The great outdoors: how a green exercise environment can benefit all

The studies of human and environment interactions usually consider the extremes of environment on individuals or how humans affect the environment. It is well known that physical activity improves both physiological and psychological well-being, but further evidence is required to ascertain how different environments influence and shape health. This review considers the declining levels of physical activity, particularly in the Western world, and how the environment may help motivate and facilitate physical activity. It also addresses the additional physiological and mental health benefits that appear to occur when exercise is performed in an outdoor environment. However, people's connectedness to nature appears to be changing and this has important implications as to how humans are now interacting with nature. Barriers exist, and it is important that these are considered when discussing how to make exercise in the outdoors accessible and beneficial for all. The synergistic combination of exercise and exposure to nature and thus the 'great outdoors' could be used as a powerful tool to help fight the growing incidence of both physical inactivity and non-communicable disease. © 2013 Gladwell et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd

Estimating the critical and sensitive periods of investment in early childhood: A methodological note

This paper provides an overview of different quantitative methods available for the statistical analysis of longitudinal data regarding child development, and in particular the identification of critical and sensitive periods for later abilities. It draws heavily on the work on human skill formation developed by the economist James Heckman, which treats ability as a latent variable and explains its formation through the simultaneous estimation of structural equations of investments and achieved abilities across time. We distinguish between two specifications of the ability formation function. One of them (the ‘recursive’) format explains current ability as a function of the ability and investment at the immediately preceding period. The other (the ‘non-recursive’) format explains current ability as a function of a series of past investments. In order to fully examine critical and sensitive periods of investments, the non-recursive formulation needs to be used. Furthermore, true abilities of an individual cannot be directly observed: what we observe are the test scores, for example, on reading and writing. We outline an approach based on structural models that treats actual test scores as measurements of the latent ability variable, and show how it can be used in the recursive and non-recursive formulation. In order to fully examine critical and sensitive periods of investments, we argue that the non-recursive formulation of this structural model is necessary. However, the non-recursive formulation requires more data than the recursive formulation, and to the best of our knowledge, has never been used in the identification of critical and sensitive periods in early childhood development. (254wds

Green exercise in the workplace

New health challenges are arising in the workplace as occupations become increasingly more sedentary, and workplace stress grows. Both impact directly on health and wellbeing. Workplace interventions that are designed to improve health and wellbeing should provide coping strategies that can directly tackle stress, as well as reducing sedentary behaviours. We explore how exposure to nature can be used as a workplace intervention to reduce stress. We show how green exercise in a workplace setting may be a potentially powerful tool to tackle physical inactivity. We also discuss future research and applications of green exercise in the workplace and identify potential barriers that need to be addressed to increase its future acceptance by both employers and employees

Quantum Speed Limit for Perfect State Transfer in One Dimension

The basic idea of spin chain engineering for perfect quantum state transfer (QST) is to find a set of coupling constants in the Hamiltonian, such that a particular state initially encoded on one site will evolve freely to the opposite site without any dynamical controls. The minimal possible evolution time represents a speed limit for QST. We prove that the optimal solution is the one simulating the precession of a spin in a static magnetic field. We also argue that, at least for solid-state systems where interactions are local, it is more realistic to characterize the computation power by the couplings than the initial energy.Comment: 5 pages, no figure; improved versio

Effective non-Markovian description of a system interacting with a bath

We study a harmonic system coupled to chain of first neighbor interacting oscillators. After deriving the exact dynamics of the system, we prove that one can effectively describe the exact dynamics by considering a suitable shorter chain. We provide the explicit expression for such an effective dynamics and we provide an upper bound on the error one makes considering it instead of the dynamics of the full chain. We eventually prove how error, timescale and number of modes in the truncated chain are related

Endogenous Versus Exogenous Shocks in Complex Networks: an Empirical Test Using Book Sale Ranking

Are large biological extinctions such as the Cretaceous/Tertiary KT boundary due to a meteorite, extreme volcanic activity or self-organized critical extinction cascades? Are commercial successes due to a progressive reputation cascade or the result of a well orchestrated advertisement? Determining the chain of causality for extreme events in complex systems requires disentangling interwoven exogenous and endogenous contributions with either no clear or too many signatures. Here, we study the precursory and recovery signatures accompanying shocks, that we test on a unique database of the Amazon sales ranking of books. We find clear distinguishing signatures classifying two types of sales peaks. Exogenous peaks occur abruptly and are followed by a power law relaxation, while endogenous sale peaks occur after a progressively accelerating power law growth followed by an approximately symmetrical power law relaxation which is slower than for exogenous peaks. These results are rationalized quantitatively by a simple model of epidemic propagation of interactions with long memory within a network of acquaintances. The slow relaxation of sales implies that the sales dynamics is dominated by cascades rather than by the direct effects of news or advertisements, indicating that the social network is close to critical.Comment: 5 pages including 3 figures final version published in Physical Review Letter

Estimating the impact of health on NEET status

This paper uses a dynamic Structural Equation Model of ability formation to investigate the determinants of NEET (not in education, employment or training) status in adolescents, with special focus on health. The model addresses the issue of measurement error in estimating ability and mental health; and explores the determinants of ability and NEET status through time. The analysis finds that ability remains the key predictor of NEET status; and while general health plays an important role in the formation of ability for both girls and boys, the impact of mental health differs between the sexes

A comparison of the cost-effectiveness of treatment of prolonged acute convulsive epileptic seizures in children across Europe

In the majority of children and adolescents with epilepsy, optimal drug therapy adequately controls their condition. However, among the remaining patients who are still uncontrolled despite mono-, bi- or tri-therapy with chronic anti-epileptic treatment, a rescue medication is required. In Western Europe, the licensed medications available for first-line treatment of prolonged acute convulsive seizures (PACS) vary widely, and so comparators for clinical and economic evaluation are not consistent. No European guidelines currently exist for the treatment of PACS in children and adolescents and limited evidence is available for the effectiveness of treatments in the community setting. The authors present cost-effectiveness data for BUCCOLAM® (midazolam oromucosal solution) for the treatment of PACS in children and adolescents in the context of the treatment pathway in seven European countries in patients from 6 months to 18 years. For each country, the health economic model consisted of a decision tree, with decision nodes informed by clinical data and expert opinion obtained via a Delphi methodology. The events modelled are those associated with a patient experiencing a seizure in the community setting. The model assessed the likelihood of medication being administered successfully and of seizure cessation. The associated resource use was also modelled, and ambulance call-outs and hospitalisations were considered. The patient's quality of life was estimated by clinicians, who completed a five-level EuroQol five dimensions questionnaire from the perspective of a child or adolescent suffering a seizure. Despite differences in current therapy, treatment patterns and healthcare costs in all countries assessed, BUCCOLAM was shown to be cost saving and offered increased health-related benefits for patients in the treatment of PACS compared with the current local standard of care

On an initial value Reissner-Sagoci problem

A rigid circular cylinder is cemented to the otherwise stress-free surface of a homogeneous isotropic elastic half-space. The cylinder is rotated through a small angle and then released from rest. During the subsequent motion the cylinder remains cemented to the half-space and the problem is the determination of its motion. The problem is solved by setting up an integral equation for the Laplace transform of the angular displacement. Numerical values for the solution of this equation for large and small values of the Laplace parameter s = i[omega] can be obtained from the known results for the steady-state Reissner-Sagoci problem. For intermediate values of the parameter the equation is solved by means of Chebyshev approximation. The inversion of the Laplace transform is carried out by using a Laguerre polynomial approximation technique.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/32750/1/0000119.pd