Children\u27s Physical Activity and the Built Environment: The Impact of Neighbourhood Opportunities and Contextual Environmental Exposure

Childhood obesity rates have risen dramatically since 1981, in part due to decreased physical activity (PA) levels. Research suggests that PA is influenced in part by an individual’s exposure to and engagement with their built environment. Using a multi-tool protocol, this thesis examines how (a) neighbourhood opportunities facilitate or constrain children’s moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) and (b) contextual environmental exposure facilitates or constrains children’s MVPA. Results suggest that children’s MVPA is influenced by their built environment, but more so by the contextual environments that they are directly exposed to rather than their overall neighbourhood settings. Children are mobile and unlikely to never leave their neighbourhood, especially considering that many parents drive their children to activities outside their neighbourhood. Examining contextual environmental exposure is a novel approach that can be used by researchers to clarify the environments that exert an influence on children’s MVPA

Finding Business "Idols": A New Model to Accelerate Start-Ups

Explores a novel approach to finding high-tech entrepreneurial enterprises that is transforming how high-tech entrepreneurs are identified, their businesses launched, and the growth of their operations accelerated

An Intelligent Case-Based Help Desk Providing Web-Based Support for EOSDIS Customers

This paper describes a project that extends the concept of help desk automation by offering World Wide Web access to a case-based help desk. It explores the use of case-based reasoning and cognitive engineering models to create an 'intelligent' help desk system, one that learns. It discusses the AutoHelp architecture for such a help desk and summarizes the technologies used to create a help desk for NASA data users

Examining How Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status, Geographic Accessibility, and Informational Accessibility Influence the Uptake of a Free Population-Level Physical Activity Intervention for Children

Purpose: To evaluate the uptake of ACT-i-Pass (G5AP), a physical activity (PA) intervention that provides free access to PA opportunities, and to understand the extent to which the intervention provides equitable access to children. Design: This study evaluates the differences in uptake (ie, enrollment) by comparing postal codes of registrants with the postal codes of all eligible children. Setting: Children were provided the opportunity to register for the G5AP during the 2014 to 2015 school year in London, Canada. Participants: The population of grade 5 students in London who registered for the G5AP (n = 1484) and did not register (n = 1589). Intervention: The G5AP offered grade 5 students free access to select PA facilities/programs during 2014 to 2015 school year. Measures: Measures included G5AP registration status, method of recruitment, distance between home and the nearest facility, and neighborhood socioeconomic status. Analysis: Getis-Ord Gi* and multilevel logistic regression were used to analyze these data. Results: There were significant differences in the uptake of the G5AP: residing in neighborhoods of high income (odds ratio [OR] = 1.062, P = .029) and high proportion of recent immigrants (OR = 1.036, P = .001) increased the likelihood of G5AP registration. Children who were recruited actively were significantly more likely to register for the G5AP (OR = 2.444, P \u3c .001). Conclusion: To increase the uptake of a PA intervention, children need to be actively recruited. Interactive presentations provide children with increased access to information about both the program and its nuances that cannot be communicated as effectively through passive methods

Built environment influences of children’s physical activity: Examining differences by neighbourhood size and sex

Neighbourhoods can facilitate or constrain moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) among children by providing or restricting opportunities for MVPA. However, there is no consensus on how to define a child’s neighbourhood. This study examines the influence of the neighbourhood built environment on objectively measured MVPA among 435 children (aged 9–14 years) in London (ON, Canada). As there is no consensus on how to delineate a child’s neighbourhood, a geographic information system was used to generate measures of the neighbourhood built environment at two buffer sizes (500 m and 800 m) around each child’s home. Linear regression models with robust standard errors (cluster) were used to analyze the relationship between built environment characteristics and average daily MVPA during non-school hours on weekdays. Sex-stratified models assessed sex-specific relationships. When accounting for individual and neighbourhood socio-demographic variables, park space and multi-use path space were found to influence children’s MVPA. Sex-stratified models found significant associations between MVPA and park space, with the 800 m buffer best explaining boys’ MVPA and the 500 m buffer best explaining girls’ MVPA. Findings emphasize that, when designing built environments, programs, and policies to facilitate physical activity, it is important to consider that the size of the neighbourhood influencing a child’s physical activity may differ according to sex

Rating the Financial Health of U.S. Production Agriculture using Synthetic Credit Rating

Agribusiness, Agricultural and Food Policy, Production Economics,

Optimizing Tracking Software for a Time Projection Chamber

International research collaborations will be using accelerators in the U.S. and Europe to produce and detect t5 phase transition in high-density nuclear matter called the Quark-Gluon Plasma, formed in collisions between pairs of A=200 nuclei, for projectiles with kinetic energies large compared to their rest mass energies. Each collaboration will use time projection chambers (TPC) to track thousands ofsecondary charged particles formed in the aftermath ofeach central primary collision. Creating and optimizing TPC tracking software is difficultinsuch a high multiplicity environment, particularly for particles with a low momentum (below 300 MeV/C). A thigh momenta, energy loss is low enough for particle-tracking to use unchanging helix parameters. However, at low momenta, tracking requires changing helix parameters as energy is lost along the path. Tracking software, written for particles of high momenta, may identify the track of a single low momentum particle as two or three separate tracks. This tracking problem was corrected by changing the main tracking algorithm to merge together these two-or-three fragmented, low-momentum particle tracks. Event displays were found exceedingly helpful in diagnosing the problems and optimizing the algorithms

Exceptional endocrine profiles characterise the meerkat: sex, status, and reproductive patterns.

In vertebrates, reproductive endocrine concentrations are strongly differentiated by sex, with androgen biases typifying males and estrogen biases typifying females. These sex differences can be reduced in female-dominant species; however, even the most masculinised of females have less testosterone (T) than do conspecific males. To test if aggressively dominant, female meerkats (Suricata suricatta) may be hormonally masculinised, we measured serum androstenedione (A4), T and estradiol (E2) in both sexes and social classes, during both 'baseline' and reproductive events. Relative to resident males, dominant females had greater A4, equivalent T and greater E2 concentrations. Males, whose endocrine values did not vary by social status, experienced increased T during reproductive forays, linking T to sexual behaviour, but not social status. Moreover, substantial E2 concentrations in male meerkats may facilitate their role as helpers. In females, dominance status and pregnancy magnified the unusual concentrations of measured sex steroids. Lastly, faecal androgen metabolites replicated the findings derived from serum, highlighting the female bias in total androgens. Female meerkats are thus strongly hormonally masculinised, possibly via A4's bioavailability for conversion to T. These raised androgen concentrations may explain female aggressiveness in this species and give dominant breeders a heritable mechanism for their daughters' competitive edge