Il Sistema T.Arc.H.N.A. Per una nuova accessibilità al patrimonio culturale

This paper presents the preliminary results of the Project T.Arc.H.N.A., Towards Archaeological Heritage New Accessibility, partially funded by the European Union, as part of the Culture 2000 Programme. Tarchna is the Etruscan name of the ancient city of Tarquinia and T.Arc.H.N.A. the name of a model of virtual Museum. Thanks to the use of modern technology, combined with a deep knowledge of history and archaeology, it has been possible to create a tool useful for both scholars and the wider public, which is also available for other situations. Through the cooperation of experts from two different fields – Computer Science and Archaeology – an innovative system of accessibility to the Cultural Heritage in the field bof research, education and dissemination has been designed and implemented. One of the first results of the project is the restoration of the original unity of the Tarquinian Heritage much of which is scattered all over the world, lacking in contexts and anthropological meanings. Scholars are thus enabled to deal with this Cultural Heritage as a whole and to bring the single document from the environment that produced it, to the environment of the modern user, thus filling the gap between the document and its interpretation. In this way the public can learn the main features of the Etruscan culture and comprehend the research of scholars

Web navigation for individuals with dyslexia: An exploratory study

In this paper, we present an exploratory study of the web navigation experiences of dyslexic users. Findings indicate that dyslexics exhibit distinctive web navigation behaviour and preferences. We believe that the outcomes of this study add to our understanding of the particular needs of this web user population and have implications for the design of effective navigation structures

Advanced Visual Systems Supporting Unwitting EUD

The ever increasing use of interactive software systems and the evolution of the World Wide Web into the so-called Web 2.0 determines the rise of new roles for users, who evolve from information consumers to information producers. The distinction between users and designers becomes fuzzy. Users are increasingly involved in the design and development of the tools they use, thus users and developers are not anymore two mutually exclusive groups of people. In this paper types of users that are between pure end users and software developers are analyzed. Some users take a very active role in shaping software tools to their needs, but they do it without being aware of programming, they are unwitting programmers who need appropriate development techniques and environments. A meta-design participatory approach for supporting unwitting end-user development through advanced visual systems is briefly discussed

Il sistema T.Arc.H.N.A. : per una nuova accessibilit\ue0 al patrimonio culturale

This paper presents the preliminary results of the Project T.Arc.H.N.A., Towards Archaeological Heritage New Accessibility, partially funded by the European Union, as part of the Culture 2000 Programme. Tarchna is the Etruscan name of the ancient city of Tarquinia and T.Arc.H.N.A. the name of a model of virtual Museum. Thanks to the use of modern technology, combined with a deep knowledge of history and archaeology, it has been possible to create a tool useful for both scholars and the wider public, which is also available for other situations. Through the cooperation of experts from two different fields \u2013 Computer Science and Archaeology \u2013 an innovative system of accessibility to the Cultural Heritage in the field of research, education and dissemination has been designed and implemented. One of the first results of the project is the restoration of the original unity of the Tarquinian Heritage much of which is scattered all over the world, lacking in contexts and anthropological meanings. Scholars are thus enabled to deal with this Cultural Heritage as a whole and to bring the single document from the environment that produced it, to the environment of the modern user, thus filling the gap between the document and its interpretation. In this way the public can learn the main features of the Etruscan culture and comprehend the research of scholars

"Delirium Day": A nationwide point prevalence study of delirium in older hospitalized patients using an easy standardized diagnostic tool

Background: To date, delirium prevalence in adult acute hospital populations has been estimated generally from pooled findings of single-center studies and/or among specific patient populations. Furthermore, the number of participants in these studies has not exceeded a few hundred. To overcome these limitations, we have determined, in a multicenter study, the prevalence of delirium over a single day among a large population of patients admitted to acute and rehabilitation hospital wards in Italy. Methods: This is a point prevalence study (called "Delirium Day") including 1867 older patients (aged 65 years or more) across 108 acute and 12 rehabilitation wards in Italian hospitals. Delirium was assessed on the same day in all patients using the 4AT, a validated and briefly administered tool which does not require training. We also collected data regarding motoric subtypes of delirium, functional and nutritional status, dementia, comorbidity, medications, feeding tubes, peripheral venous and urinary catheters, and physical restraints. Results: The mean sample age was 82.0 \ub1 7.5 years (58 % female). Overall, 429 patients (22.9 %) had delirium. Hypoactive was the commonest subtype (132/344 patients, 38.5 %), followed by mixed, hyperactive, and nonmotoric delirium. The prevalence was highest in Neurology (28.5 %) and Geriatrics (24.7 %), lowest in Rehabilitation (14.0 %), and intermediate in Orthopedic (20.6 %) and Internal Medicine wards (21.4 %). In a multivariable logistic regression, age (odds ratio [OR] 1.03, 95 % confidence interval [CI] 1.01-1.05), Activities of Daily Living dependence (OR 1.19, 95 % CI 1.12-1.27), dementia (OR 3.25, 95 % CI 2.41-4.38), malnutrition (OR 2.01, 95 % CI 1.29-3.14), and use of antipsychotics (OR 2.03, 95 % CI 1.45-2.82), feeding tubes (OR 2.51, 95 % CI 1.11-5.66), peripheral venous catheters (OR 1.41, 95 % CI 1.06-1.87), urinary catheters (OR 1.73, 95 % CI 1.30-2.29), and physical restraints (OR 1.84, 95 % CI 1.40-2.40) were associated with delirium. Admission to Neurology wards was also associated with delirium (OR 2.00, 95 % CI 1.29-3.14), while admission to other settings was not. Conclusions: Delirium occurred in more than one out of five patients in acute and rehabilitation hospital wards. Prevalence was highest in Neurology and lowest in Rehabilitation divisions. The "Delirium Day" project might become a useful method to assess delirium across hospital settings and a benchmarking platform for future surveys

Proceedings of the Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI2006)

Cura di atti di conferenza internazional

Knowledge and learning management in cultural contexts

Knowledge and learning management process in cultural contexts requires the application of methodologies able to create, sustain and share knowledge in a collaborative way through the participation of domain experts. This paper presents a practical learning model, which captures the significance of the cultural assets by means of the use of narrations. A narration is a medium for knowledge transfer being able to recollect and contextualise cultural data according to their historic and anthological meaning. The knowledge system, from which the narration stems, is based on the definition of relationships between a knowledge representation of the cultural domain fitting the conceptual model of the cultural experts and an information domain representation understandable by the machine (modelled by domain ontology). In this way, it is possible to promote a shared accessibility to the cultural knowledge and an enhancement of the collaborative opportunities among domain experts across the sharing of different perspectives