Search results for " Communication"

Physical Education Teachers’ Perceived Sexual and Physical Violence and Work-related Stress

2020

This study investigated the relationships between sexual (verbal and non-verbal sexual harassment) and physical violence against physical education (PE) teachers and work-related stress. Participants were 175 (females 122, males 53) Finnish PE teachers aged between 27 and 62 years. The findings showed that 1) higher perceived physical violence was positively associated with higher perceived non-verbal sexual harassment and work-related stress; 2) teachers with a sport science degree perceived higher work-related stress mediated by physical violence than other teachers; 3) longer-serving PE teachers reported lower verbal sexual harassment than teachers with less teaching experience; and 4) f…

2019

The etiology of overweight and obesity is a mixture of genetic determinants, environmental factors and health behaviors. Especially intra- and interpersonal inactive behaviors, here termed convenience seems to play an important role. The objective was to develop and validate the Convenience Behavior Questionnaire (CBQ) to assess convenience-related items and their association with overweight and obesity in a large population. A sample of 1233 subjects aged 18 to 82 years from six population groups took part in a self-administered questionnaire. Test-retest reliability was estimated and the independent association between convenience-related items and overweight and obesity was investigated.…

Emerging Trends, Issues, and Challenges in Big Data and Its Implementation toward Future Smart Cities

2017

The articles in this special section focus on Big Data as it impacts future smart cities. The world is experiencing a period of extreme urbanization. Moreover, this process will continue, and the global urban population is expected to double by 2050. Smart city has been proposed to improve the efficiency of services and meet residents’ needs for better quality of life. Essentially, smart city integrates the Internet of Things and emerging communication technologies such as fifth generation (5G) solutions to manage the citys’ assets, including transportation systems, hospitals, water supply networks, waste management, and so on. Therefore, smart city is driving innovation and new technologie…

Use of ICT to support epidemiological surveillance on a community of university students during SARS-CoV-2 phase 3 pandemic

2021

Populations documenting to date low incidence rates of SARS-CoV-2 infection are immunologically susceptible and at high exposure risk of new COVID-19 outbreaks during phase 3 of the pandemic. Following the experience documented by other countries with regard to the use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) to counteract the current pandemic, Italy has implemented a contact tracing system based on a mobile application. In this work, we describe the proposal of a complementary ICT-based prototypal model of COVID-19 prevention and surveillance system, involving the university students as sentinels acting both in the academic community and the general population.

Towards a European public sphere? A Comparative Study of the Facebook Activities of Danish and Spanish Members of the European Parliament

2019

This comparative study examines the everyday Facebook activities of all Danish and Spanish members of the European Parliament (MEPs), and the extent to which there is a real political conversation between citizens and European representatives. Through content analysis, it analyzes the Facebook practices of a significantly under-studied population (MEPs) during a non-campaign period (January 15 to February 15, 2017) while most of recent research has overwhelmingly focused on campaign periods. The results show that both Danish and Spanish MEPs are generously present and active on Facebook, but that they are less popular than their national counterparts. The study shows that Danish MEPs use Fa…

A distributed visualization system for crowd simulations1

2011

The visualization system of large-scale crowd simulations should scale up with both the number of visuals views of the virtual world and the number of agents displayed in each visual. Otherwise, we could have large scale crowd simulations where only a small percentage of the population is displayed. Several approaches have been proposed in order to efficiently render crowds of animated characters. However, these approaches either render crowds animated with simple behaviors or they can only support a few hundreds of user-driven entities. In this paper, we propose a distributed visualization system for large crowds of autonomous agents that allows the visualization of crowds animated with co…

Design of virtual environments for the treatment of agoraphobia: Inclusion of culturally relevant elements for the population of the Dominican Republ…

2020

Abstract Virtual Reality is a powerful tool for the treatment of agoraphobia. However, how effective is the use of these scenarios when they do not resemble the sociocultural context? Literature suggests that the inclusion of culturally relevant elements increases the ecological validity and transferability of learning since it reduces the gap between the virtual and real context. Unfortunately, in Latin America, the development of virtual environments is incipient, and the use of generic virtual environments is commonplace. The objective of this study was to develop virtual environments that include elements that are culturally relevant to the population of the Dominican Republic. Three hu…

Virtual Reality in Education : Focus on the Role of Emotions and Physiological Reactivity

2019

Cognitive and emotional dimensions are often linked to each other in learning experiences. Moreover, emotions and engagement can lead to better outcomes at the cognitive level. Previous research has indicated that virtual reality (VR) provides a feeling of presence and immersion, which can trigger emotionally engaging learning situations. In this study, we explore the opportunities and challenges related to the use of VR in an educational context. The focus of this article is threefold: First, we explore interdisciplinary research literature related to the use of VR for educational purposes. Second, we introduce our VR pilot study in teacher education, applying three different kinds of VR a…

Banknæringens digitale hamskifte : en kvalitativ studie om DNBs digitalisering i møtet med eldre kunder

2016

Masteroppgave samfunnskommunikasjon- Universitetet i Agder, 2016 The purpose of this thesis is to better understand the digitization of the banking sector in Norway and how it affects the relationship between the bank and older customers. One of the reasons being that there are few examples of Norwegian research on the elderly and their use of Information and Communications-Technology (ICT). The theoretical approach is interdisciplinary, combining theory from fields such as information systems theory (Technology Acceptance Model), conceptual design theory (Service design) and sociological theory (Socialgerontology). Using a qualitative research method I interviewed four elderly customers of…

Communication politique et réseaux sociaux: les élections présidentielles 2014 en Roumanie sous la loupe de Twitter et de Facebook

2015

Dans cet article nous proposons d’étudier l’utilisation des réseaux socio-numériques (essentiellement Facebook et Twitter) à des fins de communication politique dans le contexte spécifique des élections présidentielles qui ont eu lieu en Roumanie entre le 2 et le 16 novembre 2014. Nous essaierons de déterminer l’efficacité du recours à ces réseaux dans la communication des candidats et l’influence qu’ils ont pu exercer sur l’issue de la campagne. In this article we propose to study the use of socio-digital networks (mainly Facebook and Twitter) for the purpose of political communication in the specific context of the presidential elections were held in Romania between 2 and 16 November 2014…