How Not to Get Away with Murder: Turning Reality into Fiction

Undergraduate Performign Arts- Fil

School Design to Promote Physical Activity

Increasing children’s physical activity (PA) at school is a national focus to address childhood obesity. Research has demonstrated associations between school built environments and students’ PA, but has lacked a comprehensive synthesis of evidence. Chapter 1 presents new evidence-, theory-, and practice-informed school design guidelines, including evidence substantiality ratings, to promote PA in school communities. These guidelines delineate strategies for school designers, planners, and educators to create K-12 school environments conducive to PA. They also engage public health scientists in needed transdisciplinary perspectives. There have been few longitudinal studies to verify causal relationships between the school built environment and PA. Chapter 2 presents results from a natural experiment with objective PA-related measures before and after a move to a new K-5 school designed based on the Chapter 1 guidelines. The study hypothesized that the school would have desirable impacts on students’ sedentary behaviors and PA. The intervention school group was compared longitudinally with a demographically-similar group at 2 control schools. School-time analyses showed that the intervention school design had positive impact on accumulation of sedentary time, and time in light PA, likely due to movement-promoting classroom design. Studies of built environment impacts on human behaviors and health have presented challenges in control of confounding effects. Chapter 3 presents results from experiments using an agent based model (ABM) to simulate population samples of children and to quantify the impact of a single design intervention, dynamic furniture in school, on obesity and overweight prevalence over time. Results of computational experiments showed that there could be some desirable population impact among girls with low PA profiles. Chapter 4 places the work presented in Chapters 1-3 in a larger context. Via exploration of theories of space as a social phenomenon, of design as a discipline with human purpose, and of limitations of current public health built environment studies, the investigator proposes key strategies toward achieving substantial unrealized potential to design our built environments to achieve health

Active Video Gaming Compared to Unstructured, Outdoor Play in Children: Measurements of Estimated Energy Expenditure and Measured Percent Time in Moderate-to-Vigorous Physical Activity

It is recommended that children and adolescents participate in \u3e 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) per day. Despite the current recommendations and positive health benefits, many children and adolescents still do not engage in regular physical activity (PA). One challenge for assisting children in becoming more active is sedentary screen-based activities (SBAs), such as watching television (TV), using computers, and playing sedentary video games (VGs), as SBAs may compete with time for being physically active in children. One modification to sedentary VGs that may increase PA in children is to alter them so that the VGs actually provide an option to engage in PA. These types of VGs are called active video games (AVG) or Exer-gaming. Studies have found that playing AVGs can produce the estimated energy expenditure (EE) comparable to moderate-intensity structured PAs, such as moderate-intensity treadmill walking and self-paced walking, but significantly less EE as compared to vigorous-intensity PAs, such as running. To determine if AVGs can provide a good source of PA in young children, it is important to note that young children acquire much of their PA through play rather than structured PA. Children’s play consists of short intermittent bouts of activity with frequent rest periods. Children are more active in unstructured, outdoor play areas where they can freely engage in activities requiring running, jumping and chasing. Thus to determine if AVGs are a good source of PA for young children, AVGs should be compared to unstructured play, rather than structured PA. Only one study has compared AVGs to unstructured PA in children and has used pedometry to assess PA. Thus, the purpose of this investigation was to compare AVG to unstructured outdoor play, as assessed by accelerometery and direct observation (DO), using a within-subjects design

Equilibrium and Transport in a Fully Ionized Gas

A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of PhilosophySummary -- Chapter I Statistical Mechanical Theory : A. Classical Theory; B. Quantum Theory ; C. Phase Space Representation of Quantum Mechanics ; D. Spin and Statistics ; E. Equilibrium -- Chapter II Transport Phenomena in a System Composed of Charged Particles : A. Hamiltonian Description ; B. Maxwell's Equations ; C. Hydromagnetic Equations -- Chapter III Equilibrium Properties of a Fully Ionized Gas: A. Classical Theory ; B. Quantum Theory -- Chapter IV The Effective Potential : A. Introduction ; B. The Effective Potential ; C. Asymptotic Solutions -- Chapter V Kinetic Theory Integrals : A. Introduction; B. Asymptotic Theory of Scattering ; C. Numerical Evaluation of Stieltjes Integrals -- Acknowledgements -- Appendix I McCoy's Theorem -- Appendix II The Operator -- Appendix III Phase Space Treatment of the Simple Harmonic Oscillator -- BibliographyYe

A case study of the drivers and barriers of implementation of the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) within a rural sub-district in South Africa

Exclusive breastfeeding is recognised as a key child survival strategy in the South African context and the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) accreditation for maternity facilities is recommended by the National Department of Health (NDOH) as crucial to improving the standards of care required for optimal support for mothers to successfully breastfeed. The Cape Winelands District in the Western Cape is a region that needs to improve the accreditation rate for its facilities. Key informant interviews were conducted within rural maternity services in the Breede Valley Sub-District. Interviews identified the barriers and enablers related to the health system building block 'information'. An additional goal was to examine communication and how information was disseminated throughout all levels of the health system to achieve the aim of successful policy implementation of the BFHI. Findings demonstrated that personal experiences of healthcare personnel may impact on the information offered to mothers. In addition, the operational manager of a facility possessed significant influence to ensure a policy was implemented and adhered to. Recommendations include advocating for education promoting breastfeeding in all healthcare programmes especially during the antenatal period by providing consistent, non-conflicting messages. Management should provide vision and strong leadership around implementation of the BFHI policy and ensure effective communication strategies around significant changes in the policy. Implementing BFHI is a complex context specific activity and to ensure optimal implementation of "Step three" (inform pregnant women of the benefits and management of breastfeeding) it is necessary to examine this particular area by using the recommendations as a framework in order to probe further

A systems analysis of neural connectivity and functionality in Caenorhabditis elegans

Part I considers the stereotypic patterns of synaptic connectivity in neural circuits, referred to as wiring specificity. Two aspects of wiring specificity are lamina specificity - placing synaptic partners in close spatial proximity - and synaptic specificity - making the appropriate synaptic connections among many physically adjacent neurons. Combinatorial expression patterns of surface proteins could be used to uniquely label neurons for the purposes of synaptic specificity. To test this model in the worm, the C. elegans nerve ring was volumetrically reconstructed from serial sectioned legacy electron micrographs, which provides detailed spatial and morphological information of neural processes in the nerve ring. Comparing the spatial data with the synaptic wiring diagram shows that the C. elegans nerve ring exhibits both lamina-like specificity and synaptic specificity. Combinatorial expression patterns of CAM genes in nerve ring neurons were analyzed. If a few key conditions regarding gene expression are satisfied, then the number of known combinatorial CAM expression patterns is sufficient to uniquely label neurons and can account for more than 90% of the observed synaptic specificity. Part II develops a new rotatable microfluidic device for simultaneously imaging calcium activity in bilateral neuron pairs within the same animal. Typically when imaging calcium activity in C. elegans, only the left or right side of the animal is imaged. This is due to the natural orientation of the worm which places neurons on the left and right side in different focal planes. Our new device allows the animal to be rotated, placing cells on the right and left side of the animal in the same focal plane