US Consumer Identification of the Health Benefits of Dietary Fiber and Consideration of Fiber When Making Food Choices

The purposes of this study were to (1) determine beliefs in the health benefits of dietary fiber, an under-consumed nutrient of public health concern, and (2) determine the relationship between beliefs about dietary fiber and consideration of fiber when making food choices. We conducted a nationally representative within-subject randomized online survey of 42,018 US primary shoppers in May–June 2021. Participants selected health benefits they believed were associated with consumption of fiber from a list of six benefits recognized by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), one indirect benefit, and one unrelated benefit. Respondents then indicated which nutrients, if any, they considered when making food choices. Respondents selected 1.77 (95% CI = 1.76–1.77) FDA-recognized benefits out of a total six; half (50.6%) of respondents identified zero or one FDA-recognized benefit. The most-cited benefit was “improving bowel movements” (64.4%). Older participants perceived significantly more FDA-recognized fiber benefits. Identification of FDA-recognized benefits increased odds ratios for consideration of fiber during food choice (relative to zero benefits) from 3.0 for one benefit (95% CI = 2.8–3.3) to 14.3 for six benefits (95% CI = 12.4–16.6). Consumers are largely unaware of the many health benefits of dietary fiber, which dramatically decreases the likelihood that they consider this important, under-consumed nutrient during food choice

Health Prompts Affect Consideration of Health but Not Intertemporal Preferences While Promoting Healthier Food Choices

Diet-related diseases impact populations across the globe. While intertemporal preferences—a fundamental preference for the distribution of benefits across time—have been used to explain low-quality food choices, the recent literature proposes another cause: inattention to the future implications (or opportunity costs) of the options faced. Food choices tend to become habitual to conserve cognitive resources, rather than carefully modeling future health impacts. Both low discount rates for future benefits and attention to future health impacts predict healthier decisions. While intertemporal preferences are stable, attention may provide an opportunity to intervene in the decision process to promote healthier decisions. In this study, we test the impact of a simple message that highlights health during food choice on the healthiness of the foods chosen and on health consideration and intertemporal preferences. Our results show that actively considering health outcomes and lower discount rates lead to healthier food choices. We find that messaging increases the consideration of health outcomes during food choice but does not affect intertemporal preferences, suggesting that simple prompts may be an effective way to promote decisions balancing short- and long-term benefits by drawing attention to the overlooked opportunity costs of choices

Brain edema : a valid endpoint for measuring hepatic encephalopathy?

Hepatic encephalopathy (HE) is a major complication of liver failure/disease which frequently develops during the progression of end-stage liver disease. This metabolic neuropsychiatric syndrome involves a spectrum of symptoms, including cognition impairment, attention deficits and motor dysfunction which eventually can progress to coma and death. Pathologically, HE is characterized by swelling of the astrocytes which consequently leads to brain edema, a common feature found in patients with acute liver failure (ALF) as well as in cirrhotic patients suffering from HE. The pathogenic factors involved in the onset of astrocyte swelling and brain edema in HE are unresolved. However, the role of astrocyte swelling/brain edema in the development of HE remains ambiguous and therefore measuring brain edema as an endpoint to evaluate HE is questioned. The following review will determine the effect of astrocyte swelling and brain edema on neurological function, discuss the various possible techniques to measure brain edema and lastly to propose a number of neurobehavioral tests to evaluate HE

Heterogeneity in susceptibility dictates the order of epidemiological models

The fundamental models of epidemiology describe the progression of an infectious disease through a population using compartmentalized differential equations, but do not incorporate population-level heterogeneity in infection susceptibility. We show that variation strongly influences the rate of infection, while the infection process simultaneously sculpts the susceptibility distribution. These joint dynamics influence the force of infection and are, in turn, influenced by the shape of the initial variability. Intriguingly, we find that certain susceptibility distributions (the exponential and the gamma) are unchanged through the course of the outbreak, and lead naturally to power-law behavior in the force of infection; other distributions often tend towards these "eigen-distributions" through the process of contagion. The power-law behavior fundamentally alters predictions of the long-term infection rate, and suggests that first-order epidemic models that are parameterized in the exponential-like phase may systematically and significantly over-estimate the final severity of the outbreak

Multiple vaginal examinations and early neonatal sepsis

Background: Early onset neonatal sepsis (EONS) is caused mainly by organisms present in the genital tract. Maternal risk factors increase the incidence of EONS. This study was done to find out the association between one such risk factor i.e., multiple vaginal examinations and EONS.Methods: Case control study. 114 patients with three or more vaginal examinations after rupture of membranes were taken as cases and 114 patients with less than three vaginal examinations after rupture of membranes were taken as controls. All these babies were followed up for the development of EONS.Results: Of the 114 cases, 6 babies developed EONS. None of the babies in the control group developed EONS. So, 3 or more vaginal examinations after rupture of membranes in labour is significantly associated with early onset neonatal sepsis with p-value of 0.01305.Conclusions: Multiple vaginal examinations after rupture of membranes is a risk factor for early onset neonatal sepsis.

Quantitative Verification of Thin-Film PVDF Transducer Array Performance up to 60 °C

Thin-film PVDF (polyvinylidene fluoride) transducers are appealing as light weight, durable, and flexible sensors for structural health monitoring applications in aircraft structures. However, due to the relatively low Curie temperature of PVDF, there are concerns that its performance will drop below unacceptable levels during high temperature conditions. To verify acceptable performance in these environmental operating conditions (EOC), temperature history data was collected in which tests were carried out between 23-60 °C. For these tests, the PVDF sensor was tested along with a PZT (lead zirconate titanate) wafer sensor as a benchmark. The damage feature is the decrease in peak amplitude from the presence of a through-hole defect. The waveguide for the tests was a 1 mm thick aluminum plate and the measurement was completed using the pitch-catch method. The performance of each sensor was evaluated using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves and the relative quality of the sensors to detect the defect was evaluated by calculating the Area Under the Curve (AUC) of the ROC curves. These ROCs can require a significant amount of time and resources to produce, but it is possible to use baseline signals at various EOCs to construct synthetic datasets, which reduce the time and resources required. This was attempted and the resulting ROCs were compared to ROCs constructed using actual datasets at the specific EOCs. The comparison of the two ROCs and their respective AUCs were completed to evaluate the effectiveness of this data synthesis approach for future use with this inspection methodology

Coping Strategies in Mothers of Children with Intellectual Disabilities Showing Multiple Forms of Challenging Behaviour:Associations with Maternal Mental Health

Background: It is well documented that mothers of children with intellectual disabilities experience elevated mental health difficulties and that these are exacerbated by the presence of challenging behaviour. However, comparatively little is known about the effect of specific coping strategies for managing such behaviours. Aims: This paper aims to document coping strategies used by mothers of children showing multiple forms of challenging behaviour and to explore how these relate to positive and negative maternal mental health. Method: Eighty-nine mothers of children with intellectual disabilities completed questionnaires assessing maternal mental health (Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, Positive and Negative Affect Scale) and maternal coping strategies (Brief COPE). Results: Coping strategies were not associated with child age or ability, but were associated with maternal mental health. Higher levels of problem- and positive-coping strategies were associated with higher positive affect. Although active-avoidance coping was the least frequently reported, it was associated with higher levels of negative affect and increased anxiety and depression. Moderated mediation analyses identified that active-avoidance coping mediated the relationship between the number of forms of challenging behaviour and poor maternal mental health, but only in mothers with lower levels of problem-focused coping. Conclusions: Active-avoidance coping is associated with poorer negative mental health in mothers of children with intellectual disabilities who have average to low levels of problem-focused coping. This is reflective of that noted within a range of populations, highlighting it as a key area for intervention.Arts, Education & Law Group, School of Education and Professional StudiesFull Tex

Bayesian Optimised Collection Strategies for Fatigue Testing : Constant Life Testing

This paper presents a statistical framework enabling optimal sampling and robust analysis of fatigue data. We create protocols using Bayesian maximum entropy sampling, which build on the staircase and step methods, removing the requirement of prior knowledge of the fatigue strength distribution for data collection. Results show improved sampling efficiency and parameter estimation over the conventional approaches. Statistical methods for distinguishing between distribution types highlight the role of the protocol in model distinction. Experimental validation of the above work is performed, showing the applicability of the methods in laboratory testing.Comment: 25 pages, 12 figures + 1 SI figur