Specifying the boundary conditions of the multimedia effect: The influence of content and its distribution between text and pictures.

It was investigated whether the beneficial effect of picture presentation might be influenced by the content conveyed through text and pictures and the way information is distributed between them. Ninety-nine students learnt in five between-subjects learning conditions (i.e., text with spatial contents plus pictures, text with visual contents plus pictures, only text with spatial contents, only text with visual contents, only picture) about a tourist centre and a holiday farm. Results showed that pictures (i.e., maps) were beneficial for learning if spatial knowledge had to be acquired, but did not support learning when non-spatial, visual knowledge had to be acquired. Furthermore, a high overlap of spatial information in text and picture was helpful, which can be explained by the assumption that learning is a text-guided process. On the other hand, regarding non-spatial visual information, a high text-picture overlap did not influence learning, probably because text alone was sufficient for acquiring visual knowledge. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Participatory mapping in low-resource settings: Three novel methods used to engage Kenyan youth and other community members in community-based HIV prevention research.

Understanding the link between health and place can strengthen the design of health interventions, particularly in the context of HIV prevention. Individuals who might one day participate in such interventions - including youth - may further improve the design if engaged in a meaningful way in the formative research process. Increasingly, participatory mapping methods are being used to achieve both aims. We describe the development of three innovative mapping methods for engaging youth in formative community-based research: 'dot map' focus groups, geocaching games, and satellite imagery-assisted daily activity logs. We demonstrate that these methods are feasible and acceptable in a low-resource, rural African setting. The discussion outlines the merits of each method and considers possible limitations.

How do you give information?

BEING A PATIENT in the NHS is like being a stranger in a foreign country. It has its own food, language and customs, clans and chiefs. It can be frightening, confusing and alienating for adults, let alone children visiting a hospital or GP's surgery.

GIS as a community engagement tool: developing a plan to reduce infant mortality risk factors.

This article describes how a community coalition focusing on maternal and child health engages community participation through the use of geographic information systems (GIS) mapping, developing strategies that culminate in the implementation of a service delivery plan to improve birth outcomes. Vital statistics data from 2007 to 2009 was analyzed by zip code in Pinellas County Florida to produce choropleth thematic maps using ArcGIS for 3 year rolling average infant deaths and single year percentages for prematurity. The maps were presented at the organization's annual coalition meeting to discuss risk areas, changes over time in the selected indicators and solicit community feedback on how to best target issues addressing infant mortality and prematurity. The maps identified new zip codes of concern for prematurity in addition to known high risk zip codes for both infant mortality and prematurity. The community identified changes in demographic composition and changes in housing patterns, such as new mobile home areas, in the high risk areas. In response, the community assisted the Coalition in developing a holistic plan addressing risk factors affecting birth outcomes by expanding current services, hiring a nutritionist, and contracting a health navigator. When compared to tables and charts, a visual depiction of a neighborhood by recognizable zip codes is a useful tool to help community decision makers better visualize public health concerns and interpret trends based on local knowledge. Public health professionals should use this community knowledge to interpret research results and implement strategies to improve birth outcomes.

Cognitive styles and mental rotation ability in map learning.

In inspecting, learning and reproducing a map, a wide range of abilities is potentially involved. This study examined the role of mental rotation (MR) and verbal ability, together with that of cognitive styles in map learning. As regards cognitive styles, the traditional distinction between verbalizers and visualizers has been taken into account, together with a more recent distinction between two styles of visualization: spatial and object. One hundred and seven participants filled in two questionnaires on cognitive styles: the Verbalizer-Visualizer Questionnaire (Richardson in J Ment Imag 1:109-125, 1977) and the Object-Spatial Imagery Questionnaire (Blajenkova et al. in Appl Cogn Psych 20:239-263, 2006), performed MR and verbal tests, learned two maps, and were then tested for their recall. It was found that MR ability and cognitive styles played a role in predicting map learning, with some distinctions within cognitive styles: verbal style favoured learning of one of the two maps (the one rich in verbal labels), which in turn was disadvantaged by the adoption of spatial style. Conversely, spatial style predicted learning of the other map, rich in visual features. The discussion focuses on implications for cognitive psychology and everyday cognition.

Development of risk maps to minimize uranium exposures in the Navajo Churchrock mining district.

BACKGROUND: Decades of improper disposal of uranium-mining wastes on the Navajo Nation has resulted in adverse human and ecological health impacts as well as socio-cultural problems. As the Navajo people become increasingly aware of the contamination problems, there is a need to develop a risk-communication strategy to properly inform tribal members of the extent and severity of the health risks. To be most effective, this strategy needs to blend accepted risk-communication techniques with Navajo perspectives such that the strategy can be used at the community level to inform culturally- and toxicologically-relevant decisions about land and water use as well as mine-waste remediation. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to develop GIS-based thematic maps as communication tools to clearly identify high risk exposure areas and offer alternatives to minimize public and ecological health impacts. METHODS: Thematic maps were produced that incorporated data derived from environmental sampling and public health surveys. The maps show the location and quality of unregulated water resources and identify regulated water sources that could be used as alternatives. In addition, the maps show the location of contaminated soil and sediment areas in which disturbance of surface deposits should be avoided. Preliminary feedback was collected from an informal Navajo working group to assess the clarity and efficacy of this proposed communication method. RESULTS: The working group found the maps to be both clear and effective, and made suggestions for improvements, such as the addition of more map features. The working group predicted that once the maps are presented to the public, water hauling and soil use behaviors will change, and dialogue with chapter officials will be initiated to accelerate further risk reduction efforts. IMPLICATIONS: Because risk communication is complicated by language barriers, lack of infrastructure, and historical mistrust of non-Navajo researchers, mapping provides an easily interpretable medium that can be objectively viewed by community members and decision makers to evaluate activities that affect toxicant exposures.

Visualization of simulated urban spaces: inferring parameterized generation of streets, parcels, and aerial imagery.

Urban simulation models and their visualization are used to help regional planning agencies evaluate alternative transportation investments, land use regulations, and environmental protection policies. Typical urban simulations provide spatially distributed data about number of inhabitants, land prices, traffic, and other variables. In this article, we build on a synergy of urban simulation, urban visualization, and computer graphics to automatically infer an urban layout for any time step of the simulation sequence. In addition to standard visualization tools, our method gathers data of the original street network, parcels, and aerial imagery and uses the available simulation results to infer changes to the original urban layout and produce a new and plausible layout for the simulation results. In contrast with previous work, our approach automatically updates the layout based on changes in the simulation data and thus can scale to a large simulation over many years. The method in this article offers a substantial step forward in building integrated visualization and behavioral simulation systems for use in community visioning, planning, and policy analysis. We demonstrate our method on several real cases using a 200 GB database for a 16,300 km2 area surrounding Seattle.

Mapping cancer for community engagement.

INTRODUCTION: Two research strategies may reduce health disparities: community participation and the use of geographic information systems. When combined with community participation, geographic information systems approaches, such as the creation of disease maps that connect disease rates with community context, can catalyze action to reduce health disparities. However, current approaches to disease mapping often focus on the display of disease rates for political or administrative units. This type of map does not provide enough information on the local rates of cancer to engage community participation in addressing disparities. METHODS: We collaborated with researchers and cancer prevention and control practitioners and used adaptive spatial filtering to create maps that show continuous surface representations of the proportion of all colorectal cancer cases diagnosed in the late stage. We also created maps that show the incidence of colorectal cancer. RESULTS: Our maps show distinct patterns of cancer and its relationship to community context. The maps are available to the public on the Internet and through the activities of Iowa Consortium for Comprehensive Cancer Control partners. CONCLUSION: Community-participatory approaches to research are becoming more common, as are the availability of geocoded data and the use of geographic information systems to map disease. If researchers and practitioners are to engage communities in exploring cancer rates, maps should be made that accurately represent and contextualize cancer in such a way as to be useful to people familiar with the characteristics of their local areas.

Facilitating participatory multilevel decision-making by using interactive mental maps.

Participation of citizens in political, economic or social decisions is increasingly recognized as a precondition to foster sustainable development processes. Since spatial information is often important during planning and decision making, participatory mapping gains in popularity. However, little attention has been paid to the fact that information must be presented in a useful way to reach city planners and policy makers. Above all, the importance of visualisation tools to support collaboration, analytical reasoning, problem solving and decision-making in analysing and planning processes has been underestimated. In this paper, we describe how an interactive mental map tool has been developed in a highly interdisciplinary disaster management project in Chennai, India. We moved from a hand drawn mental maps approach to an interactive mental map tool. This was achieved by merging socio-economic and geospatial data on infrastructure, local perceptions, coping and adaptation strategies with remote sensing data and modern technology of map making. This newly developed interactive mapping tool allowed for insights into different locally-constructed realities and facilitated the communication of results to the wider public and respective policy makers. It proved to be useful in visualising information and promoting participatory decision-making processes. We argue that the tool bears potential also for health research projects. The interactive mental map can be used to spatially and temporally assess key health themes such as availability of, and accessibility to, existing health care services, breeding sites of disease vectors, collection and storage of water, waste disposal, location of public toilets or defecation sites.

Mining and environmental change in Sierra Leone, West Africa: a remote sensing and hydrogeomorphological study.

This paper evaluates the environmental changes in southwestern Sierra Leone, West Africa from rutile (titanium dioxide) between 1967 and 1995. Mining in peripheral parts of the world economy is a consequence of larger global economic interests. Historically, long-distance trade and export production of minerals and other natural resources primarily for the benefit of core countries are responsible for transforming the natural environment and landscapes of peripheral sectors of the world economy. Tracking environmental change in developing countries such as Sierra Leone is challenging because of financial and infrastructural constraints on the use of ground methods of evaluation and monitoring. Remote sensing data are invaluable in assessing the human dimensions of Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) with implications for political ecology. Using available multi-date infrared Landsat images supplemented with field hydrological and biophysical data, we monitored the rapid temporal and spatial dynamic characteristic of mining areas in the study area with a focus on physical changes to the landscape. Reservoir construction for mining has caused flooding of alluvial lowlands, deforestation, and the creation of tailings and stockpiles over mined-out portions of the lease. Although the study was conducted at a local scale, it represents the broad, regional, past-to-present manner by which global economic interests exploit natural resources and impact the environment in distant places.

The Norse discovery of America.

In the late 8th century, the stage for Viking expansion was set by commercial expansion in northwest Europe, the pressure of an increasing population in limited territorial reserves, and the development of the Viking ships. The Norsemen traveled extensively over the oceans, south to the Holy Land, and north to the White Sea and settled over a wide area from Sicily to Greenland. Historical sources, including the reports by Adam of Bremen and the Icelandic Sagas, describe several expeditions from Greenland to Vinland (somewhere along the east coast of North America) in approximately AD 1000 and later. Historians have arrived at highly different conclusions with respect to the location of Vinland (from Labrador to Georgia), but, in 1960, the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad localized ancient house sites on L'Ans aux Meadows, a small fishing village on the Northern beaches of Newfoundland. From 1961 to 1969, Ingstad and his wife, Anne Stine (an archaeologist), led several archaeological expeditions that revealed Viking turf houses with room for approximately 100 people. They also excavated a smithy, outdoor cooking pits, boathouses, a bathhouse, and enclosures for cattle, in addition to several Viking artifacts. The finds were C dated to AD 990 +/- 30. The present report reviews historical and archaeological evidence indicating the sites to which the Vikings traveled and attempted to settle in the new world.

Early maps as stepping stones for the reconstruction of historic ecological conditions and biota.

We reconstructed the flora of a European region at a historical point in time from historical topographical maps that contain rather precise information about the condition and composition of habitats. The ecological information obtained from these maps can be enriched through the potential of broadly diversified archival information. This study is confined to grassland communities. Considerations in terms of phytosociology make historical lists of plant species a good starting point for the reconstruction of grassland communities. The combination of historical and scientific methods proves suitable for reconstructing specific historical environmental conditions. Taking into account the frequency of relevant historical sources in European archives as well as in archives abroad, this approach claims for far-reaching application to ecosystem restoration matters, especially if ecological information from natural sources is missing.

A study of the spatiotemporal health impacts of ozone exposure.

Exposure analysis and mapping of spatiotemporal pollutants in relation to their health effects are important challenges facing environmental health scientists and integrated assessment modellers. In this work, a methodological framework is discussed to study the impact of spatiotemporal ozone (O3) exposure distributions on the health of human populations. The framework, however, is very general and can be used to study various other pollutants. The spatiotemporal analysis starts with exposure distributions producing the input to pollutokinetic (or toxicokinetic) laws which are linked to effect models which, in turn, are integrated with relationships that describe how effects are distributed across populations. Important characteristics of the environmental health framework are holisticity and stochasticity. Holisticity emphasizes the functional relationships between composite space/time O3 maps, pollutokinetic models of burden on target organs and tissues, and health effects. These relationships offer a meaningful physical interpretation of the exposure and biological processes that affect human exposure. Stochasticity involves the rigorous representation of natural uncertainties and biological variations in terms of spatiotemporal random fields. The stochastic perspective introduces a deeper epistemological understanding in the development of improved models of spatiotemporal human exposure analysis and mapping. Also, it explicitly determines the knowledge bases available and develops logically plausible rules and standards for data processing and human exposure map construction. The proposed approach allows the horizontal integration among sciences related to the human exposure problem that leads to accurate and informative spatiotemporal maps of O3 exposure and effect distributions and an integrative analysis of the whole risk case. By processing a variety of knowledge bases, the spatiotemporal analysis can bring together several sciences which are all relevant to the aspect of human exposure reality that is examined.

[Archives, photographies, maps for malary in Latina Province]. / Le fonti archivistiche per la storia della malaria in Provincia di Latina.

After an historical introduction about ancient institutional regime of present Littoria/Latina province (until 1870 organized in Naples kingdom and Papal States), this essay is going to a swift analysis of marshes who reigned all over the land from the periphery of Rome to Fondi, when transient sheperds and woodmen were the only human beings of marshy land. So teachers for that unlettered people came into these lands, and so physicians came to fight against malary, first symbiotic enemy of man. So drainages were tried from Roman's epoch to Medieval and Illuministic one. We'll see Popes, feudal ladies and at last drainage trusts, all working to improve human life before the birth of Latina province. New cities and towns were born just during these trials; after the experiences of Angelo Celli, Italian Red Cross and Istituto per il risanamento antimalarico della regione pontina, many laws looked to medical aid for workers in malaric zones (exactly specified in topographic maps). In 1934 the Comitato provinciale antimalarico was introduced all over italian territory with the R.D.n. 1265.

The Asklipieion's healing environment--learning from the past.

Asklipieia were the first hospitals (or, better, health care campuses) in Europe, which flourished in Hellas (Greece) for about 12 centuries, since about the 6th century B.C. A kind of holistic health care was offered in Asklipieia through the conception of illnesses as a result of interaction of physical, psychological, social and environmental factors. The study of Asklipleian health care will help us to complete our knowledge on the history of health care and can teach us a lesson deriving from the Hellenic philosophy and history that could form the prototypical base for a better understanding of the concept of healing environment.

Semantic and visual factors affecting the representation of map information.

In past research evidence has been found for both mental imagery and propositional hierarchies in subjects' map representations. How the visual and semantic factors associated with maps influence the use of one form of representation or another was the subject of the study reported here. Subjects were required to make relational judgments about city pairs. The results of experiment 1 indicated that superordinate relationships (the relationship of the counties of which the cities were members) affected only the most difficult perceptual judgments, but affected all judgments made from memory. Experiment 2 was done to determine the extent to which these findings were attributable to perceptual distortions rather than propositionally stored rules. Results of experiment 3 showed the degree of perceptual distinction necessary for propositional rules to have no significant influence on relational judgments.

Visualizing changing social structure from a census.

"In this paper it is shown how new visualization techniques are being used to analyze the first results of the British 1991 Census and other large data sets." The focus is on new ways to show how localities develop over time. The author suggests that this cannot be done effectively using traditional quantitative techniques. "Pictures are needed to show how different processes occur in different places, and holistic patterns need also to be seen without generalizing out the detail. Neither traditional thematic mapping nor commercial geographic information systems can do this well. Spatial visualization is an alternative approach in which the researchers choose what they wish to see and how they wish to view it. Many problems require new methods of visualization for their exploration. A new census presents us not only with new statistics, but also with the opportunity and impetus to develop radically different ways of envisioning information to reveal more fully the human facts contained within a mass of social statistics."