Providing Accessible ReCreation Outdoors: User-driven Research on Standards (PARCOURS) – Research protocol (Preprint)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mike Prescott ◽  
François Routhier ◽  
Delphine Labbé ◽  
W Ben Mortenson ◽  
Atiya Mahmood ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Canada’s national parks are world-renowned. However, despite recent attempts to improve access, many are not accessible to people with disabilities. With the advent of provincial and federal legislation, standards are being developed to assist with the design and management of parks. OBJECTIVE The overarching objective of this study is to inform accessibility standards for federal parks that meet the needs of all park visitors, regardless of ability. The specific objectives of this study are to: 1. Identify park accessibility standards that exist internationally; 2. Identify the accessibility challenges that people with disabilities face in park environments; 3. Prioritize and recommend accessibility standards for national parks. METHODS A three-phase approach will be used to achieve study objectives. In the first phase, a scoping review of the existing accessibility standards will be conducted. The second phase will include an objective audits of trails and features in six parks, three in western Canada and three in eastern Canada, as well as mobile interviews with 24 diverse participants in each region regarding their experiences of and recommendations for improving the park’s accessibility. In the final phase, a Delphi participatory consensus-development process will be used, based on the data gathered in the first two phases, to prioritize recommendations for standards. RESULTS We expect to find gaps in existing standards that do not account for the diverse range of accessibility requirements that people with disabilities have for visiting parks. We also expect to find that existing standards, on their own, may not be enough to ensure equitable access to all the experiences and amenities that parks have to offer. Development of subsequent guidelines and best practices may be necessary to address complex scenarios for which standards may not be the best approach to ensuring accessibility. CONCLUSIONS The participatory and mixed-methods approaches used in this study will provide rich insights for developing accessible park standards that consider the diverse needs of people with disabilities. The findings will also support the development or enhancement of park standards at all levels of government.

2005 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela Dickinson ◽  
Carol Welch ◽  
Laurie Ager ◽  
Aileen Costar

Poor nutritional care within the hospital setting continues despite decades of work chronicling and measuring the problems. To address the problem changes in practice have been attempted to improve the patients’ experience of mealtimes. In order to implement patient-centred mealtimes for older patients by changing the focus from institutional convenience to one that focuses on the requirements of the patients, an action research approach has been used that focuses on action and change, and thus appears to have much to offer those who seek to change practice. The present paper focuses on the first two phases in a three-phase approach. In phase one the nature of everyday mealtime care and the wider context are explored using focus groups, interviews and observations. The data fall into three main themes that all impact on patients’ experiences of mealtimes: institutional and organisational constraints; mealtime care and nursing priorities; eating environment. Following feedback of phase 1 findings to staff and identification of areas of concern a model of practice development was selected to guide the change process of the second phase. Changes to mealtime nursing practice and the ward environment have been made, indicating that action research has the potential to improve the mealtime care of patients.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 157 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ying-Dar Lin ◽  
Chun-Ying Huang

Android is one of the most popular operating systems used in mobile devices. Its popularity also renders it a common target for attackers. We propose an efficient and accurate three-phase behavior-based approach for detecting and classifying malicious Android applications. In the proposedapproach, the first two phases detect a malicious application and the final phase classifies the detected malware. The first phase quickly filters out benign applications based on requested permissions and the remaining samples are passed to the slower second phase, which detects malicious applications based on system call sequences. The final phase classifies malware into known or unknown types based on behavioral or permission similarities. Our contributions are three-fold: First, we propose a self-contained approach for Android malware identification and classification. Second, we show that permission requests from an Application are beneficial to benign application filtering. Third, we show that system call sequences generated from an application running inside a virtual machine can be used for malware detection. The experiment results indicate that the multi-phase approach is more accurate than the single-phase approach. The proposed approach registered true positive and false positive rates of 97% and 3%, respectively. In addition, more than 98% of the samples were correctly classified into known or unknown types of malware based on permission similarities.We believe that our findings shed some lights on future development of malware detection and classification.


1974 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 787-793 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen F. Davis ◽  
Robert E. Prytula ◽  
Wyatt E. Harper ◽  
Howard K. Tucker ◽  
Clarence Lewis ◽  
...  

Two groups of 12 rats served as Ss in a three-phase investigation into the production and utilization of odor cues in the runway. Both groups were trained under double-alternation patterns of reward-nonreward with one group serving as start-box donor-odorants, while the second group actually traversed the runway. During the first two phases the run- Ss were water-reinforced, and the donor-odorants were food-reinforced. The reinforcement schedules for the run and donor-odorant Ss were positively correlated during the first phase and negatively correlated during the second phase. In the third phase both groups were food reinforced and the reinforcement schedules once again positively correlated. The results indicated that significant double-alternation patterning was shown by the run- Ss only in the goal measure during Phases I and II. However, significant patterning was shown in start, run, and goal measures during Phase III, suggesting the specificity of odor cues to deprivational states.


2019 ◽  
pp. 105-144
Author(s):  
Jelena Nedeljkovic ◽  
Dragan Nonic ◽  
Mladen Prvulovic ◽  
Nenad Rankovic

In accordance with the Law on National Parks (NP) from 2015, the manager is obliged to cooperate with the stakeholders in the area of NP. The aim of the paper is to determine the attitudes of the representatives of the Public Enterprise ?NP Djerdap? and Public Enterprise ?NP Kopaonik? and stakeholders in the area of these two NPs, towards the existing cooperation, as well as the possibilities for its improvement. Primary data were collected in two phases. In the first phase, 52 stakeholders' representatives from the public, private and civil sectors from the areas of both NPs were surveyed and 9 representatives of the NP managers were interviewed. In the second phase, interviews were conducted with 16 stakeholders' representatives, 2 representatives of NP managers and 2 experts (representatives of institutions and organizations, whose business activities are directly or indirectly related to the management of protected areas). Representatives of NP managers emphasize that they have cooperation with stakeholders from the public, private and civil sectors. They are satisfied with this cooperation, but also have the interest to improve it. Most stakeholders? representatives from the area of NP Djerdap (92.6%) and NP Kopaonik (76.0%) noted that they are satisfied with the managers? work. They also have cooperation with other stakeholders in the NP area, but they are interested in improvement. Proposals refer to sharing more information and education of stakeholders, establishing of their association and joint work on projects.


2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 236-247
Author(s):  
Divya Srivastava ◽  
Rajitha B. ◽  
Suneeta Agarwal

Diseases in leaves can cause the significant reduction in both quality and quantity of agricultural production. If early and accurate detection of disease/diseases in leaves can be automated, then the proper remedy can be taken timely. A simple and computationally efficient approach is presented in this paper for disease/diseases detection on leaves. Only detecting the disease is not beneficial without knowing the stage of disease thus the paper also determine the stage of disease/diseases by quantizing the affected of the leaves by using digital image processing and machine learning. Though there exists a variety of diseases on leaves, but the bacterial and fungal spots (Early Scorch, Late Scorch, and Leaf Spot) are the most prominent diseases found on leaves. Keeping this in mind the paper deals with the detection of Bacterial Blight and Fungal Spot both at an early stage (Early Scorch) and late stage (Late Scorch) on the variety of leaves. The proposed approach is divided into two phases, in the first phase, it identifies one or more disease/diseases existing on leaves. In the second phase, amount of area affected by the disease/diseases is calculated. The experimental results obtained showed 97% accuracy using the proposed approach.


Author(s):  
Paulo César Antonini de Souza ◽  
Derick Trindade Bezerra

ResumoTendo por campo de investigação o Festival da América do Sul Pantanal (FASP) em 2018, na cidade de Corumbá (Brasil), objetiva-se identificar a materialidade e conceitos que permeiam as manifestações artísticas bidimensionais nesta região de fronteira, a partir da percepção de artistas da Bolívia. A pesquisa se organizou em duas fases: na primeira foi realizado um levantamento em plataformas online de produções acadêmicas em artes visuais, com foco no trabalho bidimensional, utilizando os descritores “arte popular” e “estética latina” resultando em três artigos. Na segunda fase foram selecionados dois trabalhos de uma artista da Bolívia, participante da mostra “Conexão Santa Cruz”, realizada durante o FASP 2018, que foram analisados em seus níveis representacional e simbólico. Pela interpretação das imagens foi possível construir uma leitura sobre a perspectiva da artista a respeito de suas condições culturais dentro da ordenação social em que se encontra situada.Palavras-chave: Artes Visuais. Arte Popular. Arte Regional. América Latina. Representation and symbolism: visual arts on the Brazil/Bolivia frontierAbstractHaving as research field the Festival da América do Sul Pantanal (FASP) in 2018, in the city of Corumbá (Brazil), the objective is to identify the materiality and concepts that permeate the two-dimensional artistic manifestations in this border region, from the perception of artists from Bolivia. The research was organized in two phases: in the first, a survey was carried out on online platforms of academic productions in visual arts, focusing on two-dimensional work, using the descriptors “arte popular” and “estética latina” resulting in three articles. In the second phase, two works were selected by an artist from Bolivia, participating in the exhibition “Conexão Santa Cruz”, held during FASP 2018, which were analyzed at their representational and symbolic levels. Through the interpretation of the images, it was possible to construct a reading on the artist’s perspective regarding her cultural conditions within the social order in which she is located.Keywords: Visual Arts. Folk Art. Regional Art. Latin America.Representación y simbolismo: artes visuales en la frontera de Brasil/BoliviaResumenTeniendo como campo de investigación el Festival de Sudamérica Pantanal (FASP) en 2018, en la ciudad de Corumbá (Brasil), el objetivo es identificar la materialidad y conceptos que permean las manifestaciones artísticas bidimensionales en esta región fronteriza, desde la percepción de artistas de Bolivia. La investigación se organizó en dos fases: en la primera, se realizó una encuesta en plataformas online de producciones académicas en artes visuales, con foco en el trabajo bidimensional, utilizando los descriptores “arte popular” y “estética latina” dando como resultado tres artículos. En la segunda fase, dos obras fueron seleccionadas por un artista de Bolivia, participante de la exposición “Conexão Santa Cruz”, realizada durante FASP 2018, que fueron analizadas en sus niveles representativos y simbólicos. A través de la interpretación de las imágenes, fue posible construir una lectura sobre la perspectiva de la artista sobre sus condiciones culturales dentro del orden social en el que se ubica.Palabras clave: Artes Visuales. Arte Popular. Arte Regional. América Latina.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 (8A) ◽  
pp. 1187-1199
Author(s):  
Qaed M. Ali ◽  
Mohammed M. Ezzalden

BLDC motors are characterized by electronic commutation, which is performed by using an electric three-phase inverter. The direct control system of the BLDC motor consists of double loops; including the inner-loop for current regulating and outer-loop for speed control. The operation of the current controller requires feedback of motor currents; the conventional current controller uses two current sensors on the ac side of the inverter to measure the currents of two phases, while the third current would be accordingly calculated. These two sensors should have the same characteristics, to achieve balanced current measurements. It should be noted that the sensitivity of these sensors changes with time. In the case of one sensor fails, both of them must be replaced. To overcome this problem, it is preferable to use one sensor instead of two. The proposed control system is based on a deadbeat predictive controller, which is used to regulate the DC current of the BLDC motor. Such a controller can be considered as digital controller mode, which has fast response, high precision and can be easily implemented with microprocessor. The proposed control system has been simulated using Matlab software, and the system is tested at a different operating condition such as low speed and high speed.


Author(s):  
A. Geerinck ◽  
C. Beaudart ◽  
J.-Y. Reginster ◽  
M. Locquet ◽  
C. Monseur ◽  
...  

Abstract Purpose To facilitate the measurement of quality of life in sarcopenia, we set out to reduce the number of items in the previously validated Sarcopenia Quality of Life (SarQoL®) questionnaire, and to evaluate the clinimetric properties of this new short form. Methods The item reduction process was carried out in two phases. First, information was gathered through item-impact scores from older people (n = 1950), a Delphi method with sarcopenia experts, and previously published clinimetric data. In the second phase, this information was presented to an expert panel that decided which of the items to include in the short form. The newly created SFSarQoL was then administered to older, community-dwelling participants who previously participated in the SarcoPhAge study. We examined discriminative power, internal consistency, construct validity, test–retest reliability, structural validity and examined item parameters with a graded response model (IRT). Results The questionnaire was reduced from 55 to 14 items, a 75% reduction. A total of 214 older, community-dwelling people were recruited for the validation study. The clinimetric evaluation showed that the SF-SarQoL® can discriminate on sarcopenia status [EWGSOP2 criteria; 34.52 (18.59–43.45) vs. 42.86 (26.56–63.69); p = 0.043], is internally consistent (α = 0.915, ω = 0.917) and reliable [ICC = 0.912 (0.847–0.942)]. A unidimensional model was fitted (CFI = 0.978; TLI = 0.975; RMSEA = 0.108, 90% CI 0.094–0.123; SRMR = 0.055) with no misfitting items and good response category separation. Conclusions A new, 14-item, short form version of the Sarcopenia Quality of Life questionnaire has been developed and shows good clinimetric properties.


Author(s):  
Kui Xu ◽  
Ming Zhang ◽  
Jie Liu ◽  
Nan Sha ◽  
Wei Xie ◽  
...  

Abstract In this paper, we design the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) protocol for massive multi-input multi-output (mMIMO) system with non-linear energy-harvesting (EH) terminals. In this system, the base station (BS) serves a set of uplink fixed half-duplex (HD) terminals with non-linear energy harvester. Considering the non-linearity of practical energy-harvesting circuits, we adopt the realistic non-linear EH model rather than the idealistic linear EH model. The proposed SWIPT protocol can be divided into two phases. The first phase is designed for terminals EH and downlink training. A beam domain energy beamforming method is employed for the wireless power transmission. In the second phase, the BS forms the two-layer receive beamformers for the reception of signals transmitted by terminals. In order to improve the spectral efficiency (SE) of the system, the BS transmit power- and time-switching ratios are optimized. Simulation results show the superiority of the proposed beam-domain SWIPT protocol on SE performance compared with the conventional mMIMO SWIPT protocols.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 2745
Author(s):  
Manoj Kumar ◽  
Ritu Dogra ◽  
Mahesh Narang ◽  
Manjit Singh ◽  
Sushant Mehan

Manual transplanting, a pre-dominant practice in almost all the paddy growing areas in India, is laborious, burdensome, and has many expenses on raising, settling, and transplanting nursery. The transplanting process’s limitations motivated the replacement of conventional paddy transplanting methods. The study was divided into two phases. The first phase included laboratory testing of three levels of metering mechanisms, namely cell type (M1) with 10 cells grooved around a circular plate having a 13 cm diameter, inclined plate (M2) containing 24 U shaped cells provided on an 18 cm diameter plate, and fluted roller (M3) with 10 flutes on a 5 cm diameter shaft. The testing matrix included a missing index, multiple index, and seed damage with forward speeds (2.5, 3.0, and 3.5 km/h), and pre-germination levels of 24 h soaked (P1), 24 h pre-germinated (P2), and 36 h pre-germinated paddy seeds (P3)). The second phase included selecting the best combination obtained from the laboratory study and developing a new efficient planter for the puddled field. The inclined plate metering mechanism operating at 2.5 km/h for 24 h pre-germinated seeds was reported most efficient from the first phase. Therefore, a self-propelled 8-row planter equipped with an inclined plate metering mechanism having a row-to-row spacing of 22.5 cm was developed, fabricated, and evaluated in the puddled field. The designed planter was assessed on two different soils: sandy loom (ST1) and clay loom (ST2) and at two different hopper fill levels as ½ filled hopper (F1) and ¾ filled hopper (F2). The number of plants per square meter and hill-to-hill spacing was measured. The on-field evaluation revealed that the number of plants per square meter was non-significantly affected by the type of soil but was significantly affected by hopper fill.


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