scholarly journals Walking on Water—A Natural Experiment of a Population Health Intervention to Promote Physical Activity after the Winter Holidays

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (19) ◽  
pp. 3627
Author(s):  
Jonathan McGavock ◽  
Nicole Brunton ◽  
Nika Klaprat ◽  
Anders Swanson ◽  
Dave Pancoe ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Annual Household Income ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
The Public ◽  
Population Health Intervention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Urban Trail

Background: Very few experimental studies exist describing the effect of changes to the built environment and opportunities for physical activity (PA). We examined the impact of an urban trail created on a frozen waterway on visitor counts and PA levels. Methods: We studied a natural experiment in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada that included 374,204 and 237,362 trail users during the 2017/2018 and 2018/2019 winter seasons. The intervention was a 10 km frozen waterway trail lasting 8–10 weeks. The comparator conditions were the time periods immediately before and after the intervention when ~10 kms of land-based trails were accessible to the public. A convenience sample of 466 participants provided directly measured PA while on the frozen waterway. Results: Most trail users were 35 years or older (73%), Caucasian (77%), and had an annual household income >$50,000 (61%). Mean daily trail network visits increased ~four-fold when the frozen waterway was open (median and interquartile range (IQR) = 710 (239–1839) vs. 2897 (1360–5583) visits/day, p < 0.001), compared with when it was closed. Users achieved medians of 3852 steps (IQR: 2574–5496 steps) and 23 min (IQR: 13–37 min) of moderate to vigorous intensity PA (MVPA) per visit, while 37% of users achieved ≥30 min of MVPA. Conclusion: A winter-specific urban trail network on a frozen waterway substantially increased visits to an existing urban trail network and was associated with a meaningful dose of MVPA. Walking on water could nudge populations living in cold climates towards more activity during winter months.

scholarly journals Changes in the Soundscape of the Public Space Close to a Highway by a Noise Control Intervention

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (9) ◽  
pp. 5284
Author(s):  
Timothy Van Renterghem ◽  
Francesco Aletta ◽  
Dick Botteldooren
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Noise Abatement ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
The Public ◽  
Control Intervention ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Noise Shielding ◽  
Visual Preferences ◽  
The Impact

The deployment of measures to mitigate sound during propagation outdoors is most often a compromise between the acoustic design, practical limitations, and visual preferences regarding the landscape. The current study of a raised berm next to a highway shows a number of common issues like the impact of the limited length of the noise shielding device, initially non-dominant sounds becoming noticeable, local drops in efficiency when the barrier is not fully continuous, and overall limited abatement efficiencies. Detailed assessments of both the objective and subjective effect of the intervention, both before and after the intervention was deployed, using the same methodology, showed that especially the more noise sensitive persons benefit from the noise abatement. Reducing the highest exposure levels did not result anymore in a different perception compared to more noise insensitive persons. People do react to spatial variation in exposure and abatement efficiency. Although level reductions might not be excessive in many real-life complex multi-source situations, they do improve the perception of the acoustic environment in the public space.

scholarly journals Covid-19: Early evening curfews are not effective and may backfire

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sotiris Vandoros ◽  
Alina Velias ◽  
Sotiris Georganas
Keyword(s):  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Relative Difference ◽  
Relative Increase ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Early Evening ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Clear Identification ◽  
Econometric Approach ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Indoor Spaces

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, some countries have introduced early evening curfews. Several studies try measure the effectiveness of such measures across different countries, but clear identification of effects is elusive. Objective: We examined the impact of an early evening curfew on mobility by studying a shift in curfews from 9pm to 6pm in Greece. Data and Methods: We took advantage of a natural experiment in Greece, where curfews shifted from 9pm to 6pm in one Region, but not in another. We followed a difference-in-difference econometric approach, where we compared trends in mobility in groceries and pharmacies as well as residential spaces before and after the introduction of the 6pm curfew, in the two regions. Results: The relative difference in the time spent in groceries and pharmacies between the two regions before and after the intervention, is statistically insignificant [coeff: -9.95; 95%CI -44.358 to 24.458]. The relative increase in time spent in groceries and pharmacies after the 6pm curfew was only 4.625 percentage points [coeff: 4.625; 95%CI 1.412 to 7.838]. Conclusions: We found that the 6pm instead of 9pm curfew in Athens led to a 4.63 percentage point relative increase in time spent at home and had no effect on time spent in groceries and pharmacies. Considering that this was a result of a 18.75% reduction in hours where people were allowed to leave home, it seems that the early evening curfew led to more crowding in indoor spaces; which may facilitate the spread of disease. Lockdowns and other measures are necessary to tackle Covid-19, but it is important to avoid substitution by activities that contribute further to spreading the virus. Interventions should therefore be based on a thorough analysis of human behaviour.

scholarly journals Mixed Fuzzy-Logic and Game-Theoretical Approach to Justify Vehicle Models for Servicing the Public Bus Line

2022 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. A26-A34
Author(s):  
Vitalii Naumov ◽  
Laura Bekmagambetova ◽  
Zukhra Bitileuova ◽  
Zhumazhan Zhanbirov ◽  
Igor Taran
Keyword(s):  
Simulation Experiment ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Software Implementation ◽  
Rational Structure ◽  
The Public ◽  
City Bus ◽  
Game Theoretical Approach ◽  
Passenger Flows ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The City

One of the main problems to be solved by the transport operators is the substantiation of the vehicle models servicing the transport lines. A gametheoretical approach is proposed in this paper to justify the bus model choice based on the passengers’ preferences and the structure of the passenger flows. To estimate the customers’ preferences, the membership functions for fuzzy sets of the optimal vehicle models were defined. The simulation experiment aiming to estimate the city fleet structure in terms of the vehicles’ capacity was conducted for the Talas city (Kazakhstan) based on the proposed approach with use of the corresponding software implementation of the developed mathematical models. As a result of the experimental studies, the impact of the passengers’ flow structure and the number of carriers on the rational structure of the city bus fleet was studied in the paper.

scholarly journals Ethnocentrism, Theoretical Awareness, and Intellectual Resistance in University Students’ Reading Behaviour

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 228
Author(s):  
Brahim Hiba
Keyword(s):  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Basic Function ◽  
General Idea ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Reading Habits ◽  
Convenience Sample ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Post Test ◽  
The Impact

This paper discusses the insightful and illuminating findings of teaching critical reading within the theoretical framework of critical pedagogy. More specifically, this paper examines the impact of a critical-reading course on students’ reading skills and beliefs about discourse production and interpretation. The course was conducted according to the principles of transformative participatory action research and, thus, a corpus of 50 essays, written by a convenience sample of 25 post-graduate students in the pre-test and post-test phases, was analyzed to examine the effect of the course on students’ reading-habits and their representations of different discourses. Pretest findings showed that most students used to think that discourses are innocent and ideology-free and that reading a text consists in understanding its general idea, extracting its writer’s viewpoint, making sense of its vocabulary, and paraphrasing it. As far as text’s function is concerned, most students used to believe that a text’s basic function is delivering information. In addition, most of them were unaware of the fact that a text has ideological and socio-political functions. Post-test findings revealed that students’ discourse awareness and reading habits have become more critical and developed at two levels: the worldview level and the meta-language level. The t-test statistics suggest that there is a significant difference of p˂.001 between students’ reading scores before and after the intervention. Therefore, the null hypothesis which says that there is no significant difference between studying critical reading from a critical pedagogy perspective and studying it from a functional or conventional perspective is false.

Abstract P267: New Urbanism and Its Impact on Active Living among Inner City Children/Youth

Circulation ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 125 (suppl_10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory W Heath ◽  
Sarah White-Woerner
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Inner City ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Vigorous Physical Activity ◽  
Active Living ◽  
The South ◽  
City Community ◽  
New Urbanist ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Urban Trail

Introduction: Although it is known that urban design and land use at the community level contributes to active living, there remains a paucity of such information among low income and diverse populations affected by such infrastructure. Reconstruction of an inner city community in Chattanooga, Tennessee afforded the opportunity to assess the impact of new urbanist construction on active living among African-American children/youth living in the inner city. Hypothesis: Transportation and recreational physical activity levels among children/youth residing in a new urbanist community was hypothesized to be higher compared to demographically similar children/youth who reside in a more traditional inner city community. Methods: Using the System for Observing Physical Activity and Recreation in Communities (SOPARC) we examined an urban trail and recreational park areas of two distinct communities to assess physical activity, sports, and recreational of children/youth. SOPARC data were collected in each of 4 settings in each community (East, a traditional and South, a new urbanist) during four 1-h observation periods during 7 days of clement weather. Observations were made during each day of the week in each setting (i.e., Sunday through Saturday). Results: The SOPARC assessments of the urban trail and pedestrian/bicycle routes in the South and East yielded a total of 672 and 436 children/youth observations, respectively. South children/youth were over three times more likely to engage in vigorous physical activity compared to their East counterparts (Mantel-Haenszel Chi Square = 19.67; P< 0.00001). Conclusions: The present findings support the hypothesis that enhanced environmental supports, such as those found within the South community, increase the likelihood of greater levels of activity among children/youth compared to children/youth that were not exposed to these environmental enhancements. This comparative difference was most remarkable when examining the SOPARC assessment differences along the transport path/sidewalk routes, with South children/youth being significantly more likely than the East children/youth to engage in more vigorous forms of physical activity along this transport/recreational corridor, providing evidence that access to these types of ‘urban’ trails appears to translate into increased opportunities for physical activity among children/youth.

P634Motivation for physical activity predicts effect of cardiac rehabilitation in an elderly cardiac population

2019 ◽  
Vol 40 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
N Mikkelsen ◽  
C Dall ◽  
A Holdgaard ◽  
M Frederiksen ◽  
H Rasmusen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Elderly Patients ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Cardiopulmonary Exercise Test ◽  
Current Smoker ◽  
Cardiac Patients ◽  
Full Data ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Level Of Motivation ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background Motivation for physical activity is a psychological parameter that is sparsely described in secondary prevention, and it is plausible that motivation contributes to differential effect of CR. Purpose To investigate if motivation, measured using the behavioural regulation in exercise questionnaire (BREQ-2), predicts VO2peak in elderly cardiac patients before and after CR. Methods Prospective cohort study (Danish cohort from the EU-CaRE study) of elderly patients with ischemic or valvular disease enrolled in CR. Motivation for physical activity was measured using the BREQ-2 questionnaire at baseline, which measures five constructs of motivation and a summed score. VO2peak was measured before and after CR by a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET). The impact of motivation on VO2peak was examined using standardized multiple regression analyses. Results 203 patients performed the baseline tests. 182 (90%) completed CR and had full data available. Dropout was not associated with motivation. VO2peak at baseline was 18 ml/kg/min (SD±5.1) and was associated with motivation score: for each SD increase in motivation VO2peak was 1.05 (0.43–1.69) ml/kg/min higher (p<0.01). Mean improvement was 2.3 (12%) ml/kg/min (SD±4.3). Higher motivation was positively associated with VO2peak (0.78 (0.33–1.24) pr. SD improvement (p=0.01) after adjusting for age, sex, depression, comorbidities and baseline VO2peak (Table). Subscales of the BREQ2 indicate that internal but not external motivation drives this positive association. Predictors of change in VO2peak Age and sex adjusted Multiple adjusted model Motivation (RAI pr. SD) 0.57 (0.12 to 1.01)* 0.78 (0.33 to 1.24)** Baseline VO2peak (pr. SD) −0.56 (−1.16 to 0.21) −1.30 (−1.94 to −0.66)*** Age (pr. SD) −0.84 (−1.85 to 0.18) −1.00 (−2.01 to −0.01)* Sex (male) −0.18 (−1.21 to 0.85) 0.74 (−0.28 to 1.76) Previous smoker −0.23 (−1.22 to 0.77) −0.37 (−1.34 to 0.59) Current smoker −1.43 (−3.00 to 0.14) −1.89 (−3.36 to −0.40)* Diabetes (Yes) −1.37 (−2.50 to −0.24)* −1.62 (−2.78 to −0.48)** Kidney disease (Yes) −0.98 (−2.37 to 0.42) −1.45 (−2.84 to −0.06)* PHQ-9 (pr. SD) 0.22 (−0.24 to 0.69) 0.21 (−0.24 to 0.66) Conclusion In elderly cardiac patients, level of motivation is important to achieve benefits of CR. Future studies should address if motivation measured with BREQ-2 can be applied as a screening tool for elderly patients to provide more personalized intervention.

REVAMP: A natural experiment to examine the impact of park renewal on park-use and park-based physical activity

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. e146-e147 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Veitch ◽  
J. Salmon ◽  
A. Carver ◽  
D. Crawford ◽  
B. Giles-Corti ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Natural Experiment ◽  
Park Use ◽  
The Impact

scholarly journals Mobile health interventions to promote physical activity and reduce sedentary behaviour in the workplace: A systematic review

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 205520761983988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Ann Buckingham ◽  
Andrew James Williams ◽  
Karyn Morrissey ◽  
Lisa Price ◽  
John Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Physical Activity ◽  
Systematic Review ◽  
Sedentary Behaviour ◽  
Mobile Health ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
Methodological Quality ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
Cochrane Library ◽  
Behaviour Change Techniques ◽  
The Impact

Objective This systematic review aimed to assess the effectiveness, feasibility and acceptability of mobile health (mHealth) technology (including wearable activity monitors and smartphone applications) for promoting physical activity (PA) and reducing sedentary behaviour (SB) in workplace settings. Methods Systematic searches were conducted in seven electronic databases (MEDLINE, SPORTDiscus, Scopus, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Web of Science and the Cochrane library). Studies were included if mHealth was a major intervention component, PA/SB was a primary outcome, and participants were recruited and/or the intervention was delivered in the workplace. Study quality was assessed using the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) tool. Interventions were coded for behaviour change techniques (BCTs) using the Coventry, Aberdeen and London – Refined (CALO-RE) taxonomy. Results Twenty-five experimental and quasi-experimental studies were included. Studies were highly heterogeneous and only one was rated as ‘strong’ methodological quality. Common BCTs included self-monitoring, feedback, goal-setting and social comparison. A total of 14/25 (56%) studies reported a significant increase in PA, and 4/10 (40%) reported a significant reduction in sedentary time; 11/16 (69%) studies reported a significant impact on secondary outcomes including reductions in weight, systolic blood pressure and total cholesterol. While overall acceptability was high, a large decline in technology use and engagement was observed over time. Conclusions While methodological quality was generally weak, there is reasonable evidence for mHealth in a workplace context as a feasible, acceptable and effective tool to promote PA. The impact in the longer term and on SB is less clear. Higher quality, mixed methods studies are needed to explore the reasons for decline in engagement with time and the longer-term potential of mHealth in workplace interventions. Protocol registration: The review protocol was registered with PROSPERO: CRD42017058856

Displays of emotion and citizen support for Merkel and Gysi

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 80-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oscar W. Gabriel ◽  
Lena Masch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Individual Recognition ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Experimental Studies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Support ◽  
The Public ◽  
Positive Effects ◽  
The Impact

Emotional appeals have always been an important instrument in the mobilization of political support in modern societies. As found in several experimental studies from the United States, the emotions displayed by leading politicians in their televised public appearances have an impact on the political attitudes and behaviors of the public. Positive emotions such as joy or happiness, pride, and amusement elicit a more positive assessment of politicians, whereas showing negative emotions such as anger or outrage often diminishes the public’s support. This transfer of emotions from sender to recipient has been described as “emotional contagion.” However, under specific circumstances, emotions expressed by politicians can result in counter-empathic reactions among recipients. To examine the role of emotions between political leaders and the public in an institutional and cultural setting outside the United States, this article presents experimental findings on the impact of emotions expressed by two leading German politicians on the German public. The study used emotional displays by Chancellor Angela Merkel and former parliamentary leader of the Left Party, Gregor Gysi, observing how their assessments by the German public changed in response to these displays. Consistent with existing research, we discovered positive effects on the evaluation of both politicians when they displayed positive emotions. However, the impact of negative emotions is different for Merkel and Gysi and can be described as contagion in the former and counter-contagion in the latter case. Furthermore, we found that individual recognition of the expressed emotions modified the effect they had on the evaluation of some leadership characteristics.

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