Validity of the new lifestyles NL-1000 accelerometer for measuring time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in school settings

Current interest in promoting physical activity in the school environment necessitates an inexpensive, accurate method of measuring physical activity in such settings. Additionally, it is recognized that physical activity must be of at least moderate intensity in order to yield substantial health benefits. The purpose of the study, therefore, was to determine the validity of the New Lifestyles NL-1000 (New Lifestyles, Inc., Lee's Summit, Missouri, USA) accelerometer for measuring moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in school settings, using the Actigraph GT1M (ActiGraph, Pensacola, Florida, USA) as the criterion. Data were collected during a cross-country run (n = 12), physical education (n = 18), and classroom-based physical activities (n = 42). Significant and meaningful intraclass correlations between methods were found, and NL-1000 estimates of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity were not meaningfully different from GT1M-estimated moderate- to-vigorous physical activity. The NL-1000 therefore shows promising validity evidence as an inexpensive, convenient method of measuring moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in school settings

Comparison of the Therapeutic Effects of Human and Mouse Adipose-Derived Stem Cells in a Murine Model of Lipopolysaccharide-Induced Acute Lung Injury

Introduction. Adipose-derived stem cells (ASCs) have emerged as important regulators of inflammatory/immune responses in vitro and in vivo and represent attractive candidates for cell-based therapies for diseases that involve excessive inflammation. Acute lung injury (ALI) is an inflammatory condition for which treatment is mainly supportive due to lack of effective therapies. In this study, the therapeutic effects of ASC-based therapy were assessed in vivo by comparison of the anti-inflammatory properties of both human and murine ASCs in a mouse model of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced ALI. Methods. Human ASCs (hASCs) or mouse ASCs (mASCs) were delivered to C57Bl/6 mice (7.5 x 105 total cells/mouse) by oropharyngeal aspiration (OA) four hours after the animals were challenged with lipopolysaccharide (15 mg/kg). Mice were sacrificed 24 and 72 hours after LPS exposure, and lung histology examined for evaluation of inflammation and injury. Bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF) was analyzed to determine total and differential cell counts, total protein and albumin concentrations, and myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity. Cytokine expression in the injured lungs was measured at the steady-state mRNA levels and protein levels for assessment of the degree of lung inflammation. Results: Both human and mouse ASC treatments provided protective anti-inflammatory responses. There were decreased levels of leukocyte (for example neutrophil) migration into the alveoli, total protein and albumin concentrations in BALF, and MPO activity after the induction of ALI following both therapies. Additionally, cell therapy with both cell types effectively suppressed the expression of proinflammatory cytokines and increased the anti-inflammatory cytokine interleukin 10 (IL-10). Overall, the syngeneic mASC therapy had a more potent therapeutic effect than the xenogeneic hASC therapy in this model. Conclusions: Treatment with hASCs or mASCs significantly attenuated LPS-induced acute lung injury in mice. These results suggest a potential benefit for using an ASC-based therapy to treat clinical ALI and may possibly prevent the development of acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS)

Reaction Between Nitrogen and Spinel in Chromium

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66029/1/j.1151-2916.1968.tb15671.x.pd

Sozialstaatliche Kürzungspolitik in Deutschland: Nur eine Mär? Eine quantitative Gesetzgebungsanalyse 1974–2014

Quantitative analyses on welfare state dynamics have to cope with the “dependent variable problem”, as studies on social spending reach different conclusions than analyses of replacement rate data. This article suggests a way around this problem by presenting results from a fine-grained analysis of welfare state legislation in Germany between 1974 and 2014. We show that the German welfare state has seen both cuts and expansions occur in all decades. Moreover, we show by means of a regression analysis that partisan politics play a role. Supporting the “Nixon-in-China”-thesis, social democratic governments are associated with a higher probability of cutbacks – especially in times of budgetary pressure – whereas expansions are more likely under Christian democratic governments

Historical institutionalism and the politics of sustainable energy transitions: a research agenda

Improving the understanding of the politics of sustainable energy transitions has become a major focus for research. This paper builds on recent interest in institutionalist approaches to consider in some depth the agenda arising from a historical institutionalist perspective on such transitions. It is argued that historical institutionalism is a valuable complement to socio-technical systems approaches, offering tools for the explicit analysis of institutional dynamics that are present but implicit in the latter framework, opening up new questions and providing useful empirical material relevant for the study of the wider political contexts within which transitions are emerging. Deploying a number of core concepts including veto players, power, unintended consequences, and positive and negative feedback in a variety of ways, the paper explores research agendas in two broad areas: understanding diversity in transition outcomes in terms of the effects of different institutional arrangements, and the understanding of transitions in terms of institutional development and change. A range of issues are explored, including: the roles of electoral and political institutions, regulatory agencies, the creation of politically credible commitment to transition policies, power and incumbency, institutional systems and varieties of capitalism, sources of regime stability and instability, policy feedback effects, and types of gradual institutional change. The paper concludes with some observations on the potential and limitations of historical institutionalism, and briefly considers the question of whether there may be specific institutional configurations that would facilitate more rapid sustainable energy transitions

Psychological determinants of whole-body endurance performance

Background: No literature reviews have systematically identified and evaluated research on the psychological determinants of endurance performance, and sport psychology performance-enhancement guidelines for endurance sports are not founded on a systematic appraisal of endurance-specific research. Objective: A systematic literature review was conducted to identify practical psychological interventions that improve endurance performance and to identify additional psychological factors that affect endurance performance. Additional objectives were to evaluate the research practices of included studies, to suggest theoretical and applied implications, and to guide future research. Methods: Electronic databases, forward-citation searches, and manual searches of reference lists were used to locate relevant studies. Peer-reviewed studies were included when they chose an experimental or quasi-experimental research design, a psychological manipulation, endurance performance as the dependent variable, and athletes or physically-active, healthy adults as participants. Results: Consistent support was found for using imagery, self-talk, and goal setting to improve endurance performance, but it is unclear whether learning multiple psychological skills is more beneficial than learning one psychological skill. The results also demonstrated that mental fatigue undermines endurance performance, and verbal encouragement and head-to-head competition can have a beneficial effect. Interventions that influenced perception of effort consistently affected endurance performance. Conclusions: Psychological skills training could benefit an endurance athlete. Researchers are encouraged to compare different practical psychological interventions, to examine the effects of these interventions for athletes in competition, and to include a placebo control condition or an alternative control treatment. Researchers are also encouraged to explore additional psychological factors that could have a negative effect on endurance performance. Future research should include psychological mediating variables and moderating variables. Implications for theoretical explanations of endurance performance and evidence-based practice are described

The challenge of face recognition from digital point-and-shoot cameras

Inexpensive “point-and-shoot ” camera technology has combined with social network technology to give the gen-eral population a motivation to use face recognition tech-nology. Users expect a lot; they want to snap pictures, shoot videos, upload, and have their friends, family and acquain-tances more-or-less automatically recognized. Despite the apparent simplicity of the problem, face recognition in this context is hard. Roughly speaking, failure rates in the 4 to 8 out of 10 range are common. In contrast, error rates drop to roughly 1 in 1,000 for well controlled imagery. To spur advancement in face and person recognition this pa-per introduces the Point-and-Shoot Face Recognition Chal-lenge (PaSC). The challenge includes 9,376 still images of 293 people balanced with respect to distance to the cam-era, alternative sensors, frontal versus not-frontal views, and varying location. There are also 2,802 videos for 265 people: a subset of the 293. Verification results are pre-sented for public baseline algorithms and a commercial al-gorithm for three cases: comparing still images to still im-ages, videos to videos, and still images to videos. 1