Home Cooking, Food Consumption and Food Production among the Unemployed and Retired Households

Utilizing the 1996 Canadian Food Expenditure survey matched with Canadian Nutrient File, we separate actual food consumption from observed expenditure and test the Permanent Income/Life Cycle Hypothesis on the true consumption data. We find that the lower food expenditure during periods of unemployment or retirement (previously reported in the literature), does not translate into poorer nutrition. Household calorie intake and major nutrient intake seem to be unaffected by changes in employment status. We find evidence that unemployed or retired households substitute food purchased from restaurants for food purchased for at home consumption. Further, with the 1998 Time Use Survey we find that individuals who are not employed devote more time for food preparation. Finally we present limited evidence that unemployed and retired households substitute precooked meals for meals made from primary ingredients.Food Production, Nutrition, Consumption Smoothing

Quantum Phase Imaging using Spatial Entanglement

Entangled photons have the remarkable ability to be more sensitive to signal and less sensitive to noise than classical light. Joint photons can sample an object collectively, resulting in faster phase accumulation and higher spatial resolution, while common components of noise can be subtracted. Even more, they can accomplish this while physically separate, due to the nonlocal properties of quantum mechanics. Indeed, nearly all quantum optics experiments rely on this separation, using individual point detectors that are scanned to measure coincidence counts and correlations. Scanning, however, is tedious, time consuming, and ill-suited for imaging. Moreover, the separation of beam paths adds complexity to the system while reducing the number of photons available for sampling, and the multiplicity of detectors does not scale well for greater numbers of photons and higher orders of entanglement. We bypass all of these problems here by directly imaging collinear photon pairs with an electron-multiplying CCD camera. We show explicitly the benefits of quantum nonlocality by engineering the spatial entanglement of the illuminating photons and introduce a new method of correlation measurement by converting time-domain coincidence counting into spatial-domain detection of selected pixels. We show that classical transport-of-intensity methods are applicable in the quantum domain and experimentally demonstrate nearly optimal (Heisenberg-limited) phase measurement for the given quantum illumination. The methods show the power of direct imaging and hold much potential for more general types of quantum information processing and control

Interpreting the Electron EDM Constraint

The ACME collaboration has recently announced a new constraint on the electron EDM, $|d_e| < 1.1 \times 10^{-29}\, e\, {\rm cm}$, from measurements of the ThO molecule. This is a powerful constraint on CP-violating new physics: even new physics generating the EDM at two loops is constrained at the multi-TeV scale. We interpret the bound in the context of different scenarios for new physics: a general order-of-magnitude analysis for both the electron EDM and the CP-odd electron-nucleon coupling; 1-loop SUSY, probing sleptons above 10 TeV; 2-loop SUSY, probing multi-TeV charginos or stops; and finally, new physics that generates the EDM via the charm quark or top quark Yukawa couplings. In the last scenario, new physics generates a "QULE operator" $(q_f \bar{\sigma}^{\mu \nu}{\bar u}_f) \cdot (\ell {\bar{\sigma}}_{\mu \nu} {\bar e})$, which in turn generates the EDM through RG evolution. If the QULE operator is generated at tree level, this corresponds to a previously studied leptoquark model. For the first time, we also classify scenarios in which the QULE operator is generated at one loop through a box diagram, which include SUSY and leptoquark models. The electron EDM bound is the leading constraint on a wide variety of theories of CP-violating new physics interacting with the Higgs boson or the top quark. We argue that any future nonzero measurement of an electron EDM will provide a strong motivation for constructing new colliders at the highest feasible energies.Comment: 23 pages plus appendices, 16 figure

Being Bad in a Video Game can Make Us Morally Sensitive

Several researchers have demonstrated that the virtual behaviors committed in a video game can elicit feelings of guilt. Researchers have proposed that such guilt could have prosocial consequences. However, this proposition has not been supported with empirical evidence. The current study examined this issue in a 2 2 (video game play vs. real world recollection guilt vs. control) experiment. Participants were first randomly assigned to either play a video game or complete a memory recall task. Next, participants were randomly assigned to either a guilt-inducing condition (game play as a terrorist/recall of acts that induce guilt) or a control condition (game play as a UN soldier/recall of acts that do not induce guilt). Results of the study indicate several important findings. First, the current results replicate previous research indicating that immoral virtual behaviors are capable of eliciting guilt. Second, and more importantly, the guilt elicited by game play led to intuition-specific increases in the salience of violated moral foundations. These findings indicate that committing "immoral" virtual behaviors in a video game can lead to increased moral sensitivity of the player. The potential prosocial benefits of these findings are discussed.Advertisin

Ergonomic Evaluation of Scaffold Building

AbstractThe present study evaluated the ergonomic hazards that are associated with scaffold building/erecting for one of the local construction companies and proposed recommendations for solution/control measures to mitigate those hazards. Ergonomic hazards were identified based on field observation and conversation with workers, superintendents/foremen, and managers. REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) was used to estimate the risks of entire-body injuries and disorders. Building/erecting scaffolds requires lifting/carrying heavy and bulky materials, awkward postures (e.g., reaching and holding overhead, and kneeling on the scaffolds), and repetitive motions (e.g., hammering the cuplocks). Exposure to these hazards lead to a high risk of musculoskeletal injuries and disorders, especially to the back and shoulder, for scaffold builders. Discussion among the researcher and the pertinent personnel of the company was made during presentation of the research findings, so recommendations for control measures could be better communicated. The recommendations include, but are not limited to: installing scaffold hoist pulley system or other hoist assistance systems, training provided to all field personnel on ergonomics of scaffold building/erecting, proper work-rest scheduling, and workplace stretching program

Examining Scientific Writing Styles from the Perspective of Linguistic Complexity

Publishing articles in high-impact English journals is difficult for scholars around the world, especially for non-native English-speaking scholars (NNESs), most of whom struggle with proficiency in English. In order to uncover the differences in English scientific writing between native English-speaking scholars (NESs) and NNESs, we collected a large-scale data set containing more than 150,000 full-text articles published in PLoS between 2006 and 2015. We divided these articles into three groups according to the ethnic backgrounds of the first and corresponding authors, obtained by Ethnea, and examined the scientific writing styles in English from a two-fold perspective of linguistic complexity: (1) syntactic complexity, including measurements of sentence length and sentence complexity; and (2) lexical complexity, including measurements of lexical diversity, lexical density, and lexical sophistication. The observations suggest marginal differences between groups in syntactical and lexical complexity.Comment: 6 figure