Factors Shaping Expenditure on Food-Away-from-Home in Irish and UK Households

End of project reportFactors influencing consumer spending in two sectors of the food-away-from-home (FAFH) market (quick-service e.g. takeaways, and full-service e.g. restaurants) were analysed using national household expenditure survey data. Different variables affect expenditure in the two sectors in different ways. Income has a greater effect on expenditure in the full-service sector than in the quick-service sector. Similarly households that are health-conscious indicate a greater preference for full-service meals while households which place more value on time (and therefore are more convenience-oriented) indicate a greater preference for quick-service. Households of a higher social class and those with higher education levels also appear to favour full-service expenditure. In addition, younger, urbanised households favour quickservice meal options. The results emphasise the merits of analysing different sectors within the FAFH market separately.Teagasc Walsh Fellowship Programm

Urban Adolescents\u27 Experiences of Parental Unemployment

A substantial number of children in the United States are being raised in households with an unemployed parent. These individuals may have unknown and unmet needs, as they are the first generation since the Great Depression to be raised during a time characterized by economic hardship and high unemployment. The purpose of this study was to explore how urban adolescents of unemployed parents experience parental unemployment. This qualitative study was informed by phenomenology for data collection and consensual qualitative research (CQR) for data analysis. Participants included 13 urban adolescents from low socio-economic status areas, who have been raised by unemployed parent(s) or caregiver(s). Data were organized into eight domains that describe how parental unemployment has influenced the personal and social identity and career development of urban adolescents. Results suggested that participants perceive parental unemployment increased awareness, positively and negatively influenced social activities, and positively motivated participants for future success at school and/or work. Implications for clinicians working with this population are discussed

A shift of allegiance: The case of Erie and the North / Midland boundary

The city of Erie, Pennsylvania represents an anomalous case in the dialect geography of North America. According to all available historical records, it was linguistically aligned with the North in the early part of the 20 th century: the lexical data presented in Kurath (1949) and Carver (1987) locate Erie within most of the Northern isoglosses, and the phonological data presented in Kurath and McDavid (1961) show that Erie shared nearly all of its phonological features with the North and only a few with the Midland. However, recent research for the Atlas of North American English (Labov et al. 2006) shows that Erie is now a Midland city, and the two ANAE speakers from Erie show no traces of the Northern Cities Shift. Crucially, the two pivot points in the vowel system, as defined by Labov (1991), show clear Midland characteristics: short-a exhibits raising before all nasals, but not the general raising of the NCS, and both speakers have a complete merger of the vowels in cot and caught. Erie’s shift from being a Northern city to a Midland city is surprising given that the North/Midland boundary is the most clearly defined dialect boundary in North America today (Labov et al. 2006). Furthermore, it would not be predicted by dialect diffusion models that only take population and distance into account, such as Trudgill’s (1974) Gravity Model: Buffalo and Cleveland, the large Northern Cities along Lake Erie on either side of Erie are more populous and closer to Erie than Pittsburgh, the nearest large Midland city. The current study provides a more detailed characterization of Erie, and presents vowel measurements from seven Erieites, ranging in age from 25 to 60. I n general, the results confirm ANAE’s finding that Erie is aligned with the Midland. H owever, the vowels systems of the Erie speakers are different from the neighboring Midland speakers in two respects. First of all, /ow/ does not participate in the strong fronting that is characteristic of Pittsburgh/Western PA: only the youngest speaker (a 25-year-old female) shows an F2 value for /ow/ that is higher than would be expected for a Northern speaker. Furthermore, while all speakers clearly have the low-back merger, the phonetic realization of the resulting phoneme is unrounded and lower than the distinctly rounded and raised open-o of the Pittsburgh area. Thus, while Erie is clearly phonologically aligned with Pittsburgh, the two regions are not phonetically identical. This realignment with the Midland suggests that Pittsburgh has had a stronger influence on Erie since the middle of the 20 th century than either of the two large nearby Northern cities. Qualitative evidence from sociolinguistic interviews will be presented to confirm this and to show that Erieites have more contact with speakers from Pittsburgh than either Buffalo or Cleveland. Much of this contact stems from the popularity of Erie as a summer vacation destination for residents of Pittsburgh, evidenced by the fact that some Erieites refer to these summer vacationers from Pittsburgh as mups (from come up ). It will be argued that this higher density of communication caused Erie to shift its phonological allegiance from the North to the Midland, and, consequently, that any model of dialect diffusion must take communication patterns into account in order to be fully explanatory

The permeability of dialect boundaries: a case study of the region surrounding Erie, Pennsylvania

This dissertation presents a dialectological study of the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, and the neighboring towns in the boundary area between the North and Midland dialect regions. The field work conducted for this dissertation consists of interviews, word lists, minimal pair tests, and grammatical acceptability judgments. In total, data from 106 speakers was analyzed to determine the course of linguistic change in the city of Erie and the current location of the dialect boundaries in the neighboring regions. In order to process the acoustic data from this large corpus, the methodology of transcription and subsequent forced alignment was applied. In order to reduce error in the formant measurements, automatic techniques for measurement point selection and formant prediction were developed. The acoustic analysis focuses on aspects of the vowel system that differentiate the North and the Midland. The results show that the merger of /o/ and /oh/ began in the city of Erie before 1900, and that it subsequently spread to Ripley, NY. On the other hand, Erie is still located on the Northern side of the boundary with respect to the fronting of the back upgliding vowels /uw/, /ow/, and /aw/. Finally, an analysis of the lexical and morphosyntactic variables shows a widespread acceptability of the Midland features in Erie. In the final section of the dissertation, the early settlement history of the region is examined, and Erie\u27s acceptance of several Midland features is explained by the early presence of a large contingent of non-Northern, especially Scots-Irish, settlers

Emotion Perception Correlates In Moderate And Severe Traumatic Brain Injury

Introduction: Studies have demonstrated that individuals with TBI experience impairments in emotion perception accuracy in facial and auditory modalities but does not yet understand patterns of emotion perception and their relation to neurocognitive performance. The current study assessed why emotion perception deficits occur via psychological and cognitive relationships as well as patterns of emotion misattributions. Methods: 50 adults with a bona-fide moderate or severe traumatic brain injury and 39 healthy comparison adults were included in the study. Eligible participants completed a battery of paper-and-pencil and computerized neuropsychological measures, including three tasks of emotion perception, and psychological questionnaires. Results: The TBI group underperformed on auditory and facial emotion perception tasks compared to healthy adults. Patterns of neuropsychological correlates of emotion perception were generally global, but nuanced depending on group membership and modality of emotion perception task. Findings about experienced affect suggest a moderating effect of experienced emotion depending on the intensity and content on facial emotion perception accuracy. Misattribution patterns revealed that individuals in the TBI group demonstrated the highest degree of omission errors compared to healthy adults. Additionally, they tended to observe emotion where there was none (i.e., when presented with neutral stimuli) and see it as negative more often than their healthy counterparts. Conclusions: The presence of low and high levels of experienced affect, specific neuropsychological relationships, and the pattern of misattribution errors were distinct for persons following TBI compared to their healthy counterparts in auditory and facial modalities of emotion perception. Findings from this current study enable education of providers and loved owes as well as additional research to improve social/interpersonal functioning and quality of life for persons with TBI

A numerical assessment of architectural parameters for anisotropic behavior in idealised trabecular structures

Bones macroscopically consist of two major constituents; namely cortical and trabecular (also known as cancellous) bone. Cortical bone is the hard and dense outer layer of bone, which holds majority of the load bearing capacity. Trabecular bone is the porous internal bone, which distributes loads at joints by allowing for a larger bearing surface and acts as an energy absorber. Trabecular bone has a complex, heterogeneous, anisotropic open cell lattice structure with a large variation in mechanical properties across anatomic site, species, sex, age, normal loading direction and disease state. A common attempt to account for this variation is to correlate the structure of the trabecular bone sample to the mechanical response, which requires a means of quantifying the structure. Microstructural indices such as bone volume vs. total volume (BV/TV), trabecular thickness (Tb.Th), trabecular separation (Tb.Sp), structural modal index (SMI) and mean intercept length (MIL) have been widely used to find correlations between structure and properties. Early studies only considered densitometric indices, which accounted for much of the variation however cross study correlations did not agree, leading to an interest in capturing non-scalar valued indices to account for features such as the anisotropy of the bone. The structural anisotropy varies from fully equiaxed to highly directional based on where the trabecular bone is located and what the function would be. The mean intercept length has been proposed as a measure of the structural anisotropy, specifically the interfacial anisotropy of the sample, which is commonly used to account for the mechanical anisotropy. This research falls within a longer term goal of investigating and understanding the mechanical anisotropy of trabecular bone. To that end, the anisotropy of regular lattice structures was investigated, with the particular goal that the investigated lattices were simple analogues for the more complex structures seen in trabecular bone. A framework for assessing the structure-property relations of trabecular bone is created, with focus on anisotropy. The mechanical anisotropy of idealised trabecular structures is quantified using well known microstructural indices, which are compared to the numerically determined mechanical response. The modelling methodology initially investigated 2D lattices that have very well known responses, such that the modelled approach could be verified. Three 2D lattices were used to do this, with the aim that the 3D lattices would be their analogues. Specifically a 2D square, hexagonal and triangular lattice were investigated. The square lattice is highly anisotropic as is the cubic lattice. The hexagonal lattice is isotropic with a large constraint effect as is the Kelvin cell, and the triangular lattice is isotropic with a small constraint effect. The octet-truss was the closest analogue to the triangular lattice, having a small constraint effect and being less anisotropic than the cubic lattice. The three 3D lattices were chosen to represent highly directional trabecular bone (using a cubic lattice) and more equiaxed trabecular bone, with the fully isotropic Kelvin cell lattice (also known as a tetrakaidecahedron) and the octet-truss lattice which has a lower degree of anisotropy than the cubic. Two confinement arrangements were also investigated as analogues for the trabecular bone at the free surface and at the cortical surface. To assess the mean intercept length analysis as a measure of mechanical anisotropy, this research performed the analysis on three 3D periodic lattice structures and compared the results to mechanical properties which were numerically determined using finite element analysis. The mean intercept analysis was performed by generating 3D images for the lattices, similar to the output of (mu)CT images, using a combination of open-source software and custom code, and performing the analysis in BoneJ, an open-source software package. The mechanical response was determined using two methods, namely discrete and continuum modelling approaches. The discrete approach characterised the lattice with each strut modelled as a Timoshenko beam element solved in LS-DYNA. To capture the anisotropy, the lattice had to be loaded at arbitrary angles, which was achieved by a rotating the whole lattice and cropping it to a specified test region using custom code. The continuum modelling approach used a homogenisation approach by treating the lattice as a solid material with effective properties, this was solved in a custom implicit solver written in MATLAB using solid elements. The anisotropy was modelled by transforming the elasticity tensor to arbitrary coordinate systems to load the model in arbitrary directions. The discrete modelling approach suffered from high computational costs and difficulty in removing the boundary effects, all of which would be worsened for models of real trabecular bone. However the discrete approach did accurately captured the mechanical behaviour of the lattices tested. The continuum approach accurately captured some of the responses but failed to capture all behaviour caused by confinement. The continuum model could not capture the switch in predominant deformation mode of the 2D hexagonal lattice caused by lateral confinement, and failed to accurately capture the symmetry of the highly anisotropic 3D cubic lattice. The mean intercept length analysis failed to capture the anisotropic response of simple periodic lattices, showing no significant difference between the octet-truss and cubic lattices, despite them having a very large difference in mechanical anisotropy. It also showed that the Kelvin cell lattice had the highest degree of geometric anisotropy, which is compared to having the lowest mechanical anisotropy being the only fully isotropic 3D lattice investigated. The mechanical investigation showed that the lateral confinement has a large effect, significantly scaling the response of isotropic lattices whilst distinctly changing the anisotropic behaviour of the cubic and octet-truss lattice. The mean intercept length analysis cannot capture the mechanical confinement effect from geometry alone, and thus fails to capture the mechanical response due to confinement Overall, the continuum modelling approach showed difficulty in capturing the confinement effect in all lattices and thus a more robust method is required. The mean intercept analysis proved unsuccessful in capturing the mechanical response of three periodic idealised trabecular structures. A new microstructural index that can capture the mechanical anisotropy is required, with the ability to consider the effects of confinement on the structure

Urban Adolescents\u27 Experiences of Parental Unemployment

A substantial number of children in the United States are being raised in households with an unemployed parent. These individuals may have unknown and unmet needs, as they are the first generation since the Great Depression to be raised during a time characterized by economic hardship and high unemployment. The purpose of this study was to explore how urban adolescents of unemployed parents experience parental unemployment. This qualitative study was informed by phenomenology for data collection and consensual qualitative research (CQR) for data analysis. Participants included 13 urban adolescents from low socio-economic status areas, who have been raised by unemployed parent(s) or caregiver(s). Data were organized into eight domains that describe how parental unemployment has influenced the personal and social identity and career development of urban adolescents. Results suggested that participants perceive parental unemployment increased awareness, positively and negatively influenced social activities, and positively motivated participants for future success at school and/or work. Implications for clinicians working with this population are discussed

A study of the effects of glucose and oxygen deficiency on the function of synaptosomes: A model for ischaemia in immature and adult rat brain

Immature animals show a heightened resistance to episodes of ischaemia in comparison with fully matured animals. Although this phenomenon has been observed for a number of decades, the underlying physiological and biochemical mechanisms allowing this increased resistance remain obscure. This study has concentrated on comparing a number of biochemical responses of neonatal and adult nerve terminals to episodes of in vitro ischaemia and reperfusion. Under such conditions of metabolic stress it was found that adult and neonatal isolated nerve terminals (synaptosomes) behaved very differently. Adult synaptosomes exhibited a decrease in adenosine triphosphate (ATP) levels and an increase in cytosolic calcium during ischaemia. Following a short recovery period there was a significant production of the free radical nitric oxide from adult synaptosomes. Increased calcium levels and increased free radicals have been implicated as causative factors in mitochondrial dysfunction. There was a significant decrease in the activities of two enzymes of the mitochondrial respiratory chain, namely complex II-III and complex IV after ischaemia in the adult synaptosomes. Neonatal synaptosomes did not exhibit increased cytosolic calcium or nitric oxide production. Furthermore there was no significant decrease in the activity of any of the enzymes of the mitochondrial respiratory chain after ischaemia/reperfusion in these neonatal synaptosomes. Oxidative stress of adult and neonatal synaptosomes was induced by the addition of exogenous peroxynitrite - a highly damaging reactive oxygen species which is widely implicated in oxidative damage. Adult synaptosomes exhibited the same pattern of mitochondrial dysfunction as that occurring after ischaemia/reperfusion. Furthermore, neonatal synaptosomes once again showed no such dysfunction. The total antioxidant status of adult and neonatal synaptosomes was found to be similar, however neonatal synaptosomes showed a two-fold greater concentration of the antioxidant peptide reduced glutathione. Interestingly, measured glutathione levels were also found to significantly increase in neonatal synaptosomes following ischaemia, but not in adult synaptosomes. it is concluded that oxidative damage to nerve terminals may have a role in the increased susceptibility of adult animals to episodes of ischaemia/reperfusion, and that glutathione could have an important role in protection

The Forgotten Few: French Canadians and the Great War

Geoff Keelan is a PhD Candidate at the University of Waterloo under Dr. Whitney Lackenbauer. He studies Quebec and the First World War, specifically the role of Henri Bourassa during the war, French Canadian veterans and other themes that challenge the traditionally understood narrative of Quebec during the Great War