Overweight and obesity has increased in the U.S. Unfortunately, this increases the risk of metabolic dysfunction, such as diabetes. Meal timing has recently shown promise as viable options to minimize the risk of overweight or obesity and metabolic dysfunction. The primary purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate the effect of timing of energy intake on blood glucose in females with overweight or class one obesity (BMI=27-35 kg/m2). This study utilized crossover design with two conditions counterbalanced in random order. Participants completed two 2-week 1500kcal dietary interventions: 1) a big breakfast diet or BB (50% of energy intake between 7-9am, 35% of energy between 12-2pm, and ~15% of energy between 5-7pm), and 2) a big dinner diet or BD (~15% of energy intake between 7-9am, of energy between 12-2pm, and ~50% of energy between 5-7pm). There was a 2-week wash-out period between each condition. Meals were provided to participants. The primary outcome was differences in glucose over the course of each 2-week period. Glucose was determined using a continuous glucose monitor and analyzed for area under the curve (AUC) using the trapezoidal method. Other exploratory outcomes were assessed, including: fasting glucose, height, weight, body composition using dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry, physical activity and sleep using accelerometry, waist circumference, hunger using visual analog scales, sleep quality using the Pittsburg Sleep Quality Index, depression and anxiety using the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale, eating behaviors using the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire, resting heart rate using an oximeter, blood pressure using an aneroid cuff and sphygmomanometer and temperature using a temporal scan thermometer. This study was designed for proof of concept. The primary analysis showed there was no significant difference in total AUC glucose between the BB and BD conditions (F=0.14; p=0.7137). A secondary analysis indicated a significant interaction between dietary condition across the 14-day intervention (F=98.23; p<0.001) and condition x hour interaction for glucose AUC (F=32.62; p<0.0001). As expected, the BB diet had higher AUC glucose from 7am-12pm (F=15.48; p=0.001) and the BD diet has higher AUC glucose from 5pm-10pm (F=11.63; p=0.0031). Both conditions were effective to decrease weight, waist circumference, BMI, and fat free mass (p<0.05); however, the condition x time interaction was significantly more reduced for fat mass during the BB than the BD condition (F=4.37; p=0.0411). This study did not reveal a difference in total AUC glucose between the BB and BD. It was shown that the BB saw a greater rate of fat mass loss then the BD. This indicates that meal timing can provide addition benefits to the outcomes caused by a caloric deficit.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Timing, and ergo rhythm, are intrinsic features of language that help facilitate real-time speech comprehension. However, work exploring how variable timing is processed in speech is limited. This dissertation addresses this gap in literature by exploring the tenets of how temporal variability is cognitively processed, particularly in the context of real-time stimulus processing. This research is one of the first works to examine temporal variations in linguistic and other acoustically complex contexts. Using electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioural methods, participants were tested on their perception of temporal variations within a continuous stream of either simple tones, complex waves, or syllables. Two timing deviants were presented that occurred early or late compared to other stimuli in the sequence. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for each stimulus type across three experiments. A fourth experiment tested participant recognition memory for syllable order. Results showed differential processing between the two timing deviants. Unexpectedly earlier tokens elicited larger pre-attentive responses compared to late, suggesting a saliency for the earlier tokens that was not present for the delayed ones. This pattern was observed across all three levels of acoustic and linguistic complexity. Compared to sequences with no timing deviants or an early timing deviant, unexpectedly late tokens were more detrimental to memory, suggesting a negative impact of delays on verbal recognition. Thus, not only were early and late timing variations processed differently, but delays in continuous sequences were also more cognitively taxing for working memory. The results reported in this dissertation contribute to existing knowledge by enriching our understanding of the fundamentals of how aspects of prosodic timing may affect attention and memory. Additionally, it provides new insights into how speech synthesis can be used in neurolinguistic research by tracking how neurophysiological responses change with increasing acoustic complexity and linguistic familiarity. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines how unexpectedly shorter or longer pauses in speech may affect speech comprehension. Specifically, the research reported here examined how stimuli that are presented unexpectedly early or unexpectedly late in a steady-rate sequence impact a listener’s attention and memory. Although the speed at which we speak has been studied previously, work on unexpected changes in its timing has been limited. This research begins to explore this aspect of speech processing. It contributes to our understanding of how speech timing is processed in two important ways. First, we found that unexpected delays in both non-linguistic sounds and syllables were less noticeable than unexpectedly early presentations, when participants were not required to pay attention to them. Second, we found that unexpected delays made recognition memory for stimulus order worse. Overall, the results of these studies indicate that unexpected delays in the rhythm of speech make it more difficult to understand.

Broadly, this study focuses on roles of sell-side analysts and examines the determinants and consequences of information discovery and stock timing roles by sell-side analysts. We also re-examine reiterations of prior recommendations by sell-side analysts. In Chapter 1, the contribution is to document that analysts add value by engaging in discovery of private information and this value addition is greater than that due to interpretation of public news or stock timing. The innovation in this Chapter is to read over 3,700 analyst reports from Investext and explicitly identify whether the report contains discovery, interpretation, and/or timing. Analysts discover new information by talking to management sources (personal meetings, investor meetings, and conference calls) or non-management sources (such as channel checks). We find that information discovery is prevalent in 17% of the reports. The cumulative abnormal return (CAR) for reports containing discovery are 6.3% for upgrades and -10.6% for downgrades. The CARs are higher for reports containing discovery relative to those containing interpretation or timing. We find that economic determinants predict whether a report will contain discovery. Discovery from management sources is more likely for reports in the pre-Reg FD period and for reports by optimistic analysts. Discovery from non-management sources is more likely for reports written by All-Star analysts, and for firms that have high information asymmetry and those that are followed by more analysts. In Chapter 2, the contribution is to introduce and document a third role that analysts play that is also valuable to investors, which we term "stock timing." Specifically, we define a timing report as one where the analyst revises his recommendation but does not revise the Price Target or any of the 23 fundamental drivers of stock price (such as EPS, FCF) tracked by I/B/E/S. Because the analyst maintains the same price target as in his prior report but still revises his recommendation, such timing calls are contrarian valuation calls. Analysts issue timing downgrades (upgrades) in response to price increases (declines) since the release of their prior report on the firm. 30% of all revisions are timing reports, indicating the importance of the timing role played by analysts. If analysts have timing ability, then markets should react to the release of the timing report and we should observe that economic determinants explain the cross-sectional variation in timing ability. We find the 3-day announcement return is over 2% in magnitude, 62% of the reports are winners (have announcement returns that have the correct sign), 10% of the reports are large enough to be considered influential, and 37% of the reports are persistent winners. These results suggest that analysts have timing ability. The ability to time is similar is magnitude to information interpretation but smaller compared to information discovery. We find considerable cross-sectional and time-series variation in timing ability. We find that the probability of issuing a timing report is positively related to the opportunities to time the stock provided by potential mispricing. Conditional on issuing a timing report, the probability of issuing a winner, an influential winner, or a persistent winner is positively related to analyst experience and negatively related to the costs associated with issuing a timing report. In Chapter 3, we document that recommendation reiterations are not homogeneous and there is a large subset of reiterations that are as much valued by investors as recommendation revisions. We combine Detail History file containing the measures tracked by I/B/E/S (Price Target, EPS, etc.) and Recommendation file to create the full time series of recommendations (initiations, reiterations, and revisions) made by each analyst for each firm for 14 years from 1999 to 2012. By adopting a modified version of "filling in the holes" method, we find that recommendation reiterations are prevalent, consisting of about 80% of recommendations for our 14-year sample period. Second, market response to recommendation reiterations increases monotonically from Reiteration: Strong Sell to Reiteration: Strong Buy. Third, reiterations coupled with contemporary changes in price targets and/or earning forecasts bring substantial absolute abnormal stock returns to investors. Lastly, when we replicate what Loh and Stulz (2011), we find that the number of reiterations which are influential is more than twice that of recommendation revisions that are influential. / Business Administration/Finance

One of the fundamental concerns of developmental psychology is the nature of continuity and change across development. The present study investigated the continuity of social competence across developmental periods, paying special attention to the transition from middle childhood to adolescence. Using a birth cohort of youths (277 males, 315 females), I examined the stability of social competence across developmental periods, assessed the relation between quality of early parenting and later competence, and tested how timing of pubertal maturation and school transition impact the stability of social competence, using both variable-centered and person-centered analyses. It was expected that social competence would be highly stable across development, but less stable across the transition to adolescence, and that higher quality parenting would predict greater competence among males and females. Furthermore, I expected that pubertal maturation and school transition would deflect trajectories of social competence over time, accentuating individual differences (e.g., socially competent youths would become more competent, whereas incompetent youths would become less competent). As expected, the nature of social competence was fairly stable from early childhood to adolescence, although there is evidence that social competence is less stable as youth transition from early childhood to middle childhood and from middle childhood to adolescence. Moreover, individuals with warm parenting evinced greater social competence across time. Consistent with my hypothesis, off-time pubertal maturation and school transition accentuated individual differences in social competence, increasing social competence among more competent youths, and further diminishing social competence among less competent youths. Finally, I find evidence that experiencing both off-time pubertal maturation and a school transition simultaneously incurred more risk for females, particularly among less competent females, than experiencing only off-time maturation or a school transition. / Psychology

This thesis presents a simulation model for a Control Area Network (CAN) software stack, the Dual FIFO CAN (DFC) stack, and a method for identifying and incorporating the details of the host environment (hardware setup, operating system, etc.) into the implementation of the simulation model in order to achieve a high level of fidelity. The method enable the simulation model to produce more realistic simulation results that are close to real-life experiments of the target system compared to existing commercial and academic simulation tools, which mostly ignore the system details The simulation model is implemented based on the specification documents of the DFC stack as well as knowledge gained from real-life experiments about the DFC stack and its host environment, a dual-core Electric Control Unit (ECU) hardware test bench that runs a Real-Time Operating System (RTOS). Like the actual DFC stack, the simulation model offers features such as dual non-preemptive FIFO transmit queues and TX buffers, and reserved slots in the queues for higher-priority messages. By using the method introduced in this research, the simulation model also offers options, once enabled and configured with proper parameters, for simulating a host environment that has effects on the behaviors of the modeled CAN stack. And these features are not fully available in existing commercial and academic simulation tools. The model provides internal calibration values of the DFC stack as configurable parameters to the user, making it easy to customize the simulation. Configurable calibration values includes the total number of slots in the transmit FIFO queues, number of reserved slots in the queues, transmit-rate thresholds that decide to which transmit queue a message is routed and whether a message is eligible to enter the reserved slots of the queues, and together they determine the queuing behaviors of the DFC stack. The options for simulating a host environment (an ECU on a CAN network in a modern vehicle, for instance) is capable of recreating the timing effects (delays, jitters or other effects due to the processing load, physical limitation and internal implementation) of the target host environment on the simulation results. Both deterministic (constant values, etc.) and/or statistical (probability distributions, etc.) models can be used to configure each single timing effect from the simulated host environment. The simulation model is also automated to transmit a set of customized transmit message (configurable message ID, DLC, period and internal transmission priority) and process simulation results according to the purpose of the simulation (statistical analysis, plots of data, etc). These features make it possible for the simulation model to be used not only to simulate various customized simulation scenarios, but also for different purposes in various stages of the development process, for instance, a pre-experiment simulation run before a test bench experiment to test the correctness of the calibrations and predict the possible outcomes of the experiment, or, simulations for confirmation purposes in order validate the test bench data after the test experiment. The model is compatible with typical modeling, simulation and development environments as it is implemented in MATLAB SimEvents environment, which works with third-party CAN development tools such as Vector CANoe. It is also designed to work with the high-fidelity model of the Vector CAN protocol stack from Whinton (2016). / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)