THE EFFECTIVENESS OF PHYSICAL ACTIVITY INTERVENTIONS AMONG PRESCHOOL-AGED CHILDREN: A META-ANALYTIC REVIEW

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of physical activity interventions among preschool-aged children. A secondary purpose was to investigate the influence of several moderator variables (e.g., location of intervention, intervention type, intervention leadership) on physical activity and body composition outcomes. Nine databases were systematically searched; a total of 19 studies meet the inclusion criteria. Effect sizes (i.e., Hedges g values) were calculated using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis software. SPSS software was used to analyze the data. Results indicated that interventions had moderate effects on preschoolers’ engagement in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (g = 0.51;/? \u3c .05; n = 39 ES) and small or small- to-moderate effects on: body composition (g = 0.28;p \u3c .05; n = 39 ES); light intensity physical activity (g = 0.27; p \u3e .05; n= 11 ES); physical activity counts (g = 0.40; p \u3e .05; n = 14 ES); and proxy-reported physical activity (g = 0.31,;? \u3e .05; n = 19 ES). These results are discussed in terms of implications for future research and interventions

Jean Cocteau: Orpheus Narcissus

Over the course of thirty years, the poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau created a singular artistic project he called the Orphic trilogy: Le Sang d’un poète (1930), Orphée (1950), and Le Testament d’Orphée (1959). This trilogy is marked by an Orphic pattern of a poet’s journey into an underworld to confront death. I will show that Cocteau’s invention is to have Orpheus be in love with death, for death to be an attractive and irresistible force to the poet. Simultaneously, Cocteau avails himself of the Narcissus myth, the man in love with his own reflection. Orpheus and Narcissus converge in these films as a synthesis of Cocteau’s personal obsessions, which I will identify in his own life. I will reveal that Cocteau’s usage of Narcissus results in a queer aesthetic which courses through the trilogy. Through a close textual and visual analysis of these films, I hope to enrich the appreciation and criticism of this major artistic achievement

Les surélévations: solution pour endiguer la crise du logement à Genève ?

Le canton de Genève vit une situation de pénurie dans le marché immobilier depuis plusieurs dizaines d’années maintenant. Les gouvernements successifs n’ont pas réussi à endiguer cette crise qui ne se dirige pas vers une amélioration. Les milieux politiques sont toujours très concernés lorsqu’il s’agit de logements, les débats sont fréquents entre les différentes parties impliquées, parmi lesquelles figurent les propriétaires et les locataires. Chacun défend ses intérêts avec une telle véhémence que cela engendre un réel blocage. De multiples couches rendent la lecture légale de la problématique extrêmement difficile pour un oeil non aguerri. Des lois cantonales et fédérales sont impliquées pour fixer les règles à respecter en la matière. La difficulté étant que le canton n’a que très peu d’influence sur les lois établies par la Confédération. Pour une majorité des acteurs ce sont pourtant quelques éléments de loi, qui en étant modifiés, permettraient une détente du marché immobilier genevois. La situation actuelle est d’autant plus délicate qu’il ne reste au canton que très peu de terres sur lesquelles il est autorisé à construire. Une piste de réflexion pourrait être de trouver la meilleure façon de construire du logement en ayant recours au minimum de terrain. La surélévation d’immeubles, qui a l’immense avantage de ne pas être consommatrice de surface au sol, est une alternative crédible pour le canton afin de répondre à la demande en logement des habitants. Cette solution, en théorie prometteuse sur le canton de part cette caractéristique et le fait que le canton soit relativement bien urbanisé, ne suffira cependant pas, à elle seule, à régler la crise immobilière actuelle. Ce travail porte sur le contexte des surélévations à Genève avec notamment une comparaison entre la construction d’un immeuble et la réalisation de deux surélévations

The Induction of Haploidy in Tetrahymena pyriformis Following X-irradiation. 1

Vegetative clones of Tetrahymena pyriformis , variety 2, mating type II, were the recipients of various dosages of X-rays from 10,000 to 400,000r. One clone from the 400,000 level (UM7X), when mated with non-irradiated cells of various mating types in variety 2, failed to produce a migratory nucleus. A one-way transfer from the normal to irradiated mate occurred, resulting in the production of haploid exconjugants. When haploids were crossed with diploids the former failed to produce a migratory nucleus. A one-way nuclear transfer from the diploid to the haploid occurred resulting again in the production of haploid exconjugants. When two haploids were crossed a clone resulted which showed 80 to 90 percent amicronucleate forms. The mating type of the derived haploid is always that of the diploid parent. All derived haploids manifest physiological and morphological characteristics similar to those of the diploid except that the haploids possess a smaller micronucleus.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/75021/1/j.1550-7408.1956.tb02453.x.pd

Optical immersion of mid-infrared LEDs and photodiodes for gas-sensing applications

The high gains in performance predicted for optical immersion are difficult to achieve in practice due to total internal reflection at the lens/detector interface. By reducing the air gap at this interface optical tunneling becomes possible and the predicted gains can be realized in practical devices. Using this technique we have demonstrated large performance gains by optically immersing mid-infrared heterostructure InA1Sb LEDs and photodiodes using hypershperical germanium lenses. The development of an effective method of optical immersion that gives excellent optical coupling has produced a photodiode with a peak room temperature detectivity (D*) of 5.3 x 109 cmHz½W-1 at λpeak=5.4μm and a 40° field of view. A hyperspherically immersed LED showed a f-fold improvement in the external efficiency, and a 3-fold improvement in the directionality compared with a conventional planar LED for f/2 optical systems. The incorporation of these uncooled devices in a White cell produced a NO2 gas sensing system with 2 part-per-million sensitivity, with an LED drive current of <5mA. These results represent a significant advance in the use of solid state devices for portable gas sensing systems

Advances in Machine Learning for Compositional Data

Compositional data refers to simplex-valued data, or equivalently, nonnegative vectors whose totals are uninformative. This data modality is of relevance across several scientific domains. A classical example of compositional data is the chemical composition of geological samples, e.g., major-oxide concentrations. A more modern example arises from the microbial populations recorded using high-throughput genetic sequencing technologies, e.g., the gut microbiome. This dissertation presents a set of methodological and theoretical contributions that advance the state of the art in the analysis of compositional data. Our work can be divided along two categories: problems in which compositional data represents the input to a predictive model, and problems in which it represents the output of the model. For the first class of problems, we build on the popular log-ratio framework to develop an efficient learning algorithm for high-dimensional compositional data. Our algorithm runs orders of magnitude faster than competing alternatives, without sacrificing model quality. For the second class of problems, we define a novel exponential family of probability distributions supported on the simplex. This distribution enjoys attractive mathematical properties and provides a performant probability model for simplex-valued outcomes. Taken together, our results constitute a broad contribution to the toolkit of researchers and practitioners studying compositional data