In this paper, we describe Coach Mike, a virtual staff member at the Boston Museum of Science that seeks to help visitors at Robot Park, an interactive exhibit for computer programming. By tracking visitor interactions and through the use of animation, gestures, and synthesized speech, Coach Mike provides several forms of support that seek to improve the experiences of museum visitors. These in...

Healthcare spending varies widely across markets, and previous empirical studies find little evidence that higher spending translates into better health outcomes. The main innovation in this paper exploits this cross-sectional variation in hospital spending in a new way by considering patients who are exposed to healthcare systems not designed for them: patients far from home when a health emer...

this article analyses the push and pull factors that bring visitors to the iranian national parks. the study used a structured questionnaire to collect data on these factors and the socio-demographic profile of the visitors. survey conducted in boujagh national park, an area of 3177 hectares located in the north of the iran, produced 400 questionnaires. the factor analysis identified four push ...

The National Museum of Natural Science (NMNS) was established in 1986. By 1999, the NMNS exceeded the 3 million visitors mark, surpassing the National Palace Museum to become Taiwan’s largest museum, and established itself as one of the top five museums in the world. From 1999 to 2008, the NMNS received more than 3 million visitors, attaining the status of being the single most important leisur...

public authorities should assess what recreational services can be offered citizens visitingaprotected natural area. therefore, the characterisation of visitors as well as the economic valuation of apark’srecreational use would allow the proposal of management strategies to satisfy visitors. for this purpose,410 surveys were taken of visitors to the calaresdelmundoandsimanatural park (spain). t...

visitor management is considered important for the sustainable development of protected areas as the presence of visitors may cause negative impacts on wildlife and vegetation. within this framework, visitor impacts and perceptions are considered critical for decision-making and planning of future management regimes. this paper resumes opinions of visitors of the valley of butterflies in rhodes...

As the World Wide Web matures, it makes leaps forward in both size and complexity. Navigating through a large Web site can become a frustrating exercise. Many sites employ Site Maps to help visitors understand the overall structure of the site. However, static Site Maps show all visitors large amounts of irrelevant content. It is very easy for visitors to get lost in hyperspace. Therefore we pr...

The article describes how service access barriers (language, trust) were addressed at different levels (organization, service provider, community) by involving Family Home Visitors to support Nurse Practitioners in providing preand postnatal services to linguistic minority women in Ontario. The investigators undertook a secondary analysis of 18 semi-structured interviews with health unit inform...

Visiting museums and exhibitions represented in multi-user 3D environments can be an efficient way of learning about the exhibits in an interactive manner and socialising with other visitors. The rich educational information presented in the virtual environment and the presence of remote users could also be beneficial for the visitors of the physical exhibition space. In this paper we present t...

INTRODUCTION Research within the European Union has shown international visitors to have a higher injury mortality than residents. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of injury-related death among overseas visitors and evidence suggests overseas visitors are at a greater risk of being involved in road traffic accidents than the resident population. Little information looks specifically at p...