Longitudinal Changes in Physical Activity Engagement and Mental Health Outcomes in a Sample of Digital Mental Health Platform Users

Research has demonstrated a bidirectional relationship between physical activity and well-being, anxiety, and depression. PURPOSE: We examined this relationship in a sample of employees with access to a digital mental health care platform. METHODS: Adults (n=755, 57% female; 41% BIPOC; M age= 34±9 years) receiving employer-sponsored digital mental health care completed an online survey at baseline and 3-month follow-up. Data were collected on duration of physical activity engagement (IPAQ), well-being (WHO-5), anxiety (GAD-7) and depression (PHQ-9) symptoms, and self-reported impact of mental health issues on physical activity. We analyzed baseline correlations between physical activity and mental health, and conducted longitudinal analyses of the relationship between changes in activity and changes in mental health. RESULTS: Across the full sample, engagement in physical activity at baseline was positively correlated with baseline well-being (r= 0.11, pr= -0.14, pp= 0.18). Almost half (47.3%; n= 357) of participants were ‘inactive’, i.e., not meeting the recommended weekly minimum of at least 150 minutes of moderate physical activity. At 3-month follow-up, this inactive group increased physical activity an average of 60 minutes per week (pppR2= 0.014, pR2= 0.009, pp= 0.22). Moreover, self-reported negative impact of mental health issues on physical activity engagement decreased over time (pCONCLUSION: Employees using a digital mental health platform improved in mental health outcomes and mental health was perceived to be less of a barrier to activity over time. Initially inactive members had the added benefit of increasing physical activity. The association between physical activity and mental health outcomes highlights the importance of considering physical health factors in the holistic treatment of mental health conditions

Instabilities and disorder of the domain patterns in the systems with competing interactions

The dynamics of the domains is studied in a two-dimensional model of the microphase separation of diblock copolymers in the vicinity of the transition. A criterion for the validity of the mean field theory is derived. It is shown that at certain temperatures the ordered hexagonal pattern becomes unstable with respect to the two types of instabilities: the radially-nonsymmetric distortions of the domains and the repumping of the order parameter between the neighbors. Both these instabilities may lead to the transformation of the regular hexagonal pattern into a disordered pattern.Comment: ReVTeX, 4 pages, 3 figures (postscript); submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

System architecture for trust-based news recommenders on the web

A fundamental challenge in personalized news recommendation is to account for the notion of trust. In this work we show how the notion of trust can be qualitatively modeled and incorporated into the architecture of a news recommendation system. The proposed system enables users to express explicit trust statements on news reports, news sources and other users. Trust is modeled and propagated using a dialectical process supported by a defeasible logic programming interpreter. We illustrate the operation of the system with some illustrative examples, describe the system architecture and discuss future steps.Presentado en el XII Workshop Agentes y Sistemas Inteligentes (WASI)Red de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Surface Transitions for Confined Associating Mixtures

Thin films of binary mixtures that interact through isotropic forces and directionally specific "hydrogen bonding" are considered through Monte Carlo simulations. We show, in good agreement with experiment, that the single phase of these mixtures can be stabilized or destabilized on confinement. These results resolve a long standing controversy, since previous theories suggest that confinement only stabilizes the single phase of fluid mixtures.Comment: LaTeX document, documentstyle[aps,preprint]{revtex}, psfig.sty, bibtex, 13 pages, 4 figure

Anisotropic dynamical scaling in a spin model with competing interactions

Results are presented for the kinetics of domain growth of a two-dimensional Ising spin model with competing interactions quenched from a disordered to a striped phase. The domain growth exponent are $\beta=1/2$ and $\beta=1/3$ for single-spin-flip and spin-exchange dynamics, as found in previous simulations. However the correlation functions measured in the direction parallel and transversal to the stripes are different as suggested by the existence of different interface energies between the ground states of the model. In the case of single-spin-flip dynamics an anisotropic version of the Ohta-Jasnow-Kawasaki theory for the pair scaling function can be used to fit our data.Comment: 4 pages, REVTeX fil

Stress Measurement in Primary Care: Conceptual Issues, Barriers, Resources, and Recommendations for Study

Objective: Exposure to stressors in daily life and dysregulated stress responses are associated with increased risk for a variety of chronic mental and physical health problems, including anxiety disorders, depression, asthma, heart disease, certain cancers, and autoimmune and neurodegenerative disorders. Despite this fact, stress exposure and responses are rarely assessed in the primary care setting and infrequently targeted for disease prevention or treatment. Method: In this narrative review, we describe the primary reasons for this striking disjoint between the centrality of stress for promoting disease and how rarely it is assessed by summarizing the main conceptual, measurement, practical, and reimbursement issues that have made stress difficult to routinely measure in primary care. The following issues will be reviewed: (1) assessment of stress in primary care; (2) biobehavioral pathways linking stress and illness; (3) the value of stress measurements for improving outcomes in primary care; (4) barriers to measuring and managing stress; and (5) key research questions relevant to stress assessment and intervention in primary care. Results: Based on our synthesis, we suggest several approaches that can be pursued to advance this work, including feasibility and acceptability studies, cost-benefit studies, and clinical improvement studies. Conclusions: Although stress is recognized as a key contributor to chronic disease risk and mortality, additional research is needed to determine how and when instruments for assessing life stress might be useful in the primary care setting, and how stress-related data could be integrated into disease prevention and treatment strategies to reduce chronic disease burden and improve human health and wellbeing

Modeling Elasticity in Crystal Growth

A new model of crystal growth is presented that describes the phenomena on atomic length and diffusive time scales. The former incorporates elastic and plastic deformation in a natural manner, and the latter enables access to times scales much larger than conventional atomic methods. The model is shown to be consistent with the predictions of Read and Shockley for grain boundary energy, and Matthews and Blakeslee for misfit dislocations in epitaxial growth.Comment: 4 pages, 10 figure

Weak selection and stability of localized distributions in Ostwald ripening

We support and generalize a weak selection rule predicted recently for the self-similar asymptotics of the distribution function (DF) in the zero-volume-fraction limit of Ostwald ripening (OR). An asymptotic perturbation theory is developed that, when combined with an exact invariance property of the system, yields the selection rule, predicts a power-law convergence towards the selected self-similar DF and agrees well with our numerical simulations for the interface- and diffusion-controlled OR.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to PR

A Viscoelastic model of phase separation

We show here a general model of phase separation in isotropic condensed matter, namely, a viscoelastic model. We propose that the bulk mechanical relaxation modulus that has so far been ignored in previous theories plays an important role in viscoelastic phase separation in addition to the shear relaxation modulus. In polymer solutions, for example, attractive interactions between polymers under a poor-solvent condition likely cause the transient gellike behavior, which makes both bulk and shear modes active. Although such attractive interactions between molecules of the same component exist universally in the two-phase region of a mixture, the stress arising from attractive interactions is asymmetrically divided between the components only in dynamically asymmetric mixtures such as polymer solutions and colloidal suspensions. Thus, the interaction network between the slower components, which can store the elastic energy against its deformation through bulk and shear moduli, is formed. It is the bulk relaxation modulus associated with this interaction network that is primarily responsible for the appearance of the sponge structure peculiar to viscoelastic phase separation and the phase inversion. We demonstrate that a viscoelastic model of phase separation including this new effect is a general model that can describe all types of isotropic phase separation including solid and fluid models as its special cases without any exception, if there is no coupling with additional order parameter. The physical origin of volume shrinking behavior during viscoelastic phase separation and the universality of the resulting spongelike structure are also discussed.Comment: 14 pages, RevTex, To appear in Phys. Rev