DETERMINANTS OF FOOD AWAY FROM HOME AMONG AFRICAN-AMERICANS

The prominence of FAFH on consumers food expenditure raises some important questions, particularly those related to the health impact of such a trend. This is particularly true among African-Americans because on average African Americans are twice as likely as white Americans to develop Type 2 diabetes, which has been known to have some correlation with ones diet. There is a plethora of studies focusing on FAFH by American consumers. However, there are very few studies that focus exclusively on African-Americans. This study tries to fill that gap.food demand, FAFH, minorities, health, nutrition, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,

A cluster randomised control trial of a multi-component weight management programme for adults with intellectual disabilities and obesity

There have been few published controlled studies of multi-component weight management programmes that include an energy deficit diet (EDD), for adults with intellectual disabilities and obesity. The objective of this study was to conduct a single-blind, cluster randomised controlled trial comparing a multi-component weight management programme to a health education programme. Participants were randomised to either TAKE 5, which included an EDD or Waist Winners Too (WWToo), based on health education principles. Outcomes measured at baseline, 6 months (after a weight loss phase) and 12 months (after a 6-month weight maintenance phase), by a researcher blinded to treatment allocation, included: weight; BMI; waist circumference; physical activity; sedentary behaviour and health-related quality of life. The recruitment strategy was effective with fifty participants successfully recruited. Both programmes were acceptable to adults with intellectual disabilities, evidenced by high retention rates (90 %). Exploratory efficacy analysis revealed that at 12 months there was a trend for more participants in TAKE 5 (50·0 %) to achieve a clinically important weight loss of 5-10 %, in comparison to WWToo (20·8 %) (OR 3·76; 95 % CI 0·92, 15·30; 0·064). This study found that a multi-component weight management programme that included an EDD, is feasible and an acceptable approach to weight loss when tailored to meet the needs of adults with intellectual disabilities and obesity

Improving NRM Investment through a policy performance lens

Choosing a mechanism to encourage landholders to change their land management in order to deliver environmental outcomes is a complicated process. Careful instrument selection may count for little if uptake and adoption are insufficient to meet performance targets. Similarly, investors may require assurance that the proposed investment will deliver the stated goals. In order to reduce the uptake uncertainty facing policy makers we evaluate and describe several possible methods to guide and frame adoption targets. We conclude that referring to past adoption experience of a wide range of mechanisms offers the best approach to setting feasible adoption targets for future mechanisms. We call this adoption points of reference. This approach is tested by application to mechanisms focusing on delivering water quality improvements in GBR catchments. We conclude that the points of reference approach is appropriate and useful but should be supported by processes designed to incorporate the impact of heterogeneity and local knowledge and an emphasis on improving the accuracy of future data.adoption targets, NRM investment, reasonable assurance, water quality,

Optimization of double drive pulse pumping in Ne-like Ge x-ray lasers

Pumping of the Ne-like Ge x-ray laser with two 100 ps duration pulses (a prepulse and main pulse) is investigated using a fluid and atomic physics code coupled to a 3D ray tracing postprocessor code. The modeling predicts the optimum ratio of the irradiance of the two pulses for the maximum x-ray laser output resulting from the balance between the relative lower electron density gradients and wider gain region which is produced with a larger prepulse and the higher peak gain coefficients produced with a small prepulse. With a longer pulse interval between prepulse and main pulse, a relatively lower optimum pulse ratio is found. The threshold irradiance of the main driving pulse with a prepulse required to make an order of magnitude enhancement of laser output compared to irradiation without a prepulse is also found at 3-4x10(13) W/cm(2) for Ne-like Ge. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics

EDUCATION AND LIFELONG LEARNING – FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE OF A NEW PARADIGMA

Globalisation and the knowledge-based society generate multiple challenges and opportunities with respect to initial education for all and continuing training of labour force. The learning paradigm changes with respect to contents and amplitude of the learning process, and mainly its interconnection elements, their learning mechanisms and financial support. Lifelong learning has multiple functions: adjusting demand and supply of competencies on labour market, increasing the volume and share of employment, increasing productivity and competitiveness on the internal and external market, participation to community life, strengthening economic and social cohesion, active European citizenship. With respect to these exigencies, LLL in Romania – under its most diverse aspects – is yet far from the standards reached in developed countries. A strategy is necessary in the field with well-defined competencies and responsibilities of various actors, and their behaviours in accordance with the demands of the third millennium

Feeding Relationship Between Two Synoptic, Morphologically Similar Fishes, the Western Mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) and the Blackspotted Topminnow (Fundulus olivaceus)

We sampled fish during the summer of 1999, in Caney Bayou on the campus of the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Jefferson County, in order to study the feeding relationship between the western mosquitofish (Gambusia ajfinis) and the blackspotted topminnow (Fundulus olivaceus). We identified and enumerated the diet items of 56 blackspotted topminnows and 28 mosquitofish that were captured using electroshocking, seining, and dipnetting. Pooled diet items for each species were analyzed using a variety of approaches: percent of diet composition, frequency of occurrence, Levins\u27 measure of diet breadth, and Morisita\u27s measure of diet overlap. Twenty-one percent of mosquitofish and 8.9% of the blackspotted topminnow had empty stomachs. The mean number of individual prey items in mosquitofish stomachs was 2.5 (SD = 2.1), while the mean number of items for blackspotted topminnows was 72.5 (SD = 118.68). Detritus (37%), terrestrial insects (34%) and chironomids (16%) were the three major components of the western mosquitofish diet. Cladocerans comprised 96% of the blackspotted topminnow diets. The diet breadth for the western mosquitofish (0.51) was relatively broad compared to the blackspotted topminnow (0.01). Diet overlap between these species was low (0.01)

Experiments and Simulations of short-pulse laser-pumped extreme ultraviolet lasers

Recent experimental work on the development of extreme ultraviolet lasers undertaken using as the pumping source the VULCAN laser at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory is compared to detailed simulations. It is shown that short duration (similar topicosecond) pumping can produce X-ray laser pulses of a few picosecond duration and that measurement of the emission from the plasma can give an estimate of the duration of the gain coefficient. The Ehybrid fluid and atomic physics code developed at the University of York is used to simulate X-ray laser gain and plasma emission. Two postprocessors to the Ehybrid code are utilized: 1) to raytrace the X-ray laser beam amplification and refraction and 2) to calculate the radiation emission in the kiloelectronvolt photon energy range. The raytracing and spectral simulations are compared, respectively, to measured X-ray laser output and the output of two diagnostics recording transverse X-ray emission. The pumping laser energy absorbed in the plasma is examined by comparing the simulations to experimental results. It is shown that at high pumping irradiance (>10(15) Wcm(-2)), fast electrons are produced by parametric processes in the preformed long scale-length plasmas. These fast electrons do not pump the population inversion and so pumping efficiency is reduced at high irradiance

A multigroup diffusion solver using pseudo transient continuation for a radiation-hydrodynamic code with patch-based AMR

We present a scheme to solve the nonlinear multigroup radiation diffusion (MGD) equations. The method is incorporated into a massively parallel, multidimensional, Eulerian radiation-hydrodynamic code with adaptive mesh refinement (AMR). The patch-based AMR algorithm refines in both space and time creating a hierarchy of levels, coarsest to finest. The physics modules are time-advanced using operator splitting. On each level, separate level-solve packages advance the modules. Our multigroup level-solve adapts an implicit procedure which leads to a two-step iterative scheme that alternates between elliptic solves for each group with intra-cell group coupling. For robustness, we introduce pseudo transient continuation (PTC). We analyze the magnitude of the PTC parameter to ensure positivity of the resulting linear system, diagonal dominance and convergence of the two-step scheme. For AMR, a level defines a subdomain for refinement. For diffusive processes such as MGD, the refined level uses Dirichet boundary data at the coarse-fine interface and the data is derived from the coarse level solution. After advancing on the fine level, an additional procedure, the sync-solve (SS), is required in order to enforce conservation. The MGD SS reduces to an elliptic solve on a combined grid for a system of G equations, where G is the number of groups. We adapt the partial temperature scheme for the SS; hence, we reuse the infrastructure developed for scalar equations. Results are presented. (Abridged)Comment: 46 pages, 14 figures, accepted to JC