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Parents\u27 support and knowledge of their daughters\u27 lives and females\u27 early sexual initiation In nine European countries.
No full textCONTEXT: Associations between early sexual initiation and parental support and knowledge have not been uniformly tested in multiple European population-based samples. Understanding such associations is important in efforts to discourage females\u27 early sex.METHODS: Data were compiled for 7,466 females aged 14-16 who participated in the 2005-2006 Health Behaviors in School-Aged Children survey in nine countries (Austria, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Lithuania, Romania, Spain and Ukraine). Univariate, bivariate and multivariable analyses were run with standard error corrections and weights to assess how sexual initiation before age 16 was related to maternal and paternal support and knowledge of daily activities.RESULTS: Prevalence of early sexual initiation ranged from 7% (in Romania) to 35% (in Iceland). In bivariate analyses, maternal and paternal support were significantly negatively related to adolescent females\u27 early sexual initiation in most countries. In models with demographic controls, parental support was negatively associated with early sexual initiation (odds ratio, 0.8 for maternal and 0.7 for paternal). After parental knowledge was added, early sexual initiation was no longer associated with parental support, but was negatively associated with maternal and paternal knowledge (0.7 for each). These patterns held across countries.CONCLUSIONS: Parental knowledge largely explained negative associations between parental support and early initiation, suggesting either that knowledge is more important than support or that knowledge mediates the association between support and early sex. Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2012, 44(3):167-175, doi: 10.1363/441671
Go open: a beginners guide to open education
No full textIn this short guide, we aim to give you a beginners guide to the area of open education, so that you can engage with open education practices in your teaching, research and support activities and to Go Open
Identity processes and eating disorder symptoms during university adjustment: a cross-sectional study
No full textBackground: Young people with eating disorders (EDs) and ED symptoms are at risk during university adjustment, suggesting a need to protect their health. The social identity approach proposes that people’s social connections – and the identity-related behaviour they derive from them – are important for promoting positive health outcomes. However, there is a limited understanding as to how meaningful everyday connections, supported by affiliative identities, may act to reduce ED symptoms during a life transition. Methods: Two hundred eighty-one first year university students with an ED or ED symptoms completed an online survey during the first month of university. Participants completed self-reported measures of affiliative identity, social support, injunctive norms and ED symptoms. Path analysis was used to test a hypothesised mediated model, whereby affiliative identity has a significant indirect relation with ED symptoms via social support and injunctive
norms. Results: Results support the hypothesised model. We show that affiliative identity predicts lower self-reported ED symptoms, because of its relation with social support and injunctive norms. Conclusions: The findings imply that affiliative identities have a positive impact on ED symptoms during university adjustment, because the social support derived from affiliative identity is associated with how people perceive norms around disordered eating. Our discussion emphasises the possibility of identity processes being a social cure
for those at risk of ED symptoms
In silico design of additively manufacturable composite synthetic vascular conduits and grafts with tuneable compliance
No full textBenchtop testing of endovascular medical devices under accurately simulated physiological conditions is a critical part of device evaluation prior to clinical assessment. Currently, glass, acrylic and silicone vascular models are predominantly used as anatomical simulator test beds for in vitro testing. However, most current models lack the ability to mimic the non-linear radial compliance of native vessels and are typically limited to being compliance-matched at a single mean pressure comparison point or not at all. Hence, a degree of caution needs to be shown when analysing results from such models under simulated physiological or pathophysiological conditions. Similarly, the clinical translation of proposed biomimetic compliance-matched vascular grafts has undoubtedly been curtailed due to performance and material limitations. Here, we propose a new design for synthetic vessels where compliance can be precisely modulated across a wide physiological pressure range by customising design parameters. Building on previously demonstrated methods of 3D printing composite compliant cylindrical structures, we demonstrate proof of principle in creating composite vascular constructs designed via a finite element model. Our constructs are 3D printable and consist of a soft silicone matrix with embedded polyurethane fibres. The fibre layer consists of circumferential sinusoidal waves with an amplitude that can be altered to result in tuneable internal radial compliances of 5.2-15.9%/mmHg × 10-2 at a mean pressure of 100 mmHg. Importantly, the design presented here allows preservation of the non-linear exponentially decaying compliance curve of native arteries and veins with an increasing mean pressure. This model offers a design toolbox for 3D printable vascular models that offer biomimetic compliance. The robust nature of this model will lead to rapidly accelerating the design process for biomimetic vascular anatomical simulators, lumped parameter model flow loops, endovascular device benchtop testbeds, and compliance-matched synthetic grafts.Science Foundation IrelandFulbright Ireland Student Award12 month embargo - A
How Political Careers affect Prime-Ministerial Performance: Evidence from Central and Eastern Europe
No full textEven though Prime Ministers (PMs) are the central actors in parliamentary democracies, little comparative research explores what makes them perform successfully in office. This article investigates how the political careers of PMs affect their performance. For this purpose, we make use of a unique expert survey covering 131 cabinets in 11 Central and Eastern European countries between 1990 and 2018. Performance is defined as a two-dimensional set of tasks PMs ought to fulfill: first, managing the cabinet and directing domestic affairs as tasks delegated to their office, second, ensuring support of parliament and their own party, who constitute the direct principals. The findings indicate that a simple political insider career is not sufficient to enhance prime-ministerial performance. Rather, PMs who served as party leaders have the best preconditions to succeed in office
FedFast: Going Beyond Average for Faster Training of Federated Recommender Systems
No full textThe 26th ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD ’20), San Diego, California (held online due to coronavirus outbreak), 23-27th August 2020Federated learning (FL) is quickly becoming the de facto standard for the distributed training of deep recommendation models, us-ing on-device user data and reducing server costs. In a typical FLprocess, a central server tasks end-users to train a shared recommen-dation model using their local data. The local models are trained over several rounds on the users’ devices and the server combinesthem into a global model, which is sent to the devices for the pur-pose of providing recommendations. Standard FL approaches userandomly selected users for training at each round, and simply average their local models to compute the global model. The resulting federated recommendation models require significant client effortto train and many communication rounds before they converge to asatisfactory accuracy. Users are left with poor quality recommendations until the late stages of training. We present a novel technique, FedFast, to accelerate distributed learning which achieves goodaccuracy for all users very early in the training process. We achievethis by sampling from a diverse set of participating clients in each training round and applying an active aggregation method that propagates the updated model to the other clients. Consequently, with FedFast the users benefit from far lower communication costsand more accurate models that can be consumed anytime during the training process even at the very early stages. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach across a variety of benchmark datasetsand in comparison to state-of-the-art recommendation techniquesScience Foundation IrelandInsight Research CentreSamsung ResearchSamsung Electronic
Use of Smartphone Apps, Social Media, and Web- Based Resources to Support Mental Health and Well-Being: Online Survey
No full textBackground: Technology can play an important role in supporting mental health. Many studies have explored the effectiveness, acceptability, or context of use of different types of mental health technologies. However, existing research has tended to investigate single types of technology at a time rather than exploring a wider ecosystem that people may use. This narrow focus can limit our understanding of how we could best design mental health technologies. Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate which technologies (smartphone apps, discussion forums and social media, and websites and Web-based programs) people use to support their mental health and why, whether they combine and use more than one technology, what purpose each technology serves, and which features people find the most valuable. Methods: We conducted an online survey to gather responses from members of the public who use technology to support their mental health and well-being. The survey was advertised on social media and via posters at a university. It explored usage patterns, frequently used features, and engagement with technology. To gain deeper insights into users’ preferences, we also thematically analyzed open-ended comments about each technology type and suggestions for improvements provided by the respondents. Results: In total, 81 eligible participants completed the survey. Smartphone apps were the most commonly used technology, with 78% of the participants (63/81) using them, either alone (40%) or in combination with other technologies (38%). Each type of technology was used for specific purposes: apps provided guided activities, relaxation, and enabled tracking; social media and discussion forums allowed participants to learn from the experiences of others and use that knowledge to understand their own situation; and Web-based programs and websites helped to find out how to deal on a day-to-day basis with stress and anxiety. The analysis of open-ended responses showed that although many people valued technology and felt it could support targeted activities, it was not seen as a substitute for traditional face-to-face therapy. Participants wanted technology to be more sophisticated and nuanced, supporting personalized and actionable recommendations. There was evidence that participants mistrusted technology, irrespective of the type, and had broader concerns regarding the impact of overuse of technology. Conclusions: People use different types of technology to support their mental health. Each can serve a specific purpose. Although apps are the most widely used technology, mixing and matching different types of technology is also common. Technology should not be seen as a replacement for traditional psychotherapy, rather it offers new opportunities to support mental health as part of an overall ecosystem. People want technology to be more nuanced and personalized to help them plan informed actions. Future interventions should explore the use of multiple technologies and their combined effects on mental health support.Science Foundation IrelandInsight Research CentreNational Institute for Health Research (NIHR)Program Grants for Applied ResearchNIHR Biomedical Research Centre at University Hospitals Bristol National Health ServiceFoundation TrustUniversity of Bristo
A VR interface for browsing visual spaces at VBS2021
No full textThe Video Browser Showdown (VBS) is an annual competition in which each participant prepares an interactive video retrieval system and partakes in a live comparative evaluation at the annual MMMConference. In this paper, we introduce Eolas, which is a prototype video/image retrieval system incorporating a novel virtual reality (VR)interface. For VBS’21, Eolas represented each keyframe of the collection by an embedded feature in a latent vector space, into which a query would also be projected to facilitate retrieval within a VR environment. A user could then explore the space and perform one of a number of filter operations to traverse the space and locate the correct result
Effective separation of prime olefins from gas stream using anion pillared metal organic frameworks: ideal adsorbed solution theory studies, cyclic application and stability
No full textThe separation of C3H4/C3H6 is one of the most energy intensive and challenging operations, requiring up to 100 theoretical stages, in traditional cryogenic distillation. In this investigation, the potential application of two MOFs (SIFSIX-3-Ni and NbOFFIVE-1-Ni) was tested by studying the adsorption-desorption behaviors at a range of operational temperatures (300–360 K) and pressures (1–100 kPa). Dynamic adsorption breakthrough tests were conducted and the stability and regeneration ability of the MOFs were established after eight consecutive cycles. In order to establish the engineering key parameters, the experimental data were fitted to four isotherm models (Langmuir,
Freundlich, Sips and Toth) in addition to the estimation of the thermodynamic properties such as the isosteric heats of adsorption. The selectivity of the separation was tested by applying ideal adsorbed solution theory (IAST). The results revealed that SIFSIX-3-Ni is an effective adsorbent for the separation of 10/90 v/v C3H4/C3H6 under the range of experimental conditions used in this study. The maximum adsorption reported for the same combination was 3.2 mmol g−1. Breakthrough curves confirmed the suitability of this material for the separation with a 10-min gab before the lighter C3H4 is eluted from the column. The separated C3H6 was obtained with a 99.98% purity
