Safe Water Systems: An Evaluation of the Zambia Clorin Program

Clorin is a household water treatment product (a sodium hypochlorite disinfectant) that Society for Family Health launched in Zambia in 1998. This report provides a external assessment of Clorin use in light of the Centers for Disease Control and Pan American Health Organization's overall Safe Water Systems initiative. The intervention took a social marketing approach, targeting low-income households with Clorin at a subsidized price, and sales steadily increased from 1998 to 2004. This involved training for health center staff , neighborhood volunteers, and pharmacists; and promotions through radio, television, newspapers, and posters. The study found that active marketing through community-level personal was very important, while the role of mass media messages was unclear. Collaboration with the government health sector, retailers, and community agents was advised, as was strengthening the water management side of the program

Social influence, negotiation and cognition

To understand how personal agreements can be generated within complexly differentiated social systems, we develop an agent-based computational model of negotiation in which social influence plays a key role in the attainment of social and cognitive integration. The model reflects a view of social influence that is predicated on the interactions among such factors as the agents' cognition, their abilities to initiate and maintain social behaviour, as well as the structural patterns of social relations in which influence unfolds. Findings from a set of computer simulations of the model show that the degree to which agents are influenced depends on the network of relations in which they are located, on the order in which interactions occur, and on the type of information that these interactions convey. We also find that a fundamental role in explaining influence is played by how inclined the agents are to be concilatory with each other, how accurate their beliefs are, and how self-confident they are in dealing with their social interactions. Moreover, the model provides insights into the trade-offs typically involved in the exercise of social influence

A qualitative exploration of social motivational influences in determining the physical activity of 30–60 year old adults

Introduction: Adults over 60–65 years old are a group considered vulnerable to the risks of sedentary lifestyle causing decreased quality of life and poor health. Australian government figures estimate the number of over 65s will reach 8.1 million by 2056, and 11.2 million by 2101. One key opportunity to prevent sedentary lifestyles in older adults is to understand and promote motivation towards physical activity in middle-aged adults. This study qualitatively examined the motivationally relevant behaviours (‘motivational atmosphere’) of key social agents towards physical activity and sedentary lifestyles in adults between 30 and 60 years of age. Methodology: Twenty participants (32–60 years old) of varying activity levels were recruited from local workplaces and a GP referral scheme. Participants took part in semi-structured interviews to examine which social agents affected their motivation towards PA and how/why. A critical rationalist philosophy was deployed in the gathering and analysis of data. Results: Using inductive content analysis, 307 raw themes were coded into 38 categories and five higher dimensions, labelled: (1) providing information and impetus; (2) supporting progress and competence; (3) affiliation and belongingness; (4) logistical considerations; and (5) emotional support. Spouses, close family, work colleagues, GPs and the media were perceived to be highly influential social agents, with many others listed (e.g., personal trainers, local government). Whilst spouses, family and work colleagues influenced motivation through ‘leading-by-example’, ‘reminding/persuading’ and ‘support/encouragement’, GPs and the media were more likely to exert an influence by offering advice, guidance and recommendations, or in some cases ‘sounding-the-alarm-bell’. The consistency of messages from these different agents (media, health professionals, friends/family) was also noted as a key determinant of attitudes and actions. Whilst health was often central to participants’ responses, social interactions and friendships were also key reasons people gave for becoming or staying active (and for being sedentary). Further, there was preliminary evidence that the sources and types of influence changed as a function of current activity level. Conclusion: The results facilitate future interventions by suggesting specific behavioural recommendations in relation to known social agents, as well as guiding theoretical development/ refinement. The findings suggest that interventions should encompass psychological and social as-well-as health considerations, and that health professionals must understand the ‘motivational atmosphere’ of each client. Finally, the findings suggest that future research and modelling should adopt methodologies that better address the complexity inherent in the social determination of motivation

Embedding agents in business applications using enterprise integration patterns

This paper addresses the issue of integrating agents with a variety of external resources and services, as found in enterprise computing environments. We propose an approach for interfacing agents and existing message routing and mediation engines based on the endpoint concept from the enterprise integration patterns of Hohpe and Woolf. A design for agent endpoints is presented, and an architecture for connecting the Jason agent platform to the Apache Camel enterprise integration framework using this type of endpoint is described. The approach is illustrated by means of a business process use case, and a number of Camel routes are presented. These demonstrate the benefits of interfacing agents to external services via a specialised message routing tool that supports enterprise integration patterns

Negative emotions boost users activity at BBC Forum

We present an empirical study of user activity in online BBC discussion forums, measured by the number of posts written by individual debaters and the average sentiment of these posts. Nearly 2.5 million posts from over 18 thousand users were investigated. Scale free distributions were observed for activity in individual discussion threads as well as for overall activity. The number of unique users in a thread normalized by the thread length decays with thread length, suggesting that thread life is sustained by mutual discussions rather than by independent comments. Automatic sentiment analysis shows that most posts contain negative emotions and the most active users in individual threads express predominantly negative sentiments. It follows that the average emotion of longer threads is more negative and that threads can be sustained by negative comments. An agent based computer simulation model has been used to reproduce several essential characteristics of the analyzed system. The model stresses the role of discussions between users, especially emotionally laden quarrels between supporters of opposite opinions, and represents many observed statistics of the forum.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figure