Monitoring voluntary food intake in female endurance athletes

Female athletes may demonstrate a poor ability to quantify portion sizes and educational sessions using food models do not always improve accuracy. Female cyclists with the highest body fat do not report the highest energy intakes during 70 days of training and racing. Training loads can influence reported daily energy intake.

Discourse of conscience in the assessment of voluntary assignments in equity

This article examines the continuing suitability of the existing Australian test for determining when a voluntary assignment of legal property has passed in equity. It suggests that the current test, which focuses upon the ‘completion’ by the donor of the all the necessary transfer formalities, and the underlying equitable maxims that support it, should be revised to better reflect the dual concerns of assignment and constructive trust. The article reviews the English authorities, in particular the English Court of Appeal in Pennington v Waine, which held that the equitable jurisdiction can validate a voluntary assignment of legal property where, in the circumstances, it would be unconscionable to allow the donor to resile. It is argued that this approach represents an appropriate progression because it provides greater scope for a particularised examination of the intention, circumstances and behaviour surrounding the purported assignment. A test which encourages greater contextual examination of the overall circumstances underlying the assignment process is consistent with the core expectations of equitable methodology. It supports the multi-layered process of determining whether a donor intended the assignment and further, whether that donor should be held liable as constructive trustee.

A study of voluntary disclosure by listed firms in China

This study investigates the impact of changed disclosure environment on listed Chinese firms in respect of their disclosure decisions. It provides empirical evidences showing that firms have positively responded to the pressure exerted by regulatory bodies in China. Voluntary information disclosure has been adopted by firms to achieve stakeholder salience.

I have to want to do it : gaining 'voluntary' compliance with fear, guilt, and shame appeals in social marketing campaigns

This paper presents results from a qualitative study of income support recipients with regard to how they feel about advertising which overtly appeals to their sense of fear, guilt and shame. The motivation of the study was to provide formative research for a social marketing campaign designed to increase compliance with income reporting requirements. This study shows that negative appeals with this group of people are more likely to invoke self-protection and inaction rather than an active response such as volunteering to comply. Social marketers need to consider the use fear, guilt and shame to gain voluntary compliance as the study suggests that there has been an overuse of these negative appeals. While more formative research is required, the future research direction aim would be to develop an instrument to measure the impact of shame on prosocial decision-making; particularly in the context of social networks rather than the wider society.

Voluntary exercise does not affect stress-induced tachycardia, but improves resistance to cardiac arrhythmias in rats

1. It is currently unknown whether long-term voluntary exercise has enduring cardioprotective effects in animal models.

2. The present study was conducted in three groups of rats: (i) sedentary controls (n = 6); (ii) 24 h runners (n = 8; unlimited access to running wheels); and (iii) 2 h runners (n = 8; access to running wheels limited to 2 h daily). After termination of the 6 week exercise protocol, all rats were implanted with the telemetric electrocardiogram transmitters and were studied 1 week later.

3. Resting heart rate (HR) values in the control rats, 24 h runners and 2 h runners were 372 ± 7, 361 ± 9 and 298 ± 5 b.p.m., respectively (P < 0.05 for 2 h runners vs controls). The high-frequency spectral power in the control rats, 24 h runners and 2 h runners was 3.9 ± 0.2, 4.3 ± 0.3 and 5.3 ± 0.3 s2, respectively (P < 0.05 for 2 h runners vs controls), whereas intrinsic HR was 383 ± 3, 377 ± 2 and 346 ± 3 b.p.m., respectively (P < 0.001 for 2 h runners vs controls). Restraint stress provoked tachycardia of similar magnitude in all groups.

4. After completion of telemetric studies, haemodynamic indices and susceptibility to cardiac arrhythmias were assessed in anaesthetized animals, there were no major between-group differences in HR, arterial pressure, contractility indices or sensitivity to β-adrenoceptor stimulation (dobutamine) or blockade (atenolol). The effective refractory period in the control rats, 24 h runners and 2 h runners was 49 ± 2, 55 ± 2 and 60 ± 4 ms, respectively (P = 0.054 for 2 h runners vs controls). A significantly higher dose of aconitine was required to provoke ventricular arrhythmias in the 24 h and 2 h running groups compared with controls (489 ± 76, 505 ± 88 and 173 ± 33 μg, respectively; P < 0.05).

5. We conclude that, in rats, long-term voluntary exercise has enduring cardioprotective effects mediated at the level of both the central nervous system and the heart.

Voluntary disclosure in a changing regulatory environment : evidence from Chinese stock market

This paper investigates the voluntary disclosure made by 297 Chinese listed firms in their 1995-2006 annual reports. It aims to determine how firms in the Chinese stock market have responded to the coercive pressure exerted upon them by the market regulatory body, the Chinese Security Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in terms of providing transparent information to the stock market. The findings show that over the study period, listed firms have gradually increased their voluntary disclosure. This paper also explores the main characteristics of voluntary disclosure made by listed firms in the Chinese stock market. It is concluded that voluntary disclosure has been adopted by firms to achieve institutional legitimacy in the stock market.

IT consultants' voluntary contract termination - a psychological contract perspective

This research explores the question why IT consultants terminate their employment contracts in a labour market with job drought, downsizing and salary cuts when they were among those who kept their jobs during layoffs. A process model for the maintenance of a psychological contract between employees and employers is presented, which combines the concept of psychological contract with a theory of the relation between intrinsic motivation and management practices and with theories of identity, self-esteem, influence and power. The research verifies and specifies the model based on a revelatory case study. The model helps explaining IT consultants’ behavior of voluntarily terminating their employment contracts beyond the crisis situation in the IT industry some years ago which motivated this research originally. It should assist managers in a more general context in avoiding practices, which might lead to their employees’ loss of intrinsic motivation and as a consequence to the loss of valuable employees for the organization.

A study of voluntary disclosure of listed Chinese firms - a stakeholder perspective

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate stakeholder power changes and their impact on firms' disclosure decisions in the Chinese stock market. Using legitimacy theory and stakeholder theory, the paper identifies newly emerged stakeholder groups for listed Chinese firms during three distinguished periods of the development of the Chinese stock market.

Design/methodology/approach – Panel data analysis was undertaken over a period from 1995-2006 with an aim to examine the influence of stakeholder power changes on voluntary disclosures made by 297 listed firms in their 12 years of annual reports. A voluntary disclosure checklist has been used for hand-collecting data from annual reports.

Findings – The finding shows that different stakeholder groups exert different degrees of influence on firms' decision-making in respect of information disclosure during different stages of the development of the Chinese stock market.

Research limitations/implications – The impact of a stakeholder power changes on corporate disclosure has not been well addressed and how listed Chinese firms respond to these changes is still a significant gap in the Chinese corporate disclosure literature. In this study, the paper uses proxies to represent each stakeholder group, discuss power changes of each group and predict the impact of power changes on firms' voluntary disclosure.

Originality/value – The paper identifies the new content of the “social contract” between listed firms and Chinese society and identifies various stakeholder groups of listed Chinese firms in the context of a new “social contract”. The paper predicts that voluntary corporate disclosure is the result of stakeholder pressures and firms use voluntary disclosure as one of their strategies to manage the firm-stakeholder relationship.

Voluntary demand for auditing by farm businesses: an Australian perspective

 This study investigates voluntary demand for auditing by Australian farm businesses, a significant but relatively unexplored segment of the economy. Most farms operate as family partnerships or sole proprietors and we thus focus on incentives to audit arising from internal sources (owner-manager), controlling for traditional incentives arising from external contractual constraints (i.e., debt), organisational characteristics (i.e., size), and agency conflict. We hypothesise that an external audit assists management in enhancing internal control by complementing the process of profit planning and control (budgeting) and that increased family conflict provides an incentive to engage external audit. Of the 457 survey questionnaire respondents, 27% voluntarily engage an external auditor and 66% conduct some formal written planning. Results from logistic regression analyses support the predicted impact of both size and debt on audit, and further support the hypothesised impact of budgeting. The positive association between budgeting and audit confirms the complementary relationship. More importantly, this relationship is not confounded by the combined impact of size and budgeting and debt and budgeting on voluntary audit. In addition, family conflict has no impact on voluntary demand for auditing by farm business.

Are voluntary wheel running and open-field behavior correlated in mice? Different answers from comparative and artificial selection approaches

Voluntary wheel running and open-field behavior are probably the two most widely used measures of locomotion in laboratory rodents. We tested whether these two behaviors are correlated in mice using two approaches: the phylogenetic comparative method using inbred strains of mice and an ongoing artificial selection experiment on voluntary wheel running. After taking into account the measurement error and phylogenetic relationships among inbred strains, we obtained a significant positive correlation between distance run on wheels and distance moved in the open-field for both sexes. Thigmotaxis was negatively correlated with distance run on wheels in females but not in males. By contrast, mice from four replicate lines bred for high wheel running did not differ in either distance covered or thigmotaxis in the open field as compared with mice from four non-selected control lines. Overall, results obtained in the selection experiment were generally opposite to those observed among inbred strains. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are discussed.