Making the Grade: Do art museums have an impact on student achievement within low socio-economic communities?

This thesis evaluates the connections between art museums across the country with their communities. With many of the country’s museums located in city centers, there is a large population of children who live within the vicinity of art museums. Many of these children also come from low socio-economic backgrounds. They may not have access to the resources needed to gain access to art museums. This thesis examines what art museums are doing to ensure all community members can experience what they have to offer. Four main categories are examined in this research: (1) the price of entry to the museum, (2) the variety of bus, subway, and rail stops close to the museum, (3) the variety and cost of educational programming the museum offers, and (4) the type of funding and support received to facilitate access. By understanding what museums are doing to promote affordable connections we can understand what more needs to be done. In summation, are art museums doing enough in their cities to ensure the success of the people who need them most? Do art museums really make a difference

D3.3 Business models report

RECIPROCITY aims to transform European cities into climate-resilient and connected, multimodal nodes for smart and clean mobility. The project's innovative four-stage replication approach is designed to showcase and disseminate best practices for sustainable urban development and mobility. As part of this project, the present business model report (D3.3) provides an overview of innovative urban mobility business models that could be tailored to cities in the RECIPROCITY replication ecosystem. The work developed was based upon the work carried-out in WP1-2-4, and aimed to collect and derive the business model patterns for urban mobility and propose a business model portfolio that encourage cross-sector collaboration and create an integrated mobility system. This report is therefore addressed to cities and local authorities that have to meet mobility challenges (i.e. high costs and low margin, broad set of partners, competing with private car) by providing new services to activate and accelerate a sustainable modal shift. It also targets other stakeholders interested in business model concepts applied to cities

Integrating Haptic Feedback into Mobile Location Based Services

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human-computer interaction has been visual - text and images on the screen. Haptic feedback can be an important additional method especially in Mobile Location Based Services such as knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. A knowledge discovery system called the Haptic GeoWand is a low interaction system that allows users to query geo-tagged data around them by using a point-and-scan technique with their mobile device. Haptic Pedestrian is a navigation system for walkers. Four prototypes have been developed classified according to the user’s guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Haptic Transit is a notification system that provides spatial information to the users of public transport. In all these systems, haptic feedback is used to convey information about location, orientation, density and distance by use of the vibration alarm with varying frequencies and patterns to help understand the physical environment. Trials elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a “heads up” approach to mobile navigation. Results from a memory recall test show that the users of haptic feedback for navigation had better memory recall of the region traversed than the users of landmark images. Haptics integrated into a multi-modal navigation system provides more usable, less distracting but more effective interaction than conventional systems. Enhancements to the current work could include integration of contextual information, detailed large-scale user trials and the exploration of using haptics within confined indoor spaces

Oceanus.

v. 28, no. 1 (1985

A Systematic Review of Late Effects, Current Models of Follow-up in Three Pennsylvania Health Network Settings, and Survivor Care Plans for Brain Neoplasm Survivor

Introduction: Brain neoplasm survival rates have increased substantially in developed countries due to modern medical interventions, research, and enhanced therapeutic options. As the second leading cause of pediatric cancers, this has been a topic of interest within the field of public health. With mortality decreasing, scientists are now focusing the lens on the long-term outcomes of survivors, coined “survivorship” and subsequent late effects. These effects are the combined neurocognitive, psychological, and social deterioration and deficits experienced due to the brain pathology itself or exposure to associative treatments. This phenomenon is now appearing frequently in the literature. The aim of this review is to examine standards of care, planning for survivors, postdiagnostic interventions, and lapses in follow-up for brain tumor survivors. Models of care were observed in three major hospital systems and compared to the literature. Furthermore, a comprehensive examination of common late effects associated with the various treatment modalities, and the process for continued patient care has been provided for scope. Methods: Relevant literature was derived from publicly available databases for scholarly articles. Peer-reviewed studies were slated for consideration. Discussion: The extent of neurocognitive, psychological and social decline is individual and lapses in care come from lack of standardization in the follow-up process. Also, with current models of care, there is a substantial patient initiative is required, leaving patients and caretakers, already heavily burdened, to fend for themselves. This review contributes to the knowledge base afforded to survivors, thereby informing patients, caregivers, and practitioners, such that preemptive decisions can be made to bolster late effects and improve quality of life

Venice Without Obstacles

For this project, data was collected on the accessibility of bridges, water transportation, public establishments, and points of interest in Venice for people with a variety of disabilities, from mobility impairments to sight deficiencies. A website template was created that acts as a data repository for the accessibility data we collected that will be usable for people who have disabilities to plan their activities in Venice. This website includes an interactive map of the accessible islands via bridges and water transportation, as well as several maps of public points of interest and establishments on Giudecca. These deliverables focused on assisting people with disabilities when traveling in Venice and laid the foundation for extending accessibility practices in the city

Addressing Barriers to Breast Cancer Care in California: The 2016 - 2017 Landscape for Policy Change

In 2018, over 29,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in California and an estimated 4,500 will die of the disease. While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has successfully expanded access to health insurance and breast cancer care, numerous population subgroups remain uninsured, and many others may lack adequate coverage for treatment and management of their breast cancer. Although insurance improves breast cancer outcomes compared to those with no insurance, challenges may remain even for the insured. Among those insured, there appear to be significant barriers to cancer care as health insurance premiums are increasing, networks are narrowing, and as the cost of breast cancer drugs is increasing.This report provides a comprehensive assessment of the significant barriers and challenges to accessing breast cancer care in California through the  completion of three key tasks: (1) a synthesis of the peer reviewed literature, news media, reports and policy briefs, (2) completion of a series of key informant/stakeholder interviews, and (3) an analysis of social media. The authors find five categories of barriers: (1) Health System Barriers, (2) Insurance Barriers, (3) High Costs, (4) Individual and Cultural Characteristics, and (5) Language.Although many barriers are shared across insurance types, where possible, this report provides insight on barriers unique to the insurance status of women, specifically for the uninsured, those covered by Medi-Cal, and those covered by commercial insurance. Findings from this report can be used to guide efforts of policymakers to improve timely access to breast cancer care among all women in California

Asynchronous Ultrasonic Trilateration for Indoor Positioning of Mobile Phones

Spatial awareness is fast becoming the key feature on today‟s mobile devices. While accurate outdoor navigation has been widely available for some time through Global Positioning Systems (GPS), accurate indoor positioning is still largely an unsolved problem. One major reason for this is that GPS and other Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) systems offer accuracy of a scale far different to that required for effective indoor navigation. Indoor positioning is also hindered by poor GPS signal quality, a major issue when developing dedicated indoor locationing systems. In addition, many indoor systems use specialized hardware to calculate accurate device position, as readily available wireless protocols have so far not delivered sufficient levels of accuracy. This research aims to investigate how the mobile phone‟s innate ability to produce sound (notably ultrasound) can be utilised to deliver more accurate indoor positioning than current methods. Experimental work covers limitations of mobile phone speakers in regard to generation of high frequencies, propagation patternsof ultrasound and their impact on maximum range, and asynchronous trilateration. This is followed by accuracy and reliability tests of an ultrasound positioning system prototype.This thesis proposes a new method of positioning a mobile phone indoors with accuracy substantially better than other contemporary positioning systems available on off-theshelf mobile devices. Given that smartphones can be programmed to correctly estimate direction, this research outlines a potentially significant advance towards a practical platform for indoor Location Based Services. Also a novel asynchronous trilateration algorithm is proposed that eliminates the need for synchronisation between the mobile device and the positioning infrastructure

Multimodal Content Delivery for Geo-services

This thesis describes a body of work carried out over several research projects in the area of multimodal interaction for location-based services. Research in this area has progressed from using simulated mobile environments to demonstrate the visual modality, to the ubiquitous delivery of rich media using multimodal interfaces (geo- services). To effectively deliver these services, research focused on innovative solutions to real-world problems in a number of disciplines including geo-location, mobile spatial interaction, location-based services, rich media interfaces and auditory user interfaces. My original contributions to knowledge are made in the areas of multimodal interaction underpinned by advances in geo-location technology and supported by the proliferation of mobile device technology into modern life. Accurate positioning is a known problem for location-based services, contributions in the area of mobile positioning demonstrate a hybrid positioning technology for mobile devices that uses terrestrial beacons to trilaterate position. Information overload is an active concern for location-based applications that struggle to manage large amounts of data, contributions in the area of egocentric visibility that filter data based on field-of-view demonstrate novel forms of multimodal input. One of the more pertinent characteristics of these applications is the delivery or output modality employed (auditory, visual or tactile). Further contributions in the area of multimodal content delivery are made, where multiple modalities are used to deliver information using graphical user interfaces, tactile interfaces and more notably auditory user interfaces. It is demonstrated how a combination of these interfaces can be used to synergistically deliver context sensitive rich media to users - in a responsive way - based on usage scenarios that consider the affordance of the device, the geographical position and bearing of the device and also the location of the device