| 1. |
- Berner, Jessica, et al.
(författare)
-
Factors influencing Internet usage in older adults (65 years and above) living in rural and urban Sweden
- 2015
-
Ingår i: Health Informatics Journal. - : Sage Publications. - 1460-4582 .- 1741-2811. ; 21:3, s. 237-249
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Older adults living in rural and urban areas have shown to distinguish themselves in technology adoption; a clearer profile of their Internet use is important in order to provide better technological and health-care solutions. Older adults' Internet use was investigated across large to midsize cities and rural Sweden. The sample consisted of 7181 older adults ranging from 59 to 100 years old. Internet use was investigated with age, education, gender, household economy, cognition, living alone/or with someone and rural/urban living. Logistic regression was used. Those living in rural areas used the Internet less than their urban counterparts. Being younger and higher educated influenced Internet use; for older urban adults, these factors as well as living with someone and having good cognitive functioning were influential. Solutions are needed to avoid the exclusion of some older adults by a society that is today being shaped by the Internet.
|
|
| 2. |
- Ketzer, Daniel, 1988-, et al.
(författare)
-
Driving and restraining forces for the implementation of the Agrophotovoltaics system technology : A system dynamics analysis
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Journal of Environmental Management. - : Elsevier. - 0301-4797 .- 1095-8630. ; 270
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The innovative Agrophotovoltaics (APV) system technology combines agricultural biomass and solar power production on the same site and aims at reducing the conflict between food and power production. Unrelated to this benefit, this technology may impact the landscape negatively and could thus be subject to public opposition and/or restraining frameworks. The presented study offers a System Dynamics (SD) approach, through Causal Loop Diagrams (CLDs) models, based on the results of citizen workshops, literature research, and expert discussions on the technology. A comprehensive analysis of the driving and restraining forces for the implementation of APV-technology and expected or potential impacts reveals influential factors. Hence, this SD approach identifies bottlenecks and conflicting objectives in the technology implementation that need to be further addressed. A key finding is that successful APV-projects would require stakeholder involvement to achieve greater local acceptance. When it comes to production on agricultural land, APV-systems may drive the land use efficiency to up to 186 percent when the PV-panels serve for protection against heat stress. On the other hand, altered precipitation patterns and impacts on agricultural cultivation and, especially, the landscape caused by the technical system, may restrain the application of APV. Finally, system design factors and operator modes are amongst the criteria that may influence the local acceptance in society, farmers’ motivation for APV and economic factors for the market launch of APV. © 2020 The Authors
|
|
| 3. |
- Linde, Peter, et al.
(författare)
-
Accessibility and self-archiving of conference articles : A study on a selection of Swedish institutional repositories
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Information Services and Use. - Guimarães : IOS Press. - 0167-5265 .- 1875-8789. ; 31:3-4, s. 259-269, s. 123-
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The main purpose of this project has been to examine the accessibility of refereed conference articles and the OA- and publishing policies of conferences in order to in this way elucidate different aspects concerning self-archiving in Swedish institutional repositories. For this purpose, the project participants have examined a number of conferences and references to conference articles via their institutional repositories during a specific time period and described these from the perspective of a common scheme. The study has showed that the local institutional repositories fill an important role to make conference publications visible. We have found that ca. 50% of the conference papers can be published as postprints in our institutional repositories. We have noticed that ca. 15% or the studied conference articles are not available at all. It is, therefore, of great importance to use local institutional repositories as a publishing channel, not only for primary published material such as dissertations and reports, but also as a source for finding these conference articles "without a home". Between 20-25% of the examined articles were found in some type of OA archive; ca. half of these were found in one of the project participants' own institutional repositories. This indicates that the publishing database of respective higher education institution is an important factor for open accessibility. Ca. 10% of the conferences in the study had an explicit OA policy or expressed such a policy by openly making conference articles accessible on their conference sites. A big problem when it comes to self-archiving of conference articles is the lack of information about OA policy. The landscape of conference publishing is complex and the self-archiving of documents from conferences is very time-consuming. Above all, we would wish a policy resource for conferences similar to the SHERPA/RoMEO. At present, however, there is no other alternative than scrutinizing the conferences' copyright information to the authors and from this attempt to draw conclusions about possible self-archiving. To facilitate the future handling and classification of conference articles in Swedish institutional repositories a number of recommendations are suggested.
|
|
| 4. |
- Lindwall, Magnus, et al.
(författare)
-
Depression and exercise in elderly men and women : findings from the Swedish national study on aging and care
- 2007
-
Ingår i: Journal of Aging and Physical Activity. - Champaign, Illinois : Human Kinetics Publishers. - 1063-8652 .- 1543-267X. ; 15:1, s. 41-55
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study investigated the relationship between light and strenuous exercise and depression, as well as gender differences in this relationship, in a representative sample of 860 elderly Swedish suburb-dwelling men and women in age cohorts from 60 to 96 years, drawn from among participants in the Swedish National Aging and Care study. The relationship between depression and self-reported changes in exercise status over time was also examined. Exercise activities were measured with four survey questions, and depression, with the Montgomery Asberg Depression Rating Scale. The inactive elderly had higher depression scores than more active individuals, both in terms of light and strenuous exercise. The continuously active group had lower depression scores than both continuously inactive individuals and individuals reporting a shift from activity to inactivity during the preceding year. Light exercise had a somewhat stronger effect on depression for women.
|
|
| 5. |
- Mollah, Sabur, et al.
(författare)
-
Equity market contagion during global financial and Eurozonecrises : Evidence from a dynamic correlation analysis
- 2016
-
Ingår i: Journal of international financial markets, institutions, and money. - : Elsevier BV. - 1042-4431 .- 1873-0612. ; 41, s. 151-167
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The devastation resulting from the recent global financial and Eurozone crises is immense. Most researchers commonly believe that the global financial crisis originated in the United States, and spread immediately to global financial hubs where it eventually became the Eurozone crisis. Several studies have been conducted on financial market contagion during both global and Eurozone crises; however, the issue of whether equity market contagion spreads from the United States to the world equity markets during these crises has not been addressed yet. Through using US dollar-denominated MSCI daily indices from fifty-five equity markets for the period 2003–2013, we have found evidence of contagion in developed and emerging markets during the global and Eurozone crises. We show that contagion spread from the United States to the world markets during both crises. Our regression results identify that the bank risk transfer between the United States and other countries is the key transmission channel for cross-country correlations. This study has an important policy implication for portfolio diversification between the United States and other countries during these crises.
|
|
| 6. |
- Nord, Catharina, et al.
(författare)
-
Translocal Optimisation : Assembling Rural and Urban Spaces for Later Life in Urban Namibia and Uganda
- 2020
-
Ingår i: Journal of Southern African Studies. - : Routledge. - 0305-7070 .- 1465-3893. ; 46:1, s. 109-127
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- It is often assumed that sub-Saharan African urban migrants return in later life to the villages from which they originated. This article challenges this model of circular migration by exploring the strategies of older adults who live permanently in urban areas. The empirical material comes from ethnographic case studies in two industrial towns formed by the apartheid and colonial housing policies of the 1950s and 1960s: Kuisebmond in Walvis Bay, Namibia, a former apartheid ‘location’; and Walukuba in Jinja, Uganda, a former ‘African’ rental estate. Older adults’ housing situation and its significance for their strategies and choices in later life provide the focus. The results show that even if many strategies appeared that are often associated with a return to the rural place of origin, for many the move back to the village was not a viable option. Participants in the study nurtured contacts with their places of origin, for example by making regular visits, sending remittances, contributing to housing in the village and receiving relatives in town. It is argued that these strategies, together with urban advantages–in particular a good housing situation–must be understood as translocal optimisation, in which potentialities emerge from an assemblage of various actors in different, connected locales. The optimal situation in which to age–in rural or urban areas–is a product of co-emergent actors and not necessarily an individual choice on the part of the older adult. The study concludes that urban living in later life seems to be an alternative choice for a group of older adults and must be acknowledged. © 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
|
|
| 7. |
- Schenkman, Bo, et al.
(författare)
-
Human echolocation : Blind and sighted persons' ability to detect sounds recorded in the presence of a reflecting object
- 2010
-
Ingår i: Perception. - : PION LTD. - 0301-0066 .- 1468-4233. ; 39:4, s. 483-501
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Research suggests that blind people are superior to sighted in echolocation, but systematic psychoacoustic studies on environmental conditions such as distance to objects, signal duration, and reverberation are lacking. Therefore, two experiments were conducted. Noise bursts of 5, 50, or 500 ms were reproduced by a loudspeaker on an artificial manikin in an ordinary room and in an anechoic chamber. The manikin recorded the sounds binaurally in the presence and absence of a reflecting 1.5-mm thick aluminium disk, 0.5 in in diameter, placed in front, at distances of 0.5 to 5 m. These recordings were later presented to ten visually handicapped and ten sighted people, 30 62 years old, using a 2AFC paradigm with feedback. The task was to detect which of two sounds that contained the reflecting object. The blind performed better than the sighted participants. All performed well with the object at < 2 in distance. Detection increased with longer signal durations. Performance was slightly better in the ordinary room than in the anechoic chamber. A supplementary experiment on the two best blind persons showed that their superior performance at distances > 2 m was not by chance. Detection thresholds showed that blind participants could detect the object at longer distances in the conference room than in the anechoic chamber, when using the longer-duration sounds and also as compared to the sighted people. Audiometric tests suggest that equal hearing in both ears is important for echolocation. Possible echolocation mechanisms are discussed.
|
|
| 8. |
- Schenkman, Bo, et al.
(författare)
-
Human echolocation : The relative importance of pitch and loudness
- 2008
-
Ingår i: Proceedings of the 40th Annual Conference of the Nordic Ergonomics Society. - Reykjavik, Iceland.
-
Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- A sound heard in the presence of a reflected object will be both louder and have a slightly different timbre (“repetition pitch”) than the same sound heard with no reflection. Thus, pitch and loudness are two sources of information that visually handicapped people may use for echolocation. In real life, the two sources of information are confounded, because perceived loudness and repetition pitch both diminishes with distance to the reflecting object. The purpose of the present experiment was to disentangle the influence of each of these sources on human echolocation. Experimental sounds were obtained from binaural recordings with an artificial head in an ordinary room. White noise (500 ms) was emitted from a loudspeaker on the chest of the artificial head. A reflecting aluminum sheet (0.5 m diameter) was located at 1, 2 and 3 m distance to the artificial head. By digital manipulation, the loudness information or the pitch information of the recorded sounds were eliminated, resulting in three kinds of sounds: (1) sounds containing both pitch and loudness information, (2) sounds with only pitch information, and (3) sounds with only loudness information. These three kinds of sounds were presented to 14 sighted students. The psychophysical method of 2-alternative-forced-choice with feedback was used, with 56 trials for each person at each condition. Each trial presented one sound recorded with, and one without, reflecting object. The task was to detect which of the two sounds that was recorded in the presence of the reflecting object. All participants could use echolocation for all three kinds of sounds at the distance of 1m, but performed close to chance with all sounds at 3 m. At the 2 m condition, sounds with only pitch information gave a higher performance compared to sounds with only loudness information, for which the performance was close to random. Thus, pitch alone may provide sufficient information for echolocation at these distances. Audiometric tests were conducted, with focus on the pure tone threshold average and the absolute difference between the ears. The results will have a bearing on the construction of orientation and mobility aids for the visually handicapped.
|
|
| 9. |
- Schenkman, Bo, et al.
(författare)
-
Human echolocation using click trains and continuous noise
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Fechner Day 2011. - Raanana, Israel : International Society for Psychophysics.
-
Konferensbidrag (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Blind people may detect objects from the information in reflected sounds, echolocation. Detection as a function of the number of clicks compared to a continuous noise was tested by presenting clicks of 5 ms with rates from 1 to 64 clicks during a 500 ms period and a 500-ms continuous white noise. The sounds were recorded in an ordinary room through an artificial binaural head. The reflecting object was an aluminum disk, diameter 0.5 m, at distances of 1 and 1.5 m. These sounds were later presented to 3 blind and 16 sighted participants in a laboratory using a 2AFC methodology. The task was to detect which of the two sounds that contained a reflecting object. Feedback was provided. The blind participants had a higher detection than the sighted, but there were also differences among the blind. These results are put in relation to physical features such as the autocorrelation function and spectral variations.
|
|
| 10. |
- Schenkman, Bo N., et al.
(författare)
-
Human echolocation : Pitch versus loudness information
- 2011
-
Ingår i: Perception. - : SAGE Publications. - 0301-0066 .- 1468-4233. ; 40:7, s. 840-852
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Blind persons emit sounds to detect objects by echolocation. Both perceived pitch and perceived loudness of the emitted sound change as they fuse with the reflections from nearby objects: Blind persons generally are better than sighted at echolocation, but it is unclear whether this superiority is related to detection of pitch, loudness, or both. We measured the ability of twelve blind and twenty-five sighted listeners to determine which of two sounds, 500 ms noise bursts, that had been recorded in the presence of a reflecting object in a room with reflecting walls using an artificial head. The sound pairs were original recordings differing in both pitch and loudness, or manipulated recordings with either the pitch or the loudness information removed. Observers responded using a 2AFC method with verbal feedback. For both blind and sighted listeners the performance declined more with the pitch information removed than with the loudness information removed. In addition, the blind performed clearly better than the sighted as long as the pitch information was present, but not when it was removed. Taken together, these results show that the ability to detect pitch is a main factor underlying high performance in human echolocation.
|
|
