163 research outputs found
Examining the role of affective states in relation to exercise intentions and participation in extra-curricular exercise classes at university: A repeated measurement observational study
Background: Previous research has shown evidence on the role of affective
states for physical activity behavior. However, there is a lack of research
investigating the interplay between affective states, intentions, and exercise
behavior, especially with respect to maintaining regular exercise over time. The
study aimed to investigate whether post-exercise affective states and changes
in affect during exercise (i) are related to exercise intentions; (ii) moderate the
relationship between intention and subsequent exercise behavior, and (iii)
directly predict future exercise.
Methods: Participants from weekly voluntary sports and gym classes at two
universities were recruited. For 13 weeks, 268 individuals’ (Mage = 24.5 years,
SD = 5.6, 90% students, 67.4% female) class attendance was documented on a
weekly basis. Before and immediately after training, participants self-reported
affective states, including affective valence (Feeling Scale) and perceived
arousal (Felt Arousal Scale). Participants also reported their intention to re attend the class the following week. Mixed-effect linear models and Cox
proportional hazard models were used to examine the relationships between
affective states, change in affective states, re-attendance intentions, and class
re-attention.
Results: Affective valence at the end of training was significantly positively
associated with the intention to re-attend the class on the within-person level
(β = 0.880, p < 0.001) as well as the between-person level (β = 0.831, p < 0.001),
while higher increases of valence during class were related to smaller
intention. For class re-attendance, significant effects of affective states were
only found on the within-person level. A one-point increase on the valence
scale increased the hazard ratio to re-attend by 8.4% (p < 0.05), but this effect was no longer meaningful after adjusting for intention. No moderation of
the relationship between intention and subsequent class re-attendance was
found.
Conclusion: The results suggest that positive affective state immediately after
exercise does not facilitate translation of intentions into subsequent exercise
behavior (i.e., do not close the intention-behavior gap). Rather, affective
valence was found to be an important predictor of exercise intentions but
seemed indirectly related to behavior via intentions. Practitioners should plan
exercise programs that allow for positive affective states especially at the end
of a training
Antecedents and Consequences of Outward Emotional Reactions in Table Tennis
Fritsch J, Finne E, Jekauc D, Zerdila D, Elbe A-M, Hatzigeorgiadis A. Antecedents and Consequences of Outward Emotional Reactions in Table Tennis . Frontiers in Psychology. 2020;11: 578159.The purpose of the present study was to shed light on the behavioral component of emotions by investigating antecedents and consequences of outward emotional reactions during table tennis competitions. With regards to the antecedents of outward emotional reactions, in line with appraisal theories, we considered the importance and the controllability of the situation as two important constructs. Fifteen table tennis matches, involving in total 21 players (7 females) with a mean age of 16.71 (SD = 0.70), were video recorded during the finals of the youth National Championship in Greece. Based on the footage, outward emotional reactions after every point were classified as neutral, positive, or negative. Situational factors in relation to the scoring system, bearing the importance and the controllability of the situation, were formed to assess antecedents of outward emotional reactions. To measure the consequences of outward emotional reactions, the impact on the outcome of the next point was assessed. Generalized linear models with a logit link were computed separately for positive outward emotional reactions after having won a point and negative outward emotional reactions after having lost a point. In general, the results show that while situational factors bearing the importance of the situation could predict positive and negative outward emotional reactions, the effects of situational factors bearing the controllability of the situation were less conclusive. In addition, the results also showed interactive effects between the two constructs for both positive and negative outward emotional reactions. With regard to the consequences of outward emotional reactions, negative and positive outward emotional reactions could not predict the outcome of the next point. To conclude, this study highlights the behavioral component of emotions as a viable alternative to enhance our understanding of the role of emotions in sport
Climate change, private sector and value chains : constraints and adaptation strategies working paper
This work was carried out under the Collaborative Adaptation Research Inititive in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), with financial support from the UK Government's Department for International Development and the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Canada.Understanding how climate change will affect private sector activities and incentives as well as markets is key to understanding the overall economic but also social and environmental impacts of climate change in arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs). The private sector and market work package fosuses on private sector actors as key agents of change, with "private sector" actors defined here in a broad sense, encompassing both smallhoder farmers and large multinational companies. Although those actors are heterogeneous and sometimes have very different rationalities, the core constraints (such as limited access to finance, markets or natural resources) influencing their decision-making are often similar. Moreover, these actors are not acting independently from each other; they interact direclty or indirectly within value chains or through the use of resources and assets. For instance, they compete on the use of labour, land and water
Case study of a method of development of a selection process for community health workers in sub-Saharan Africa
Background
Choosing who should be recruited as a community health worker (CHW) is an important task, for their future performance partly depends on their ability to learn the required knowledge and skills, and their personal attributes. Developing a fair and effective selection process for CHWs is a challenging task, and reports of attempts to do so are rare. This paper describes a five-stage process of development and initial testing of a CHW selection process in two CHW programmes, one in Malawi and one in Ghana, highlighting the lessons learned at each stage and offering recommendations to other CHW programme providers seeking to develop their own selection processes.
Case presentation
The five stages of selection process development were as follows: (1) review an existing selection process, (2) conduct a job analysis, (3) elicit stakeholder opinions, (4) co-design the selection process and (5) test the selection process. Good practice in selection process development from the human resource literature and the principles of co-design were considered throughout. Validity, reliability, fairness, acceptability and feasibility—the determinants of selection process utility—were considered as appropriate during stages 1 to 4 and used to guide the testing in stage 5. The selection methods used by each local team were a written test and a short interview.
Conclusions
Working with stakeholders, including CHWs, helped to ensure the acceptability of the selection processes developed. Expectations of intensiveness—in particular the number of interviewers—needed to be managed as resources for selection are limited, and CHWs reported that any form of interview may be stressful. Testing highlighted the importance of piloting with CHWs to ensure clarity of wording of questions, interviewer training to maximise inter-rater reliability and the provision of guidance to applicants in advance of any selection events. Trade-offs between the different components of selection process utility are also likely to be required. Further refinements and evaluation of predictive validity (i.e. a sixth stage of development) would be recommended before roll-out
Chicken astrovirus (CAstV) molecular studies reveal evidence of multiple past recombination events in sequences originated from clinical samples of white chick syndrome (WCS) in Western Canada
In this study, we aimed to molecularly characterize 14 whole genome sequences of chicken
astrovirus (CAstV) isolated from samples obtained from white chick syndrome (WCS) outbreaks
in Western Canada during the period of 2014–2019. Genome sequence comparisons showed all
these sequences correspond to the novel Biv group from which no confirmed representatives were
published in GenBank. Molecular recombination analyses using recombination detection software
(i.e., RDP5 and SimPlot) and phylogenetic analyses suggest multiple past recombination events in
open reading frame (ORF)1a, ORF1b, and ORF2. Our findings suggest that recombination events
and the accumulation of point mutations may have contributed to the substantial genetic variation
observed in CAstV and evidenced by the current seven antigenic sub-clusters hitherto described.
This is the first paper that describes recombination events in CAstV following analysis of complete
CAstV sequences originated in Canada
LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products
(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in
the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of
science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will
have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is
driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking
an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and
mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at
Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m
effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel
camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second
exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given
night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000
square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5
point-source depth in a single visit in will be (AB). The
project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations
by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg with
, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, ,
covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time
will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a
18,000 deg region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the
anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to . The
remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a
Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products,
including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion
objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures
available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie
Measurement of the cosmic ray spectrum above eV using inclined events detected with the Pierre Auger Observatory
A measurement of the cosmic-ray spectrum for energies exceeding
eV is presented, which is based on the analysis of showers
with zenith angles greater than detected with the Pierre Auger
Observatory between 1 January 2004 and 31 December 2013. The measured spectrum
confirms a flux suppression at the highest energies. Above
eV, the "ankle", the flux can be described by a power law with
index followed by
a smooth suppression region. For the energy () at which the
spectral flux has fallen to one-half of its extrapolated value in the absence
of suppression, we find
eV.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Energy Estimation of Cosmic Rays with the Engineering Radio Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory
The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is part of the Pierre Auger
Observatory and is used to detect the radio emission of cosmic-ray air showers.
These observations are compared to the data of the surface detector stations of
the Observatory, which provide well-calibrated information on the cosmic-ray
energies and arrival directions. The response of the radio stations in the 30
to 80 MHz regime has been thoroughly calibrated to enable the reconstruction of
the incoming electric field. For the latter, the energy deposit per area is
determined from the radio pulses at each observer position and is interpolated
using a two-dimensional function that takes into account signal asymmetries due
to interference between the geomagnetic and charge-excess emission components.
The spatial integral over the signal distribution gives a direct measurement of
the energy transferred from the primary cosmic ray into radio emission in the
AERA frequency range. We measure 15.8 MeV of radiation energy for a 1 EeV air
shower arriving perpendicularly to the geomagnetic field. This radiation energy
-- corrected for geometrical effects -- is used as a cosmic-ray energy
estimator. Performing an absolute energy calibration against the
surface-detector information, we observe that this radio-energy estimator
scales quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy as expected for coherent
emission. We find an energy resolution of the radio reconstruction of 22% for
the data set and 17% for a high-quality subset containing only events with at
least five radio stations with signal.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO
Measurement of the Radiation Energy in the Radio Signal of Extensive Air Showers as a Universal Estimator of Cosmic-Ray Energy
We measure the energy emitted by extensive air showers in the form of radio
emission in the frequency range from 30 to 80 MHz. Exploiting the accurate
energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory, we obtain a radiation energy of
15.8 \pm 0.7 (stat) \pm 6.7 (sys) MeV for cosmic rays with an energy of 1 EeV
arriving perpendicularly to a geomagnetic field of 0.24 G, scaling
quadratically with the cosmic-ray energy. A comparison with predictions from
state-of-the-art first-principle calculations shows agreement with our
measurement. The radiation energy provides direct access to the calorimetric
energy in the electromagnetic cascade of extensive air showers. Comparison with
our result thus allows the direct calibration of any cosmic-ray radio detector
against the well-established energy scale of the Pierre Auger Observatory.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DOI.
Supplemental material in the ancillary file
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