USING MUSIC WITH INTUITIVE INTERFACE AS A CATALYST TO IMPROVE SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT AMONG ELDERS AT AN ASSISTED LIVING FACILITY

My thesis explores the use of music as a catalyst to improve social engagement among elders at an assisted living facility. In order to increase engagement I am exploring intuitive interface. The design is an interactive interface which facilitates participation from remote location thereby increasing engagement. The design involves the other residents, part of the art group in Menorah Park to participate in creating the interface, thereby widening the social networks of the elders and creating more meaningful engagement

Exploration of adherence to treatment challenges experienced by HIV positive adolescents in Insiza District, Zimbabwe

Masters of Public Health - see Magister Public HealthZimbabwe has a high burden of HIV with a prevalence of 13.8% among the 15 to 49-year old population in 2016. As at 2017, the national antiretroviral treatment (ART) programme initiated over 1.1 million people living with HIV in Zimbabwe on treatment. Success of ART depends on optimal adherence to treatment and long-term engagement in care. Adherence to ART is challenging in general; and even more complex for the adolescent population living with HIV. The combination of physiological, mental and psychosocial development changes which occur during adolescence creates a complex interface with adherence to treatment. Understanding the perspectives of HIV positive adolescents with regards to challenges that they experience with adherence to HIV treatment is important for improving treatment outcomes. The current study explored the challenges faced by adolescents living with HIV who are registered to receive ART in Insiza District of Matabeleland South Province, Zimbabw

The Orbis Pictus we all live in: Coding the World with differently- abled visitors in the Gallery of Contemporary Art

AbstractThis discussion paper is based on research findings from a programme of gallery education for visitors with special needs. Contemporary fine art is self-reflective, critical, participatory, often revealing hidden structures of signifying systems. We, as art educators and cultural researchers, are convinced about its great cognitive potentials and its power in psychic-socio construction. Living in the symbolic order of today's society and participating in processes of communication requires multiple competencies and literacies. Production of globalised cultural industry and the manner of their dissemination by film, photography, TV, and the internet create a specific cultural interface that blurs distinctions between the “natural” and the “artificial”. Do we still live in Comenius’ visible world-in-pictures or rather in the image-world? Social systems are under constant flux in general, including education. A serious stagnation in the educational approach towards students with special needs and their neglect still persist in the Czech society

The bio-nano-interface in predicting nanoparticle fate and behaviour in living organisms: towards grouping and categorising nanomaterials and ensuring nanosafety by design

In biological media, nanoparticles acquire a coating of biomolecules (proteins, lipids, polysaccharides) from their surroundings, which reduces their surface energy and confers a biological identity to the particles. This adsorbed layer is the interface between the nanomaterial and living systems and therefore plays a significant role in determining the fate and behaviour of the nanoparticles. This review summarises the state of the art in terms of understanding the bio-nano interface and provides direction for potential future research and recommendations for future priorities and strategies to support the safe implementation of nanotechnologies. The central premise is that nanomaterials must be studied as biological entities under the appropriate exposure conditions and that this should be implemented in study design and reporting for nanosafety assessment. The implications of the bio-nano interface for nanomaterials fate and behaviour are described in light of four interlinked perspectives: the Coating concept; the Translocation concept; the Signalling concept, and the Kinetics concept. A key conclusion is that nanoparticles cannot be viewed as non-interacting species, but rather must be thought of, and studied as, biological entities, where their interaction with the environment is mediated by the proteins and other biomolecules that adsorb to them, and the key parameter to characterise then becomes the nature, composition and evolution of the bio-nano interfac

Toward an Aesthetics of New-Media Environments

In this paper I suggest that, over and above the need to explore and understand the technological newness of computer art works, there is a need to address the aesthetic significance of the changes and effects that such technological newness brings about, considering the whole environmental transaction pertaining to new media, including what they can or do offer and what users do or can do with such offerings, and how this whole package is integrated into our living spaces and activities. I argue that, given the primacy of computer-based interaction in the new-media, the notion of ‘ornamentality’ indicates the ground-floor aesthetics of new-media environments. I locate ornamentality not only in the logically constitutive principles of the new-media (hypertextuality and interactivity) but also in their multiform cultural embodiments (decoration as cultural interface). I utilize Kendall Walton’s theory of ornamentality in order to construe a puzzle pertaining to the ornamental erosion of information in new-media environments. I argue that insofar as we consider new-media to be conduits of ‘real-life’, the excessive density of ornamental devices prevalent in certain new-media environments forces us to conduct our inquiries under conditions of neustic uncertainty, that is, uncertainty concerning the kind of relationship that we, the users, have to the propositional content mediated. I conclude that this puzzle calls our attention to a peculiar interrogatory complexity inherent in any game of knowledge-seeking conducted across the infosphere, which is not restricted to the simplest form of data retrieval, especially in mixed-reality environments and when the knowledge sought is embodied mimetically

Fall prevention intervention technologies: A conceptual framework and survey of the state of the art

In recent years, an ever increasing range of technology-based applications have been developed with the goal of assisting in the delivery of more effective and efficient fall prevention interventions. Whilst there have been a number of studies that have surveyed technologies for a particular sub-domain of fall prevention, there is no existing research which surveys the full spectrum of falls prevention interventions and characterises the range of technologies that have augmented this landscape. This study presents a conceptual framework and survey of the state of the art of technology-based fall prevention systems which is derived from a systematic template analysis of studies presented in contemporary research literature. The framework proposes four broad categories of fall prevention intervention system: Pre-fall prevention; Post-fall prevention; Fall injury prevention; Cross-fall prevention. Other categories include, Application type, Technology deployment platform, Information sources, Deployment environment, User interface type, and Collaborative function. After presenting the conceptual framework, a detailed survey of the state of the art is presented as a function of the proposed framework. A number of research challenges emerge as a result of surveying the research literature, which include a need for: new systems that focus on overcoming extrinsic falls risk factors; systems that support the environmental risk assessment process; systems that enable patients and practitioners to develop more collaborative relationships and engage in shared decision making during falls risk assessment and prevention activities. In response to these challenges, recommendations and future research directions are proposed to overcome each respective challenge.The Royal Society, grant Ref: RG13082

Recognition of activities of daily living in natural “at home” scenario for assessment of Alzheimer's disease patients

In this paper we tackle the problem of Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) recognition from wearable videos in a Home Clinical scenario. The aim of this research is to provide an accessible and yet detailed video-based navigation interface of patients with dementia/Alzheimer disease to doctors and caregivers. A joint work between a memory clinic and computer vision scientists enabled studying real-case life scenarios of a dyad couple consisting of a caregiver and patient with Alzheimer. As a result of this collaboration, a new @Home, real-life video dataset was recorded, from which a truly relevant taxonomy of activities was extracted. Following a state of the art Activity Recognition framework we further studied and assessed these IADLs in term of recognition performances with different calibration approaches

Interactive digital art

In this paper, we present DNArt in general, our work in DNArt’s lab including a detailed presentation of the first artwork that has come out of our lab in September 2011, entitled “ENCOUNTERS #3”, and the use of DNArt for digital art conservation. Research into the use of DNArt for digital art conservation is currently conducted by the Netherlands Institute for Media art (Nederlands Instituut voor Mediakunst, NIMk). The paper describes this research and presents preliminary results. At the end, it will offer the reader the possibility to participate in DNArt’s development

The Art of the Interface in Mixed Realities: Predessors and Visions

The approach of this paper is broad and historical; it attempts to expand a narrow technical view by looking at historic art media together with contemporary media art. By focusing on recent art against the backdrop of historic developments, it is possible to better analyze and grasp what is really new in media art and, using cornerstones from the history of media of illusion and immersion, it is a material and theoretical contribution to a new, emerging discipline: the science of the image. Where and how does the new genre of virtual art fit into the art history of illusion and immersion in the image, that is, how do older elements continue to live on and influence this contemporary art? What part does this play in the current metamorphosis of the concepts of art and the image