Are you what you eat? Healthy behaviour and risk preferences

We elicit and estimate risk preferences for a pool of young adults in the UK, and explore their links with healthy eating and risky health behaviours. We construct the Healthy Eating Index (HEI) as an overall indicator of nutritional quality, and we use it to complement the body mass index BMI. While for females we find no significant association between the BMI and risk preferences, males with high BMI appear more risk-seeking. However, this association disappears when controlling for the quality of the diet. For males, the HEI is significantly associated with risk preferences. Males smoking status is not associated with risk preferences

Informal caregivers of persons with dementia, their use of and needs for specific professional support: a survey of the national dementia programme

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>This paper describes both the use of and needs for informal caregivers of people with dementia, based on a questionnaire survey organized within the National Dementia Programme in the Netherlands. The National Dementia Programme is a quality collaborative of the Dutch Alzheimer's Association, the Institute of Quality of Healthcare (CBO) and the Knowledge Centre on Ageing (Vilans), instigated by the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, to improve integrated care for people with dementia and their informal caregivers. The support needs of informal caregivers are important to improve caregiver well-being and delaying institutionalization of the person with dementia.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>In the period April 2006 - January 2007, the National Dementia Programme questionnaire was completed by 984 informal caregivers. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the use of and needs for additional professional support by informal caregivers. Chi-square tests were used to assess the relationships between characteristics of the caregivers (spouses, sons/daughters, sons/daughters in-law) and support needs on one hand and to assess the relationship between the living situation of the person with dementia (living at home or living in a nursing home or home for the elderly) and support needs on the other hand.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Almost all informal caregivers (92.6%) received some professional support. However, two thirds (67.4%) indicated they had one or more needs for additional professional support. Informal caregivers often need additional professional advice about what to do when their relative is frightened, angry of confused. Spouses reported different needs than sons or daughters (in-law): spouses relatively often need emotional support and sons or daughters (in-law) more often need information and coordination of dementia care.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Most of the informal caregivers report that they need additional information and advice, e.g. about how to cope with behavioral problems of their relative, about the progression of the illness trajectory, emotional support and coordination of dementia care. Future support programmes, e.g. in the field of case management, should address the specific needs of informal caregivers.</p

‘The world is best experienced at 18 mph’. The psychological wellbeing effects of cycling in the countryside: an Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis

Green Exercise (GE) refers to physical activity conducted whilst simultaneously engaging the natural environment. A substantial body of literature has now been accumulated that establishes that carrying out exercise in this way has significantly greater psychological wellbeing benefits than the non-GE equivalent. Hitherto, seldom has consideration been given to the individual meanings that doing GE has. This study, therefore, sought to understand the lived experience of the phenomenon amongst a group of serious male recreational road bicyclists aged between mid-30s and early 50s who routinely rode in the countryside. Eleven bicyclists participated in semi-structured interviews. Data were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. This revealed themes of mastery and uncomplicated joys; my place to escape and rejuvenate; and alone but connected. Findings indicate that green-cycling served to enhance the participants’ sense of wellbeing and in doing so helped them cope with the mental challenges associated with their lives. It is suggested that green-cycling merges the essential qualities of natural surroundings – including its aesthetic, feelings of calm and a chance for exploration – with the potential for physical challenge and, facilitated by modern technology, opportunities for prosocial behaviours. It also identifies how green-cycling may influence self-determined behaviours towards exercise regulation, suggesting more satisfying and enduring exercise experiences

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bugs. Most of those bugs will cause the service simply to fail in some circumstances. Attempts to provoke this type of failure are known as denial of service attacks. However a more dangerous type of failure is one that allows an external command to invoke some function on the server computer that was not supposed to be available. For example, a bug in a restricted server could allow a service to be requested before the necessary authentication has been performed, whilst even more seriously a bug in either class of server might allow commands to be given to the host computer that were not supposed to be part of the service at all. In the worst case, the bug may cause part of the external input to be executed by the host computer&apos;s command interpreter. This allows the intruder to run any operating system command they wish, to read or modify information, or alter the configuration or operation of the computer itself. Many services require special privileges to operate normally, and an