A mixed-methods exploration of the factors affecting bike riding participation in Victoria, Australia

Participation rates in Australia remain low compared to other international settings, and gross inequities exist in participation, including for women and people living in low socioeconomic areas [1]. In recognition of the health and environmental benefits of increasing cycling participation, governments in Australia are increasing investment in initiatives to increase bicycling [2]. Recent research found that 78% of people in Greater Melbourne (a major Australian metropolitan region) are interested in riding a bike [3]. This demonstrates an opportunity for considerable modal shift to bike riding. There is, however, insufficient knowledge of the barriers to, and enablers of cycling for transport in this context. Research of barriers and enablers in Australia is very limited, however the majority of what has been conducted bas been quantitative research in groups whom are already cyclists. Existing research explores factors affecting cycling for all purposes, potentially overlooking differences in barriers and enablers reported for either riding a bike for transport, or recreational purposes. Further, quantitative studies often present the prevalence of a particular barrier or enabler, without consideration of the strength of how preventative, or encouraging the factor may be. This has resulted in cycling strategies being largely uninformed by the needs of people who are not current cyclists, and without consideration of the needs of people who ride a bike for transport, compared to recreational ri.ders. To increase cycling participation, it is essential to understand the barriers and enablers of cycling for all people of all ages and abilities, and to understand the nuances of their perception of safety. This requires a mixed-methods approach, with a robust sampling approach, to consider the prevalence and strength of the varying factors that influence people's decision to ride a bike or not. We conducted an online survey and semi-structured interviews with people living in nine selected local government areas across Greater Melbourne. [From: Introduction

Maternal and best friends\u27 influences on meal-skipping behaviours

Skipping meals is particularly common during adolescence and can have a detrimental effect on multiple aspects of adolescent health.&nbsp;Understanding the correlates of meal-skipping behaviours is important for the design of nutrition interventions. The present study examined&nbsp;maternal and best friends&rsquo; influences on adolescent meal-skipping behaviours. Frequency of skipping breakfast, lunch and dinner was&nbsp;assessed using a Web-based survey completed by 3001 adolescent boys and girls from years 7 and 9 of secondary schools in Victoria,&nbsp;Australia. Perceived best friend and maternal meal skipping, modelling of healthy eating (eating healthy food, limiting junk food,&nbsp;eating fruit and vegetables) and weight watching were assessed. Best friend and maternal factors were differentially associated with&nbsp;meal-skipping behaviours. For example, boys and girls who perceived that their best friend often skipped meals were more likely to&nbsp;skip lunch (OR &frac14; 2&middot;01, 95% CI 1&middot;33, 3&middot;04 and OR &frac14; 1&middot;93, 95% CI 1&middot;41, 2&middot;65; P,0&middot;001). Boys and girls who perceived that their mother&nbsp;often skipped meals were more likely to skip breakfast (OR &frac14; 1&middot;48, 95% CI 1&middot;01, 2&middot;15; P,0&middot;05 and OR &frac14; 1&middot;93, 95% CI 1&middot;42, 2&middot;59;&nbsp;P,0&middot;001) and lunch (OR &frac14; 2&middot;05, 95% CI 1&middot;35, 3&middot;12 and OR &frac14; 2&middot;02, 95% CI 1&middot;43, 2&middot;86; P,0&middot;001). Educating adolescents on how to&nbsp;assess and interpret unhealthy eating behaviours that they observe from significant others may be one nutrition promotion strategy to&nbsp;reduce meal-skipping behaviour. The involvement of mothers may be particularly important in such efforts. Encouraging a peer subculture&nbsp;that promotes regular consumption of meals and educates adolescents on the detrimental impact of meal-skipping behaviour on health&nbsp;may also offer a promising nutrition promotion strategy.</span

Assessing Patients’ Awareness and Perception of the UNMC SHARING Clinic Among Patients Visiting Nebraska Medicine’s Emergency Department

https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/emet_posters/1011/thumbnail.jp

Adolescent television viewing and unhealthy snack food consumption: the mediating role of home availability of unhealthy snack foods

Objective To examine whether home availability of energy-dense snack foods mediates the association between television (TV) viewing and energy-dense snack consumption among adolescents.Design Cross-sectional.Setting Secondary schools in Victoria, Australia.Subjects Adolescents (n 2984) from Years 7 and 9 of secondary school completed a web-based survey, between September 2004 and July 2005, assessing their energy-dense snack food consumption, school-day and weekend-day TV viewing and home availability of energy-dense snack foods.Results School-day and weekend-day TV viewing were positively associated with energy-dense snack consumption among adolescent boys (&beta; = 0&middot;003, P &lt; 0&middot;001) and girls (&beta; = 0&middot;03, P &lt; 0&middot;001). Furthermore, TV viewing (school day and weekend day) were positively associated with home availability of energy-dense snack foods among adolescent boys and girls and home availability of energy-dense snack foods was positively associated with energy-dense snack food consumption among boys (&beta; = 0&middot;26, P &lt; 0&middot;001) and girls (&beta; = 0&middot;28, P &lt; 0&middot;001). Home availability partly mediated the association between TV viewing and energy-dense snack consumption.Conclusions The results of the present study suggest that TV viewing has a significant role to play in adolescent unhealthy eating behaviours. Future research should assess the efficacy of methods to reduce adolescent energy-dense snack food consumption by targeting parents to reduce home availability of energy-dense foods and by reducing TV viewing behaviours of adolescents

Adding team-based financial incentives to the Carrot Rewards physical activity app increases daily step count on a population scale: a 24-week matched case control study

Background: Mobile health applications (mHealth apps) targeting physical inactivity have increased in popularity yet are usually limited by low engagement. This study examined the impact of adding team-based incentives (Step Together Challenges, STCs) to an existing mHealth app (Carrot Rewards) that rewarded individual physical activity achievements. Methods: A 24-week quasi-experimental study (retrospective matched pairs design) was conducted in three Canadian provinces (pre-intervention: weeks 1–12; intervention: weeks 13–24). Participants who used Carrot Rewards and STCs (experimental group) were matched with those who used Carrot Rewards only (controls) on age, gender, province and baseline mean daily step count (±500 steps/d). Carrot Rewards users earned individual-level incentives (worth $0.04 CAD) each day they reached a personalized daily step goal. With a single partner, STC users could earn team incentives ($0.40 CAD) for collaboratively reaching individual daily step goals 10 times in seven days (e.g., Partner A completes four goals and Partner B completes six goals in a week). Results: The main analysis included 61,170 users (mean age = 32 yrs.; % female = 64). Controlling for pre-intervention mean daily step count, a significant difference in intervention mean daily step count favoured the experimental group (p \u3c 0.0001; ηp2 = 0.024). The estimated marginal mean group difference was 537 steps per day, or 3759 steps per week (about 40 walking min/wk). Linear regression suggested a dose-response relationship between the number of STCs completed (app engagement) and intervention mean daily step count (adjusted R2 = 0.699) with each new STC corresponding to approximately 200 more steps per day. Conclusion: Despite an explosion of physical activity app interest, low engagement leading to small or no effects remains an industry hallmark. In this paper, we found that adding modest team-based incentives to the Carrot Rewards app increased mean daily step count, and importantly, app engagement moderated this effect. Others should consider novel small-teams based approaches to boost engagement and effects

XO-2b: a hot Jupiter with a variable host star that potentially affects its measured transit depth

The transiting hot Jupiter XO-2b is an ideal target for multi-object photometry and spectroscopy as it has a relatively bright ($V$-mag = 11.25) K0V host star (XO-2N) and a large planet-to-star contrast ratio (R$_{p}$/R$_{s}\approx0.015$). It also has a nearby (31.21") binary stellar companion (XO-2S) of nearly the same brightness ($V$-mag = 11.20) and spectral type (G9V), allowing for the characterization and removal of shared systematic errors (e.g., airmass brightness variations). We have therefore conducted a multiyear (2012--2015) study of XO-2b with the University of Arizona's 61" (1.55~m) Kuiper Telescope and Mont4k CCD in the Bessel U and Harris B photometric passbands to measure its Rayleigh scattering slope to place upper limits on the pressure-dependent radius at, e.g., 10~bar. Such measurements are needed to constrain its derived molecular abundances from primary transit observations. We have also been monitoring XO-2N since the 2013--2014 winter season with Tennessee State University's Celestron-14 (0.36~m) automated imaging telescope to investigate stellar variability, which could affect XO-2b's transit depth. Our observations indicate that XO-2N is variable, potentially due to {cool star} spots, {with a peak-to-peak amplitude of $0.0049 \pm 0.0007$~R-mag and a period of $29.89 \pm 0.16$~days for the 2013--2014 observing season and a peak-to-peak amplitude of $0.0035 \pm 0.0007$~R-mag and $27.34 \pm 0.21$~day period for the 2014--2015 observing season. Because of} the likely influence of XO-2N's variability on the derivation of XO-2b's transit depth, we cannot bin multiple nights of data to decrease our uncertainties, preventing us from constraining its gas abundances. This study demonstrates that long-term monitoring programs of exoplanet host stars are crucial for understanding host star variability.Comment: published in ApJ, 9 pages, 11 figures, 3 tables; updated figures with more ground-based monitoring, added more citations to previous work

Study design and protocol for a mixed methods evaluation of an intervention to reduce and break up sitting time in primary school classrooms in the UK: the CLASS PAL (Physically Active Learning) Programme

Introduction: Children engage in a high volume of sitting in school, particularly in the classroom. A number of strategies, such as physically active lessons (termed movement integration (MI)), have been developed to integrate physical activity into this learning environment; however, no single approach is likely to meet the needs of all pupils and teachers. This protocol outlines an implementation study of a primary school-based MI intervention: CLASS PAL (Physically Active Learning) programme. This study aims to (A) determine the degree of implementation of CLASS PAL, (B) identify processes by which teachers and schools implement CLASS PAL and (C) investigate individual (pupil and teacher) level and school-level characteristics associated with implementation of CLASS PAL. Methods and analysis: The intervention will provide teachers with a professional development workshop and a bespoke teaching resources website. The study will use a single group before-and-after design, strengthened by multiple interim measurements. Six state-funded primary schools will be recruited within Leicestershire, UK. Evaluation data will be collected prior to implementation and at four discrete time points during implementation: At measurement 0 (October 2016), school, teacher and pupil characteristics will be collected. At measurements 0 and 3 (June-July 2017), accelerometry, cognitive functioning, self-reported sitting and classroom engagement data will be collected. At measurements 1(December 2016-March 2017) and 3, teacher interviews (also at measurement 4; September-October 2017) and pupil focus groups will be conducted, and at measurements 1 and 2 (April-May 2017), classroom observations. Implementation will be captured through website analytics and ongoing teacher completed logs. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval was obtained through the Loughborough University Human Participants Ethics Sub-Committee (Reference number: R16-P115). Findings will be disseminated via practitioner and/or research journals and to relevant regional and national stakeholders through print and online media and dissemination event(s)

Population-Level Compensation Impedes Biological Control of an Invasive Forb and Indirect Release of a Native Grass

The intentional introduction of specialist insect herbivores for biological control of exotic weeds provides ideal but understudied systems for evaluating important ecological concepts related to top-down control, plant compensatory responses, indirect effects, and the influence of environmental context on these processes. Centaurea stoebe (spotted knapweed) is a notorious rangeland weed that exhibited regional declines in the early 2000s, attributed to drought by some and to successful biocontrol by others. We initiated an experiment to quantify the effects of the biocontrol agent, Cyphocleonus achates, on Ce. stoebe and its interaction with a dominant native grass competitor, Pseudoroegneria spicata, under contrasting precipitation conditions. Plots containing monocultures of each plant species or equal mixtures of the two received factorial combinations of Cy. achates herbivory (exclusion or addition) and precipitation (May–June drought or “normal,” defined by the 50-year average) for three years. Cy. achates herbivory reduced survival of adult Ce. stoebe plants by 9% overall, but this effect was stronger under normal precipitation compared to drought conditions, and stronger in mixed-species plots compared to monocultures. Herbivory had no effect on Ce. stoebe per capita seed production or on recruitment of seedlings or juveniles. In normal-precipitation plots of mixed composition, greater adult mortality due to Cy. achates herbivory resulted in increased recruitment of new adult Ce. stoebe. Due to this compensatory response to adult mortality, final Ce. stoebe densities did not differ between herbivory treatments regardless of context. Experimental drought reduced adult Ce. stoebe survival in mixed-species plots but did not impede recruitment of new adults or reduce final Ce. stoebe densities, perhaps due to the limited duration of the treatment. Ce. stoebe strongly depressed P. spicata reproduction and recruitment, but these impacts were not substantively alleviated by herbivory on Ce. stoebe. Population-level compensation by dominant plants may be an important factor inhibiting top-down effects in herbivore-driven and predator-driven cascades

Promoting motor skills in low-income, ethnic children: The Physical Activity in Linguistically Diverse Communities (PALDC) nonrandomized trial

This study reports the long-term effects of a professional learning program for classroom teachers on fundamental motor skill (FMS) proficiency of primary school students from ethnically diverse backgrounds. Design: A cluster non-randomized trial using a nested cross-sectional design. Methods: The study was conducted in 8 primary schools located in disadvantaged and culturally diverse areas in Sydney, Australia. The intervention used an action learning framework, with each school developing and implementing an action plan for enhancing the teaching of FMS in their school. School teams comprised 4-5 teachers and were supported by a member of the research team. The primary outcome was total proficiency score for 7 FMS (run, jump, catch, throw, kick, leap, side gallop). Outcome data were analyzed using mixed effects models. Results: Eight-hundred and sixty-two students (82% response rate) were assessed at baseline in 2006 and 830 (82%) at follow-up in 2010. Compared with students in the control schools, there was a significantly greater increase in total motor skill proficiency among children in the intervention schools at follow-up (adjusted difference = 5.2 components, 95%CI [1.65, 8.75]; p. = 0.01) and in four of the seven motor skills. Conclusions: Training classroom teachers to develop and implement units of work based around individual FMS is a promising strategy for increasing FMS among ethnically diverse children over an extended period of time