Integrated Personal Mobility Architecture (IPMoA) is a personal mobility framework that supports personal mobility in both the areas of personal communications and personalising operational environments [11]. In this paper, we describe in detail one aspect of IPMoA that is unique, namely the use of mobile agents to assist users in personal communications. In particular, we describe the function...

Park availability and land use diversity (LUD) are independent environmental correlates of physical activity (PA). This paper investigated whether parks were more likely to be used for PA if surrounded by greater LUD, as well as the interaction of LUD with the number of facilities in the park for predicting use of the park for PA. Facilities in 32 parks from 4 neighborhoods were audited and LUD...

Although Japan has been a signatory to the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control since 2004, progress in translating the recommendations into national policy has been limited. Globally, outdoor smoking bans cover outdoor dining areas, beaches, public parks, schools, etc. In Japan, most of existing outdoor smoking bans allow designated smoking areas (DSAs) in the no-smoking zones, thus limitin...

The Chinese banking sector has gone through a consistent process of the reform which includes liberalization of the business to foreign banks, privatization and listing bank shares, allowing diversifications into intermediary business beyond the traditional deposit and loan activities. In the mean time, the changing structures of the banking sector and the favourable economic condition in the r...

The operating environment for banking in Austria changed substantially during 1990-1997. The changes during the period can be seen as a gradual adjustment towards adherence to European banking standards, which became a legal requirement on Austria’s entry, in 1995, into the European Union. In this paper, we investigate the relative performance of Austrian banks during this period and thereby te...

User activity is the most complex part of the context awareness mechanism in an Intelligent Environment. Unfortunately, the computer environment changes overtime. The problem confronting the user is how to enable transparent distribution computing to continue operation across a changing circumstance in a seamless manner and how the environment recognises user activity. This paper describes an a...

In this paper we present the interpretation and generation processes of a spoken dialogue interface for intelligent environments. The interface is automatically created for each specific environment and the interpretation and generation vary depending on the environment and its context. These processes rely on a dialogue tree structure. Several modules process the tree structure and the environ...

STUDY OBJECTIVES Few studies have analysed the rates and correlates of physical activity in economically and geographically diverse populations. Objectives were to examine: (1) urban-rural differences in physical activity by several demographic, geographical, environmental, and psychosocial variables, (2) patterns in environmental and policy factors across urban-rural setting and socioeconomic ...