A Double-Hurdle Model of Irish Household Expenditure on Prepared Meals

In this paper, Irish households' expenditure on prepared meals for home consumption is analysed using the 1987 and 1994 Irish Household Budget Survey datasets. The aim of the paper is to analyse the factors influencing Irish households' decisions to purchase prepared meals and how much to spend on these food items. This is done using the double-hurdle methodology adjusted for the problems of heteroscedasticity and non-normality. Income elasticities are estimated for household expenditure on prepared meals in both years and significant socio-economic influences are identified. These socio-economic factors are assumed to underpin the tastes and preferences of Irish households, with convenience identified as a significant preference of many household groups.

Recidivism: an exploration of juvenile prison inmates subjective perception of their return to prison

Magister Psychologiae - MPsychDespite the unpleasant living conditions in prison, recidivism seems to be an uncontrollable phenomenon. It is evident that prison life is harsh with inmates having to sleep on the floors due to overpopulation, frequently subjected to physical and sexual abuse, and overpopulation leading to numerous communicable diseases, such as tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted infections. Prison should therefore, be the least favourable ecosystem in which to be incorporated. However, research indicates that thousands of youth return to prison habitually. This study aimed to explore juvenile inmates perceptions of their return to prison. Although recidivism is often measured in terms of the success of rehabilitation programmes, this study focused on eliciting socio-economic factors influencing recidivism.South Afric

Letting Sleeping Abnormalities Lie: Lovecraft and the Futility of Divination [Article]

By way of divinatory dreams, astrology, geomancy, or other means, the Lovecraft quester discovers that universe is more deeply frightening than anything he could possibly have imagined. Lovecraft’s lack of faith in divination practices, not because of their inefficacy, but rather due to his conviction that humans lack the essential capacity to understand their lowly place in the universe, is ironically not shared by many of his admirers and followers, who have created magical and divination systems galore since Lovecraft’s demise

Community environment, cognitive impairment and dementia in later life: results from the Cognitive Function and Ageing Study

Background: Few studies have investigated the impact of the community environment, as distinct from area deprivation, on cognition in later life. This study explores cross-sectional associations between cognitive impairment and dementia and environmental features at the community level in older people. Method: The postcodes of the 2424 participants in the year-10 interview of the Cognitive Function and Ageing Study in England were mapped into small area level geographical units (Lower-layer Super Output Areas) and linked to environmental data in government statistics. Multilevel logistic regression was conducted to investigate associations between cognitive impairment (defined as MMSE3 in GMS-AGECAT) and community level measurements including area deprivation, natural environment, land use mix and crime. Sensitivity analyses tested the impact of people moving residence within the last two years. Results: Higher levels of area deprivation and crime were not significantly associated with cognitive impairment and dementia after accounting for individual level factors. Living in areas with high land use mix was significantly associated with a nearly 60% reduced odds of dementia (OR: 0.4; 95% CI: 0.2, 0.8) after adjusting for individual level factors and area deprivation, but there was no linear trend for cognitive impairment. Increased odds of dementia (OR: 2.2, 95% CI: 1.2, 4.2) and cognitive impairment (OR: 1.4, 95% CI: 1.0, 2.0) were found in the highest quartile of natural environment availability. Findings were robust to exclusion of the recently relocated. Conclusion: Features of land use have complex associations with cognitive impairment and dementia. Further investigations should focus on environmental influences on cognition to inform health and social policies

A comparison of parametric models for the investigation of the shape of cognitive change in the older population.

BACKGROUND: Cognitive decline is a major threat to well being in later life. Change scores and regression based models have often been used for its investigation. Most methods used to describe cognitive decline assume individuals lose their cognitive abilities at a constant rate with time. The investigation of the parametric curve that best describes the process has been prevented by restrictions imposed by study design limitations and methodological considerations. We propose a comparison of parametric shapes that could be considered to describe the process of cognitive decline in late life. Attrition plays a key role in the generation of missing observations in longitudinal studies of older persons. As ignoring missing observations will produce biased results and previous studies point to the important effect of the last observed cognitive score on the probability of dropout, we propose modelling both mechanisms jointly to account for these two considerations in the model likelihood. METHODS: Data from four interview waves of a population based longitudinal study of the older population, the Cambridge City over 75 Cohort Study were used. Within a selection model process, latent growth models combined with a logistic regression model for the missing data mechanism were fitted. To illustrate advantages of the model proposed, a sensitivity analysis of the missing data assumptions was conducted. RESULTS: Results showed that a quadratic curve describes cognitive decline best. Significant heterogeneity between individuals about mean curve parameters was identified. At all interviews, MMSE scores before dropout were significantly lower than those who remained in the study. Individuals with good functional ability were found to be less likely to dropout, as were women and younger persons in later stages of the study. CONCLUSION: The combination of a latent growth model with a model for the missing data has permitted to make use of all available data and quantify the effect of significant predictors of dropout on the dropout and observational processes. Cognitive decline over time in older persons is often modelled as a linear process, though we have presented other parametric curves that may be considered.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Optimization of Sustainability and Flood Hazard Resilience for Home Designs

AbstractLife-cycle analysis is a beneficial tool that can be utilized to quantify the performance of buildings within the context of environmental impact metrics (e.g. carbon footprint). While typical life-cycle analysis incorporates regular building maintenance, structural repairs made as a result of natural hazard damages are largely ignored. This study presents an environmental impact design optimization model that can be used to compare multiple coastal, single-family residential (SFR) building designs subjected to coastal flood hazards based on environmental impact factors. For each design, the model measures the environment impact (i.e. embodied energy and carbon footprint) of initial construction plus flood-induced repairs. Repairs are quantified using a probability-based methodology and life-cycle analysis is used to measure environmental impacts. Design options can then be compared and optimal designs that meet performance-based resilience and sustainable design objectives can be selected. A case study is presented for an SFR building located in coastal St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, and demonstrates that up to a 64% reduction in embodied energy and carbon footprint can be achieved over a 50 year building life through more resilient component configurations and materials and by increasing first floor elevations

Exploring the eating behaviours of people in mid-late adulthood

This thesis examined fruit and vegetable intake and variety in people in the peri-retirement life-stage. A range of factors from intrapersonal, social and environmental domains were found to influence eating behaviours, and influences varied by partnership status. Fruit and vegetable intake and variety were associated with quality of life measures.<br /

Ok Can We Try Now? One Student\u27s Communications on a Classroom Computer Network

A case study describing one of fifteen students at The Lexington School for the Deaf who participated in a pilot program called the Literacy Network