Issues Faced by Prosthetists and Physiotherapists During Lower-Limb Prosthetic Rehabilitation: A Thematic Analysis

Successful prosthetic rehabilitation is essential to improve the physical and mental outcomes of people with lower-limb amputation. Evaluation of prosthetic services from a prosthesis user perspective have been published and commissioned by the national bodies, however, the perspectives of clinicians working with service users during rehabilitation have not to date been sought. We sought to determine factors impacting lower-limb prosthetic rehabilitation from a clinician's perspective to inform studies focusing on prosthetic and socket design and fitting. Six clinician (2 prosthetists, 4 physiotherapists) interviewees were self-selected from a survey exploring issues and frustrations during lower-limb prosthetic rehabilitation. Semi-structured interviews explored the impactors on and frustrations with rehabilitation and the prosthetic socket. A thematic analysis was subsequently conducted to identify themes in the responses. Five themes were identified: Service Disparity, Body Impactors, Consequences of Ill-Fit, Prosthesis Irritants, and Limitations of Practice. Each theme, though distinct, relates to the others either as a cause or consequence and should be viewed as such. Addressing the themes will have benefits beyond the issues addressed but also expand into the other themes. This study provides an insight into the clinician perspectives on lower-limb prosthetic rehabilitation, which has not been formally documented to date.

Exploring the Measurement Lab Open Dataset for Internet Performance Evaluation: The German Internet Landscape

The Measurement Lab (MLab) provides a large and open collection of Internet performance measurements. We make use of it to look at the state of the German Internet by a structured analysis, in which we carve out expressive results from the dataset to identify busy hours and days, the impact of server locations and congestion control protocols, and compare Internet service providers. Moreover, we examine the impact of the COVID-19 lockdown in Germany. We observe that only parts of the Internet show a performance degradation at the beginning of the lockdown and that a large impact in performance depends on the network the servers are located in. Furthermore, the evolution of congestion control algorithms is reflected by performance improvements. For our analysis, we focus on the busy hours. From the end-user perspective, this time is of most interest to identify if the network can support challenging services such as video streaming or cloud gaming at these intervals.

Managing User Integration

The importance of robotics and assistive technologies for healthcare is increasing. For their introduction into practical application, the continuous integration of the user perspective is crucial to ensure acceptance and usability. This can be achieved by the user-centered design approach. In an earlier publication, several problems with its functional implementation within research and development (R&D) projects were pointed out. This chapter discusses possible solutions to promote an effective integration of the user perspective in R&D projects based on six interviews with experts from Germany. The results can be summarized in three main requirements: first, the generation of a common understanding of the target group; second, a scientific research approach considering the context of technology usage; third, projectification, with a focus on efficient resource planning, the development of generic technologies, and technology evaluations with the user group. Leaders of innovative projects can benefit from implementing these strategies in the development process.

Application of MSTAM Methodology in Project Management

Innovation technology development and commercialization are not new, but this is a hot topic in this decade in Hong Kong. The relevant researches are focused on two dimensions from research and development (R&D) technologist perspective (supply-side) and industry user perspective (demand-side). This is a part of the author's engineering doctorate thesis. The thesis title is “An Analysis of the Determinants of Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) R&D Projects Commercialization in Hong Kong's Logistics and Supply Chain Industries.” A pilot implementation case study has been conducted and tested, and the MSTAM methodology are workable for ITF R&D project deliverables commercialization to the industry.

Is it the “outstanding universal value" of heritage really global? : Measuring reputation using social media

Web 2.0 and social media play an important role nowadays in our society, not only from a user perspective, but also on an academic perspective. The data and information production based on the user-generated content is an important source to conduct scientific studies, specially the new geospatial information that exists due to the widespread of technological devices that capture the geospatial data. The main objective of this research is to assess if we can measure the brand awareness, with a focus in the reputation component, using geospatial user-generated content with an approach as a geographic problem. In this paper is identified the main research question and objectives, the methodological approach and the expected results regarding this Doctorate Thesis in Information Management.<br><div>Keywords: geographic information, social media, web 2.0, citizen sensing, ambient information systems, GIS, world heritage, brand awareness, reputation<br></div>

HOME OFFICE SURVEY IN THE SCOPE OF THE IEA SHC TASK 61, THE LIGHTING CONDITIONS FOR STUDENTS

This paper has been developed in the IEA SHC Task 61 Integrated Solutions for Daylighting and Electric Lighting scope. Task 61 aims at developing and testing strategies and solutions combining daylighting, electric lighting, and the most suitable control systems. Some of the planned activities, especially in the Subtask A: User perspective and requirements, were not possible due to the Coronavirus pandemic restrictions. On the other side, new challenges emerged, for example, the migration of workplaces to homes. It occurred both for professionals and students, and the lighting conditions in these new improvised workplaces are unknown. In this context, the article presents the part of the home office survey aiming to understand lighting conditions for students in home offices in different countries: Brazil, Italy, Japan, Columbia, Denmark, and Poland. The paper also seeks to define the current limitations of a home office in providing a resilient visual environment.

Towards Sustainable Use of Machine Translation: Usability and Perceived Quality from the End-User Perspective

Artificial intelligence-grounded machine translation has fundamentally changed public awareness and attitudes towards multilingual communication. In some language pairs, the accuracy, quality and efficiency of machine-translated texts of certain types can be quite high. Hence, the end-user acceptability and reliance on machine-translated content could be justified. However, machine translation in small and/or low-resource languages might yield significantly lower quality, which in turn may lead to potentially negative consequences and risks if machine translation is used in high-risk contexts without awareness of the drawbacks, critical assessment and modifications to the raw output. The current study, which is part of a more extensive project focusing on the societal impact of machine translation, is aimed at revealing the attitudes towards usability and quality as perceived from the end-user perspective. The research questions addressed revolve around the machine translation types used, purposes of using machine translation, perceived quality of the generated output, and actions taken to improve the quality by users with various backgrounds. The research findings rely on a survey of the population (N = 402) conducted in 2021 in Lithuania. The study reveals the frequent use of machine translation for a diversity of purposes. The most common uses include work, research and studies, and household environments. A higher level of education correlates with user dissatisfaction with the generated quality and actions taken to improve it. The findings also reveal that age correlates with the use of machine translation. Sustainable measures to reduce machine translation related risks have to be established based on the perceptions of different social groups in different societies and cultures.

Why Are We Distracted by Social Media? Distraction Situations and Strategies, Reasons for Distraction, and Individual Differences

Social media is a major source of distraction and thus can hinder users from successfully fulfilling certain tasks by tempting them to use social media instead. However, an understanding of why users get distracted by social media is still lacking. We examine the phenomenon of social media distraction by identifying reasons for, situations of, and strategies against social media distraction. The method adopted is a quantitative online survey (N = 329) with a demographically diverse sample. The results reveal two reasons for social media distraction: social (e.g., staying connected and being available) and task-related distraction (e.g., not wanting to pursue a task). We find individual differences in these reasons for distraction. For social distraction, affiliation motive and fear of missing out (FoMO) are significant predictors, while for task-related distraction, self-regulatory capabilities (self-control, problematic social media use) and FoMO are significant predictors. Additionally, typical distraction situations are non-interactive situations (e.g., watching movies, facing unpleasant tasks). Strategies used to reduce distractions mostly involved reducing external distractions (e.g., silencing the device). This paper contributes to the understanding of social media use by revealing insights into social media distraction from the user perspective.