Weight gain, overweight, and obesity: determinants and health outcomes from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health

Recent estimates suggest that 35.3\ua0% of adult Australians are overweight and a further 27.5\ua0% are obese. The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH) is a prospective study of women's health that commenced in Australia in 1996. The study recruited approximately 40,000 women in three birth cohorts, 1973-1978, 1946-1951 and 1921-1926, who have since been followed up approximately every three years using self-report surveys. Six surveys have been completed to date. This review aims to describe the changes in weight and weight status over time in the three ALSWH cohorts, and to review and summarise the published findings to date relating to the determinants and health consequences of weight gain, overweight and obesity. Future plans for the ALSWH include on-going surveys for all cohorts, with a seventh survey in 2013-2015, and establishment of a new cohort of women born in 1990-1995, which is currently being recruited

Is That Me or My Twin? Lack of Self-Face Recognition Advantage in Identical Twins

Despite the increasing interest in twin studies and the stunning amount of research on face recognition, the ability of adult identical twins to discriminate their own faces from those of their co-twins has been scarcely investigated. One’s own face is the most distinctive feature of the bodily self, and people typically show a clear advantage in recognizing their own face even more than other very familiar identities. Given the very high level of resemblance of their faces, monozygotic twins represent a unique model for exploring self-face processing. Herein we examined the ability of monozygotic twins to distinguish their own face from the face of their co-twin and of a highly familiar individual. Results show that twins equally recognize their own face and their twin’s face. This lack of self-face advantage was negatively predicted by how much they felt physically similar to their co-twin and by their anxious or avoidant attachment style. We speculate that in monozygotic twins, the visual representation of the self-face overlaps with that of the co-twin. Thus, to distinguish the self from the co-twin, monozygotic twins have to rely much more than control participants on the multisensory integration processes upon which the sense of bodily self is based. Moreover, in keeping with the notion that attachment style influences perception of self and significant others, we propose that the observed self/co-twin confusion may depend upon insecure attachment

A Comparison of Several Algorithms for SAR Raw Data Compression.

Es werden neue Verfahren im Zeit- und Frequenzbereich zur Kompression von SAR-Rohdaten vorgestellt. Dabei werden sowohl statistische Methoden als auch fuzzy Systeme eingesetzt. Die resultierende Bildqualitaet und der Rechenaufwand werden mit bisher bekannten Kompressionsverfahren verglichen. Auf dieser Basis kann eine optimale Kompression in Abhaengigkeit der Anwendung der SAR-Daten angegeben werden

A Comparison of Several Algorithms for On-Board SAR Raw Data Reduction.

This paper presents a comparison of different SAR raw data reduction algorithms applied to air- and spaceborne SAR data. A signal-to-noise ratio up to 12 dB is achieved by the Block Adaptive Vector Quantizer (BAVQ)

On-board SAR processing - Candidate Processing and Data Compression Algorithms

This work gives an overview about compression algorithms applied on Synthetic aperture Radar (SAR) signal (raw data) and SAR image data

Use of a Social Robot in the Implementation of a Narrative Intervention for Young People with Cystic Fibrosis:A Feasibility Study

Young people with cystic fibrosis face significant physical discomfort and an extensive treatment burden that often includes lengthy hospital stays and increased risk for psychological distress. With many treatments being critically important, parents are often compelled to act as translators between the child patient and medical staff. An inadvertent consequence of this dynamic is that young patients can be hindered from freely discussing their personal experiences of cystic fibrosis (CF) and finding ways to ameliorate their distress. In similar situations, social robots (SR) have been shown to help overcome such hindrances. Two studies were conducted. An online study (N = 132) assessed young people’s views of potentially creating a storybook of their experiences with CF and interacting with a SR. Secondly, a feasibility study tested the use of an SR delivering an intervention for CF that has given significant reductions in anxiety—the Metacognitive Intervention of Narrative Imagery (MINI). Eight patients, aged 10–14 years, received three 1-h sessions and were assessed on anxiety, depression, and metacognitive beliefs. Participants showed improvements in anxiety and the metacognitive beliefs of negative meta-worry and superstition, punishment and responsibility, all with large effect sizes. Participants and parents rated the intervention and robot highly on favourability and usability. Participant ratings after interacting with the social robot were considerably higher than other young patients who only viewed a brief video of the robot, indicating conversing with the robot may improve their perception of it. These findings provide additional evidence of the MINI’s effectiveness in reducing anxiety and certain negative metacognitive beliefs. This study also provides preliminary evidence that there may be added benefits from using a social robot to implement the MINI.</p

Correlates of distress in young people with cystic fibrosis: the role of self-efficacy and metacognitive beliefs

Objectives: While significantly elevated distress is repeatedly found amongst young people with cystic fibrosis, their determinants remain largely unknown. This study explored whether metacognitive beliefs and self-efficacy for emotion regulation were associated with anxiety and depression after control for physical functioning, age and gender. Design: Cross-sectional study using a 110-item online questionnaire. Methods: An online survey was undertaken by 147 young people with CF aged 10–18 from five countries. Associations of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale scores with gender, age, physical functioning, Metacognitive Beliefs Questionnaire for Children (MCQ-C) subscales and Self-Efficacy for Emotion Regulation (SE-ER) were examined using hierarchical multiple linear regressions. Results: Physical functioning, gender and age accounted for 31% of the variance in anxiety and 39% in depression. The MCQ-C and SE-ER added another 45% to the variance of anxiety and 32% to depression. At the final step of both analyses, physical functioning, SE-ER, MCQ-C Negative Meta-Worry and Superstition, Punishment &amp; Responsibility contributed significantly. Older age was also significantly associated with depression. Conclusions: Self-efficacy for emotion regulation, concern about worrying and shame may be particularly important foci for interventions aimed at ameliorating anxiety and depression in young people with CF.</p