240,152 research outputs found
Body image and the media: the media's influence on body image
No full textPlan BMedia images of the unattainable thin body can be found almost anywhere. These media images are seen on billboards, magazines, in commercials and in ads. There has been continual interest in women’s body image throughout the years. Women’s self-esteem, eating patterns and how these two concepts are affected by what a women sees in the media have been researched. This line of research is important because discovering the link between poor body image and the media’s portrayal of women could allow for success interventions to be evaluated and implemented. An intervention could lead to fewer cases of anorexia and bulimia and could lead to increased self-esteem and a more positive body image amongst women. The purpose of this study was to substantiate the media’s influence on body image. Forty-three University of Wisconsin Stout undergraduate students voluntarily participated in the study. The control subjects participated by filling out the Body Image States Scales (BISS). The experimental subjects viewed 120-second power point presentation showing media images of women followed by completion of the BISS. The BISS consists of six questions, rated on a likert type scale that inquires about the subject’s feelings regarding their physical appearance at a particular moment in time. Data analysis using independent sample t-tests was used in this study. Analysis suggested that individuals who viewed the media images of women felt less physically attractive than the individuals who where not exposed to the media presentation. Also, individuals who viewed the media presentation felt worse about their looks than those individuals who did not view the media presentation. Additional findings suggested that overall the two groups’ satisfaction with their body, looks and attractiveness were not found to be significantly different. The four questions that did not reveal significant findings dealt with more specific aspects of body image. For example, body shape, size and weight were a few of the specific aspects that were questioned. In the future, replication of this research with a wider pool of subjects perhaps internationally, using a pre-test post-test design, or exposing the experimental group to the thin ideal for a longer period of time is recommended
Dual Hierarchy for Gravitational n-body
No full textThe n-body problem is the simulation of pair-wise interactions between n objects. This problem appears in many forms, with the classic example being the modeling of gravitational forces between point masses, necessary for cosmological simulations. Many approximation approaches have been devised to reduce the complexity of this problem.t-SNE is a data visualization method that requires repeatedly solving a variant of the n-body problem. A recent paper (An Efficient Dual-Hierarchy t-SNE Minimization, van de Ruit et. al.) proposes a novel algorithm that outperforms other t-SNE minimization methods on medium-scale datasets. The report proves the viability of a dual-traversal method that uses an embedding tree to emit forces and an independent field tree to collect forces. Because the embedding tree is a Linear-BVH and the field tree is an orthtree built to a fixed depth, the overall algorithm has linear complexity.This thesis demonstrates how the dual-tree approach can be adapted for gravitational n-body simulations. Following this, it measures the performance against similar implementations of other algorithms and shows that while the adapted Dual Hierarchy approach is faster than Barnes-Hut, it is outperformed by the Fast Multipole Method on realistic large-scale cosmological datasets.https://github.com/JacksonCampolattaro/n-body Git repository containing an implementation of the adapted Dual Hierarchy algorithm for Gravitational n-body, as well as implementations of several other common algorithms compared against during benchmarking.Computer Engineerin
Force harmonic distortion in the supine human body during vertical and longitudinal horizontal sinusoidal whole-body vibration
No full textBody mass index as a standard of living measure: a different interpretation for the case of Colombia.
No full textWe analyze the Body Mass Index (BMI) in a distinct way of its traditional use and it lets us use it as a proxy of standard of living for the case of Colombia. Our approach is focused on studying how far the people are from the normal range and not on the score of each one and this lets us to treat equally extreme cases as severe thinness and obesity. We use a probabilistic model (Ordered Probit) that evaluates the probability of being within the normal range or another level. We found that socioeconomic variables have a significant effect on the dependent variable and that there are no linear effects. Besides, people with difficulties for walking and adults have less probability of having a normal BMI.Standard of Living, Body Mass Index, Overweight
Implicit body representations and the conscious body image
No full textRecent studies have revealed that somatosensory processing relies on a class of implicit body representations showing large distortions of size and shape. The relation between these representations and the conscious body image remains unclear. Dissociations have been reported in the clinical literature on eating disorders between different body image measures, with larger and more consistent distortions found with depictive measures, in which participants compare their body to a visual depiction of a body, than metric measures, in which participants compare their body to some non-body standard. Here, we compared implicit body representations underlying position sense to the body image measured with both depictive and metric methods. The body image was measured using both a depictive method (template matching) in which participants judged whether their hand was wider or more slender than a shown hand picture, and a metric method (line length) in which participants judged whether different parts of the their hand were shorter or longer than a presented line. Consistent with previous findings, characteristic distortions were found for the implicit body representation underlying position sense. These distortions were also found in attenuated form for metric – but not depictive – body image measures. While replicating the basic dissociation between implicit body representations and the conscious body image, these results demonstrate that this dissociation is not absolute and specific tasks may utilise both to varying degrees depending on task demands. Metric measures may not be pure measures of body image, but some combination of visual and somatosensory body representations
Looking age-appropriate while growing old gracefully: A qualitative study of ageing and body image among older adults
No full textBody dissatisfaction can be significantly detrimental to wellbeing. Little is known about older adults’ body image, despite the fact that ageing causes unique bodily changes and that sociocultural pressures to resist these changes abound. We conducted six focus groups with a UK community sample of White British and South Asian older adults aged 65–92 years. Thematic analysis highlighted four themes: appearance indicates capability and identity; physical ability trumps appearance; felt pressures to age ‘gracefully’ while resisting appearance changes; and gender and cultural differences. These findings suggest that older adults’ body image can have important implications for their wellbeing and merits researchers’ attention
Wireless body sensor networks for health-monitoring applications
No full textThis is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in
Physiological Measurement. The publisher is
not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version
derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0967-3334/29/11/R01
A topological approach for segmenting human body shape
No full textSegmentation of a 3D human body, is a very challenging problem in applications exploiting human scan data. To tackle this problem, the paper proposes a topological approach based on the discrete Reeb graph (DRG) which is an extension of the classical Reeb graph to handle unorganized clouds of 3D points. The essence of the approach concerns detecting critical nodes in the DRG, thereby permitting the extraction of branches that represent parts of the body. Because the human body shape representation is built upon global topological features that are preserved so long as the whole structure of the human body does not change, our approach is quite robust against noise, holes, irregular sampling, frame change and posture variation. Experimental results performed on real scan data demonstrate the validity of our method
Can appearance conversations explain differences between gay and heterosexual men's body dissatisfaction?
No full textMen's body dissatisfaction is prevalent and a serious health concern as it is associated with negative outcomes including depression, disordered eating, and anabolic steroid abuse. Gay men are particularly vulnerable to body dissatisfaction, perhaps due to heightened sociocultural appearance pressures experienced in gay subculture. Appearance conversations represent an underresearched, but potentially potent, mechanism of appearance pressures. The current study explored whether differences in the frequency of engaging in appearance conversations accounted for differences in body dissatisfaction and associated risk factors among gay and heterosexual men. A purposeful sample of gay (N = 77, Mage = 32.57) and heterosexual (N = 78, Mage = 25.30) men were recruited from community organizations in the United Kingdom. Participants completed an online questionnaire assessing appearance conversations, body dissatisfaction, appearance orientation, and internalization of appearance ideals. Gay men reported more frequent engagement in positive and negative appearance conversations and greater body dissatisfaction, appearance orientation, and general internalization than heterosexual men. Moreover, frequency of appearance conversations mediated the relationship between sexuality and the majority of study variables, including body dissatisfaction (ps<.05). These findings suggest that appearance conversations are an important sociocultural influence on male body image and that they are important in understanding the differences between gay and heterosexual men's body dissatisfaction and associated risk factors. © 2013 American Psychological Association
Wave-body interactions for a surface-piercing body in water of finite depth
No full textNonlinear wave-body interactions for a stationary surface-piercing body in water of finite depth with flat and sloping bottoms are simulated in a two-dimensional numerical wave tank, which is constructed mainly based on the spatially averaged Navier-Stokes equations with the k-ε model for simulating the turbulence. The equations are discretized based on the finite volume method and the scheme of the pressure implicit splitting of operators is employed to solve the Navier-Stokes equations. By using the force time histories, the mean and higher-harmonic force components are calculated. The computational results are shown to be in good agreement with experimental and numerical results of other researchers. Then, the horizontal force, the vertical force and the moment on the surface-piercing body under nonlinear regular waves with flat and sloping bottoms are obtained. The results indicate that the bottom topographies have a significant influence on the wave loads on the surface-piercing body.</div
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