Communicating the Obesity Crisis: The Role of Public Relations and the Media in Framing a National Health Issue

Communication of obesity as a public health issue has taken many forms and been framed in a variety of ways since early 2000. These communications often frame the public’s perception of the problem and of potential solutions. This study examines the current perceptions and actions according to several groups, including the government, the food industry, individuals, the media, and public relations professionals. It then attempts to assess the framing of the issue, including perceptions and actions, by the print media and public relations professionals. A census of newspaper articles and press releases from a one-month time period in late 2004 were collected and analyzed to answer two questions: (a) How are each of the groups – newspapers and PR professionals – framing the issue? and (b) What are the implications of the current framing strategies? The study found evidence of framing according to a blame-and-responsibility scheme, and reactions that attempt to sway blame from one party to another

Spartan Daily November 3, 2010

Volume 135, Issue 36https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/1199/thumbnail.jp

University of Hawaii at Hilo: International Female Student Diversity and Inclusion Workshop

The purpose of the University of Hawaii at Hilo’ Women’s Center is to provide advocacy, access, education, equity and equality to women and minority students on campus. On March 8, 2016, The Women’s Center at the University of Hawaii at Hilo held an International Women’s Day event. During the event, the topic about their experiences here at UH Hilo was brought up. Five of the seven panelists felt like they lacked the knowledge and support of on-campus resources including the Women’s Center. The response to the women’s day event led the Women’s Center staff to investigate further why this was. A needs assessment was conducted by interviewing panelists, reviewing feedback from audience members, discussions from peers and students, discussions with administrators from other offices, an online international female student survey, and on the job observations. The results of our analysis concluded that these women lacked the knowledge and access to equal rights as a UH Hilo student. The UH Hilo Women’s Center created a Diversity and Inclusion workshop designed to address that gap, meet the needs of these students and to fulfill the UH Hilo’s Women’s Center’s vision of creating an inclusive campus. The four-hour workshop will include six topic sessions and will be offered once a year in September. Program design theories will include Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory, Edward Hall’s High/Low Context Culture, and Josselson’s Theory of Identity Development in Women. The curriculum design theory is modeled using Wiggins and McTighe’s Backward Design and Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The Grizzly, February 22, 1985

Auto Blaze Cuts Phone Service • New Forensics Society Competing Successfully • All is Well With All\u27s Well Cast • Career Program Scheduled • Students Invited to Presidential Symposium • Pi Gamma Mu Seeks New Members • UC Selected for Ed Project • Bloodmobile Here in March • Nutrition Forum Tuesday • Bears Beat Swarthmore to Finish Season • Baseball Trains for Season and Florida Trip • Carr Puts Teams in Drive • Wellness Week Aimed at Promoting Overall Health • Night on Ice Scheduledhttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1134/thumbnail.jp

Digital Height-Measuring Sensor Device

A digital height-measurement device (stadiometer) was developed in partnership with the Pediatric Wellness Group (PWG) clinic to improve the speed and accuracy of the height measurement process and address the discomfort and inefficiency issues of traditional physical height-measurement devices currently used in hospitals and clinics. The digital stadiometer uses sensor components to quickly and efficiently measure a patient’s height. One key need for accurate height measurements from this device is to ensure the device is level to the ground. Therefore, this project incorporated an accelerometer along with a “bubble level game” feature, which allowed the user to ‘self-level’ the device in two axes by moving a black circle into a ring as viewed by the LCD screen. The device was prototyped and tested, then mounted onto a helmet for final testing and analysis. The aim is for the helmet-mounted device to be incorporated into the Pediatric Wellness Group clinic’s routine physical measurements that they perform for each patient. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 lockdown, prototype testing was unable to be completed in the clinic setting with patients. However, limited testing proved that the device took quick height measurements, with height displayed in about 6 seconds, and was relatively accurate, though it did not meet the ¼” accuracy desired by the customer. Future revisions to the device will strive to improve accuracy of the device through implementation of a temperature sensor and more thorough testing

Human localization and activity classification by machine learning on Wi-Fi channel state information

Devices communicating via Wi-Fi adjust subcarrier correction coefficients in real time. The stream of correction coefficients for all subcarriers is called channel state information (CSI). The latter can be used for human body sensing, in particular current activity and location. The thesis aims to create a robust, environment-agnostic activity classifier. In other words, a neural network (NN) trained to recognize and classify human actions in one location should not dramatically lose prediction capability if transferred to another. This purpose has been achieved in three steps. First, for a neural network to abstract from a particular environment, a diverse data has to be collected. Therefore, a dedicated laboratory equipment to automate a Wi-Fi access point (AP) physical movement and rotation has been developed and constructed. After data for training NNs has been collected, the environment-specific information has been cleaned by classic signal processing algorithms. Finally, a dedicated neural network architecture adjustments have been implemented. Altogether, the goal of environment agnostic classification for the target "sit down", "stand up", "lie down", and "unlie" activities is achieved. However, classification accuracy depends on the similarity between train and test human subjects. The work argues that activity classification and localization tasks have orthogonal goals and focus on different aspects of CSI information. In particular, activity classification NN is interested in ongoing physical movement features and should work independently of the human location. On the contrary, localization NN should ignore subject activities and infer only positioning. Therefore, these two tasks are separated into standalone NN architectures. Since environments such as apartments can be very different from each other, it is assumed that training a universal NN localizer is not possible. Since the localization NN needs to be re-trained for each particular environment, its virtue would be an inexpensive training cycle. Tho achieve this goal, localization NN is substantially reduced in size from 58.8 to 0.4 million parameters

A Pragmatic Analysis of the Regulation of Consumer Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (TDCS) Devices in the United States

Several recent articles have called for the regulation of consumer transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) devices, which provide low levels of electrical current to the brain. However, most of the discussion to-date has focused on ethical or normative considerations; there has been a notable absence of scholarship regarding the actual legal framework in the United States. This article aims to fill that gap by providing a pragmatic analysis of the consumer tDCS market and relevant laws and regulations. In the five main sections of this manuscript, I take into account (a) the history of the do-it-yourself tDCS movement and the subsequent emergence of direct-to-consumer devices; (b) the statutory language of the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act and how the definition of a medical device—which focuses on the intended use of the device rather than its mechanism of action—is of paramount importance for discussions of consumer tDCS device regulation; (c) how both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and courts have understood the FDA\u27s jurisdiction over medical devices in cases where the meaning of ‘intended use’ has been challenged; (d) an analysis of consumer tDCS regulatory enforcement action to-date; and (e) the multiple US authorities, other than the FDA, that can regulate consumer brain stimulation devices. Taken together, this paper demonstrates that rather than a ‘regulatory gap,’ there are multiple, distinct pathways by which consumer tDCS can be regulated in the United States

Validation of polymer-based screen-printed textile electrodes for surface EMG detection

In recent years, the variety of textile electrodes developed for electrophysiological signal detection has increased rapidly. Among the applications that could benefit from this advancement, those based on surface electromyography (sEMG) are particularly relevant in rehabilitation, training and muscle function assessment. In this work, we validate the performance of polymer-based screen-printed textile electrodes for sEMG signal detection. We obtained these electrodes by depositing poly-3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene doped with poly(styrene sulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) onto cotton fabric, and then selectively changing the physical properties of the textile substrate. The manufacturing costs are low and this process meets the requirements of textile-industry production lines. The validation of these electrodes was based on their functional and electrical characteristics, assessed for two different electrode sizes and three skin-interface conditions (dry, solid hydrogel or saline solution), and compared to those of conventional disposable gelled electrodes. Results show high similarity in terms of noise amplitude and electrode-skin impedance between the conventional and textile electrodes with the addition of solid hydrogel or saline solution. Furthermore, we compared the shape of the electrically-induced sEMG, as detected by conventional and textile electrodes from tibialis anterior. The comparison yielded an R2 value higher than 97% for all measurement conditions. Preliminary tests in dynamic conditions (walking) revealed the exploitability of the proposed electrode technology with saline application for the monitoring of sEMG for up to 35 minutes of activity. These results suggest that the proposed screen-printed textile electrodes may be an effective alternative to the conventional gelled electrodes for sEMG acquisition, thereby providing new opportunities in clinical and wellness fields