1,721,005 research outputs found
Designing human-centric software artifacts with future users: a case study
Get PDFThe quality and quantity of participation supplied by human beings during the different phases of the design and development of a software artifact are central to studies in human-centered computing. With this paper, we have investigated on what kind of experienced people should be engaged to design a new computational artifact, when a participatory approach is adopted. We compared two approaches: the former including only future users (i.e., novices) in the design process, and the latter enlarging the community to expert users. We experimented with the design of a large software artifact, in use at the University of Bologna, engaging almost 1500 users. Statistical methodologies were employed to validate our findings. Our analysis has provided mounting evidence that expert users have contributed to the design of the artifact only by a small amount. Instead, most of the innovative initiatives have come from future users, thus surpassing some traditional limitations that tend to exclude future users from this kind of processes. We here challenge the traditional opinion that expert users provide typically a more reliable contribution in a participatory software design process, demonstrating instead that future users would be often better suited. Along this line of sense, this is the first paper, in the field of human-centric computing, that discusses the relevant question to offer to future users a larger design space, intended as a higher level of freedom given in a software design situation, demarcated by precise design constraints. In this sense, the outcome has been positiv
Particulate Matter and COVID-19 Disease Diffusion in Emilia-Romagna (Italy). Already a Cold Case?
Get PDFAs we prepare to emerge from an extensive and unprecedented lockdown period, due to the COVID-19 virus infection that hit the Northern regions of Italy with the Europe’s highest death toll, it becomes clear that what has gone wrong rests upon a combination of demographic, healthcare, political, business, organizational, and climatic factors that are out of our scientific scope. Nonetheless, looking at this problem from a patient’s perspective, it is indisputable that risk factors, considered as associated with the development of the virus disease, include older age, history of smoking, hypertension and heart disease. While several studies have already shown that many of these diseases can also be favored by a protracted exposure to air pollution, there has been recently an insurgence of negative commentary against authors who have correlated the fatal consequences of COVID-19 (also) to the exposition of specific air pollutants. Well aware that understanding the real connection between the spread of this fatal virus and air pollutants would require many other investigations at a level appropriate to the scale of this phenomenon (e.g., biological, chemical, and physical), we propose the results of a study, where a series of the measures of the daily values of PM2.5, PM10, and NO2 were considered over time, while the Granger causality statistical hypothesis test was used for determining the presence of a possible correlation with the series of the new daily COVID19 infections, in the period February–April 2020, in Emilia-Romagna. Results taken both before and after the governmental lockdown decisions show a clear correlation, although strictly seen from a Granger causality perspective. Moving beyond the relevance of our results towards the real extent of such a correlation, our scientific efforts aim at reinvigorating the debate on a relevant case, that should not remain unsolved or no longer investigated
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
A Planning-Based Serious Game for Cognitive Rehabilitation in Multiple Sclerosis
No full textABSTRACT
Many patients suffering from multiple sclerosis encounter cognitive impairment. The use of computerized serious games could play
an essential role in their cognitive rehabilitation, especially when these games are designed to train the patient with intellectual dis-
ability on tasks typically required in their daily activities. In this paper, we present a serious game for the rehabilitation of executive functions, high-level cognitive processes that people activate to achieve their everyday goals. The game consists in executing, via
a dedicated graphical interface, the actions that are necessary to complete a set of common tasks. Automated planning techniques
are used to generate a potentially unlimited number of game scenarios with parametrized difficulty, and to verify if the patient’s
game strategy is leading to the correct completion of the tasks. An evaluation of the game usability is also presented
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