Disentangling the characteristics of narratives comprising evidence: outcomes of osteoporosis narrative evidence for young women

Health communication scholars are charged with seeking ways to convey health information in credible and reliable ways for audiences. In the context of osteoporosis, the challenge becomes how to communicate risk and prevention to young women, as prevention behaviors started early in life can help decrease osteoporosis diagnosis later in life. Evidence has been shown to be one message tool that can increase comprehension of information presented and influence outcomes. Previous research has found that statistical evidence to be associated with systematic processing, or careful attention to messages, whereas narrative evidence evokes heuristic processing, or a reliance on heuristics. Yet, the benefits of narratives, and the sharing and telling of experiences has been shown to aid comprehension and behaviors for a variety of health contexts. Specifically, that the emotions conveyed and aroused after reading a narrative can influence understanding, and message effectiveness. Guided by the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), this study examined outcomes associated with the use of different narrative evidence types and expressions of emotion within narrative evidence for arousal of discrete emotions, comprehension, dominant cognitions, heuristic and systematic processing, perceived evidence quality, perceived message effectiveness, behavioral intentions, and the osteoporosis prevention behaviors of calcium and vitamin D consumption. Formative research led to the creation of narrative evidence and selection of positive and negative emotions expressed. A 4x3 between subjects pretest-post-test with follow-up 24-hour dietary recall was used to test the outcomes of the narrative evidence types. Results indicated that both heuristic and systematic processing of narrative evidence does simultaneously occur for osteoporosis content, and positive relationships between comprehension, judgments of evidence quality and perceptions of message effectiveness predict behavioral intentions towards osteoporosis prevention. Specifically, the emotions of fear and hope serve as heuristics for the processing of osteoporosis narrative evidence. No significant differences emerged for narrative evidence type and the behaviors of calcium and vitamin D, however, results imply that different message strategies are needed for these behaviors. Implications of these findings for osteoporosis health messages are discussed

Lattice thermal conductivity of disordered NiPd and NiPt alloys

Numerical calculations of lattice thermal conductivity are reported for the binary alloys NiPd and NiPt. The present work is a continuation of an earlier paper by us [PRB, 72, 214207 (2005)]which had developed a theoretical framework for the calculation of configuration-averaged lattice thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity in disordered alloys. The formulation was based on the augmented space theorem combined with a scattering diagram technique. In this paper we shall show dependence of the lattice thermal conductivity on a series of variables like phonon frequency, temperature and alloy composition. The temperature dependence of $\kappa(T)$ and its realtion to the measured thermal conductivity is discussed. The concentration dependence of $\kappa$ appears to justify the notion of a minimum thermal conductivity as discussed by Kittel, Slack and others. We also study the frequency and composition dependence of the thermal diffusivity averaged over modes. A numerical estimate of this quantity gives an idea about the location of mobility edge and the fraction of states in the frequency spectrum which is delocalized.Comment: 23 pages, 18 figure

TARANIS — Scientific payload and mission strategy

International audienceOn December 2010 the implementation phase of the TARANIS micro-satellite was authorized by the French space agency. TARANIS is dedicated to the study of impulsive transfers of energy between the Earth atmosphere and the space environment, and more precisely to the physics of the Transient Luminous Events (TLEs) and of the Terrestrial Gamma ray Flashes (TGFs). By 2015 TARANIS will provide combined Nadir observations of TLEs and TGFs, high resolution measurements of energetic electrons, and wave field measurements. The strategy adopted to maximize the scientific return of the data is presented

On Es-spread effects in the ionosphere connected to earthquakes

International audienceIn the present work, phenomena in the ionosphere are studied, which are connected with earthquakes (16 events) having a depth of less than 50 km and a magnitude M larger than 4. Analysed are night-time Es-spread effects using data of the vertical sounding station Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (f=53.0°, ?=158.7°) from May 2004 until August 2004 registered every 15 min. It is found that the maximum distance of the earthquake from the sounding station, where pre-seismic phenomena are yet observable, depends on the magnitude of the earthquake. Further it is shown that 1–2 days before the earthquakes, in the pre-midnight hours, the appearance of Es-spread increases. With a probability of more than 0.95, this increase of Es-spread observations before midnight is not casual

Spectral features of lightning-induced ion cyclotron waves at low latitudes: DEMETER observations and simulation

International audience[1] We use a comprehensive analysis of 6-component ELF wave data from the DEMETER satellite to study proton whistlers, placing emphasis on low-latitude events originating from lightning strokes in the hemisphere opposite to the hemisphere of observation. In this case, the formation of proton whistlers does not involve mode conversion caused by a strong mode coupling at a crossover frequency, although a polarization reversal remains an important element in formation of the phenomenon. DEMETER measurements of the six electromagnetic field components in the frequency band below 1000 Hz make it possible to determine not only the dynamic spectrum, but also the wave polarization, the wave normal angle, and the normalized parallel component of the Poynting vector. This permits us to address fine features of proton whistlers, in particular, we show that the deviation of the upper cutoff frequency from the equatorial cyclotron frequency is related to the Doppler shift. Experimental study of proton whistlers is supplemented by an investigation of ion cyclotron wave propagation in a multicomponent magnetoplasma and by numerical modeling of spectrograms, both in the frame of geometrical optics

On variations of <i>fo</i>F2 and F-spread before strong earthquakes in Japan

International audienceThe statistical analysis of the variations of the dayly-mean frequency of the maximum ionospheric electron density foF2 is performed in connection with the occurrence of (more than 60) earthquakes with magnitudes M>6.0, depths hRfoF2 decreases before the earthquakes. One day before the shock the decrease amounts to about 5%. The statistical reliability of this phenomenon is obtained to be better than 0.95. Further, the variations of the occurrence probability of the turbulization of the F-layer (F spread) are investigated for (more than 260) earthquakes with M>5.5, hRfoF2 analysis, the Wolf number is less than 100 and the index SKp is smaller than 30, and in case of the F-spread study a Wolf number less than 80 and SKp smaller than 17 are chosen

Fractal Metrology for biogeosystems analysis

The solid-pore distribution pattern plays an important role in soil functioning being related with the main physical, chemical and biological multiscale and multitemporal processes of this complex system. In the present research, we studied the aggregation process as self-organizing and operating near a critical point. The structural pattern is extracted from the digital images of three soils (&lt;i&gt;Chernozem, Solonetz&lt;/i&gt; and &lt;i&gt;&quot;Chocolate&quot; Clay&lt;/i&gt;) and compared in terms of roughness of the gray-intensity distribution quantified by several measurement techniques. Special attention was paid to the uncertainty of each of them measured in terms of standard deviation. Some of the applied methods are known as classical in the fractal context (box-counting, rescaling-range and wavelets analyses, etc.) while the others have been recently developed by our Group. The combination of these techniques, coming from Fractal Geometry, Metrology, Informatics, Probability Theory and Statistics is termed in this paper &lt;i&gt;Fractal Metrology&lt;/i&gt; (FM). We show the usefulness of FM for complex systems analysis through a case study of the soil&apos;s physical and chemical degradation applying the selected toolbox to describe and compare the structural attributes of three porous media with contrasting structure but similar clay mineralogy dominated by montmorillonites

An unusual VLF signature structure recorded by the DEMETER satellite

A type of electromagnetic phenomenon has been found in the electric VLF data measured by the low Earth orbit DEMETER satellite, which was nonidentified earlier as a different class of electromagnetic VLF events. The phenomenon, termed as “swallow-tailed whistler” (STW) after its shape, seems to be similar to a whistler, but following the main trace, an additional trace appears with monotonously increasing frequency. The secondary trace, lasting less than 80 ms within the recorded 20 kHz bandwidth joins at a given Starting Furcation Frequency. In a 7 month long time interval three series of strong STWs were found in a geographically confined search zone. Further, 10 weak STW periods have been identified by a thorough review of a 2 month long recording. Several STWs were found by the investigation of randomly selected DEMETER burst VLF recording acquired globally. On the basis of comparisons with previous studies, we can exclude that this phenomenon is generated by plasma processes in the vicinity of the satellite though the formation mechanism of this (ionospheric) signal is so far unclear. It is possible that this event type appeared in earlier records too, however, without identification

Mettre en œuvre un réseau d’îlots de vieux bois - Test d’une méthode dans la Réserve de biosphère du mont Ventoux -

Le réseau d’îlots de vieux bois est un outil nouveau pour conserver notamment la riche biodiversité cavicole et saproxylique. Après avoir analysé la littérature, une méthodologie générique de mise en œuvre, organisée en sept étapes, est proposée, ainsi que des outils pratiques. Elle est testée dans le mont Ventoux. Un scénario défini de façon participative conduit à un réseau d’îlots de sénescence fondé sur des indicateurs de naturalité (indigénat, maturité, ancienneté, connectivité), de même qu’une approche centrée sur les espèces, le manque à gagner économique et la sécurité du public. La surface du réseau d’îlots est limitée à 3% de la surface de la forêt. La méthode Electre est utilisée pour classer les 132 îlots pré-repérés, au regard du scénario élaboré. 74 îlots sont retenus pour le réseau. Les valeurs écologiques sont maximisées. Le manque à gagner est minimisé (66% des îlots retenus présentent un manque à gagner &lt; 20 e/ha/an). La révision de l’aménagement de la forêt domaniale du Ventouret en 2012 a permis la mise en place de quatre premiers îlots, dont un a été financé par Natura 2000. La méthode permet de bien évaluer et hiérarchiser l’intérêt de chaque îlot et de discuter la notion de réseau. Elle est disponible pour être confrontée à des contextes écologiques variés

Theoretical study of O adlayers on Ru(0001)

Recent experiments performed at high pressures indicate that ruthenium can support unusually high concentrations of oxygen at the surface. To investigate the structure and stability of high coverage oxygen structures, we performed density functional theory calculations, within the generalized gradient approximation, for O adlayers on Ru(0001) from low coverage up to a full monolayer. We achieve quantitative agreement with previous low energy electron diffraction intensity analyses for the (2x2) and (2x1) phases and predict that an O adlayer with a (1x1) periodicity and coverage of 1 monolayer can form on Ru(0001), where the O adatoms occupy hcp-hollow sites.Comment: RevTeX, 6 pages, 4 figure