Self Control and Food Consumption at Home and in the Wild - Empirical Evidence of the Age Cohorts in Taiwan

As the increasing prevalence of obesity in the world, how to prevent increasing body weight has became important policy issue. This paper addresses this issue using the behavioral economic models to empirically test food consumption behaviors and self-control problem. In contrast to replying on experimental evidence of the behavioral economic studies, age cohort data are constructed for households in Taiwan and food away from home and several categories of food consumption at home are recognized. Results show that self-control problem are evident for food away from home, and the effects are more pronounced for younger age cohorts. In contrast, staple and secondary food consumption at home are more stable across life-time periods and no self-control problem is evident.cohort analysis, food expenses, self-control, behavior economics., Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Institutional and Behavioral Economics,

Fully resonant four-wave mixing spectroscopy of pentacene and dye molecules in condensed phases

Four-wave mixing spectroscopy (FWM) including coherent anti-stokes Raman spectroscopy (CARS) and coherent stokes Raman spectroscopy (CSRS) have been studied for pentacene doped in naphthalene crystals at low temperatures (4.5 to 35 K) in order to investigate nonlinear optical behavior of the third-order nonlinear susceptibility, X(\u27(3)). Further, its application to study of cresyl violet perchlorate embedded in polyacrylic acid and in polyvinyl carbazole has been examined;The theoretical basis for line narrowing has been established for fully resonant four wave mixing for a four-level system. A careful line-narrowing study for the pentacene 755 cm(\u27-1) resonance in naph- thalene illustrates that line narrowing is operative. Temperature dependent studies indicate that the excited state population mech- anism for negative detuning involves phonon hotband absorption. Power broadening data are discussed in terms of dynamic Stark shifts resulting from the site inhomogeneous line broadening of vibronic transitions. Novel temperature-dependent CARS data for positive detuning are presented and tentatively interpreted in terms of the interplay between dephasing induced coherent emission and the temperature dependence of the phonon sideband absorption building on the (0\u27,0) band;Cresyl violet perchlorate in polyacrylic acid shows that the CARS intensity of the excited state resonance at 585 cm(\u27-1) depends on the location of the (omega)(,1)-field within the severely inhomogeneously broadened absorption profile of the dye. It is argued that the linear electron-phonon interaction is an important mechanism for the intensity of the excited state resonance. Time-dependent CARS spectra suggest that the hole burning effect is responsible for the changes of the absolute intensities for ground and excited state vibrational resonances. The absence of line narrowing in the CARS and CSRS spectra is reported and discussed. However, cresyl violet perchlorate in polyvinyl carbazole presents different features in the CARS spectra. The corresponding excited state resonance is very weak at low temperatures. A significant interference from nonreso-;nant to contribution to X(\u27(3)) is reported. Some other experimental results are presented and qualitatively discussed; *DOE Report IS-T-1206. This work was performed under contract No. W-7405-Eng-82 with the U.S. Department of Energy

Effects of Occupational Noise Exposure on 24-Hour Ambulatory Vascular Properties in Male Workers

BACKGROUND: Epidemiologic studies have demonstrated that occupational noise exposure is associated with hypertension, but the related mechanism in vascular structural changes is unclear. OBJECTIVE: This panel study aimed to investigate effects of occupational noise exposure on ambulatory vascular structural properties in male workers. METHODS: We recruited 20 volunteers and divided them into a high-noise- exposure group of 15 and a low-noise-exposure group of 5 based on environmental noise measurement in an automobile manufacturing company. We determined individual noise exposure and measured personal ambulatory vascular property parameters simultaneously during 24 hr. Linear mixed-effects regression models were used to estimate transient and sustained effects of noise exposure on vascular parameters by adjusting some confounders collected from self- administrated questionnaires and health checkups. RESULTS: The high-noise- exposed (85 ± 8 dBA) workers had significantly higher systemic vascular resistance (SVR) than the low-noise-exposed workers (59 ± 4 dBA) during work and sleep periods. Contrarily, low-noise-exposed workers had significantly higher brachial artery compliance (BAC), brachial artery distensibility (BAD), and systemic vascular compliance (SVC; marginal, p = 0.07) than high-noise-exposed workers during off-duty periods. We also found that high- noise-exposed workers had significantly lower BAC (1.38 ± 0 .55 %mL/mmHg) and BAD (1.29 ± 0.51 %/mmHg), as well as lower SVC (0. 24 ± 0.10 mL/L/mmHg), but higher SVR (1.93 ±0.67 mL/L/min) compared with low-noise-exposed workers over a 24-hr period. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that in automobile workers, occupational noise exposure may have sustained, not transient, effects on vascular properties and also enhances the development of hypertension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Environmental Health Perspectives is the property of Superintendent of Documents and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts

Hazardous Materials Transportation with Multiple Objectives: A Case Study in Taiwan

Hazardous material (hazmat) transportation has been an important issue for handling hazardous materials, such as gases and chemical liquids. In the past, researchers have made great efforts to develop policies and route planning methods for hazmat transportation problems. In 2014, Kaohsiung City in Taiwan suffered a gas pipeline explosion at midnight; 32 people were killed, and hundreds of people were injured. After the incident, policies and routing strategies for hazardous materials (hazmat) transportation in Kaohsiung were initiated to avoid pipeline transportation. Although methodologies for hazmat transportation have been proposed and implemented to minimize potential risks, multiple objectives need to be considered in the process to facilitate hazmat transportation in Taiwan. In order to consider both government and operators’ aspects, a multi-objective formulation for the hazmat problem is proposed and a compromise programming method is applied to solve the problem with two objectives: travel cost and risk. The path risk is defined based on risk assessment indexes, such as road characteristics, population distribution, link length, hazardous material characteristics, and accident rates. An aggregate risk indicator is proposed for roadway segments. The compromise programming approach is developed from the concept of compromise decision and the main idea is to search the compromise solution closest to the ideal solution. The proposed method is applied to Kaohsiung City, Taiwan. The results show that two conflicting objectives keep making trade-offs between each other until they finally reach a compromise solution

Micromagnetic simulation of magnetofossils with realistic size and shape distributions: Linking magnetic proxies with nanoscale observations and implications for magnetofossil identification

We build micromagnetic models to investigate the magnetic properties of biogenic magnetite - a common type of magnetic minerals that is responsible for recording a wide range of biological, geophysical and geological processes on earth. The geometry of modelled particles is based on realistic size and shape distributions from nanoscale observations. Systematic changes in microstructures of biogenic magnetite ensembles are built and their magnetic properties are calculated, which enables a quantitative and separate assessment of the effect of crystal morphology and chain structures. Although the same particle size and shape distributions are used in all calculations, simulation results document large variations in magnetic properties, i.e., wide distributions of coercivity (Bc = ~10-60 mT), coercivity of remanence (Bcr = ~14-81 mT), dispersion parameter (DP = ~0.1-0.5), and skewness values (S = ~0.7-1.1) due to variable degree of anisotropy and magnetostatic interactions. Previously, the commonly observed "biogenic soft" and "biogenic hard" components on biogenic magnetite-bearing samples were often interpreted to reflect crystal morphologies, and that the small DP values of coercivity distributions were an indication of narrow particle size distributions. Our simulations suggest that these speculations are not always the case and that magnetosome microstructures likely exert a dominant control over their magnetic properties. Our modelling results provide a new theoretical perspective on the magnetic properties of biogenic magnetite, which is important for understanding magnetic proxy signals from magnetofossils in a wide range of environmental and geological settings, and for the search for biogenic magnetite in terrestrial rocks and in extra-terrestrial materials.European Research Counci

Directed diffraction without negative refraction

Using the FDTD method, we investigate the electromagnetic propagation in two-dimensional photonic crystals, formed by parallel air cylinders in a dielectric medium. The corresponding frequency band structure is computed using the standard plane-wave expansion method. It is shown that within partial bandgaps, waves tend to bend away from the forbidden directions. This phenomenon perhaps need not be explained in terms of negative refraction or `superlensing' behavior, contrast to what has been conjectured.Comment: 3 pages, 4 figure