Influence of socioeconomic status on changes in body size and physical activity in ageing black South African women

Background

The increasing prevalence of obesity in sub-Saharan African women is not well understood, and black South African women in the region are particularly vulnerable. This study aimed to examine whether the relationship of socioeconomic status (SES) with changes in body mass index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) is mediated by physical activity in ageing African women.

Methods

In a longitudinal analysis of the 518 caregivers associated with the Birth to Twenty Plus study, the role of SES associated with 10-year changes in BMI and WC was tested using structural equation modelling (SEM). The degree of mediation of moderate-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and sitting time in this association was also assessed.

Results

The prevalence of obesity increased significantly from baseline to follow-up (p?<?0.0001). In the SEM models, baseline SES had a direct positive effect on changes in BMI (β, 95% CI, 0.02 (0.005 to 0.04), and a direct negative effect on changes in MVPA (β, 95% CI, ??3.81 (??6.92 to ??0.70). Baseline MVPA had a direct negative effect (β, 95% CI, ??0.002 (??0.003 to ??0.0003) and indirect positive effect via change in MVPA (β, 95% CI, 0.01 (0.0001 to 0.001) on change in WC.

Conclusions

Our study demonstrates the role and interaction of sociodemographic and behavioural predictors of obesity, and suggests a multifaceted approach to management of the crisis in communities of ageing urban African women.

     

Relationships between muscle strength and multi-channel surface EMG parameters in eighty-eight elderly

Background

Since age-related muscle strength loss cannot be explained solely by muscle atrophy, other determinants would also contribute to muscle strength in elderly. The present study aimed to clarify contribution of neuromuscular activation pattern to muscle strength in elderly group. From 88 elderlies (age: 61~?83 years), multi-channel surface electromyography (EMG) of the vastus lateralis muscle was recorded with two-dimensional 64 electrodes during isometric submaximal ramp-up knee extension to assess neuromuscular activation pattern. Correlation analysis and stepwise regression analysis were performed between muscle strength and the parameters for signal amplitude and spatial distribution pattern, i.e., root mean square (RMS), correlation coefficient, and modified entropy of multi-channel surface EMG.

Results

There was a significant correlation between muscle strength and RMS (r =?0.361, p =?0.001) in the elderly. Muscle thickness (r =?0.519, p <?0.001), RMS (r =?0.288, p?=?0.001), and normalized RMS (r =?0.177, p =?0.047) were selected as major determinants of muscle strength in stepwise regression analysis (r?=?0.664 in the selected model).

Conclusion

These results suggest that inter-individual difference in muscle strength in elderly can be partly explained by surface EMG amplitude. We concluded that neuromuscular activation pattern is also major determinants of muscle strength on elderly in addition to indicator of muscle volume.

     

Das TIMP-Inventar – Ein Beitrag zur ökonomischen Erfassung von Kern-Faktoren salutogener Führung

Occupational health management and science increasingly focus on the issue of health-promoting leadership. Meanwhile a lot of leadership behaviors have been identified that affect the health of employees. To measure them requires high costs. Therefore, the aim of this study is to identify core-factors of salutogenic leadership and to operationalize them for an efficient diagnosis. As an integrative work-related indicator of employees’ health sense of work coherence (Work-SoC) was chosen. In a deductive and inductive process the TIMP-inventory has been developed that enables the economic assessment of three leadership dimensions: Trust, Incident Management and Pressure. These factors explain with less items more variance of the Work-SoC construct than established general and health-related leadership scales of transformational leadership, consideration, social support, demanding leadership as well as positive and negative health behavior. That is why the TIMP-factors can be recognized as core-factors of health-promoting leadership.     

Karriereerfolg als Ergebnis des Personalmanagements

Strategic human resource management has avoided to evaluate its efforts in relation to employees’ careers. Recent research has investigated a selection of individual human resource management (HRM) practices (e.?g., training and development, mentoring, career development, talent management, performance appraisal) in relation to objective and subjective career success, but failed to study HRM systems or bundles. This paper argues that HRM systems and career success can be connected via human capital theory because human capital is understood as an organizational resource and as an individual antecedent to careers. Based on extant research that relates individual HRM practices to objective or subjective career success, this paper reviews and discusses the relationship between bundles of HRM practices and the individual practices contained therein and career success. The final conclusion suggests that evaluations of HRM systems should take careers into account because organizations rely on employees’ human capital. Future research should focus more intensely on the role of HRM for the development of careers also across organizations.     

BarCamps und frühere partizipatorische Konferenzformate

For the ?news‘ section of the journal ?Gruppe, Interaktion, Organisation (GIO)‘, Janine Klemmt inducts into the functioning of US conference formats, which have long-since spread to European conference landscape. Among them there are formats like BarCamp or the predecessor Open-Space-Technology. These formats increasingly rely on the active participation and involvement of their attendees. Occasionally, the conference content is completely locally determined by the attendees. These participatory conferences have a decentralized structure, which is similar to the way social media works, but cannot be explained by an imitation of contemporary social media formats. Rather by means of decentralization online and conference platforms have a common organizational component, a common denominator, which, especially with cybernetics, has moved into the field of science, has been taken up in societal areas such as technology and business, and thus increasingly found its way into the everyday world.     

Nah der Wissenschaft und fern der Führung in einer Fach‑/Expertenlaufbahn?

In order to motivate and retain technical employees, representatives of strategic career management face the challenge of establishing alternative career paths in addition to the common leadership/management career. Surveying a sample of 629 doctorate holders from the STEM fields, we differentiated between five career paths within and beyond structured career models. Structured career ladders were predominantly present in major enterprises. Female participants less frequently reported to be part of a structured career path. Entering a leadership/management career seems to occur at a later stage compared to other paths. Generally, advancement on a leadership/management path was related to stronger increases in incentives than climbing up the technical/expert or project management ladders. Contrary to our expectations, we did not find members of a technical/expert career to work closer to basic research and their initial qualification than their colleagues on other career paths. Members of leadership/management paths reported to have significantly more leadership responsibility than those working on alternative paths.     

Fragmentierung sozialer Zugehörigkeit in Unternehmen durch Ökonomisierung

This article focuses on unintended consequences of internal-marketisation strategies on employees’ social belonging to companies. By the example of two case studies, it shows that internal marketisation may foster a fragmentation of social belonging, specifically reflected by established-outsider figurations within the workforce. Moreover, case-study results highlight the importance of “third actors”, e.?g. management, for the fragmentation of social belonging at company level. Therefore, competence building of third actors is required to prevent or effectively deal with fragmentation of social belonging at company level.     

Bindung(en) in der Arbeitswelt

Vanishing or decreasing attachment is an indicator for changes within a work-oriented society. This particularly affects employment and our organizational commitment as well as bonds that are established in the context of professional relationships. This text provides a comparative analysis of two attachment-theoretical approaches that have developed simultaneously but independently from one another: commitment research into organizational psychology on the one hand and attachment theory based on developmental psychology on the other. Both are to be examined for their potential, their theoretical and empirical response to current dynamics in the world of work.     

Generalized Kerridge’s inaccuracy measure for conditionally specified models

Recently, conditional Renyi’s divergence of order α and Kerridge’s inaccuracy measures are studied by Navarro et al. (2014 Navarro, J., Sunoj, S.M., Linu, M.N. (2014). Characterizations of bivariate models using some dynamic conditional information divergence measures. Commun. Stat. Theory Methods 43:1939–1948.[Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). In the present article, a generalized dynamic conditional Kerridge’s inaccuracy measure is introduced, which can be represented as the sum of conditional Renyi’s divergence and Renyi’s entropy. Some useful bounds are obtained using the concept of likelihood ratio order. The results are extended to weighted distributions. Sufficient conditions are obtained for the monotonicity of the proposed measure. Characterizations for bivariate exponential conditional distribution are presented based on the proposed measure.     

Trend estimation of multivariate time series with controlled smoothness

This paper extends the univariate time series smoothing approach provided by penalized least squares to a multivariate setting, thus allowing for joint estimation of several time series trends. The theoretical results are valid for the general multivariate case, but particular emphasis is placed on the bivariate situation from an applied point of view. The proposal is based on a vector signal-plus-noise representation of the observed data that requires the first two sample moments and specifying only one smoothing constant. A measure of the amount of smoothness of an estimated trend is introduced so that an analyst can set in advance a desired percentage of smoothness to be achieved by the trend estimate. The required smoothing constant is determined by the chosen percentage of smoothness. Closed form expressions for the smoothed estimated vector and its variance-covariance matrix are derived from a straightforward application of generalized least squares, thus providing best linear unbiased estimates for the trends. A detailed algorithm applicable for estimating bivariate time series trends is also presented and justified. The theoretical results are supported by a simulation study and two real applications. One corresponds to Mexican and US macroeconomic data within the context of business cycle analysis, and the other one to environmental data pertaining to a monitored site in Scotland.