Parental child-feeding strategies in relation to Dutch children's fruit and vegetable intake

Objective: To identify parental child-feeding strategies that may increase children's fruit or vegetable intake, since the relationship between these strategies and children's intake has never been investigated for fruit and vegetables as two separate food groups. Design: A survey study, where parents provided information about their practices in relation to feeding their children and about their own and their children's fruit and vegetable intake. Children completed a preference questionnaire about fruit and vegetables. To find underlying parental child-feeding strategies, factor analysis was applied to parents' practices in relation to fruit and vegetables separately. Regression analysis was used to predict the effect of these strategies on children's fruit and vegetable intake. The impact of the strategies was further analysed by estimating children's intake based on the frequency of use of specific strategies. Setting: The study was conducted at three primary schools in The Netherlands. Subjects: A total of 259 children between 4 and 12 years old and their parents (n242). Results: Parents used different strategies for fruit as compared with vegetables. The vegetable-eating context was more negative than the fruit-eating context. Parental intake and presenting the children with choice were positive predictors of children's intake of both fruit and vegetables. The intake difference based on frequency of use of the strategy 'Choice' was 40 g/d for vegetables and 72 g/d for fruit (

Goal-directed visual attention drives health goal priming: an eye-tracking experiment

Objective: Several lab and field experiments have shown that goal priming interventions can be highly effective in promoting healthy food choices. Less is known, however, about the mechanisms by which goal priming affects food choice. This experiment tested the hypothesis that goal priming affects food choices through changes in visual attention. Specifically, it was hypothesized that priming with the dieting goal steers attention toward goal-relevant, low energy food products, which, in turn, increases the likelihood of choosing these products. Methods: In this eye-tracking experiment, 125 participants chose between high and low energy food products in a realistic online supermarket task while their eye movements were recorded with an eye-tracker. One group was primed with a health and dieting goal, a second group was exposed to a control prime, and a third group was exposed to no prime at all. Results: The health goal prime increased low energy food choices and decreased high energy food choices. Furthermore, the health goal prime resulted in proportionally longer total dwell times on low energy food products, and this effect mediated the goal priming effect on choices. Conclusions: The findings suggest that the effect of priming on consumer choice may originate from an increase in attention for prime-congruent items. This study supports the effectiveness of health goal priming interventions in promoting healthy eating and opens up directions for research on other behavioral interventions that steer attention toward healthy foods

Transboundary Externalities and Property Rights: An International River Pollution Model

In this paper we study international river pollution problems. We introduce a model in which the agents (countries) located along a river derive benefit while causing pollution, but also incur environmental costs of experiencing pollution from all upstream agents. We find that total pollution in the model decreases when the agents decide to cooperate. The resulting gain in social welfare can be distributed among the agents based on the property rights over the river. Using principles from international water law we suggest 'fair' ways of distributing the property rights and therefore the cooperative gain

Spin and orbital moments of ultra-thin Fe films on various semiconductor surfaces

The magnetic moments of ultrathin Fe films on three different III-V semiconductor substrates, namely GaAs, InAs and In0.2Ga0.8As have been measured with X-ray magnetic circular dichroism at room temperature to assess their relative merits as combinations suitable for next-generation spintronic devices. The results revealed rather similar spin moments and orbital moments for the three systems, suggesting the relationship between film and semiconductor lattice parameters to be less critical to magnetic moments than magnetic anisotropy

Applications of Trajectory Data From the Perspective of a Road Transportation Agency: Literature Review and Maryland Case Study

Transportation agencies have an opportunity to leverage increasingly-available trajectory datasets to improve their analyses and decision-making processes. However, this data is typically purchased from vendors, which means agencies must understand its potential benefits beforehand in order to properly assess its value relative to the cost of acquisition. While the literature concerned with trajectory data is rich, it is naturally fragmented and focused on technical contributions in niche areas, which makes it difficult for government agencies to assess its value across different transportation domains. To overcome this issue, the current paper explores trajectory data from the perspective of a road transportation agency interested in acquiring trajectories to enhance its analyses. The paper provides a literature review illustrating applications of trajectory data in six areas of road transportation systems analysis: demand estimation, modeling human behavior, designing public transit, traffic performance measurement and prediction, environment and safety. In addition, it visually explores 20 million GPS traces in Maryland, illustrating existing and suggesting new applications of trajectory data

A Strategic Implementation of the Average Tree Solution for Cycle-Free Graph Games

In this note we provide a strategic implementation of the Average Tree solution for zero-monotonic cycle-free graph games. That is, we propose a non-cooperative mechanism of which the unique subgame perfect equilibrium payoffs correspond to the average hierarchical outcome of the game. This mechanism takes into account that a player is only able to communicate with other players (i.e., to make proposals about a division of the surplus of cooperation) when they are connected in the graph. © 2013 Elsevier Inc