INTRODUCTION: PHOTOGRAPHY AND LANDSCAPE

Momentary loneliness among older adults: Contextual differences and their moderation by gender and race/ethnicity

Effects of single and group housing conditions and alterations in social and physical contexts on amphetamine-induced behavioral sensitization in rats

Existing research on context and context awareness has broadly focused on the technical aspects of context acquisition and interpretation of users' surroundings, also called physical or sensor-based context. Such an approach is lack of reconciling the user's perception of real-world context and a context-aware system's interpretation of that context. Using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), we propose a hybrid approach that accounts for both user and physical context in defining an overall context awareness value. The model is validated using a simulation approach, which is valuable in that it examines and helps reduce the uncertainty in AHP to some extent. The results suggest several preliminary guidelines to determine representative measures of user and physical context in the design and evaluation of context-aware systems.

Multilevel analysis in rural cancer control: A conceptual framework and methodological implications

The design of a safe and reliable Autonomous Driving stack (ADS) is one of the most challenging tasks of our era. These ADS are expected to be driven in highly dynamic environments with full autonomy, and a reliability greater than human beings. In that sense, to efficiently and safely navigate through arbitrarily complex traffic scenarios, ADS must have the ability to forecast the future trajectories of surrounding actors. Current state-of-the-art models are typically based on Recurrent, Graph and Convolutional networks, achieving noticeable results in the context of vehicle prediction. In this paper we explore the influence of attention in generative models for motion prediction, considering both physical and social context to compute the most plausible trajectories. First, the past trajectories are encoded using a LSTM network which feed a Multi-Head Self-Attention module to compute the social context. Then, plausible goal points are extracted from the driveable area of the HDMap information (physical context). Finally, the input of our generator is a white noise vector sampled from a multivariate normal distribution while the social and physical context are its conditions to predict plausible trajectories. We validate our method using the Argoverse Motion Forecasting Benchmark 1.1, achieving competitive unimodal results. Our code is publicly available at https://github.com/Cram3r95/mapfe4mp.

The emerging role of private sector in neoliberal city development is creating disconnect of contemporary public space with physical and social context. The following paper uses four case studies of public spaces within Karachi, mega city of Pakistan, to highlight the developing trends creating lack of context integration to place. The main research question for this study is, how well do the contemporary public spaces cater to inclusivity and integration with social and physical context? The research methodology used is mixed methods and qualitative research. Surveys and interviews conducted evaluate success factors and limitations in design approach to public spaces.

With increasing privacy concerns and security demands present within mobile devices, behavioral biometric solutions, such as touch based user recognition, have been researched as of recent. However, several vital contextual behavior factors (i.e., screen size, physical and application context) and how those effect user identification performance, remains unaddressed in previous studies. In this paper we first introduce a context-aware mobile user recognition method. Then a comparative experiment to evaluate the impacts of these factors in relation to user identification performance is presented. Experimental results have demonstrated that a user's touch screen usage behavior may be affected given different contextual behavior information. Furthermore, several interesting occurrences have been found in the results: 1) screen size of a smartphone device changes the way a user touches and holds the device. A larger screen size will provide more potential methods of interacting with the device and in effect, a higher user recognition accuracy as well; and 2) application context and physical activity context can aid in achieving higher accuracy for user recognition.

An increasingly globalized economy and rapidly changing communication technologies have had a fundamental impact on the physical and social nature of work. We highlight the recent emergence of modern work arrangements, Co-working Spaces and Jellies, in order to better understand the changing meaning of work and the role of physical space in creating and giving meaning to work. Despite the benefits of the trend towards teleworking and mobile work we find that many workers who have been left “placeless” are actively searching to re-embed work in shared physical locations. This search for the “third place” gives rise to Co-working Spaces and Jellies, modern work arrangements built around the need for shared location, interaction and community. Through a detailed historical account of evolving work arrangements from the postwar period to the present we trace fundamental changes in the physical location of work and the evolving connection between the space in which work takes place and meaning. We highlight the role of the physical and social context in meaning-making and illustrate the potential of meaning of work to be actively co-created an co- crafted in shared social and physical contexts. Finally, we outline the implications of taking the physical environment more seriously for theories of organizational behaviour more broadly and for managers seeking to drive innovation and employee engagement.

This chapter goes in-depth in the analysis of the museum servicescape and discusses it as a new combination of physical and virtual contexts (i.e. mixed reality), including multiple dimensions of visitors’ interactions. The chapter proposes a conceptual model of the augmented museum servicescape to analyse how organisations face the increasing complexity in design the customer experience in the cultural heritage sector by integrating multisided aspects of digital and physical contexts. The physical, social, and emotional dimensions are integrated and designed to activate users’ roles in an augmented designed environment. Through technologies, servicescape can help users to be guided better by their choices and times, increase their engagement within the virtual exploration, and improve their content understanding through direct and augmented experience.

Network Centrality in the Virtual Context-A Proposed Approach

When learning physics, students need more than just an understanding of mathematical and physical concepts. Integrating the two fields is crucial, as research indicates that students often struggle even when they have a strong grasp of both. In this paper, we use the heat equation as an example from higher education. Given the importance of the gradient and the Laplacian in the heat equation, as well as fluency and flexibility in using multiple external representations, this study investigates students’ reasoning about the gradient and the Laplacian of a function within different function representations in mathematics and physics contexts. To do so, we designed isomorphic open-response questions, administered as paper-and-pencil tests to 190 first-year students who were taking calculus-based introductory physics courses and multivariable calculus courses during their second semester. These students were enrolled in physics, mathematics, engineering, and bioengineering programs. We found that students face conceptual challenges with both the gradient and the Laplacian. Student difficulties with interpreting the gradient may be related to an incomplete understanding of steepness in graphical representations of functions of two independent variables. Moreover, their understanding of the Laplacian is limited. While context did not significantly affect students’ reasoning in terms of the types of difficulties they encountered, the proportion of students facing these difficulties, and their tendency to link or discuss more than one aspect of a concept, we did find context-specific prevalence of graphical, algebraic-symbolic, or linguistic descriptions. Students used linguistic descriptions more frequently in a physics context. We observed varying abilities to express the meaning of concepts in different answer representations. Linguistic descriptions of concepts proved particularly challenging for both concepts and contexts. Our findings provide insight into students’ understanding of two concepts related to the 2D heat equation.

Testing the effectiveness of warning statements designed to encourage healthy lifestyle behaviours is largely done by showing the messages to study participants in the absence of ‘real world’ social and physical contexts. This approach does not factor in the impact of the medium of the message. A virtual, 360-degree environment (Messaging360) was developed that online participants can explore and be exposed to messages in a variety of different social and physical contexts: through advertising in a newspaper, labels on products and from a small child and a doctor avatar. The platform allows for large numbers of participants to be tested in a way that models real-life contexts for the messages and so may represent a more effective way of assessing their impact in delivering the health information.

The current study characterizes associations between physical and social contexts of self-reported primary episodes of eating/drinking and sociodemographic and obesity-related variables in US adults. Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyse a nationally representative sample of adults from the 2006-2008 American Time Use Survey. Models identifying physical (where) and social (whom) contexts of primary eating/drinking episodes at the population level, controlling for demographic characteristics, weight status and time of eating, were conducted. A nationally representative sample of US adults (n 21 315). Eating/drinking with immediate family was positively associated with age (OR = 1·15 (95 % CI 1·04, 1·27) to 1·23 (95 % CI 1·09, 1·39)), education level (OR = 1·16 (95 % CI 1·03, 1·30) to 1·36 (95 % CI 1·21, 1·54)), obesity (OR = 1·13 (95 % CI 1·04, 1·22)), children in the household (OR = 3·39 (95 % CI 3·14, 3·66)) and time of day (OR = 1·70 (95 % CI 1·39, 2·07) to 5·73 (95 % CI 4·70, 6·99)). Eating in the workplace was negatively associated with female gender (OR = 0·65 (95 % CI 0·60, 0·70)) and children in the household (OR = 0·90 (95 % CI 0·83, 0·98)), while positively associated with non-white status (OR = 1·14 (95 % CI 1·01, 1·29) to 1·47 (95 % CI 1·32, 1·65)) and time of day (OR = 0·25 (95 % CI 0·28, 0·30) to 5·65 (95 % CI 4·66, 6·85)). Women (OR = 0·80 (95 % CI 0·74, 0·86)), those aged >34 years (OR = 0·48 (95 % CI 0·43, 0·54) to 0·83 (95 % CI 0·74, 0·93)) and respondents with children (OR = 0·69 (95 % CI 0·63, 0·75)) were less likely to eat in a restaurant/bar/retail than at home. Overweight and obese respondents had a greater odds of reporting an episode of eating in social situations v. alone (e.g. immediate family and extended family; OR = 1·13 (95 % CI 1·04, 1·22)) and episodes occurring in restaurant/bar/retail locations (OR = 1·12 (95 % CI 1·03, 1·23) to 1·14 (95 % CI 1·05, 1·24)). Findings underscore the multidimensional nature of describing eating/drinking episodes. Social and physical contexts for eating/drinking and their demographic correlates suggest opportunities for tailoring interventions related to diet and may inform intervention targeting and scope.

The purpose of this survey research is to analyze and compare the views of classroom teachers on character education in Turkey, Germany and the U.S. In this study, in which descriptive survey method was used, data were collected from 419 teachers from three countries with questionnaire forms. The data were subjected to descriptive analysis. It was determined that character education is influenced by many factors such as family education level, media, internet, social and physical context, and that teachers in all three countries have similar views, only American teachers think differently that "social and physical context" is more important. Character education is mostly practiced in the USA, and to a lesser extent in Germany and Turkey. Teachers of three countries believe that Life & Social studies are the most important lessons that contribute character education. However, character education should be integrated with other curricula with an interdisciplinary approach preferably. Various resources such as meetings, in-school posters, books and thematic projects are used in character education and American teachers use these resources more than other teachers. According to participants, techniques such as observation, interviews, and questionnaires may be used to determine whether character education goals have been achieved. It is seen that the majority of teachers in all three countries are not sure about the possibility to achieve the goals of character education. It may be stated that teachers do not have a very high level of belief in the level of realization of character education goals. According to German teachers, values are less important, but values are acquired at a similar rate, and for Turkish teachers values are very highly important, but not realized at the expected level. In conclusion, the views of teachers from different countries on character education have similar and different aspects.

Problematic smartphone use negatively affects physical and mental health. Despite the wide range of prior research, existing persuasive techniques are not flexible enough to provide dynamic persuasion content based on users’ physical contexts and mental states. We first conducted a Wizard-of-Oz study (N=12) and an interview study (N=10) to summarize the mental states behind problematic smartphone use: boredom, stress, and inertia. This informs our design of four persuasion strategies: understanding, comforting, evoking, and scaffolding habits. We leveraged large language models (LLMs) to enable the automatic and dynamic generation of effective persuasion content. We developed MindShift, a novel LLM-powered problematic smartphone use intervention technique. MindShift takes users’ in-the-moment app usage behaviors, physical contexts, mental states, goals & habits as input, and generates personalized and dynamic persuasive content with appropriate persuasion strategies. We conducted a 5-week field experiment (N=25) to compare MindShift with its simplified version (remove mental states) and baseline techniques (fixed reminder). The results show that MindShift improves intervention acceptance rates by 4.7-22.5% and reduces smartphone usage duration by 7.4-9.8%. Moreover, users have a significant drop in smartphone addiction scale scores and a rise in self-efficacy scale scores. Our study sheds light on the potential of leveraging LLMs for context-aware persuasion in other behavior change domains.