Embedding realistic surveys in simulations through volume remapping

Connecting cosmological simulations to real-world observational programs is often complicated by a mismatch in geometry: while surveys often cover highly irregular cosmological volumes, simulations are customarily performed in a periodic cube. We describe a technique to remap this cube into elongated box-like shapes that are more useful for many applications. The remappings are one-to-one, volume-preserving, keep local structures intact, and involve minimal computational overhead.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures. Companion material at http://mwhite.berkeley.edu/BoxRemap

Visibility and Power: Preliminary Analysis of Social Control on a Bandanese Plantation Compound, Eastern Indonesia

This article evaluates the extent to which the architectural organization of a Dutch plantation compound was designed to aid in plantation administrators’ and owners’ ability to engage in acts of social control via surveillance. The particular compound, Groot Walling, is located on Banda Besar, the largest of the Banda Islands, Maluku Province, Indonesia. Our initial hypothesis is that the compound was designed to aid in surveillance activity by administrators against slaves and contract workers. After discussing the history of the islands and prior historical archaeological research into surveillance, we employ GIS-based visibility analysis to evaluate this hypothesis. A series of single viewsheds were calculated within Groot Walling and compared against viewsheds generated from hypothetical organizations of that same compound. The results, while preliminary, are not consistent with our hypothesis, and we tentatively reject it. We follow up these results with some exploratory analyses, utilizing a series of total viewsheds to try to better characterize the visual properties of this compound. We then suggest some alternative hypotheses for our results, and end with a discussion of future research directions

An Inventory of Evidence-Based Health and Wellness Assessments for Community-Dwelling Older Adults

It is estimated that by 2020 older adults will makeup one fifth of California\u27s population. Many of these older adults are living in the community and are maintaining their independence. In order to help the older adults to maintain their independence, occupational therapists are turning to the newly emerged wellness promotion model to guide their practice. The wellness promotion model is a holistic model that addresses six domains of wellness (intellectual, spiritual, physical, social, emotional, and vocational). One of the concerns in using this model to guide the emerging practice area in occupational therapy is that there is little information on health and wellness assessments. The purpose of this project was to create an inventory of evidence-based Health and Wellness Assessments for use with the community-dwelling older adult population

Cortisol levels are positively associated with pup-feeding rates in male meerkats

In societies of cooperative vertebrates, individual differences in contributions to offspring care are commonly substantial. Recent attempts to explain the causes of this variation have focused on correlations between contributions to care and the protein hormone prolactin, or the steroid hormone testosterone. However, such studies have seldom considered the importance of other hormones or controlled for non-hormonal factors that are correlative with both individual hormone levels and contributions to care. Using multivariate statistics, we show that hormone levels explain significant variation in contributions to pup-feeding by male meerkats, even after controlling for non-hormonal effects. However, long-term contributions to pup provisioning were significantly and positively correlated with plasma levels of cortisol rather than prolactin, while plasma levels of testosterone were not related to individual patterns of pup-feeding. Furthermore, a playback experiment that used pup begging calls to increase the feeding rates of male helpers gave rise to parallel increases in plasma cortisol levels, whilst prolactin and testosterone levels remained unchanged. Our findings confirm that hormones can explain significant amounts of variation in contributions to offspring feeding, and that cortisol, not prolactin, is the hormone most strongly associated with pup-feeding in cooperative male meerkats

Teamwork that affects outcomes: A method to enhance team ownership

Healthcare is the ultimate team sport, and this case study explores how to build teamwork across teams. The ability for nursing, environmental services and food and nutrition services to work collaboratively to benefit patients is paramount to a patients experience and outcomes. The case study describes how the work was done to build teams and then improved outcomes in both patient and employee experiences. The learnings are applicable to any team setting not just those described in this case study. Experience Framework This article is associated with the Staff & Provider Engagement lens of The Beryl Institute Experience Framework (https://www.theberylinstitute.org/ExperienceFramework). Access other PXJ articles related to this lens. Access other resources related to this lens

Latent profile analysis of accelerometer-measured sleep, physical activity, and sedentary time and differences in health characteristics in adult women.

ObjectivesIndependently, physical activity (PA), sedentary behavior (SB), and sleep are related to the development and progression of chronic diseases. Less is known about how rest-activity behaviors cluster within individuals and how rest-activity behavior profiles relate to health. In this study we aimed to investigate if adult women cluster into profiles based on how they accumulate rest-activity behavior (including accelerometer-measured PA, SB, and sleep), and if participant characteristics and health outcomes differ by profile membership.MethodsA convenience sample of 372 women (mean age 55.38 + 10.16) were recruited from four US cities. Participants wore ActiGraph GT3X+ accelerometers on the hip and wrist for a week. Total daily minutes in moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) and percentage of wear-time spent in SB was estimated from the hip device. Total sleep time (hours/minutes) and sleep efficiency (% of in bed time asleep) were estimated from the wrist device. Latent profile analysis (LPA) was performed to identify clusters of participants based on accumulation of the four rest-activity variables. Adjusted ANOVAs were conducted to explore differences in demographic characteristics and health outcomes across profiles.ResultsRest-activity variables clustered to form five behavior profiles: Moderately Active Poor Sleepers (7%), Highly Actives (9%), Inactives (41%), Moderately Actives (28%), and Actives (15%). The Moderately Active Poor Sleepers (profile 1) had the lowest proportion of whites (35% vs 78-91%, p < .001) and college graduates (28% vs 68-90%, p = .004). Health outcomes did not vary significantly across all rest-activity profiles.ConclusionsIn this sample, women clustered within daily rest-activity behavior profiles. Identifying 24-hour behavior profiles can inform intervention population targets and innovative behavioral goals of multiple health behavior interventions