Lessons learnt from a feasibility study on price incentivised healthy eating promotions in workplace catering establishments

Background It is recognised that the worksite catering sector is likely to play a pivotal role in influencing dietary intake in adults of working age. The present study aimed to assess the feasibility of engaging worksites in a healthy eating intervention, implementing a price incentivised main meal intervention and measuring indicative intervention responses to inform the design of a future trial. Methods Workplaces registered with the Scottish Healthy Living Award were invited to participate. The EatSMART intervention (a reduced price, healthy meal combination plus promotions) was implemented over 10 weeks in two worksites. Implementation was assessed by observational and sales data. Indicative effects on food habits were measured using online pre- and post-intervention questionnaires. Focus group discussions and interviews were used to determine catering staff and consumer acceptability. Results Thirty-seven worksites were invited to participate and four worksites responded positively. Two sites (with 1600 and 500 employees, respectively) participated. Both required significant implementation support. Estimated sales data indicated that the uptake of promoted items varied by week (range 60–187 items) and by site. A poor response rate from questionnaires limited the evaluation of intervention impact. Consumers reported improved value for money and quality. Both sites reported an intention to continue the intervention delivery. Conclusions Significant efforts are required to engage worksite catering teams and implement healthy eating interventions. Evaluation methods require further development to improve data collection. Responses from consumers and catering staff suggest that further work in this area would be welcomed

Speculation

‘Speculation’ originally meant ‘reflective observation’. It came to mean ‘conjecture’ or ‘mere conjecture’ as philosophers strove for certainty, consecrating science as rigorously acquired knowledge accumulated through application of the scientific method and devalued the cognitive status of other discourses. The present conventional meaning of speculation, where the place of observation has disappeared, is a by-product of this consecration. In this entry I show how through efforts to defend the status of these other discourses, the original meaning of ‘speculation’ was not only revived but built upon by speculative philosophers. They showed that speculation is primordial to all experience and thinking, with past speculations embodied in language as ‘dead’ metaphors. Revealing the possibility of elaborating alternative metaphors frees us not only from these dead metaphors to overcome the dead-ends of current science, opening up new possibilities for enquiry, but the possibility of reconceiving ourselves and our place in nature. In this way, speculation makes it possible to transform ourselves, creating radically new ways of living and new forms of life. On this view, speculation, by opening new possibilities, could free us from the destructive trajectories of current civilization

International Wildlife Law : Understanding and Enhancing Its Role in Conservation

We gratefully acknowledge valuable input by Kees Bastmeijer, Sanja Bogojevic, Jennifer Dubrulle, and Han Somsen.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Hybrid Equation/Agent-Based Model of Ischemia-Induced Hyperemia and Pressure Ulcer Formation Predicts Greater Propensity to Ulcerate in Subjects with Spinal Cord Injury

Pressure ulcers are costly and life-threatening complications for people with spinal cord injury (SCI). People with SCI also exhibit differential blood flow properties in non-ulcerated skin. We hypothesized that a computer simulation of the pressure ulcer formation process, informed by data regarding skin blood flow and reactive hyperemia in response to pressure, could provide insights into the pathogenesis and effective treatment of post-SCI pressure ulcers. Agent-Based Models (ABM) are useful in settings such as pressure ulcers, in which spatial realism is important. Ordinary Differential Equation-based (ODE) models are useful when modeling physiological phenomena such as reactive hyperemia. Accordingly, we constructed a hybrid model that combines ODEs related to blood flow along with an ABM of skin injury, inflammation, and ulcer formation. The relationship between pressure and the course of ulcer formation, as well as several other important characteristic patterns of pressure ulcer formation, was demonstrated in this model. The ODE portion of this model was calibrated to data related to blood flow following experimental pressure responses in non-injured human subjects or to data from people with SCI. This model predicted a higher propensity to form ulcers in response to pressure in people with SCI vs. non-injured control subjects, and thus may serve as novel diagnostic platform for post-SCI ulcer formation. © 2013 Solovyev et al

The Architectural Design Rules of Solar Systems based on the New Perspective

On the basis of the Lunar Laser Ranging Data released by NASA on the Silver Jubilee Celebration of Man Landing on Moon on 21st July 1969-1994, theoretical formulation of Earth-Moon tidal interaction was carried out and Planetary Satellite Dynamics was established. It was found that this mathematical analysis could as well be applied to Star and Planets system and since every star could potentially contain an extra-solar system, hence we have a large ensemble of exoplanets to test our new perspective on the birth and evolution of solar systems. Till date 403 exoplanets have been discovered in 390 extra-solar systems. I have taken 12 single planet systems, 4 Brown Dwarf - Star systems and 2 Brown Dwarf pairs. Following architectural design rules are corroborated through this study of exoplanets. All planets are born at inner Clarke Orbit what we refer to as inner geo-synchronous orbit in case of Earth-Moon System. By any perturbative force such as cosmic particles or radiation pressure, the planet gets tipped long of aG1 or short of aG1. Here aG1 is inner Clarke Orbit. The exoplanet can either be launched on death spiral as CLOSE HOT JUPITERS or can be launched on an expanding spiral path as the planets in our Solar System are. It was also found that if the exo-planet are significant fraction of the host star then those exo-planets rapidly migrate from aG1 to aG2 and have very short Time Constant of Evolution as Brown Dwarfs have. This vindicates our basic premise that planets are always born at inner Clarke Orbit. This study vindicates the design rules which had been postulated at 35th COSPAR Scientific Assembly in 2004 at Paris, France, under the title ,New Perspective on the Birth & Evolution of Solar Systems.Comment: This paper has been reported to Earth,Moon and Planets Journal as MOON-S-09-0007

Weakened magnetic braking as the origin of anomalously rapid rotation in old field stars

A knowledge of stellar ages is crucial for our understanding of many astrophysical phenomena, and yet ages can be difficult to determine. As they become older, stars lose mass and angular momentum, resulting in an observed slowdown in surface rotation. The technique of 'gyrochronology' uses the rotation period of a star to calculate its age. However, stars of known age must be used for calibration, and, until recently, the approach was untested for old stars (older than 1 gigayear, Gyr). Rotation periods are now known for stars in an open cluster of intermediate age (NGC 6819; 2.5 Gyr old), and for old field stars whose ages have been determined with asteroseismology. The data for the cluster agree with previous period-age relations, but these relations fail to describe the asteroseismic sample. Here we report stellar evolutionary modelling, and confirm the presence of unexpectedly rapid rotation in stars that are more evolved than the Sun. We demonstrate that models that incorporate dramatically weakened magnetic braking for old stars can---unlike existing models---reproduce both the asteroseismic and the cluster data. Our findings might suggest a fundamental change in the nature of ageing stellar dynamos, with the Sun being close to the critical transition to much weaker magnetized winds. This weakened braking limits the diagnostic power of gyrochronology for those stars that are more than halfway through their main-sequence lifetimes.Comment: 25 pages, 3 figures in main paper, 6 extended data figures, 1 table. Published in Nature, January 2016. Please see https://youtu.be/O6HzYgP5uyc for a video description of the resul

The challenges of intersectionality: Researching difference in physical education

Researching the intersection of class, race, gender, sexuality and disability raises many issues for educational research. Indeed, Maynard (2002, 33) has recently argued that ‘difference is one of the most significant, yet unresolved, issues for feminist and social thinking at the beginning of the twentieth century’. This paper reviews some of the key imperatives of working with ‘intersectional theory’ and explores the extent to these debates are informing research around difference in education and Physical Education (PE). The first part of the paper highlights some key issues in theorising and researching intersectionality before moving on to consider how difference has been addressed within PE. The paper then considers three ongoing challenges of intersectionality – bodies and embodiment, politics and practice and empirical research. The paper argues for a continued focus on the specific context of PE within education for its contribution to these questions

A population-based cohort study on sun habits and endometrial cancer

Background:No large cohort study has examined the risk of endometrial cancer in relation to sun exposure.Methods:A population-based cohort study of 29 508 women who answered a questionnaire in 1990-92, of whom 24 098 responded to a follow-up enquiry in 2000-02. They were followed for an average of 15.5 years.Results:Among the 17 822 postmenopausal women included, 166 cases of endometrial cancer were diagnosed. We used a multivariate Cox regression analysis adjusting for age and other selected demographic variables to determine the risk of endometrial cancer. Women using sun beds >3 times per year reduced their hazard risk (HR) by 40% (0.6, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.4-0.9) or by 50% when adjusting for body mass index or physical activity (HR 0.5, 95% CI 0.3-0.9), and those women who were sunbathing during summer reduced their risk by 20% (HR 0.8 95% CI 0.5-1.5) compared with women who did not expose themselves to the sun or to artificial sun (i.e., sun beds).Conclusion:Exposure to artificial sun by the use of sun beds >3 times per year was associated with a 40% reduction in the risk of endometrial cancer, probably by improving the vitamin D levels during winter.British Journal of Cancer advance online publication, 23 June 2009; doi:10.1038/sj.bjc.6605149 www.bjcancer.com

Risk, Unexpected Uncertainty, and Estimation Uncertainty: Bayesian Learning in Unstable Settings

Recently, evidence has emerged that humans approach learning using Bayesian updating rather than (model-free) reinforcement algorithms in a six-arm restless bandit problem. Here, we investigate what this implies for human appreciation of uncertainty. In our task, a Bayesian learner distinguishes three equally salient levels of uncertainty. First, the Bayesian perceives irreducible uncertainty or risk: even knowing the payoff probabilities of a given arm, the outcome remains uncertain. Second, there is (parameter) estimation uncertainty or ambiguity: payoff probabilities are unknown and need to be estimated. Third, the outcome probabilities of the arms change: the sudden jumps are referred to as unexpected uncertainty. We document how the three levels of uncertainty evolved during the course of our experiment and how it affected the learning rate. We then zoom in on estimation uncertainty, which has been suggested to be a driving force in exploration, in spite of evidence of widespread aversion to ambiguity. Our data corroborate the latter. We discuss neural evidence that foreshadowed the ability of humans to distinguish between the three levels of uncertainty. Finally, we investigate the boundaries of human capacity to implement Bayesian learning. We repeat the experiment with different instructions, reflecting varying levels of structural uncertainty. Under this fourth notion of uncertainty, choices were no better explained by Bayesian updating than by (model-free) reinforcement learning. Exit questionnaires revealed that participants remained unaware of the presence of unexpected uncertainty and failed to acquire the right model with which to implement Bayesian updating