Search results for "ARENES"

Classroom interaction and literacy activities in kindergarten : Longitudinal links to grade 1 readers at risk and not at risk of reading difficulties

2017

The purpose of the present study is to establish how the quality of kindergarten classroom interactions and the frequency of literacy activities affect reading development among Grade 1 children—both those who are at risk and not at risk of developing reading difficulties. Interaction was assessed in terms of classroom organization, and the level of emotional and instructional support offered in 49 kindergarten classrooms in Finland using the CLASS (Classroom Assessment Scoring System). Kindergarten teachers also recorded the frequency of literacy activities in their classrooms. The phonological awareness and letter knowledge of 515 children (i.e., their pre-reading skills) were assessed at…

The Impacts of ICT Support on Information Distribution, Task Assignment for Gaining Teams’ Situational Awareness in Search and Rescue Operations

2015

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has changed the way we communicate and work. To study the effects of ICT for Information Distribution (ID) and Task Assignment (TA) for gaining Teams’ Situational Awareness (TSA) across and within rescue teams, an indoor fire game was played with students. We used two settings (smartphone-enabled support vs. traditional walkietalkies) to analyze the impact of technology on ID and TA for gaining TSA in a simulated Search and Rescue operation. The results presented in this paper combine observations and quantitative data from a survey conducted after the game. The results indicate that the use of the ICT was good in second scenario than first sce…

Experiencing Urban Mining in an Italian Municipality towards a Circular Economy vision

2017

Abstract Selective waste collection in Italy has undergone significant changes over the last decade, highlighting very different approaches from one region to another. Research results presented in this paper are underlying differences between geographical regions and use them as a model of good practices to improve the less optimized systems. In the last decade, the Trento City Council has established a goal – the optimization of selective municipal solid waste collection – that led to a very low amount of recyclable materials in the residual fraction. More than that, for the first time sanitary textiles have been considered as a separable fraction at the source; for a long time this type …

Enabling independent navigation for visually impaired people through a wearable vision-based feedback system

2017

This work introduces a wearable system to provide situational awareness for blind and visually impaired people. The system includes a camera, an embedded computer and a haptic device to provide feedback when an obstacle is detected. The system uses techniques from computer vision and motion planning to (1) identify walkable space; (2) plan step-by-step a safe motion trajectory in the space, and (3) recognize and locate certain types of objects, for example the location of an empty chair. These descriptions are communicated to the person wearing the device through vibrations. We present results from user studies with low- and high-level tasks, including walking through a maze without collisi…

Identifying First Responders Information Needs

2016

At the onset of an indoor fire emergency, the availability of the information becomes critical due to the chaotic situation at the emergency site. Moreover, if information is lacking, not shared, or responders are too overloaded to acknowledge it, lives can be lost and property can be harmed. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to identify information items that are needed for first responders during search and rescue operations. The authors use an educational building fire emergency as a case and show how first responders can be supported by getting access to information that are stored in different information systems. The research methodology used was a combination of literature review,…

Ubiquitous Co-Driver System and Its Effects on the Situation Awareness of the Driver

2008

The aim of this paper is to explore the effects of ubiquitous computing in cars on the situation awareness and expectations of the driver. In a driving simulation environment with participants using a co-driver system, we investigated how people took and recovered from misinformation provided by the system. The system presented safety-critical information about the upcoming curves on the road, but in the experiment part of the messages contained false information. The effects of this information on participants’ behavior were investigated. On the grounds of the experiment, we discuss two approaches for investigating drivers’ situational awareness, which are based on either mental workload o…

2017

Social media has become an important tool for sport organisations to interact with fans. In particular for sports that have smaller marketing budgets and that do not receive mainstream media coverage on a daily basis, social media platforms provide unique communication and marketing opportunities to overcome such challenges. This study investigates the motives of fans to communicate on the Facebook page of the International Table Tennis Federation (ITTF). It is the first study that focuses on the use of social media in the context of an international sport federation. Knowledge about the gratifications sought by fans while interacting on social media is important for organisations to develo…

A propósito del desarrollo sostenible: Origen, evolución y teorías alternativas

2016

Resumen . El Desarrollo Sostenible representa el modelo de desarrollo al que todas las sociedades deberian aspirar con el objetivo de mantener en equilibrio el sistema ecologico de nuestro Planeta, al menos para conservarlo tal como hoy lo conocemos. De no ser asi, las condiciones de vida existentes corren peligro de cambiar drasticamente y las consecuencias a nivel ambiental, social y economico podrian ser catastroficas. Desde la acunacion oficial del concepto, del que ya han pasado casi 30 anos, los principios del Desarrollo Sostenible (a pesar de la mayor concienciacion social y politica) todavia quedan muy distantes de una aplicacion real y de una consecucion optima de sus objetivos. Lo…

Supporting Awareness in Creative Group Work by Exposing Design Rationale

2011

When creativity is taken as a long-term, complex, and collaborative activity, support for awareness is required for group members to monitor the development of ideas, track how these ideas became narrowed, and understand how alternatives are being implemented and integrated by colleagues. In this paper, we investigate the effects of exposing design rationale to convey awareness, specifically activity awareness, in group creativity. Through evaluating a prototype, we investigate status updates that convey design rationale, and to what consequences, in small groups in fully distributed collaboration. We found that status updates are used for a variety of purposes and that participants’ commen…

Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Consciousness and the Intermediate Level Fallacy

2018

Recently, there has been considerable interest and effort to the possibility to design and implement conscious robots, i.e., the chance that a robot may have subjective experiences. However, typical approaches as the global workspace, information integration, enaction, cognitive mechanisms, embodiment, i.e., the Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Consciousness, henceforth, GOFAC, share the same conceptual framework. In this paper, we discuss GOFAC's basic tenets and their implication for AI and Robotics. In particular, we point out the intermediate level fallacy as the central issue affecting GOFAC. Finally, we outline a possible alternative conceptual framework towards robot consciousness.