Protocols to monitor marketing of unhealthy foods to children: Comparison and evaluation of existing protocols, with stakeholder consultation

Work Package 6.4 of the EU Best-ReMap Joint Action (2020-23) is tasked with reviewing best practices in monitoring the marketing of unhealthy foods and non-alcoholic drinks and will develop, test, and adapt an EU-wide Monitoring Protocol to support Member States’ monitoring of unhealthy food marketing to children, with a particular focus on digital marketing. This document was created to fulfil Task 6.4.1 of Work Package 6 of Best-ReMaP. The aim of 6.4.1 is to identify, describe and compare the existing global protocols to monitor marketing of unhealthy food and non-alcoholic drinks to children, identifying the best practices in monitoring that could feed into the design of an EU-wide harmonised and comprehensive monitoring protocol for reducing unhealthy food marketing to children (JA Task 6.4.3; Deliverable D6.3). This review consulted with WP6.4 partners (Member States and technical experts) to understand their needs regarding the design of an EU-wide monitoring protocol. A knowledge and experience sharing workshop entitled “Monitoring food advertising: Progress, experiences, challenges, solutions” (JA Task 6.4.4, Milestone M6.5) took place on 9th of May 2022, in which countries shared their experiences in using marketing monitoring protocols and articulated their needs and expectations of the EU-wide monitoring protocol. Prior to holding this workshop, four global monitoring protocols were identified and reviewed: from the INFORMAS consortium, the Nordic Council of Ministers, and the World Health Organization (WHO) (Protocols and Templates, and the WHO CLICK framework). The design, content and scope of these four protocols are described and compared in this report, summarising the existing tools available to measure marketing in different channels, with a special focus on the digital marketing. Recommendations for the design of the EU-wide monitoring protocol are made and these will feed into further work on this Task. The result of this review is a set of recommendations on the design and content of key elements of the monitoring protocol. These are presented below with the key recommendations being: 1. Devise an EU-wide marketing monitoring framework that links to existing protocols hosted by WHO-Euro; 2. Assess routes to providing protocols for event-based sponsorship marketing and outdoor marketing; 3. Provide further contextual information and guidance for MS, particularly relating to digital marketing; 4. Provide further supporting materials for MS new to food marketing monitoring as a practice especially for the preparatory stages and to support resource planning; 5. Provide support materials for MS on working with and involving children and taking a child rights stance; 6. Identify the optimal site for hosting the EU-wide protocols to facilitate visibility, access and knowledge-sharing; and 7. Explore opportunities for knowledge sharing between MS on monitoring marketing

Yours ever (well, maybe): Studies and signposts in letter writing

Electronic mail and other digital communications technologies seemingly threaten to end the era of handwritten and typed letters, now affectionately seen as part of snail mail. In this essay, I analyze a group of popular and scholarly studies about letter writing-including examples of pundits critiquing the use of e-mail, etiquette manuals advising why the handwritten letter still possesses value, historians and literary scholars studying the role of letters in the past and what it tells us about our present attitudes about digital communications technologies, and futurists predicting how we will function as personal archivists maintaining every document including e-mail. These are useful guideposts for archivists, providing both a sense of the present and the past in the role, value and nature of letters and their successors. They also provide insights into how such documents should be studied, expanding our gaze beyond the particular letters, to the tools used to create them and the traditions dictating their form and function. We also can discern a role for archivists, both for contributing to the literature about documents and in using these studies and commentaries, suggesting not a new disciplinary realm but opportunities for new interdisciplinary work. Examining a documentary form makes us more sensitive to both the innovations and traditions as it shifts from the analog to the digital; we can learn not to be caught up in hysteria or nostalgia about one form over another and archivists can learn about what they might expect in their labors to document society and its institutions. At one time, paper was part of an innovative technology, with roles very similar to the Internet and e-mail today. It may be that the shifts are far less revolutionary than is often assumed. Reading such works also suggests, finally, that archivists ought to rethink how they view their own knowledge and how it is constructed and used. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V

Estudo Sobre O Estado Nutricional Em Relação Ao Zinco Na Amazônia. I. Níveis De Zinco No Sôro E Ingestão De Zinco Em Operários De Manaus, 1978 ()

The objective of this study was to verify if the low zinc intakes reported for the urban Amazon are associated with low serum zinc levels. A survey was carried out amongst the low salaried workers of four Manaus factories. Two of these factories provided meals and medical assistance. The mean and median dietary zinc intakes were 54.7% and 49.3% respectively of the American RDA. Zinc intakes were higher in those workers born in Manaus, that were better educated and that came from higher income families but these differences were only apparent in factories that didn't provide meals. Zinc intake decreased with age in both men and women, being higher in men than women in all age groups. These trends were observed in all factories. No significant difference was found between serum zinc levels for men and women. Whilst serum zinc values tended to decline with age in both sexes, there was no significant correlation with age in either sex. Mean serum zinc levels of low and medium family income workers were significantly lower than high family income workers. (P<.001 P<.05). 34% of all low family income, 26% of medium family income and 17% of high family income workers had deficient serum zinc levels (<11.5 μmol/l). Serum zinc concentrations were related to zinc intake in male (r = 0.26 p<.02) but not female workers (r=0.11 p<.1). Zinc intakes of male and female workers with deficient serum zinc levels were significantly lower than those with normal serum zinc levels. Zinc intakes of male workers were higher than those of female workers at all serum zinc levels.", 'enO objetivo deste estudo foi verificar se a baixa ingestão de zinco relatada para a população da área urbana da cidade de Manaus, no Estado do Amazonas, está associada com niveis balxos de zinco sérico. O estudo foi realizado com trabaIhadores percebendo salários baixos, em quatro fábricas de Manaus. Duas destas fábricas forneciam alimentação e assistência médica. A média e a mediana da ingestão de zinco dietético, foi 54.7% e 49.3% respectivamente das recomendações diárias. americanas. A ingestão de zinco foi mais alta nos trabalhadores nascidos em Manaus, que possuiam um meIhor nível de escolaridade e que tinham renda familiar mais alta, mas essas diferenças foram evidentes unicamente nas fábricas que não forneciam refeição. A ingestão de zinco diminui com a idade em ambos os sexos, sendo mais alto nos homens do que nas mulheres em todos os grupos por idade. Essa tendência foi observada em todas as fábricas. Não houve diferença significativa do nível de zinco sérico entre homens e mulheres. Porém o valor de zinco no soro tende a declinar também com a idade em ambos os sexos. A média do nível de zinco sérico de trabalhadores com renda familiar baixa e média foi significativamente mais baixa do que trabalhadores com renda familiar alta (P<.001. P<.05). 34% de todos os trabalhadores com renda familiar baixa, 26% com renda familiar média e 17% com renda familiar alta, tinham níveis de zinco sérico deficientes (< 11.5 μmol/l). A concentração de zinco no soro foi relacionada com ingestão de zinco do sexo masculino (r=0.26 p<.02) mas não em operários do sexo feminino (r=0.11 p<.1). A ingestão de zinco em trabalhadores de ambos os sexos com nível de zinco sérico déficiente foi significativamente mais baixa do que aqueles com nível de zinco sérico normal. A ingesta de zinco nos homens foi mais alta do que nas mulheres para todos os níveis de zinco sérico

Examining a staging model for anorexia nervosa: empirical exploration of a four stage model of severity.

Background: An illness staging model for anorexia nervosa (AN) has received increasing attention, but assessing the merits of this concept is dependent on empirically examining a model in clinical samples. Building on preliminary findings regarding the reliability and validity of the Clinician Administered Staging Instrument for Anorexia Nervosa (CASIAN), the current study explores operationalising CASIAN severity scores into stages and assesses their relationship with other clinical features. Method: In women with DSM-IV-R AN and sub-threshold AN (all met AN criteria using DSM 5), receiver operating curve (ROC) analysis (n = 67) assessed the relationship between the sensitivity and specificity of each stage of the CASIAN. Thereafter chi-square and post-hoc adjusted residual analysis provided a preliminary assessment of the validity of the stages comparing the relationship between stage and treatment intensity and AN sub-types, and explored movement between stages after six months (Time 3) in a larger cohort (n = 171). Results: The CASIAN significantly distinguished between milder stages of illness (Stage 1 and 2) versus more severe stages of illness (Stages 3 and 4), and approached statistical significance in distinguishing each of the four stages from one other. CASIAN Stages were significantly associated with treatment modality and primary diagnosis, and CASIAN Stage at Time 1 was significantly associated with Stage at 6 month follow-up. Conclusions: Provisional support is provided for a staging model in AN. Larger studies with longer follow-up of cases are now needed to replicate and extend these findings and evaluate the overall utility of staging as well as optimal staging models

The Relationship Between HR Practices and Firm Performance: Examining Causal Order

Significant research attention has been devoted to examining the relationship between HR practices and firm performance, and the research support has assumed HR as the causal variable. Using data from 45 business units (with 62 data points), this study examines how measures of HR practices correlate with past, concurrent, and future operational performance measures. The results indicate that correlations with performance measures at all three times are both high and invariant, and that controlling for past or concurrent performance virtually eliminates the correlation of HR with future performance. Implications are discussed

The Hidden Curriculum of Veterinary Education: Mediators and Moderators of Its Effects

The “hidden curriculum” has long been supposed to have an effect on students' learning during their clinical education, and in particular in shaping their ideas of what it means to be a professional. Despite this, there has been little evidence linking specific changes in professional attitudes to the individual components of the hidden curriculum. This study aimed to recognize those components that led to a change in students' professional attitudes at a UK veterinary school, as well as to identify the attitudes most affected. Observations were made of 11 student groups across five clinical rotations, followed by semi-structured interviews with 23 students at the end of their rotation experience. Data were combined and analyzed thematically, taking both an inductive and deductive approach. Views about the importance of technical competence and communication skills were promoted as a result of students' interaction with the hidden curriculum, and tensions were revealed in relation to their attitudes toward compassion and empathy, autonomy and responsibility, and lifestyle ethic. The assessment processes of rotations and the clinical service organization served to communicate the messages of the hidden curriculum, bringing about changes in student professional attitudes, while student-selected role models and the student rotation groups moderated the effects of these influences

On the formal foundations of cash management systems

[EN] Cash management aims to find a balance between what is held in cash and what is allocated in other investments in exchange for a given return. Dealing with cash management systems with multiple accounts and different links between them is a complex task. Current cash management models provide analytic solutions without exploring the underlying structure of accounts and its main properties. There is a need for a formal definition of cash management systems. In this work, we introduce a formal approach to manage cash with multiple accounts based on graph theory. Our approach allows a formal reasoning on the relation between accounts in cash management systems. A critical part of this formal reasoning is the characterization of desirable and non-desirable cash management policies. Novel theoretical results guide cash managers in the analysis of complex cash management systems.This work is partially funded by projects Logistar (H2020-769142), AI4EU (H2020-825619) and 2017 SGR 172.Salas-Molina, F.; Rodriguez-Aguilar, JA.; Pla Santamaría, D.; Garcia-Bernabeu, A. (2021). On the formal foundations of cash management systems. Operational Research. 21(2):1081-1095. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-019-00464-6S10811095212Baccarin S (2009) Optimal impulse control for a multidimensional cash management system with generalized cost functions. Eur J Oper Res 196(1):198–206Bollobás B (2013) Modern graph theory, vol 184. Springer, BerlinBondy JA, Murty USR (1976) Graph theory with applications, vol 290. Macmillan, LondonChartrand G, Oellermann OR (1993) Applied and algorithmic graph theory, vol 993. McGraw-Hill, New YorkConstantinides GM, Richard SF (1978) Existence of optimal simple policies for discounted-cost inventory and cash management in continuous time. Oper Res 26(4):620–636da Costa Moraes MB, Nagano MS, Sobreiro VA (2015) Stochastic cash flow management models: a literature review since the 1980s. In: Guarnieri P (ed) Decision models in engineering and management. Springer, Berlin, pp 11–28de Avila Pacheco JV, Morabito R (2011) Application of network flow models for the cash management of an agribusiness company. Comput Ind Eng 61(3):848–857Golden B, Liberatore M, Lieberman C (1979) Models and solution techniques for cash flow management. Comput Oper Res 6(1):13–20Gormley FM, Meade N (2007) The utility of cash flow forecasts in the management of corporate cash balances. Eur J Oper Res 182(2):923–935Gregory G (1976) Cash flow models: a review. Omega 4(6):643–656Makridakis S, Wheelwright SC, Hyndman RJ (2008) Forecasting methods and applications. Wiley, New YorkRighetto GM, Morabito R, Alem D (2016) A robust optimization approach for cash flow management in stationery companies. Comput Ind Eng 99:137–152Salas-Molina F (2017) Risk-sensitive control of cash management systems. Oper Res. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-017-0371-0Salas-Molina F, Pla-Santamaria D, Rodriguez-Aguilar JA (2018) A multi-objective approach to the cash management problem. Ann Oper Res 267(1):515–529Srinivasan V, Kim YH (1986) Deterministic cash flow management: state of the art and research directions. Omega 14(2):145–166Valiente G (2013) Algorithms on trees and graphs. Springer, Berli