Structural equation modeling of health belief model influences on exercise behavior among medical center employees

This investigation had two purposes. First, the study was designed to confirm the factor structure of the Health Belief Model Inventory (HBMI) among employees of a medical center. Second, a causal model was developed and tested using HBMI components to predict exercise behavior;Data were collected from 511 employees of a regional medical center. Analysis of the data included (1) confirmatory factor analysis of the proposed model including benefits, barriers, susceptibility, social influences, cues to action, and perceived physical ability. (2) structural equation modeling of the relationship between these factors and exercise behavior;Confirmatory factor analysis of the HBMI revealed relatively stable factor structure for benefits, susceptibility, social influences, cues to action, and perceived physical ability. Barriers was somewhat less unidimensional and, although the goodness of fit was improved by trimming some items, it continued to be the poorest fitting factor in the model;The structural equation modeling of exercise behavior used the HBMI constructs as predictors and minutes per week and weeks of exercise as indicators in a multiple indicators-multiple causes analysis. Susceptibility was negatively associated with exercise behavior while Cues to Action and Perceived Physical Ability were positively associated. Benefits, Barriers, and Social Influences were nonsignificant in their contributions to the model;When high exertion subjects were compared with low exertion subjects, some differences emerged. The high exertion group displayed negative path coefficients for Susceptibility and positive coefficients for Cues to Action and Perceived Physical Ability. The low exertion group displayed negative path coefficients for Susceptibility and Social Influences and a positive coefficient for Cues to Action;Results of this study substantiate the addition of Perceived Physical Ability as a component of the model, at least among high exertion subjects. This model\u27s overall ability to predict exercise behavior was substantially less than that achieved in a previous application of the HBMI instrument used in this study

Frequency and informativity of phonological input directed to children in the first four years of life

Information theory characterizes how signals are optimized for transmission from source to receiver across noisy channels, yet little is known about how these principles manifest when the receiver's capabilities change over time. Using child-directed speech as a natural experiment, we analyzed >7.5 million phones in North American English caregiver speech to children aged 3-44 months (N=218) from the CHILDES database. We found that while the relative frequency of individual phones remained stable over this developmental time period, phonological informativity increased from early infancy (3-8 months) through toddlerhood (27-32 months), before plateauing in the preschool years. This result suggests that speech directed to children sounds less redundant, with a phonological structure that is harder to predict in context, as children progress through early childhood. Our findings demonstrate how linguistic signals may be optimized to accommodate receiver (child) characteristics, with implications for both general principles of information transmission and theories of how children carve out linguistic representations and patterns from limited, noisy input

Can automated vocal analyses over child-centered audio recordings be used to predict speech-language development?

Understanding how children's spontaneous language behavior relates to standardized metrics of language development remains a crucial challenge in developmental science, particularly given the time and resources required for many traditional lab-based assessments. This study investigates whether automated analysis of naturalistic, child-centered audio recordings can index the developmental trajectory of speech-language abilities. Using a longitudinal design following N=130 preschoolers, we employed deep learning methods to compute Canonical Proportion - a theoretically-motivated metric that reflects both speech motor control development and phonological representation building - from naturalistic, child-centered audio recordings at age 3 years. Canonical proportion measures significantly predicted multiple dimensions of speech-language development longitudinally, formally assessed in the lab one year later at age 4. The strongest relationships were found for consonant articulation skill and vocabulary size, suggesting that early speech production patterns may moderately index numerous later facets of language development. These findings outline a potential relationship between children's spontaneous, everyday language behavior and more traditional language development metrics, while demonstrating the potential for automated measures to expand and diversify research in developmental science

How to vocode: Using channel vocoders for cochlear-implant research.

The channel vocoder has become a useful tool to understand the impact of specific forms of auditory degradation-particularly the spectral and temporal degradation that reflect cochlear-implant processing. Vocoders have many parameters that allow researchers to answer questions about cochlear-implant processing in ways that overcome some logistical complications of controlling for factors in individual cochlear implant users. However, there is such a large variety in the implementation of vocoders that the term vocoder is not specific enough to describe the signal processing used in these experiments. Misunderstanding vocoder parameters can result in experimental confounds or unexpected stimulus distortions. This paper highlights the signal processing parameters that should be specified when describing vocoder construction. The paper also provides guidance on how to determine vocoder parameters within perception experiments, given the experimenters goals and research questions, to avoid common signal processing mistakes. Throughout, we will assume that experimenters are interested in vocoders with the specific goal of better understanding cochlear implants

Imagining International Justice in Post-Genocide Cambodia (abstract)

Through an innovative student-faculty collaborative research externship program supported by the Ohio University Center for Law, Justice & Culture, several undergraduate students spent the summer of 2014 in Cambodia conducting independent ethnographic research on issues of law, memory, and justice in the aftermath of the Khmer Rouge genocide. Utilizing the students’ research in Cambodia, this proposed panel session presents three case studies for a conversation regarding how ethnographic methods can inform transitional justice mechanisms by emphasizing local experiences. Much of the research is in light of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), a hybrid tribunal that began in 2007 to try senior leaders of the Khmer Rouge and those deemed most responsible for crimes committed between 1975 and 1979. Collectively, the projects explore connections between international justice and contemporary Cambodian society, including how international justice mechanisms produce global legal consciousness, how this consciousness is claimed and contested by local actors, and how legal categories shape collective identity, memories of the past, and imaginations of the future. The research projects reveal a spectrum of issues related to law, memory, and justice. One of the projects discusses the politics of the word “genocide” as it is used in the Cambodian case, drawing upon the experiences and perceptions of the Cham Muslim minority and Case 002/02 of the ECCC. Another project explores representations of victimhood at the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocidal Crimes as they manifest in debates surrounding a new, ECCC reparations-related memorial on the site. The last project investigates the politics of the cultural production, representation, and translation in genocide exhibitions at three contrasting memorial museums across Cambodia

The vectorization of a ray tracing program for image generation

Ray tracing is a widely used method for producing realistic computer generated images. Ray tracing involves firing an imaginary ray from a view point, through a point on an image plane, into a three dimensional scene. The intersections of the ray with the objects in the scene determines what is visible at the point on the image plane. This process must be repeated many times, once for each point (commonly called a pixel) in the image plane. A typical image contains more than a million pixels making this process computationally expensive. A traditional ray tracing program processes one ray at a time. In such a serial approach, as much as ninety percent of the execution time is spent computing the intersection of a ray with the surface in the scene. With the CYBER 205, many rays can be intersected with all the bodies im the scene with a single series of vector operations. Vectorization of this intersection process results in large decreases in computation time. The CADLAB's interest in ray tracing stems from the need to produce realistic images of mechanical parts. A high quality image of a part during the design process can increase the productivity of the designer by helping him visualize the results of his work. To be useful in the design process, these images must be produced in a reasonable amount of time. This discussion will explain how the ray tracing process was vectorized and gives examples of the images obtained

The Making and Breaking of a Language: The French and Spanish Effect upon the Catalan Regional Language

Almost four hundred years ago, the French and Spanish governments divided the Catalan border regions located between their respective countries. The subsequent centuries have seen the expansion and development of the Catalan language in Spain and the demise of the Catalan language in France, where it has nearly deteriorated to disuse. Is this a reflection upon the French and Spanish culture or was it simply governmental policy? If so, what did the central governments of Madrid and Paris do in the centuries following the division that resulted in this contrasting development of Catalan? What effect did the usage of Catalan in governmental relations, schools, and quotidian life have on its discontinuance, its prospering? How does one measure the vitality of a regional language? This study, rooted in Grenoble and Whaley\u27s 1998 systemization of endangered language prospects, Toward a typology of language endangerment, will focus upon several categories such as governmental intervention, economic strength, religious involvement, but particularly the consequences that the unique French and Spanish cultures have had upon the regional language Catalan