Behavioral Modification Program to Control Obesity among School Children in Knott County, Kentucky

Childhood obesity is one of the major public health concerns in the United States (US). Obese children have a greater likelihood of developing cardiovascular disease risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, and impaired blood glucose[7].The prevalence of obesity among children 2 to 5 years of age in Kentucky was 15.7% (US average 8.4%) and 17.6% (US average 17%) among adolescents in Kentucky being higher than the national averages [8,3]. A major goal of the Behavioral Modification Program is to promote healthy behaviors among elementary school children to control obesity by modifying eating, physical activity and screen time behavior. The proposed program is adapted from an evidence based multi-level intervention (school, family and community) program, the SWITCH, what you do, view, and chew. The SWITCH was developed and tested by the randomized control trial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa in 2005. The Kentucky River District Health Department (KRDHD) is implementing the adapted behavioral modification program in three elementary schools of Knott County, among potentially eligible 356 students from grade 3 to 5 from 2017 to 2020. Knott Co. is situated at the eastern region of the Kentucky and it has the highest rate of adult obesity (41%) in the state [11]. The prevalence of early childhood obesity in Knott County is 15.5%, which is almost double in compare to national average (8.4%) [15]. The KRDHD is a regional public health department. It has 7 counties under its jurisdiction. There are six staff members of the KRDHD are directly involved in the proposed program along with Mrs. Samjhana Shakya, a project director. The KRDHD is collaborating with six partners including the University of Kentucky, the Knott County Cooperation Extension, and other local organizations to implement the program. The participants of the program will set a goal/goals related to eating, physical activity and screen time each week and perform guided activities to achieve the goal which continues for 8 months (October to May of an academic year). Parent and teachers will support the participants to meet their goals. Similarly, there are community based intervention components (PSA, bill boards, community presentation, and educational booth) to create a supportive environment and raise the community awareness. Major outcomes of the proposed program are a) increased fruit and vegetable consumption b) increased physical activity, c) reduced screen time, and d) reduced Body Mass Index among participants. These outcomes will be assessed by baseline survey, end line survey and 6 month follow up survey among participants (students), parent, and teacher. Community impact will be assessed by baseline and end line community survey. The long term impact of the program will be the more involved and aware community, family and schools in Knott County to promote healthy behavior and supportive environment to control childhood obesity. The proposed program is promising to be sustainable in future because of the strong collaboration with local stakeholders, an active community participation, and enhanced capacity building (training, adapted materials, data) through this program. We anticipate to extend this program to the rest of the counties under jurisdiction of the KRDHD in near future after grant period

Measuring internet activity: a (selective) review of methods and metrics

Two Decades after the birth of the World Wide Web, more than two billion people around the world are Internet users. The digital landscape is littered with hints that the affordances of digital communications are being leveraged to transform life in profound and important ways. The reach and influence of digitally mediated activity grow by the day and touch upon all aspects of life, from health, education, and commerce to religion and governance. This trend demands that we seek answers to the biggest questions about how digitally mediated communication changes society and the role of different policies in helping or hindering the beneficial aspects of these changes. Yet despite the profusion of data the digital age has brought upon us—we now have access to a flood of information about the movements, relationships, purchasing decisions, interests, and intimate thoughts of people around the world—the distance between the great questions of the digital age and our understanding of the impact of digital communications on society remains large. A number of ongoing policy questions have emerged that beg for better empirical data and analyses upon which to base wider and more insightful perspectives on the mechanics of social, economic, and political life online. This paper seeks to describe the conceptual and practical impediments to measuring and understanding digital activity and highlights a sample of the many efforts to fill the gap between our incomplete understanding of digital life and the formidable policy questions related to developing a vibrant and healthy Internet that serves the public interest and contributes to human wellbeing. Our primary focus is on efforts to measure Internet activity, as we believe obtaining robust, accurate data is a necessary and valuable first step that will lead us closer to answering the vitally important questions of the digital realm. Even this step is challenging: the Internet is difficult to measure and monitor, and there is no simple aggregate measure of Internet activity—no GDP, no HDI. In the following section we present a framework for assessing efforts to document digital activity. The next three sections offer a summary and description of many of the ongoing projects that document digital activity, with two final sections devoted to discussion and conclusions

Assessing the quality of audio and video components in desktop multimedia conferencing

This thesis seeks to address the HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) research problem of how to establish the level of audio and video quality that end users require to successfully perform tasks via networked desktop videoconferencing. There are currently no established HCI methods of assessing the perceived quality of audio and video delivered in desktop videoconferencing. The transport of real-time speech and video information across new digital networks causes novel and different degradations, problems and issues to those common in the traditional telecommunications areas (telephone and television). Traditional assessment methods involve the use of very short test samples, are traditionally conducted outside a task-based environment, and focus on whether a degradation is noticed or not. But these methods cannot help establish what audio-visual quality is required by users to perform tasks successfully with the minimum of user cost, in interactive conferencing environments. This thesis addresses this research gap by investigating and developing a battery of assessment methods for networked videoconferencing, suitable for use in both field trials and laboratory-based studies. The development and use of these new methods helps identify the most critical variables (and levels of these variables) that affect perceived quality, and means by which network designers and HCI practitioners can address these problems are suggested. The output of the thesis therefore contributes both methodological (i.e. new rating scales and data-gathering methods) and substantive (i.e. explicit knowledge about quality requirements for certain tasks) knowledge to the HCI and networking research communities on the subjective quality requirements of real-time interaction in networked videoconferencing environments. Exploratory research is carried out through an interleaved series of field trials and controlled studies, advancing substantive and methodological knowledge in an incremental fashion. Initial studies use the ITU-recommended assessment methods, but these are found to be unsuitable for assessing networked speech and video quality for a number of reasons. Therefore later studies investigate and establish a novel polar rating scale, which can be used both as a static rating scale and as a dynamic continuous slider. These and further developments of the methods in future lab- based and real conferencing environments will enable subjective quality requirements and guidelines for different videoconferencing tasks to be established

Costs and benefits of superfast broadband in the UK

This paper was commissioned from LSE Enterprise by Convergys Smart Revenue Solutions to stimulate an open and constructive debate among the main stakeholders about the balance between the costs, the revenues, and the societal benefits of ‘superfast’ broadband. The intent has been to analyse the available facts and to propose wider perspectives on economic and social interactions. The paper has two parts: one concentrates on superfast broadband deployment and the associated economic and social implications (for the UK and its service providers), and the other considers alternative social science approaches to these implications. Both parts consider the potential contribution of smart solutions to superfast broadband provision and use. Whereas Part I takes the “national perspective” and the “service provider perspective”, which deal with the implications of superfast broadband for the UK and for service providers, Part II views matters in other ways, particularly by looking at how to realise values beyond the market economy, such as those inherent in neighbourliness, trust and democrac

Economically sustainable public security and emergency network exploiting a broadband communications satellite

The research contributes to work in Rapid Deployment of a National Public Security and Emergency Communications Network using Communication Satellite Broadband. Although studies in Public Security Communication networks have examined the use of communications satellite as an integral part of the Communication Infrastructure, there has not been an in-depth design analysis of an optimized regional broadband-based communication satellite in relation to the envisaged service coverage area, with little or no terrestrial last-mile telecommunications infrastructure for delivery of satellite solutions, applications and services. As such, the research provides a case study of a Nigerian Public Safety Security Communications Pilot project deployed in regions of the African continent with inadequate terrestrial last mile infrastructure and thus requiring a robust regional Communications Satellite complemented with variants of terrestrial wireless technologies to bridge the digital hiatus as a short and medium term measure apart from other strategic needs. The research not only addresses the pivotal role of a secured integrated communications Public safety network for security agencies and emergency service organizations with its potential to foster efficient information symmetry amongst their operations including during emergency and crisis management in a timely manner but demonstrates a working model of how analogue spectrum meant for Push-to-Talk (PTT) services can be re-farmed and digitalized as a “dedicated” broadband-based public communications system. The network’s sustainability can be secured by using excess capacity for the strategic commercial telecommunication needs of the state and its citizens. Utilization of scarce spectrum has been deployed for Nigeria’s Cashless policy pilot project for financial and digital inclusion. This effectively drives the universal access goals, without exclusivity, in a continent, which still remains the least wired in the world

M-health review: joining up healthcare in a wireless world

In recent years, there has been a huge increase in the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) to deliver health and social care. This trend is bound to continue as providers (whether public or private) strive to deliver better care to more people under conditions of severe budgetary constraint

Packet Loss in Terrestrial Wireless and Hybrid Networks

The presence of both a geostationary satellite link and a terrestrial local wireless link on the same path of a given network connection is becoming increasingly common, thanks to the popularity of the IEEE 802.11 protocol. The most common situation where a hybrid network comes into play is having a Wi-Fi link at the network edge and the satellite link somewhere in the network core. Example of scenarios where this can happen are ships or airplanes where Internet connection on board is provided through a Wi-Fi access point and a satellite link with a geostationary satellite; a small office located in remote or isolated area without cabled Internet access; a rescue team using a mobile ad hoc Wi-Fi network connected to the Internet or to a command centre through a mobile gateway using a satellite link. The serialisation of terrestrial and satellite wireless links is problematic from the point of view of a number of applications, be they based on video streaming, interactive audio or TCP. The reason is the combination of high latency, caused by the geostationary satellite link, and frequent, correlated packet losses caused by the local wireless terrestrial link. In fact, GEO satellites are placed in equatorial orbit at 36,000 km altitude, which takes the radio signal about 250 ms to travel up and down. Satellite systems exhibit low packet loss most of the time, with typical project constraints of 10−8 bit error rate 99% of the time, which translates into a packet error rate of 10−4, except for a few days a year. Wi-Fi links, on the other hand, have quite different characteristics. While the delay introduced by the MAC level is in the order of the milliseconds, and is consequently too small to affect most applications, its packet loss characteristics are generally far from negligible. In fact, multipath fading, interference and collisions affect most environments, causing correlated packet losses: this means that often more than one packet at a time is lost for a single fading even

The Design of FTTH Network

The aim of this thesis is to explain the problems of optical access networks with wavelength division multiplexers, main purpose is to demonstrate the difference between theoretical and real measurement. The work is divided into several thematic areas. The introduction outlines the basic of telecommunications, fiber optics lasers, single mode, multimode, lasers fibers cables & cores, splitters division multiplexing system, there are known solutions discussed fundamental wavelength multiplexes and their possible combinations. The following chapter deals with the active elements such as AON, PON, which are essential part xWDM systems such as optical lasers, detectors and amplifiers. Another chapter focuses on passive elements, which form a key part of the wavelength multiplex. Methods of measurement of WDM/PON networks are discussed in the following part. The next section describes the topology used active and passive optical networks. The penultimate part of the work consists of architecture & technology of xWDM such as GPON and WDM-PON networks and comparing their transmission parameters. The final part of the paper presents the results of practical experimental measurements of optical access networks with wavelengths division multiplex while these results are compared with the theoretical output & methods of Optical lost test, OTDR & LSPM, with advantage & disadvantage of every methods. The second part of practical is the draft to the connection resident housing units of 30 houses, boarding-house (10 rooms) and 2 shops, 20 km distant from exchange. With comparing the possibilities of two options- passive and active optical network- PON system – WDM- Wave multiplex. Suggest the possibility of measuring and monitoring the created network.The aim of this thesis is to explain the problems of optical access networks with wavelength division multiplexers, main purpose is to demonstrate the difference between theoretical and real measurement. The work is divided into several thematic areas. The introduction outlines the basic of telecommunications, fiber optics lasers, single mode, multimode, lasers fibers cables & cores, splitters division multiplexing system, there are known solutions discussed fundamental wavelength multiplexes and their possible combinations. The following chapter deals with the active elements such as AON, PON, which are essential part xWDM systems such as optical lasers, detectors and amplifiers. Another chapter focuses on passive elements, which form a key part of the wavelength multiplex. Methods of measurement of WDM/PON networks are discussed in the following part. The next section describes the topology used active and passive optical networks. The penultimate part of the work consists of architecture & technology of xWDM such as GPON and WDM-PON networks and comparing their transmission parameters. The final part of the paper presents the results of practical experimental measurements of optical access networks with wavelengths division multiplex while these results are compared with the theoretical output & methods of Optical lost test, OTDR & LSPM, with advantage & disadvantage of every methods. The second part of practical is the draft to the connection resident housing units of 30 houses, boarding-house (10 rooms) and 2 shops, 20 km distant from exchange. With comparing the possibilities of two options- passive and active optical network- PON system – WDM- Wave multiplex. Suggest the possibility of measuring and monitoring the created network.

Wide area detection system: Conceptual design study

An integrated sensor for traffic surveillance on mainline sections of urban freeways is described. Applicable imaging and processor technology is surveyed and the functional requirements for the sensors and the conceptual design of the breadboard sensors are given. Parameters measured by the sensors include lane density, speed, and volume. The freeway image is also used for incident diagnosis

Multimedia

The nowadays ubiquitous and effortless digital data capture and processing capabilities offered by the majority of devices, lead to an unprecedented penetration of multimedia content in our everyday life. To make the most of this phenomenon, the rapidly increasing volume and usage of digitised content requires constant re-evaluation and adaptation of multimedia methodologies, in order to meet the relentless change of requirements from both the user and system perspectives. Advances in Multimedia provides readers with an overview of the ever-growing field of multimedia by bringing together various research studies and surveys from different subfields that point out such important aspects. Some of the main topics that this book deals with include: multimedia management in peer-to-peer structures & wireless networks, security characteristics in multimedia, semantic gap bridging for multimedia content and novel multimedia applications