Empowering cultural heritage professionals with tools for authoring and deploying personalised visitor experiences

This paper presents an authoring environment, which supports cultural heritage professionals in the process of creating and deploying a wide range of different personalised interactive experiences that combine the physical (objects, collection and spaces) and the digital (multimedia content). It is based on a novel flexible formalism that represents the content and the context as independent from one another and allows recombining them in multiple ways thus generating many different interactions from the same elements. The authoring environment was developed in a co-design process with heritage stakeholders and addresses the composition of the content, the definition of the personalisation, and the deployment on a physical configuration of bespoke devices. To simplify the editing while maintaining a powerful representation, the complex creation process is deconstructed into a limited number of elements and phases, including aspects to control personalisation both in content and in interaction. The user interface also includes examples of installations for inspiration and as a means for learning what is possible and how to do it. Throughout the paper, installations in public exhibitions are used to illustrate our points and what our authoring environment can produce. The expressiveness of the formalism and the variety of interactive experiences that could be created was assessed via a range of laboratory tests, while a user-centred evaluation with over 40 cultural heritage professionals assessed whether they feel confident in directly controlling personalisation

User-centred design of flexible hypermedia for a mobile guide: Reflections on the hyperaudio experience

A user-centred design approach involves end-users from the very beginning. Considering users at the early stages compels designers to think in terms of utility and usability and helps develop the system on what is actually needed. This paper discusses the case of HyperAudio, a context-sensitive adaptive and mobile guide to museums developed in the late 90s. User requirements were collected via a survey to understand visitors’ profiles and visit styles in Natural Science museums. The knowledge acquired supported the specification of system requirements, helping defining user model, data structure and adaptive behaviour of the system. User requirements guided the design decisions on what could be implemented by using simple adaptable triggers and what instead needed more sophisticated adaptive techniques, a fundamental choice when all the computation must be done on a PDA. Graphical and interactive environments for developing and testing complex adaptive systems are discussed as a further step towards an iterative design that considers the user interaction a central point. The paper discusses how such an environment allows designers and developers to experiment with different system’s behaviours and to widely test it under realistic conditions by simulation of the actual context evolving over time. The understanding gained in HyperAudio is then considered in the perspective of the developments that followed that first experience: our findings seem still valid despite the passed time

The diet of otters (Lutra lutra) on the Agri river system, one of the most important presence sites in Italy: A molecular approach

Background. The Eurasian otter (Lutra lutra) underwent a strong decline in large areas of the Central-Western part of its distribution range, during the second half of the twentieth century. In Italy, only residual fragmented nuclei survive in the Central- Southern part of the peninsula. Nowadays, the otter is one of the most endangered mammals in Italy, and increasing the knowledge about the ecology of this species is a key step in defining fitting management strategies. Here we provide information about the diet of otter on the Agri river system, one of the most important presence sites in Italy, to understand both the species' food requirements and the impact on fish communities. Methods. DNA metabarcoding and High Throughput Sequencing were used on DNA extracted from spraints. We amplified DNA with a primer set for vertebrates, focusing efforts on the bulk of the otter's diet (fishes and amphibians). Results. Our findings showed that the diet of the otter was dominated by cyprinids (97.77%, and 99.14% of fishes), while amphibians represented 0.85% of the sequences analyzed. Results are in general accordance with previous studies based on morphological characterization; however, molecular analyses allow the resolving of some morphological uncertainties. Although the study area offers a very wide range of available prey, the diet of the otters shows marked selectivity. We highlighted a variation in prey consumed, in accordance with the typology of water system (i.e., river, lake, tributary). Some of the preys found in the diet were alien species introduced by man for sport fishing. Our findings could help define strategies useful for the conservation of the otter population in Southern Italy, suggesting management actions directed at avoiding fish community alterations through illegal stockings without severe controls on their taxonomic status. These introductions could result in a general reduction in the diversity of the otter's preys, affecting its predatory behavior

Completion of death certificates in the aftermath of a hurricane

Death certificates are used widely for many critical uses. For example, families use them to close out estates as well as to reach emotional closure about the loss of their relative. Information from death certificates is also the fundamental source for official mortality statistics which are used to support statements such as \u201cThe impact of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season and the resulting death, injury, destruction, and population displacement were unprecedented in U.S. history.\u201d (CDC. MGuide: Hurricanes, accessed at http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/mguide_nd.html) and to more generally define the mortality scope and impact of particular events. Having more information about past events helps plan for future catastrophic storms.The medical examiner, coroner, or physician\u2019s primary responsibility in certifying or completing the death certificate is to provide a medical opinion on cause of death, that is, an etiological description of the order, type, and association of events resulting in death. In reporting the cause of death, any disease, abnormality, injury, or poisoning believed to have adversely affected the decedent should be reported as specifically and precisely as possible. He or she may also complete other legal and demographic items on the death certificate although normally a funeral director would complete this other information.200

Cultural heritage communities: Technologies and challenges

This workshop will explore the role of technology support-ing and mediating cultural heritage practices for both pro-febional communities (cultural heritage profebionals, her-itage institutions, etc.) and civic communities (citizen-led heritage initiatives, heritage volunteers, personal and com-munity identified heritage, heritage crowdsourcing, etc.). The workshop-which aims to attract participants from her-itage studies and practice, community engagement, digital humanities and human-centred computing-will discub challenges and future opportunities for technology use and for design and participatory procebes in the context of var-ious heritage communities, and the role of different stake-holders in engaging with heritage in a technologically-mediated way

Is the choice of statistical model relevant in the cost estimation of patients with chronic diseases? An empirical approach from the Piedmont Diabetes Registry.

BACKGROUND: Chronic diseases impose large economic burdens. Cost analysis is not straightforward, particularly when the goal is to relate costs to specific patterns of covariates, and to compare costs between diseased and healthy populations. Using different statistical methods this study describes the impact on results and conclusions of analyzing health care costs in a population with diabetes. METHODS: Direct health care costs of people living in Turin were estimated from administrative databases of the Regional Health System. Patients with diabetes were identified through the Piedmont Diabetes Registry. The effect of diabetes on mean annual expenditure was analyzed using the following multivariable models: 1) an ordinary least squares regression (OLS); 2) a lognormal linear regression model; 3) a generalized linear model (GLM) with gamma distribution. Presence of zero cost observation was handled by means of a two part model. RESULTS: The OLS provides the effect of covariates in terms of absolute additive costs due to the presence of diabetes (€ 1,832). Lognormal and GLM provide relative estimates of the effect: the cost for diabetes would be six fold that for non diabetes patients calculated with the lognormal. The same data give a 2.6-fold increase if calculated with the GLM. Different methods provide quite different estimated costs for patients with and without diabetes, and different costs ratios between them, ranging from 3.2 to 5.6. CONCLUSIONS: Costs estimates of a chronic disease vary considerably depending on the statistical method employed; therefore a careful choice of methods to analyze data is required before inferring results

Obesity and Cancer Screening according to Race and Gender

The relationship between obesity and cancer screening varies by screening test, race, and gender. Most studies on cervical cancer screening found a negative association between increasing weight and screening, and this negative association was most consistent in white women. Recent literature on mammography reports no association with weight. However, some studies show a negative association in white, but not black, women. In contrast, obese/overweight men reported higher rates of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing. Comparison of prostate cancer screening, mammography, and Pap smears implies a gender difference in the relationship between screening behavior and weight. In colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, the relationship between weight and screening in men is inconsistent, while there is a trend towards lower CRC screening in higher weight women

Gut microbiota plasticity in insular lizards under reversed island syndrome

Animals living on small islands are more drastically exposed to environmental changes, such as food or water starvation, and rapid temperature shifts. Facing such conditions, and probably thank to adaptive plasticity mechanisms, some animals display a Reversed Island Syndrome (RIS), a suite of traits, including skin pigmentation, voracity, sexual dimorphism, showed differently from mainland relatives. Here, we analyse a so far poorly explored aspect of RIS: the effect of this on the microbiota composition of host Italian wall lizard (Podarcis siculus), strongly influenced by the animal's lifestyle, and conditioning the same. We compare mainland and island populations, assessing the difference between their microbial communities and their response under unexpected food, experimentally provided. Our observations showed a significant difference in microbiota communities between island and mainland groups, depended mainly from changes in relative abundance of the shared genera (difference due to decrease/increase). Exposure to experimental diet regimes resulted into significative reshaping of bacterial composition of microbiota and a greater variation in body mass only in the island population. Our results could be an evidence that gut microbial community contributes to adaptive plasticity mechanisms of island lizards under RIS to efficiently respond to unexpected changes

MEMORANDUM: Oficio de la Cámara Federal de Apelaciones. Exp. Nº 17.946. (Litigio en Dto. Albigasta, Catamarca)

Fil: Viruel, María E. Secretaría de Minería de la Nación. Delegación Córdoba; Argentina.Fil: Petrelli, H. Secretaría de Minería de la Nación. Delegación Córdoba; Argentina