A survey of quality measures for gray-scale image compression

Although a variety of techniques are available today for gray-scale image compression, a complete evaluation of these techniques cannot be made as there is no single reliable objective criterion for measuring the error in compressed images. The traditional subjective criteria are burdensome, and usually inaccurate or inconsistent. On the other hand, being the most common objective criterion, the mean square error (MSE) does not have a good correlation with the viewer's response. It is now understood that in order to have a reliable quality measure, a representative model of the complex human visual system is required. In this paper, we survey and give a classification of the criteria for the evaluation of monochrome image quality

Influence of national culture on website design Republic of Turkey vs the United Kingdom

In this paper the influence of cultural dimensions on website design and their design features were examined through a comparative study of Turkey and the United Kingdom. Countries were chosen due to having opposite cultural dimensions scores when compare to each other. The purpose of the study was to learn more about the design features of websites and measure the effect of cultural dimensions on them. A questionnaire (composed of three criteria each for UAI, PDI, MAS and IDV dimensions of Geert Hofstede’s cultural model) was designed to content analysis of nineteen websites (highly ranked e-commerce and non e-commerce ones) from each country and applied by five experts. The statistical significance of the results was tested by Welch t-test. Findings showed that there is significant difference in power distance and masculinity features of the websites which are in accordance with the dimension scores of the countries. On the other hand, same significance was not seen in uncertainty and collectivism features in design due to the United Kingdom reflecting the same design features as Turkey.Neste trabalho, a influência das dimensões culturais sobre o design do site e as suas características foram examinadas através de um estudo comparativo da Turquia e Reino Unido. Estes países foram escolhidos devido a estarem em polos opostos nas pontuações das dimensões culturais. O objetivo do estudo foi saber mais sobre as características de design desses sites e medir o efeito das dimensões culturais sobre eles. Um questionário (composto de três critérios para a UAI, PDI, MAS e IDV, dimensões de Geert Hofstede) foi projetado para codificar as características de design de sites (classificados em e-commerce e em não e-commerce) de cada país e aplicado por cinco especialistas. A utilização do teste t de Welch permitiu concluir que há uma diferença significativa nas características relativas a distância de poder e relativas a masculinidade dos sites que estão em concordância com os scores das dimensões dos dois países. Por outro lado, as diferenças não se mostraram significativas relativamente ao controle de incerteza e individualismo no design

Indigenous youth peer-led health promotion in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States: A systematic review of the approaches, study designs, and effectiveness

Background: Youth peer-led interventions have become a popular way of sharing health information with young people and appear well suited to Indigenous community contexts. However, no systematic reviews focusing on Indigenous youth have been published. We conducted a systematic review to understand the range and characteristics of Indigenous youth-led health promotion projects implemented and their effectiveness. Methods: A systematic search of Medline, Embase, and ProQuest Social Sciences databases was conducted, supplemented by gray literature searches. Included studies focused on interventions where young Indigenous people delivered health information to age-matched peers. Results: Twenty-four studies were identified for inclusion, based on 20 interventions (9 Australian, 4 Canadian, and 7 from the United States of America). Only one intervention was evaluated using a randomized controlled study design. The majority of evaluations took the form of pre–post studies. Methodological limitations were identified in a majority of studies. Study outcomes included improved knowledge, attitude, and behaviors. Conclusion: Currently, there is limited high quality evidence for the effectiveness of peer-led health interventions with Indigenous young people, and the literature is dominated by Australian-based sexual health interventions. More systematic research investigating the effectiveness of peer-led inventions is required, specifically with Indigenous populations. To improve health outcomes for Indigenous youth, greater knowledge of the mechanisms and context under which peer-delivered health promotion is effective in comparison to other methods of health promotion is needed

Developing patient education to enhance recovery after colorectal surgery through action research: a qualitative study

Objectives: To understand the role of preoperative education for patients undergoing colorectal surgery by involving patients, carers and staff in: (1) identifying its perceived value and deficits for enhanced recovery; (2) modifying current education practices to address educational deficits; and (3) evaluating these changes for preparing patients to enhance their recovery. Design: Qualitative study of three cycles of action research using mixed methods within a 24-month naturalistic enquiry to identify, implement and evaluate changes through observations, questionnaires, semistructured longitudinal interviews, focus groups and documentation review. Setting: A UK 1200-bed National Health Service (NHS) hospital providing colorectal surgery in a small city in a rural county. Participants: Ninety-sevenpatients having colorectal surgery, 19 carers and 22 clinical staff. Rresults: Themes identified were: (1) knowledge and engagement; (2) situated understanding and confidence building; and (3) partnership and proactive involvement in enhancing recovery. All patients articulated needs to prepare mentally and physically to plan for colorectal surgery and rehabilitation. Patients and carers wanted to counter uncertainty about medical procedures: likely bodily changes, recovery timescales and future. They therefore sought as much personalised, relevant information as possible about their disease, planned surgery and recovery. Staff implemented preoperative education to more specifically inform and respond multimodally to individual needs. Conclusions: Patients wanted to be proactively involved in managing their recovery to re-engage with their everyday lives. Preoperative education supported this through developing patients' situated understanding of hospital and bodily processes related to colorectal surgery. Situated understanding was achieved through educational product to give knowledge and processes promoting engagement. Multimodal, comprehensive and timely preoperative education on the whole patient pathway facilitates active engagement. Situated understanding increased patients' confidence to work in partnership with healthcare professionals and proactively self-manage recovery

The role of selectins in the first trimester pregnancy loss

Objective: There are no well-defined findings about reasons for first trimester abortion in some pregnancy cases. Selectins are cell adhesion proteins which are important for blastocyst implantation in the decidua. The goal of the study was to investigate the role of selectins in first trimester pregnancy loss by immunohistochemistry. Study design: Decidual and placental tissue samples have been obtained from the women with unwanted pregnancy as the control group (n=40) and missed abortion (n=40) as the study group. Immunohistochemistry technique has been used to compare P, L and E-selectin expression of the fibroblast and the decidual cells in uterine decidual stroma; and fibroblasts and mesenchymal cells in placental villous stroma. Immunostaining for P,L,E-Selectin has been evaluated semiquantitatively by HSCORE analysis. Results: Decidual cells, for E and L-selectin showed stronger staining in the study group than controls, and the difference was statistically significant (p = 0.001, p = 0.001). P-selectin showed stronger staining in the control group, but the difference was not as significant as the E and L-selectins (p=0.04). In the placenta, cytotrophoblasts and syncytiotrophoblasts showed stronger staining for P,E,L-selectins for the control group (

Influence of affective image content on subjective quality assessment

Image quality assessment (IQA) enables distortions introduced into an image (e.g., through lossy compression or broadcast) to be measured and evaluated for severity. It is unclear to what degree affective image content may influence this process. In this study, participants (n=25) were found to be unable to disentangle affective image content from objective image quality in a standard IQA procedure (single stimulus numerical categorical scale). We propose that this issue is worthy of consideration, particularly in single stimulus IQA techniques, in which a small number of handpicked images, not necessarily representative of the gamut of affect seen in true broadcasting, and unrated for affective content, serve as stimuli