An Ontology Engineering Approach to User Profiling for Virtual Tours of Museums and Galleries

This paper describes a study of the development of a hierarchical ontology for producing and maintaining personalized profiles to improve the experience of visitors to virtual art galleries and museums. The paper begins by describing some of the features of virtual exhibitions and offers examples of virtual tours that the reader may wish to examine in more detail. The paper then discusses the ontology engineering (OE) approach and domain modelling languages (e.g. KACTUS, SENSUS and METHONTOLOGY). It then follows a basic OE approach to define classes for a cultural heritage virtual tour and to produce a Visitor Profile Ontology that is hierarchical and has static and dynamic elements. It concludes by suggesting ways in which the ontology may be automated to provide a richer, more immersive personalized visitor experience

“everything in one place”

Purpose: To describe older adults’ perspectives on a new patient education manual for the recovery process after hip fracture. Materials and methods: The Fracture Recovery for Seniors at Home (FReSH) Start manual is an evidence- based manual for older adults with fall-related hip fracture. The manual aims to support the transition from hospital to home by facilitating self- management of the recovery process. We enrolled 31 community-dwelling older adults with previous fall-related hip fracture and one family member. We collected data using a telephone-based questionnaire with eight five-point Likert items and four semi-structured open-ended questions to explore participants’ perceptions on the structure, content, and illustration of the manual. The questionnaire also asked participants to rate the overall utility (out of 10 points) and length of the manual. We used content analysis to describe main themes from responses to the open-ended interview questions. Results: Participants’ ratings for structure, content, and illustrations ranged from 4 to 5 (agree to highly agree), and the median usefulness rating was 9 (10th percentile: 7, 90th percentile: 10). Main themes from the content analysis included: ease of use and presentation; health literacy; illustration utility; health care team delivery; general impression, information support from hospital to home; emotional and decision-making support; and the novelty of the manual. Conclusion: The FReSH Start manual was perceived as comprehensive in content and acceptable for use with older adults post-fall- related hip fracture. Participants expressed a need for delivery and explanation of the manual by a health care team member

a pilot randomized controlled trial

Objectives: Our primary aim of this pilot study was to test feasibility of the planned design, the interventions (education plus telephone coaching), and the outcome measures, and to facilitate a power calculation for a future randomized controlled trial to improve adherence to recovery goals following hip fracture. Design: This is a parallel 1:1 randomized controlled feasibility study. Setting: The study was conducted in a teaching hospital in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Participants: Participants were community-dwelling adults over 60 years of age with a recent hip fracture. They were recruited and assessed in hospital, and then randomized after hospital discharge to the intervention or control group by a web-based randomization service. Treatment allocation was concealed to the investigators, measurement team, and data entry assistants and analysts. Participants and the research physiotherapist were aware of treatment allocation. Intervention: Intervention included usual care for hip fracture plus a 1-hour in-hospital educational session using a patient- centered educational manual and four videos, and up to five postdischarge telephone calls from a physiotherapist to provide recovery coaching. The control group received usual care plus a 1-hour in-hospital educational session using the educational manual and videos. Measurement: Our primary outcome was feasibility, specifically recruitment and retention of participants. We also collected selected health outcomes, including health- related quality of life (EQ5D-5L), gait speed, and psychosocial factors (ICEpop CAPability measure for Older people and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale). Results: Our pilot study results indicate that it is feasible to recruit, retain, and provide follow-up telephone coaching to older adults after hip fracture. We enrolled 30 older adults (mean age 81.5 years; range 61–97 years), representing a 42% recruitment rate. Participants excluded were those who were not community dwelling on admission, were discharged to a residential care facility, had physician-diagnosed dementia, and/or had medical contraindications to participation. There were 27 participants who completed the study: eleven in the intervention group, 15 in the control group, and one participant completed a qualitative interview only. There were no differences between groups for health measures. Conclusion: We highlight the feasibility of telephone coaching for older adults after hip fracture to improve adherence to mobility recovery goals

Hair Drama on the Cover of Vibe Magazine

This study consists of a cultural reading of the cover photograph of the June-July 1999 issue of Vibe magazine. It explores the relationship between Mase, an African-American male rap star, and the three anonymous African-American female models that surround him. The study interprets the cover through the long, straightened hair of the models, locating the models\u27 hair in a historically-informed context of black hair theory and practice. The study argues that the models\u27 presence on the cover, particularly their bone straight and long hair, enhances Mase in much the same way breast-augmented trophy women enhance their mates. Ultimately, the study encourages and validates a wide variety of black hair styles - including straightening - even as it urges the acceptance of black hair as a site where the demonstration of the struggle for black consciousness (however one exhibits that consciousness on his or her head) can be observed

Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles

In Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, professor Bert Ashe delivers a witty, fascinating, and unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture\u27s perceptions of hair. It is a deeply personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with Ashe\u27s own mid-life journey to lock his hair. After leading a far-too-conventional life for forty years, Ashe began a long, arduous, uncertain process of locking his own hair in an attempt to step out of American convention. Black hair, after all, matters. Few Americans are subject to snap judgements like those in the African-American community, and fewer communities face such loaded criticism about their appearances, in particular their hair. Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles makes the argument that the story of dreadlocks in America can\u27t be told except in front of the backdrop of black hair in America. Ask most Americans about dreadlocks and they immediately conjure a picture of Bob Marley: on stage, mid-song, dreads splayed. When most Americans see dreadlocks, a range of assumptions quickly follow: he\u27s Jamaican, he\u27s Rasta, he plays reggae; he stinks, he smokes, he deals; he\u27s bohemian, he\u27s creative, he\u27s counter-cultural. Few styles in America have more symbolism and generate more conflicting views than dreadlocks. To read dreadlocks is to take the cultural pulse of America. To read Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles is to understand a larger story about the truths and biases present in how we perceive ourselves and others. Ashe\u27s riveting and intimate work, a genuine first of its kind, will be a seminal work for years to come.https://scholarship.richmond.edu/bookshelf/1188/thumbnail.jp

On the Jazz Musician\u27s Love/Hate Relationship with the Audience

An assistant professor of English at the College of the Holy Cross, Bertram D. Ashe discusses how the intersection of an African American cool style with a black vernacular tradition and multi-racial audiences complicates audience-performer relations. In the vernacular tradition, performers play not to but with an audience, drawing on the call-response patterns that characterize the black aesthetic. Ashe notes that the vernacular tradition is not racial but cultural, and class can be as important a marker as race in determining audience expectations. Differing cultural backgrounds create, in Ashe\u27s words, competing realities, distinct sets of expectations that can shape a musical performance. Ashe presented this paper at a Cyrus Chestnut Trio concert in Worcester, Massachusetts, January 16, 1998

Post-Soul President: Dreams from My Father and the Post-Soul Aesthetic

...Bertram Ashe provides a rubric for understanding and contextualizing complex racial identity formations in the postsoul era, and instructs us to move beyond the simple analyses of Obama\u27s sense of racial self to see how the president\u27s narration of his life story exemplifies how many of his generation experience and (re)define race

Theorizing the Post-Soul Aesthetic: An Introduction

It\u27s time. Clearly, it\u27s time. As I begin this introduction, in the spring of 2006, landmark anniversaries press in on me from every side: 20 years ago, Greg Tate wrote Cult-Nats Meet Freaky-Deke: the Return of the Black Aesthetic for the Village Voice in the fall of 1986. And Spike Lee\u27s She\u27s Gotta Have It - that totemic post-soul anthem - was released in the summer of 1986, as well. More personally, I first taught Trey Ellis\u27s essay The New Black Aesthetic in 1991,15 years ago, and I inaugurated my post-soul aesthetic course in the Spring semester of 1996 - exactly 10 years ago. Over the course of those 20 years, I have obsessively observed this peculiar, post-Civil Rights movement aesthetic: inhaled and analyzed its various manifestos as they appeared in the early years, watched it on screens in darkened movie theaters, listened to it pounding out of my speakers, attended and sponsored its various readings, concerts, lectures, and symposia, gazed on it in galleries and museums and turned its pages from books - all the while debating its very existence with friends, students, and colleagues. Twenty years. And now it\u27s time for African Americanists to weigh in, en masse

Ready ... Go: Amplitude of the fMRI Signal Encodes Expectation of Cue Arrival Time

What happens when the brain awaits a signal of uncertain arrival time, as when a sprinter waits for the starting pistol? And what happens just after the starting pistol fires? Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we have discovered a novel correlate of temporal expectations in several brain regions, most prominently in the supplementary motor area (SMA). Contrary to expectations, we found little fMRI activity during the waiting period; however, a large signal appears after the “go” signal, the amplitude of which reflects learned expectations about the distribution of possible waiting times. Specifically, the amplitude of the fMRI signal appears to encode a cumulative conditional probability, also known as the cumulative hazard function. The fMRI signal loses its dependence on waiting time in a “countdown” condition in which the arrival time of the go cue is known in advance, suggesting that the signal encodes temporal probabilities rather than simply elapsed time. The dependence of the signal on temporal expectation is present in “no-go” conditions, demonstrating that the effect is not a consequence of motor output. Finally, the encoding is not dependent on modality, operating in the same manner with auditory or visual signals. This finding extends our understanding of the relationship between temporal expectancy and measurable neural signals