Evaluation of an Online Course Promoting Health and Wellbeing for University Students and Employees.

Published studies dealing with health promotion activities, such as the improvement of physical activity and healthy eating, for workers and students prove the effectiveness of these preventive interventions. The consequent benefits include better prevention of cardiovascular risk and an improvement in quality of life. Considering this, an intervention aimed at promoting healthy eating and non-sedentary lifestyles has been implemented within an Italian university: the aim of the present research is to evaluate its effectiveness. The intervention consisted of a targeted asynchronous e-learning two-hour course on healthy eating and non-sedentary lifestyles. The attendants were 2004 university students and employees. We conducted two surveys before and after the training intervention, and, through the responses obtained, we evaluated the effectiveness of the intervention. We applied different statistical methods, including unpaired t-tests and nonparametric tests, principal components and cluster analysis. Our results indicate that the post-training knowledge has been significantly improved, compared to that pre-training (7.3 vs. 8.7, p < 0.001). Moreover, the whole sample showed an improved awareness of the importance of healthy behaviors, and perception of the University as an institution promoting a healthy lifestyle. Through the principal components analysis, we identified a unidimensional latent factor named “health and behaviors”. The cluster analysis highlighted that the sub-group reporting the lowest scores at the survey before the training was the one with the highest improvement after the intervention. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first Italian study testing, before and after a health promotion intervention, the knowledge and the attitudes and behaviors towards healthy lifestyles of a group of students and workers. Moreover, we also evaluated the pre- and post-intervention perceived health status, as well as the level of engagement of the attendants, with respect to their colleagues and management in an educational institution promoting wellbeing. The conclusions of our study support the need for further adoption of health promotion training interventions, similar to the one we performed, in order to improve healthy eating and non-sedentary behaviors among workers and students

Lepton Acceleration in Pulsar Wind Nebulae

Pulsar Wind Nebulae (PWNe) act as calorimeters for the relativistic pair winds emanating from within the pulsar light cylinder. Their radiative dissipation in various wavebands is significantly different from that of their pulsar central engines: the broadband spectra of PWNe possess characteristics distinct from those of pulsars, thereby demanding a site of lepton acceleration remote from the pulsar magnetosphere. A principal candidate for this locale is the pulsar wind termination shock, a putatively highly-oblique, ultra-relativistic MHD discontinuity. This paper summarizes key characteristics of relativistic shock acceleration germane to PWNe, using predominantly Monte Carlo simulation techniques that compare well with semi-analytic solutions of the diffusion-convection equation. The array of potential spectral indices for the pair distribution function is explored, defining how these depend critically on the parameters of the turbulent plasma in the shock environs. Injection efficiencies into the acceleration process are also addressed. Informative constraints on the frequency of particle scattering and the level of field turbulence are identified using the multiwavelength observations of selected PWNe. These suggest that the termination shock can be comfortably invoked as a principal injector of energetic leptons into PWNe without resorting to unrealistic properties for the shock layer turbulence or MHD structure.Comment: 19 pages, 5 figures, invited review to appear in Proc. of the inaugural ICREA Workshop on "The High-Energy Emission from Pulsars and their Systems" (2010), eds. N. Rea and D. Torres, (Springer Astrophysics and Space Science series

Impact of emergency online classes on students’ motivation and engagement in University during the Covid-19 pandemic: a study case

The Covid-19 pandemic has had dramatic impact on many dimensions of living and studying conditions of students at University. This paper analyses student satisfaction and motivation during the lockdown period and try to understand whether different socio-economic and environmental conditions have influenced needs and demands of students during the emergency online didactics. Drawing from the results of a questionnaire administered to students enrolled in the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, this research is aimed at describing which factors, beyond the quality and the professionalism of the lecturers and the quality of the education received, influence the satisfaction with the online learning experience and impact on students’ motivations and perceived engagement. Moreover, the study investigates the pandemic’s direct effects on gender differences and inequalities, analysing the obstacles affecting the self- organization of study at home

A New Class of Weighted Similarity Indices Using Polytomous Variables

In this paper we introduce new similarity indeces for variables with multiple categories. The proposed measures are conceptually simple and straightforward to compute. In contrast to traditionally used similarity indeces, they also consider the frequency of the modalities of each attribute in the sample. This feature is useful when dealing with rare categories, since it makes sense to differently evaluate the pairwise presence of a rare category from the pairwise presence of a widespread one. Moreover, this feature helps finding under-represented groups in cluster analysis. There are two versions of the weighted index: one for independent categorical variables and one for dependent variables. The suitability of the proposed indeces is shown in this paper using both simulated and real world data sets