3,634 research outputs found
Obesity and Developmental Functioning Among Children Aged 2-4 Years
In developed countries, obesity tends to be associated with worse labor market outcomes. One possible reason is that obesity leads to less human capital formation early in life. This paper investigates the association between obesity and the developmental functioning of children at younger ages (2-4 years) than ever previously examined. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are used to estimate models of developmental functioning in four critical areas (verbal skills, activities of daily living, motor skills, and social skills) as a function of various measures of weight (including BMI and obesity status) controlling for various child and family characteristics. The findings indicate that, among boys, obesity is a significant risk factor for lagged development in verbal skills, social skills, and activities of daily living. Among girls, weight generally does not have a statistically significant association with these developmental outcomes. Further investigations show that the correlations exist even for those preschool children who spend no time in day care, which implies that the correlation between obesity and developmental functioning cannot be due to discrimination by teachers, classmates, or even day care providers.Obesity, human capital, children, child development, Germany, gender
Obesity and Developmental Functioning Among Children Aged 2-4 Years
In developed countries, obesity tends to be associated with worse labor market outcomes. One possible reason is that obesity leads to less human capital formation early in life. This paper investigates the association between obesity and the developmental functioning of children at younger ages (2-4 years) than ever previously examined. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are used to estimate models of developmental functioning in four critical areas (verbal skills, activities of daily living, motor skills, and social skills) as a function of various measures of weight (including BMI and obesity status) controlling for various child and family characteristics. The findings indicate that, among boys, obesity is a significant risk factor for lagged development in verbal skills, social skills, and activities of daily living. Among girls, weight generally does not have a statistically significant association with these developmental outcomes. Further investigations show that the correlations exist even for those preschool children who spend no time in day care, which implies that the correlation between obesity and developmental functioning cannot be due to discrimination by teachers, classmates, or even day care providers.Obesity, human capital, children, child development, Germany, gender
Are current levels of air pollution in England too high? The impact of pollution on population mortality
We examine the relationship between common sources of airborne pollution and population mortality in present day England. The current air quality limit values are low by both historical and international standards, and these are set at levels which are believed not to be harmful to health. We assess whether this view is correct. We use data at local authority level for the period 1998 to 2004 to examine whether current levels of airborne pollution, as measured by annual mean concentrations of carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter less than 10 ÎŒm in diameter (PM10) and ozone, are associated with excess deaths. We examine all cause mortality and deaths from specific cardiovascular and respiratory causes that are known to be exacerbated by air pollution. We exploit the panel nature of our data to control for any unobserved time-invariant associations at local authority level between high levels of pollution and poor population health and estimate multi-pollutant models to allow for the fact that three of the pollutants are closely correlated. We find higher levels of PM10 and ozone are associated with higher mortality rates. The size of the effects we find translates into around 4,500 deaths per annum.airborne pollutants, adult mortality, geographical analysis
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Content-specific coordination of listeners' to speakers' EEG during communication
Cognitive neuroscience has recently begun to extend its focus from the isolated individual mind to two or more individuals coordinating with each other. In this study we uncover a coordination of neural activity between the ongoing electroencephalogram (EEG) of two peopleâa person speaking and a person listening. The EEG of one set of twelve participants (âspeakersâ) was recorded while they were narrating short stories. The EEG of another set of twelve participants (âlistenersâ) was recorded while watching audiovisual recordings of these stories. Specifically, listeners watched the superimposed videos of two speakers simultaneously and were instructed to attend either to one or the other speaker. This allowed us to isolate neural coordination due to processing the communicated content from the effects of sensory input. We find several neural signatures of communication: First, the EEG is more similar among listeners attending to the same speaker than among listeners attending to different speakers, indicating that listeners' EEG reflects content-specific information. Secondly, listeners' EEG activity correlates with the attended speakers' EEG, peaking at a time delay of about 12.5 s. This correlation takes place not only between homologous, but also between non-homologous brain areas in speakers and listeners. A semantic analysis of the stories suggests that listeners coordinate with speakers at the level of complex semantic representations, so-called âsituation modelsâ. With this study we link a coordination of neural activity between individuals directly to verbally communicated information
Obesity and Skill Attainment in Early Childhood
This paper investigates the association between obesity and skill attainment in early childhood (aged 2-4 years). Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study are used to estimate models of developmental functioning in four critical areas (verbal skills, activities of daily living, motor skills, and social skills) as a function of various measures of weight (including body mass index and obesity) controlling for a rich set of child, parent, and family characteristics. The findings indicate that, among boys, obesity is associated with reduced verbal skills, social skills, motor skills, and activities of daily living. Among girls, obesity is associated with reduced verbal skills. Further investigations show that the correlations exist even for those preschool children who spend no time in day care, which implies that it cannot be due solely to discrimination by teachers, classmates, or day care providers.
Zwischen Geschichtswissenschaft und Narratologie: Jonas Grethlein und Christopher B. Krebs ĂŒber die Bedeutung und KomplexitĂ€t von Zeit und ErzĂ€hlung in antiken historischen Texten
Jonas Grethlein / Christopher B. Krebs (Hg.): Time and Narrative in Ancient Historiography. The âPlupastâ from Herodotus to Appian. Cambridge: University Press 2012. EUR 60,00 (USD 99,00). ISBN 978-1-107-00740-6 Der vorliegende Sammelband ist an der Schnittstelle von Geschichtswissenschaft und Narratologie einzuordnen. Die Altertumswissenschaftler Jonas Grethlein und Christopher B. Krebs beleuchten die Bedeutung von Zeit und ErzĂ€hlung in der antiken Historiographie aus einem neuen Blickwinkel, dem des âPlupastâ. Das Anliegen des Sammelbandes ist dabei ein GrundsĂ€tzliches: Vor dem Hintergrund der zeitlichen KomplexitĂ€t antiker historischer ErzĂ€hlungen geht es ihm darum, neue Erkenntnisse ĂŒber die antike Geschichtsschreibung zu gewinnen. Zum Aufbau des Bandes: Nach einer allgemeinen EinfĂŒhrung der Herausgeber folgen beispielhafte Interpretationen antiker Autoren im Hinblick auf das Plupast. Das Spektrum der Analysen reicht dabei von Herodot ĂŒber Thukydides, Xenophon, Sallust, Dionysios von Halikarnassos, Livius, Tacitus und Plutarch bis hin zu Appian
Autonomy Infused Teleoperation with Application to BCI Manipulation
Robot teleoperation systems face a common set of challenges including
latency, low-dimensional user commands, and asymmetric control inputs. User
control with Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) exacerbates these problems
through especially noisy and erratic low-dimensional motion commands due to the
difficulty in decoding neural activity. We introduce a general framework to
address these challenges through a combination of computer vision, user intent
inference, and arbitration between the human input and autonomous control
schemes. Adjustable levels of assistance allow the system to balance the
operator's capabilities and feelings of comfort and control while compensating
for a task's difficulty. We present experimental results demonstrating
significant performance improvement using the shared-control assistance
framework on adapted rehabilitation benchmarks with two subjects implanted with
intracortical brain-computer interfaces controlling a seven degree-of-freedom
robotic manipulator as a prosthetic. Our results further indicate that shared
assistance mitigates perceived user difficulty and even enables successful
performance on previously infeasible tasks. We showcase the extensibility of
our architecture with applications to quality-of-life tasks such as opening a
door, pouring liquids from containers, and manipulation with novel objects in
densely cluttered environments
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