Cost and Consequences of Sedentary Living: New Battleground for an Old Enemy

The purpose of this review is to update our earlier review by itemizing, as best we can, the costs and consequences of sedentary living, and thus provide cost reasons to fight a war against sedentary lifestyles

Sedentary death syndrome is what researchers now call America's second largest threat to public health

Press release.Obesity has doubled, Type 2 diabetes has increased nine-fold, and heart disease remains the number one cause of death for Americans. Sedentary Death Syndrome, or "SeDS," is a growing list of health disorders that are exacerbated by lack of physical activity, causing premature disability and death. Sixty percent of all Americans are at risk, including children. SeDS is expected to add as much as $3 trillion to healthcare costs over ten years, more than twice the tax cut passed by the US Senate

Renormalization flow in extreme value statistics

The renormalization group transformation for extreme value statistics of independent, identically distributed variables, recently introduced to describe finite size effects, is presented here in terms of a partial differential equation (PDE). This yields a flow in function space and gives rise to the known family of Fisher-Tippett limit distributions as fixed points, together with the universal eigenfunctions around them. The PDE turns out to handle correctly distributions even having discontinuities. Remarkably, the PDE admits exact solutions in terms of eigenfunctions even farther from the fixed points. In particular, such are unstable manifolds emanating from and returning to the Gumbel fixed point, when the running eigenvalue and the perturbation strength parameter obey a pair of coupled ordinary differential equations. Exact renormalization trajectories corresponding to linear combinations of eigenfunctions can also be given, and it is shown that such are all solutions of the PDE. Explicit formulas for some invariant manifolds in the Fr\'echet and Weibull cases are also presented. Finally, the similarity between renormalization flows for extreme value statistics and the central limit problem is stressed, whence follows the equivalence of the formulas for Weibull distributions and the moment generating function of symmetric L\'evy stable distributions.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures. Several typos and an upload error corrected. Accepted for publication in JSTA

An experimental approach to recomplementation : evidence from monolingual and bilingual Spanish

This dissertation advances the study of recomplementation in Spanish (e.g., Villa-García, 2015), with three experimental studies that probe the representation and processing of the left periphery while addressing shortcomings in the field of syntax more generally. Recomplementation is the phenomenon whereby one or more left-dislocated phrases or circumstantial adjuncts intervene between a primary (C1) and secondary (C2) complementizer, e.g., He said that₁ later in the afternoon that₂ he would clean his room. Study 1 investigates the grammatical status of recomplementation in US heritage speakers of Spanish via acceptability judgment and preference tasks. Results demonstrate that heritage speakers prefer the overt C2 variety at a higher rate than the baseline group. These findings are interpreted within the Model of Divergent Attainment (Polinsky & Scontras, 2020), where complexities associated with “silent” phenomena and dependency distance, along with processing burden, lead to reanalysis and eventual divergent attainment. Study 2 explores recomplementation as a locus of dialectal variation in Colombian and Cuban Spanish via elicited imitation and sentence completion tasks. Results provide evidence that overt C2 is neither licensed by the grammar nor a facilitator of complement integration. Importantly, the possibility of task effect cannot be ruled out. Lastly, study 3 analyzes the incremental processing of recomplementation via self-paced reading. Results demonstrate that a psycholinguistic model informed by syntactic theory is favorable to one that is not. This conclusion is further supported by an analysis of individual differences in working memory span. While advancing recomplementation research, this dissertation offers experimental evidence in support of three broader claims. First, speakers with diverse profiles (e.g., heritage speakers) inform general theory and contribute to such disparate topics as processing complexity, the role of input and experience in language development and variation among the Spanishes of the world. Second, researcher selection bias and the effects of task must not be overlooked in the literature, as they threaten the ultimate pursuit of knowledge. Finally, when experimental findings, psycholinguistic models and syntactic-theoretical accounts inform one another, the outcome is superior.Spanish and Portugues

Educating leaders : executive Ed. D. program experiences

In this dissertation, I present an investigation of higher education leadership doctoral programs for mid- and senior-level administrators, specifically executive education programs. I interviewed graduates and administrators of executive education doctorate programs as well as individuals with expertise in higher education leadership. I also collected 12 executive doctoral program descriptions from publicly available information. The 12 doctoral programs represent a cross-section of the programs available throughout the United States and include public and private universities. Through phenomenological inquiry, I found that graduates of executive doctoral programs felt transformed by the educational experience, citing leadership training and international exposure as highlights of their program. The cohort model had utility across all programs studied and remained a source of information and support for alumni long after graduation. I used Relational Developmental Systems Theory to combine Adult Development Theory, Adult Learning Theory and Critical Friends Theory into a cohesive framework to explain how students processed their program experiences. The research findings indicated that potential students considered program reputation, including the faculty and program ranking, in their university selection process. Graduate participants also explained that they valued the elements of the program that had direct relevance to their work activity, in particular, the dissertation experience. Program administrators stressed that the doctoral market requires continual assessment for their programs to remain relevant. I propose a theory of change that combines environmental factors, program attributes, administrator and student attributes, and program outcomes to explain the process of doctoral program change. The proposed theory explains the assessment mechanisms that program administrators use to evaluate program and graduate outcomes. While these results cannot be extrapolated beyond the sample, they can inform future doctoral education research and program design.Educational Administratio

Methodiek arbeidsmarktprognoses en -indicatoren 2001-2006

In dit werkdocument wordt een overzicht gegeven van de methodiek die is gehanteerd bij het opstellen van de arbeidsmarktprognoses naar opleiding en beroep tot 2006 en de bijbehorende arbeidsmarktindicatoren ten behoeve van het rapport De arbeidsmarkt naar opleiding en beroep tot 2006. Dit rapport is in november 2001 uitgebracht in het kader van het Project Onderwijs-Arbeidsmarkt van het ROA. In dit werkdocument wordt een actualisatie gegeven de beschrijving van de methodiek in Van Eijs e.a. (2000) ten behoeve de vorige uitgave De arbeidsmarkt naar opleiding en beroep tot 2004 (ROA, 1999a). Daarnaast bevat dit werkdocument een uitgebreidere toelichting op de methodiek van de vervangingsvraag.De weergave van de methodiek in dit werkdocument heeft betrekking op het samenstellen van de arbeidsmarktinformatie over 34 bedrijfssectoren, 127 beroepsgroepen en 104 opleidingstypen die op de website van het ROA (http://www.roa.unimaas.nl) te bestellen is. Ook deze arbeidsmarktinformatie is in het kader van het Project Onderwijs-Arbeidsmarkt (POA) samengesteld, waarbij bovendien is rekening gehouden met de actualisatie van de gegevens over de werkenden op basis van de Enquête Beroepsbevolking (EBB) 2000 en 2001 van Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS). In de ROA-classificatiegids 2002 (ROA, 2002a) worden uitgebreide overzichten gegeven van de namen en coderingen van de sectoren, beroepen en opleidingen die binnen POA gehanteerd worden en de koppelingen tussen de classificaties van het CBS en het ROA.education, training and the labour market;