Epidemiological studies of childhood and adolescence headache

The main purpose of this study was to examine the changes in the prevalence, incidence, and characteristics of headache in childhood and adolescence. In addition, the predictors of the change in the occurrence of childhood headache and the association between adolescent headache and behavior were studied. The occurrence and characteristics of headache were investigated as part of a prospective follow-up study, where 6-year-old children and their families (n=1132) were followed to the age of 12-years (n=1126). The study design entailed both a cohort and case-control group. The incidence of headache and the association between headache and behavior were studied in another cohort, consisting of 11-year-old twins (n=5393), who were followed to the age of 17 (n=4159). The prevalence rates of headache increased during the follow-up, especially in boys whose mothers suffered from frequent headache. The incidence rates of frequent headache changed the most in girls between ages of 11 and 14. Early-onset migraine and tension-type headache were equal predictors of migraine at age 12. The age-related changes observed in pain localization, concurrent symptoms and triggers were considerable. Headache frequency was significantly associated with externalizing and internalizing problem behaviors and adaptive behaviors as rated by parents, but only with externalizing problem behaviors as rated by teachers. Headache both in children and adolescents is characterized by its changing nature. Its prevention and treatment should take familial, environmental and psychosocial aspects into account.

Comovement of stock price risk in strategic alliance — Case: mobile internet

The focus of this study has been comovement of stock price risk level between two companies as they form strategic alliance. Thus the main reason has been to shed more light to possible increased risk level that the stockholder confronts when a company he owns forms a strategic alliance with another company. This study has centralized to interfirm cooperation between mobile and internet companies, which have furthered the development of mobile internet. The study has been divided into theoretical and empirical part. In theoretical part the main concepts riskiness of a stock (volatility), comovement and strategic alliance have been run through. In empirical part seven strategic alliances formed by mobile internet companies have been examined. Based on this, strategic alliance seems to increase comovement of stock price risk in some degree. This comovement seems to be stronger when core businesses or operating environments of cooperating companies differ more from each other.

Human behavior on the Internet

In this thesis, "Human behavior on the Internet", the human anxiety is conceptualized. The following questions have guided the writing of the thesis: How humans behave with the Internet technology? What goes in their mind? What kinds of behaviors are shown while using the Internet? What is the role of the content on the Internet and especially what are the types of anxiety behavior on the Internet? By conceptualization this thesis aims to provide a model for studying whether humans show signs of less or exacerbated anxiety while using the Internet. The empirical part of this thesis was built on new developed model and user study that utilizes that model. For the user study, the target users were divided into two groups based on their skill level. The user study used both qualitative and quantitative research methods. The qualitative research was conducted using interviews and observational analysis. The quantitative research was conducted in three iterations by using questionnaires and surveys. These results suggest that the significance of human on using technology would be integral part of such a study. The study also suggests that Internet has lulled humans with the sense of dependency to greater extent. In particular, the results identified seven main areas of human anxiety. These forms of anxiety require further studies to encompass human anxiety in more detail.

Tracking of physical activity during adolescence: The 1993 Pelotas Birth Cohort, Brazil

Objective: To analyze physical activity during adolescence in participants of the 1993 Pelotas Birth Cohort Study, Brazil. Methods: Data on leisure time physical activity at 11, 15, and 18 years of age were analyzed. At each visit, a cut-off point of 300 min/week was used to classify adolescents as active or inactive. A total of 3,736 participants provided data on physical activity at each of the three age points. Results: A significant decline in the proportion of active adolescents was observed from 11 to 18 years of age, particularly among girls (from 32.9% to 21.7%). The proportions of girls and boys who were active at all three age points were 28.0% and 55.1%, respectively. After adjustment for sex, economic status, and skin color, participants who were active at 11 and 15 years of age were 58.0% more likely to be active at 18 years of age compared with those who were inactive at 11 and 15 years of age. Conclusions: Physical activity declined during adolescence and inactivity tended to track over time. Our findings reinforce the need to promote physical activity at early stages of life, because active behavior established early tends to be maintained over time.

Patrimonio cultural y turismo: nuevos modelos de promoción vía Internet

Desde Estambul a Barcelona, de Almería a Niza, de Venecia a Túnez, de Atenas a Alejandría, de la India a la China, el mundo ofrece una actividad cultural rica y muy variada. Los turistas que lo recorren desean impregnarse de ella. Parece como si el sector turístico no haya sido capaz de organizarse y desarrollar un proyecto común de turismo cultural que hermane todas estas posibilidades. Quizá en un futuro, con el uso de las nuevas tecnologías se puedan proponer viajes virtuales por el patrimonio cultural del mediterráneo como preámbulo y estimulo de posibles viajes reales

Do Schools Discriminate Against Homosexual Parents? Evidence from an Internet Field Experiment

The recognition of homosexual rights is a controversial issue in many countries. Spain was the third country in the world (after Netherlands and Belgium) to introduce a law recognizing homosexual marriage and adoption of children. In this paper, we examine for the first time whether schools are more hesitant to give feedback to homosexual parents during children's pre-registration period in Spain. In order to do that, we designed an internet field experiment to be conducted in schools. We created three types of fictitious couples; one heterosexual, one male homosexual and one female homosexual, and send emails to schools making sexual orientation explicit. Our results show that men homosexual couples had a significant lower probability to receive and answer than heterosexual couples (22.5 percentage points less). No statistically significant differences in the response rate were found between female homosexual and heterosexual couples. This result suggests that male homosexual couples might be penalized because of the lack of a maternal figure. Keywords: Discrimination, field experiment, schools, homosexual rights. JEL codes: H41, I20, K36

Internet Banking in Europe: a comparative analysis

A key strategic issue for banks is the implementation of internet banking. The ‘click and mortar’ model that complements classical branch banking with online facilities is competing with pure internet banks. The objective of this paper is to compare the performance of these two models across countries, so as to examine the role of differences in the banking system and technological progress. A fuzzy cluster analysis on the performance of banks in Finland, Spain, Italy and the UK shows that internet banks are hard to distinguish from banks that follow a click and mortar strategy; country borders are more important. We therefore explain bank performance by a group of selected bank features, country-specific economic and IT indicators over the period 1995-2004. We find that the strategy of banking groups to incorporate internet banks reflects some competitive edge that these banks have in their business models. Extensive technological innovation boosts internet banking.

Measuring Customer Experience in Mobile Internet

Problems in the mobile services are complex where the lack of the user analysis is not the modest issue. User centered design has increasingly become as a basis for the design of mobile services. The concept of user centered design gives end-user extensive attention at each stage of the design process. Mobile service providers want to offer experiences for users and clearly the users look for services that can provide pleasant experiences. In this thesis, the elements of user experience in mobile internet were studied as well as user experience measuring methods were researched. This study was looking for user experience measuring metrics and methods to specify new factors to measure user experience. During this thesis research project an application called CEM4Mobile was designed and implemented. CEM4Mobile is an application for observing and analysing user experience based on the user activity and behaviour. As a result of this thesis, a collection of user experience elements and measuring metrics were found. The elements and metrics were designed and implemented to CEM4Mobile product, which measures user experience. It was found out that the user experience measuring methods were based on interaction between two people but CEM4Mobile makes user observation programmatic.

Physical activity in adolescence - with special reference to cardiovascular health

Liikunta ja sydän- ja verisuoniterveys nuorilla Aikuisiällä ilmenevien sydän- ja verisuonisairauksien kehitys alkaa lapsuudessa. Vähäinen liikunta lisää vaaraa sairastua sydän- ja verisuonisairauksiin sekä vaikuttaa haitallisesti näiden sairauksien riskitekijöihin läpi elämän. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena oli tutkia nuorten liikuntaa ja sen yhteyttä sydän- ja verisuoniterveyteen. Sydän- ja verisuoniterveyttä tutkittiin riskitekijöiden sekä valtimon laajentumiskyvyn avulla. Tutkittavat koostuivat nuorista, jotka osallistuivat pitkäaikaisen sepelvaltimotaudin ehkäisytutkimuksen (STRIP) 13-vuotistutkimuskäynnille ja jotka raportoivat vapaa-ajan liikuntatottumuksensa (n=560). Liikunnan lisäksi nuorten pituus, paino, verenpaine ja olkavaltimon laajentumiskyky mitattiin sekä analysoitiin laboratorionäytteitä (otettiin verinäyte) ja selvitettiin ruoankäyttöä. Vähäinen vapaa-ajan liikunta oli yleistä etenkin tytöillä. Vapaa-ajallaan vähän liikkuvat pojat viettivät enemmän aikaa televisio- ja tietokoneruudun ääressä kuin vapaa-ajallaan paljon liikkuvat pojat. Äidin, toisin kuin isän, vapaa-ajan liikunta ja paino olivat yhteydessä lapsen vapaa-ajan liikuntaan. Vähän liikkuvat tytöt olivat olleet jo kahden vuoden iästä saakka useammin ylipainoisia kuin runsaammin liikkuvat ikätoverinsa. Sydän- ja verisuonisairauksien riskitekijöiden kasautuminen oli tavallisempaa vähän kuin paljon liikkuvilla nuorilla. Vähän liikkuvilla pojilla oli lisäksi huonompi olkavaltimon laajentumiskyky kuin paljon liikkuvilla pojilla. Tämä on tärkeä löydös, koska valtimon laajentumiskyky kuvannee sydän- ja verisuoniterveyttä jo ennen rakenteellisten muutosten ilmaantumista. Useat nuoret, etenkin tytöt, liikkuivat vähän vapaa-ajallaan. Vähäisellä vapaa-ajan liikunnalla oli haitallinen yhteys sydän- ja verisuonisairauksien riskitekijöihin sekä valtimon laajentumiskykyyn. Nuorten kannustaminen liikunnalliseen elämäntapaan on erittäin tärkeää sydän- ja verisuoniterveyden edistämiseksi sekä nuoren että kansanterveyden kannalta.

The Problematic Internet Entertainment Use Scale for Adolescents: Prevalence of Problem Internet Use in Spanish High School Students

Many researchers and professionals have reported nonsubstance addiction to online entertainments in adolescents. However, very few scales have been designed to assess problem Internet use in this population, in spite of their high exposure and obvious vulnerability. The aim of this study was to review the currently available scales for assessing problematic Internet use and to validate a new scale of this kind for use, specifically in this age group, the Problematic Internet Entertainment Use Scale for Adolescents. The research was carried out in Spain in a gender-balanced sample of 1131 high school students aged between 12 and 18 years. Psychometric analyses showed the scale to be unidimensional, with excellent internal consistency (Cronbach"s alpha of 0.92), good construct validity, and positive associations with alternative measures of maladaptive Internet use. This selfadministered scale can rapidly measure the presence of symptoms of behavioral addiction to online videogames and social networking sites, as well as their degree of severity. The results estimate the prevalence of this problematic behavior in Spanish adolescents to be around 5 percent.

Mujeres emprendedoras en internet: una revisión de la literatura

Los estudios sobre emprendimiento desde la perspectiva de género, es un ámbito que ha ido incrementado en los últimos años, la evidencia que más del 50% de la población mundial son mujeres pero que ellas son propietarias y gestionan una proporción de negocios muy inferior que los hombres y que existen diferentes estilos de gestión según el género, han impulsado el estudio de variables explicativas de las características distintivas entre hombres y mujeres en el ámbito del emprendimiento. El objetivo de esta revisión bibliográfica, es presentar un análisis de la literatura que refleja el interés de mujeres empresarias en Internet. La revisión se basa en investigaciones académicas publicadas sobre el tema, y se complementa con un resumen de la literatura "gris", basada en las fuentes encontradas en Internet. Consideramos que existe una clara necesidad de revisar la literatura existente para conocer el caso de las mujeres que han establecido un negocio en Internet, y para indicar una nueva dirección de futuros estudios, y concluimos que existe una escasez de la investigación académica en el área, una clara falta de conocimiento acumulado junto a teorías y propuestas explicativas.

Hacia la autoformación permanente de los docentes en las comunidades de práctica: los talleres de internet en el Aula

El objetivo principal de este trabajo es determinar si las comunidades virtuales de práctica son un espacio adecuado para la autoformación de los docentes. Con este fin, primero se especifican algunos conceptos clave que ayuden a contextualizar el tema de la formación; en segundo lugar se recogen los rasgos que se consideran hoy necesarios para llevar a cabo la labor docente, dibujándose así el perfil “ideal” del profesor en el contexto actual desde distintos ángulos de vista; y por último, se narran algunas experiencias personales en las redes sociales para ilustrar el funcionamiento de este nuevo paradigma social.

Funcions de les aplicacions d'internet en la relació família-escola

El vincle entre família i escola és un aspecte clau en el clima d’aula, el clima de centre i l’èxit acadèmic. A la vegada ens trobem davant impediments, ja sigui de conciliació familiar i laboral o de prejudicis en la relació entre família i escola, que dificulten aquest vincle. D’altra banda ens trobem davant una societat de la informació i el coneixement que avança a un ritme accelerat i que ofereix il·limitades propostes d’intercanvi i comunicació. La present recerca pretén donar a conèixer quines funcions tenen les aplicacions d’internet en la relació família i escola. En segon lloc, l’estudi identifica els factors i les limitacions que condicionen aquesta relació. Finalment, la recerca proposa possibles pràctiques inclusives entorn les aplicacions d’internet, que poden contribuir a millorar el vincle entre escola i família, com també en el clima d’aula, el clima de centre i l’èxit acadèmic.