Smartphone Augmented Reality Applications for Tourism

Invisible, attentive and adaptive technologies that provide tourists with relevant services and information anytime and anywhere may no longer be a vision from the future. The new display paradigm, stemming from the synergy of new mobile devices, context-awareness and AR, has the potential to enhance tourists’ experiences and make them exceptional. However, effective and usable design is still in its infancy. In this publication we present an overview of current smartphone AR applications outlining tourism-related domain-specific design challenges. This study is part of an ongoing research project aiming at developing a better understanding of the design space for smartphone context-aware AR applications for tourists

What to expect from Bulgaria's latest parliamentary election

On 2 October, Bulgarian citizens will once again go to the polls as the country holds its fourth parliamentary election since April 2021. Teodora Yovcheva and Fernando Casal Bértoa write that with Bulgarian politics continuing to suffer from fragmentation, polarisation, and the refusal of parties to cooperate with one another, there is little sign of an end to the country’s political instability

Characteristics of acute intoxications with regard to capacity for effective doctor-patient communication and competent informed decisions

Introduction: Altered mental status caused by certain acute poisonings creates barriers for effective doctor-patient communication and compromises the process of informed consent (IC) for treatment. A categorization of toxicological patients with regard to communication capacity would be helpful for practical purposes.Aim: This article has the following aims:characterization of toxicology patients with mental status altered by poisoning according to the etiology of intoxication;discussion of the impact of cerebral toxic syndrome on the capacity for effective communication between the doctor and the patient and for IC.Materials and Methods: A retrospective study of the medical documentation of 2088 patients with acute intoxications, treated in the Clinic of Intensive Treatment of Acute Intoxications and Toxicoallergies at Naval Hospital, Varna during the 2010–2013 period: case files, IC forms, was conducted. The R program package, version 3.4.2 (2017-09-28), was used for statistics.Results: Toxic cerebral syndrome was found in 966 cases of acute intoxication, 46% of all patients, with especially high percentages in the medicament, alcohol, and narcotics intoxication groups. Regaining lucid mental state was observed within 1 hour in 21.9% of patients, and for the rest, it took from 2 hours to 7 days. Only 1211 patients, or 58%, signed the admission IC form themselves.Conclusion: Characterization of acute intoxications with regard to capacity for effective doctor-patient communication is necessary because of the great percentage of patients with cerebrotoxic syndrome. Good knowledge of the specificity of toxicology patients and good communication skills of physicians can help the proper process of informed decisions of the patient

Enabling Positive Transition to University: Evaluating an App-Based Positive Psychology Intervention with UK First Year Undergraduate Students

© 2022 National Wellbeing Service Ltd. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://www.nationalwellbeingservice.org/volumes/volume-6-2022/volume-6-article-6/Background: Starting university is a key life transition, and a potential source of psychological distress in first year university students. Those who manage the university transition effectively report high levels of optimism, hope, self-efficacy, emotional intelligence and self-regulation. Methodology: This study evaluated the effect of an app-based multi-component positive psychology intervention (MPPI) delivered to undergraduates within the first semester of university. Ninety-two first year university students were randomly allocated to an app-based MPPI (n = 46) or an active control journaling condition (n = 46) for six weeks. Results: The MPPI condition reported significant increases in life satisfaction after three and six weeks of the intervention; plus, significant increases in positive affect and self-efficacy, and decreases in negative affect after six weeks. Discussion: The effect of exercise dosage and follow-up period is reviewed. The differential effects of the varied psychological intervention are considered in the light of the Synergistic Change Model. Conclusions: App-based MPPIs are presented as a scalable cost-effective approach to supporting student transition to university.Peer reviewe

User-centred design of smartphone augmented reality in urban tourism context.

Exposure to new and unfamiliar environments is a necessary part of nearly everyone’s life. Effective communication of location-based information through various locationbased service interfaces (LBSIs) became a key concern for cartographers, geographers, human-computer interaction (HCI) and professional designers alike. Much attention is directed towards Augmented Reality (AR) interfaces. Smartphone AR browsers deliver information about physical objects through spatially registered virtual annotations and can function as an interface to (geo)spatial and attribute data. Such applications have considerable potential for tourism. Recently, the number of studies discussing the optimal placement and layout of AR content increased. Results, however, do not scale well to the domain of urban tourism, because: 1) in any urban destination, many objects can be augmented with information; 2) each object can be a source of a substantial amount of information; 3) the incoming video feed is visually heterogeneous and complex; 4) the target user group is in an unfamiliar environment; 5) tourists have different information needs from urban residents. Adopting a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach, the main aim of this research project was to make a theoretical contribution to design knowledge relevant to effective support for (geo)spatial knowledge acquisition in unfamiliar urban environments. The research activities were divided in four (iterative) stages: (1) theoretical, (2) requirements analysis, (3) design and (4) evaluation. After critical analysis of existing literature on design of AR, the theoretical stage involved development of a theoretical user-centred design framework, capturing current knowledge in several relevant disciplines. In the second stage, user requirements gathering was carried out through a field quasi experiment where tourists were asked to use AR browsers in an unfamiliar for them environment. Qualitative and quantitative data were used to identify key relationships, extend the user-centred design framework and generate hypotheses about effective and efficient design. In the third stage, several design alternatives were developed and used to test the hypotheses through a laboratory-based quantitative study with 90 users. The results indicate that information acquisition through AR browsers is more effective and efficient if at least one element within the AR annotation matches the perceived visual characteristics or inferred non-visual attributes of target physical objects. Finally, in order to ensure that all major constructs and relationships are identified, qualitative evaluation of AR annotations was carried out by HCI and GIS domain-expert users in an unfamiliar urban tourism context. The results show that effective information acquisition in urban tourism context will depend on the visual design and delivered content through AR annotations for both visible and non-visible points of interest. All results were later positioned within existing theory in order to develop a final conceptual user-centred design framework that shifts the perspective towards a more thorough understanding of the overall design space for mobile AR interfaces. The dissertation has theoretical, methodological and practical implications. The main theoretical contribution of this thesis is to Information Systems Design Theory. The developed framework provides knowledge regarding the design of mobile AR. It can be used for hypotheses generation and further empirical evaluations of AR interfaces that facilitate knowledge acquisition in different types of environments and for different user groups. From a methodological point of view, the described userbased studies showcase how a UCD approach could be applied to design and evaluation of novel smartphone interfaces within the travel and tourism domain. Within industry the proposed framework could be used as a frame of reference by designers and developers who are not familiar with knowledge acquisition in urban environments and/or mobile AR interfaces

Rapid toxicochemical analysis in phosphide intoxication cases

In recent years, phosphine and metal phosphides intoxications have been observed extremely rarely in clinical practice. Although rare, these intoxications have a severe clinical course, often with unclear clinical presentation at the beginning and possible lethal exit during the first hours or the next several days. Several tests for analysis of phosphide intoxication, based on the classical qualitative semimicroanalysis which do not require complex equipment, are presented and compared in this article. These tests contribute significantly to confirming the toxicology diagnosis and identifying the source. A rapid paper test (adopting the method of Chugh et al.) has been developed for the purposes of the routine toxicology practice to serve the practicing doctor, as quick and exact diagnostic orientation in cases with unclear history and clinical presentation of the intoxication

Radiological impact of surface water and sediment near uranium mining sites

The aim of this study is to assess the radiological impact of surface water and sediment around uranium mining sites 20 years after their closing. The areas under observations are 31 former classical underground uranium mining and exploratory sites in Bulgaria, named as objects. The extraction and processing of uranium ores in the Republic of Bulgaria were ended in 1992. To assess the radiological impact of radionuclides field expeditions were performed to sample water and bottom sediment. The migration of uranium through surface water was examined as one of the major pathways for contamination spread. The range of uranium concentration in water flowing from the mining sites was from 0.012 to 6.8 mgU l −1 with a geometric mean of 0.192 mgU l . The uranium concentrations in water downstream the mining sites were approximately 3 times higher than the background value (upstream). The concentrations of U nat , 226 Ra, 210 Pb, and 232 Th in the sediment of downstream river were higher than those upstream by 3.4, 2.6, 2, and 1.7 times, respectively. The distribution coefficient of uranium reflects its high mobility in most of the sites. In order to evaluate the impact on people as well as site prioritization for more detailed assessment and water management, screening dose assessments were done

Mercury self-poisoning. Case report

A clinical case of a self-poisoning with a single ingestion of 40-45 mL of alleged metal mercury with suicid­al purpose by a 50-year-old man is described. On the following day he was admitted to the Toxicology Clinic with symptoms of nausea, strong abdominal colic, diarrhea, and feces with macroscopic admixture of mer­cury drops. At the inspection of the residue of the substance, an unusual black-grey color on its surface was noted. Later, mercurous oxide was proven by chemical analysis. No toxic symptoms of the central nervous system, respiratory system or kidneys were observed. X-rays of the abdomen were performed and tracked dynamically: the first one showed numerous round shadows with metal density along the whole colon, the second - after 5 days - showed reduced number of similar shadows only in the distant colon, and the third X-ray on the 9th day was normal. Mercury was discovered in the blood: 0.250 μmol L-1 on the fourth day after the ingestion and 0.120 μmol L-1 - on the tenth day. Some therapeutic problems of acute mercury intoxica­tion of present interest are discussed

Holographic Recording in Charged Photopolymerisable Nanocomposites

Self – processing photopolymers have a large number of different applications due to their versatile properties as holographic recording materials. A significant effort has been directed towards the development of photopolymers for holographic data storage [1, 2], holographic sensors [3], holographic optical elements [4] and display holograms [5]. The Centre for Industrial and Engineering Optics has been developing acrylamide based photopolymers for the last decade [6-8]. The main parameters requiring improvement in these types of photopolymers are their dynamic range and their mechanical stability during the holographic recording. Recently we have successfully used zeolite nanoparticles as dopants in order to increase the dynamic range and lower the shrinkage in acrylamide-based photopolymers [9]. The advantages of using zeolite nanoparticles in colloidal form are their stability in water suspension: they have the same pH as the photopolymer and can be synthesized with different shape, size and chemical composition. Depending on the chemical composition and types of the structure, the zeolites will exhibit variable refractive index. Among the different types of zeolite nanoparticles used for doping of photopolymers, the pure silica MFI (Si-MFI) has shown the best results [9]. Having in mind that the zeolites are negatively surface charged it is expected to be an appropriate dopant for photopolymers [10]. We studied the effect of the charging of the photosensitive layers on their holographic recording properties. The charging was achieved by exposure to corona discharge. Different types of charges – positive and negative were deposited on the layer surfaces. It was observed that their presence influences the diffraction efficiency of recording