ELIMINATING ROADBLOCKS TO GREATER PRODUCTIVITY: EDUCATION

The author explains the positive steps that the educational system should implement in order to increase the number of professionals employed in the food distribution sector.Productivity Analysis,

The Polarizing Effect of Arousal on Negotiation

In this research, we examined the impact of physiological arousal on negotiation outcomes. Conventional wisdom and the prescriptive literature suggest that arousal should be minimized given its negative effect on negotiations, whereas prior research on misattribution of arousal suggests that arousal might polarize outcomes, either negatively or positively. In two experiments, we manipulated arousal and measured its effect on subjective and objective negotiation outcomes. Our results support the polarization effect. When participants had negative prior attitudes toward negotiation, arousal had a detrimental effect on outcomes, whereas when participants had positive prior attitudes toward negotiation, arousal had a beneficial effect on outcomes. These effects occurred because of the construal of arousal as negative or positive affect, respectively. Our findings have important implications not only for negotiation, but also for research on misattribution of arousal, which previously has focused on the target of evaluation, in contrast to the current research, which focused on the critical role of the perceiver

Predicting video-conferencing conversation outcomes based on modeling facial expression synchronization

Effective video-conferencing conversations are heavily influenced by each speaker's facial expression. In this study, we propose a novel probabilistic model to represent interactional synchrony of conversation partners' facial expressions in video-conferencing communication. In particular, we use a hidden Markov model (HMM) to capture temporal properties of each speaker's facial expression sequence. Based on the assumption of mutual influence between conversation partners, we couple their HMMs as two interacting processes. Furthermore, we summarize the multiple coupled HMMs with a stochastic process prior to discover a set of facial synchronization templates shared among the multiple conversation pairs. We validate the model, by utilizing the exhibition of these facial synchronization templates to predict the outcomes of video-conferencing conversations. The dataset includes 75 video-conferencing conversations from 150 Amazon Mechanical Turkers in the context of a new recruit negotiation. The results show that our proposed model achieves higher accuracy in predicting negotiation winners than support vector machine and canonical HMMs. Further analysis indicates that some synchronized nonverbal templates contribute more in predicting the negotiation outcomes

Evidence-based policy on dietary calcium and vitamin D

Copyright © 2011 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research.Peer reviewedPostprin

Calcium Intake and Risk of Primary Hyperparathyroidism in Women: Prospective Cohort Study

Objective: To examine the association between calcium intake and risk of primary hyperparathyroidism in women. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Nurses’ Health Study I, which originally recruited participants from the 11 most populous states in the United States. Participants 58 354 female registered nurses enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study I aged 39-66 years in 1986 and with no history of primary hyperparathyroidism. Calcium intake was assessed every four years using semiquantitative questionnaires on food frequency. Main outcome measure Incident primary hyperparathyroidism, confirmed by medical record review. Results: During 22 years of follow-up, we recorded 277 incident cases of primary hyperparathyroidism. Women were divided into five equal groups, according to intake of dietary calcium. After adjusting for age, body mass index, race, and other factors, the relative risk of primary hyperparathyroidism for women in the group with the highest intake of dietary calcium was 0.56 (95% confidence interval 0.37 to 0.86, P=0.009 for trend), compared with the group with the lowest intake. The multivariable relative risk of primary hyperparathyroidism for women taking more than 500 mg/day of calcium supplements compared with no calcium supplements was 0.41 (95% confidence interval 0.29 to 0.60, P<0.001 for trend). Analyses restricted to participants with regular physical exams did not significantly change the association between calcium intake and risk of primary hyperparathyroidism. Conclusion: Increased calcium intake is independently associated with a reduced risk of primary hyperparathyroidism in women

Understanding social interpersonal interaction via synchronization templates of facial events

Automatic facial expression analysis in inter-personal communication is challenging. Not only because conversation partners' facial expressions mutually influence each other, but also because no correct interpretation of facial expressions is possible without taking social context into account. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic framework to model interactional synchronization between conversation partners based on their facial expressions. Interactional synchronization manifests temporal dynamics of conversation partners' mutual influence. In particular, the model allows us to discover a set of common and unique facial synchronization templates directly from natural interpersonal interaction without recourse to any predefined labeling schemes. The facial synchronization templates represent periodical facial event coordinations shared by multiple conversation pairs in a specific social context. We test our model on two different dyadic conversations of negotiation and job-interview. Based on the discovered facial event coordination, we are able to predict their conversation outcomes with higher accuracy than HMMs and GMMs

Association Between Passive and Active Smoking and Incident Type 2 Diabetes in Women

OBJECTIVE: Accumulating evidence has identified a positive association between active smoking and the risk of diabetes, but previous studies had limited information on passive smoking or changes in smoking behaviors over time. This analysis examined the association between exposure to passive smoke, active smoking, and the risk of incident type 2 diabetes among women. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: This is a prospective cohort study of 100,526 women in the Nurses’ Health Study who did not have prevalent diabetes in 1982, with follow-up for diabetes for 24 years. RESULTS: We identified 5,392 incident cases of type 2 diabetes during 24 years of follow-up. Compared with nonsmokers with no exposure to passive smoke, there was an increased risk of diabetes among nonsmokers who were occasionally (relative risk [RR] 1.10 [95% CI 0.94–1.23]) or regularly (1.16 [1.00–1.35]) exposed to passive smoke. The risk of incident type 2 diabetes was increased by 28% (12–50) among all past smokers. The risk diminished as time since quitting increased but still was elevated even 20–29 years later (1.15 [1.00–1.32]). Current smokers had the highest risk of incident type 2 diabetes in a dose-dependent manner. Adjusted RRs increased from 1.39 (1.17–1.64) for 1–14 cigarettes per day to 1.98 (1.57–2.36) for ≥25 cigarettes per day compared with nonsmokers with no exposure to passive smoke. CONCLUSIONS: Our study suggests that exposure to passive smoke and active smoking are positively and independently associated with the risk of type 2 diabetes

Frequency of Rare Allelic Variation in Candidate Genes among Individuals with Low and High Urinary Calcium Excretion

Our study investigated the association of rare allelic variants with extremes of 24-hour urinary calcium excretion because higher urinary calcium excretion is a dominant risk factor for calcium-based kidney stone formation. We resequenced 40 candidate genes potentially related to urinary calcium excretion in individuals from the Nurses' Health Studies I & II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. A total of 960 participants were selected based on availability of 24-hour urine collection data and level of urinary calcium excretion (low vs. high). We utilized DNA sample pooling, droplet-based target gene enrichment, multiplexing, and high-throughput sequencing. Approximately 64% of samples (n = 615) showed both successful target enrichment and sequencing data with >20-fold deep coverage. A total of 259 novel allelic variants were identified. None of the rare gene variants (allele frequencies <2%) were found with increased frequency in the low vs. high urinary calcium groups; most of these variants were only observed in single individuals. Unadjusted analysis of variants with allele frequencies ≥2% suggested an association of the Claudin14 SNP rs113831133 with lower urinary calcium excretion (6/520 versus 29/710 haplotypes, P value = 0.003). Our data, together with previous human and animal studies, suggest a possible role for Claudin14 in urinary calcium excretion. Genetic validation studies in larger sample sets will be necessary to confirm our findings for rs113831133. In the tested set of candidate genes, rare allelic variants do not appear to contribute significantly to differences in urinary calcium excretion between individuals

Psoriasis and risk of type 2 diabetes among women and men in the United States: a population-based cohort study

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) shares some common risk factors with psoriasis. We evaluated the association between psoriasis and risk of incident T2D among women and men in the United States in a mixed retrospective-prospective cohort study. 184,395 participants were included from an older cohort of women (the Nurses’ Health Study, NHS) (1996–2008), a younger cohort of women (NHS II) (1991–2007) and an older cohort of men (Health Professionals’ Follow-Up Study, HPFS) (1986–2006). During 2,700,958 person-years of follow-up, 9,938 incident T2D cases were confirmed. We found a significantly increased risk of T2D associated with psoriasis only among younger women (NHS II); multivariate-adjusted relative risk (RR) (95% confidence interval (CI)) was 1.25 1.05–1.49). When only including those younger than 60 years during follow-up (NHS and HPFS), we observed a non-significant trend toward increased risk for T2D. In a pooled-analysis of the three cohorts, psoriatics younger than 60 years were at a higher risk of T2D; RR 1.26 (1.08–1.48) for women, and 1.26 (1.08–1.46) for both sexes combined. Further, the risk of T2D was much higher for those developing psoriasis at an early age. In conclusion, we found an association between psoriasis and risk of T2D among individuals younger than 60 years

Dietary and Plasma Magnesium and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease Among Women

Background: Magnesium is associated with lower risk of sudden cardiac death, possibly through antiarrhythmic mechanisms. Magnesium influences endothelial function, inflammation, blood pressure, and diabetes, but a direct relation with coronary heart disease (CHD) risk has not been established. Methods and Results: We prospectively examined the association between dietary and plasma magnesium and risk of CHD among women in the Nurses' Health Study. The association for magnesium intake was examined among 86 323 women free of disease in 1980. Information on magnesium intake and lifestyle factors was ascertained every 2 to 4 years through questionnaires. Through 2008, 3614 cases of CHD (2511 nonfatal/1103 fatal) were documented. For plasma magnesium, we conducted a nested case–control analysis, with 458 cases of incident CHD (400 nonfatal/58 fatal) matched to controls (1:1) on age, smoking, fasting status, and date of blood sampling. Higher magnesium intake was not associated with lower risk of total CHD (P‐linear trend=0.12) or nonfatal CHD (P‐linear trend=0.88) in multivariable models. However, magnesium intake was inversely associated with risk of fatal CHD. The RR comparing quintile 5 to quintile 1 of magnesium intake was 0.61 (95% CI, 0.45 to 0.84; P‐linear trend=0.003). The association between magnesium intake and risk of fatal CHD appeared to be mediated partially by hypertension. Plasma magnesium levels above 2.0 mg/dL were associated with lower risk of CHD, although not independent of other cardiovascular biomarkers (RR, 0.67; 95% CI, 0.44 to 1.04). Conclusions: Dietary and plasma magnesium were not associated with total CHD incidence in this population of women. Dietary magnesium intake was inversely associated with fatal CHD, which may be mediated in part by hypertension