4,208 research outputs found
Pain in the lumbar, thoracic or cervical regions: do age and gender matter? A population-based study of 34,902 Danish twins 20–71 years of age
No full textBackground. It is unclear to what extent spinal pain varies between genders and in relation to age. It was the purpose of this study to describe the self-reported prevalence of 1) pain ever and pain in the past year in each of the three spinal regions, 2) the duration of such pain over the past year, 3) pain radiating from these areas, and 4) pain in one, two or three areas. In addition, 5) to investigate if spinal pain reporting is affected by gender and 6) to see if it increases gradually with increasing age. Method. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2002 on 34,902 twin individuals, aged 20 to 71 years, representative of the general Danish population. Identical questions on pain were asked for the lumbar, thoracic and cervical regions. Results. Low back pain was most common, followed by neck pain with thoracic pain being least common. Pain for at least 30 days in the past year was reported by 12%, 10%, and 4%, respectively. The one-yr prevalence estimates of radiating pain were 22% (leg), 16% (arm), and 5% (chest). Pain in one area only last year was reported by 20%, followed by two (13%) and three areas (8%). Women were always more likely to report pain and they were also more likely to have had pain for longer periods. Lumbar and cervical pain peaked somewhat around the middle years but the curves were flatter for thoracic pain. Similar patterns were noted for radiating pain. Older people did not have pain in a larger number of areas but their pain lasted longer. Conclusion. Pain reported for and from the lumbar and cervical spines was found to be relatively common whereas pain in the thoracic spine and pain radiating into the chest was much less common. Women were, generally, more likely to report pain than men. The prevalence estimates changed surprisingly little over age and were certainly not more common in the oldest groups, although the pain was reported as more long-lasting in the older group
ko-ax photo [Selected by Tate Curator of Photography, Simon Baker]
No full textko-ax photo was an open submission competition selected by Simon Baker (Curator of Photography, Tate), Sue Steward (Photography critic, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian, BBC) and John Gill (Curator Brighton Photo Biennial and Founder Photoworks). The 10 artists selected all presented fascinating artworks that conceal narratives and ask questions of the viewer. Questions of beauty, family, decay and fantasy were all explored across over 50 works.</p
The people behind the papers – Jason Ko and Daniel Lobo
No full textPlanarians grow when they are fed and shrink during periods of starvation. However, it is unclear how they maintain appropriate body proportions as their size changes. A new paper in Development investigates the differences between growth and shrinkage dynamics and builds a mathematical model to explore the mechanisms underpinning these two processes. To learn more about the story behind the paper, we caught up with first author, Jason Ko, and corresponding author, Daniel Lobo, Associate Professor at the University of Maryland.https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.20298
Organizational Learning and Marketing Capability Development: A Study of Charity Retailing Operation of British Social Enterprises
No full textSocial enterprise is a hybrid form of profit- and social benefit-seeking organization whereby traditional nonprofit organizations pursue both their social mission and business opportunities. To embrace this new strategic direction shift, the nonprofit organizations need to develop new competences that will enable them to respond to the changes in the business model. The article investigates the learning mechanisms through which social enterprises develop a marketing capability to deploy their resources in the marketplace as the drivers of competitive advantage in their commercial practice. We study eight cases of UK-based charity retailers, in order to address the role of knowledge accumulation, articulation and codification process in the evolution of marketing capability development. We identify, amongst other things that the critical process of organizational learning for social enterprise is to transfer the experience into organization specific knowledge under the social aspects of constraints
Genetic and environmental transactions underlying the associationbetween physical fitness/physical exercise and body composition
No full textWe examined mean effects and variance moderating effects of measures of physical activity and fitness on six measures of adiposity and their reciprocal effects in a subsample of the population-representative Danish Twin Registry. Consistent with prior studies, higher levels of physical activity suppressed variance in adiposity, but this study provided further insight. Variance suppression appeared to have both genetic and environmental pathways. Some mean effects appeared due to reciprocal influences of environmental circumstances differing among families but not between co-twins, suggesting these reciprocal effects are uniform. Some variance moderating effects also appeared due to biases in individual measures of adiposity, as well as to differences and inaccuracies in measures of physical activity. This suggests a need to avoid reliance on single measures of both physical activity and adiposity in attempting to understand the pathways involved in their linkages, and constraint in interpreting results if only single measures are available. Future research indications include identifying which physical activity-related environmental circumstances have relatively uniform effects on adiposity in everyone, and which should be individually tailored to maximize motivation to continue involvement.</p
Ko au te whenua, te whenua ko au – I am the land, the land is me: An autoethnographic investigation of a secondary school teacher’s experience seeking to enrich learning in outdoor education for Māori students.
No full textThis thesis is my story as an outdoor educator, as a researcher, and a co-participant reflecting on my own actions and experiences as well as those of my students. In this autoethnography I share my revelations and tensions in my role as an outdoor education teacher seeking to enrich the experiences of Māori students. Māori culture and history have largely been ignored in the outdoor education classrooms and environments of Aotearoa New Zealand. After teaching the subject for ten years I didn’t perceive that I was perpetuating the same invisibility in my own outdoor education course. Over this time a number of questions that had fermented at the back of my mind came to the fore; ‘why are so few Māori students opting to take outdoor education as a senior secondary school subject?’ and ‘how can I make the subject of outdoor education more desirable and appealing to Māori?’ A place-responsive approach incorporates and values traditional ways of learning through the notion of place and the stories attached to them. The cultural context of learning about and through place has the potential to provide learning opportunities that are relevant and meaningful to all learners but particularly Māori. Place-responsive pedagogies allow outdoor educators to create an environment where language, knowledge, culture and values are normal, valid and legitimate – contexts where Māori students can be themselves. Through this research I have found that the implementation of a place responsive approach has had significant implications for Year twelve outdoor education at Mount Maunganui College. The improvement in Māori student achievement and numbers selecting the subject have been affirming.
Ko au te whenua, te whenua ko au – I am the land, the land is m
KNOWLEDGE ACCUMULATION IN ASIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION RESEARCH: A CRITICAL REVIEW
No full textGiven the growing controversy over the relevance of Anglo-Saxon style public administration to developing countries and a greater demand for more context-relevant theories of public administration in Asia, we should expect that Asian scholars achieve a certain level of knowledge growth in line with this controversy and demand. On the basis of the review of 8810 articles published in nine major international journals during 1990-2011, the author found that the number of articles on Asian public administration is very small, and there is no strong pattern of growth in this regard. In addition, there are very few studies adopting a comparative approach covering multiple Asian countries. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.N
Book-in-Common Conversation - Lisa Ko
No full textLisa Ko, author of The Leavers, will speak about her book and writing career in a virtual presentation on Tuesday, March 23 at 7 pm. Lisa Ko is the recipient of the 2016 PEN/Bellwether Prize and the 2017 Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award. The Leavers was also named best book of the year by NPR
Differentially altered social dominance- and cooperative-like behaviors in Shank2- and Shank3-mutant mice
No full textBackground: Recent progress in genomics has contributed to the identification of a large number of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) risk genes, many of which encode synaptic proteins. Our understanding of ASDs has advanced rapidly, partly owing to the development of numerous animal models. Extensive characterizations using a variety of behavioral batteries that analyze social behaviors have shown that a subset of engineered mice that model mutations in genes encoding Shanks, a family of excitatory postsynaptic scaffolding proteins, exhibit autism-like behaviors. Although these behavioral assays have been useful in identifying deficits in simple social behaviors, alterations in complex social behaviors remain largely untested. Methods: Two syndromic ASD mouse models—Shank2 constitutive knockout [KO] mice and Shank3 constitutive KO mice—were examined for alterations in social dominance and social cooperative behaviors using tube tests and automated cooperation tests. Upon naïve and salient behavioral experience, expression levels of c-Fos were analyzed as a proxy for neural activity across diverse brain areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and a number of subcortical structures. Findings: As previously reported, Shank2 KO mice showed deficits in sociability, with intact social recognition memory, whereas Shank3 KO mice displayed no overt phenotypes. Strikingly, the two Shank KO mouse models exhibited diametrically opposed alterations in social dominance and cooperative behaviors. After a specific social behavioral experience, Shank mutant mice exhibited distinct changes in number of c-Fos+ neurons in the number of cortical and subcortical brain regions. Conclusions: Our results underscore the heterogeneity of social behavioral alterations in different ASD mouse models and highlight the utility of testing complex social behaviors in validating neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric disorder models. In addition, neural activities at distinct brain regions are likely collectively involved in eliciting complex social behaviors, which are differentially altered in ASD mouse models. © 2020, The Author(s).1
Atopic diseases in twins born after assisted reproduction
No full textJäderberg I, Thomsen SF, Kyvik KO, Skytthe A, Backer V. Atopic diseases in twins born after assisted reproduction. Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 2012; 26: 140-145. We examined the risk of atopic diseases in twins born after assisted reproduction. Data on atopic diseases and assisted reproduction in 9694 twin pairs, 3-20 years of age, from the Danish Twin Registry were collected via multidisciplinary questionnaires. The risk of atopic diseases in twins born after assisted reproduction was compared with the risk in twins born after spontaneous conception using logistic regression and variance components analysis. Children born after assisted reproduction did not have a different risk of atopic outcomes (adjusted odds ratios [95% confidence intervals] for asthma: 0.95 [0.85, 1.07], P = 0.403; hay fever: 1.01 [0.86, 1.18], P = 0.918; and atopic dermatitis: 1.02 [0.81, 1.11], P = 0.773 respectively) compared with children born after spontaneous conception. Assisted reproduction did not modify the heritability of atopic diseases. This study does not support an association between assisted reproduction and development of atopic diseases. This result must be confirmed in subsequent studies, preferably of singleton populations
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