3D Information Technologies in Cultural Heritage Preservation and Popularisation

This Special Issue of the journal Applied Sciences presents recent advances and developments in the use of digital 3D technologies to protect and preserve cultural heritage. While most of the articles focus on aspects of 3D scanning, modeling, and presenting in VR of cultural heritage objects from buildings to small artifacts and clothing, part of the issue is devoted to 3D sound utilization in the cultural heritage field

River Bluffs Scenic Byways: Corridor Management Plan, 2016

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) defines a scenic byway as “a public road having special scenic, historic, recreational, cultural, archaeological, and/or natural qualities that have been recognized as such through legislation or some other official declaration.” Most byways have several of these qualities but nearly all share an emphasis on the scenic beauty of the surrounding landscape

Horses and Risk

The risk of physical accident or injury to humans from horses is well understood. Now, there is increasing awareness of negative impacts on the physical and mental wellbeing of horses from living in fundamentally human environments and being subject to human management regimes. The 17 articles in this collection describe horse-related risks to humans and human-related risks to horses across a range of equestrian disciplines, sectors and activities. Not only do the authors take detailed approaches towards describing and calculating risk, they suggest solutions-focussed interventions for reducing the consequence and likelihood of harm to horses and humans in their relations with one another. Together, these important articles provide strategies for maximising the mutual benefits of humans and horses in each other’s lives. By considering human, animal and environmental aspects of horse-related risk, this collection provides a foundation for the development of an ‘Equestrian One Health’ framework to underpin future research into horse-related risks

Making the West End modern: space, architecture and shopping in 1930s London.

This research explores the shopping cultures of the 1930s West End, arguing for the recognition of this as a significant moment within consumption history, hitherto overlooked in favour of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. The approach is interdisciplinary, combining in a new way studies of shopping routes and networks, retail architecture, spectacle, consumer types and consumption practices. The study first establishes the importance of shopping geographies in understanding the character of the 1930s West End. It positions this shopping hub within local, national and international networks. It also examines the gender and class-differentiated shopping routes within the West End, looking at how the rise of new consumer cultures during the period reconfigured this geography. In the second section, a case study of two new Modern shops, Simpson Piccadilly and Peter Jones, provides the focus for a discussion of retail buildings. Architecture is presented as an important way in which the West End was transformed and modernity articulated. Modernism was a significant arrival in the West End's retail sector: it provided a new architectural approach with a close, if often problematic, relationship with shopping. The study thus reassesses common assumptions about the fundamental irreconcilability of modernism with consumption, femininity and spectacle. The third section makes a more detailed examination of the staging of shopping cultures within the West End street, looking at window display, the application of light and decoration to facades, and participation in pageantry. The study thus revisits retail spectacle, an important strand within histories of shopping and of the urban, looking at how established strategies were adapted and developed to stage modernity, emerging consumer cultures and the West End itself during the 1930s

Evidence-based stragegies to inform urban design decision-making: the case of pedestrian movement behaviour.

Walking is an essential mode of transportation, and pedestrian movement is a major influencing parameter in city design. Due to the complexity of pedestrian behaviour, new insights concerning the significance of factors affecting walking are challenging to obtain without the use of technology. Furthermore, despite the impact of decision-making in the design of buildings and places, there is currently a limited understanding concerning how urban design decisions are best made. This research aims to “assess the adoption of, and opportunities deriving from, data-driven innovation techniques in the design of urban spaces, by the analysis of pedestrian movement patterns in urban environments, and to evaluate how the integration of evidence-based strategies can be established in supporting decision-making in relation to future urban designs”. The research focuses on two groups of stakeholders: Decision-makers in designing buildings and places and End-users undertaking walking activities within urban space. In addressing the aim, a range of research methodologies has been developed and trialled. The work centres on an extended case study concerning a retail high-street locale in London, UK. This study makes several contributions to the immediate field of urban design research. Firstly, the findings advance the research methods applied to study pedestrian movement in urban environments. Secondly, the results offer real impact in practice by demonstrating the value and importance of adopting data-driven innovation techniques in decision-making processes in urban design via the adoption of a quantitative data- driven, evidence-based methodological framework. Thirdly, the findings support decision-making by presenting a novel methodological framework to assess pedestrian routing in urban environments utilising the classification of pedestrian behaviours and spatial visibility interactions. Finally, this study raises awareness of the critical challenges and opportunities, priorities, and potential development areas for applying evidence- based strategies in informing building and urban design decisions. The research presents a series of recommendations for enhancing data-driven innovation techniques in urban design decision-making processes.Natural Environmental Research (NERC)PhD in Environment and Agrifoo

Drawing from the past to learn tomorrow

Humans are unique in their ability to use tools to produce works which communicate information about 3D objects through 2D drawings. Drawings give us insight into the origins of our species, our uniqueness amongst animals, and our creative ability to produce images from the strategic placement of line and marks. Considerable research has been devoted to the ontogeny of drawing skill and considerable speculation has been devoted to the psychological value of drawings themselves. For example, children’s ability to produce human figure drawings develops in a highly predictable stage-like manner, but the rate at which individual children progress through each stage varies considerably. These two characteristics - a consistent developmental pattern coupled with individual differences in the rate of development - have led many to argue that human figure drawings (HFDs) can be used as a measure of intelligence. One characteristic of traditional pen and paper intelligence tests is that they are highly resistant to instruction. In Study 1, I assessed the effect of instruction on 11- and 12-year-old children’s scores on the most recent HFD test, the DAP:IQ. Children showed significant gains shortly after art instruction, but their scores returned to pre-instruction levels when they were tested 6 months later. These data challenge the view that the DAP: IQ provides a valid measure of intelligence. Despite the limited value of drawings as measures of intelligence, the possible benefits of drawing per se have been under-explored in contemporary research. Students of art have traditionally drawn from life as a way to improve their drawing skills, but little is known about the cognitive benefits of this practice. In Study 2, I examined the effect of drawing on visitors’ memory for museum exhibits. Three groups completed a tour of a museum exhibit, ‘Wonders of the World’: two of these groups consisted of adults (self-identified artists and non-artists) and the third group consisted of children under the age of 13. Individuals from each group were accompanied by a researcher who instructed the participant to sketch or to merely observe each object while completing the tour. Adults observed ten objects and drew ten objects and children observed six objects and drew six objects; irrespective of whether they drew or observed, all participants spent the same amount of time with each object. One week later, they were asked to recall the objects they learned about on the tour, and then they were asked a series of specific questions about the visual details of the objects. For adult artists and children, drawing enhanced recall and recognition, but for adult non-artists, it did not. That is, for those participants who were comfortable with the medium, drawing provide an inexpensive opportunity to facilitate learning and memory in museums. Despite the positive outcomes associated with drawing, drawing as a pastime is decreasing in popularity with children, which some would attribute to the rise of digital culture and increased screen time in young people’s lives. But not all digital technology is without benefit and one digital interface that allows for creative activity in a virtual world is Minecraft. In Study 3, I examined whether using creative digital tools might also aid children’s memory for museum visits. Children took a tour of an industrial museum, either ‘in-game’ using Minecraft or by visiting the physical site and then three of the four groups completed a follow-up worksheet to find additional information. Two groups completed this worksheet ‘in-game’ using Minecraft. Students who experienced the physical tour and the follow-up worksheet activities in Minecraft had the best retention of facts one week later. Interestingly, students who completed a physical tour followed by the onsite worksheet activities recalled the same amount of information as students who completed all activities ‘in-game’ in their school classroom. That is, Minecraft proved to be an inexpensive opportunity to facilitate learning and memory on field trips. Taken together, the present research challenges some traditional assumptions about drawing, demonstrating at least one way in which it can be used to enhance learning and memory, at least for some groups of participants. For children on field trips, this research also extends the learning and memory value of digital gaming, a contemporary pastime which has superseded drawing in children’s day-to-day lives. The evolutionary history of drawing is linked to the emergence of tool use in humans: modern, digital tools build on those that have come before them. The studies in this thesis explore part of this journey

A Corpus-driven Approach toward Teaching Vocabulary and Reading to English Language Learners in U.S.-based K-12 Context through a Mobile App

In order to decrease teachers’ decisions of which vocabulary the focus of the instruction should be upon, a recent line of research argues that pedagogically-prepared word lists may offer the most efficient order of learning vocabulary with an optimized context for instruction in each of four K-12 content areas (math, science, social studies, and language arts) through providing English Language Learners (ELLs) with the most frequent words in each area. Educators and school experts have acknowledged the need for developing new materials, including computerized enhanced texts and effective strategies aimed at improving ELLs’ mastery of academic and STEM-related lexicon. Not all words in a language are equal in their role in comprehending the language and expressing ideas or thoughts. For this study, I used a corpus-driven approach which is operationalized by applying a text analysis method. For the purpose of this research study, I made two corpora, Teacher’s U.S. Corpus (TUSC) and Science and Math Academic Corpus for Kids (SMACK) with a focus on word lemma rather than inflectional and derivational variants of word families. To create the corpora, I collected and analyzed a total of 122 textbooks used commonly in the states of Florida and California. Recruiting, scanning and converting of textbooks had been carried out over a period of more than two years from October 2014 to March 2017. In total, this school corpus contains 10,519,639 running words and 16,344 lemmas saved in 16,315 word document pages. From the corpora, I developed six word lists, namely three frequency-based word lists (high-, mid-, and low-frequency), academic and STEM-related word lists, and essential word list (EWL). I then applied the word lists as the database and developed a mobile app, Vocabulary in Reading Study – VIRS, (available on App Store, Android and Google Play) alongside a website (www.myvirs.com). Also, I developed a new K-12 dictionary which targets the vocabulary needs of ELLs in K-12 context. This is a frequency-based dictionary which categorizes words into three groups of high, medium and low frequency words as well as two separate sections for academic and STEM words. The dictionary has 16,500 lemmas with derivational and inflectional forms

Shortest Route at Dynamic Location with Node Combination-Dijkstra Algorithm

Abstract— Online transportation has become a basic requirement of the general public in support of all activities to go to work, school or vacation to the sights. Public transportation services compete to provide the best service so that consumers feel comfortable using the services offered, so that all activities are noticed, one of them is the search for the shortest route in picking the buyer or delivering to the destination. Node Combination method can minimize memory usage and this methode is more optimal when compared to A* and Ant Colony in the shortest route search like Dijkstra algorithm, but can’t store the history node that has been passed. Therefore, using node combination algorithm is very good in searching the shortest distance is not the shortest route. This paper is structured to modify the node combination algorithm to solve the problem of finding the shortest route at the dynamic location obtained from the transport fleet by displaying the nodes that have the shortest distance and will be implemented in the geographic information system in the form of map to facilitate the use of the system. Keywords— Shortest Path, Algorithm Dijkstra, Node Combination, Dynamic Location (key words

Social work with airports passengers

Social work at the airport is in to offer to passengers social services. The main methodological position is that people are under stress, which characterized by a particular set of characteristics in appearance and behavior. In such circumstances passenger attracts in his actions some attention. Only person whom he trusts can help him with the documents or psychologically