Personnel management in East Germany

School of Managemen

Older Adults’ Awareness of Community Health and Support Services for Dementia Care

The article examines where older adults seek help in caring for a parent with dementia and the factors associated with their identification of community health and support services as sources of assistance. The authors conducted telephone interviews, using random digit dialing, of 1,152 adults aged 50 and over in the city of Hamilton. Respondents received a vignette that raised issues related to parental dementia. In identifying support sources, over 37 per cent of respondents identified their physician, 33 per cent identified informal support such as family and neighbors, and 31 per cent identified home health services. Only 18 per cent identified community support services. Female participants having higher levels of education were more likely to identify their physician as a source of support. Knowing where to find information about community support services was associated with an increased likelihood of mentioning physicians and home health services as sources of assistance.community support services , awareness , dementia , caregivers , vignette methodology

Characterizing Incidents Reporting Systems across Applications Domains

International audienceIncident reporting is a very well-known technique in application domains such as air traffic management and health, where specialized users are trained to provide detailed information about problems. Incident reporting systems are indeed complex systems that include many actors including the users reporting incidents, user’s colleagues and neighbors, stakeholders, policymakers, systems integrations. Incident report systems might change (positively or negatively) the users’ environment in many ways. In recent years, this kind of technique has been also been used in crisis management such as the hurricane Katrina. However, despite the fact that incident reporting systems using mobile technology are becoming more common, little is known about its actual use by the general population and which factors affect the user experience when using such system. In this paper we discuss the use of incident reporting system in critical context of use. In this paper we discuss the use of incident reporting system in several application domains. In particular we report findings in terms of dimensions that are aimed to identify social and technical aspects that can affect the design, development and use of incident reporting systems

Developing sustainable business models for institutions’ provision of open educational resources: Learning from OpenLearn users’ motivations and experiences

Universities across the globe have, for some time, been exploring the possibilities for achieving public benefit and generating business and visibility through releasing and sharing open educational resources (OER). Many have written about the need to develop sustainable and profitable business models around the production and release of OER. Downes (2006), for example, has questioned the financial sustainability of OER production at scale. Many of the proposed business models focus on OER’s value in generating revenue and detractors of OER have questioned whether they are in competition with formal education. This paper reports on a study intended to broaden the conversation about OER business models to consider the motivations and experiences of OER users as the basis for making a better informed decision about whether OER and formal learning are competitive or complementary with each other. The study focused on OpenLearn - the Open University’s (OU) web-based platform for OER, which hosts hundreds of online courses and videos and is accessed by over 3,000,000 users a year. A large scale survey and follow-up interviews with OpenLearn users worldwide revealed that university provided OER can offer learners a bridge to formal education, allowing them to try out a subject before registering on a formal course and to build confidence in their abilities as learners. In addition, it was found that using OER during formal paid-for study can improve learners’ performance and self-reliance, leading to increased retention and satisfaction with the learning experience

Open educational resources for all? Comparing user motivations and characteristics across The Open University’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform.

With the rise in access to mobile multimedia devices, educational institutions have exploited the iTunes U platform as an additional channel to provide free educational resources with the aim of profile-raising and breaking down barriers to education. For those prepared to invest in content preparation, it is possible to produce interactive, portable material that can be made available globally. Commentators have questioned both the financial implications for platform-specific content production, and the availability of devices for learners to access it (Osborne, 2012). The Open University (OU) makes its free educational resources available on iTunes U and via its web-based open educational resources (OER) platform, OpenLearn. The OU’s OER on iTunes U reached the 60 million download mark in 2013; its OpenLearn platform boasts 27 million unique visitors since 2006. This paper reports the results of a large-scale study of users of the OU’s iTunes U channel and OpenLearn platform. A survey of several thousand users revealed key differences in demographics between those accessing OER via the web and via iTunes U. In addition, the data allowed comparison between three groups: formal learners, informal learners and educators. The study raises questions about whether university-provided OER meet the needs of users and makes recommendations for how content can be modified to suit their needs. As the publishing of OER becomes core to business, we reflect on reasons why understanding users’ motivations and demographics is vital, allowing for needs-led resource provision and content that is adapted to best achieve learner satisfaction, and to deliver institutions’ social mission

Medical Informatics

Information technology has been revolutionizing the everyday life of the common man, while medical science has been making rapid strides in understanding disease mechanisms, developing diagnostic techniques and effecting successful treatment regimen, even for those cases which would have been classified as a poor prognosis a decade earlier. The confluence of information technology and biomedicine has brought into its ambit additional dimensions of computerized databases for patient conditions, revolutionizing the way health care and patient information is recorded, processed, interpreted and utilized for improving the quality of life. This book consists of seven chapters dealing with the three primary issues of medical information acquisition from a patient's and health care professional's perspective, translational approaches from a researcher's point of view, and finally the application potential as required by the clinicians/physician. The book covers modern issues in Information Technology, Bioinformatics Methods and Clinical Applications. The chapters describe the basic process of acquisition of information in a health system, recent technological developments in biomedicine and the realistic evaluation of medical informatics

Real-time distributed simulations in an HLA framework: Application to aircraft simulation

This paper presents some ongoing research carried out in the context of the PRISE Project (Research Platform for Embedded Systems Engineering). This platform has been designed to evaluate and validate new embedded system concepts and techniques through a special hardware and software environment. Since much actual embedded equipment is not available, corresponding behavior is simulated within a high-level architecture (HLA) federation implemented with a run-time infrastructure (RTI) called CERTI and developed at ONERA. HLA is currently largely used in many simulation applications, but the limited performances of the RTIs raise doubts over the feasibility of HLA federations with real-time requirements. This paper addresses the problem of achieving real-time performances with the HLA standard. Several experiments are discussed using well-known aircraft simulators such as Microsoft Flight Simulator, FlightGear, and X-plane connected with the CERTI RTI. The added value of these activities is to demonstrate that according to a set of innovative solutions, HLA architecture is well suited to achieve hard real-time constraints. Finally, a formal model guaranteeing the schedulability of concurrent processes is also proposed

Knowledge Based Systems: A Critical Survey of Major Concepts, Issues, and Techniques

This Working Paper Series entry presents a detailed survey of knowledge based systems. After being in a relatively dormant state for many years, only recently is Artificial Intelligence (AI) - that branch of computer science that attempts to have machines emulate intelligent behavior - accomplishing practical results. Most of these results can be attributed to the design and use of Knowledge-Based Systems, KBSs (or ecpert systems) - problem solving computer programs that can reach a level of performance comparable to that of a human expert in some specialized problem domain. These systems can act as a consultant for various requirements like medical diagnosis, military threat analysis, project risk assessment, etc. These systems possess knowledge to enable them to make intelligent desisions. They are, however, not meant to replace the human specialists in any particular domain. A critical survey of recent work in interactive KBSs is reported. A case study (MYCIN) of a KBS, a list of existing KBSs, and an introduction to the Japanese Fifth Generation Computer Project are provided as appendices. Finally, an extensive set of KBS-related references is provided at the end of the report

EUCARS: A partial equilibrium model of EUropean CAR emissions (Version 3.0).

EUCARS has been designed to analyse the cost-effectiveness of various transport policy measures to reach air quality objectives. A general description and a thorough technical presentation of this partial equilibrium model of passenger transport are given. Some simulation results are then discussed to illustrate the simulation properties.eucars, transport, emissions, modelling