Elizabeth and the Great Forest (Series 1) Elizabeth and the Strange Island (Series 2)

Children literature is one way to deliver important moral values to children all over the world. Therefore, I made Elizabeth and The Great Forest (Series 1) and Elizabeth and The Strange Island (Series 2) as my creative work for the final project. In those two books, I want to bring up some issues which are; technology cannot replace direct interaction between people, fears are not supposed to be avoided but to be faced, and mother-daughter relationship is the most important relationship. The first book will focus on technology that damages a girl's social life and a girl's bravery in overcoming her own fears. The second book will focus on mother-daughter relationship with sub-theme: overcoming the characters' own fears. Through the girl's journeys, she will finally realize that technology cannot replace human interaction, people need to overcome their own fears, and mother-daughter relationship is the most important relationship ever in her life

Toddlers' food preferences: The impact of novel food exposure, maternal preferences and food neophobia

Food preferences have been identified as a key determinant of children’s food acceptance and consumption. The aim of this study was to identify factors that influence children’s liking for fruits, vegetables and non-core foods. Participants were Australian mothers (median age at delivery=31 years, 18-46 years) and their two-year-old children (M=25 months, SD=1 month; 52% female) allocated to the control group (N=230) of the NOURISH RCT. The effects of repeated exposure to new foods, maternal food preferences and child food neophobia on toddlers’ liking of vegetables, fruits and non-core foods and the proportion never tried were examined via hierarchical regression models; adjusting for key maternal (age, BMI, education) and child covariates (birth weight Z-score, gender), duration of breastfeeding and age of introduction to solids. Maternal preferences corresponded with child preferences. Food neophobia among toddlers was associated with liking fewer vegetables and fruits, and trying fewer vegetables. Number of repeated exposures to new food was not significantly associated with food liking at this age. Results highlight the need to: (i) encourage parents to offer a wide range of foods, regardless of their own food preferences, and (ii) provide parents with guidance on managing food neophobia

Social Media’s Effect on Mental Health: How America’s Youth are More Vulnerable to its Negative Implications

This article explores the potentially negative psychological effects social media photo-sharing platforms have on America’s adolescents. While most studies on mental health effects related to social media use have focused on Facebook and the young adult age group 18-35, this article focuses on users under the age of 18 with an emphasis on Instagram and Snapchat – the two most rapidly growing social networking sites for adolescents. Photo-sharing sites have characteristics different than other social media sites, specifically the ability to alter photos and to communicate live time through videos and photos, which may have different mental health consequences on younger populations. Through a review of previous academic research, and a survey administered to a sample population under the age of 18, this article analyzes how social comparisons, a need for external validation, and a fear of missing out and exclusion may affect adolescents more than older adults due to the fact that they are in a critical developmental period where self-esteem and self-worth can be particularly influenced by peers and social media. While some argue that social media, including photo-sharing sites, may allow adolescents more social contact, opportunities for self-esteem building, and a chance for those who are shy or with low self-esteem to experiment in a safer environment than face to face contact, this article shows that the opposite is also true: that excessive use of photo-sharing sites may lead to negative mental health consequences due to social comparisons, a fear of missing out, and an unhealthy desire to attain external validation from peers. The article also suggests that adolescents with deceptive personalities, Machiavellian personalities, and high social desirability needs may be more vulnerable to some of the risks of social media use, and that identifying at-risk individuals may allow teachers, counselors, and parents to help them navigate their social media world during an influential time in their lives

Characterizing videos, audience and advertising in Youtube channels for kids

Online video services, messaging systems, games and social media services are tremendously popular among young people and children in many countries. Most of the digital services offered on the internet are advertising funded, which makes advertising ubiquitous in children's everyday life. To understand the impact of advertising-based digital services on children, we study the collective behavior of users of YouTube for kids channels and present the demographics of a large number of users. We collected data from 12,848 videos from 17 channels in US and UK and 24 channels in Brazil. The channels in English have been viewed more than 37 billion times. We also collected more than 14 million comments made by users. Based on a combination of text-analysis and face recognition tools, we show the presence of racial and gender biases in our large sample of users. We also identify children actively using YouTube, although the minimum age for using the service is 13 years in most countries. We provide comparisons of user behavior among the three countries, which represent large user populations in the global North and the global South

Learning from the experts: exploring playground experience and activities using a write and draw technique.

BACKGROUND: Qualitative research into the effect of school recess on children's physical activity is currently limited. This study used a write and draw technique to explore children's perceptions of physical activity opportunities during recess. METHODS: 299 children age 7-11 years from 3 primary schools were enlisted. Children were grouped into Years 3 & 4 and Years 5 & 6 and completed a write and draw task focusing on likes and dislikes. Pen profiles were used to analyze the data. RESULTS: Results indicated 'likes' focused on play, positive social interaction, and games across both age groups but showed an increasing dominance of games with an appreciation for being outdoors with age. 'Dislikes' focused on dysfunctional interactions linked with bullying, membership, equipment, and conflict for playground space. Football was a dominant feature across both age groups and 'likes/dislikes' that caused conflict and dominated the physically active games undertaken. CONCLUSION: Recess was important for the development of conflict management and social skills and contributed to physical activity engagement. The findings contradict suggestions that time spent in recess should be reduced because of behavioral issues

Explaining Data-Driven Decisions made by AI Systems: The Counterfactual Approach

We examine counterfactual explanations for explaining the decisions made by model-based AI systems. The counterfactual approach we consider defines an explanation as a set of the system's data inputs that causally drives the decision (i.e., changing the inputs in the set changes the decision) and is irreducible (i.e., changing any subset of the inputs does not change the decision). We (1) demonstrate how this framework may be used to provide explanations for decisions made by general, data-driven AI systems that may incorporate features with arbitrary data types and multiple predictive models, and (2) propose a heuristic procedure to find the most useful explanations depending on the context. We then contrast counterfactual explanations with methods that explain model predictions by weighting features according to their importance (e.g., SHAP, LIME) and present two fundamental reasons why we should carefully consider whether importance-weight explanations are well-suited to explain system decisions. Specifically, we show that (i) features that have a large importance weight for a model prediction may not affect the corresponding decision, and (ii) importance weights are insufficient to communicate whether and how features influence decisions. We demonstrate this with several concise examples and three detailed case studies that compare the counterfactual approach with SHAP to illustrate various conditions under which counterfactual explanations explain data-driven decisions better than importance weights

Wall Street Likes its Women: An Examination of Women in the Top Management Teams of Initial Public Offerings

[Excerpt] As part of an overall research project exploring the determinants of initial public offering (IPO) firm success, I examine the effect of having women on the top management teams of IPO firms on the organizations’ short and long-term financial performance. Looking at three different samples, I found that trend data indicate IPO firms are gaining in the number of women they employ in their top management teams (where top management team is defined as those listed in the firm’s prospectus). The results of the study reported in this paper suggest one reason why the trend is growing; women appear to have a positive effect on the firms’ short-term performance (Tobin’s Q, which is market price to book value per share), three-year stock price growth, and growth in earnings per share

Barnes Hospital Record

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/bjc_barnes_record/1159/thumbnail.jp