Surgical procedures that require general anesthesia can be stressful and create needless anxiety for school-age children. Interventions aimed at reducing preoperative anxiety can improve cooperation and enhance postoperative outcomes by lowering anxiety levels prior to induction of general anesthesia. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of behavioral interventions versus drug therapy in reducing pre-operative anxiety in children. The secondary purpose was to compare methods used to integrate anxiety reduction interventions into pre-operative care and to evaluate the most widely used and effective strategy for clinical practice. A literature review exploring behavioral based stress reduction interventions and drug therapy targeted at reducing preoperative anxiety was conducted from various online databases. Peer reviewed articles, published in the English-language between 2006 and 2015 that focused on postoperative outcomes in which preoperative interventions to reduce anxiety in children age two years and older, as well as the parent’s perspective of the outcome, were included for synthesis. Results from 9 randomized controlled trials that used behavioral based interventions implemented on the day of surgery, prior to anesthesia induction were compared for effectiveness at anxiety reduction versus the use of drug therapy prior to surgery. The studies suggest more successful post-surgical outcomes related to shorter length of stay and post-operative delirium for behavioral interventions to reduce anxiety prior to surgery and demonstrated even greater optimal outcomes for combined behavioral interventions. Drug therapy alone to decrease anxiety prior to anesthesia induction showed mixed results in reduction of physiologic and general outcomes following surgery. No significant difference between behavioral based interventions versus drug therapy was shown in any of the reviewed studies to have a significant effect on post-surgical outcomes. However, potentially promising behavioral based interventions such as clowns, electronic devices, parental presence and music over drug therapy prior to surgery, require further evaluation for their use in decreasing pre-operative anxiety in school-age children and having a positive impact on post-operative outcomes.

No description available.

No / This paper presents a different perspective on the collective concept of software-hardware defined radio (SHDR) in cognitive radio (CR) networks. The SHDR is proposed considering the multiple hardware functionalities conceived by software defined radio, which generally reflects on the adaptable recognition of network services and operational conditions. An ad-hoc network scheme is envisaged as an alternative to a conventional cellular network to accommodate for emergency situations. The connection to such emergency backup network could be established on CR engines built in normal or dedicated smart phone handsets.

Skulle du kunna leva utan din mobiltelefon? Det var en av frågorna som ställdes när denna studie genomfördes. Syftet med detta examensarbete var att undersöka hur individer reflekterar över sin aktivitet på sociala medier och hur beroende individer är av att uppdatera sig. Detta gjordes i en kvalitativ forskningsstudie. Studien tittade närmare på sociala mediers inverkan på individers liv. I studien diskuterades vilka för- och nackdelar sociala medier har bidragit med, hur stort behov individer känner för att ständigt vara uppkopplade på sociala medier. Känslan ”fear of missing out” var signifikant för vad studiens respondenter känner när det kommer till uppdatering på sociala medier. Studien utgick från teorin uses and gratifications, utifrån den reflekterades det över hur den kan kopplas till dagens sociala medier-samhälle. För att ha möjligheten att se samband och diskutera ett fenomen användes fenomenologi som teoretiskt angreppssätt. Den generella slutsatsen blev att individernas huvudsakliga syfte för att använda sociala medier är för att kommunicera. Det kom inte direkt som en chockande nyhet. Studien bekräftar det tidigare studier sagt men klargör ännu tydligare att mobiltelefonen på många sätt den viktigaste pryl vi äger. Den här studien handlar om livet med mobiltelefonen fastklistrad i handen och varför vi är beroende av den.

The Master's Thesis with a title Commercial communication of iPhone and iPad applications is focused on the analysis of the effectivness of the individual elements that are neccessary for a successful application with a special attention on commercial communation. The paper is divided into two parts where the first (theoretical) one talks about the role of commercial communication in today's world, description the mobile phone market and its customers and specifying the activites recommanded to become successful with one's iPhone/iPad application. The main output of this part is the creation of hypothesis related to the recommended activities. The second (practical) part describes the life of two applications and compares the realized actitivites to the sales. The final part provides the evaluation of the hypothesis regarding the findings of the practical part.

Thesis (MScEng (Electrical and Electronic Engineering))--University of Stellenbosch, 2011. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The computational power of mobile smart-phone devices are ever increasing and high-end phones become more popular amongst consumers every day. The technical speci cations of a high-end smart-phone today rivals those of a home computer system of only a few years ago. Powerful processors, combined with cameras and ease of development encourage an increasing number of Augmented Reality (AR) researchers to adopt mobile smart-phones as AR platform. Implementation of marker-based Augmented Reality systems on mobile phones is mostly a solved problem. Markerless systems still o er challenges due to increased processing requirements. Some researchers adopt purely computer vision based markerless tracking methods to estimate camera pose on mobile devices. In this thesis we propose the use of a hybrid system that employs both computer vision and integrated sensors present in most new smartphones to facilitate pose estimation. We estimate three of the six degrees of freedom of pose using integrated sensors and estimate the remaining three using feature tracking. A proof of concept hybrid system is implemented as part of this thesis. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die berekeningskrag van nuwe-generasie selfone neem elke dag toe en kragtige "slim-fone" word al hoe meer populêr onder verbruikers. Die tegniese spesifikasies van 'n nuwe slim-foon vandag is vergelykbaar met die van 'n persoonlike rekenaar van slegs 'n paar jaar gelede. Die kombinasie van kragtige verwerkers, kameras en die gemaklikheid waarmee programmatuur op hierdie toestelle ontwikkel word, maak dit 'n aantreklike ontwikkelingsplatform vir navorsers in Toegevoegde Realiteit. Die implimentering van 'n merker-gebaseerde Toegevoegde Realiteitstelsel op selfone is 'n probleem wat reeds grotendeels opgelos is. Merker-vrye stelsels, aan die ander kant, bied steeds interessante uitdagings omdat hulle meer prosesseringskrag vereis. 'n Paar navorsers het reeds rekenaarvisie-gebaseerde merker-vrye stelsels aangepas om op selfone te funksioneer. In hierdie tesis stel ons die ontwikkeling voor van 'n hibriede stelsel wat gebruik maak van rekenaarvisie sowel as geintegreerde sensore in die foon om die berekening van kamera-orientasie te vergemaklik. Ons gebruik geintegreerde sensore om drie uit ses vryheidsgrade van orientasie te bereken, terwyl die oorblywende drie met behulp van rekenaarvisie-tegnieke bepaal word. 'n Prototipe stelsel is ontwikkel as deel van hierdie tesis.

abstract: Parkinson's disease, the most prevalent movement disorder of the central nervous system, is a chronic condition that affects more than 1000,000 U.S. residents and about 3% of the population over the age of 65. The characteristic symptoms include tremors, bradykinesia, rigidity and impaired postural stability. Current therapy based on augmentation or replacement of dopamine is designed to improve patients' motor performance but often leads to levodopa-induced complications, such as dyskinesia and motor fluctuation. With the disease progress, clinicians must closely monitor patients' progress in order to identify any complications or decline in motor function as soon as possible in PD management. Unfortunately, current clinical assessment for Parkinson's is subjective and mostly influenced by brief observations during patient visits. Thus improvement or decline in patients' motor function in between visits is extremely difficult to assess. This may hamper clinicians while making informed decisions about the course of therapy for Parkinson's patients and could negatively impact clinical care. In this study we explored new approaches for PD assessment that aim to provide home-based PD assessment and monitoring. By extending the disease assessment to home, the healthcare burden on patients and their family can be reduced, and the disease progress can be more closely monitored by physicians. To achieve these aims, two novel approaches have been designed, developed and validated. The first approach is a questionnaire based self-evaluation metric, which estimate the PD severity through using self-evaluation score on pre-designed questions. Based on the results of the first approach, a smart phone based approach was invented. The approach takes advantage of the mobile computing technology and clinical decision support approach to evaluate the motor performance of patient daily activity and provide the longitudinal disease assessment and monitoring. Both approaches have been validated on recruited PD patients at the movement disorder program of Barrow Neurological Clinic (BNC) at St Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. The results of validation tests showed favorable accuracy on detecting and assessing critical symptoms of PD, and shed light on promising future of implementing mobile platform based PD evaluation and monitoring tools to facilitate PD management. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Biomedical Informatics 2013

Many everyday systems and products seem to be designed with little regard to usability. This leads to the frustration, wasted time and errors. So the usability of the product is important for its survival in the market. In many previous studies the usability evaluation of the iPhone and iPad carried out individually and very little work has been done on the comparative usability evaluation. However, there was not any study conducted on the comparative usability evaluation and measuring the performance of the iPhone versus iPad in a controlled environment. In this research work, the authors performed the comparative usability evaluation and measured the performances of the iPhone and iPad on the selected applications by considering the young users as well as the elderly users. Another objective of this study is to identify the usability issues in performances of the iPhone and iPad. A survey and experiment techniques were used to achieve the dened objectives. The survey questionnaire consisted of 42 statements that presented the different usability aspects. The objectives of the survey study were to validate the identified issues from the literature study, identify new issues and measure the signicant difference in user opinions for the iPhone and iPad. However, the experiment studies helped to measure the performance significances between the devices against the three user groups (novice user, experienced user, elderly user) and among the groups over the devices. Further, objective was to measure the satisfaction level of the participated users against the iPhone and iPad. The experiment was performed in a controlled environment. Total six tasks (two tasks per application) were dened and each participant performed the same task on both devices. Generally the authors found that the participants performed better on the iPad with lower error rates as compare to the iPhone. / The aim of this study was to evaluate and measure the comparative usability performances of the iPhone an iPad. The preliminary focus of the study was to nd the usability issues regarding both the devices. Several dierent methods have been used in the study when investigating the answers of predened research questions. The study in this thesis was a literature review, a survey study and an empirical usability testing experiment. In the literature review, the authors studied the dierent usability issues such as inconsistency in applications, applications crashes and accidental errors.The detail list of the issues also presented in Table 2. However, the survey responses validated such issues and highlighted some additional issues such as low battery time, Blue-tooth connectivity problems, wireless connectivity problem, week signal strength and missing help. Two participants commented on the missing of a swyping feature. According to them if the iPhone and iPad had such feature then their typing performance should be improved. A survey study was conducted to evaluate and measure the significance in the four main parts of the devices i.e. system, touch screen, keypad and applications. Each part contained the multiple related statements that explored the different usability aspects. The detail and results of each statement are given in Table 4. After the statistical analysis, the authors did not nd a signicant dierence between the statements regarding the iPhone and iPad apart from in four statements. In the two statements (i.e. nding a new application in the Apple store and replacing the contents location on the interface) the users agreed that the iPad performance was better than the iPhone. However, in the other two statements (i.e. use of system in the sun light and zooming gestures) they preferred the iPhone rather than the iPad. Its means 90.47% users addressed the same issues in the iPhone and iPad. There is no dierence in their preferences regarding the iPhone and iPad. 4.76% users preferred the iPhone and 4.46% users preferred the iPad in above mentioned conditions. The empirical usability testing experiment focused on studying the usability performances of the iPhone and iPad considering three target groups. The performances comparisons were conducted by comparing the dierent participants groups and both devices. In total 60 users participated in the empirical usability performance testing study. The selection of the participants was based on their earlier experience with mobile phones usage. The detail of the participant are given in Figure 13. The comparisons results of the participant groups are shown in Table 7, the devices in Table 8 and the errors on both devices in Table 9 provided the signicance in the performances. The novice users versus experienced users comparison results across the iPhone (all six tasks) and the iPad (rst ve tasks) presented that the experienced users performed faster than the novice users with lower error rate. The results of the novice users versus elderly user comparison presented that the novice user using the iPhone ( first four tasks) and using the iPad (facebook login, location close view, new note and Evernote logout) performed faster than the elderly users with lower error rate. Similarly the results in the last comparison of the experienced users versus elderly users shown that the experienced users performed all the six tasks faster than the elderly users with lower error rate. Based on such nding the authors can conclude that the experienced users performances were better than the other two groups on both devices. The authors can also conclude that if someone is using the iPhone he/she could easily use the iPad. In the devices comparison results, the performances of the iPad across the novice users (in tasks facebook login, send a message, location close view, new note Evernote logout), the experienced users (in tasks facebook login, send a message, location close view and new note) and the elderly users (st ve tasks) were better than the iPhone with lower error rate. Base on such ndings of the empirical usability testing, the authors conclude that in the controlled environment the performance of the iPad was better than the iPhone. Three participant groups performed each task faster on the iPad than the iPhone apart from in one task. The task named location identication the iPhone and iPad performed the same across the novice user and experienced user but across the elderly user, the iPad performed better than the iPhone. Table 10 presents the results of the satisfaction level of the participants in a control environment for both devices. The satisfaction level acquired through the post test questionnaire during the experiment. The results of the novice users and the experienced users presented that their satisfaction levels were higher for the iPad than the iPhone. The experienced users results shown that their satisfaction levels were same for the iPhone as well as for the iPad. However, with the keypads performances they looked more satisfied on the iPad than the iPhone. / Near Chungi number 1 Chitterpari Mirpur Azad Kashmir Pakistan.

The main objective of this Thesis is to explain the importance of a Brand as a part of the Marketing Strategy on a growing Smart Phones market. Theoretical part analyzes four basic Marketing Strategies and their effect on a Brand Perception. The rest of the theoretical part is focused on Customer-based Brand Equity concept and brand building itself. Analytic part introduces current Smart Phone Market and analyzes marketing strategies of leading manufacturers on the Czech market. Based on the Survey and Depth Interviews, the author reveals the importance of Smart Phone Brand for Millennials, who are defined as young consumers born from 1984 to 1996. Based on the research, author recommends the marketing strategy which should help manufactures to build a strong Brand and gain Millennials loyalty.

Wireless Application Development has become a major area of research in recent times. With the increasing availability of wireless technologies such as cellular, Bluetooth, Infrared etc. it has become essential to develop applications that suit the various types of hardware that support such wireless technologies. The goal of this thesis is to explore the motivations behind application development methodologies and the tools associated with it, for small mobile devices that employ cellular technologies. Due to extremely high demand of cell phones among people who have over the years become extra mobile, there has been a trend of decreasing costs for users for the last several years. As more people start using these devices every day the demand for support of various applications and services are on the rise. This thesis will explore the leading application development tools and technologies for small mobile devices WAP (Wireless Application Protocol), J2ME (Java 2 Platform, Micro Edition) and some others. This thesis will also take a brief look into cellular network technology termed 3G, in terms of its usefulness for applications developed using the aforementioned technologies. The thesis includes the development of a J2ME application using a wireless device emulator.