Wearable Computing for Health and Fitness: Exploring the Relationship between Data and Human Behaviour

Health and fitness wearable technology has recently advanced, making it easier for an individual to monitor their behaviours. Previously self generated data interacts with the user to motivate positive behaviour change, but issues arise when relating this to long term mention of wearable devices. Previous studies within this area are discussed. We also consider a new approach where data is used to support instead of motivate, through monitoring and logging to encourage reflection. Based on issues highlighted, we then make recommendations on the direction in which future work could be most beneficial

Learning in, through and about movement - Teaching research methods and research skills, engaging the imagination to develop creative and reflective thinkers.

This paper has evolved out of a much larger doctoral thesis. It explores firstly the value of placing the learner at the heart of their own learning. Secondly, it examines as a means of trying to do something different when exploring innovative practice, the concept of learning in, through and about movement, in order to teach undergraduates about research methods, research skills and notions of fair testing, and repeatability in a practical environment outside the traditional classroom. The idea explored is that through movement, students would creatively find solutions to the open-ended problems that were set, and then reflect on their own and others learning. Key Words: Movement, Learner Voice, Research Methods, Research Skill

Recruiting hard-to-reach populations to physical activity studies : evidence and experiences

Most researchers who are conducting research with a public health focus face difficulties in recruiting the segments of the population that they really want to reach. This symposium presented evidence and experiences on recruiting participants to physical activity research, including both epidemiological and intervention based studies. Results from a systematic review of recruitment strategies suggested that we know little about how best to recruit and highlighted the need for researchers to report this in more detail, including metrics of reach into the target population such as number, proportion, and representativeness of participants. Specific strategies used to optimise responses to a population-based mail survey were presented such as study promotion, survey design, multiple mailings, and personal engagement. Finally, using place based recruiting via schools or places of worship to target ethnic minority youth were discussed. Overall the symposium presenters suggested that we need to learn more about how best to recruit participants, in particular those typically under-represented, and that researchers need to apportion a similar amount of planning effort to their recruitment strategies as they do the their research design. Finally we made a plea for researchers to report their recruitment processes in detail

Fixation, transient landscape and diffusion's dilemma in stochastic evolutionary game dynamics

Agent-based stochastic models for finite populations have recently received much attention in the game theory of evolutionary dynamics. Both the ultimate fixation and the pre-fixation transient behavior are important to a full understanding of the dynamics. In this paper, we study the transient dynamics of the well-mixed Moran process through constructing a landscape function. It is shown that the landscape playing a central theoretical "device" that integrates several lines of inquiries: the stable behavior of the replicator dynamics, the long-time fixation, and continuous diffusion approximation associated with asymptotically large population. Several issues relating to the transient dynamics are discussed: (i) multiple time scales phenomenon associated with intra- and inter-attractoral dynamics; (ii) discontinuous transition in stochastically stationary process akin to Maxwell construction in equilibrium statistical physics; and (iii) the dilemma diffusion approximation facing as a continuous approximation of the discrete evolutionary dynamics. It is found that rare events with exponentially small probabilities, corresponding to the uphill movements and barrier crossing in the landscape with multiple wells that are made possible by strong nonlinear dynamics, plays an important role in understanding the origin of the complexity in evolutionary, nonlinear biological systems.Comment: 34 pages, 4 figure

Physical literacy: Importance, assessment and future directions

Physical literacy (PL) has become a major focus of physical education, physical activity and sports promotion worldwide. PL is a multifaceted conceptualisation of the skills required to fully realise potentials through embodied experience. Substantial financial investments in PL education by governments are underpinned by a wide range of anticipated benefits, including expectations of significant future savings to healthcare, improved physical and psychological well-being of the population, increased work-force productivity and raised levels of expertise in sport and exercise participation. However, disappointingly, scientific evidence showing the efficacy of PL interventions to successfully meet such high expectation is limited. We suggest that contradictions in research findings are due largely to limitations in movement assessment batteries and consequent discrepancies between measurements used to assess the immediate outcomes of PL programmes. Notably, there is no robust empirical tool for evidencing skill learning in the physical movement component of PL, education and this presents a serious limitation to the design of, and claims that can be made for, such interventions. Considering the parameters of proficient PL skills and the limitations of current evaluation instruments, possible future directions for developing empirical measures of PL movement skills are presented

Dirichlet belief networks for topic structure learning

Recently, considerable research effort has been devoted to developing deep architectures for topic models to learn topic structures. Although several deep models have been proposed to learn better topic proportions of documents, how to leverage the benefits of deep structures for learning word distributions of topics has not yet been rigorously studied. Here we propose a new multi-layer generative process on word distributions of topics, where each layer consists of a set of topics and each topic is drawn from a mixture of the topics of the layer above. As the topics in all layers can be directly interpreted by words, the proposed model is able to discover interpretable topic hierarchies. As a self-contained module, our model can be flexibly adapted to different kinds of topic models to improve their modelling accuracy and interpretability. Extensive experiments on text corpora demonstrate the advantages of the proposed model.Comment: accepted in NIPS 201

Closing the loop in exergaming - Health benefits of biocybernetic adaptation in senior adults

Exergames help senior players to get physically active by promoting fun and enjoyment while exercising. However, most exergames are not designed to produce recommended levels of exercise that elicit adequate physical responses for optimal training in the aged population. In this project, we developed physiological computing technologies to overcome this issue by making real-time adaptations in a custom exergame based on recommendations for targeted heart rate (HR) levels. This biocybernetic adaptation was evaluated against conventional cardiorespiratory training in a group of active senior adults through a floor-projected exergame and a smartwatch to record HR data. Results showed that the physiologically-augmented exergame leads players to exert around 40% more time in the recommended HR levels, compared to the conventional training, avoiding over exercising and maintaining good enjoyment levels. Finally, we made available our biocybernetic adaptation software tool to enable the creation of physiological adaptive videogames, permitting the replication of our study.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

GPS analysis of a team competing at a national Under 18 field hockey tournament

The purpose of this study was to utilise global-positioning system (GPS) technology to quantify the running demands of national Under 18 field hockey players competing in a regional field hockey tournament. Ten male players (mean ± SD; age 17.2 ± 0.4 years; stature 178.1 ± 5.2 cm; body mass 78.8 ± 8.8 kg) wore GPS units while competing in six matches over seven days at the 2018 New Zealand national under 18 field hockey tournament. GPS enabled the measurement of total distance (TD), low-speed activity (LSA; 0 -14.9 km/hr), and high-speed running (HSR; ≥ 15 km/hr) distances. Differences in running demands (TD, LSA, HSR) between positions were assessed using effect size and percent difference ± 90% confidence intervals. Midfielders covered the most TD and LSA per game and strikers the most HSR during the 6 matches. There were “very large” differences between strikers and midfielders for TD and LSA, strikers and defenders for LSA and HSR, and defenders and midfielders for LSA. These results suggest that these playing positions are sufficiently different to warrant specialised position-specific conditioning training leading into a field hockey tournament

The effects of morning preconditioning protocols on testosterone, cortisol and afternoon sprint cycling performance [conference presentation]

Opportunities exist for athletes to undertake morning exercise protocols in an attempt to potentate afternoon performance. Four sub elite track sprint cyclists completed a morning cycling (Cyc) or weights-based protocol (WP) prior to an afternoon cycling time trial (500m) in a repeated measures, counterbalance crossover design. Measured variables included heart rate, blood lactate, cycling peak power, salivary testosterone (T) and cortisol levels along with time trial performance. Standardised differences in means via magnitude-based inferences were calculated using paired samples T-tests in SPSS version 24 with statistical significance set at p < 0.05. The WP produced significantly faster times in the final 250m in comparison to CycP. The anticipated circadian decline of T was observed after the CycP but was however mitigated following the WP. While slight decreases in 500m times were experienced during the WP, they were not significant and were considered within the normal variations experienced between performances by elite athletes. The effect of the WP on the circadian rhythm of T could be linked to a greater recruitment of muscle fibres. Results suggest a morning resistance protocol can positively affect testosterone levels for afternoon performance. Possible gender and individual responses from conducting a W over Cyc protocol were observed and require further investigation