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Presentatie van eerste versie manuscript 'How voters ' multiple identities affect their response to politicians ' moral violations ' door Annemarie Walter en David Redlawsk, bij het Department Politicologie en Internationale Betrekkingen van de Universiteit van Delaware op 17 maart 2021.
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This paper investigates whether encouraging children to become more physically active in their everyday life affects their primary school performance. We use data from a field quasi‐experiment called the Active Living Program, which aimed to increase active modes of transportation to school and active play among 8‐ to 12‐year‐olds living in low socioeconomic status (SES) areas in the Netherlands. Difference‐in‐differences estimations reveal that while the interventions increase time spent on physical activity during school hours, they negatively affect school performance, especially among the worst‐performing students. Further analyses reveal that increased restlessness during instruction time is a potential mechanism for this negative effect. Our results suggest that the commonly found positive effects of exercising or participating in sports on educational outcomes may not be generalizable to physical activity in everyday life. Policymakers and educators who seek to increase physical activity in everyday life need to weigh the health and well‐being benefits against the probability of increasing inequality in school performance.
Background: The concept of “positive health” emerged from the need for a holistic and more dynamic perspective on health, emphasising the ability of individuals to adapt and self-manage. The positive health conversation tool helps understand how people score on six positive health dimensions. However, skills within these dimensions to maintain or improve health have not yet been described. This is important for enabling individuals to put health advice into practise. Therefore, this paper aims to define and suggest skills for maintaining and improving positive health. Subsections: Suggestions for definitions of skills within the positive health dimensions are described using the functional, interactive, and critical health literacy framework. Additionally, executive functions and life skills were incorporated. Moreover, the environment's role in these individual skills was noted, mentioning organisational health literacy that emphasises organisations' responsibility to provide comprehensible health information to all individuals. We propose that health promotion interventions can incorporate the proposed skills in practical exercises while aligning intervention materials and implementation tools with end-users and implementers. Discussion and conclusion: The suggested skills for maintaining and improving positive health are a first step towards a more comprehensive understanding and open to discussion. These skills may also be applied to other practical conversation tools for maintaining or improving health. Increasing positive health through the defined skills may be especially relevant to those with a lower socioeconomic position who also have limited health literacy and thereby may contribute to reducing health inequalities. Taken together, strengthening the defined skills may hopefully contribute to allowing people to flourish in life.
In the last decade, the automotive industry has seen significant advancements in technology (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) and autonomous vehicles) that presents the opportunity to improve traffic safety, efficiency, and comfort. However, the lack of drivers’ knowledge (such as risks, benefits, capabilities, limitations, and components) and confusion (i.e., multiple systems that have similar but not identical functions with different names) concerning the vehicle technology still prevails and thus, limiting the safety potential. The usual sources (such as the owner’s manual, instructions from a sales representative, online forums, and post-purchase training) do not provide adequate and sustainable knowledge to drivers concerning ADAS. Additionally, existing driving training and examinations focus mainly on unassisted driving and are practically unchanged for 30 years. Therefore, where and how drivers should obtain the necessary skills and knowledge for safely and effectively using ADAS? The proposed KIEM project AMIGO aims to create a training framework for learner drivers by combining classroom, online/virtual, and on-the-road training modules for imparting adequate knowledge and skills (such as risk assessment, handling in safety-critical and take-over transitions, and self-evaluation). AMIGO will also develop an assessment procedure to evaluate the impact of ADAS training on drivers’ skills and knowledge by defining key performance indicators (KPIs) using in-vehicle data, eye-tracking data, and subjective measures. For practical reasons, AMIGO will focus on either lane-keeping assistance (LKA) or adaptive cruise control (ACC) for framework development and testing, depending on the system availability. The insights obtained from this project will serve as a foundation for a subsequent research project, which will expand the AMIGO framework to other ADAS systems (e.g., mandatory ADAS systems in new cars from 2020 onwards) and specific driver target groups, such as the elderly and novice.
Huntington’s disease (HD) and various spinocerebellar ataxias (SCA) are autosomal dominantly inherited neurodegenerative disorders caused by a CAG repeat expansion in the disease-related gene1. The impact of HD and SCA on families and individuals is enormous and far reaching, as patients typically display first symptoms during midlife. HD is characterized by unwanted choreatic movements, behavioral and psychiatric disturbances and dementia. SCAs are mainly characterized by ataxia but also other symptoms including cognitive deficits, similarly affecting quality of life and leading to disability. These problems worsen as the disease progresses and affected individuals are no longer able to work, drive, or care for themselves. It places an enormous burden on their family and caregivers, and patients will require intensive nursing home care when disease progresses, and lifespan is reduced. Although the clinical and pathological phenotypes are distinct for each CAG repeat expansion disorder, it is thought that similar molecular mechanisms underlie the effect of expanded CAG repeats in different genes. The predicted Age of Onset (AO) for both HD, SCA1 and SCA3 (and 5 other CAG-repeat diseases) is based on the polyQ expansion, but the CAG/polyQ determines the AO only for 50% (see figure below). A large variety on AO is observed, especially for the most common range between 40 and 50 repeats11,12. Large differences in onset, especially in the range 40-50 CAGs not only imply that current individual predictions for AO are imprecise (affecting important life decisions that patients need to make and also hampering assessment of potential onset-delaying intervention) but also do offer optimism that (patient-related) factors exist that can delay the onset of disease.To address both items, we need to generate a better model, based on patient-derived cells that generates parameters that not only mirror the CAG-repeat length dependency of these diseases, but that also better predicts inter-patient variations in disease susceptibility and effectiveness of interventions. Hereto, we will use a staggered project design as explained in 5.1, in which we first will determine which cellular and molecular determinants (referred to as landscapes) in isogenic iPSC models are associated with increased CAG repeat lengths using deep-learning algorithms (DLA) (WP1). Hereto, we will use a well characterized control cell line in which we modify the CAG repeat length in the endogenous ataxin-1, Ataxin-3 and Huntingtin gene from wildtype Q repeats to intermediate to adult onset and juvenile polyQ repeats. We will next expand the model with cells from the 3 (SCA1, SCA3, and HD) existing and new cohorts of early-onset, adult-onset and late-onset/intermediate repeat patients for which, besides accurate AO information, also clinical parameters (MRI scans, liquor markers etc) will be (made) available. This will be used for validation and to fine-tune the molecular landscapes (again using DLA) towards the best prediction of individual patient related clinical markers and AO (WP3). The same models and (most relevant) landscapes will also be used for evaluations of novel mutant protein lowering strategies as will emerge from WP4.This overall development process of landscape prediction is an iterative process that involves (a) data processing (WP5) (b) unsupervised data exploration and dimensionality reduction to find patterns in data and create “labels” for similarity and (c) development of data supervised Deep Learning (DL) models for landscape prediction based on the labels from previous step. Each iteration starts with data that is generated and deployed according to FAIR principles, and the developed deep learning system will be instrumental to connect these WPs. Insights in algorithm sensitivity from the predictive models will form the basis for discussion with field experts on the distinction and phenotypic consequences. While full development of accurate diagnostics might go beyond the timespan of the 5 year project, ideally our final landscapes can be used for new genetic counselling: when somebody is positive for the gene, can we use his/her cells, feed it into the generated cell-based model and better predict the AO and severity? While this will answer questions from clinicians and patient communities, it will also generate new ones, which is why we will study the ethical implications of such improved diagnostics in advance (WP6).
Designing with the Sun is a KIEM-GoCI explorative research project on the theme Energy Transition and Sustainability. The project is aimed at network and agenda building and design research that explores new (cultural) practices of renewable energy consumption, based on a shift from ‘energy blindness’ to ‘energy awareness’. Up until now the solar industry has been propelled forward by technical innovations, offering mostly pragmatic, economic benefits to consumers. Innovation in this field mostly concerns making solar panels more efficient and less costly. However, to succeed, the energy transition also needs new cultural practices. These practices should reflect the ways renewables are different from fossil fuels. For solar, this means using more direct solar energy, when the sun is there, and being able to adapt to periods of low energy. Currently, consumers are mostly ‘blind’ to the infrastructure behind fossil-based energy. However, for energy sources such as solar and wind ‘awareness’ of their availability becomes more important. What could such an awareness look or feel like? How can it be enacted? And how can a change in practice that is more attuned to availability be experienced positively? Solar companies see opportunities in using design to help build motivating practices and narratives within the solar field, enabling awareness through personal relationships between consumer and solar energy. However, the knowledge of how to get there is lacking. In a research-through-design trajectory, and together with partners from the Creative Industries, Designing with the Sun aims to explore new ways of relating citizens to solar energy. Ultimately, these insights should enable the newly emerging field of solar design to contribute to the emergence of more sustainable and rewarding energy awareness and practices.