Adolescents’ food packaging perceptions. Does gender matter when weight control and health motivations are considered?

This paper investigates, first, to what extent adolescents highly involved in food are more worried about weight control and health than less involved adolescents. Second, it studies the impact of both food choice motivations on food packaging relevance, considering both, visual and informative packaging cues. Finally, these relationships are re-tested in two different frameworks: men and to this end, 589 adolescent consumers between 14 and 17 years were questioned. The interviews were done personally by an external company at the door of 30 different schools. Our results have confirmed the relevance of packaging informative cues over visual cues for adolescents highly worried about weight control and health. Women are significantly more involved in food than men, being also more worried about weight control and health than them. Even more, women pay significantly more attention than men on informative cues when they choose a food to control weight.     

Bibliography

Stress management programmes have become a feature of workplace training programmes and health-related activities. What they expect to achieve, or how, is not always clear. Positivistic science and medicine has difficulty with the complexities of involved human experiences. The value systems of the individual, the organization, and the society interact in complex and powerful ways, forming an inner reality which demands new ways of study and understanding.

Stress management intervention has to be seen not only as an attack on disease but also as a vehicle for promoting organizational and individual well-being. Doctors going into these areas must realize they are entering a higher-order system and thereby changing their tracitional professional role, and that their results will be measured against different criteria. Competition for scarce resources, and perhaps hostility from management, will be new experiences. Management will have a different world view and this has to be recognized and respected. Mutual interests must be identified. A formula might be: ‘health in the individual is health in the organization and vice versa’.

The theoretical models of stress and the approaches currently used in stress management programmes will be reviewed critically in an attempt to break the constraints of illness-dominated thinking and to envisage their potential for positive health and personal development. The case of ‘the healthy back’ will be taken as an example of this wider health-promoting model.     

新疆大坂隧洞工程施工过程中合同管理

以新疆大坂隧洞工程施工合同管理为例,从如何学习合同文件、处理各方关系、加强项目施工要素管理等方面分析了合同管理应注意的问题,以期提高合同管理水平,增加企业经济效益。     

Methylmercury in fish species used in preparing sashimi: A case study in Brazil

The objective of this work was to determine the organic and total mercury contents in twelve fish species used in preparing sashimi in Japanese restaurants and estimate the exposure to organic mercury due to the consumption of this food. The mercury species were quantified by atomic absorption with thermal decomposition and amalgamation. Total mercury was analyzed directly, whereas organic mercury was quantified after extraction with toluene in an acid medium using a microwave assisted system. Needlefish and tuna showed the highest levels of mercury species and salmon and mullet the lowest levels. The mean ratios between MeHg⁺/total Hg were 93% and 87% for sandperch and octopus, respectively, indicating that the most toxic form (organic Hg) predominates in these species. Exposure to methylmercury was estimated based on the PTWI and the results showed that the ingestion of 2 portions of needlefish and tuna exceeded the values established by 100%.     

A comparative study of trends of nitrate,chloride and phosphate concentration levels in selected urban rivers

Concerns for the river environment in Malaysia are highlighted. There had been occurrences of inadequate supply for water in big cities and unexpected floods over the last few years. This paper discussed and compared the results of efforts to clean-up Gombak River which passes through several industrial areas and the City of Kuala Lumpur and Penchala River which passes through the industrial areas and the neighboring City of Petaling Jaya. The trends in the levels of nitrates, chlorides and phosphates present in the rivers were analyzed. Over the period of thirteen years from 1997 to 2009, results of efforts which included public participation, engineering and river works and strict statutory regulations by government had shown success in improving the river water quality. Continued efforts from stakeholders must be harnessed to enhance the health of the Gombak River and the Penchala River.     

Understanding Why Scholars Hold Different Views on the Influences of Video Games on Public Health

Despite decades of research, no scholarly consensus has been achieved regarding the potential impact of video games on youth aggression or other public health concerns. In recent years, hypotheses have been raised that scholarly opinions on video games may resemble past moral panics, with attitudes reflective of generational conflicts. These hypotheses are tested in a sample of 175 criminologists, psychologists, and media scholars, examining both overall negative attitudes about video games and perceived linkages with youth assaults specifically. Results reflected continued lack of scholarly consensus on the issue of video game influences with only 15.3% of scholars endorsing the view that violent video games contribute to youth assaults. As hypothesized, older scholars endorsed more negative views of video games generally, although this appeared to be related to experience with games rather than age per se. Scholars with more negative attitudes toward youth themselves were also more negative about games. Criminologists and media scholars were more skeptical of violent video games contributing to youth assaults than were psychologists. These results are discussed in relation to Moral Panic Theory.     

Pattern analysis in daily physical activity data for personal health management

Purpose: sedentary lifestyles have resulted in an increasing number of people who are at increased risk of various conditions and diseases, including overweight, obesity, and metabolic syndromes. Our objective was to systematically record the daily life journal on a platform to increase the self-awareness and improve the sedentary lifestyle and to assist clinicians in understanding and facilitating patients’ daily physical activity.Method: we developed a portable activity pattern recognition system designed to automatically recognize the daily activity habits of users, and provide visualized life logs on the wellness self-management platform for patients and clinicians. Based on the participants’ and the clinician’s comments, appropriate modifications were made.Results: persuading people to improve their activities during non-working hours can enhance the general physical activity. Since users’ smartphones automatically monitor their energy expenditure, healthcare professionals can use these data to assist their patients in addressing health problems stemming from the obesity or metabolic syndromes, thus empowering users to avert or delay the progression of diabetes, cardiovascular disease and other complications.Discussion and conclusions: the clinical pilot study showed the feasibility of applying this persuasive technology to improve the physical activity of overweight people. The limitation of the study is the need for Wi-Fi and 3G environments and a smartphone.     

Affective Experience Measurement in Outdoor Environment via Machine Visual Cognition

Outdoor environments with quality landscapes can benefit people’s physical and mental health. Real-time assessment on individuals’ environmental affective experience can improve the scientism in measuring the quality of outdoor environments. Existing measurement methods are often insufficient for the cases of a larger site area or sample size. The machine visual cognition of Artificial Intelligence can realize the recognition of facial expressions and the changes in video images, which supports high-precision and long-cycle measurements on individuals’ affective experience in outdoor environments. Taking an urban community square as the study site, this research simultaneously collects participants’ facial data from video images and their electrodermal activity data, wherein Convolutional Neural Network algorithm model is trained with a deep learning algorithm, i.e. codec–SVM optimized model, whose reliability is tested through an additional experiment. The research reveals that: 1) The accuracy rate of the main and additional experiments in measuring individuals’ affective experience is 82.01% and 65.08%, respectively; 2) The additional experiment verifies the application potential of the codec–SVM optimized model; And 3) the model works more effective for outdoor scenarios with varying usage behaviors and open views. Therefore, machine visual cognition can be used for emotion measurement in a larger site area or sample size and contributes to the effectiveness of landscape optimization efforts, especially as an instrumental tool to study the affective experience of the ones who have communication or reading disability. The findings also demonstrate the model’s great potential in building Smart Cities with refined public services.     

Re-understanding the antecedents of functional foods purchase: Mediating effect of purchase attitude and moderating effect of food neophobia

The world market for functional foods has grown dynamically and China is expected to be one of the most promising markets. But little is understood the formation mechanisms of consumers’ purchase attitude and intention toward functional foods in Mainland China. The current study investigates the roles of trust, health consciousness and price in shaping consumers’ purchase intention toward functional foods by focusing on purchase attitude as a mediator and food neophobia as a moderator. Results from the sample of 1144 Chinese suggest that Chinese consumers had moderate purchase intention toward functional foods. Trust in the food system and health consciousness positively affects purchase intention via purchase attitude. Price negatively affects purchase intention; meanwhile, the negative effect could be counteracted by health consciousness. Food neophobia does not directly affect individuals’ purchase attitude or intention, but moderates the relationships between antecedents and them. Consumers with a low level of food neophobia treat higher price as a monetary sacrifice, while their counterparts may regard a higher price as a greater quality signal. The study offers the food industry insights into the development and marketing of functional foods targeted to the Mainland China market.     

Validating the moderating role of age in multi-perspective acceptance model of wearable healthcare technology

The recent trend of aging population, not to mention the unprecedented pandemic, draws great attention from the general public about health concerns. Since healthcare information technology is different from non-healthcare information technology, additional contexts should be properly incorporated into technology acceptance research to accurately identify influential factors affecting the acceptance of wearable healthcare technology. Thus, we selectively reconfigured factors from health, privacy, and socio-demographic contexts to formulate a health-aware acceptance model. Then, it was empirically analyzed using structural equation modeling. Based on the results, whereas privacy concerns were directly associated with intention to use wearable healthcare technology, health concerns were not. Moreover, age had a moderating effect on social influence and facilitating conditions. These findings suggest valuable insights that the adoption rate of healthcare technology is increased by 1) keeping personal information securely, 2) facilitating social interaction among users, and 3) offering intuitive user experience for elderly people.