Raising awareness on Archaeology: A Multiplayer Game-Based Approach with Mixed Reality

International audienceOur research deals with the development of a new type of game‐based learning environment: (M)MORPG based on mixed reality, applied in the archaeological domain. In this paper, we propose a learning scenario that enhances players' motivation thanks to individual, collaborative and social activities and that offers a continuous experience between the virtual environment and real places (archaeological sites, museum). After describing the challenge to a rich multidisciplinary approach involving both computer scientists and archaeologists, we present two types of game: multiplayer online role‐playing games and mixed reality games. We build on the specificities of these games to make the design choices described in the paper. The proposed approach aims at raising awareness among people on the scientific approach in Archaeology, by providing them information in the virtual environment and encouraging them to go on real sites. We finally discuss the issues raised by this work, such as the tensions between the perceived individual, team and community utilities, as well as the choice of the entering point in the learning scenario (real or virtual) for the players' involvement in the game

To make LUTI models operationnal tools for planning

International audienceLand Use and Transport Integrated models (LUTIs) are promising tools for urban planning. Although a large literature is dedicated to these models, little attention has been paid to them as operational tool for planners and few efforts have been made by academics to fill the gap between lab application and operational use for planning practice. We shed light on what would make them accepted and more used by planners to evaluate urban and transport policies. In addition to a literature review and reflection on our own experience, we carried out a survey of end users in France to identify their motivations and barriers to using LUTI models. Our analysis shows a need for a far more bottom-up oriented approach. Only a closer collaboration between modelers and end users, and more efforts to integrate modeling into urban planning will make LUTIs considered as relevant approaches

Conflict of Interest Policies at Canadian Universities and Medical Schools: Some Lessons from the AMSA PharmFree Scorecard

ArticleLancée en 2007, l’American Medical Students Association (AMSA) PharmFree Scorecard est un classement annuel des politiques de conflit d’intérêts (CI) de centres médicaux américains. Il se concentre sur les CI qui peuvent survenir lorsque la formation médicale est influencée par les relations université-industrie, en particulier ceux concernant l’industrie pharmaceutique et les dispositifs médicaux. Le PharmFree Scorecard s’est montré influent dans l’initiation de modification des politiques concernant la gestion des CI dans les institutions médicales américaines. Il fournit donc un point de départ utile pour une réflexion sur la manière et les raisons pour lesquelles les établissements d’enseignement médicaux dans d’autres pays - et pour nos fins, le Canada - devraient accorder plus d’attention à l’identification et à la gestion appropriée des CI. La méthodologie de la PharmFree Scorecard consiste à examiner la diversité des facteurs et des intérêts qui pourraient influencer l’enseignement médical, il s’agit donc d’une approche intéressante pour l’analyse des politiques de CI des écoles de médecine. Pour évaluer son utilité et son applicabilité à l’extérieur des États-Unis, nous avons décidé d’appliquer le PharmFree Scorecard aux politiques de CI des 16 universités canadiennes accueillent les écoles de médecine. Dans l’ensemble, les institutions canadiennes se classent très mal, particulièrement en ce qui concerne la disponibilité d’outils d’éducation et de formation concernant l'identification et la gestion de CI pour le personnel, les étudiants et les professeurs. Cependant, les différences entre les contextes d’enseignement médical aux États-Unis et au Canada (en ce qui concerne la gouvernance et le financement des universités par exemple) limitent, dans une certaine mesure, l’applicabilité directe du classement AMSA. Même si elles peuvent et doivent aller plus loin en élaborant leurs propres politiques de CI et procédures, les écoles de médecine canadiennes - et leurs universités d’accueil - ont néanmoins beaucoup à apprendre des indications fournies par le classement AMSA PharmFree Scorecard.Launched in 2007, the American Medical Students Association (AMSA) PharmFree Scorecard is an annual ranking of conflict of interest (COI) policies at American medical centres; it focuses on COIs that may occur when medical education seems likely to be influenced by university-industry relationships, especially those with the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. The PharmFree Scorecard has proven influential in stimulating changes in policy regarding the management of COI at American medical institutions, thus it provides a useful jumping off point for reflection on how and why medical education institutions in other countries – and for our purposes, Canada – should pay more attention to the appropriate identification and management of COI. The PharmFree Scorecard methodology examines a diversity of factors and interests that could influence medical education; as such, it is an interesting approach to analysing the COI policies of medical schools. To test its utility or applicability outside the US, we decided to apply the PharmFree Scorecard to the COI policies of the 16 Canadian universities hosting medical schools. Overall, Canadian institutions rank very poorly, especially in ensuring that education and training tools are provided to staff, students and faculty members to enable the identification and management of COI. However, differences between the US and Canadian medical education contexts, e.g., with regards to the governance and funding of universities, limit to some extent the direct applicability of the AMSA ranking. Canadian medical schools – and their host universities – nonetheless have much to learn from insights provided by the AMSA PharmFree Scorecard ranking, although they can and should go further in developing their own COI policies and procedures

Barriers to Research on Research Ethics Review and Conflicts of Interest

R esearch on research ethics-regarding both the governance and practice of the ethical review of human subjects research-has a tumultuous history in North America and Europe. Much of the academic literature focuses on issues to do with regulating the conduct and quality of ethics review of research protocols by ethics committees (research ethics boards (REBs) in Canada and institutional review boards (IRBs) in the United States). 1 In addition, some of the literature attends to issues particular to the review of qualitative research, 2 and still other literature addresses the challenges posed by and the need for research on REBs/IRBs. 3 It is this third group of literature within which our article is situated. In 2009, we initiated an empirical bioethics project to advance REBs' understanding and management of conflicts of interest in their ethics review of research projects. Because we were interested in the experience of the REB as a group-not specifically of individual members-our plan to conduct interviews meant that an REB had to review and approve the proposed project. We obtained approval from one of the REBs at our university in early 2010. However, as we also wished to interview REBs in medical centers, we were obliged to submit our project through Canada's provincial multicenter process (also known as a multisite review). This necessitated a second full application to a central REB (which was based in a hospital), as well as to the dozen REBs we hoped to recruit as "participants" in our study. We were interested in learning from the experiences of REBs that dealt mainly with clinical research, from those that reviewed psychosocial, behavioral and public health research, as well as from REBs that reviewed non-health related research. This second review process proved much more complicated and time consuming. Moreover, it involved unduly demanding and inappropriate requests due to 1) an apparent "clinical trial bias" on the part of some REBs (i.e., a bias against qualitative research based on the view that all research projects require the same level of risk analysis and protections as clinical trials), and 2) structural elements imposed by the multicenter process (e.g., substantial paperwork, requirement to have local respondents, and ethics review at all participating medical centers)

When Should I Use my Active Workstation? The impact of Physical Demand and Task Difficulty on IT Users’ Perception and Performance

The seated position in our daily computer interactions has been identified as a major threat for health. Active workstations have been proposed as a healthy solution to these problems. However, research findings on the effects of such workstations on users’ productivity is not conclusive. We argue that physical demand and task difficulty play a role in influencing IT users’ performance and perceptions when using active workstations. An experiment manipulating task difficulty, direct and indirect physical demands was performed. Results suggest that task difficulty moderates the relationships between physical demand (direct and indirect) and users’ perceptions and performance. Findings will help organizations and employees determine if it is appropriate for them to use active workstations

Matching visual induction effects on screens of different size

In the film industry, the same movie is expected to be watched on displays of vastly different sizes, from cinema screens to mobile phones. But visual induction, the perceptual phenomenon by which the appearance of a scene region is affected by its surroundings, will be different for the same image shown on two displays of different dimensions. This phenomenon presents a practical challenge for the preservation of the artistic intentions of filmmakers, because it can lead to shifts in image appearance between viewing destinations. In this work, we show that a neural field model based on the efficient representation principle is able to predict induction effects and how, by regularizing its associated energy functional, the model is still able to represent induction but is now invertible. From this finding, we propose a method to preprocess an image in a screen-size dependent way so that its perception, in terms of visual induction, may remain constant across displays of different size. The potential of the method is demonstrated through psychophysical experiments on synthetic images and qualitative examples on natural images

To make LUTI models operational tools for planning

Land Use and Transport Integrated models (LUTIs) are promising tools for urban planning. Although a large literature is dedicated to these models, little attention has been paid to them as operational tool for planners and few efforts have been made by academics to fill the gap between lab application and operational use for planning practice. We shed light on what would make them accepted and more used by planners to evaluate urban and transport policies. In addition to a literature review and reflection on our own experience, we carried out a survey of end users in France to identify their motivations and barriers to using LUTI models. Our analysis shows a need for a far more bottom-up oriented approach. Only a closer collaboration between modelers and end users, and more efforts to integrate modeling into urban planning will make LUTIs considered as relevant approaches

To make LUTI models operational tools for planning

Land Use and Transport Integrated models (LUTIs) are promising tools for urban planning. Although a large literature is dedicated to these models, little attention has been paid to them as operational tool for planners and few efforts have been made by academics to fill the gap between lab application and operational use for planning practice. We shed light on what would make them accepted and more used by planners to evaluate urban and transport policies. In addition to a literature review and reflection on our own experience, we carried out a survey of end users in France to identify their motivations and barriers to using LUTI models. Our analysis shows a need for a far more bottom-up oriented approach. Only a closer collaboration between modelers and end users, and more efforts to integrate modeling into urban planning will make LUTIs considered as relevant approaches