Stay and Play with Mickey Mouse: Familiar Characters Increase Children’s Exploratory Play

When children are introduced to a novel toy, they explore to discover how the toy works, but do not always discover all of the functions (Bonawitz et al., 2011). Research has shown that children prefer objects with a familiar character on them (Danovitch & Mills, 2014). This study investigates whether the presence of a familiar character’s image on a novel toy encourages exploratory play. Four- and 5-year-olds (n = 40) were presented with a novel toy, containing 5 different functions, that either displayed an image of their favorite familiar character or an image of that character’s color scheme. Children were given up to 5 minutes to play with the toy. Children’s play was coded for the number of functions they discovered and how long they played with the toy. Results showed no significant difference between conditions for number of functions discovered. However, children who were given a toy with their favorite character’s image on it spent significantly more time exploring the toy than children who had a toy with the character’s color scheme on it. These findings suggest that seeing a familiar character on an object promotes children’s exploration of that object.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1010/thumbnail.jp

Loneliness and sleep: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Despite the mounting evidence linking loneliness with health, the mechanisms underlying this relationship remain obscure. This systematic review and meta-analysis on the association between loneliness and one potential mechanism—sleep—identified 27 relevant articles. Loneliness correlated with self-reported sleep disturbance (r = .28, 95% confidence interval (.24, .33)) but not duration, across a diverse set of samples and measures. There was no evidence supporting age or gender as moderators or suggesting publication bias. The longitudinal relationship between loneliness and sleep remains unclear. Loneliness is related to sleep disturbance, but research is necessary to determine directionality, examine the influence of other factors, and speak to causality

Relation between falciparum malaria and bacteraemia in Kenyan children: a population-based, case-control study and a longitudinal study.

BACKGROUND: Many investigators have suggested that malaria infection predisposes individuals to bacteraemia. We tested this hypothesis with mendelian randomisation studies of children with the malaria-protective phenotype of sickle-cell trait (HbAS). METHODS: This study was done in a defined area around Kilifi District Hospital, Kilifi, Kenya. We did a matched case-control study to identify risk factors for invasive bacterial disease, in which cases were children aged 3 months to 13 years who were admitted to hospital with bacteraemia between Sept 16, 1999, and July 31, 2002. We aimed to match two controls, by age, sex, location, and time of recruitment, for every case. We then did a longitudinal case-control study to assess the relation between HbAS and invasive bacterial disease as malaria incidence decreased. Cases were children aged 0-13 years who were admitted to hospital with bacteraemia between Jan 1, 1999, and Dec 31, 2007. Controls were born in the study area between Jan 1, 2006, and June 23, 2009. Finally, we modelled the annual incidence of bacteraemia against the community prevalence of malaria during 9 years with Poisson regression. RESULTS: In the matched case-control study, we recruited 292 cases-we recruited two controls for 236, and one for the remaining 56. Sickle-cell disease, HIV, leucocyte haemozoin pigment, and undernutrition were positively associated with bacteraemia and HbAS was strongly negatively associated with bacteraemia (odds ratio 0·36; 95% CI 0·20-0·65). In the longitudinal case-control study, we assessed data from 1454 cases and 10,749 controls. During the study period, the incidence of admission to hospital with malaria per 1000 child-years decreased from 28·5 to 3·45, with a reduction in protection afforded by HbAS against bacteraemia occurring in parallel (p=0·0008). The incidence of hospital admissions for bacteraemia per 1000 child-years also decreased from 2·59 to 1·45. The bacteraemia incidence rate ratio associated with malaria parasitaemia was 6·69 (95% CI 1·31-34·3) and, at a community parasite prevalence of 29% in 1999, 62% (8·2-91) of bacteraemia cases were attributable to malaria. INTERPRETATION: Malaria infection strongly predisposes individuals to bacteraemia and can account for more than half of all cases of bacteraemia in malaria-endemic areas. Interventions to control malaria will have a major additional benefit by reducing the burden of invasive bacterial disease. FUNDING: Wellcome Trust

Vaporous marketing: Uncovering pervasive electronic cigarette advertisements on twitter

Background Twitter has become the wild-west of marketing and promotional strategies for advertisement agencies. Electronic cigarettes have been heavily marketed across Twitter feeds, offering discounts, kid-friendly flavors, algorithmically generated false testimonials, and free samples. Methods All electronic cigarette keyword related tweets from a 10% sample of Twitter spanning January 2012 through December 2014 (approximately 850,000 total tweets) were identified and categorized as Automated or Organic by combining a keyword classification and a machine trained Human Detection algorithm. A sentiment analysis using Hedonometrics was performed on Organic tweets to quantify the change in consumer sentiments over time. Commercialized tweets were topically categorized with key phrasal pattern matching. Results The overwhelming majority (80%) of tweets were classified as automated or promotional in nature. The majority of these tweets were coded as commercialized (83.65% in 2013), up to 33% of which offered discounts or free samples and appeared on over a billion twitter feeds as impressions. The positivity of Organic (human) classified tweets has decreased over time (5.84 in 2013 to 5.77 in 2014) due to a relative increase in the negative words \u27ban\u27, \u27tobacco\u27, \u27doesn\u27t\u27, \u27drug\u27, \u27against\u27, \u27poison\u27, \u27tax\u27 and a relative decrease in the positive words like \u27haha\u27, \u27good\u27, \u27cool\u27. Automated tweets are more positive than organic (6.17 versus 5.84) due to a relative increase in the marketing words like \u27best\u27, \u27win\u27, \u27buy\u27, \u27sale\u27, \u27health\u27, \u27discount\u27 and a relative decrease in negative words like \u27bad\u27, \u27hate\u27, \u27stupid\u27, \u27don\u27t\u27. Conclusions Due to the youth presence on Twitter and the clinical uncertainty of the long term health complications of electronic cigarette consumption, the protection of public health warrants scrutiny and potential regulation of social media marketing

Escaping stars from young low-N clusters

With the use of N-body calculations the amount and properties of escaping stars from low-N (N = 100 and 1000) young embedded star clusters prior to gas expulsion are studied over the first 5 Myr of their existence. Besides the number of stars also different initial radii and binary populations are examined as well as virialised and collapsing clusters. It is found that these clusters can loose substantial amounts (up to 20%) of stars within 5 Myr with considerable velocities up to more than 100 km/s. Even with their mean velocities between 2 and 8 km/s these stars will still be travelling between 2 and 30 pc during the 5 Myr. Therefore can large amounts of distributed stars in star-forming regions not necessarily be counted as evidence for the isolated formation of stars.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication by MNRA

Dynamical mass segregation on a very short timescale

We discuss the observations and theory of star cluster formation to argue that clusters form dynamically cool (subvirial) and with substructure. We then perform an ensemble of simulations of cool, clumpy (fractal) clusters and show that they often dynamically mass segregate on timescales far shorter than expected from simple models. The mass segregation comes about through the production of a short-lived, but very dense core. This shows that in clusters like the Orion Nebula Cluster the stars ≥ 4 M ☉ can dynamically mass segregate within the current age of the cluster. Therefore, the observed mass segregation in apparently dynamically young clusters need not be primordial, but could be the result of rapid and violent early dynamical evolution

Who participates in web-assisted tobacco interventions? The quit-primo and national dental practice-based research network hi-quit studies

INTRODUCTION: Smoking is the most preventable cause of death. Although effective, Web-assisted tobacco interventions are underutilized and recruitment is challenging. Understanding who participates in Web-assisted tobacco interventions may help in improving recruitment. OBJECTIVES: To understand characteristics of smokers participating in a Web-assisted tobacco intervention (Decide2Quit.org). METHODS: In addition to the typical Google advertisements, we expanded Decide2Quit.org recruitment to include referrals from medical and dental providers. We assessed how the expanded recruitment of smokers changed the users\u27 characteristics, including comparison with a population-based sample of smokers from the national Behavioral Risk Factors Surveillance Survey (BRFSS). Using a negative binomial regression, we compared demographic and smoking characteristics by recruitment source, in particular readiness to quit and association with subsequent Decide2Quit.org use. RESULTS: The Decide2Quit.org cohort included 605 smokers; the 2010 BRFSS dataset included 69,992. Compared to BRFSS smokers, a higher proportion of Decide2Quit.org smokers were female (65.2% vs 45.7%, P=.001), over age 35 (80.8% vs 67.0%, P=.001), and had some college or were college graduates (65.7% vs 45.9%, P=.001). Demographic and smoking characteristics varied by recruitment; for example, a lower proportion of medical- (22.1%) and dental-referred (18.9%) smokers had set a quit date or had already quit than Google smokers (40.1%, P CONCLUSIONS: Recruitment from clinical practices complimented Google recruitment attracting smokers less motivated to quit and less experienced with Web-assisted tobacco interventions. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00797628; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00797628 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6F3tqz0b3)