Understanding General Activity Motivation for Persons with Stroke—A Reversal Theory Perspective

Introduction: Motivation is the barrier identified for clients with stroke to reintegrate community living. Reversal Therapy may help to understand the pattern of bipolar variations of motivational factors. This study analyzed the general activity motivation of clients with stroke and their relationship with community participation and mental wellbeing. Methodology: Sampling of 115 subjects including 30 stroke clients and 85 normal subjects. Measurements included the validated Chinese version of General Activity Motivation Measure (GAMM), Community Integration Questionnaire (CIQ) & Short Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (SWEMWBS). Results: In GAMM, the normal group scores (Mean 50.09 SD 5.79) higher then clients with stroke (Mean 46.09; SD 8.00) (p < 0.05). GAMM correlated positively with CIQ and SWEMWBS (p < 0.05). Four factors identified under GAMM namely Means-end, Relationship, Rules and Transactions that identified with Reversal Theory. Reversals between poles of each domain evidenced between two groups. “Acquiring new experiences” was strong predictor for community integration. Conclusion: Reversal Theory is useful to explain motivational changes among clients with stroke. To develop chances of “new experiences”, “feel accomplishment every day”, “get out of house regularly” and “to do the things that they can enjoy” at “their own pace” are the motivators for reintegrate into community living

An expert view on data and modelling for planning domestic retrofit

The transition to Net Zero rests partly on the widespread adoption of energy-efficient retrofit measures for domestic dwellings. The scale of retrofit efforts is extensive, as up to 80% of the UK’s domestic housing stock for 2050 has already been built. To address the scope, data and models will play a crucial role in informing design decisions and optimising retrofit strategies. While new methods and tools for data and modelling in retrofit continue to be developed, the perspectives of professionals using these tools on their quality remain mainly absent from discussion across academia and practice. This study investigated the experiences and perceptions of data and modelling from professionals working in the planning stages of domestic retrofit, serving as a needs-finding exercise driving retrofit planning. Through semi-structured interviews and qualitative coding, the results highlight a critical trade-off between precision, confidence, and the burden of data collection. These findings underscore the need to balance precision, ease of use, and adaptability in data and modelling retrofit tools. Issues around data availability and wider access to data and modelling results across stakeholders emerged as a missed opportunity

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

A century of trends in adult human height

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries

Effects of foveal retinal slip on visually induced motion sickness: A pilot study

This experiment isolated and studied the effects of eye motions on visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) from the effects of foveal retinal slip velocity on VIMS. Eye motion has been shown to contribute to motion sickness. However, most previous work manipulated eye motion using eye fixation pointer. In so doing eye motion suppression was co-founded with increase in the relative velocity between the eyes and the visual stimulus (retinal slip velocity). Retinal slip is a necessary condition in perception of visual motion and could affect VIMS. However, due to difficulties in controlling eye motion in isolation of retinal slip, few work examined this topic. Guo et al. (2011) studied the effect of eye motion by controlling retinal slip velocity and showed that eye motion can still have significant effects on VIMS after retinal slip velocity is controlled. In this study, four conditions represent the factorial combinations of high (+) and low (-) levels of eye motions (EM) and foveal retinal slip velocity (FRSV). Peripheral retinal slip velocity was kept the same throughout the four conditions. A real time eye-slaved pointer was used to achieve the design and presentation of the conditions. Eight subjects participated in the experiment and within subject design was used. Results of Wilcoxon signed rank tests on preliminary data indicated that reduction of foveal retinal slip while keeping eye movements and peripheral retinal slip the same can significantly reduce levels of VIMS (post-exposure total simulator sickness questionnaire scores: p < 0.02 and 7-point nausea ratings: p < 0.05). Implications of these preliminary results are discussed in the paper. Copyright 2012 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Inc. All rights reserved

Could OKAN be an objective indicator of the susceptibility to visually induced motion sickness?

International Workshop Agreement 3 organized by the International Standard Organization calls for more research to determine simple objective ways to assess susceptibility to visually induce motion sickness (VIMS) without making viewers sick (So and Ujike, 2010). This study examines the use of measurable optokinetic afternystagmus (OKAN) parameters to predict susceptibility to VIMS. Eighteen participants were recruited. They were exposed to a sickness provoking virtual rotating drum (210 degrees field-of-view) with striped patterns rotating at 60 degrees per second for 30 minutes (Phase 1). Sickness data were collected before, during, and after the exposure. These participants were invited back for OKAN measurements at least two weeks after Phase 1 was completed to minimize any adaption effect (Phase 2). Out of the 18 participants, 10 participants (i.e., 55%) exhibited consistent patterns of OKAN. Correlations between the time constants of OKAN and levels of VIMS experienced by the same viewers were found. The possibility of using OKAN as an objective indicator of the susceptibility to visually induced motion sickness is discussed. © 2011 IEEE

Effects of eye fixation on visually induced motion sickness: Are they caused by changes in retinal slip velocity?

Watching slowly moving wide field-of-view patterns can cause symptoms of visually induced motion sickness (VIMS) in viewers. A within-subject full factorial experiment was designed to test two hypotheses: 1) when watching patterns rotating at 60 degrees per second (dps), eye fixation increases the peripheral retinal slip velocity leading to a reduction in the levels of VIMS; and 2) when watching patterns rotating at 7 dps, eye fixation increases the peripheral retinal slip velocity leading to an increase in the levels of VIMS. The experimental design used two levels of eye fixation (with and without). Nine participants (4 male and 5 female) were exposed to all four conditions with a week's break between each condition. Results indicated that when watching patterns rotating at 60 dps, eye fixation significantly increased the peripheral retinal slip velocity from 35 dps to 60 dps and reduced the levels of mean nausea from 3.6 to 2.7 (p < 0.01). When watching patterns rotating at 7 dps, eye fixation significantly increased the peripheral retinal slip from 2.6 to 7 dps and only slightly increased the levels of mean nausea. The implications of these results are discussed. Copyright 2011 by Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Inc. All rights reserved