A basis for the exploration of hypermedia systems : a guided path facility : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts at Massey University

This thesis examines the potential of a paths facility as an aid to navigating large hypermedia systems. The use of the navigational metaphor as applied to finding information is continued with the idea of following a path through information 'space'. This idea assumes that each node, or chunk of information, on the path can be considered a landmark that can be easily returned to when side-trips are taken off the path to explore the surrounding space. The idea of a guided path assumes the re-use of a path, and also assumes that there is extra information available about the path. This meta-information is very important for providing information to help path-followers make better sense of the path, both in terms of content and context, but also in making more effective use of the nodes on the path and in navigating the variety of interface conventions seen in the test environment - HyperCard. A small pilot study has been carried out using two groups of users performing a directed information-seeking task. One group used HyperCard's navigational facilities to find information in a group of stacks, while the other group used a guided path as a base on which to explore the same group of stacks. Both groups had a time limit, at the end of which they completed a number of questionnaires to indicate task completion, as well as providing a subjective evaluation of the facilities they used. The guided path facility appears to be most effective for inexperienced users for a number of reasons. It presents a simplified view of the complex system - the information available has already been filtered and selected, and a simple and consistent navigational interface reduces the cognitive overheads associated with learning a variety of mechanisms present in different stacks. An important feature of a path facility seems to be the provision of meta-information, especially scope information which can reduce the incidences of disorientation. Another feature is the provision of a history facility which provides a backtracking capability. It may also be used in the creation of paths using the length of visit as a criterion for node inclusion on a new path

A feasibility study for the provision of electronic healthcare tools and services in areas of Greece, Cyprus and Italy

Background: Through this paper, we present the initial steps for the creation of an integrated platform for the provision of a series of eHealth tools and services to both citizens and travelers in isolated areas of thesoutheast Mediterranean, and on board ships travelling across it. The platform was created through an INTERREG IIIB ARCHIMED project called INTERMED. Methods: The support of primary healthcare, home care and the continuous education of physicians are the three major issues that the proposed platform is trying to facilitate. The proposed system is based on state-of-the-art telemedicine systems and is able to provide the following healthcare services: i) Telecollaboration and teleconsultation services between remotely located healthcare providers, ii) telemedicine services in emergencies, iii) home telecare services for "at risk" citizens such as the elderly and patients with chronic diseases, and iv) eLearning services for the continuous training through seminars of both healthcare personnel (physicians, nurses etc) and persons supporting "at risk" citizens. These systems support data transmission over simple phone lines, internet connections, integrated services digital network/digital subscriber lines, satellite links, mobile networks (GPRS/3G), and wireless local area networks. The data corresponds, among others, to voice, vital biosignals, still medical images, video, and data used by eLearning applications. The proposed platform comprises several systems, each supporting different services. These were integrated using a common data storage and exchange scheme in order to achieve system interoperability in terms of software, language and national characteristics. Results: The platform has been installed and evaluated in different rural and urban sites in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. The evaluation was mainly related to technical issues and user satisfaction. The selected sites are, among others, rural health centers, ambulances, homes of "at-risk" citizens, and a ferry. Conclusions: The results proved the functionality and utilization of the platform in various rural places in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. However, further actions are needed to enable the local healthcare systems and the different population groups to be familiarized with, and use in their everyday lives, mature technological solutions for the provision of healthcare services

Navigating Vertical Transfer Online: Access to and Usefulness of Transfer Information on Community College Websites

Objective: To transfer, students often must navigate complex and imperfect information about credit transfer, bureaucratic hurdles, and conflicting degree requirements. This study examined how administrators and transfer personnel think about institutional online transfer resources and examined community colleges’ online transfer information. Methods: For a sample of 20 Texas community colleges, we spoke to key transfer personnel about the information provided to students and reviewed college websites, assessing the ease of access and usefulness of online transfer information. We used a qualitative case study approach to triangulate findings from our data sources. Results: Approximately two-thirds of colleges in the sample fell below the highest standard on our rubric for either ease of access or usefulness, indicating room for improvement at most institutions. Many personnel recognized the strengths and limitations of their college’s online information, though several were ambivalent about the need for improving online information, arguing that online information is not as promising an intervention as face-to-face advising. Conclusions/Contributions: Our research illustrates the need for colleges to develop and update their online information intentionally, determining which information students need in order to transfer (including transfer guides for partner programs/colleges) and how students might search for that information, and ensuring that necessary transfer information is available and up-to-date. The framework provided by our website-review approach, coupled with a proposed rubric to assess ease of access and usefulness of transfer information, may guide institutions in their evaluation of their online transfer information.Educational Leadership and Polic

DeepNav: Learning to Navigate Large Cities

We present DeepNav, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) based algorithm for navigating large cities using locally visible street-view images. The DeepNav agent learns to reach its destination quickly by making the correct navigation decisions at intersections. We collect a large-scale dataset of street-view images organized in a graph where nodes are connected by roads. This dataset contains 10 city graphs and more than 1 million street-view images. We propose 3 supervised learning approaches for the navigation task and show how A* search in the city graph can be used to generate supervision for the learning. Our annotation process is fully automated using publicly available mapping services and requires no human input. We evaluate the proposed DeepNav models on 4 held-out cities for navigating to 5 different types of destinations. Our algorithms outperform previous work that uses hand-crafted features and Support Vector Regression (SVR)[19].Comment: CVPR 2017 camera ready versio

Political Economy of International Climate Finance: Navigating Decisions in PPCR and SREP

This working paper explores how countries can build their own 'climate finance readiness' by understanding their internal political economy and use that understanding to steer consensus-based decisions on climate finance investments. For climate finance to be effective, national leaders must build shared commitments. This involves considering the arguments, incentives and power dynamics at play to ensure priorities are more equitable and representative of a broader group of stakeholders. Doing so will also help to reduce the risk of implementation delays. This paper uses case studies from Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal to explore how narratives and incentives within the political economy drive climate investment outcomes under the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PPCR) and the Scaling up Renewable Energy Programme (SREP). It draws from broader analysis of the discourses around these investments, including 80 interviews with government; multilateral development banks (MDBs) and other stakeholders

Differential recruitment of brain networks following route and cartographic map learning of spatial environments.

An extensive neuroimaging literature has helped characterize the brain regions involved in navigating a spatial environment. Far less is known, however, about the brain networks involved when learning a spatial layout from a cartographic map. To compare the two means of acquiring a spatial representation, participants learned spatial environments either by directly navigating them or learning them from an aerial-view map. While undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), participants then performed two different tasks to assess knowledge of the spatial environment: a scene and orientation dependent perceptual (SOP) pointing task and a judgment of relative direction (JRD) of landmarks pointing task. We found three brain regions showing significant effects of route vs. map learning during the two tasks. Parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortex showed greater activation following route compared to map learning during the JRD but not SOP task while inferior frontal gyrus showed greater activation following map compared to route learning during the SOP but not JRD task. We interpret our results to suggest that parahippocampal and retrosplenial cortex were involved in translating scene and orientation dependent coordinate information acquired during route learning to a landmark-referenced representation while inferior frontal gyrus played a role in converting primarily landmark-referenced coordinates acquired during map learning to a scene and orientation dependent coordinate system. Together, our results provide novel insight into the different brain networks underlying spatial representations formed during navigation vs. cartographic map learning and provide additional constraints on theoretical models of the neural basis of human spatial representation

TIP spatial index: efficient access to digital libraries in a context-aware mobile system

We present a framework for efficient, uniform, location-based access to digital library collections that are external to a context-aware mobile information system. Using a tourist Information system, we utilize a spatial index to manage the context of location. We show how access to resources from within and outside of the tourist information system can be carried out in a seamless manner. We show how the spatial index can be navigated to continually provide information to the user. An empirical evaluation of the navigation strategy versus traditional spatial searching shows that navigation is efficient and outperforms traditional spatial search. In conclusion, our work provides a strategy for context-aware mobile systems to co-operate with digital libraries in a seamless and efficient manner