Social isolation, physical inactivity and inadequate diet among European middle-aged and older adults

Social isolation is a growing public health concern for older adults, as it has been associated with poor health and premature mortality. On the other hand, physical inactivity and an inadequate diet are important health risk behaviours associated with physical and mental health problems. Considering that there is no research examining the possible relationship between social isolation and the above mentioned health risk behaviours of European middle-aged and older adults, this cross-sectional study aims to contribute to filling this gap.Fundação Calouste Gulbenkia

Big Data Analytics. Analyse der prädiktiven Fähigkeit von Twitter-Sentiments auf die Entwicklung des Börsenkurses von Technologieunternehmen

Die Datenmengen vervielfachen sich in der heutigen Zeit konstant, was zum Begriff Big Data geführt hat. Durch diese Datenmengen entsteht ein neues Potenzial, Fragen zu beantworten. Eine dieser Fragestellungen, welche mithilfe von Big Data untersucht werden kann, ist, inwiefern die Social-Media-Daten die Veränderung von Börsenkursen voraussagen können. Diese Studie untersucht die prädiktive Fähigkeit von Twitter-Nachrichten im Zusammenhang mit einem Technologieunternehmen und dessen Börsenkurs anhand von zwei Anwendungsfällen. Konkret wird anhand der Twitter-Nachrichten mithilfe einer Sentimentanalyse die Stimmung der Twitter-Nutzer mit den Veränderungen des Börsenkurses verglichen. Diese Analyse wird anhand der Technologieunternehmen Facebook und Amazon vorgenommen. In einem ersten Schritt wird untersucht, ob eine Beziehung zwischen den Twitter-Sentiments und dem Börsenkurs besteht. In einem zweiten Schritt, ob die Twitter-Sentiments eine Voraussagekraft für die Veränderung des Börsenkurses haben. Die Auswertung zeigt bei beiden Unternehmen eine positive Korrelation der Twitter-Sentiments und des Börsenkurses auf. Weiter konnte mithilfe der Granger-Analyse eine signifikante Voraussagekraft der Twitter-Sentiments für die Börsenkurse beider Unternehmen ermittelt werden. Die Twitter-Sentiments können die Börsenkurse 13 h voraussagen

From Stalingrad to Grozny: Patriotism, political pressure, and literature in the war reporting of Vassily Grossman and Anna Politkovskaya

Comparing the work of the 20th century Soviet journalist and writer, Vassily Grossman, with that of his compatriot, Anna Politkovskaya, almost half a century later, this article examines the two journalists’ writing for what it tells us about the changing nature of Russian journalism, and reporter involvement in the coverage of war. Grossman was reporting on his country’s fight for survival in a war with Nazi Germany; Politkovskaya had no peer in her coverage of the bloodiest consequence of the collapse of that country, the Soviet Union: the wars in Chechnya. It also considers the literary nature of Grossman and Politkovskaya’s reporting. The article argues that the two journalists’ work has significance far beyond the time when they were reporting, and should therefore be more widely read and studied for what it tells us about covering conflict, and especially civilian suffering and, in the case of Politkovskaya, counter-insurgency

hp-DGFEM for Partial Differential Equations with Nonnegative Characteristic Form

Presented as Invited Lecture at the International Symposium on Discontinuous Galerkin Methods: Theory, Computation and Applications, in Newport, RI, USA.\ud \ud We develop the error analysis for the hp-version of a discontinuous finite element approximation to second-order partial differential equations with nonnegative characteristic form. This class of equations includes classical examples of second-order elliptic and parabolic equations, first-order hyperbolic equations, as well as equations of mixed type. We establish an a priori error bound for the method which is of optimal order in the mesh size h and 1 order less than optimal in the polynomial degree p. In the particular case of a first-order hyperbolic equation the error bound is optimal in h and 1/2 an order less than optimal in p

The Internet as a Small Business E-Commerce Ecosystem.

The purpose of this chapter is to analyse how the ecosystem concept can be applied to small businesses and how the Internet and e-commerce can help SMEs harness the required resources to enhance their competitive performance in the marketplace. The chapter will investigate the wide variety of e-commerce applications that are available to small businesses to help address the issue of limited resources. It will provide an ecosystem map illustrating how each functional area of a small business can utilise Internet e-commerce applications to enhance their resource base. The chapter also explores the opportunities and threats that the e-commerce ecosystem model poses for small, medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is based upon empirical research consisting of three focus group interviews undertaken with small and medium-sized retail service firms located in the Herefordshire and Worcestershire regions of the United Kingdom in January–February 2014

Experts see it all: configural effects in action observation

Biological motion perception is influenced by observers’ familiarity with the observed action. Here we used classical dance as a means to investigate how visual and motor experience modulates perceptual mechanism for configural processing of actions. While some ballet moves are performed by only one gender, male and female dancers train together and acquire visual knowledge of all ballet moves. 24 expert ballet dancers (12 female) and matched non-expert participants viewed pairs of upright and inverted point light female and common dance movements. Visual discrimination between different exemplars of the same movement presented upright was significantly better in experts than controls, while no differences were found when the same stimuli were presented upside down. These results suggest expertise influences configural action processing. Within the expert group, effects were stronger for female participants than for males, while no differences were found between movement types. This observer gender effect could suggest an additional role for motor familiarity in action perception, over and above visual experience. Our results are consistent with a specific motor contribution to configural processing of action