1,943,231 research outputs found
Holidaying with the family pet: No dogs allowed!
Get PDFThis paper assesses the extent to which dog owners located in Brisbane, Australia, wish to holiday with their pets, and whether there is a gap between this desire and reality. The paper also examines the extent to which this demand is being catered for by the tourism accommodation sector. The need for this study reflects the increasingly significant role dogs are playing in the lives of humans, and the scale
of the dog-owning population. The results suggest that, although there is a strong desire among dog owners to take holidays with their pets, the actualisation of this
desire is comparatively low. A significant obstacle to the realisation of this desire appears to be a dearth of pet-friendly accommodation. This has implications for the
ability of the tourism industry to benefit from this potentially lucrative market, that is, the dog-owning population
Does owning a pet protect older people against loneliness?
Get PDFBackgroundPet ownership is thought to make a positive contribution to health, health behaviours and the general well-being of older people. More specifically pet ownership is often proposed as a solution to the problem of loneliness in later life and specific ‘pet based’ interventions have been developed to combat loneliness. However the evidence to support this relationship is slim and it is assumed that pet ownership is a protection against loneliness rather than a response to loneliness. The aim of this paper is to examine the association between pet ownership and loneliness by exploring if pet ownership is a response to, or protection against, loneliness using Waves 0–5 from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).MethodsUsing data from 5,210 men and women in the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing, cross-sectional and longitudinal regression analysis was used to assess the bi-directional relationship between loneliness and pet ownership among adults aged 50+.ResultsIn 2001 (wave 0) 41% of participants were pet owners compared with 30% in 2010 (Wave 5). The association between pet ownership and loneliness is stronger in women than men, and in both directions (i.e. pet ownership predicting loneliness and loneliness predicting pet ownership) and of the similar magnitude (OR 1.2-1.4). Age, social relationships, demographic factors and health behaviour variables have only a minimal influence upon the association between loneliness and pet ownership. The results of our longitudinal analysis showed that women who reported being lonely always in Waves 0 to 5 were more likely to have a pet in Wave 5.ConclusionReported loneliness is dependent on socio-demographic characteristics such as gender, household income, household living arrangements and health status. Taking those factors into account, owning a pet significantly influences later reporting of loneliness in women in our longitudinal analysis. In the reverse direction, reported loneliness influences pet ownership in later waves. In both directions, the relatively strong gender interaction suggests the association is limited to women with effects for men minimal or non-existent
Pet ownership and health
Get PDFThis thesis presents three classes of mechanism that may explain reported associations between pet ownership and health benefits. The first suggests any association is noncausal.
Studies 1-3 examine candidate factors to explain both health advantages and likelihood of pet ownership. Type A behaviour was hypothesised to be associated with higher risk of illness and lower likelihood of pet ownership. Hardiness was hypothesised to be associated with better health and increased likelihood of pet ownership. Neither hypothesis was supported.
The second class of explanation suggests that pets indirectly effect health by acting as social facilitators of human-human interactions. Enhanced social contact may lead to health advantages. Studies 4-6 examine the robustness of the catalysis effect of Pets and its impact on owners' social networks. Whilst the catalysis effect was found to be robust in generating social contacts, these were superficial and not regarded as providing relationship functions likely to enhance health.
The third class of explanation suggests pets have direct effects on health through the nature of the relationship with the owner, or through physiological effects such as reduced cardiovascular arousal to stress. Study 7 indicates that pets serve valuable supportive functions for normal children. Study 8 found that young people with autism demonstrate positive behaviours within their relationships with pets which they do not with people. Study 9 found the relationships between people with physical disabilities and their service dogs serve many supportive, as well as instrumental, functions and that this is associated with better self-perceived health. Studies 10 and 11 found no evidence that pet presence moderates cardiovascular reactivity to a laboratory stress task.
Little evidence was found of an association between pet ownership and health advantages, although it is clear that pets can be significant and valued relationships for their owners
Barking up the wrong tree : pet therapy in South Africa
No full textBibliography: leaves 183-238.There exists but one local detailed, documented study by Bergensen (1989) that focused on the effects of pet facilitated therapy on the self-esteem and socialisation of primary school children. In addition, a handful of articles have been published in South African journals. It is rather perturbing to note that a proven, highly effective adjunct to conventional therapeutic intervention is lacking in the South African therapeutic milieu. The marked ignorance and defence behind practitioners scorn for this form of therapy is rather perplexing, especially in light of its official existence for over thirty years. This dissertation probes the concept of pet-facilitated therapy by referring to extensive studies, focusing on various sub-populations, and concludes with a study investigating local opposition to pet therapy
Going beyond the borders : field-of-view extension in MR/PET hybrid imaging
Get PDFThe recent combination of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is of emerging interest in clinical routine. On the one hand, MRI is a widely-used diagnostic tool in medical practice. The excellent soft-tissue contrast offers reliable anatomical information. On the other hand, PET is a key imaging technique in nuclear medicine. It shows the functional metabolism thus providing information on the biochemical and physiological processes of the patient. The recently developed MR/PET hybrid system combines these advantages in one whole-body system.
The integration of the PET detector in an MR system is a new challenge. In particular, new concepts for the attenuation correction of the PET data are
required. This attenuation correction can be performed based on the MR data. However, the MR field-of-view (FoV) is limited by intrinsic physical restrictions such as B0 inhomogeneities and gradient nonlinearities. It has been reported that the PET quantification is biased due to the limitation of the MR-based FoV. Thus, new acquisition techniques are required for imaging beyond the FoV limitation. This was addressed in this thesis.
A novel method was developed to compensate the distortions arising from the gradient nonlinearity and the B0 inhomogeneity by using an optimal gradient amplitude. This imaging technique was implemented in a spin-echo-based sequence featuring multi-slice acquisition, bipolar readout and continuous table movement. Thereby, an extension of the FoV was achieved. The optimal sequence parameters were determined inline and applied automatically. No further user interaction or hardware modifications were required. The additional acquisition time is easily tolerable for clinical routine.
In a patient study the improvement achieved by the proposed method was verified. The reported bias in the PET reconstruction was reduced significantly. Therefore, the proposed technique improves the MR-based attenuation correction of the PET emission data. Furthermore, the achieved FoV extension might be of interest for diverse MR applications such as image-guided therapy or measuring of large patients. In summary a method has been developed that improves the PET quantification in MR/PET hybrid imaging
Artificial neural network-statistical approach for PET volume analysis and classification
Get PDFCopyright © 2012 The Authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The increasing number of imaging studies and the prevailing application of positron emission tomography (PET) in clinical oncology have led to a real need for efficient PET volume handling and the development of new volume analysis approaches to aid the clinicians in the clinical diagnosis, planning of treatment, and assessment of response to therapy. A novel automated system for oncological PET volume analysis is proposed in this work. The proposed intelligent system deploys two types of artificial neural networks (ANNs) for classifying PET volumes. The first methodology is a competitive neural network (CNN), whereas the second one is based on learning vector quantisation neural network (LVQNN). Furthermore, Bayesian information criterion (BIC) is used in this system to assess the optimal number of classes for each PET data set and assist the ANN blocks to achieve accurate analysis by providing the best number of classes. The system evaluation was carried out using experimental phantom studies (NEMA IEC image quality body phantom), simulated PET studies using the Zubal phantom, and clinical studies representative of nonsmall cell lung cancer and pharyngolaryngeal squamous cell carcinoma. The proposed analysis methodology of clinical oncological PET data has shown promising results and can successfully classify and quantify malignant lesions.This study was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation under Grant SNSF 31003A-125246, Geneva Cancer League, and the Indo Swiss Joint Research Programme ISJRP 138866. This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund
PET-saúde da família: contribuições na formação acadêmica e profissional em Educação Física
Get PDFTCC (Graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro de Desportos. Curso de Graduação em Educação Física.A preocupação com a formação de profissionais capazes de trabalhar no Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) e na Atenção Primária à Saúde (APS) tem motivado mudanças curriculares e projetos especiais tais como o Programa de Educação pelo Trabalho para a Saúde (PET-Saúde), inclusive nos cursos de Educação Física. O presente trabalho teve como objetivo analisar a contribuição do PET-Saúde na formação acadêmica e profissional de bolsistas do curso de Educação Física da UFSC. Do estudo, caracterizado como pesquisa descritivo-exploratória, participaram seis acadêmicos que foram bolsistas do PET-Saúde de Educação Física do Centro de Desportos da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, nos semestres 2011/2 e 2012/1. Os dados foram coletados por meio de entrevistas semiestruturadas e analisados a partir de categorias articuladoras com o auxílio do Software ATLAS-ti, versão 5.0. Os principais resultados indicam que: a) os bolsistas reconhecem a função institucional do PET-Saúde em propiciar espaços de articulação entre a universidade e a comunidade, algo que consideram decisivo em suas formações; b) apesar de reconhecerem que determinadas disciplinas da grade curricular são responsáveis pela apresentação de conceitos e problemáticas relacionadas à saúde pública e ao SUS, somente a participação no grupo PET-Saúde é que permitiu a ressignificação do conhecimento adquirido ao longo do curso e perceber sua importância na formação profissional
Transitions/relaxations in polyester adhesive/PET system
Get PDFThe correlations between the transitions and the dielectric relaxation processes of the oriented poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) pre-impregnated of the polyester thermoplastic adhesive have been investigated by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and dynamic dielectric spectroscopy (DDS). The thermoplastic polyester adhesive and the oriented PET films have been studied as reference samples. This study evidences that the adhesive chain segments is responsible for the physical structure evolution in the PET-oriented film. The transitions and dielectric relaxation modes’ evolutions in the glass transition region appear characteristic of the interphase between adhesive and PET film, which is discussed in terms of molecular mobility. The storage at room temperature of the adhesive tape involves the heterogeneity of the physical structure, characterized by glass transition dissociation. Thus, the correlation between the transitions and the dielectric relaxation processes evidences a segregation of the amorphous phases. Therefore, the physical structure and the properties of the material have been linked to the chemical characteristics
Consumer Resistance in the Pet Marketplace
No full textThis study draws on Cherrier’s (2008) concept of consumer-resistant identities together with the work of Beverland, Farelly and Lim (2008) on the dark side of pet ownership to shed light on consumer resistance in the context of the pet marketplace. The adopted research methodology utilises a photoelicitation technique known as autodriving, thus, helping to reveal in greater depth, the layers of heterogeneous meanings surrounding such resistance practices. The UK pet marketplace has become increasingly engaged with the marketing of luxury brands and designer breeds. However, our thirteen participants identified as pet owners were resistant to such luxury consumption practices, preferring to distance themselves from particular products and brands (including designer breeds) in the marketplace. The paper concludes with ideas for future research
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