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Evaluation of a participatory physical activity promotion intervention in Dutch adolescents: the SALVO study

AbstractThis study assessed the efficacy of a co-designed, school-based intervention meant to promote physical activityand fitness among Dutch prevocational secondary students. In a two-year clustered randomized controlled trial,students’ physical activity and fitness was measured by indirect and direct methods. In the intervention group,we used the triple-I procedure, a participatory action research method, to co-design the intervention together withthe students and schools. This procedure involved focus group discussions by interviewing and imagingtechniques, followed by a co-design process to align the intervention content and implementation processes withstudents’ preferences. The study involved 22 Dutch schools, with a total of 2685 13-to-14-year-old prevocationalsecondary students. Schools were randomly assigned to either intervention (11 schools, 1446 students) or controlgroup (11 schools, 1239 students).There were no significant intervention differences between students’ overallphysical activity behavior on intervention versus control schools. However, with regards to various specificphysical fitness indicators, such as the long jump, handgrip strength, shuttle run test, and the sum of skinfolds,intervention school students performed significantly better than the control group students. Furthermore, whentaking into account student participation, i.e. the success of the co-design process, schools with higher levels ofstudent participation showed higher shuttle run scores. However, such graded effects were not similarly apparentwith regards to students’ physical fitness indicators. This study showed that co-designing a comprehensivephysical activity intervention on numerous Dutch high schools via the Triple-I Interactive Method was feasible.Moreover, results showed that certain aspects of physical fitness were improved after two years of intervention,although taken together with the lack of effects on physical activity, results were mixed.

Multiple articles in the category 'OpenGL' on website 3D Game Engine Programming

Multiple articles in the category 'CUDA' on website 3D Game Engine Programming

Problem solving and Program design using the TI-92

This textbook is intended for a basic course in problem solving and program design needed by scientists and engineers using the TI-92. The TI-92 is an extremely powerful problem solving tool that can help you manage complicated problems quickly. We assume no prior knowledge of computers or programming, and for most of its material, high school algebra is sufficient mathematica background. It is advised that you have basic skills in using the TI-92. After the course you will become familiar with many of the programming commands and functions of the TI-92. The connection between good problem solving skills and an effective program design method, is used and applied consistently to most examples and problems in the text. We also introduce many of the programming commands and functions of the TI-92 needed to solve these problems. Each chapter ends with a number of practica problems that require analysis of programs as well as short programming exercises.

Analysis of parallel collaboration assignments in smart textile design

Many interesting smart textile concepts have been developed, however there are only a few relevant examples of concepts that are producible and valuable for our society. The so-called ‘killer application’ has not been found yet. That is why it is extremely important that multi-disciplinary parties team-up during the ideation process to come up with innovative solutions (Toeters, 2007). The goal of STS CRISP (Crisp, 2011) is to integrate existing knowledge from partners in the separate domains of textile (soft materials), technology and service providers. To investigate the different kinds of expertise necessary for the development of Smart Textile Services we initiated an assignment to develop new Smart Textile Services concepts for elderly that can be used during rehabilitation (ten Bhömer, Tomico, Kleinsmann, Kuusk & Wensveen, 2012) and executed this project in 2 different institutes: Saxion University of Applied Sciences and Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). Through some pre-set contact moments, the use of a gatekeeper (Vertooren, 2007) active in both institutes, and analyzing the final reports we are able to acquire an insight in the different approaches and focus preferences of the institutes. The analysis lead to the following observations: 1. Saxion students spend more time researching existing technologies and how to implement them in their concepts. A more theoretical approach from what is already there, applying existing materials and opportunities that are already there. 2. The TU/e students consistently focused on on user research to find out their perspectives. More user-centered. 3. Saxion students start with ideation and validate this by analyzing what is available in the market at the beginning of the process. 4. TU/e students work from a societal perspective towards user focus and an idea. TU/e students found out that there is a lot more steps after prototyping. Saxion takes the next step: where TU/e students stop, they continue. Out of these observations we can conclude that the institutes are active on different levels on the time-to-market line. We have to take into account that every collaborator has a different time-to-market horizon. For the STS CRISP consortium this means that efforts have to be made to define the time-to-market expertise of the partners. As a next step, we will continue to explore this concept of parallel collaboration assignments and start a new collaboration assignment in sequence in different institutes. Test the time-to-market approach and gather strategies to create a more in depth approach to relevant marketable products can speed up the process of bringing concepts to the market, so that it can have a true added value for society.

More power

The last decade has seen an increasing demand from the industrial field of computerized visual inspection. Applications rapidly become more complex and often with more demanding real time constraints. However, from 2004 onwards the clock frequency of CPUs has not increased significantly. Computer Vision applications have an increasing demand for more processing power but are limited by the performance capabilities of sequential processor architectures. The only way to get more performance using commodity hardware, like multi-core processors and graphics cards, is to go for parallel programming. This article focuses on the practical question: How can the processing time for vision algorithms be improved, by parallelization, in an economical way and execute them on multiple platforms?