Developing an app to provide physical and mental health benefits for menopausal women

Background: Menopause is the end of a women’s menstrual cycle and reproductive years. For some women the transition is without major problems; others struggle with various psychological and physical symptoms. Regular walking exercise can be an easy way to maintain physical and mental health. Previous focus groups revealed that women enjoy and want the social aspect of walking groups.    Objectives: The goal of this study is to test use and effectiveness of a walking app platform specific for menopausal women that allows them to connect with each other to schedule walks in Edmonton, and track the effect of walking on their symptom changes.   Methods: Women will be recruited from the Edmonton Menopause clinics and by word of mouth. Interested and consented women receive login information to use the app to schedule and sign-up for walks. Women will complete menopause-specific QOL and symptom questionnaires at their first login and will be prompted to complete them monthly thereafter. Women will also be asked to record their walking durations and intensities. Participating women will be invited to focus groups to discuss their experience using the app. Descriptive statistics will be applied to analyze data collected at the backend from questionnaires and surveys, and qualitative content analysis will be applied to analyze the audio-recorded focus groups.    Results: A prototypic online application has been created including a user manual. Access is restricted and all potential participants will be screened after their first login by the research team prior to gaining full access. Women will then be able to use the app features for schedules and surveys. Data collected at the back end by the researchers will determine the use and effectiveness of the app and explore the impact of social walking on menopause symptom changes.   Conclusion: This is the first social platform of this kind created specifically for menopausal women. Ultimately we hope that this platform will empower women to seek lifestyle changes such as walking exercises and connect with each other on the communality of menopause. Testing the use and effectiveness of the app will help us to improve and further develop the app

Business Models in Emerging Online Services

Due to advances in technology and the rapid growth of online services, a significant number of new and inventive web-based service models and delivery methods have been introduced. Although online resources and services are having an impact on more traditional service delivery mechanisms, it is not yet clear how these emerging mechanisms for online service delivery will result in profitable business models. In this paper, we consider emerging business models for online services and their implications for how services are delivered, used, and paid for. We demonstrate the changing roles of user / consumer and provider / seller. We also discuss the applicability of different business models for various domains

PhyDSLK: a model-driven framework for generating exergames

AbstractIn recent years, we have been witnessing a rapid increase of research on exergames—i.e., computer games that require users to move during gameplay as a form of physical activity and rehabilitation. Properly balancing the need to develop an effective exercise activity with the requirements for a smooth interaction with the software system and an engaging game experience is a challenge. Model-driven software engineering enables the fast prototyping of multiple system variants, which can be very useful for exergame development. In this paper, we propose a framework, PhyDSLK, which eases the development process of personalized and engaging Kinect-based exergames for rehabilitation purposes, providing high-level tools that abstract the technical details of using the Kinect sensor and allows developers to focus on the game design and user experience. The system relies on model-driven software engineering technologies and is made of two main components: (i) an authoring environment relying on a domain-specific language to define the exergame model encapsulating the gameplay that the exergame designer has envisioned and (ii) a code generator that transforms the exergame model into executable code. To validate our approach, we performed a preliminary empirical evaluation addressing development effort and usability of the PhyDSLK framework. The results are promising and provide evidence that people with no experience in game development are able to create exergames with different complexity levels in one hour, after a less-than-two-hour training on PhyDSLK. Also, they consider PhyDSLK usable regardless of the exergame complexity

Fishing, Weaving, Matting: Debating the Function of Notched Cobbles in Neolithic Greece

This article focuses on notched cobbles – pieces of stone with indentations on roughly opposite parts of their periphery. While exhibiting a wide geographic and chronological distribution, these simple artefacts have rarely become the subject of systematic archaeological study. In an attempt to address this gap, we discuss the three main hypotheses regarding the functions of these objects (as weights for fishing, weaving or matting) and evaluate the archaeological and ethnographic evidence that is available for each one of them; provide a detailed presentation of the technomorphological characteristics of the material from the Greek Neolithic site of Varemeni Goulon and compare it to that from the neighbouring site of Servia; expand the comparative framework to include other sites from Greece and elsewhere; and finally reconstruct the uses of both the Varemeni and Servia notched cobbles as fishing gear – the hypothesis that emerged as most likely from our survey. If associated with fishing, notched cobbles represent one of the rare components of fish capture technology preserved from Neolithic Greece

Users’ attitudes towards personal health records a cross-sectional pilot study

Background: Prevention and management of chronic conditions is a priority for many healthcare systems. Personal health records have been suggested to facilitate implementation of chronic care programs. However, patients’ attitude towards personal health records (PHRs) can significantly affect the adoption rates and use of PHRs. Objectives: to evaluate the attitude of patients with Type II diabetes towards using a PHR to manage their condition. Methods: We used a cross-sectional exploratory pilot study. Fifty-four (54) patients used a PHR to monitor and record their blood glucose levels, diet, and activities for 30 days, and to communicate with their clinicians. At the end of the study, patients responded to a survey based on three constructs borrowed from different technology acceptance frameworks: relative advantage, job fit, and perceived usefulness. A multivariate predictive model was formed using partial least squaring technique (PLS) and the effect of each construct on the patients’ attitude towards system use was evaluated. Patients also participated in a semi-structured interview. Results: We found a significant positive correlation between job fit and attitude (JF?ATT = +0.318, p less than 0.01). There was no statistical evidence of any moderating or mediating effect of other main constructs or any of the confounding factors (i.e., age, gender, time after diagnosed) on attitude. Conclusion: The attitude of patients towards using PHR in management of their diabetes was positive. Their attitude was mainly influenced by the extent to which the system helped them better perform activities and self-manage their condition. © Schattauer 2016

Feature Detection in Ajax-enabled Web Applications

Abstract-In this paper we propose a method for reverse engineering the features of Ajax-enabled web applications. The method first collects instances of the DOM trees underlying the application web pages, using a state-of-the-art crawling framework. Then, it clusters these instances into groups, corresponding to distinct features of the application. The contribution of this paper lies in the novel DOM-tree similarity metric of the clustering step, which makes a distinction between simple and composite structural changes. We have evaluated our method on three real web applications. In all three cases, the proposed distance metric leads to a number of clusters that is closer to the actual number of features and classifies web page instances into these feature-specific clusters more accurately than other traditional distance metrics. We therefore conclude that it is a reliable distance metric for reverse engineering the features of Ajax-enabled web applications

Francopass, une nouvelle application mobile pour développer le sentiment d’appartenance à la communauté francophone en Alberta

Lors de cette communication, nous présenterons une nouvelle application mobile développée par une équipe interdisciplinaire de l’université de l’Alberta regroupant des chercheurs du Département de Département des langues modernes et des études culturelles (MLCS), du Département des sciences informatiques et du Campus Saint-Jean (éducation), en collaboration avec l’Association Canadienne-Française de l’Alberta (ACFA) et Canadian Parents for French-Alberta. Le but de cette application est d’encourager les futurs enseignants à assister à des activités dans la communauté francophone à Edmonton. Dans un premier temps, nous présenterons l’application elle-même en mettant l’accent sur ses aspects innovants. Dans un second temps, nous verrons comment cette application permet aux étudiants du programme de formation à l’enseignement du Campus Saint-Jean (Université de l’Alberta) de renforcer un sentiment d’appartenance culturelle. Nous nous appuierons sur des résultats obtenus dans le cadre d’un sondage que nous avons mené auprès des utilisateurs du Francopass. Dans un troisième temps, nous ferons part de quelques pistes pour optimiser les bénéfices du Francopass

A multidimensional empirical study on refactoring activity

Abstract In this paper we present an empirical study on the refactoring activity in three well-known projects. We have studied five research questions that explore the different types of refactorings applied to different types of sources, the individual contribution of team members on refactoring activities, the alignment of refactoring activity with release dates and testing periods, and the motivation behind the applied refactorings. The studied projects have a history of 12, 7, and 6 years, respectively. We have found that there is very little variation in the types of refactorings applied on test code, since the majority of the refactorings focus on the reorganization and renaming of classes. Additionally, we have identified that the refactoring decision making and application is often performed by individual refactoring "managers". We have found a strong alignment between refactoring activity and release dates. Moreover, we found that the development teams apply a considerable amount of refactorings during testing periods. Finally, we have also found that in addition to code smell resolution the main drivers for applying refactorings are the introduction of extension points, and the resolution of backward compatibility issues