Service Participant Voices in Child Welfare, Children\u27s Mental Health, and Psychotherapy

Service providers are becoming increasingly interested in hearing the views of service participants regarding issues of service delivery. This trend is viewed as progressive and sensitive to the many complex issues facing a diverse service participant population. In order to understand what is known related to this trend, the paper reviews the literature in child welfare, children’s mental health, and psychotherapy where service participant feedback regarding aspects of service delivery has been studied. The findings from the three areas of service delivery are organized into a number of tangible themes. Suggestions for future research in the area of participant voice are noted

Measuring environments for public displays: a Space Syntax approach

This paper reports on an on-going project, which is investigating the role that location plays in the visibility of information presented on a public display. Spatial measures are presented, derived from the architectural theory of Space Syntax. These are shown to relate to the memorability of words and images presented on different displays. Results show a complex pattern of interactions between the size and shape of spaces in which displays are situated and the memorability of different types of representations depicted. This approach offers a new way to consider the role of space in guiding and constraining interaction in real settings: a growing concern within HCI and Ubicomp

From then until now

The photograph may create a sense of nostalgia and longing for the past, but that past is not an authentic one. It is a past that has been mediated through a lens and by a photographer who is already mediated by cultural and societal norms and beliefs. Yet this past is both familiar and foreign at the same time. From Then Until Now is a series of visual investigations and physical manipulations of the photograph--particularly the snapshot. I utilize the photograph for its dual role as an objective index and as an aid for the subjective nature of memories. In this way the snapshot allows one to hold onto a physical object as well as construct an imagined past. By employing techniques of removal, erasure, and alteration, this exhibition addresses and complicates the snapshots ability to transcend its own objectness and materiality while simultaneously staging its disappearance as subject back to object

Hydration Status of Lifesaving Athletes During International Competition

This study investigated the hydration status of lifesaving athletes in situ during an International competition. Participants were 10 lifesaving athletes (6 male and 4 female) competing in pool- and ocean-based competition across three consecutive days. Assessment included upon-waking urine samples and body mass across 7 days including travel, training and competition days. Urine specific gravity was significantly lower while traveling compared to predeparture (p \u3c 0.05). There were no gender differences for sweat rates, body mass changes, fluids consumed or percentage dehydration during the training sessions (p \u3e 0.05). Sweat rates were higher than previously reported and there were no significant differences identified for daily body mass changes (p \u3e 0.05). The results of the current study found that lifesaving athletes were capable of maintaining favorable hydration status throughout the course of an International lifesaving event held in hot and humid conditions

Designing Implementation and Communication Approaches in IT Project Management

This paper is a conceptual, research-in-progress study of the nature and role of communication in IT implementation projects. The paper considers different approaches to the implementation of change and to communication, and argues that scant attention is given to the design of communication approaches and strategies suitable for IT projects and other change initiatives. Arguments are developed to suggest that the most frequently used approaches to both implementation and communication are the least likely to be perceived to be successful, and those approaches to implementation and communication associated with greater acceptance of change are less likely to be used. We then map different approaches to implementation against different approaches to communication and argue that designing participative approaches to both implementation and communication are likely to result in better outcomes. The resulting conceptual model of communication approaches is then discussed with reference to a planned action research study of an enterprise system (ES) implementation in a global manufacturing company

Learning from a Strategic Failure

Some years ago Lyytinen and Hirschheim (1987) explored information systems (IS) failure, characterising four different types or modes of failure. This paper re-examines these types of failures in the context of an enterprise system (ES) implementation in an Asia Pacific business that was newly acquired by a global manufacturing company. Following many successful ES implementations in other newly acquired businesses, this implementation encountered many difficulties. Some months after a difficult cut over, the acquiring company commissioned an independent review of the system and subsequently accepted a recommendation to withdraw the ES and allow the business to return to its legacy system. The acquiring company then embarked on a broad based strategy to address the concerns and perceptions upon which the opposition to the system had been based. Subsequently a second implementation was initiated, led by staff of the acquired business themselves. The analysis of this case leads to a new type of failure, namely strategic failure, being added to the set of failure types. The theoretical orientation of the study was social constructionism. To capture, analyse and understthe multiple perspectives explored as a result of using this orientation, a narrative approach was utilised

Running up Blueberry Hill: Prototyping whole body interaction in harmony space

Musical harmony is considered to be one of the most abstract and technically difficult parts of music. It is generally taught formally via abstract, domain-specific concepts, principles, rules and heuristics. By contrast, when harmony is represented using an existing interactive desktop tool, Harmony Space, a new, parsimonious, but equivalently expressive, unified level of description emerges. This focuses not on abstract concepts, but on concrete locations, objects, areas and trajectories. This paper presents a design study of a prototype version of Harmony Space driven by whole body navigation, and characterizes the new opportunities presented for the principled manipulation of chord sequences and bass lines. These include: deeper engagement and directness; rich physical cues for memory and reflection, embodied engagement with rhythmic time constraints; hands which are free for other simultaneous activities (such as playing a traditional instrument); and qualitatively new possibilities for collaborative use

Competition in benthic marine invertebrates: the unrecognized role of exploitative competition for oxygen

Competition is a ubiquitous structuring force across systems, but different fields emphasize the role of different types of competition. In benthic marine environments, where some of the classic examples of competition were described, there is a strong emphasis on interference competition: marine invertebrates are assumed to compete fiercely for the limiting resource of space. Much of our understanding of the dynamics of this system is based on this assumption, yet empirical studies often find that increases in density can reduce performance despite free space being available. Furthermore, the assumption that space is the exclusively limiting resource raises paradoxes regarding species coexistence in this system. Here, we measure the availability of oxygen in the field and in the laboratory, as well as the tolerance of resident species to low-oxygen conditions. We show that oxygen can be the primary limiting resource in some instances, and that exploitative competition for this resource is very likely among benthic marine invertebrates. Furthermore, growth form (and the associated risk of oxygen limitation) covaries with the ability to withstand oxygen-poor conditions across a wide range of taxa. Oxygen availability at very small scales may influence the distribution and abundance of sessile marine invertebrates more than is currently appreciated. Furthermore, competition for multiple resources (space and oxygen) and trade-offs in competitive ability for each may promote coexistence in this system