The integrated development of children with hearing impairment – is sore subject. Even though the teachers take the hearing-impaired children well-wishing, try to help them to integrate with the healthy ones, but only being in the comprehensive school does not solve the problems. Both hearing-impaired and healthy ones have to master the same educational programs for getting the secondary school certificate, but because of incomplete language development the hearing-impaired children can not acquire the verbal material by the same ways as the healthy children. The analysis of pedagogues’ opinions about the possibilities of children with hearing impairment to develop showed that only the children, who have slight or average hearing impairment, can learn on the principle of total integration. The survey also showed that the level of spoken and written language of children, who are developed integrally, is lower than those, who are developed in the centers of the deaf and hard of hearing people. This difference is conditioned not by the lack of methodical knowledge of subject teaching, but by the incomplete knowledge about the development the language of hearing-impaired children. The teachers would like to have more consultations about the methods of developing children with hearing impairment, as well as the ways of their estimating and developing their abilities of communication. Besides, the pedagogues request not occasional, but systematical consultations constantly given at... [to full text]

Au cours des 10 dernières années, les téléphones mobiles ont considérablement évolué~: l'apparition des écrans tactiles et la disparition des claviers physiques ont changé la façon dont nous interagissons au quotidien avec ces dispositifs. Pourtant, la saisie de texte demeure toujours une tâche importante avec des activités telles que la prise de notes, l'envoi de messages textuels ou la communication sur les réseaux sociaux. Cependant, bien que l'utilisation du tactile ait de grands avantages en termes de dynamicité de l'interface et de personnalisation, de tels dispositifs ne sont pas forcément accessibles pour tous. En effet, pour 39 millions de personnes dans le monde touchés par la cécité, les difficultés sont nombreuses avec ces dispositifs du fait que toutes les interactions se fassent au moyen de l'écran dépourvu de tout repère tactile : les interactions avec le dispositif sont possibles, mais elles sont souvent laborieuses et répétitives, ce qui implique alors une charge cognitive trop importante et des problèmes de précision, de mémorisation, et de fatigue. Dans ce travail de doctorat, nous nous sommes intéressés à l'accessibilité de la saisie de texte dans le contexte de la déficience visuelle. Dans un premier temps, nous avons étudié les différentes solutions actuellement existantes pour les utilisateurs en situation de déficience. La problématique principale de ces recherches était d'améliorer la saisie de texte pour permettre aux utilisateurs d'avoir de meilleures performances de saisie. Pour cela, nous avons conçu une solution déductive, appelée DUCK. Cette solution permet aux déficients visuels, de saisir rapidement du texte sans se soucier de la précision de leurs frappes. Un système à base de connaissances linguistiques permet à chaque fin de mot de déduire le mot que l'utilisateur a voulu saisir. Ce dispositif a ensuite été testé auprès d'un échantillon de déficients visuels afin de vérifier l'efficacité de notre solution. La suite des travaux s'est ensuite focalisée sur deux principales optimisations. La première concerne les listes de mots. Nous avons étudié et comparé différentes interactions pour permettre à l'utilisateur de naviguer et choisir des mots de façon efficace et simple lorsqu'il est face à une liste de mots proposée par un système de prédiction ou de déduction. La seconde se focalise sur la saisie des mots couramment utilisés. Nous avons également mené une étude comparative entre différentes propositions d'interaction permettant de saisir un mot court de façon efficace sans avoir recours au système de déduction, trop coûteux en temps pour ce type de mots. Enfin, nous terminons ce projet de doctorat par une étude longitudinale qui présente le clavier DUCK avec l'intégration de ces optimisations. Ce nouveau système a été utilisé par des déficients visuels sur une période de deux semaines afin d'étudier l'efficacité du clavier une fois ce dernier pris en main sur le long terme. / Over the past 10 years, mobile phones have evolved considerably : the advent of touch screens and the disappearance of physical keyboards have changed the way we interact with these devices in our daily lives. However, text input is still an important task though activities such as taking notes, sending text messages or communicating on social networks. However, while using touch screen has great advantages in terms of dynamical interfaces and customization, such devices are not necessarily accessible to all. Indeed, for 39 million people worldwide affected by blindness, there are many difficulties related to the devices that will make such interactions difficult due to the lack of tactile reference: interactions with the device are possible but they are often laborious and repetitive, which then implies a lot of cognitive load, accuracy, memory and fatigue related problems. In this PhD thesis, we focused on the accessibility of text input interactions in the context of visual impairment. First, we studied the currently existing solutions designed for impaired users. The main issue of this research was to improve text input so that users have a better typing experience. As such, we designed a deductive solution called DUCK. This solution allows visually impaired to quickly enter text without worrying about how accurate their input is. A basic language-based modelling system allows at the each end of a word what the user wanted to type. This device was then tested with a sample of visually impaired people to assess the effectiveness of our solution. Further work was subsequently focused on two main optimizations. The first work focused on word lists. We studied and compared different interactions to allow the user to navigate and choose words effectively and easily when faced with a list of words proposed by a predictive or deductive system. The second optimization focuses on entering commonly used words. We also conducted a comparative study of different interactions models to type a short word efficiently without using the deduction system, which would be too time consuming for such words. Finally, we finish this PhD project by a longitudinal study that shows the DUCK keyboard with the integration of these optimizations. This new system has been used by visually impaired over a period of two weeks to study the effectiveness of the keyboard over the long term.

No description available.

Human gait is a complex process that involves the coordination of the central nervous and muscular systems. A disruption to the either system results in the impairment of a person’s ability to walk. Impairments can be caused by neurological disorders such as stroke and physical conditions like amputation. There is not a standardized method to quantitatively assess the gait asymmetry of affected subjects. The purpose of this research is to understand the fundamental aspects of asymmetrical effects on the human body and improve rehabilitation techniques and devices. This research takes an interdisciplinary approach to address the limitations with current rehabilitation methodologies. The goal of my Doctoral research is to understand the fundamental effects of asymmetry caused by physical and neurological impairments. The methods discussed in this document help in developing better solutions to rehabilitate impaired individuals’ gait. I studied four major hypothesis in regards to gait asymmetry. The first hypothesis is the potential of asymmetric systems to have symmetric output. The second hypothesis is that a method that incorporates a wider range of gait parameter asymmetries can be used as a measure for gait rehabilitation. The third hypothesis is that individuals can visually identify subtle gait asymmetries. Final hypothesis is to establish the relationship between gait quality and function. Current approaches to rehabilitate impaired gait typically focus on achieving the same symmetric gait as an able-body person. This cannot work because an impaired person is inherently asymmetric and forcing them to walk symmetrically causes them to adopt patterns that are not beneficial long term. Instead, it is more prudent to embrace the asymmetry of the condition and work to minimize in specific gait parameters that may cause more harm over the long run. Combined gait asymmetry metric (CGAM) provides the necessary means to study the effect of the gait parameters and it is weighted to balance each parameter’s effect equally by normalizing the data. CGAM provides the necessary means to study the effect of the gait parameters and is weighted towards parameters that are more asymmetric. The metric is also designed to combine spatial, temporal, kinematic, and kinetic gait parameter asymmetries. It can also combine subsets of the different gait parameters to provide a more thorough analysis. CGAM will help define quantitative thresholds for achievable balanced overall gait asymmetry. The studies in this dissertation conducted on able-body and impaired subjects provides better understanding of some fundamental aspects of asymmetry in human gait. Able body subjects test devices that aim to make an individual’s gait more asymmetric. These perturbations include a prosthetic and stroke simulator, addition of distal mass, and leg length alterations. Six able-body subjects and one amputee participated in the experiment that studied the effect of asymmetric knee height. The results which consisted of analyses of individual gait parameters and CGAM scores revealed that there is evidence of overall reduction of asymmetry in gait for both able-body subject on prosthetic simulators and transfemoral amputee. The transfemoral amputee also walked with a combination of distal mass with lowered knee height. Although this configuration showed better symmetry, the configuration is detrimental in terms of energy costs. Analyzing the data of gait with the stroke simulator showed that the subject’s gait does undergo alterations in terms of overall gait asymmetry. The distal mass and leg length alteration study has revealed some significant findings that are also reflected in the prosthetic study with distal mass. A leg length discrepancy (LLD) or the change of limb mass can result in asymmetric gait patterns. Although adding mass and LLD have been studied separately, this research studies how gait patterns change as a result of asymmetrically altering both leg length and mass at a leg’s distal end. Spatio-temporal and kinetic gait measures are used to study the combined asymmetric effects of placing LLD and mass on the opposite and same side. There were statistically significant differences for the amount of mass and leg length added for all five parameters. When LLD is added to longer leg, the temporal and kinetic gait parameters of the shorter limb and the altered limb’s spatial parameter become more asymmetric. Contrary to the hypothesis, there was no significant interaction between the amount of mass and leg length added. There were cases in all perturbations where a combination of mass and LLD make a gait parameter more symmetric than a single effect. These cases exhibit the potential for configurations with lower overall asymmetries even though each parameter has a slight asymmetry as opposed to driving one parameter to symmetry and other parameters to a larger asymmetry. CGAM analysis of the results revealed that the addition of distal mass contributes more towards overall asymmetry than LLD. Analyzing 11 gait parameters for LLD and mass on the same side showed that the overall asymmetry decreased for the combination of small LLD and mass. This is consistent with the findings from analyzing five individual gait parameters. Impaired subjects include individuals with stroke and amputees. The clinical trials for individuals with stroke involve training with the Gait Enhancing Mobile Shoe (GEMS) that pro- vides an asymmetric effect on the subject’s step length and time. Training with the GEMS showed improvement in clinical measures such as timed up and go (TUG), six minute walk test (6MWT), and gait velocity. The subjects also showed lower step length symmetry as intended by the GEMS. The ground reaction force asymmetries became more asymmetric as the spatial and temporal parameters became more symmetric. This phenomenon shows evidence that when an individual with stroke is corrected, for spatial and temporal symmetry is at the expense of kinetic symmetry. The CGAM scores also reflected similar trends to that of spatial and temporal symmetry and the r2 correlation with the gait parameters proved that double limb support asymmetry has no correlation with CGAM while ground reaction force asymmetry has a weak correlation. Step length, step, and swing time showed high correlation to CGAM. I also found the r2 correlation between the clinical measures and the CGAM scores. The CGAM scores were moderately correlated to 6MWT and gait velocity but had a weak correlation with TUG. CGAM has positive correlation with TUG and has negative correlation with 6MWT and gait velocity. This gives some validation to CGAM as a potential metric that can be used to evaluate gait patterns based on their asymmetries. Transfemoral amputees were tested for their gait with varied prosthetic knee heights to study the asymmetrical effects and trained split-belt treadmill. Asymmetric knee heights showed improvement in multiple gait parameters such as step length, vertical, propulsive, and braking force asymmetry. It also decreased hip and ankle angle asymmetries. However, these improvements did lead other parameters to become more asymmetric. The CGAM scores reflect this and they show overall improvement. Although the lowest knee height showed improvement, the input from the amputee suggested that the quality of gait decreased with the lowest knee height. These exploratory results did show that a slightly lower knee height may not affect the quality of gait but may provide better overall symmetry. Another exploratory study with split-belt treadmill training, similar to the protocol followed for individuals with stroke, showed definitive improvement in double limb support, swing time, step length and time symmetry. This was also reflected in the improvements seem post training in the CGAM scores as well. I found the r2 correlation of the CGAM and the gait parameters including gait velocity. Step length and swing time show consistent correlation for individual subjects and all the data combined to CGAM. Gait velocity shows a moderate correlation to CGAM for one subject and a high correlation to the other one. However, the combined data of gait velocities does not have any correlation with CGAM. These results show that CGAM can successfully represent the overall gait parameter asymmetry. The trends seen in the gait parameters is closely reflected in the CGAM scores. This research combines the study of asymmetry with people’s perception of human gait asymmetry, which will help in estimating the thresholds for perceivable asymmetrical changes to gait. Sixteen videos were generated using motion capture data and Unity game engine. The videos were chosen to represent the largest variation of gait asymmetries. Some videos were also chosen based on CGAM values that were similar but had large variation in underlying gait parameters. The dataset consisted of results of perturbation experiments on able-body subjects and asymmetric knee height prosthesis on transfemoral amputee. These videos were rated on a seven point Likert scale by subjects from 7 being normal to 1 being abnormal. Thirty one subjects took part in the experiment, out of which only 22 subject’s data was used because they rated at least 3 videos. The results show that the subjects were able to differentiate asymmetric gait with perturbations to able-body gait without perturbation at a self-selected speed. r2 correlation analysis showed that hip angle had mild correlation to the Likert scale rating of the 16 different gait patterns. Multivariate linear regression analysis with a linear model showed significant contribution of ankle and hip angles, vertical, propulsive, and braking forces. It is interesting that the majority of parameters that showed significance are not perceivable visually. Ankle and hip angles are visually perceivable and this significance revealed that subjects seemed to perceive asymmetric ankle and hip angles as abnormal. However, the subjects do not perceive asymmetric knee angles as completely abnormal with evidence of no significance, no correlation, and neutral Likert rating for gait patterns that perturbed knee angles.

<p>Datum: 2006-10-10</p><p>Nivå/utbildning: Kandidat uppsats</p><p>Författare: Diana Joseph och Ander Sandström</p><p>Handledare: Gösta Söderlund</p><p>Titel: IAS/IFRS?</p><p>Problem: Hur påverkas företag och dess intressenter av IAS/IFRS</p><p>implementeringen och hur har deras föreberedelser fungerat?</p><p>Syfte: Att få en djupare inblick i hur företagsintressenterna i form av revisorerna och analytiker har förberett sig inför IAS/IFRS införandet.</p><p>Metod: En kvalitativ studie</p><p>Resultat/slutsatser: Att respondenterna till stor utsträckning varit väl förberedda inför den nya standarderna och att de överlag är positivt inställda till en ökad jämförbarhet och harmonisering av redovisningsreglerna. Det finns dock vissa värderingsproblem av tillgångar som uppstår och där inte alla respondenter har samma åsikter om hur de kan lösas.</p><p>Sökord: IAS/IFRS, Goodwill, redovisning, koncernredovisning, de nya</p><p>standarderna, impairment test, intangible assets</p><p>Omfång, sidor: 50</p><p>Antal ref/källor: 26</p>

Datum: 2006-10-10 Nivå/utbildning: Kandidat uppsats Författare: Diana Joseph och Ander Sandström Handledare: Gösta Söderlund Titel: IAS/IFRS? Problem: Hur påverkas företag och dess intressenter av IAS/IFRS implementeringen och hur har deras föreberedelser fungerat? Syfte: Att få en djupare inblick i hur företagsintressenterna i form av revisorerna och analytiker har förberett sig inför IAS/IFRS införandet. Metod: En kvalitativ studie Resultat/slutsatser: Att respondenterna till stor utsträckning varit väl förberedda inför den nya standarderna och att de överlag är positivt inställda till en ökad jämförbarhet och harmonisering av redovisningsreglerna. Det finns dock vissa värderingsproblem av tillgångar som uppstår och där inte alla respondenter har samma åsikter om hur de kan lösas. Sökord: IAS/IFRS, Goodwill, redovisning, koncernredovisning, de nya standarderna, impairment test, intangible assets Omfång, sidor: 50 Antal ref/källor: 26

The aim of this study is to answer the questions: Are abilities to use modern information technologies gives new possibilities for children who have visual disability? Can use of this technologies help to impel integration and inclusion process and decrease social isolation? 82 pupils were involved to the research and all they are visually impacted. After that research we can do such main conclusions: 1. Modern information technologies help to communicate with friends and family, who are far away from them and get more information. In this way technologies decrease social isolation. 2. Learning in special school separates children from their family and community. About half of children wish to learn in general school and live at home. 3. Modern information technologies help to find new friends and choose new and more various professions.

Yes / Blood clotting was reported in April 2020 [1] as another serious symptom due to COVID-19, but also came other reports such as young adults dying due to strokes and heart attacks [2]. The currently known head-to-toe symptoms of COVID-19, seem to indicate vascular as well as respiratory diseases and that 40% of related death are due to cardiovascular complications [2]. In a recently published journal paper in Lancet [3], the authors found that SARS-CoV-2 virus can infect the endothelial cells that line the inside of blood vessels noting that endothelial cells protect the cardiovascular system and release proteins that influence everything from blood clotting to the immune response. In the same paper, the authors showed damage to endothelial cells in the lungs, heart, kidneys, liver, and intestines in patients with Covid-19. Therefore, the emerging belief is that the novel coronavirus is a respiratory illness to begin with, but as it spreads further into blood vessels it becomes a vascular illness that is capable of killing patients via vascular system.

Plusieurs auteurs se sont intéressés au développement des conduites explicatives et justificatives (CEJ) chez des enfants typiques. La littérature reporte aussi de plus en plus d’études qui s’intéressent aux compétences pragmatiques et interactionnelles des enfants qui présentent un trouble du développement du langage (TDL) en montrant que ces enfants présentent des spécificités par rapport aux enfants typiques. Dans ce travail, nous avons combiné ces deux pistes de réflexion en investiguant les CEJ produites par des enfants avec TDL (5-7 ans) et des enfants typiques (4-7 ans), ainsi que par leurs mères, dans des interactions mères-enfants italophones et francophones dans deux activités différentes : unjeu symbolique et une lecture conjointe d’un livre en images. Nos résultats montrent que les deux langues présentent des patrons similaires. Cependant, des différences ponctuelles liées à la langue ont pu être mises en évidence. Les mères prennent en charge les activités proposées et l’activité paraît influencer le fonctionnement des interactions et la production des CEJ. Les enfants avec TDL présentent de CEJ moins élevés que leurs pairs typiques dans l’activité de jeu symbolique et ils semblent avoir davantage besoin que ces derniers du support de leur mère pour en produire dans l’activité de lecture conjointe (notamment dans le corpus francophone). Les mères des enfants typiques et des enfants avec TDL présentent des comportements globalement similaires en amont mais elles semblent s’adapter aux besoins de leurs enfants en aval. Compte tenu de l’importance sociale et éducative de ces conduites, nos résultats pourraient avoir des implications cliniques / Several authors have studied the development of explanations and justifications(E/J) in typical developing (TD) children. Similarly, it is possible to find in the literature studiesthat analyze pragmatic and interactional skills of children with specific language impairment(SLI). These studies show that children with SLI present specific behaviour when compared toTD children. In this thesis, we merge these two strands of research by investigating E/Jproduced by children with SLI (aged 5-7) and TD children (aged 4-7), and by their mothers. Todo so, we analyzed mother-child interactions (in Italian and French) during two differentactivities: symbolic play and joint wordless picture-book reading. Similar patterns wereobserved in both languages. Nevertheless, specific differences related to the typology of thelanguage were highlighted. Our results show that the management of the activity is globallyasymmetric, but important interindividual differences were observed. Moreover, activities playa central role in shaping the structure of interactions and E/J. Furthermore, children with SLIshow lower rates of E/J than their typical peers in the symbolic play and seem to need thesupport of their mothers more than TD children in the joint reading activity (particularly in theFrench corpus). Finally, the mothers of TD children and children with SLI show somesimilarities in the way they solicit E/J, but at the same time they fine tune their reactions to E/Jproduced by children according to the children’s needs. Given the social and educationalimportance of explanations and justifications, our results may have some clinical implications.

My thesis focuses on the problem on person with hearing impaiment in physical training and sport. My research is based on own experience as I am a hearing impaired pesrosn myself. After having collected the all the necesery data, the theorectical part was dividend into six charter. The first chapter focuses on hearing itself hearing impairment and hearing dysfunctions. The second chapter focuses on the issue of hearing aids. The third chapter is devoted to education and communication of people with hearing impairment. In the fourth and fifth chapter, sports opportunites and limitations of aurally weakened persons are analyzed. Last chapter is devoted to motor skills. The balance between healty persons and those with hearing impariment is described in the practical part of the thesis. A hypothesis is suggqsted and research results will either support or oppose it. The essential part odt the part the thesis consists in the results of a questionnaire and physical test applied and also graph processing. The thesis work includes additional affachments which are essential for further understanding. Keywords weakened persons, hearing impared, communication, locomotive abilities, coordination and balance skills, sport, hearing aids, cochlear implant