4,602 research outputs found

    Inovação na diplomacia cultural: o caso da China

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    This study focuses on the innovation of China’s cultural diplomacy (CCD) by means of the Confucius Institute (CI). The main contents revolve around the following research goals: 1) to understand the strategic framework and practical path of CCD, and to clarify the context of its inheritance and innovation; 2) to analyze whether the CI, epitomized as a crucial innovation of CCD, has improved China’s national image in Portuguese-speaking countries (PSCs) and enhanced the attraction and international competitiveness of Chinese culture; and 3) to explore how China can better formulate its CD strategy in line with the exigencies of the modern era. The study combines the methods of literature review, case study, and questionnaire research to explore the topics from different perspectives to strengthen the scientific nature of the research results. In addition to the introduction and conclusion, the thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 discusses the connotation and value of CD. Chapter 2 expounds the development and innovation of CCD. Chapter 3 systematically summarizes China’s cultural interaction in its diplomatic process with PSCs. Chapter 4 elaborates on the CI in terms of its operation mode and diplomatic means. Chapter 5 forms the core of the study and involves empirical analysis of case-study and questionnaire data. It aims to investigate the functions, public image, influence, and practical means of CIs in the process of CD. Major findings indicate that CIs in PSCs have achieved ideal social feedback and play a positive role in shaping the image of China. However, according to the different continents where CIs are located, the survey results show distinct characteristics which are closely related to China’s different foreign policies towards Latin America, Europe, and Africa and are determined by the historical experiences and national conditions of the various countries. The future task for CCD is to clarify China’s institutional roots and the cultural genes behind its development by using cultural exchanges and China’s fluid culture to convey a message of China’s pursuit of peace, development, and cooperation.Este estudo tem como foco a inovação da Diplomacia Cultural da China (DCC) através do Instituto Confúcio (IC). Os principais conteúdos giram em torno dos seguintes objetivos de investigação: 1) compreender o enquadramento estratégico e o percurso prático da Diplomacia Cultural da China e clarificar o contexto da sua herança e inovação; 2) analisar se o IC, exemplo de inovação crucial da Diplomacia Cultural da China, melhorou a imagem nacional da China nos Países de Língua Oficial Portuguesa (PALOP) e aumentou a atração e competitividade internacional da cultura chinesa; e 3) explorar como a China pode formular melhor a sua estratégia de Diplomacia Cultural, de acordo com as exigências da era moderna. O estudo combina os métodos de revisão de literatura, estudo de caso e pesquisa de questionário para explorar os tópicos de diferentes perspetivas com o objetivo de fortalecer a natureza científica dos resultados de investigação. Além da introdução e da conclusão, a tese está dividida em cinco capítulos. O Capítulo 1 discute a conotação e o valor de Diplomacia Cultural (DC). O Capítulo 2 expõe o desenvolvimento e a inovação da Diplomacia Cultural da China (DCC). O Capítulo 3 resume sistematicamente a interação cultural da China no seu processo diplomático com os Países de Língua Oficial Portuguesa (PALOP). O Capítulo 4 discorre sobre o papel do IC em termos do seu modo de operar e dos seus meios diplomáticos. O Capítulo 5 constitui o núcleo da tese e envolve a análise empírica dos dados do estudo de caso e do questionário. Tem como objetivo investigar as funções, a imagem pública, a influência e os meios práticos dos IC no processo de Diplomacia Cultural (DC). As principais descobertas indicam que os IC nos PALOP alcançaram o feedback social ideal e desempenham um papel positivo na formação da imagem da China. No entanto, de acordo com os diferentes continentes onde os IC estão situados, os resultados da pesquisa apresentam caraterísticas distintas que estão intimamente relacionadas com as diferentes políticas externas da China para a América Latina, a Europa e a África e são determinadas pelas experiências históricas e pelas condições nacionais dos vários países. A futura tarefa da Diplomacia Cultural da China (DCC) será a de esclarecer as raízes institucionais da China e os genes culturais por trás do seu desenvolvimento, usando intercâmbios culturais e a cultura fluida da China para transmitir uma mensagem de busca de paz, de desenvolvimento e de cooperação por parte da China.Programa Doutoral em Políticas Pública

    3D Innovations in Personalized Surgery

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    Current practice involves the use of 3D surgical planning and patient-specific solutions in multiple surgical areas of expertise. Patient-specific solutions have been endorsed for several years in numerous publications due to their associated benefits around accuracy, safety, and predictability of surgical outcome. The basis of 3D surgical planning is the use of high-quality medical images (e.g., CT, MRI, or PET-scans). The translation from 3D digital planning toward surgical applications was developed hand in hand with a rise in 3D printing applications of multiple biocompatible materials. These technical aspects of medical care require engineers’ or technical physicians’ expertise for optimal safe and effective implementation in daily clinical routines.The aim and scope of this Special Issue is high-tech solutions in personalized surgery, based on 3D technology and, more specifically, bone-related surgery. Full-papers or highly innovative technical notes or (systematic) reviews that relate to innovative personalized surgery are invited. This can include optimization of imaging for 3D VSP, optimization of 3D VSP workflow and its translation toward the surgical procedure, or optimization of personalized implants or devices in relation to bone surgery

    Scalable Exploration of Complex Objects and Environments Beyond Plain Visual Replication​

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    Digital multimedia content and presentation means are rapidly increasing their sophistication and are now capable of describing detailed representations of the physical world. 3D exploration experiences allow people to appreciate, understand and interact with intrinsically virtual objects. Communicating information on objects requires the ability to explore them under different angles, as well as to mix highly photorealistic or illustrative presentations of the object themselves with additional data that provides additional insights on these objects, typically represented in the form of annotations. Effectively providing these capabilities requires the solution of important problems in visualization and user interaction. In this thesis, I studied these problems in the cultural heritage-computing-domain, focusing on the very common and important special case of mostly planar, but visually, geometrically, and semantically rich objects. These could be generally roughly flat objects with a standard frontal viewing direction (e.g., paintings, inscriptions, bas-reliefs), as well as visualizations of fully 3D objects from a particular point of views (e.g., canonical views of buildings or statues). Selecting a precise application domain and a specific presentation mode allowed me to concentrate on the well defined use-case of the exploration of annotated relightable stratigraphic models (in particular, for local and remote museum presentation). My main results and contributions to the state of the art have been a novel technique for interactively controlling visualization lenses while automatically maintaining good focus-and-context parameters, a novel approach for avoiding clutter in an annotated model and for guiding users towards interesting areas, and a method for structuring audio-visual object annotations into a graph and for using that graph to improve guidance and support storytelling and automated tours. We demonstrated the effectiveness and potential of our techniques by performing interactive exploration sessions on various screen sizes and types ranging from desktop devices to large-screen displays for a walk-up-and-use museum installation. KEYWORDS - Computer Graphics, Human-Computer Interaction, Interactive Lenses, Focus-and-Context, Annotated Models, Cultural Heritage Computing

    Microcredentials to support PBL

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    Reforming the Corporate Governance of Not-for-profit Residential Care Institutions in China

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    Due to the continuous aging process in China, not-for-profit residential care institutions (NPRIs) account for about half of the service providers in aged care services and are playing an increasingly significant role. However, several NPRIs have been exposed to governance scandals, such as the corruption of senior management; NPRIs using their not-for-profit status as an empty shell to generate profit for illegal distribution; NPRI managers’ unlawful use of government subsidies; and extreme situations such as fraud, crime, and aged abuse cases, which has contributed to the public accountability requirements in this sector. This research, therefore, asks: Can Chinese NPRIs’ existing corporate governance systems fulfill their accountability function? If not, how can they be enhanced to achieve greater accountability to protect the interests of stakeholders? To address the research question, this research developed an accountability framework by analysing the NPRIs should be accountable to whom; accountable for what; and how to improve the accountability. This accountability framework is used in analysing the related legislation and governance documents with four key accountability mechanisms in NPRIs, including the monitoring role of the supervisory board; the evaluation of the related party transactions; the transparency of the annual report; and the public enforcement has taken by regulators. This research identified several potential system flaws and proposes some specific recommendations to enhance the accountability mechanisms. For example, the legislator should value the accountability demands of clients; the legislator should emphasis the formal and functional independence of the supervisory board ; the Regulatory regime should consider regulating related party transactions with due process and directors’ loyalty duty rules; the NPRI practitioner should think of improving the transparency of annual reports to outsiders with higher levels of understandability and accessibility; and regulators should improve the current public enforcement system with more enforcement tools and a greater use of them to respond to the violations appropriately. By implementing the proposed improvements, this research hopes that the current corporate governance system could be more accountable to broader stakeholders of NPRIs, in both substantive and procedural issues, especially to protect the most important and vulnerable stakeholders, aged residents

    A view of colonial life in South Australia: An osteological investigation of the health status among 19th-century migrant settlers

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    Studies of human skeletal remains contribute to understanding the extent to which conditions prevailing in various past communities were detrimental to health. Few of these studies have evaluated the situation in which the first European colonists of South Australia lived. Colonial Australian skeletal collections are scarce, especially for research purposes. This makes the 19th-century skeletal remains of individuals, excavated from St Mary’s Cemetery, South Australia, a rare and valuable collection. The overarching aim of this thesis was to investigate the general and oral health of this specific group of 19th-century settlers, through the examination of their skeletons and dentitions. Four research papers in this thesis address this overarching aim. The first two papers determine the general skeletal health of the settlers, with a focus on pathological manifestations on bones associated with metabolic deficiencies and the demands of establishing an industrial society. Paper 3 investigated whether Large Volume Micro- Computed Tomography (LV Micro-CT) could be used as a single technique for the analysis of the in situ dentoalveolar complex of individuals from St Mary’s. This led to a detailed investigation of the dentitions of the St Mary’s sample, in paper 4, with the aims of determining the oral health status of these individuals, and understanding how oral conditions may have influenced their general health. The skeletal remains of 65 individuals (20 adults and 45 subadults) from St Mary’s sample were available for the four component investigations using non-destructive techniques - macroscopic, radiographic and micro-CT methods. Signs of nutritional deficiencies (vitamin C and iron) were identified in Paper 1. The findings of paper 2 showed joint diseases and traumatic fractures were seen and that gastrointestinal and pulmonary conditions were the leading causes of death in subadults and adults respectively. Paper 3 found that the LV Micro-CT technique was the only method able to generate images that allowed the full range of detailed measurements across all the oral health categories studied. A combination of macroscopic and radiographic techniques covered a number of these categories, but was more time-consuming, and did not provide the same level of accuracy or include all measurements. Results for paper 4 confirmed that extensive carious lesions, antemortem tooth loss and evidence of periodontal disease were present in the St Mary’s sample. Developmental defects of enamel (EH) and areas of interglobular dentine (IGD) were identified. Many individuals with dental defects also had skeletal signs of co-morbidities. St Mary’s individuals had a similar percentage of carious lesions as the British sample, which was more than other historic Australian samples, but less than a contemporary New Zealand sample. The 19th-century migrants to the colony of South Australia were faced with multiple challenges such as adapting to local environmental conditions as well as participating in the development of settlements, infrastructure and new industries. Evidence of joint diseases, traumatic injuries and health insults, seen as pathological changes and/ or abnormalities on the bone and/or teeth, confirmed that the settlers' health had been affected. The number of burials in the ‘free ground’ area between the 1840s -1870s was greater than the number in the leased plots, reflecting the economic problems of the colony during these early years. Validation of the reliability and accuracy of the LV Micro-CT system for the analysis of the dentoalveolar complex, in situ within archaeological human skull samples, provided a microanalytical approach for the in-depth investigations of the St Mary’s dentition. Extensive carious lesions, antemortem tooth loss and periodontal disease seen in this group would have affected their general health status. The presence of developmental defects (EH and IGD) indicated that many of the settlers had suffered health insults in childhood to young adulthood. Contemporaneous Australian, New Zealand and British samples had comparable findings suggesting that little improvement had occurred in their oral health since arriving in South Australia. In conclusion, the findings of this investigation largely fulfilled the initial aims. Our understanding of the extent to which conditions prevailing in the new colony were detrimental to human health has increased, as has our knowledge of why pathological manifestations and/or abnormalities were seen on the bones and teeth of individuals from the St Mary’s sample. A multiple-method approach, to derive enhanced information has been shown to be effective, whilst establishing a new methodology (LV Micro-CT) for the analysis of dentition in situ in human archaeological skulls. Further, this investigation has digitally preserved data relating to this historical group of individuals for future comparisons.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Biomedicine, 202

    Soundscape in Urban Forests

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    This Special Issue of Forests explores the role of soundscapes in urban forested areas. It is comprised of 11 papers involving soundscape studies conducted in urban forests from Asia and Africa. This collection contains six research fields: (1) the ecological patterns and processes of forest soundscapes; (2) the boundary effects and perceptual topology; (3) natural soundscapes and human health; (4) the experience of multi-sensory interactions; (5) environmental behavior and cognitive disposition; and (6) soundscape resource management in forests

    “Have patients with chronic skin diseases needs been met?”:A thesis on psoriasis and eczema patient care in dermatology service

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    Background: Common chronic skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis usually require long term medical care. They are often associated with psychological and metabolic comorbidities, which can impact on patient quality of life (QOL) and on the self-management of these diseases. Regular assessment of patient needs, comorbidities and feedback is a critical step in the development of decision-analytic models. Currently, no intervention is available to regularly assess such patients’ needs and comorbidities and support their involvement in the decision-making and self-management of their morbidity and comorbidities. The aim of this research is to involve the patients in decision making of their care and to support their self-management by the use of a paper questionnaire (study tool) at each consultation. Objective: To explore the acceptability and potential of a self-developed paper questionnaire that constituted a study tool for addressing the needs, comorbidities, and feedback of patients with psoriasis and eczema and supporting their involvement in decision making and self-management of their chronic conditions. Method: A mixed method study was conducted and included a postal survey on adult male and female patients with psoriasis and eczema, using the study tool, which is a paper questionnaire and contains the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) and seven supplementary open-ended questions to capture patients’ views, feedback, comorbidities, coping status and needs. The survey was followed by semi-structured face-to-face interviews with a sample of the patients who had participated in the survey. The aims of the interviews were two-fold: 1. to gain a deeper understanding of their experience of living with and managing their skin disease; and 2. to gather patient feedback on the service they received as well as their views on using the new study tool or any alternative intervention to address and support their self-management. The final study was a pilot which involved presenting a proposal of an online version of the study tool to a group of healthcare experts asking them to critically review the extent to which the online model responded to patients expressed needs. Results: Of the 114 patients who participated in the postal survey 108 (94.7%) of them expressed physical, metabolic and psychological comorbidities. Stress was identified as the dominant disease-triggering factor in 72 (63%) participants. Thirty-three (28.9%) of participants reported that they could not cope with their chronic illness. Eighteen (15.7%) participants suffered from anxiety, and 12 (10.5%) had depression and suicidal thoughts. Twenty-nine (25%) participants addressed their needs for support at home, and 16 (14%) of them asked for support at work. In the patient feedback section, 21 (18.4%) and 9 (7.8%) participants rated the service they received from their general practitioner (GP) and dermatologist as poor, respectively. In the interviews, all the participants 22 (100%) welcomed the use of the study tool on a regular basis to address their needs, comorbidities and feedback. Nineteen (86.3%) of them suggested that they would prefer using an online version of the tool or patient portal system as a convenient way of remote and interactive communication with the healthcare provider, particularly during the worsening of their skin condition. In the final pilot study, the healthcare experts agreed that the proposed online version of the study tool could be a convenient platform for such patients to support their self-management. They discussed the potential importance of such a tool if it provided them with access to supportive services such as patient information on skin diseases and self-management, access to local mental health service and other relevant psoriasis and eczema patients’ support groups and charities. Conclusion: This novel mixed method research identified knowledge gaps in managing patients with psoriasis and eczema. It provided a new tool that has the potential to regularly engage and assess patients’ unmet needs, comorbidities and feedback. The tool can involve patients in decision-making and offers them the autonomy to disclose heterogeneous needs that may support their self-management. All the interviewees welcomed regular use of the study tool and the majority of them suggested that they would prefer using an online version of the tool if it was available. Future research is needed to assess the impact of the study tool in filling important gaps in patient self-management and in health service improvement
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