Annual report of the town of New Durham, New Hampshire year ending December 31, 2008.

This is an annual report containing vital statistics for a town/city in the state of New Hampshire

Usability and Reliability of Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) Module 4 Remote Administration

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by impairments in social interaction, impairments in communication, and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior, interests, and activities. The Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) Module 4 is a semi-structured diagnostic assessment tool designed for verbally fluent adolescents and adults with possible ASD. Due to a lack of available clinical expertise, it can be difficult for adults to receive an accurate ASD diagnostic assessment, especially those residing in rural areas. An ADOS teleassessment system was developed using the Versatile and Integrated System for Telerehabilitation (VISYTER). VISYTER consists of computer stations at the client site and clinician site, and a web portal server for managing and coordinating all elements of the assessment process. Clinician usability and fidelity to standard, face-to-face administration, was assessed. After improvements to the system were made, a study was conducted to determine the reliability of the ADOS module 4 administrations delivered remotely. Twenty-three adults with an ASD diagnosis participated in a within-subject crossover design study in which both a remote and face-to-face ADOS were administered. Weighted kappa was calculated for all 31 ADOS items. There was substantial agreement on 11 items and almost perfect or perfect agreement on 10 items. Intraclass correlations (ICCs) were calculated for algorithm subtotals. ICCs were greater than .75 for three out of four subtotals. There was substantial agreement on ADOS classification (i.e., diagnosis) between assessments delivered face-to-face versus assessments delivered remotely, Po=83%; ĸ =.772, ICC=.92. Non-agreement may have been due to outside factors or practice effect despite a washout period. Finally, usability and satisfaction of the remote assessment system was evaluated from the participants’ perspectives. Participant satisfaction with the remote ADOS delivery system was high. The results of these studies demonstrate that an ASD assessment designed to be delivered face-to-face can be reliably administered remotely using an integrated web-based system

Contextual Factors Affecting Information Sharing Patterns in Technology Mediated Communication

In this thesis, we investigate how and what contextual factors affect user’s information sharing. We build our work on six individual research projects which cover a variety of systems (search engines, social network sites, teleconferencing systems, monitoring technology, and general purpose conversational agents) in a variety of communication scenarios with diverse relationships and dispositions of users. Alongside detailed findings for particular systems and communication scenarios from each individual project, we provide a consolidated analysis of these results across systems and scenarios, which allows us to identify patterns specific for different system types and aspects shared between systems. In particular, we show that depending on the system’s position between a user and an intended information receiving agent – whether communication happens through, around, or directly with the system – the system should have different patterns of operational adaptation to communication context. Specifically, when communication happens through the system, the system needs to gather communication context unavailable to the user and integrate it into information communication; when communication happens around the system, the system should adapt its operations to provide information in the most contextually suitable format; finally, when a user communicates with the system, the role of the system is to “match” this context in communication with the user. We then argue that despite the differences between system types in patterns of required context-based adaptation, there are contextual factors affecting user’s information sharing intent that should be acknowledged across systems. Grounded in our cumulative findings and analysis of related literature, we identify four such high-level contextual factors. We then present these four factors synthesized into an early design framework, which we call SART according to the included factors of space, addressee, reason, and time. Each factor in SART is presented as a continuum defined through a descriptive dichotomy: perceived breadth of communication space (public to private); perceived specificity of an information addressee (defined to undefined); intended reason for information sharing (instrumental to objective); and perceived time of information relevance and life-span (immediate to indefinite)

Feature Papers "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: State of the Art and Future Perspectives"

The "Age-Friendly Cities & Communities: States of the Art and Future Perspectives" publication presents contemporary, innovative, and insightful narratives, debates, and frameworks based on an international collection of papers from scholars spanning the fields of gerontology, social sciences, architecture, computer science, and gerontechnology. This extensive collection of papers aims to move the narrative and debates forward in this interdisciplinary field of age-friendly cities and communities

General Appropriations Act

Proclamation issued by the Governor of the State of Texas, issuing a line-item veto of the General Appropriations Bill