Next Generation Satellite Broadband for enabling Universal Service Commitment

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

CURIOS: Connecting Community Heritage through Linked Data

Peer reviewedPostprin

The relationship between the golf swing plane and ball impact characteristics using trajectory ellipse fitting

The trajectory of the clubhead close to ball impact during the golf swing has previously been shown to be planar. However, the relationship between the plane orientation and the orientation characteristics of the clubhead at ball impact has yet to be defined. Fifty-two male golfers (27 high skilled, 25 intermediate skilled) hit 40 drives each in an indoor biomechanics laboratory. This study successfully fitted the trajectory of the clubhead near impact to an ellipse for each swing for players of different skill levels to help better explain this relationship. Additionally, the eccentricities of the ellipses were investigated for links to skill level. The trajectory of the clubhead was found to fit to an ellipse with RMSE of 1.2mm. The eccentricity of the ellipse was found to be greater in the high skilled golfers. The club path and angle of attack generated from the ellipse fitted clubhead trajectory were found to have a normalised bias-corrected RMSE of 2% and 3% respectively. A set of ‘rule of thumb’ values for the relationship between the club path, angle of attack and delivery plane angle was 56 generated for use by coaches

Integrating pathology and radiology disciplines: an emerging opportunity?

Pathology and radiology form the core of cancer diagnosis, yet the workflows of both specialties remain ad hoc and occur in separate "silos," with no direct linkage between their case accessioning and/or reporting systems, even when both departments belong to the same host institution. Because both radiologists' and pathologists' data are essential to making correct diagnoses and appropriate patient management and treatment decisions, this isolation of radiology and pathology workflows can be detrimental to the quality and outcomes of patient care. These detrimental effects underscore the need for pathology and radiology workflow integration and for systems that facilitate the synthesis of all data produced by both specialties. With the enormous technological advances currently occurring in both fields, the opportunity has emerged to develop an integrated diagnostic reporting system that supports both specialties and, therefore, improves the overall quality of patient care

Do TETRA (Airwave) base station signals have a short-term impact on health and well-being? A randomized double-blind provocation study

Background: "Airwave" is the new communication system currently being rolled out across the United Kingdom for the police and emergency services, based on the Terrestrial Trunked Radio Telecommunications System (TETRA). Some police officers have complained about skin rashes, nausea, headaches, and depression as a consequence of using their Airwave handsets. In addition, a small subgroup in the population self-report being sensitive to electromagnetic fields (EMFs) in general. Objectives: We conducted a randomized double-blind provocation study to establish whether short-term exposure to a TETRA base station signal has an impact on the health and well-being of individuals with self-reported "electrosensitivity" and of participants who served as controls.Methods: Fifty-one individuals with self-reported electrosensitivity and 132 age and sex-matched controls participated in an open provocation test; 48 sensitive and 132 control participants went on to complete double-blind tests in a fully screened semianechoic chamber. Heart rate, skin conductance, and blood pressure readings provided objective indices of short-term physiological response. Visual analog scales and symptom scales provided subjective indices of well-being.Results: We found no differences on any measure between TETRA and sham (no signal) under double-blind conditions for either controls or electrosensitive participants, and neither group could detect the presence of a TETRA signal at rates greater than chance (50%). When conditions were not double blind, however, the self-reported electrosensitive individuals did report feeling worse and experienced more severe symptoms during TETRA compared with sham.Conclusions: Our findings suggest that the adverse symptoms experienced by electrosensitive individuals are due to the belief of harm from TETRA base stations rather than to the low-level EMF exposure itself

Do non-traumatic stressful life events and ageing negatively impact working memory performance and do they interact to further impair working memory performance?

Stress and normal ageing produce allostatic load, which may lead to difficulties with cognition thereby degrading quality of life. The current study’s objective was to assess whether ageing and cumulative stress interact to accelerate cognitive decline. With 60 participants, Marshall et al. found that ageing and cumulative stress interact significantly to impair working memory performance in older adults, suggesting vulnerability to the cumulative effects of life events beyond 60 years old. To replicate and extend this finding, we increased the sample size by conducting 3 independent studies with 156 participants and improved the statistical methods by conducting an iterative Bayesian meta-analysis with Bayes factors. Bayes factors deliver a more comprehensive result because they provide evidence for either the null hypothesis (H0), the alternative hypothesis (H1) or for neither hypothesis due to evidence not being sufficiently sensitive. Young (18-35 yrs) and older (60-85 yrs) healthy adults were categorised as high or low stress based on their life events score derived from the Life Events Scale for Students or Social Readjustment Rating Scale, respectively. We measured accuracy and reaction time on a 2-back working memory task to provide: a) Bayes factors and b) Bayesian meta-analysis, which iteratively added each study’s effect sizes to evaluate the overall strength of evidence that ageing, cumulative stress and/or the combination of the two detrimentally affect working memory performance. Using a larger sample (N=156 vs. N=60) and a more powerful statistical approach, we did not replicate the robust age by cumulative stress interaction effect found by Marshall et al.. The effects of ageing and cumulative stress also fell within the anecdotal range (⅓<BF<3). We therefore conclude that there was inconclusive statistical evidence, as measured with a life events scale, that ageing and cumulative life stress interact to accelerate cognitive decline

The Social Readjustment Rating Scale: updated and modernised

The Social Readjustment Rating Scale, originally devised in 1967 by Holmes and Rahe, measures the impact of life events stress. At the time, the SRRS advanced its field of research by standardising the impact of stress with a set of independently derived weights called ‘life change units’ (LCUs) for 43 life events found to predict illness onset. The scale has been criticised for being outdated, e.g. “Mortgage over $10,000” and biased, e.g. “Wife begin or stop work”. The aim of this cross-sectional survey study is to update and improve the SRRS whilst allowing backwards compatibility. We successfully updated the SRRS norms/LCUs using the ratings of 540 predominantly UK adults aged 18 to 84. Moreover, we also updated wording of 12 SRRS items and evaluated the impact of demographics, personal experience and loneliness. Using non-parametric frequentist and Bayesian statistics we found that the updated weights were higher but broadly consistent with those of the original study. Furthermore, changes to item wording did not affect raters’ evaluations relative to the original thereby ensuring cross-comparability with the original SRRS. The raters were not unduly influenced by their personal experiences of events nor loneliness. The target sample was UK rather than US-based and was proportionately representative regarding age, sex and ethnicity. Moreover, the age range was broader than the original SRRS. In addition, we modernised item wording, added one optional extra item to the end of the scale to evaluate the readjustment to living alone and identified 3 potential new items proposed by raters. Backwards-compatibility is maintained

Rehabilitating Your Organization’s Image: Public Relations Professionals’ Perceptions of the Effectiveness and Ethicality of Image Repair Strategies in Crisis Situations

When crisis hits an organization, public relations professionals are called upon as communication experts to play a key role in mitigating damage to and maintaining stakeholder confidence in the organization. The relevance of crisis and post-crisis communication research to public relations practitioners lies in its utility in identifying factors that influence stakeholders’ perceptions before, during, and after organizational crises, and in identifying processes and strategies that are effective in maintaining or restoring an organization’s reputation and image. These brand and image repair strategies rely on effective use of language, persuasive message strategies, and symbolic actions. This study offers evidence-based decision making from empirical research based on practicing public relations professionals’ reported perceptions and use of specific strategies in different types of crisis situations. The use of crisis communication strategies among public relations professionals, focusing on judgments about which strategies are ethical, which strategies professionals are likely to use and recommend, and which strategies are most effective, is contextualized within three common reputation crisis scenarios (accidents, product safety, and illegal activity)

Different stages of emotional prosody processing in healthy ageing-evidence from behavioural responses, ERPs, tDCS, and tRNS.

Past research suggests that the ability to recognise the emotional intent of a speaker decreases as a function of age. Yet, few studies have looked at the underlying cause for this effect in a systematic way. This paper builds on the view that emotional prosody perception is a multi-stage process and explores which step of the recognition processing line is impaired in healthy ageing using time-sensitive event-related brain potentials (ERPs). Results suggest that early processes linked to salience detection as reflected in the P200 component and initial build-up of emotional representation as linked to a subsequent negative ERP component are largely unaffected in healthy ageing. The two groups show, however, emotional prosody recognition differences: older participants recognise emotional intentions of speakers less well than younger participants do. These findings were followed up by two neuro-stimulation studies specifically targeting the inferior frontal cortex to test if recognition improves during active stimulation relative to sham. Overall, results suggests that neither tDCS nor high-frequency tRNS stimulation at 2mA for 30 minutes facilitates emotional prosody recognition rates in healthy older adults