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The relationship between movement reinvestment, balance confidence, and clinical balance performance in older adults
Get PDFMovement reinvestment is a personality trait that may confound clinical balance performance. It is assessed using the Movement Specific Reinvestment Scale (MSRS) which has a conscious motor processing (CMP) subscale (tendency to consciously attend to and control movement) and a movement self-consciousness (MSC) subscale (tendency to be self-conscious about movement). The thesis objectives were to 1) explore relationships between movement reinvestment, balance confidence, and clinical balance outcomes, and 2) determine whether movement reinvestment explained variation in clinical balance performance over and above that of other established predictors of balance like age and balance confidence. Two hundred and forty-three older adults living independently in the community (173 females, mean (SD) age = 66.79 (7.31) years) completed the MSRS, Activities-Specific Balance Confidence (ABC) scale, and three trials (best trial taken) of a single leg stance (SLS) test (duration), timed-up-and-go (TUG) test (duration), functional reach (FR) test (distance), and obstacle course (OC) test (duration + error). First, bivariate correlations were conducted among all measures. Next, four separate hierarchical linear regressions were performed to predict clinical balance outcomes. In all regressions, age, sex, fall status, health status, and balance confidence were entered simultaneously on the first step, followed by CMP and MSC together on the second step. The results showed that higher CMP and MSC were associated with lower balance confidence. Higher MSC was associated with poorer clinical balance performance including shorter SLS durations, longer TUG durations, and higher OC scores. CMP was unrelated to clinical balance outcomes. Age and balance confidence were significant predictors of clinical balance outcomes. However, only the final regression model predicting OC score showed significant change from the initial model (R2 change of .018). MSC and not CMP was significantly positively related to OC score on the final step, after controlling for demographic variables and balance confidence. The results provide novel evidence of a relationship between greater self consciousness concerning movement style and poorer clinical balance outcomes in community-living adults over the age of 55 years of age. MSC can provide added insight into performance on a challenging obstacle course over and above that of other commonly used predictors including age, sex, fall status, health status and balance confidence. The results suggest that trait movement reinvestment and specifically MSC may be important to consider in clinical balance assessment protocols especially for complex adaptive gait tasks
Ethical Guidelines for Animals in Tourism, A Belmont Report Adaptation
Get PDFEthical guidelines have long been instrumental in ensuring responsible human behavior, particularly in protecting participants involved in research. The Belmont Report, a foundational document in human research ethics, outlines three key principles: respect for persons, beneficence, and justice. However, ethical considerations for animals, especially in tourism, remain underdeveloped despite growing concerns over animal welfare. This study explores the potential for adapting the Belmont Report’s principles to create a set of ethical guidelines applicable to animals in tourism. Through a Delphi study, expert scholars in animal-based tourism provide feedback on these adapted principles. The research addresses the increasing demand for ethical oversight in animal-based tourism, where animals are often used in entertainment with limited regulatory standards. By integrating these modified principles into tourism practices, this study seeks to fill a critical gap in both academic literature and practical applications. The resulting guidelines aim to establish a universal ethical framework that promotes responsible and humane treatment of animals in tourism, while also enhancing tourists’ awareness and enabling informed decision-making. This research not only contributes to advancing animal welfare but also supports the development of policies and practices that foster sustainable and ethical tourism operations
The effect of Tweets on Cryptocurrencies around the pandemic period
Get PDFThe link between Twitter and cryptocurrencies has been documented in previous literature. However, not all Twitter accounts disseminate the same information to cryptocurrency market participants. This study investigates verified Twitter users and differences between accounts. We differentiate between individual and institutional Twitter accounts, as well as examine the impact of influential Twitter accounts on Bitcoin and Ethereum. We use a high-frequency dataset of Bitcoin and Ethereum quotes, with tweets related to each cryptocurrency. Our data set is from January 1, 2017, to September 30, 2022, and includes the NBER defined Covid-19 pandemic recession period. Thus, we examine whether the impact of tweets is stable over time and economic periods (recession vs expansion).
Our results indicate distinctions in the effects between individual and institutional tweets, aligning with existing literature on incentives, audiences, and expertise. Additionally, the study explores the significance of the number of followers and tweets in both user categories, emphasizing that while the number of followers is important, it alone is insufficient, and the frequency of tweets also plays a vital role. Furthermore, the research highlights the impact of influential Twitter accounts, exemplified by figures like Elon Musk, on Bitcoin and Ethereum. This influence is attributed to factors such as a substantial following, perceived expertise, and active involvement in the cryptocurrency space. Tweets exhibit unstable effects over different economic periods
Picture this: Representing Local Discourses of Poverty Reduction through Graphic Notetaking
Get PDFPoverty researchers, and in turn the poverty reduction practitioners they inform, often fail to conceptualize poverty as structural, evolving, systematic, complex and above all, political (Harriss 2012). A key aspect of this failure is the tendency to define and measure poverty in primarily economistic terms (Yapa 1996). Objective, economistic constructions of poverty are often depoliticized, as Elwood and Lawson (2018) assert, “to stabilize political-economic orders and power hierarchies” (p. 2). Understandings of poverty that fail to acknowledge its social and political dimensions can lead researchers to focus on questions such as “Why are poor people poor?” (Yapa, 1996). Such questions reinscribe poverty as a normal part of the social order and localize conversations of poverty to the individual. To avoid taking poverty for granted, we need to ask why specific groups of people in specific times, locations, and contexts are experiencing hunger, houselessness, lack of safety, mobility, health care, and barriers to participation in social life. We also need to ask the concomitant question, why do specific groups of people in particular times, locations, and contexts have differential access to material wealth, political legibility, and social value?
Taking such a political approach, my research examines discourses of poverty within a local context. Additionally, I examine how engaging in these discourses visually, through the drawing of graphic notes, offers a way to excavate and explore some of the shortcomings and possibilities of poverty politics in Niagara. My research involves drawing a series of graphic notes for ten community consultations organized by the Niagara regional government which aimed to gather community input to inform the region’s process of writing a poverty reduction strategy
Beatty Mill account book
Get PDFWilliam Beatty, a native of County Tyrone, Ireland, settled in the Thorold area in 1835. He may have first operated a grist mill in Port Robinson. His next venture was a tannery in Thorold. With his two sons, William Jr. and James Hughes Beatty they began the Beatty sawmill operations around 1850 in nearby Grantham Township. The two operations were in close proximity to one another. The saw mill was located in Grantham Township near Lock 21 of the second Welland Canal.
In 1863 the Beatty’s acquired the timber rights on a parcel of land measuring 234 square miles near Parry Sound. William Jr. managed the lumber business of the new Parry Sound Mills and James supervised the transportation operations.
Shipbuilder Melancthon Simpson built several ships for the Beatty family business. They include the steamers Waubuno (1865), Cumberland (1871) and Manitoba (1871) and the propeller Asia (1873). The ships were built at Simpson’s yards in St. Catharines, Port Robinson and Thorold.
In 1875, the mill was sold to Gillespie & McLean, and afterwards to McCleary & McLean.
The Beatty family went on to concentrate their business in the shipping / transportation industry as well as the creation and expansion of the town of Parry Sound.The Beatty Mill account book (1869-1875) includes the names of many local businesses, including: Lybster Cotton Mill, James Norris, Wesleyan Methodist Church John Abbey, George N. Oile [Oille], William Parnall, Thorold Post, Parry Sound Mills, and Lewis Shickluna
Do anthropometrics and functional measurements predict performance in the Sandbag Lift Task?
Get PDFBackground: The Sandbag Lift Task (SLT) is a component of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) pre-employment fitness evaluation, which mimic demands of common military tasks. Understanding the relationship between anthropometrics, dynamic balance, core stability, and isometric strength may provide insight into SLT performance.
Purpose: The purpose was to examine if anthropometrics such as BMI and limb lengths and circumferences, FMS trunk stability, anterior reach of YBT-LQ, isometric knee and hip extension strength, and core stability predict SLT performance. An exploratory purpose was to examine hip, knee, and ankle kinematics throughout SLT performance.
Methods: Twenty-four participants (12 males; 12 females) completed two sessions 48-96 hours apart. Session one included height and weight measurements and SLT performance (mins/sec), which was recorded for kinematic analysis. Session two assessed predictors of limb lengths and circumferences (cm), trunk stability pushup (0-3), anterior reach asymmetry (cm), isometric knee and hip extension strength (N), and single leg wall sit hold (secs). Linear regression determined SLT variance explained by these predictors. Hip, knee, and ankle kinematics throughout SLT performance were derived from markerless motion capture.
Results: For the total sample, single leg wall sit hold, leg length, and trunk stability pushup explained 55.1% (adjusted R2) of SLT variance. In males, single leg wall sit hold, shank circumference, and trunk stability pushup explained 48.1% (adjusted R2) of SLT variance. In females, thigh circumference, trunk stability pushup, shank circumference, isometric knee extension, shank length, and single leg wall sit hold explained 88.5% of SLT variance.
Conclusion: These findings suggest development of targeted interventions to potentially optimize training for SLT performance with an additional focus on sex-specific interventions
Investigating Individual Differences in the Aftereffects of Self-Control Exertion
Get PDFThe aftereffects of self-control exertion have been debated by psychologists over the last two decades. Among those who claim there are aftereffects of self-control exertion, some contend that self-control acts as a limited resource that depletes as you use it (Baumeister, Heatherton, & Tice, 1994), while others suggest that exerting self-control provokes a change in attention and motivation from ‘have-to’ goals to ‘want-to’ goals (Inzlicht & Schmeichel, 2012). Main effects of self-control exertion have been found that support both of these theories, but so have many null results. Individual difference models have rarely been applied to these theories despite the fact that they could potentially account for the mixed pattern of results. Indeed, individual differences in trait approach motivation have been found to moderate the aftereffects of self-control on emotionally neutral cognition tasks but have yet to be investigated in tasks with motivationally salient, approach-related goals or stimuli. The current study looked to investigate how self-control exertion will affect subsequent behaviour in approach-based tasks and whether or not this behaviour is moderated by individual differences in trait approach motivation and/or value driven attention. Across two studies, participants reported trait levels of approach motivation and value-driven attention, were assigned to exert high or low levels of self-control, and were then presented with a gambling task (Study 1) or an RSVP image detection task with low and high approach-motivated images (Study 2). The results did not show evidence of a main effect of self-control exertion in either study, but Study 2 showed some evidence of individual differences in trait approach motivation and self-control exertion interacting to modulate attention to approach-motivated stimuli. Specifically, participants who had just exerted high levels of self-control and were low in trait reward responsiveness showed a greater effect of approach motivated stimuli than those low in reward responsiveness and/or those who did not just exert self-control. The present results fail to provide support for either competing self-control theory but suggest that individual differences can play a significant role in the aftereffects of self-control exertion
Entering the Nursing Workforce during a Pandemic: An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) Study
Get PDFBackground: In March of 2020, COVID-19 was declared to be a worldwide pandemic (WHO, 2022a). Since the pandemic was declared, various resources worldwide have been exhausted to accommodate the needs of the public; nurses have been significantly impacted by COVID. Although there is an overwhelming need for nurses to support the healthcare sector, there remains a critical worldwide shortage of nurses, including Registered Nurses (RNs), Registered Practical Nurses (RPNs) and Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs). In the next decade, there will be a vacancy of 13 million nurses worldwide (Buchan et al., 2022). Novice nurses are graduating into a global pandemic that has exacerbated existing nursing shortage problems, unsafe patient ratios, increasing nursing vacancies, and severe burnout. Little is known about the lived experience of novice nurses working in this pandemic context.
Research Question: What is the experience of novice nurses working during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ontario?
Methods: A qualitative study was conducted, using Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis.
Sample: 6 registered nurses were recruited who had graduated from a BScN program from 2019 to the present. The mean age was 25 years and the average number of years practicing nursing was 2.92 years. Semi-structured interviews were conducted, and data were analyzed. The overarching theme, COVID-19 as a catalyst was generated. Within this theme, three subthemes emerged: burnout, moral injury, and lack of nursing support.
Conclusions: Burnout and lack of nursing support are concepts that have corroborated and added to pre-existing literature. Knowledge gleaned from this study has brought attention to moral injury and its negative psychological impact on novice nurses. Future research should focus on incidence and prevalence of moral injury in nurses in all areas of practice and education. Further, education and support of nurses should consider the development of coping skills that incorporate the tools of moral courage and moral resilience for all levels of nursing leadership
An Exploration of the Students’ Perspective of Alternative Environment Activities in Physical Education
Get PDFAlternative Environment Activities (AEAs) are a common component of physical education curricula across Canada (Kilborn et al., 2016), and studies have demonstrated the benefit to promoting participation in AEAs, such as leading to decreased sedentary behaviour and participation in higher amounts of physical activity (Hall et al., 2022). Yet, to date, there is minimal research exploring the role of AEAs in PE programs and all of it has focused on teachers’ perceptions and behaviours related to inclusion of AEAs in physical education programs (e.g., Hall et al., 2020; Robinson et al., 2021). Consequently, there is a clear need to examine AEAs in physical education from the students’ perspective. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine students’ perceptions regarding their experiences participating in AEAs as part of their school-based physical education. Participants were a convenience sample of first year Brock University students who indicated they had participated in AEAs as part of their school-based physical education experiences. Following a basic qualitative methodology (Merriam, 2009), thirteen one-on-one semi-structured interviews were utilized to explore the participants’ experiences in AEAs during their elementary and secondary school physical education. The data was examined through a thematic analysis (Clarke & Braun, 2016), with verbatim transcripts analyzed by two researchers to eliminate bias and ensure trustworthiness (Strauss & Corbin, 1998). Findings demonstrated that participants had an overall positive response to the incorporation of AEAs within physical education and saw value in including AEAs as part of a physical education program. Participants indicated that AEAs were a positive part of their physical education experiences because AEAs were seen as fun and provided variety. The results also demonstrated there were no dominant specific AEAs that participants preferred. However, participants did indicate having a preference for AEAs that were done outside in natural settings and that allowed them to escape the gymnasium setting for physical education classes. Participants offered suggestions to better include AEAs in physical education such as using small scale AEAs more frequently and increased funding for AEAs. This research provides initial insight into students’ perceptions regarding AEAs being incorporated into school-based physical education programs
Federated Learning on Knowledge Graphs via Contrastive Alignment
Get PDFIn traditional federated learning (FL) frameworks for knowledge graph embeddings (KGE), individual clients train their local KGE models independently, and a central server collects and aggregates (e.g., by averaging) these models to produce a global one. This process ensures data privacy throughout the FL training process, as the server does not require direct access to clients’ data. However, the performance of traditional FL global aggregation algorithms is significantly challenged by the non-identical distribution of data across clients’ knowledge graphs.
To tackle this issue, we introduce AlignNet, a novel supervised contrastive learning (CL) approach that helps align both entity and relation embeddings across clients in federated settings. AlignNet works by pulling similar embeddings closer together while pushing dissimilar ones further apart, using only the existence of entities and relations without accessing the underlying data or detailed associations. This alignment process ensures robustness and better generalization across diverse clients, while still maintaining privacy. Our experiments on benchmark datasets, show that AlignNet consistently outperforms current FL methods, especially with more complex models and datasets. We found that AlignNet effectively reduces the variability and noise introduced by the FL process. While traditional FL setups tend to lose performance as more clients join the aggregation process, AlignNet improves as the number of clients increases. This makes AlignNet a strong choice for large-scale federated settings with many clients and diverse data. Overall, our results show that AlignNet is a scalable and reliable solution for federated KGE, making it an excellent fit for real-world applications like healthcare, finance, and distributed IoT networks, where handling data diversity and maintaining performance at scale are crucial