Societal Change and Values in Arab Communities in Israel: Intergenerational and Rural–Urban Comparisons

This study tested and extended Greenfield’s theory of social change and human development to adolescent development in Arab communities in Israel undergoing rapid social change. The theory views sociodemographic changes—such as contact with an ethnically diverse urban setting and spread of technology—as driving changes in cultural values. In one research design, we compared three generations, high school girls, their mothers, and their grandmothers, in their responses to value-assessment scenarios. In a second research design, we compared girls going to high school in an ethnically diverse city with girls going to school in a village. As predicted by the theory, a t test and ANOVA revealed that both urban life and membership in the youngest generation were significantly related to more individualistic and gender-egalitarian values. Regression analysis and a bootstrapping mediation analysis showed that the mechanism of change in both cases was possession of mobile technologies

All in the mind? : psychological, social and religious predictors of civic volunteerism among churchgoers in England

A number of studies have shown links between volunteerism and a range of sociological and religious variables, mostly based on work from the USA. This study of volunteering among 5220 lay Anglicans in England tested the idea that individual differences in personality could predict civic participation even after allowing for the effects of socio-demographic and religious variables on civic participation. Extraversion significantly increased the probability of civic participation, and the number of different areas of activity among those who did participate. Emotional stability (Neuroticism scale) also significantly increased the chances of volunteering, but not the number of areas of activity among participants. Tender- versus tough-mindedness (Psychoticism scale) had no influence on civic participation in what was a generally tender-minded sample. The results suggest that while socio-demographic factors may affect the opportunities for civic participation, personality and theological orientation may affect the propensity of individuals to participate

Extended Timed Up and Go assessment as a clinical indicator of cognitive state in Parkinson\u27s disease

Objective: To evaluate a modified extended Timed Up and Go (extended-TUG) assessment against a panel of validated clinical assessments, as an indicator of Parkinson’s disease (PD) severity and cognitive impairment. Methods: Eighty-seven participants with idiopathic PD were sequentially recruited from a Movement Disorders Clinic. An extended-TUG assessment was employed which required participants to stand from a seated position, walk in a straight line for 7 metres, turn 180 degrees and then return to the start, in a seated position. The extended-TUG assessment duration was correlated to a panel of clinical assessments, including the Unified Parkinson’s Disease Rating Scale (MDS-UPDRS), Quality of Life (PDQ-39), Scales for Outcomes in Parkinson’s disease (SCOPA-Cog), revised Addenbrooke’s Cognitive Index (ACE-R) and Barratt’s Impulsivity Scale 11 (BIS-11). Results: Extended-TUG time was significantly correlated to MDS-UPDRS III score and to SCOPA-Cog, ACE-R (p\u3c0.001) and PDQ-39 scores (p\u3c0.01). Generalized linear models determined the extended-TUG to be a sole variable in predicting ACE-R or SCOPA-Cog scores. Patients in the fastest extended-TUG tertile were predicted to perform 8.3 and 13.4 points better in the SCOPA-Cog and ACE-R assessments, respectively, than the slowest group. Patients who exceeded the dementia cut-off scores with these instruments exhibited significantly longer extended-TUG times. Conclusions: Extended-TUG performance appears to be a useful indicator of cognition as well as motor function and quality of life in PD, and warrants further evaluation as a first line assessment tool to monitor disease severity and response to treatment. Poor extended-TUG performance may identify patients without overt cognitive impairment form whom cognitive assessment is needed

Changes in structural network topology correlate with severity of hallucinatory behavior in Parkinson's disease

Inefficient integration between bottom-up visual input and higher order visual processing regions is implicated in visual hallucinations in Parkinson's disease (PD). Here, we investigated white matter contributions to this perceptual imbalance hypothesis. Twenty-nine PD patients were assessed for hallucinatory behavior. Hallucination severity was correlated to connectivity strength of the network using the network-based statistic approach. The results showed that hallucination severity was associated with reduced connectivity within a subnetwork that included the majority of the diverse club. This network showed overall greater between-module scores compared with nodes not associated with hallucination severity. Reduced between-module connectivity in the lateral occipital cortex, insula, and pars orbitalis and decreased within-module connectivity in the prefrontal, somatosensory, and primary visual cortices were associated with hallucination severity. Conversely, hallucination severity was associated with increased between- and within-module connectivity in the orbitofrontal and temporal cortex, as well as regions comprising the dorsal attentional and default mode network. These results suggest that hallucination severity is associated with marked alterations in structural network topology with changes in participation along the perceptual hierarchy. This may result in the inefficient transfer of information that gives rise to hallucinations in PD. Author SummaryInefficient integration of information between external stimuli and internal perceptual predictions may lead to misperceptions or visual hallucinations in Parkinson's disease (PD). In this study, we show that hallucinatory behavior in PD patients is associated with marked alterations in structural network topology. Severity of hallucinatory behavior was associated with decreased connectivity in a large subnetwork that included the majority of the diverse club, nodes with a high number of between-module connections. Furthermore, changes in between-module connectivity were found across brain regions involved in visual processing, top-down prediction centers, and endogenous attention, including the occipital, orbitofrontal, and posterior cingulate cortex. Together, these findings suggest that impaired integration across different sides across different perceptual processing regions may result in inefficient transfer of information

An analytical framework to nowcast well-being using mobile phone data

An intriguing open question is whether measurements made on Big Data recording human activities can yield us high-fidelity proxies of socio-economic development and well-being. Can we monitor and predict the socio-economic development of a territory just by observing the behavior of its inhabitants through the lens of Big Data? In this paper, we design a data-driven analytical framework that uses mobility measures and social measures extracted from mobile phone data to estimate indicators for socio-economic development and well-being. We discover that the diversity of mobility, defined in terms of entropy of the individual users' trajectories, exhibits (i) significant correlation with two different socio-economic indicators and (ii) the highest importance in predictive models built to predict the socio-economic indicators. Our analytical framework opens an interesting perspective to study human behavior through the lens of Big Data by means of new statistical indicators that quantify and possibly "nowcast" the well-being and the socio-economic development of a territory

Emotions, Demographics and Sociability in Twitter Interactions

The social connections people form online affect the quality of information they receive and their online experience. Although a host of socioeconomic and cognitive factors were implicated in the formation of offline social ties, few of them have been empirically validated, particularly in an online setting. In this study, we analyze a large corpus of geo-referenced messages, or tweets, posted by social media users from a major US metropolitan area. We linked these tweets to US Census data through their locations. This allowed us to measure emotions expressed in the tweets posted from an area, the structure of social connections, and also use that area's socioeconomic characteristics in analysis. %We extracted the structure of online social interactions from the people mentioned in tweets from that area. We find that at an aggregate level, places where social media users engage more deeply with less diverse social contacts are those where they express more negative emotions, like sadness and anger. Demographics also has an impact: these places have residents with lower household income and education levels. Conversely, places where people engage less frequently but with diverse contacts have happier, more positive messages posted from them and also have better educated, younger, more affluent residents. Results suggest that cognitive factors and offline characteristics affect the quality of online interactions. Our work highlights the value of linking social media data to traditional data sources, such as US Census, to drive novel analysis of online behavior.Comment: International Conference on the Web and Social Media (ICWSM2016

Capturing the Visitor Profile for a Personalized Mobile Museum Experience: an Indirect Approach

An increasing number of museums and cultural institutions around the world use personalized, mostly mobile, museum guides to enhance visitor experiences. However since a typical museum visit may last a few minutes and visitors might only visit once, the personalization processes need to be quick and efficient, ensuring the engagement of the visitor. In this paper we investigate the use of indirect profiling methods through a visitor quiz, in order to provide the visitor with specific museum content. Building on our experience of a first study aimed at the design, implementation and user testing of a short quiz version at the Acropolis Museum, a second parallel study was devised. This paper introduces this research, which collected and analyzed data from two environments: the Acropolis Museum and social media (i.e. Facebook). Key profiling issues are identified, results are presented, and guidelines towards a generalized approach for the profiling needs of cultural institutions are discussed

Expanding the spectrum of impulse control disorders in Parkinson's disease: the phenomenology of sweet craving

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityBackground: The recognized spectrum of impulse control disorders in Parkinson’s disease (PD) includes pathologic gambling, hypersexuality, compulsive buying, and binge eating, and is commonly related to exposure to dopamine agonist medications. Sweet craving in the general population is a phenomenon that is closely linked to several factors, including poor impulse control. Craving for sweets, though recognized to occur in PD, has not previously been studied. Methods: First, patients with idiopathic PD and normal controls who reported craving sweets completed craving questionnaires (CQ), taste threshold testing, assessment of mood symptoms and olfactory testing. CQ scores were correlated with these results and other demographic information. A pathologic craving score was identified as the 75th percentile of the mean CQ score for all PD patients. Second, patients with PD and controls completed a series of questionnaires addressing the presence of a variety of impulse control disorders and sweet craving to determine the prevalence of sweet craving in PD and disease and medication-related factors that are associated with each. Results: Craving for sweets is present in about 5.5% of patients with idiopathic PD. Similar to the determinants of other ICDs, determinants of sweet craving include female gender (p=0.0001), decreased olfactory function (t-test: p=0.0001; fisher’s exact method: comparing QSIT scores of 0 and 2 (p=0.0179), 0 and 3 (p=0.0182)), self-reported current or past history of depression (p=0.048) and obsessive-compulsive traits (p=0.044), higher Hoehn & Yahr staging (p=0.0001; fisher’s exact method: no significance), younger onset of disease (p=0.015), and longer duration of disease (p=0.003). Conclusions: Craving for sweets in PD is similar in its phenomenology to other recognized ICDs in this population of patients. Though the potential implications of this behavior may be less hazardous than those of other pathologic behaviors, it broadens the spectrum of ICDs that should be recognized in PD and discussed with patients