Work place health support interventions can help support our aging work force, with mApps offering cost-effectiveness opportunities. Previous research shows that health support apps should offer users enough newness and relevance each time they are used. Otherwise the ‘eHealth law of attrition’ applies: 90 % of users are lost prematurely. Our research study builds on this prior research with further investigation on whether a mobile health quiz provides added value for users within a hybrid service mix and whether it promotes long term health? We developed a hybrid health support intervention solution that uses a mix of electronic and physical support services for improving health behaviours, including a mobile micro-learning health quiz. This solution was evaluated in a multiple-case study at three work sites with 86 users. We find that both our mobile health quiz and the overall hybrid solution contributed to improvements in health readiness, −behaviour and -competence. Users indicated that the micro-learning health quiz courses provided new and relevant information. Relatively high utilization rates of the health quiz were observed. Participants indicated that health insights were given that directly influenced every day health perceptions, −choices, coping and goal achievement strategies, plus motivation and self-norms. This points to increased user health self-management competence. Moreover, even after 10 months they indicated to still have improved health awareness, −motivation and -behaviours (food, physical activity, mental recuperation). A design analysis was conducted regarding service mix efficacy; the mobile micro-learning health quiz helped fulfil a set of key requirements that exist for designing ICT-enabled lifestyle interventions, largely in the way it was anticipated.

AbstractsBy adopting a citation-based recursive ranking method for patents the evolution of new fields of technology can be traced. Specifically, it is demonstrated that the laser / inkjet printer technology emerged from the recombination of two existing technologies: sequential printing and static image production. The dynamics of the citations coming from the different "precursor" classes illuminates the mechanism of the emergence of new fields and give the possibility to make predictions about future technological development. For the patent network the optimal value of the PageRank damping factor is close to 0.5; the application of d=0.85 leads to unacceptable ranking results.

Despite the seeming uniformity of mediu presentation of news aboutpace, the fomnats of news reporhng and the contest among various discourses allow for the appearance and sometimes prominence of alternative and men oppositiond discourses that offer a pragmatic for social a c h They made a desert a n d called itpeace-Tacitus Peace and war mean different things at different times, in different places to different people. They are categories that have to be located in the multiple contexs of their use. While hardly new, these observations about the semantic historicity, localness, and specificity of the terms need restating if we are to resist the universalizing and generalizing tendencies that dominate discussions of war and peace in the media and in academic scholarship.In the continental Europe of the Middle Ages, peace meant not only the absence of fighting between knights and war lords but also the protection of the poor and their means of subsistence (29, p. 246). Pax or Landfrieden, as guaranteed by the emperor or the church, meant access to and utilization of water and pasture, woods and livestock. Peace provided a network of social relations that not only protected people but also entitled them to subsistence and survival. broadened to include guarantees to exploit resources and to trade commercially for profit. The Lanqi-ieden was a people's peace, a paxpopuli; the new economic peace, pax economica, vanquished this peace. Other semantic changes came about as well. Subsistence living came to be associated with "unproductive" life and traditional ways with "underdevelopment" (29, p. 246). Today, when U.S. presidents talk about peace in the Middle East or Latin America, they refer to this pax econornica: the license to wage a war called economic development against all those who are not yet integrated into the capitalist system and its recent mutations.With the development of capitalist market economies, the meaning of peace

No abstract

No abstract

Teaching theory t o undergraduate students i s a steep task.The notion of theory i s an unfamiliar and strange one f o r them, and t h e i r willingness and a b i l i t y t o engage i n more abstract thought can by no means be taken f o r granted.Theory --so it i s thought --cannot be taught t o undergraduates i n t h e i r f i r s t o r even second year, and the prerequisites f o r i t s study have t o be taught w i t h i n the university. The majority o f f i r s t and second year courses are taught through the medim o f comnon sense language leaving most of t h e i r epistemological and methodological bases unexplored.No doubt there are c u l t u r a l reasons f o r the observable absence of much care f o r self-expression and language use among most undergraduates.Teaching communication theory i s , therefore, p a r t of a larger academic assault on the minds o f comnon sensical young adults grown up i n a c u l t u r e o f b l i n d and pragmatic m p i r i c i s m .I n addition, media r e l a t e d communication theory f i n d s i t s e l f taught t o the most avid consumers o f the object of study. Even though students might be bewildered by t h e object o f study, they lack distance from it, by it. The course which i s the object of t h i s paper takes t h i s s i t u a t i o n as i t s p o i n t o f departure.It i s a t h i r d year course i n a three and four year undergraduate program (three year majors and four year Honours) i n mass communication.It i s p a r t o f the core curriculum o f required courses, and the only one of these taught i n t h i r d year. It i s preceded by a f i r s t year introductory course and second year communication issues and research methods courses, and followed f o r honours students by a p o l i c y and an advanced methods course.I have taught the course now three times. ME NOTION OF CRITICAL I take the notion of c r i t i c a l to have two dimensions i n r e l a t i o n t o u n i v e r s i t y teaching.One addresses the level o f i n t e l l e c t u a l s k i l l s , the other the o r i e n t a t i o n towards the subject matter.While the f i r s t does not imply t h e second, I would argue t h a t the development of the second i s g r e a t l y helped by the presence o f the first. That i s , a minimum of i n t e l l e c t u a l s k i l l s are required i n order t o be able t o

No abstract

No abstract