Loyal Tongue, Liberal Mind: International Students’ Experiences on Dietary Acculturation in England

This study explores the dietary experiences of international students in a British university, and how these phenomena differ from what they experienced in their home country. Ten participants were recruited using purposive sampling. The inclusion criteria were international students who had lived in England for less than a year; those with diet-related health problems were excluded. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and analyzed with Colaizzi’s method. This resulted in three main themes: changes in diet, new dietary experiences, and factors affecting dietary practices. Our findings also offer new insight about what international students might encounter relating to food and diet when studying abroad

Asymmetrical Performance and Abnormal Synergies of the Post-Stroke Patient Wearing SCRIPT Passive Orthosis in Calibration, Exercise and Energy Evaluation

© 2014 Qin Y, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.In the context of therapeutic human-robot interaction, it is important to detect human contribution in interaction with robots, thus to auto-tune a robot to compensate or resist based on such input. A passive orthosis is used to evaluate interaction based on kinematic data and energy flow model to identify human-contributions during interaction experiments with healthy subject and stroke patient. The results identified presence of abnormal synergies between wrist and fingers, showed a skewness apparent in stroke patient performance which seemed to decrease over-time after the rehabilitation practice and indicated lack of fine control. We hypothesise that the presented methods can be used as potential performance benchmarks allowing to identify subject’s contribution during an interaction session but also to observe extent of fine motor control over time.Peer reviewe

Inadequacies of micronutrient intake in normal weight and overweight young adults aged 18-25 years: a cross-sectional study

Objectives: This study aims to assess adequacy in micronutrient intake in comparison with reference nutrient intakes (RNI) and to identify differences in intakes between normal weight and overweight individuals. Study design: A sample of 542 university students (18e25 years), normal weight (N ¼ 369) and overweight (N ¼ 173), was included in a cross-sectional study. Methods: A three-day diet diary was used to assess energy and nutrient intake. BMI and waist circumference were measured. Results: Mean dietary vitamin D intake was lower than RNI in both men (4.44 mg) and women (5.04 mg). Mean intakes of calcium (597.44 mg), iron (8.62 mg) and folate (171.29 mg) were also lower than recommendations in women. Weight status (normal weight versus overweight) was significantly associated with micronutrient intake, and a trend towards a decrease in vitamin and mineral intake with increasing weight was noted. Conclusions: Results suggest the need to increase the intake of some micronutrients to meet the RNI, to ensure optimal health. This study provides a helpful tool to reinforce recommendations and potential health promotion and intervention strategies in university settings and could influence manufacturers involved in new food product development targeted to this young population