Comparison of heart rate monitoring with indirect calorimetry for energy expenditure evaluation

PurposeThe purpose of this study was to compare established methods with newly-developed methods for estimating the total energy expenditure (TEE).MethodsThe study subjects comprised 46 individuals, including 16 middle-aged men (mean age 51.4 years), 14 middle-aged women (mean age 49.9 years) and 16 young women (mean age 19.1 years). The TEE was estimated from 24-h heart rate (HR) data using newly-developed software (MoveSense HRAnalyzer 2011a, RC1, Suunto Oy, Vantaa, Finland), and was compared against the TEE determined using doubly labeled water (DLW). Agreement between the two methods was analyzed using Bland and Altman plots.ResultsThe HR method yielded similar TEE values as the DLW method at the group level, with an average of 8.6 kcal/day in the difference in the mean, but with large individual variations. Forty-four (96%) out of 46 subjects fell within ±2SD of the mean difference in TEE comparisons, and there was no tendency towards under- or over-estimation.ConclusionOur results indicate that the current software using HR analysis for the estimation of daily TEE needs further development for use with free-living individuals.     

Setting by numbers: datafication processes and ability grouping in an English secondary school

ABSTRACT

With the rise of accountability policies since the early nineties, the daily operation of English schools has profoundly changed. Through the in-depth analysis of ability grouping practices in one English secondary school, this paper aims to explore how the accountability shift and datafication impacted the practice of student grouping and students’ experience of education. The paper documents how an English secondary school which had fully endorsed the comprehensive ideal gradually shifted from mixed ability teaching to a rigid system of hierarchically arranged attainment-based grouping structure over a period of decades, and explores the pedagogical dilemmas that data-driven governance generates. The paper concludes that the school’s data-driven practice creates an environment of competition and an experience of incessant insecurities for the students which unsettlingly echo the culture of the late neoliberal labour market.     

Snap Judgments: How Students Search the Web for Their Rights to Photograph in Public

ABSTRACT

China’s distinct development of the Internet has provided religious populations within its mainland access, allowing them to create practices and resources related to the development of religion online. Yet this phenomenon has been understudied both within the current Chinese research on the Internet and international studies of digital religion online. This article provides an overview of digital religion in the Chinese context by identifying and exploring the main characteristics of Buddhism, Islam, and Protestantism manifest online. This is done by providing an overview of current research and profiling the development of different forms of digital religious expression found in China. Through this we show how the concept of digital religion is manifest in China and how this compares to Western understandings of such practices, and we highlight the unique characteristics defining the Chinese religious digital landscape.     

Digitally Savvy Citizenship: The Role of Internet Skills and Engagement in Young Adults' Political Participation around the 2008 Presidential Election

Popular narratives assume that digital media play a central role mobilizing voters and especially young adults. Based on unique survey data of a diverse group or young adults from Spring, 2009, we consider the relationship between differentiated internet uses, and online and offline political engagement around the time of the 2008 U.S. presidential election. Thanks to our rich data set, we are able to consider both online and offline activities while taking into consideration more traditional measures. Our findings suggest that online forms of political engagement complement offline engagement. The pathways to young adults' political participation remain relatively stable. We also find an association between Internet skills, social network site usage and greater levels of engagement. These findings imply that although Internet usage alone is unlikely to transform existing patterns in political participation radically, it may facilitate the creation of new pathways for engagement.     

Shortcuts to Well Being? Evaluating the Credibility of Online Health Information through Multiple Complementary Heuristics

Relying on the think-aloud method, this article explores how a diverse group of American adults seek health information online. Analyzing over 350,000 words of interview material and over 43 hours of video screen shots, the study identifies the specific strategies users rely upon in the health-information seeking context. People simultaneously deploy multiple complementary heuristics rather than engage in intensive systematic processing of online information despite the high-stakes nature of these searches. The results contribute nuanced understanding of how diverse adults find and evaluate online information in the important domain of health.     

Tactile training facilitates infants' ability to reach to targets on the body

This longitudinal study investigated the effect of experience with tactile stimulation on infants' ability to reach to targets on the body, an important adaptive skill. Infants were provided weekly tactile stimulation on eight body locations from 4 to 8 months of age (N = 11), comparing their ability to reach to the body to infants in a control group who did not receive stimulation (N = 10). Infants who received stimulation were more likely to successfully reach targets on the body than controls by 7 months of age. These findings indicate that tactile stimulation facilitates the development of reaching to the body by allowing infants to explore the sensorimotor correlations emerging from the stimulation.