An insight into the public acceptance of nutrigenomic-based personalised nutrition.

It is predicted that non-communicable diseases will account for over 73 % of global mortality in 2020. Given that the majority of these deaths occur in developed countries such as the UK, and that up to 80 % of chronic disease could be prevented through improvements in diet and lifestyle, it is imperative that dietary guidelines and disease prevention strategies are reviewed in order to improve their efficacy. Since the completion of the human genome project our understanding of complex interactions between environmental factors such as diet and genes has progressed considerably, as has the potential to individualise diets using dietary, phenotypic and genotypic data. Thus, there is an ambition for dietary interventions to move away from population-based guidance towards 'personalised nutrition'. The present paper reviews current evidence for the public acceptance of genetic testing and personalised nutrition in disease prevention. Health and clear consumer benefits have been identified as key motivators in the uptake of genetic testing, with individuals reporting personal experience of disease, such as those with specific symptoms, being more willing to undergo genetic testing for the purpose of personalised nutrition. This greater perceived susceptibility to disease may also improve motivation to change behaviour which is a key barrier in the success of any nutrition intervention. Several consumer concerns have been identified in the literature which should be addressed before the introduction of a nutrigenomic-based personalised nutrition service. Future research should focus on the efficacy and implementation of nutrigenomic-based personalised nutrition.

The 'veil' of control: exploring the attitudes and perceptions of UK design controllers

In the UK, architectural design is regulated through a system of design control for the public interest, which aims to secure and promote ‘quality’ in the built environment. Design control is primarily implemented by locally employed planning professionals with political oversight, and independent design review panels, staffed predominantly by design professionals. Design control has a lengthy and complex history, with the concept of ‘design’ offering a range of challenges for a regulatory system of governance. A simultaneously creative and emotive discipline, architectural design is a difficult issue to regulate objectively or consistently, often leading to policy that is regarded highly discretionary and flexible. This makes regulatory outcomes difficult to predict, as approaches undertaken by the ‘agents of control’ can vary according to the individual. The role of the design controller is therefore central, tasked with the responsibility of interpreting design policy and guidance, appraising design quality and passing professional judgment. However, little is really known about what influences the way design controllers approach their task, providing a ‘veil’ over design control, shrouding the basis of their decisions. This research engaged directly with the attitudes and perceptions of design controllers in the UK, lifting this ‘veil’. Using in-depth interviews and Q-Methodology, the thesis explores this hidden element of control, revealing a number of key differences in how controllers approach and implement policy and guidance, conceptualise design quality, and rationalise their evaluations and judgments. The research develops a conceptual framework for agency in design control – this consists of six variables (Regulation; Discretion; Skills; Design Quality; Aesthetics; and Evaluation) and it is suggested that this could act as a ‘heuristic’ instrument for UK controllers, prompting more reflexivity in relation to evaluating their own position, approaches, and attitudes, leading to better practice and increased transparency of control decisions.

Language learning in the public eye: an analysis of newspapers and official documents in England

This article considers the issue of low levels of motivation for foreign language learning in England by exploring how language learning is conceptualised by different key voices in that country through the examination of written data: policy documents and reports on the UK's language needs, curriculum documents, and press articles. The extent to which this conceptualisation has changed over time is explored, through the consideration of documents from two time points, before and after a change in government in the UK. The study uses corpus analysis methods in this exploration. The picture that emerges is a complex one regarding how the 'problems' and 'solutions' surrounding language learning in that context are presented in public discourse. This, we conclude, has implications for the likely success of measures adopted to increase language learning uptake in that context.

Vox Populi, Vox Dei? A closer look at the ‘public opinion’ argument for retention

The Japanese government’s justification for retaining the death penalty is that abolition would erode the legitimacy of and public trust in the criminal justice system, leading to victims’ families taking justice into their own hands. This justification is based on the results of a regularly administered public opinion survey, which is said to show strong public support for the death penalty. However, a close analysis of the results of the 2014 survey fails to validate this claim. Just over a third of respondents were committed to retaining the death penalty at all costs, while the rest accepted the possibility of future abolition, with some of them seeing this as contingent on the introduction of life imprisonment without parole as an alternative sentence. These findings hardly describe a society that expects the strict application of the death penalty and whose trust in justice depends on the government’s commitment to retaining it. My reading of the 2014 survey is that the Japanese public is ready to embrace abolition. Japan, after all, is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which calls on states not to delay or prevent abolition, so this should be welcome news for the Japanese government!

Il/legitimate risks? Occupational health and safety and the public in Britain, c. 1960-2015

The last 20 years have seen the emergence of a popular climate of antipathy towards occupational health and safety regulation within the UK, particularly within the mainstream British media. The governance of health and safety has thus in recent years become an increasingly visible and contested public and political issue. The extent of this contestation, and its impact on the State’s governance of health and safety in the workplace and beyond, is explained and historicized within this chapter. Why has public rhetoric about health and safety apparently become so important in framing the ways in which the State could legitimately act in recent years? The chapter demonstrates how since 1960 the State remained a significant player – one among many, admittedly – and that while its roles in managing health and safety had long been bounded by a number of factors, a variable that emerged with particular saliency over the last 20 years has been a mediated notion of ‘public opinion’. This focus serves to remind us of the ways in which State action has at certain moments been pushed in particular directions by factors beyond formal mechanisms of rule.

Vasectomy within the public health services in Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Objective: To describe some of the characteristics of men who underwent a vasectomy in the public health network of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil. Methods: A descriptive study including 202 men randomly selected from a list of all the men vasectomized between 1998 and 2004 in the public health network. Results: Most of the men were 30 years of age or older when vasectomized, had completed elementary school and had two or more children of both sexes. Most of the men came from the lowest income segment of the population: 47.6% in 1998-1999 and 61.3% in 2003-2004. Although the men knew various contraceptive methods, 51.2% reported that their partners were using combined oral contraceptives at the time of surgery. Most men initially sought information on vasectomy at health-care clinics where care was provided by a multidisciplinary team; most received counselling, however, 47.9% of the men waited more than 4 months for the vasectomy. Conclusions: The profile of the vasectomized men in this study appears to indicate that the low-income population from Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil has access to vasectomy; however, the waiting time for vasectomy reveals that difficulties exist in obtaining this contraceptive method in the public health service.

VISTA Variables in the Via Lactea (VVV): The public ESO near-IR variability survey of the Milky Way

We describe the public ESO near-IR variability survey (VVV) scanning the Milky Way bulge and an adjacent section of the mid-plane where star formation activity is high. The survey will take 1929 h of observations with the 4-m VISTA telescope during 5 years (2010-2014), covering similar to 10(9) point sources across an area of 520 deg(2), including 33 known globular clusters and similar to 350 open clusters. The final product will be a deep near-IR atlas in five passbands (0.9-2.5 mu m) and a catalogue of more than 106 variable point sources. Unlike single-epoch surveys that, in most cases, only produce 2-D maps, the VVV variable star survey will enable the construction of a 3-D map of the surveyed region using well-understood distance indicators such as RR Lyrae stars, and Cepheids. It will yield important information on the ages of the populations. The observations will be combined with data from MACHO, OGLE, EROS, VST, Spitzer, HST, Chandra, INTEGRAL, WISE, Fermi LAT, XMM-Newton, GAIA and ALMA for a complete understanding of the variable sources in the inner Milky Way. This public survey will provide data available to the whole community and therefore will enable further studies of the history of the Milky Way, its globular cluster evolution, and the population census of the Galactic Bulge and center, as well as the investigations of the star forming regions in the disk. The combined variable star catalogues will have important implications for theoretical investigations of pulsation properties of stars. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Persuading the Public : A Linguistic Analysis of Barack Obama’s Speech on “Super Tuesday” 2008

This essay examines the persuasive side of language in a speech given by Senator Barack Obama on Super Tuesday in February 2008. It studies how Senator Obama utilizes language to convince and persuade his audience. This is done from an Aristotelian point of view, meaning that the study focuses foremost on how the senator’s word choices relate to Aristotle’s three means of persuasion, ethos, pathos and logos. Those basic guiding principles are relevant to use since Aristotle’s work on the subject of rhetoric is still today one of the most relevant works in that field. The analysis is basically performed through personal observations guided by previous studies, within the frame of Aristotelian rhetoric. The results show how Senator Obama enforces the three means of persuasion through language and how it can be considered persuasive. The study might add to rhetoric studies from a linguistic perspective since it reaches a better understanding of language used in the field of politics, where rhetoric is a prominent component.

Immigration, security and the public debate on US language policy : a critical discourse analysis of language attitudes in the United States of America

The narrative of the United States is of a "nation of immigrants" in which the language shift patterns of earlier ethnolinguistic groups have tended towards linguistic assimilation through English. In recent years, however, changes in the demographic landscape and language maintenance by non-English speaking immigrants, particularly Hispanics, have been perceived as threats and have led to calls for an official English language policy.This thesis aims to contribute to the study of language policy making from a societal security perspective as expressed in attitudes regarding language and identity originating in the daily interaction between language groups. The focus is on the role of language and American identity in relation to immigration. The study takes an interdisciplinary approach combining language policy studies, security theory, and critical discourse analysis. The material consists of articles collected from four newspapers, namely USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle between April 2006 and December 2007.Two discourse types are evident from the analysis namely Loyalty and Efficiency. The former is mainly marked by concerns of national identity and contains speech acts of security related to language shift, choice and English for unity. Immigrants are represented as dehumanised, and harmful. Immigration is given as sovereignty-related, racial, and as war. The discourse type of Efficiency is mainly instrumental and contains speech acts of security related to cost, provision of services, health and safety, and social mobility. Immigrants are further represented as a labour resource. These discourse types reflect how the construction of the linguistic 'we' is expected to be maintained. Loyalty is triggered by arguments that the collective identity is threatened and is itself used in reproducing the collective 'we' through hegemonic expressions of monolingualism in the public space and semi-public space. The denigration of immigrants is used as a tool for enhancing societal security through solidarity and as a possible justification for the denial of minority rights. Also, although language acquisition patterns still follow the historical trend of language shift, factors indicating cultural separateness such as the appearance of speech communities or the use of minority languages in the public space and semi-public space have led to manifestations of intolerance. Examples of discrimination and prejudice towards minority groups indicate that the perception of worth of a shared language differs from the actual worth of dominant language acquisition for integration purposes. The study further indicates that the efficient working of the free market by using minority languages to sell services or buy labour is perceived as conflicting with nation-building notions since it may create separately functioning sub-communities with a new cultural capital recognised as legitimate competence. The discourse types mainly represent securitising moves constructing existential threats. The perception of threat and ideas of national belonging are primarily based on a zero-sum notion favouring monolingualism. Further, the identity of the immigrant individual is seen as dynamic and adaptable to assimilationist measures whereas the identity of the state and its members are perceived as static. Also, the study shows that debates concerning language status are linked to extra-linguistic matters. To conclude, policy makers in the US need to consider the relationship between four factors, namely societal security based on collective identity, individual/human security, human rights, and a changing linguistic demography, for proposed language intervention measures to be successful.