Teaching Data Literacy for Civic Engagement: Resources for Data Capture and Organization

Endangered Data Week emerged in the early months of 2017 as an effort to encourage conversations about government-produced, open data and the many factors that can limit its access. The event offers an internationally-coordinated series of events that includes publicizing the availability of datasets, increasing critical engagement with them, encouraging open data policies at all levels of government, and the fostering of data skills through workshops on curation, documentation and discovery, improved access, and preservation. The reflection provides an outline of the curriculum development happening through Endangered Data Week and encourages others to contribute

Brisk walking compared with an individualised medical fitness programme for patients with type 2 diabetes: a randomised controlled trial

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Structured exercise is considered a cornerstone in type 2 diabetes treatment. However, adherence to combined resistance and endurance type exercise or medical fitness intervention programmes is generally poor. Group-based brisk walking may represent an attractive alternative, but its long-term efficacy as compared with an individualised approach such as medical fitness intervention programmes is unknown. We compared the clinical benefits of a 12-month exercise intervention programme consisting of either brisk walking or a medical fitness programme in type 2 diabetes patients. METHODS: We randomised 92 type 2 diabetes patients (60 +/- 9 years old) to either three times a week of 60 min brisk walking (n = 49) or medical fitness programme (n = 43). Primary outcome was the difference in changes in HbA1c values at 12 months. Secondary outcomes were differences in changes in blood pressure, plasma lipid concentrations, insulin sensitivity, body composition, physical fitness, programme adherence rate and health-related quality of life. RESULTS: After 12 months, 18 brisk walking and 19 medical fitness participants were still actively participating. In both programmes, 50 and 25% of the dropout was attributed to overuse injuries and lack of motivation, respectively. Intention-to-treat analyses showed no important differences between brisk walking and medical fitness programme in primary or secondary outcome variables. CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: The prescription of group-based brisk walking represents an equally effective intervention to modulate glycaemic control and cardiovascular risk profile in type 2 diabetes patients when compared with more individualised medical fitness programmes. Future exercise intervention programmes should anticipate the high attrition rate due to overuse injuries and motivation problems

A multi-layer functional genomic analysis to understand noncoding genetic variation in lipids

A major challenge of genome-wide association studies (GWASs) is to translate phenotypic associations into biological insights. Here, we integrate a large GWAS on blood lipids involving 1.6 million individuals from five ancestries with a wide array of functional genomic datasets to discover regulatory mechanisms underlying lipid associations. We first prioritize lipid-associated genes with expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) colocalizations and then add chromatin interaction data to narrow the search for functional genes. Polygenic enrichment analysis across 697 annotations from a host of tissues and cell types confirms the central role of the liver in lipid levels and highlights the selective enrichment of adipose-specific chromatin marks in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides. Overlapping transcription factor (TF) binding sites with lipid-associated loci identifies TFs relevant in lipid biology. In addition, we present an integrative framework to prioritize causal variants at GWAS loci, producing a comprehensive list of candidate causal genes and variants with multiple layers of functional evidence. We highlight two of the prioritized genes, CREBRF and RRBP1, which show convergent evidence across functional datasets supporting their roles in lipid biology.Xiang Zhu is supported by the Stein Fellowship from Stanford University and Institute for Computational and Data Sciences Seed Grant from The Pennsylvania State University. C.D.B. is supported by the NIH (R01-HL133218). Funding for the Global Lipids Genetics Consortium was provided by the NIH (R01-HL127564). This research was conducted using the UK Biobank Resource under application number 24460. This research is based on data from the Million Veteran Program, Office of Research and Development, Veterans Health Administration, and was supported by awards 2I01BX003362-03A1 and 1I01BX004821-01A1. This publication does not represent the views of the Department of Veteran Affairs or the United States Government. We thank Bethany Klunder for administrative support. Study-specific acknowledgments are provided in the supplemental information

THE MILITARY-MASCULINITY COMPLEX: HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY AND THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES, 1940-1963

The military-industrial complex grew rapidly in the build up to the Second World War and continued to expand in the decades that followed. The military was not only much larger, but had also changed their relationship with American citizens, impacting their lives in new and complex ways. The defensive needs of World War Two and the Cold War made the military an imperative and prestigious institution in the United States, and the Selective Service Draft, beginning in 1940 and running continuously until 1973, gave the military unfettered access to the young men of the nation. During the same time, government propaganda spread to new forms of media, and created more in-depth narratives than ever before. A deep analysis of these deeper texts, created and distributed for mass audiences, provides a glimpse into the ways the military represented itself, and the expectations it had for the nation. The military consistently depicted its men as white, straight, cissexual, physically well-built, and emblematic of white, middle class norms and values. This corpus of propaganda drew heavily upon hegemonic masculinity, and illustrated all four of the dimensions of masculinity as outlined by Deborah S. David and Robert Brannon, in The Forty-Nine Percent Majority: The Male Sex Role. By drawing so heavily and completely upon these dimensions, the US military created an unproblematized image of the military, and also solidified and reified the existing masculine power dynamics. Adviser: Patrick D. JonesThis thesis is also available in its original digital form in DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska-Lincoln and elsewhere on the web

Teaching Data Literacy for Civic Engagement: Resources for Data Capture and Organization

Endangered Data Week emerged in the early months of 2017 as an effort to encourage conversations about government-produced, open data and the many factors that can limit its access. The event offers an internationally-coordinated series of events that includes publicizing the availability of datasets, increasing critical engagement with them, encouraging open data policies at all levels of government, and the fostering of data skills through workshops on curation, documentation and discovery, improved access, and preservation. The reflection provides an outline of the curriculum development happening through Endangered Data Week and encourages others to contribute

Association of day length and weather conditions with physical activity levels in older community dwelling people

This study was funded by Scottish Executive grant CZH/4/518. The sponsor was the University of Dundee.Background: Weather is a potentially important determinant of physical activity. Little work has been done examining the relationship between weather and physical activity, and potential modifiers of any relationship in older people. We therefore examined the relationship between weather and physical activity in a cohort of older community-dwelling people. Methods: We analysed prospectively collected cross-sectional activity data from community-dwelling people aged 65 and over in the Physical Activity Cohort Scotland. We correlated seven day triaxial accelerometry data with daily weather data (temperature, day length, sunshine, snow, rain), and a series of potential effect modifiers were tested in mixed models: environmental variables (urban vs rural dwelling, percentage of green space), psychological variables (anxiety, depression, perceived behavioural control), social variables (number of close contacts) and health status measured using the SF-36 questionnaire. Results: 547 participants, mean age 78.5 years, were included in this analysis. Higher minimum daily temperature and longer day length were associated with higher activity levels; these associations remained robust to adjustment for other significant associates of activity: age, perceived behavioural control, number of social contacts and physical function. Of the potential effect modifier variables, only urban vs rural dwelling and the SF-36 measure of social functioning enhanced the association between day length and activity; no variable modified the association between minimum temperature and activity. Conclusions: In older community dwelling people, minimum temperature and day length were associated with objectively measured activity. There was little evidence for moderation of these associations through potentially modifiable health, environmental, social or psychological variables.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe