Improving Prediction of Real-Time Loneliness and Companionship Type Using Geosocial Features of Personal Smartphone Data

Loneliness is a widely affecting mental health symptom and can be mediated by and co-vary with patterns of social exposure. Using momentary survey and smartphone sensing data collected from 129 Android-using college student participants over three weeks, we (1) investigate and uncover the relations between momentary loneliness experience and companionship type and (2) propose and validate novel geosocial features of smartphone-based Bluetooth and GPS data for predicting loneliness and companionship type in real time. We base our features on intuitions characterizing the quantity and spatiotemporal predictability of an individual's Bluetooth encounters and GPS location clusters to capture personal significance of social exposure scenarios conditional on their temporal distribution and geographic patterns. We examine our features' statistical correlation with momentary loneliness through regression analyses and evaluate their predictive power using a sliding window prediction procedure. Our features achieved significant performance improvement compared to baseline for predicting both momentary loneliness and companionship type, with the effect stronger for the loneliness prediction task. As such we recommend incorporation and further evaluation of our geosocial features proposed in this study in future mental health sensing and context-aware computing applications.This work was supported by Whole Communities—Whole Health, a research grand challenge at the University of Texas at AustinOffice of the VP for Researc

Assessing the impact of tailored biosecurity advice on farmer behaviour and pathogen presence in beef herds in England and Wales

The term ‘biosecurity’ encompasses many measures farmers can take to reduce the risk of pathogen incursion or spread. As the best strategy will vary between settings, veterinarians play an important role in assessing risk and providing advice, but effectiveness requires farmer acceptance and implementation. The aim of this study was to assess the effectiveness of specifically-tailored biosecurity advice packages in reducing endemic pathogen presence on UK beef suckler farms. One hundred and sixteen farms recruited by 10 veterinary practices were followed for three years. Farms were randomly allocated to intervention (receiving specifically-tailored advice, with veterinarians and farmers collaborating to develop an improved biosecurity strategy) or control (receiving general advice) groups. A spreadsheet-based tool was used annually to attribute a score to each farm reflecting risk of entry or spread of bovine viral diarrhoea virus (BVDV), bovine herpesvirus-1 (BHV1), Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis (MAP), Leptospira interrogans serovar hardjo (L. hardjo) and Mycobacterium bovis (M. bovis). Objectives of these analyses were to identify evidence of reduction in risk behaviours during the study, as well as evidence of reductions in pathogen presence, as indications of effectiveness. Risk behaviours and pathogen prevalences were examined across study years, and on intervention compared with control farms, using descriptive statistics and multilevel regression. There were significant reductions in risk scores for all five pathogens, regardless of intervention status, in every study year compared with the outset. Animals on intervention farms were significantly less likely than those on control farms to be seropositive for BVDV in years 2 and 3 and for L. hardjo in year 3 of the study. Variations by study year in animal-level odds of seropositivity to BHV1 or MAP were not associated with farm intervention status. All farms had significantly reduced odds of BHV1 seropositivity in year 2 than at the outset. Variations in farm-level MAP seropositivity were not associated with intervention status. There were increased odds of M. bovis on intervention farms compared with control farms at the end of the study. Results suggest a structured annual risk assessment process, conducted as a collaboration between veterinarian and farmer, is valuable in encouraging improved biosecurity practices. There were some indications, but not conclusive evidence, that tailored biosecurity advice packages have potential to reduce pathogen presence. These findings will inform development of a collaborative approach to biosecurity between veterinarians and farmers, including adoption of cost-effective strategies effective across pathogens

Multi-Modal Data Collection for Measuring Health, Behavior, and Living Environment of Large-Scale Participant Cohorts: Conceptual Framework and Findings from Deployments

As mobile technologies become ever more sensor-rich, portable, and ubiquitous, data captured by smart devices are lending rich insights into users' daily lives with unprecedented comprehensiveness, unobtrusiveness, and ecological validity. A number of human-subject studies have been conducted in the past decade to examine the use of mobile sensing to uncover individual behavioral patterns and health outcomes. While understanding health and behavior is the focus for most of these studies, we find that minimal attention has been placed on measuring personal environments, especially together with other human-centric data modalities. Moreover, the participant cohort size in most existing studies falls well below a few hundred, leaving questions open about the reliability of findings on the relations between mobile sensing signals and human outcomes. To address these limitations, we developed a home environment sensor kit for continuous indoor air quality tracking and deployed it in conjunction with established mobile sensing and experience sampling techniques in a cohort study of up to 1584 student participants per data type for 3 weeks at a major research university in the United States. In this paper, we begin by proposing a conceptual framework that systematically organizes human-centric data modalities by their temporal coverage and spatial freedom. Then we report our study design and procedure, technologies and methods deployed, descriptive statistics of the collected data, and results from our extensive exploratory analyses. Our novel data, conceptual development, and analytical findings provide important guidance for data collection and hypothesis generation in future human-centric sensing studies.This work was supported by Whole Communities—Whole Health, a research grand challenge at the University of Texas at Austin, and National Science Foundation Award SES-1758835.Office of the VP for Researc

Urban hedges: a review of plant species and cultivars for ecosystem service delivery in north-west Europe

Urban hedges provide a number of important ecosystem services (ESs) including microclimate alteration, flood and pollution mitigation, and biodiversity provision, along with some disservices (DSs, e.g. invasiveness, allergenicity). However, hedge plant species differ in their capacity to promote different services, so it is important that the decision to plant hedges is evidence-based. The objectives of this study were thus to (i) to review the role of urban hedges within NW Europe; (ii) review the available literature detailing the ESs and DSs provided by different plant species and cultivars when used as hedge plants; (iii) identify where there is a lack of evidence for certain species or ESs/DSs; and (iv) develop a starting point for a discussion about appropriate species/cultivar selection to deliver multiple ESs, and avoid DSs. Many studies consider biodiversity and air quality ESs. There are significant gaps in the literature relating to rainfall mitigation/flood protection, but also CO2 sequestration, allergenicity and human psychological well-being impact of different species. Additionally, for noise and pollution mitigation studies, a range of methodologies and units are used, making comparisons between hedge species difficult/impossible. A number of common hedge species demonstrated high levels of ESs delivery, including Fagus sylvatica, Crataegus monogyna, Ilex aquifolium and Rosa rugosa. No species surveyed had an entirely negative association with ESs, and most provide at least some benefits in supporting ESs provision (e.g. Viburnum tinus, Laurus nobilis). We created a matrix, in a table form, linking plant species, key plant traits and ESs/DSs, which should make it easier for professionals to choose species best suited to provide multiple benefits, whilst minimising the drawbacks. Our review suggests that the relative contribution of urban hedges to ESs delivery may be under-valued currently, and calls for more research

Assessing fitness-to-practice of overseas-trained health practitioners by Australian registration & accreditation bodies

Assessment of fitness-to-practice of health professionals trained overseas and who wish to practice in Australia is undertaken by a range of organisations. These organisations conduct assessments using a range of methods. However there is very little published about how these organisations conduct their assessments. The purpose of the current paper is to investigate the methods of assessment used by these organisations and the issues associated with conducting these assessments

Can Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi Reduce the Growth of Agricultural Weeds?

BACKGROUND: Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are known for their beneficial effects on plants. However, there is increasing evidence that some ruderal plants, including several agricultural weeds, respond negatively to AMF colonization. Here, we investigated the effect of AMF on the growth of individual weed species and on weed-crop interactions. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: First, under controlled glasshouse conditions, we screened growth responses of nine weed species and three crops to a widespread AMF, Glomus intraradices. None of the weeds screened showed a significant positive mycorrhizal growth response and four weed species were significantly reduced by the AMF (growth responses between -22 and -35%). In a subsequent experiment, we selected three of the negatively responding weed species--Echinochloa crus-galli, Setaria viridis and Solanum nigrum--and analyzed their responses to a combination of three AMF (Glomus intraradices, Glomus mosseae and Glomus claroideum). Finally, we tested whether the presence of a crop (maize) enhanced the suppressive effect of AMF on weeds. We found that the growth of the three selected weed species was also reduced by a combination of AMF and that the presence of maize amplified the negative effect of AMF on the growth of E. crus-galli. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our results show that AMF can negatively influence the growth of some weed species indicating that AMF have the potential to act as determinants of weed community structure. Furthermore, mycorrhizal weed growth reductions can be amplified in the presence of a crop. Previous studies have shown that AMF provide a number of beneficial ecosystem services. Taken together with our current results, the maintenance and promotion of AMF activity may thereby contribute to sustainable management of agroecosystems. However, in order to further the practical and ecological relevance of our findings, additional experiments should be performed under field conditions

Moral courage in the workplace: moving to and from the desire and decision to act

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72135/1/j.1467-8608.2007.00484.x.pd