Training Dieters to Eat Intuitively with a Mobile Application

Weight loss is commonly recommended to prevent cardiometabolic diseases like hypertension, heart disease, and diabetes. Rather than lead to a long-term healthy weight, dieting can result in weight cycling, which has been shown to be more harmful to health than being overweight. An emerging solution to prevent both excess weight gain and weight cycling is to avoid extremes of hunger and fullness by eating intuitively. Intuitive eating or mindful eating means tuning into interoceptive cues of hunger and fullness to guide when and how much to eat. Mindful eating has been linked to both heart, and metabolic health. It is, however, often labor intensive to retrain chronic dieters to intuitively eat what they need, and nothing more. This study describes a mobile health application that mimics an in-office intuitive eating coaching session. It utilizes homeostasis concepts, and components of the Health Belief Model; including, cues to action, phone prompts, minimal barriers to use, and self-efficacy through repeated immediate feedback. It is expected that this innovation could assist or replace the more labor-intensive in-person methods that exist to train previous dieters to eat intuitively. An enhanced description of this mobile application, the PaleoIntuitive app, is presented in this paper along with a discussion of its expected impact on health behavior

Trapped in the Goddess\u27s Mousetrap: Equitable Solutions for Poverty Poaching of Venus Flytraps

Most discussions of poaching—the intentional, unlawful taking or killing of a living organism—focus on animals. However, poaching is also the primary threat for many prized collectible plants. The bizarre Venus flytrap has particularly drawn media attention as North Carolina struggles to save its endemic State Carnivorous Plant from extinction. Existing federal plant protection laws are sparse and either ineffective (in the case of the Endangered Species Act) or underutilized (in the case of the Lacey Act). Traditional poaching enforcement methods, which target individual poachers with small fines, are designed for animal poaching, and fail to adequately protect plants. Not only do enforcement officers have difficulty finding plant poachers, but poverty, drug use, and cultural traditions often provide incentives that small fines do little to deter. North Carolina has taken one alternative approach by increasing deterrence through stricter penalties, including jail time. Another alternative approach is using the Lacey Act to enforce state laws, as modeled by a maple-poaching case in Washington State. This comment argues that a combination of these two approaches may best protect the Venus flytrap—and avoid the inequities of traditional enforcement—by targeting upstream buyers and resellers of poached plants with more severe penalties

A Computational Cognitive Architecture for Exploring Team Mental Models

Team Mental Models (TMM) are one of the strongest predictors of team behavior and performance. TMM direct team behaviors through the series of tasks they perform over time. Research in the area, although crucial in demonstrating the effect of TMM, has been largely static, failing to articulate specifically how TMM emerge or function in teams over time. This dissertation develops a computational model to explicate the process of TMM emergence and demonstrate necessary factors. First, I explain the core concepts of TMM emergence, including team composition, dyadic interactions, and contextual variables. Second, I develop a process-oriented theory of TMM development in narrative format. Third, I translate the narrative theory into a computational model proposed to explore how the core processes interact to influence TMM emergence. Results of the model suggest that teams may simultaneously increase TMM similarity and decrease overall accuracy as a team. Additionally, team intelligence may be viewed as a liability in some respects. While intelligence in team members could facilitate more efficient, faster sharing of information, incorrect information spreads more quickly. As team members are more agreeable starting from the beginning of the simulation, members could be more susceptible to believing more incorrect information

Cooperation and Facets of Psychological Collectivism as Antecedents of Team Mental Model Similarity

This thesis investigated the role of facets of trait psychological collectivism (Preference, Reliance, Concern, and Goal-Priority) and the personality trait cooperativeness in the development of Team Mental Models. Team Mental Models (TMMs) are shared representations of a work team’s context that aid a team in directing behaviors and coordinating actions. I utilized Marks, Mathieu, and Zaccaro’s (2001) taxonomy of team processes to explicate and test a model detailing the role of composition in TMM development. Data were collected from 35 teams of 5 individuals who completed a computer simulation in which the team interdependently replicated pictures using blocks. Multiple regression analyses were used to test a mediation model of team trait personality composition, team mental models, team processes and team performance. TMMs and the team traits Reliance and Preference were found to positively predict team performance; however, the mediated model was not supported. Implications and future directions are discussed

Another New South: Patterns of Continuity in the Southern Naval Stores Industry.

Analysis of southern naval stores production, an industry in many respects more representative of southern economic development than cotton textiles, reveals a pattern of continuity between the antebellum and post-war South. Naval stores manufacturing began in the colonial era but languished as a marginally-profitable business until the 1830s when new uses for spirits of turpentine resulted in increased demand and higher prices. Large turpentine operations developed almost exclusively in eastern North Carolina and the slaves, who performed most of the work, experienced distinct work patterns. By the 1850s, destructive gum-harvesting methods led to the depletion of North Carolina\u27s longleaf pine forests; producers determined to continue in the business moved their operations and slaves into fresh pine tracts in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama. The antebellum industry\u27s trends---large-scale production, primitive harvesting methods that wounded the trees, and reliance on forced labor---continued after the Civil War. Producers continued moving into the deep South and solved the problem of labor shortages with convict leasing and peonage. Intensive work routines and difficult conditions in isolated forest camps also persisted, despite attacks on the industry\u27s labor practices in the early twentieth century. Moreover, producers continued to migrate through the South as gum collection devastated pine stands. Progressive-era initiatives did bring moderately successful efforts to introduce less destructive harvesting methods than those in use since the 1700s. However, two new problems plagued the industry in the first half of the century: the rapid rise of production costs and competition from both foreign gum naval stores producers and the rapidly growing wood naval stores industry. These rivals, combined with the economic and social changes that affected the South in the 1930s and 1940s, brought the gum naval stores industry to virtual collapse, despite federal assistance through New Deal farm programs. The wood naval stores industry, which relied on heavy mechanization and a small number of well-trained technicians, made gains at the expense of the gum industry. That naval stores production did not modernize until World War II, demonstrates that a significant portion of post-Civil War southern development represented a continuation of antebellum patterns

Improving Glycemic Control among Incarcerated Men

In the California state prison environment, many diabetic inmates have poor glycemic control and are at risk for complications which include heart disease, retinopathy, renal failure and peripheral vascular disease. An established program permitted diabetic inmates to carry a glucometer and perform their own blood glucose finger sticks. As a quality improvement process, in addition to allowing inmates to carry a glucometer one institution developed an individualized interdisciplinary educational program. The purpose of this report is to summarize a Quality Improvement project assessing the addition of a health promotion educational program, and to retrospectively compare existing data to determine if such a program might improve glycemic control among participating inmates. In a prison setting where no dietary modification is provided, it is important to identify strategies which have been shown to promote glycemic control in this population. Additionally, with the increasing incidence of diabetes taking both an economic and human toll, successful glycemic control strategies should be incorporated into the design of care models

Critical Team Composition Issues for Long-Distance and Long-Duration Space Exploration: A Literature Review, an Operational Assessment, and Recommendations for Practice and Research

Prevailing team effectiveness models suggest that teams are best positioned for success when certain enabling conditions are in place (Hackman, 1987; Hackman, 2012; Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008; Wageman, Hackman, & Lehman, 2005). Team composition, or the configuration of member attributes, is an enabling structure key to fostering competent teamwork (Hackman, 2002; Wageman et al., 2005). A vast body of research supports the importance of team composition in team design (Bell, 2007). For example, team composition is empirically linked to outcomes such as cooperation (Eby & Dobbins, 1997), social integration (Harrison, Price, Gavin, & Florey, 2002), shared cognition (Fisher, Bell, Dierdorff, & Belohlav, 2012), information sharing (Randall, Resick, & DeChurch, 2011), adaptability (LePine, 2005), and team performance (e.g., Bell, 2007). As such, NASA has identified team composition as a potentially powerful means for mitigating the risk of performance decrements due to inadequate crew cooperation, coordination, communication, and psychosocial adaptation in future space exploration missions. Much of what is known about effective team composition is drawn from research conducted in conventional workplaces (e.g., corporate offices, production plants). Quantitative reviews of the team composition literature (e.g., Bell, 2007; Bell, Villado, Lukasik, Belau, & Briggs, 2011) are based primarily on traditional teams. Less is known about how composition affects teams operating in extreme environments such as those that will be experienced by crews of future space exploration missions. For example, long-distance and long-duration space exploration (LDSE) crews are expected to live and work in isolated and confined environments (ICEs) for up to 30 months. Crews will also experience communication time delays from mission control, which will require crews to work more autonomously (see Appendix A for more detailed information regarding the LDSE context). Given the unique context within which LDSE crews will operate, NASA identified both a gap in knowledge related to the effective composition of autonomous, LDSE crews, and the need to identify psychological and psychosocial factors, measures, and combinations thereof that can be used to compose highly effective crews (Team Gap 8). As an initial step to address Team Gap 8, we conducted a focused literature review and operational assessment related to team composition issues for LDSE. The objectives of our research were to: (1) identify critical team composition issues and their effects on team functioning in LDSE-analogous environments with a focus on key composition factors that will most likely have the strongest influence on team performance and well-being, and 1 Astronaut diary entry in regards to group interaction aboard the ISS (p.22; Stuster, 2010) 2 (2) identify and evaluate methods used to compose teams with a focus on methods used in analogous environments. The remainder of the report includes the following components: (a) literature review methodology, (b) review of team composition theory and research, (c) methods for composing teams, (d) operational assessment results, and (e) recommendations

Do you Dare to Study Abroad? Examining Cross-Cultural Differences in the Role of Covid-19 Post-Pandemic Stress on Study Abroad Intentions and Country Image Formation

The purpose of this study is to explore the underlying dimensions of Covid-19 stress to determine the extent to which Covid-19 stress has an effect on students’ intentions to participate in future study abroad programs. The underlying stress factors that this work examines include traumatic stress, contamination fears, fears about economic consequences and past Covid illness experience. The paper addresses the cross-cultural differences in these factors’ effects on studying abroad intentions among young individualistic versus collectivistic consumers. The goal of this study is to develop a deeper understanding of Covid related stress phenomena among global young consumer cohorts. The results of this study could inform university study abroad managers to consider the students’ perceptions of Covid-19 stress when developing future study abroad programs. We posit that students are more likely to participate in study abroad programs when the programs address the post-pandemic era stressors, but cross-cultural differences exist