Evidence-based approaches to dissemination and diffusion of physical activity interventions

With the increasing availability of effective, evidence-based physical activity interventions, widespread diffusion is needed. We examine conceptual foundations for research on dissemination and diffusion of physical activity interventions; describe two school-based program examples; review examples of dissemination and diffusion research on other health behaviors; and examine policies that may accelerate the diffusion process. Lack of dissemination and diffusion evaluation research and policy advocacy is one of the factors limiting the impact of evidence-based physical activity interventions on public health. There is the need to collaborate with policy experts from other fields to improve the interdisciplinary science base for dissemination and diffusion. The promise of widespread adoption of evidence-based physical activity interventions to improve public health is sufficient to justify devotion of substantial resources to the relevant research on dissemination and diffusion.

Bias, precision and heritability of self-reported and clinically measured height in Australian twins

Many studies of quantitative and disease traits in human genetics rely upon self-reported measures. Such measures are based on questionnaires or interviews and are often cheaper and more readily available than alternatives. However, the precision and potential bias cannot usually be assessed. Here we report a detailed quantitative genetic analysis of stature. We characterise the degree of measurement error by utilising a large sample of Australian twin pairs (857 MZ, 815 DZ) with both clinical and self-reported measures of height. Self-report height measurements are shown to be more variable than clinical measures. This has led to lowered estimates of heritability in many previous studies of stature. In our twin sample the heritability estimate for clinical height exceeded 90%. Repeated measures analysis shows that 2-3 times as many self-report measures are required to recover heritability estimates similar to those obtained from clinical measures. Bivariate genetic repeated measures analysis of self-report and clinical height measures showed an additive genetic correlation > 0.98. We show that the accuracy of self-report height is upwardly biased in older individuals and in individuals of short stature. By comparing clinical and self-report measures we also showed that there was a genetic component to females systematically reporting their height incorrectly; this phenomenon appeared to not be present in males. The results from the measurement error analysis were subsequently used to assess the effects of error on the power to detect linkage in a genome scan. Moderate reduction in error (through the use of accurate clinical or multiple self-report measures) increased the effective sample size by 22%; elimination of measurement error led to increases in effective sample size of 41%.

Efficient Multi-hop Broadcast Data Dissemination in IoT and Smart Cities

Internet of Things (IoT) can be defined as a “network of networks” composed by billions of uniquely identified physical Smart Objects (SO), organized in an Internet-like structure. Smart Objects can be items equipped with sensors, consumer devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, or wearable devices), and enterprise assets that are connected both to the Internet and to each others. The birth of the IoT, with its communications paradigms, can be considered as an enabling factor for the creation of the so-called Smart Cities. A Smart City uses Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to enhance quality, performance and interactivity of urban services, ranging from traffic management and pollution monitoring to government services and energy management. This thesis is focused on multi-hop data dissemination within IoT and Smart Cities scenarios. The proposed multi-hop techniques, mostly based on probabilistic forwarding, have been used for different purposes: from the improvement of the performance of unicast protocols for Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to the efficient data dissemination within Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs).

Divulgação Científica na Revista Ciência Hoje das Crianças

Esta pesquisa trata da revista Ciência Hoje das Crianças, editada pela Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência (SBPC), e coloca em questão as especificidades da linguagem utilizada pela revista para a divulgação científica. A amostra utilizada é composta pelas edições publicadas no ano de 2008. O objetivo da pesquisa é identificar os recursos utilizados pela revista para adequação da linguagem científica para a linguagem coloquial, acessível ao público leigo. A metodologia utilizada para desenvolvimento da pesquisa tem viés qualitativo e adota os recursos da pesquisa bibliográfica, documental, entrevistas e análise de discurso da Escola Francesa. Constata-se que a revista busca contemplar com seus artigos todas as áreas do conhecimento, o que garante ao leitor a possibilidade de ampliar a visão sobre o mundo científico. Para construção da mensagem em linguagem acessível, identifica-se que a revista recorre à utilização de desenhos, fotos, cores, tipografia, metáforas, analogias e estrutura textual organizada, principalmente, em forma de narração.(AU)