Breve visita a Mallorca de dos naturalistas

Abstract not availabl

Human performance in adverse environments

Human performance testing of astronaut capabilities during prolonged space fligh

An ethnographic study of the everyday lives of young women living with HIV in Zambia

Although young women in sub-Saharan Africa are disproportionately affected by HIV, limited research has documented their lives with HIV. This thesis aimed to understand the impact of HIV on young women’s everyday lives in Lusaka, Zambia. I conducted a 12-month ethnography with seven middle-income young women living with HIV in 2017-18. Participant observation with the young women, their friends and families was conducted in their homes, recreational spaces, churches, health facilities, colleges and workplaces. Additional data were generated through participatory workshops, diaries and visual collages. The young women had previously participated in a qualitative study in 2014- 15. Data from the latter study were included for secondary analysis. Analyses were inductive, theory-driven and iterative. Methodological critique assessed how collage methods effectively enabled self-reflection among participants in their representations of their lives with HIV. This thesis also prompted critical reflections on ethics-in-practice in conducting research with these participants, and identified areas of ethical tension, including the negotiated researcher-participant relationship and protecting participants’ HIV status. Theoretical findings showed how young women enacted agency through employing strategies to navigate their lives, including secrecy and limiting disclosure. This enabled them to cope with a stigmatising environment and the tight restrictions that were sometimes imposed around disclosure, sexual relationships and treatment adherence. Temporal analyses explored the impact of HIV on the participants’ lives across time, showing how their everyday and biographical experiences were interlinked with the historical availability of ART. My findings provide evidence of these young women’s resilience, offsetting a historical focus on their vulnerability. I propose applying Reynolds Whytes’ term “biogeneration” to capture how young people’s lives are entwined lives to their biosocial-historical environment. I question overly-simplistic narratives urging routine HIV-status disclosure, and endorse support groups for young people living with HIV to provide critical safe spaces to share their experiences with their peers

Pervasive and standalone computing: The perceptual effects of variable multimedia quality.

The introduction of multimedia on pervasive and mobile communication devices raises a number of perceptual quality issues, however, limited work has been done examining the 3-way interaction between use of equipment, quality of perception and quality of service. Our work measures levels of informational transfer (objective) and user satisfaction (subjective)when users are presented with multimedia video clips at three different frame rates, using four different display devices, simulating variation in participant mobility. Our results will show that variation in frame-rate does not impact a user’s level of information assimilation, however, does impact a users’ perception of multimedia video ‘quality’. Additionally, increased visual immersion can be used to increase transfer of video information, but can negatively affect the users’ perception of ‘quality’. Finally, we illustrate the significant affect of clip-content on the transfer of video, audio and textual information, placing into doubt the use of purely objective quality definitions when considering multimedia presentations

Soft constraint abstraction based on semiring homomorphism

The semiring-based constraint satisfaction problems (semiring CSPs), proposed by Bistarelli, Montanari and Rossi \cite{BMR97}, is a very general framework of soft constraints. In this paper we propose an abstraction scheme for soft constraints that uses semiring homomorphism. To find optimal solutions of the concrete problem, the idea is, first working in the abstract problem and finding its optimal solutions, then using them to solve the concrete problem. In particular, we show that a mapping preserves optimal solutions if and only if it is an order-reflecting semiring homomorphism. Moreover, for a semiring homomorphism $\alpha$ and a problem $P$ over $S$, if $t$ is optimal in $\alpha(P)$, then there is an optimal solution $\bar{t}$ of $P$ such that $\bar{t}$ has the same value as $t$ in $\alpha(P)$.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Non-Surgical Regional Therapy for Osteoarthritis: An Update and Review of the Literature

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint condition worldwide. It can lead to chronic debilitating symptoms that can be definitively managed with surgical techniques at times. More frequently however, either due to age, extent of disease or patient choice, non-surgical approaches are preferred. They include topical therapies such as thermotherapy, ultrasound, laser treatment, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and capsaicin cream. Injections are another technique often implemented. These consist of intra-articular (IA) corticosteroid or hyaluronan injections, trigger point injections and subcutaneous sodium salicylate. Acupuncture and various types of external support are also widely used. This chapter examines the latest evidence and summarises the role of the various regional treatments available for use in the management of OA