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As maternal mortality increases in the United States, birth providers and policymakers are seeking new solutions to address what scholars have called the “C-section epidemic.” Hospital cesarean rates vary tremendously, from 7 to 70 percent of all births. Based on in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 47 obstetricians and family physicians in the United States, I explore one reason for this variation: differences in how physicians perceive and manage risk in American obstetrics. While the dominant model of risk management encourages high levels of intervention and monitoring, I argue that a significant portion of physicians are concerned about high intervention rates in childbirth and are working to reduce cesarean rates and/or the use of monitoring technologies like continuous fetal heart rate monitors. Unlike prior theories of biomedicalization, which suggest that health risks are managed through increased monitoring and intervention, I find that many physicians are resisting this model of risk management by ordering fewer interventions and collecting less information about their patients. These providers acknowledge that interventions designed to mitigate risks may only provide an illusion of control, rather than an actual mastery of risks. By limiting interventions, providers may lose this illusion of control but also mitigate the iatrogenic effects of intervention and continuous monitoring. This alternative approach to risk management is growing in many medical fields and deserves more attention from medical sociologists.

Health scientists and urban planners have long been interested in the influence that the built environment has on the physical activities in which we engage, the environmental hazards we face, the kinds of amenities we enjoy, and the resulting impacts on our health. However, it is widely recognized that the extent of this influence, and the specific cause-and-effect relationships that exist, are still relatively unclear. Recent reviews highlight the need for more individual-level data on daily activities (especially physical activity) over long periods of time linked spatially to real-world characteristics of the built environment in diverse settings, along with a wide range of personal mediating variables. While capturing objective data on the built environment has benefited from wide-scale availability of detailed land use and transport network databases, the same cannot be said of human activity. A more diverse history of data collection methods exists for such activity and continues to evolve owing to a variety of quickly emerging wearable sensor technologies. At present, no “gold standard” method has emerged for assessing physical activity type and intensity under the real-world conditions of the built environment; in fact, most methods have barely been tested outside of the laboratory, and those that have tend to experience significant drops in accuracy and reliability. This paper provides a review of these diverse methods and emerging technologies, including biochemical, self-report, direct observation, passive motion detection, and integrated approaches. Based on this review and current needs, an integrated three-tiered methodology is proposed, including: (1) passive location tracking (e.g., using global positioning systems); (2) passive motion/biometric tracking (e.g., using accelerometers); and (3) limited self-reporting (e.g., using prompted recall diaries). Key development issues are highlighted, including the need for proper validation and automated activity-detection algorithms. The paper ends with a look at some of the key lessons learned and new opportunities that have emerged at the crossroads of urban studies and health sciences.

We do have a vision for a world in which people can walk to shops, school, friends' homes, or transit stations; in which they can mingle with their neighbors and admire trees, plants, and waterways; in which the air and water are clean; and in which there are parks and play areas for children, gathering spots for teens and the elderly, and convenient work and recreation places for the rest of us. (Frumkin, Frank, & Jackson, 2004, p. xvii)

Strategic decisions leaders make involving organizational changes such as mergers and acquisitions (M&A), divestitures, and downsizing, which can influence and/or interact with other organizational factors. For example, within the context of M&A, changes impact financial performance, firm behaviors, and organizational culture. In addition, strategic decisions for these types of change can also interrelate with other more intrapersonal factors, including both leaders’ and employees’ health and well-being. Employee stress, also referred to as “merger syndrome,” outlines individual negative impacts of the changes including, but not limited to, cynicism and distrust, change wariness, and burnout, all accumulating to psychological effects including increases in detachment to work, stress, and sick leave. In this chapter, the authors outline the different impacts M&A phases have on stress and well-being and how they interrelate with the strategic decisions leaders make. The authors also outline future research opportunities and practical implications for how leaders and employees could better manage future major changes such as M&A activities.

This chapter provides an overview of the Department of Defense (DoD) laboratory structure to help equipment designers, modelers, and manufacturers determine where research, testing programs, or relevant findings can be found. The chapter includes a discussion of the performance measures and metrics typically used in DoD laboratories and concludes by considering the current state-of-the-art as well as the state-of-the-possible for human performance measurement.

Team cohesion and other team processes are inherently dynamic mechanisms that contribute to team effectiveness. Unfortunately, extant research has typically treated team cohesion and other processes as static, and failed to capture how these processes change over time and the implications of these changes. In this chapter, we discuss the characteristics of team process dynamics and highlight the importance of temporal considerations when measuring team cohesion. We introduce innovative research methods that can be applied to assess and monitor team cohesion and other process dynamics. Finally, we discuss future directions for the research and practical applications of these new methods to enhance our understanding of the dynamics of team cohesion and other processes.

Disruptive student behavior contributes to poor student outcomes, loss of classroom instructional time, and teacher burnout. Physical movement is an intervention that has been used to target and ameliorate disruptive student behavior for students with learning and behavioral disabilities. A review of two movement-based interventions – Brain Gym® and antecedent bouts of exercise – reveals different levels of research support. Brain Gym®, a commercial movement-based curriculum, is not supported by extant empirical research. Alternatively, a growing body of research empirically supports antecedent bouts of exercise as an effective behavioral intervention. This chapter provides a description and review of research for each intervention. Implications for instructional practice and recommendations are provided.

The application of physiological methods to the study of psychological phenomena has garnered considerable interest in recent years. These methods have proved especially useful to the study of emotions, since evidence suggests that validly measuring a person’s emotional state using traditional, psychometric methods such as surveys or observation is considerably more difficult than once thought. The present chapter reviews the challenges associated with measuring emotions from a purely psychological perspective, and suggests that the study of emotions in organizations can benefit from the use of physiological measurement to complement traditional assessment methods. We review more established approaches to physiological measurement, including those related to hormone secretion, cardiovascular activity, and skin conductance. We then highlight somewhat more recent attempts to use neurological scanning. A theme of this chapter is that both psychological and physiological measures are relevant to understanding and assessing emotions in organizations. Accordingly, we propose a multi-method approach involving both types of assessment. Finally, we discuss the practical and ethical implications of employing various forms of physiological measurement in the study of emotions, specifically in the context of organizations.

This research focuses on the challenges of establishing a better medical system that can detect and diagnose diseases earlier. Using such cutting-edge health systems, healthcare practitioners may quickly and effectively manage patients’ medical issues by providing the appropriate data at the right time about the right people. The advancement of technology has increased the usefulness of devices that routinely analyse health measurements or monitoring time-sensitive health-related data. Medical professionals and patients alike are downloading health-related mobile apps to better track and manage their health. The research evidences how Internet of Things (IoT) technology may be used to support health care.