Exploring the challenges in obtaining physical activity data from women using hip-worn accelerometers

Quality objective physical activity data are required to inform physical activity-based health improvement initiatives, however, various challenges undermine acquisition of such data. We examined the efficacy and challenges of a hip-worn accelerometry protocol in women. Specific objectives included determining accelerometer-wear-compliance rates and understanding the barriers and acceptability of wearing accelerometers. Healthy New Zealand women (n?=?406) of three ethnicities (Māori (indigenous New Zealander), Pacific, European) aged 16–45 years (30.9?±?8.7 y) wore hip-mounted Actigraph wGT3X+ accelerometers for 7 consecutive days under a 24-h wear protocol. Post hoc, a sub-sample (n?=?45; age: 29.4?±?9.0 y) was interviewed to investigate comfort/convenience and burdens of accelerometer-wear. Wear-compliance (≥10?h/day, ≥4 day) was 86%. European women returned more valid data (92.7%, p?<?.04) than Pacific (73.0%) or Māori women (82.1%). Twenty-two participants (5.4%) had completely missing data; 13 due to lost accelerometers. Burden of accelerometer-wear was greatest during sleeping (66.7%) due to discomfort. Embarrassment of accelerometer visibility through clothing and consequent restricted clothing choices caused high burden in social settings (45.2%). Discomfort during sleeping, embarrassment due to perceived appearance in social settings and ethnicity are key factors affecting the efficacy of collecting physical activity data from women using hip-worn accelerometers. Refining accelerometer design to reduce size and subsequently participant burden should improve acceptability and wear-compliance. Increasing overall participant compliance by reducing burden and ensuring appropriate understanding of study aims and relevance should reduce attrition and improve wear-compliance and data quality when collecting accelerometry data from women of different ethnicities.     

Prospective analysis of technological innovation systems: Identifying technological and organizational development options for biogas in Switzerland

In this article, we put forward a concept for the identification and analysis of future development options of technological innovation systems. The key element of our approach, the so-called variation analysis, is a methodology to identify coherent socio-technical and organizational variants within a specific innovation field. Consistent combinations of these two dimensions may be interpreted as nuclei for alternative future developments of innovation systems. The method may be used in discursive foresight processes to inform strategy formulation of firms or policy makers who see a utility in furthering the innovation field. The paper has a focus on developing the theoretical background and the analytical structure of the methodology. Empirically, we illustrate the method for the innovation system of biomass digestion in Switzerland.     

Shaping selection environments for industrial catch-up and sustainability transitions: A systemic perspective on endogenizing windows of opportunity

Transitioning economic sectors towards more sustainable futures is a major global challenge, in particular for non-OECD countries. Policymakers in these countries are confronted with a double challenge: how to implement cleaner technologies and infrastructures while at the same time promoting rapid industrial development. In catch-up studies, this trade-off has been increasingly interpreted as providing windows of opportunity for gaining strong leadership in new generations of cleantech industries. In this paper, we maintain that in order to specify how these windows of opportunity can be endogenized, a deeper understanding is needed about whether, how and by whom the directionality of innovation systems can be influenced. For this purpose, we propose an analytical approach that draws on the technological innovation system framework extending the current understanding of directionality in two ways: first, we complement the prevalent top-down perspective with a bottom-up view exemplified by the institutional entrepreneurship literature. Second, we posit that the focus has to be shifted from the manufacturing of single technologies to the transformation of entire socio-technical systems. The presented framework is validated by a case study on recent shifts in the dominant technology in China’s urban water management sector. Major changes in the country’s sectoral selection environment led membrane bioreactor technology to become the dominant design in urban water management – a development that is unmatched in any other country in the world. Owing to these transformations, China’s technology firms outcompete multinational players and therefore they show strong potentials for industrial leapfrogging. However, although the promise to solve environmental problems played a decisive role in the shaping of the selection environment, it remains unclear whether the observed transformation leads the way to a more sustainable sector structure in the longer run. The case, however, still enables us to specify how windows of opportunity can be endogenized through the interplay of different actors trying to shape different layers of the selection environment in a specific sector.     

典型国家工业化进程中经济社会与能源环境协调发展分析

国家经济社会与能源环境的协调发展特征因各国工业化程度不同而存在差异,通过分析典型国家在工业化进程中经济社会与能源环境协调发展的演进趋势,可为其他国家未来工业化进程中实现经济社会与能源环境协调发展提供理论依据。本文以美国、日本等8个典型国家为例,运用修正后的耦合协调发展度模型对其1961-2011年的国家经济社会与能源环境的耦合协调发展特征进行研究和分析。结果表明：1961-2011年期间日本、韩国、西班牙等工业化完成国家经历了完整的工业化进程,经济社会与能源环境的协调发展度呈现明显的“U”型变化趋势,而美国、法国等后工业化国家因处于后工业化阶段而处于“U”型曲线右侧的上升阶段,埃及、马来西亚、泰国等前工业化国家因处于工业化发展阶段而处于“U”型曲线左侧的下降阶段。各国因工业化开始时间、发展速度及产业结构、能源结构、人口规模和城市化水平差异,其协调发展度谷值时间和谷值量存在差异。     

The Effects of Collaborative Care of Living Animals in Biology Lessons on Students’ Relatedness Toward Their Teacher Across Gender

Research in Science Education - The transition from elementary school to the upper grades can lead to ambiguous feelings toward the new, male teachers. This study investigated whether collaborative...     

Reflections on working with virtual action learning

This paper brings together the reflections of the authors on their shared and individual experiences of virtual action learning. Whilst many conclusions are shared, there are also some points of difference in practices.     

Grading Standards,Student Ability and Errors in College Admission

Grades are important for admission of students in most higher education programs. Analyzing admission and student performance data at a major Norwegian business school, we find that the grading practice of teachers at regional colleges sending students to the school is affected by the average performance of the students being graded. Teachers at colleges recruiting good students from upper secondary school tend to be strict in their grading practice, while teachers at colleges recruiting less good students tend to follow a lenient practice. This has implications for the interpretation of grades and hence for optimal admission procedures. We develop a methodology to assess the consequences of differential grading standards. Approximately 10% of the students in our data are admitted at the expense of more competent students. We demonstrate costs for the school admitting the wrong students and in particular for the rejected students.     

Understanding the Greenhouse Effect by Embodiment – Analysing and Using Students' and Scientists' Conceptual Resources

Over the last 20 years, science education studies have reported that there are very different understandings among students of science regarding the key aspects of climate change. We used the cognitive linguistic framework of experientialism to shed new light on this valuable pool of studies to identify the conceptual resources of understanding climate change. In our study, we interviewed 35 secondary school students on their understanding of the greenhouse effect and analysed the conceptions of climate scientists as drawn from textbooks and research reports. We analysed all data by metaphor analysis and qualitative content analysis to gain insight into students' and scientists' resources for understanding. In our analysis, we found that students and scientists refer to the same schemata to understand the greenhouse effect. We categorised their conceptions into three different principles the conceptions are based on: warming by more input, warming by less output, and warming by a new equilibrium. By interrelating students' and scientists' conceptions, we identified the students' learning demand: First, our students were afforded with experiences regarding the interactions of electromagnetic radiation and CO₂. Second, our students reflected about the experience-based schemata they use as source domains for metaphorical understanding of the greenhouse effect. By uncovering the—mostly unconscious—deployed schemata, we gave students access to their source domains. We implemented these teaching guidelines in interventions and evaluated them in teaching experiments to develop evidence-based and theory-guided learning activities on the greenhouse effect.     

Content-Related Knowledge of Biology Teachers from Secondary Schools: Structure and learning opportunities

Teachers’ content-related knowledge is a key factor influencing the learning progress of students. Different models of content-related knowledge have been proposed by educational researchers; most of them take into account three categories: content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge. As there is no consensus about the empirical separability (i.e. empirical structure) of content-related knowledge yet, a total of 134 biology teachers from secondary schools completed three tests which were to capture each of the three categories of content-related knowledge. The empirical structure of content-related knowledge was analyzed by Rasch analysis, which suggests content-related knowledge to be composed of (1) content knowledge, (2) pedagogical content knowledge, and (3) curricular knowledge. Pedagogical content knowledge and curricular knowledge are highly related (r_latent?=?.70). The latent correlations between content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (r_latent?=?.48)—and curricular knowledge, respectively (r_latent?=?.35)—are moderate to low (all ps?<?.001). Beyond the empirical structure of content-related knowledge, different learning opportunities for teachers were investigated with regard to their relationship to content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and curricular knowledge acquisition. Our results show that an in-depth training in teacher education, professional development, and teacher self-study are positively related to particular categories of content-related knowledge. Furthermore, our results indicate that teaching experience is negatively related to curricular knowledge, compared to no significant relationship with content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge.