PNF 2.0? Initial evidence that gamification can increase the efficacy of brief, web-based personalized normative feedback alcohol interventions

Gamified interventions exploit the motivational characteristics of a game in order to provide prevention information and promote behavior change. Despite the modest effect sizes observed in increasingly popular web-based personalized normative feedback (PNF) alcohol interventions for college students, previous research has yet to consider how gamification might be used to enhance efficacy. This study examines whether a novel, gamified PNF intervention format, which includes a point-based reward system, the element of chance, and personal icons to visually represent users, is more effective in reducing short-term alcohol use than the standard web-based style of PNF currently used on college campuses. Two-hundred and thirty-seven college students were randomly assigned to receive either a standard brief, web-based PNF alcohol intervention or the same alcohol intervention components delivered within a Facebook-connected social game called CampusGANDR (Gamified Alcohol Norm Discovery and Readjustment). In both study conditions participants answered identical questions about their perceptions of peer drinking norms and own drinking and then received the same PNF slides. Two weeks following PNF delivery, participants again reported their perceptions of peers\u27 alcohol use and own drinking. Students in the CampusGANDR condition reported significantly reduced peer drinking norms and alcohol use at the two-week follow-up relative to students who received identical PNF delivered by standard online survey. Further, a mediation model demonstrated that this effect was driven by larger reductions in perceived drinking norms among participants assigned to receive CampusGANDR, relative to control. As web-based PNF is becoming an increasingly universal prevention strategy, findings from this study suggest gamification may represent one method by which intervention efficacy could be substantially improved. The potential methodological and economic benefits associated with gamified PNF interventions are emphasized and directions for future research are discussed

Air Toxics under the Big Sky: A Real-World Investigation To Engage High School Science Students

This paper describes a problem-based chemistry education model in which students perform scientific research on a local environmentally relevant problem. The project is a collaboration among The University of Montana and local high schools centered around Missoula, Montana. Air Toxics under the Big Sky involves high school students in collecting air samples inside and outside their homes within and near Missoula. As part of this program, teachers, students, and university researchers investigate the relationship between air pollutants and their harmful respiratory effects. Students experience scientific research, use scientific equipment, gain an insight into the relationship between the environment and public health, and develop scientific hypotheses. UM benefits by having a pipeline of high school students, several of whom participated in the program while in high school and now attend UM. The local community benefits from the work students and university researchers have done producing high-quality data that are being used in a tracking database for respiratory disease in western Montana. Student research efforts have culminated in three annual symposia that allowed students to present their results at a public forum

The personal experience of parenting a child with Juvenile Huntington’s Disease: perceptions across Europe

The study reported here presents a detailed description of what it is like to parent a child with juvenile Huntington’s disease in families across four European countries. Its primary aim was to develop and extend findings from a previous UK study. The study recruited parents from four European countries: Holland, Italy, Poland and Sweden,. A secondary aim was to see the extent to which the findings from the UK study were repeated across Europe and the degree of commonality or divergence across the different countries. Fourteen parents who were the primary caregiver took part in a semistructured interview. These were analyzed using an established qualitative methodology, interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five analytic themes were derived from the analysis: the early signs of something wrong; parental understanding of juvenile Huntington’s disease; living with the disease; other people’s knowledge and understanding; and need for support. These are discussed in light of the considerable convergence between the experiences of families in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe

Anarchy in the UK('s most famous fortress): comradeship and cupidity in Gibraltar and neighbouring Spain, 1890-1902

This article is the first to investigate the growth of anarchist ideology and tactics in Gibraltar and the surrounding Spanish region, the Campo de Gibraltar, in the period 1890-1902. We draw upon hitherto unused material from both The National Archives in London and the Gibraltar Government Archives. By doing so, we demonstrate that during this period Gibraltarian and Spanish workers came together, not only to defend and advance their interests by direct action, such as strikes and attacks on employers, but also to advance educational and social causes too. Indeed, by 1898-9 the appeal of this movement was so strong that an attempt by the British Social Democratic Federation to establish a more constitutionalist approach to industrial relations failed. By 1902, the power of anarchist movements and tactics concerned employers in Gibraltar so greatly that they engineered a lock-out – styled a general strike by local workers – and successfully smashed the organising power of the local movement. Meanwhile, on the Spanish side of the frontier a massacre engineered by the local Spanish authorities resulted in the deaths of a number of activists and a hiatus in the movement that would last until the Great War of 1914-18

Testing and development of transfer functions for weighing precipitation gauges in WMO-SPICE

Weighing precipitation gauges are used widely for the measurement of all forms of precipitation, and are typically more accurate than tipping-bucket precipitation gauges. This is especially true for the measurement of solid precipitation; however, weighing precipitation gauge measurements must still be adjusted for undercatch in snowy, windy conditions. In WMO-SPICE (World Meteorological Organization Solid Precipitation InterComparison Experiment), different types of weighing precipitation gauges and shields were compared, and adjustments were determined for the undercatch of solid precipitation caused by wind. For the various combinations of gauges and shields, adjustments using both new and previously existing transfer functions were evaluated. For most of the gauge and shield combinations, previously derived transfer functions were found to perform as well as those more recently derived. This indicates that wind shield type (or lack thereof) is more important in determining the magnitude of wind-induced undercatch than the type of weighing precipitation gauge. It also demonstrates the potential for widespread use of the previously developed transfer functions. Another overarching result was that, in general, the more effective shields, which were associated with smaller unadjusted errors, also produced more accurate measurements after adjustment. This indicates that although transfer functions can effectively reduce measurement biases, effective wind shielding is still required for the most accurate measurement of solid precipitation

Errors, biases, and corrections for weighing gauge precipitation measurements from WMO-SPICE

Presentación realizada en: American Meteorological Society Annual Meeting (2017) celebrado en Seattle (Washington) del 22 al 26 de enero de 2017

Errors, Biases, and Corrections for Weighing Gauge Precipitation Measurements from the WMO Solid Precipitation Intercomparison Experiment

Comunicación presentada en: TECO-2016 (Technical Conference on Meteorological and Environmental Instruments and Methods of Observation) celebrada en Madrid, del 27 al 30 de septiembre de 2016.Although precipitation has been measured for many centuries, precipitation measurements are still beset with significant biases and errors. Solid precipitation is particularly difficult to measure accurately, and biases between winter-time precipitation measurements from different measurement networks or different regions can exceed 100%. Using precipitation gauge results from the WMO Solid Precipitation Intercomparison Experiment (WMO-SPICE), errors in precipitation measurement caused by gauge uncertainty, spatial variability in precipitation, hydrometeor type, and wind are quantified. The methods used to calculate gauge catch efficiency and correct known biases are described briefly. Transfer functions describing catch efficiency as a function of air temperature and wind speed are also presented. In addition, the biases and errors associated with the use of a single transfer function to correct gauge undercatch at multiple sites are discussed

Analysis of single-Alter-shielded and unshielded measurements of mixed and solid precipitation from WMO-SPICE

Precipitation measurements were combined from eight separate precipitation testbeds to create multi-site transfer functions for the correction of unshielded and single-Alter-shielded precipitation gauge measurements. Site-specific errors and more universally applicable corrections were created from these WMO-SPICE measurements. The importance and magnitude of such wind speed corrections were demonstrated.This research was funded by the Korean Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport through a grant (16AWMP-B079625-03) from the Water Management Research Program