Familial fictions: families and food, convenience and care

Purpose: The paper explores the way diverse family forms are depicted in recent TV advertisements and how the ads may be read as an indication of contemporary attitudes to food. It focuses particularly on consumers’ ambivalent attitude towards convenience foods, given the way these foods are moralized within a highly gendered discourse of ‘feeding the family’. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a critical reading of the advertisments and their complex meanings for diverse audiences, real and imagined. The latter part of the paper draws on the results of ethnographically-informed fieldwork in the north of England. Findings: The research highlights the value of food as a ‘lens’ on contemporary family life. It challenges the conventional distinction between convenience and care, arguing that convenience food can be used as an expression of care. Research limitations: The paper makes limited inferences about audiencing processes in the absence of direct empirical evidence. Practical implications: The research has implications for providers of ‘healthy eating’ advice, attending to the way that individual food choices are embeddded within the practices of everyday life. Originality/value: The paper’s value lies in its original interpretation of TV food advertising within the context of contemporary family life and in the novel connections that are drawn between convenience and care

Consumer anxieties about food grain safety in China

China has a long history of eating staple plant foods which are mainly derived from food grains, especially rice and wheat. Food grain safety has been a worrying challenge on health and nutrition grounds in China, although evidence clearly suggests that expanding agricultural production is linked to reducing undernourishment. The focus of this study is to investigate consumers’ anxieties about food grain safety in China. The nature and extent of consumer anxieties about grain safety, the cause of these anxieties, and possible ways to relieve anxiety are empirically analyzed. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews with 142 grain consumers in 29 provinces of China, in both rural and urban areas, during 2016. The results show that consumers are worried about the production and processing safety of food grains and genetically modified cereals and that the causes of anxiety are varied. Anxiety is amplified by social media reports of food scandals, polluted ecological environments, the high incidence of food-related chronic diseases and cancer, concerns about food system governance and lack of knowledge and ability to identify grain quality. Consumers seek to relieve their anxiety by identifying grain quality themselves, choosing foreign grains and paying close attention to reports about unsafe food. These findings have important implications for future programs aimed at improving consumer confidence about grain safety

Antithrombotic Treatment for Acute Extracranial Carotid Artery Dissections: A Meta-Analysis

IntroductionCarotid artery dissection is a leading cause of stroke in younger patients, with an associated prevalence of 2.6–3.0 per 100,000 population. This meta-analysis aims to determine whether in patients managed medically, treatment with anticoagulants or antiplatelet agents was associated with a better outcome with respect to mortality, ischaemic stroke, and major bleeding episodes.Patients and methodsA comprehensive search strategy was employed of the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE (January 1966 to March 2015), and EMBASE (January 1980 to March 2015) databases. Primary outcomes were death (all causes) or disability. Secondary outcomes were ischaemic stroke, symptomatic intracranial haemorrhage, and major extracranial haemorrhage during the reported follow-up period.ResultsNo completed randomized trials were found. Comparing antiplatelets with anticoagulants across 38 studies (1,398 patients), there were no significant differences in the odds of death (effects size, ES, −0.007, p = .871), nor in the death and disability comparison or across any secondary outcomes.ConclusionThere were no randomised trials comparing either anticoagulants or antiplatelets with control, thus there is no level 1 evidence to support their routine use for the treatment of carotid artery dissection. Also, there were no randomised trials that directly compared anticoagulants with antiplatelet drugs, and the reported non-randomised studies did not show any evidence of a significant difference between the two

Dynamic response of full-scale sandwich composite structures subject to air-blast loading

Glass-fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) sandwich structures (1.6 m × 1.3 m) were subject to 30 kg charges of C4 explosive at stand-off distances 8–14 m. Experiments provide detailed data for sandwich panel response, which are often used in civil and military structures, where air-blast loading represents a serious threat. High-speed photography, with digital image correlation (DIC), was employed to monitor the deformation of these structures during the blasts. Failure mechanisms were revealed in the DIC data, confirmed in post-test sectioning. The experimental data provides for the development of analytical and computational models. Moreover, it underlines the importance of support boundary conditions with regards to blast mitigation. These findings were analysed further in finite element simulations, where boundary stiffness was, as expected, shown to strongly influence the panel deformation. In-depth parametric studies are ongoing to establish the hierarchy of the various factors that influence the blast response of sandwich composite structures

Proteorhodopsin overproduction enhances the long-term viability of Escherichia coli

Genes encoding the photoreactive protein proteorhodopsin (PR) have been found in a wide range of marine bacterial species, reflecting the significant contribution that PR makes to energy flux and carbon cycling in ocean ecosystems. PR can also confer advantages to enhance the ability of marine bacteria to survive periods of starvation. Here, we investigate the effect of heterologously produced PR on the viability of Escherichia coli. Quantitative mass spectrometry shows that E. coli, exogenously supplied with the retinal cofactor, assembles as many as 187,000 holo-PR molecules per cell, accounting for approximately 47% of the membrane area; even cells with no retinal synthesize ∼148,000 apo-PR molecules per cell. We show that populations of E. coli cells containing PR exhibit significantly extended viability over many weeks, and we use single-cell Raman spectroscopy (SCRS) to detect holo-PR in 9-month-old cells. SCRS shows that such cells, even incubated in the dark and therefore with inactive PR, maintain cellular levels of DNA and RNA and avoid deterioration of the cytoplasmic membrane, a likely basis for extended viability. The substantial proportion of the E. coli membrane required to accommodate high levels of PR likely fosters extensive intermolecular contacts, suggested to physically stabilize the cell membrane and impart a long-term benefit manifested as extended viability in the dark. We propose that marine bacteria could benefit similarly from a high PR content, with a stabilized cell membrane extending survival when those bacteria experience periods of severe nutrient or light limitation in the oceans

A Nonlinear Force-Free Magnetic Field Approximation Suitable for Fast Forward-Fitting to Coronal Loops. I. Theory

We derive an analytical approximation of nonlinear force-free magnetic field solutions (NLFFF) that can efficiently be used for fast forward-fitting to solar magnetic data, constrained either by observed line-of-sight magnetograms and stereoscopically triangulated coronal loops, or by 3D vector-magnetograph data. The derived NLFFF solutions provide the magnetic field components $B_x({\bf x})$, $B_y({\bf x})$, $B_z({\bf x})$, the force-free parameter $\alpha({\bf x})$, the electric current density ${\bf j}({\bf x})$, and are accurate to second-order (of the nonlinear force-free $\alpha$-parameter). The explicit expressions of a force-free field can easily be applied to modeling or forward-fitting of many coronal phenomena.Comment: Solar Physics (in press), 26 pages, 11 figure

Charge Fluctuations on Membrane Surfaces in Water

We generalize the predictions for attractions between over-all neutral surfaces induced by charge fluctuations/correlations to non-uniform systems that include dielectric discontinuities, as is the case for mixed charged lipid membranes in an aqueous solution. We show that the induced interactions depend in a non-trivial way on the dielectric constants of membrane and water and show different scaling with distance depending on these properties. The generality of the calculations also allows us to predict under which dielectric conditions the interaction will change sign and become repulsive

Light scattering from disordered overlayers of metallic nanoparticles

We develop a theory for light scattering from a disordered layer of metal nanoparticles resting on a sample. Averaging over different disorder realizations is done by a coherent potential approximation. The calculational scheme takes into account effects of retardation, multipole excitations, and interactions with the sample. We apply the theory to a system similar to the one studied experimentally by Stuart and Hall [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 80}, 5663 (1998)] who used a layered Si/SiO$_2$/Si sample. The calculated results agree rather well with the experimental ones. In particular we find conspicuous maxima in the scattering intensity at long wavelengths (much longer than those corresponding to plasmon resonances in the particles). We show that these maxima have their origin in interference phenomena in the layered sample.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure

Nonlinear electrodynamics of p-wave superconductors

We consider the Maxwell-London electrodynamics of three dimensional superconductors in p-wave pairing states with nodal points or lines in the energy gap. The current-velocity relation is then nonlinear in the applied field, cubic for point nodes and quadratic for lines. We obtain explicit angular and depth dependent expressions for measurable quantities such as the transverse magnetic moment, and associated torque. These dependences are different for point and line nodes and can be used to distinguish between different order parameters. We discuss the experimental feasibility of this method, and bring forth its advantages, as well as limitations that might be present.Comment: Fourteen pages RevTex plus four postscript figure

Programmable models of growth and mutation of cancer-cell populations

In this paper we propose a systematic approach to construct mathematical models describing populations of cancer-cells at different stages of disease development. The methodology we propose is based on stochastic Concurrent Constraint Programming, a flexible stochastic modelling language. The methodology is tested on (and partially motivated by) the study of prostate cancer. In particular, we prove how our method is suitable to systematically reconstruct different mathematical models of prostate cancer growth - together with interactions with different kinds of hormone therapy - at different levels of refinement.Comment: In Proceedings CompMod 2011, arXiv:1109.104