Duration and breaks in sedentary behaviour: Accelerometer data from 1566 community-dwelling older men (British Regional Heart Study)

Background: Sedentary behaviours are increasingly recognised as raising risk of CVD events, diabetes and mortality, independently of physical activity (PA) levels. However, little is known about patterns of sedentary behaviour in older adults. Methods: Cross sectional study of 1566/3137 (50% response) men aged 71-91 years from a UK population-based cohort study. Men wore a GT3x accelerometer over the hip for one week in 2010-11. Mean daily minutes of SB, % of day in sedentary behaviours, sedentary bouts and breaks were calculated and summarized by health and demographic characteristics. Results: 1403 ambulatory men aged 78.4 years (SD 4.6 years) with ≥600 minutes of accelerometer wear on ≥3 days had complete data on covariables. Men spent on average 618 minutes (SD=83), or 72% of their day in sedentary behaviours (<100 counts/minute). On average men accumulated 72 spells of sedentary behaviours per day, with 7 breaks in each sedentary hour. Men had on average 5.1 sedentary bouts of ≥30 minutes, which accounted for 43% of sedentary time, and 1.4 bouts of ≥60 minutes, which accounted for 19% of daily sedentary time. Men who were over 80 years old, obese, depressed and had multiple chronic conditions accumulated more sedentary time and spent more time in longer sedentary bouts. Conclusions: Older men spend nearly three quarters of their day in sedentary behaviours, mostly accumulated in short bouts, although bouts lasting ≥30 minutes accounted for nearly half of the sedentary time each day. Men with medical risk factors were more likely to also display sedentary behaviour

Consumers’ self-disclosure decisions and concerns : the effects of social exclusion and agent anthropomorphism

Consumer data and privacy is becoming an increasingly important topic in marketing, as the collection and use of consumers’ personal information and instances of data breach are both on the rise. At the core of these recent shifts in the consumer data and privacy landscape is consumers’ concern with sharing their personal information. Past research on consumer privacy has focused on when and why consumers’ concerns are heightened and why people still provide their personal information despite the concerns. This dissertation extends the literature on consumer self-disclosure and privacy concerns and explores novel psychological and situational factors that influence consumers’ decision to disclose and concern with sharing their personal information to brands and marketers. In Essay 1, I focused on the influence of individual and situational differences – namely, the feeling of social exclusion – and examined at how experiencing social exclusion can increase consumers’ self-disclosure intentions toward brands. Specifically, I proposed that consumers will be more willing to share their information with a brand when they experience social exclusion, driven by their desire to forge social connections with the brand. Through five studies, I tested and confirmed these hypotheses and also demonstrated two boundary conditions. In Essay 2, I investigated how anthropomorphism of products and brands – a marketer-controlled variable – influences consumers’ concerns with sharing their personal information when there are threats to privacy in the environment. Specifically, I proposed that consumers’ concerns with information collection by agents (i.e., products or brands) would be influenced by the level of privacy threats in the environment and the anthropomorphic nature of the agent, and that the effects would be driven by the perception of control over the agent. I argued that, when threats to privacy are high (vs. low), individuals’ concern with sharing their data will increase for a non-anthropomorphic agent, but such effect will be attenuated for an anthropomorphic agent collecting the information. Furthermore, I expected that the difference in the perceived control over the agent would account for these effects. I tested and partially confirmed these hypotheses through five studiesMarketin

Why belonging matters for college students’ academic engagement : antecedents and consequences of sense of classroom belonging

The purpose of this dissertation project was to explore the mechanisms through which sense of belonging affects academic engagement—behavioral, emotional, and cognitive—over time in varying college classroom situations. The study also examined the potential contribution of some course attributes to either facilitating or thwarting students’ sense of belonging on academic engagement. Moreover, this project sought to identify group differences between ethnic or racial minority students and non-minority students in terms of the effect of sense of belonging on academic engagement. Using structural equation modeling (SEM), the study tested a short-term longitudinal model that hypothesized the predictive relations among course attributes, sense of classroom belonging, and academic engagement at the beginning and toward the end of the semester. Participants were 295 undergraduate students from a public university in a southwestern state of the U.S., who were recruited via an online website dedicated to a subject pool that was offered through the department of Educational Psychology. Participants were asked to respond to online survey items in relation to one of their undergraduate courses, choosing from those courses they were taking in the current semester the course that had a subject pool requirement. Results from the study showed that participants’ sense of belonging in the classroom positively predicted academic engagement later in the semester, even after their motivation and course attributes were held constant. The results also indicated that mode of instruction and classroom goal structure had significant direct effects on participants’ perceived belongingness at the beginning of the semester and subsequently indirect effects on their course engagement over the semester. Finally, the multigroup SEM analysis revealed that the effect of sense of belonging was almost equally beneficial for ethnic or racial minority and non-minority groups, suggesting that sense of belonging generally matters for both groups. However, a more nuanced look at the data suggests that for the ethnic or racial minority group, it may be more important to nurture a supportive classroom climate and provide ample opportunities to connect with peers. Overall, results provide insights into the powerful impact of sense of belonging in college students’ engagement in the classroom.Educational Psycholog

Electric fields as a means of controlling thin film flow over topography

This paper was presented at the 2nd Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2009), which was held at Brunel University, West London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, IPEM, the Italian Union of Thermofluid dynamics, the Process Intensification Network, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group and the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications.Gravity-driven, steady-state flow of a thin liquid film over a substrate containing topography in the presence of a normal electric field is investigated. The liquid is assumed to be a perfect conductor and the air above it an ideal dielectric. The Navier-Stokes equations are solved using a new depth-averaged approximation that is capable of analysing film flows with inertia, with the flow coupled to the electric field via a Maxwell normal stress term that results from the solution of Laplace’s equation for the electric potential above the film. The latter is solved analytically using separation of variables and Fourier series. The coupled solver is used to analyse the interplay between inertia and electric field effects for flow over onedimensional step and trench topographies and to predict the effect of an electric field on three-dimensional Stokes flow over a two-dimensional trench topography. Sample results are given which investigate the magnitude of the electric fields needed to suppress free surface disturbances induced by topography in each of the cases considered.This study is funded by the European Union via Marie Curie Action Contract MEST-CT-2005-020599

Communicating development, branding nation in South Korea

This dissertation examines foreign aid-related activities of South Korea to demonstrate how the discourse and practice surrounding development is understood, interpreted, and enacted by an emerging donor. The past two decades have given rise to a diversity of development actors committed to doing good for their inter/transnational counterparts, evidenced in the multi-directional flow of development programs and funds to support such causes. Emerging from the multi-polar structure of the development landscape are a diverse range of articulations, motivations, and understandings guiding development aid. This has raised fundamental questions about how to approach and understand the geopolitical field of development at present moment in time, and the possibility of emerging actors to dismantle the dominant discourse of development. The scholarly field of development communication, however, has been slow to take such shifts into consideration. Following a critical approach to development communication, this study understands development as a discursive field where negotiation and struggle among different actors take place at multiple levels. Based on the theoretical understanding, this study examines South Korea’s development thinking and practice, specifically, in relation to its international development volunteer program. Drawing on a discourse analysis of multiple sources data, including news coverage that examines how development is discussed over time by Korean popular press, visual images of Korea’s volunteer program, and interviews with former volunteers, this study makes three points. First, geopolitical and domestic conditions over time have closely tied the understanding of development with nation building, where the two projects mutually constitute one another. Second, in examining how such enduring association of development with the national project is manifested in its representational practices of volunteer encounters, I show that the host becomes simplified, depoliticized, and romanticized, against which Korea is foregrounded as culturally rich, competent, and compassionate. Finally, drawing on an interrogation of multiple structural conditions that are implicated in development volunteering, I show the ways in which Korean volunteers navigate and complicate the dominant imaginaries of development, bringing new perspectives to nation, race, and gender in volunteer-host relationship.Radio-Television-Fil

The associations between religion, bereavement and depression among Hong Kong nurses

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Workplace Violence toward Physicians and Nurses: Prevalence and Correlates in Macau

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Heterotopic heart transplantation in the rat receiving FK-506 alone or with cyclosporine.

In rats, FK significantly prolonged heterotopic heart graft survival over a wide dose range when given for 2 weeks starting on the day of the operation. Brief courses of FK for one to four days preoperatively, and especially beginning four days postoperatively, allowed long subsequent survival of heart grafts in otherwise untreated recipients. The seeming acceptance of the grafts with postoperative FK treatment was largely but not exclusively donor specific when tested eight days after the last FK dose by second grafts from the same donor v third-party donor grafts. FK in minimally therapeutic doses was synergistic with suboptimal doses of CyA

The Role of Innovation in Inventory Turnover Performance

How a firm utilizes technological innovation to improve operations management is an important research question in today's knowledge economy but lacks empirical evidence in the literature. We use a dataset of all non-service U.S. public firms from 1976 to 2005 to examine how a firm's innovation performance is associated with its inventory turnover performance. In particular, we measure a firm's innovation performance by the ratio of its patents (either citations or counts) to its research and development (R&D) expenditure. Our fixed-effect panel regression results indicate a positive relation between innovation performance and inventory turnover ratio, and such a relation varies across industries. By differentiating process and product innovation according to patent usages, we find that process innovation has a consistent and long-lasting effect, whereas product innovation has an immediate but short-lasting effect. We also find supporting evidence for industry spillovers by showing that firms in a more innovative industry are likely to better manage their inventory performance. Our results confirm the benefit of using innovation in logistics and operations management and point to the strategic importance of integrating technology and operations management.postprin