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Anthropologists commonly accept that generous food sharing is universal to small-scale subsistence populations. This paper uses observational data from a Mikea community in southwestern Madagascar to demonstrate the following: (1) Most foods are rarely shared, i.e. transferred between households; exceptions are prepared food and livestock meat; (2) Clusters of closely related households feed each other’s members reciprocally, and inconsistent with kin selection, unrelated affines are the major distributors; and (3) Tolerated theft and market value explain why livestock meat is widely shared, why scroungers are invited to share vegetal foods but rarely do, and why small game and honey are both actively defended (by hiding, theft) and scrounged (by demand sharing).

This research aims to explore how female immigrants use consumption to challenge and support their husband's position within the context of their patriarchal bargain.

The sample group (n = 20) consisted of ten first-generation Nigerian immigrant married couples living in Britain, who were interviewed together, with the married female then re-interviewed separately.

This paper demonstrates how women transition from being a wife in a consanguine family in Nigeria, which they describe as patriarchal, to becoming one within a nuclear family in the UK, a society to which they attribute gender equality. Nigerian immigrant women alter their ways of thinking and consuming, with implications to their agency and empowerment. In particular, consumption choices demonstrated the limits of these women’s willingness to challenge their patriarchal bargain and instead often colluded with their husbands to maintain his position as the head of the family.

Immigrant women should not be seen as passive receptors of their male partner’s wishes or demands, but instead active participators in purchasing and consumption decisions. Although marketing encourages direct targeting of customers, this approach raises a number of ethical issues for female African immigrants.

Previous research on the consumption behaviour of immigrants is limited in scope and tends to focus on male immigrants, with female immigrants either invisible or stereotyped. Compounding this problem are disciplinary, geographical and linguistic barriers that hinder social scientists' research into the consumption of female migration. This paper works to address these omissions.

Foodbank use in the UK is rising but, despite high levels of poverty, Pakistani women are less likely to use food banks than white British women. The purpose of this paper is to understand the lived experience of food in the context of poverty amongst Pakistani and white British women in Bradford, including perspectives on food aid.

A total of 16 Pakistani and white British women, recruited through community initiatives, participated in three focus groups (one interview was also held as a consequence of recruitment difficulties). Each group met for two hours aided by a moderator and professional interpreter. The transcripts were analysed thematically using a three-stage process.

Women in low-income households employed dual strategies to reconcile caring responsibilities and financial obligations: the first sought to make ends meet within household income; the second looked to outside sources of support. There was a reported near absence of food insecurity amongst Pakistani women which could be attributed to support from social/familial networks, resource management within the household, and cultural and religious frameworks. A minority of participants and no Pakistani respondents accessed charitable food aid. There were three reasons for the non-use of food aid: it was not required because of resource management strategies within the household and assistance from familial/social networks; it was avoided out of shame; and knowledge about its existence was poor.

This case study is the first examination of varying experiences of food insecurity amongst UK white British and Pakistani women. Whilst the sample size is small, it presents new evidence on perceptions of food insecurity amongst Pakistani households and on why households of varying ethnicities do not use food aid.

The purpose of this paper is to modify the crow search algorithm (CSA) to enhance both exploration and exploitation capability by including two novel approaches. The positions of the crows are updated in two approaches based on awareness probability (AP). With AP, the position of a crow is updated by considering its velocity, calculated in a similar fashion to particle swarm optimization (PSO) to enhance the exploiting capability. Without AP, the crows are subdivided into groups by considering their weights, and the crows are updated by conceding leaders of the groups distributed over the search space to enhance the exploring capability. The performance of the proposed PSO-based group-oriented CSA (PGCSA) is realized by exploring the solution of benchmark equations. Further, the proposed PGCSA algorithm is validated over recently published algorithms by solving engineering problems.

In this paper, two novel approaches are implemented in two phases of CSA (with and without AP), which have been entitled the PGCSA algorithm to solve engineering benchmark problems.

The proposed algorithm is applied with two types of problems such as eight benchmark equations without constraint and six engineering problems.

The PGCSA algorithm is proposed with superior competence to solve engineering problems. The proposed algorithm is substantiated hypothetically by using a paired t-test.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the practice of hiding vegetables among low socioeconomic parents.

A qualitative longitudinal study involving 37 low socioeconomic Australian parents with at least one overweight or obese child aged five to nine years. Data were obtained with the use of interviews, focus groups, and self-introspections.

Identified issues relating to the practice of hiding vegetables included: how parents manage hiding vegetables, children's presence in the kitchen during vegetable preparation, the employment of deception when hiding vegetables, the use of cookbooks and blogs, and the alternative views of parents not strongly in favour of hiding vegetables.

Hiding vegetables is a practice used by some parents to increase their children's vegetable intake. Children who are unaware of hidden vegetables in their meals are potentially missing the opportunity to develop an appreciation for vegetables and learn about vegetable preparation and cooking.

The findings are relevant to dietitians, general practitioners, and other health professionals providing advice to parents on appropriate child-feeding strategies.

This appears to be the first study to provide an in-depth account of low socioeconomic parents’ use of hiding vegetables to facilitate higher levels of vegetable consumption.

This paper uses data from a city with a multi-ethnic, multi-faith population to better understand faith-based food aid. The paper aims to understand what constitutes faith-based responses to food insecurity, compare the prevalence and nature of faith-based food aid across different religions and explore how community food aid meets the needs of a multi-ethnic, multi-faith population.

The study involved two phases of primary research. In Phase 1, desk-based research and dialogue with stakeholders in local food security programmes were used to identify faith-based responses to food insecurity. Phase 2 consisted of 18 semi-structured interviews involving faith-based and secular charitable food aid organizations.

The paper illustrates the internal heterogeneity of faith-based food aid. Faith-based food aid is highly prevalent and the vast majority is Christian. Doctrine is a key motivation among Christian organizations for their provision of food. The fact that the clients at faith-based, particularly Christian, food aid did not reflect the local religious demographic is a cause for concern in light of the entry-barriers identified. This concern is heightened by the co-option of faith-based organizations by the state as part of the “Big Society” agenda.

This is the first academic study in the UK to look at the faith-based arrangements of Christian and Muslim food aid providers, to set out what it means to provide faith-based food aid in the UK and to explore how faith-based food aid interacts with people of other religions and no religion.

Purpose and methodology – Many adult women struggle with serious eating problems (EPs) and obesity is increasing, yet, little is known about the origins of EPs, which often begin in childhood. Personal Narratives with 25 Israeli Jewish women in recovery from EPs explore (a) types of childhood experiences, (b) the connection between childhood experiences and subsequent EPs, and (c) why food!

Findings a.Analyses of personal narratives uncover a broad range of emotionally abusive experiences in childhood (CEA) including continuous criticism about body shape and weight, emotional neglect and abandonment, death or illness in the family in the absence of a nurturing adult, conflict and tension surrounding parental divorce or dysfunctional marriage, geographic dislocation, and aftermath of the Holocaust.b.Interviewees explicitly identified CEA as the cause of their turning to food for comfort in childhood and subsequently developing lifelong EPs.c.Why food! It was easily accessible, its sweetness took away the pain - temporarily, children replicated parents' unhealthy relationship with food, it was abundant and central in Jewish cultural, ethnic and religious traditions.

Research Implications – This research documents the critical contribution of emotionally abusive experiences in childhood to the development of EPs and confirms the need for additional research.

Practical Implications – The findings warrant a shift in policies and practices to address the role of emotional abuse in the development and maintenance of EPs. Moreover, policies focused on obesity, particularly among youth, need to recognize the contribution of CEA – in addition to poor dietary choices and lack of exercise.

In today’s digital world, real-time health monitoring is becoming a most important challenge in the field of medical research. Body signals such as electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyogram and electroencephalogram (EEG) are produced in human body. This continuous monitoring generates huge count of data and thus an efficient method is required to shrink the size of the obtained large data. Compressed sensing (CS) is one of the techniques used to compress the data size. This technique is most used in certain applications, where the size of data is huge or the data acquisition process is too expensive to gather data from vast count of samples at Nyquist rate. This paper aims to propose Lion Mutated Crow search Algorithm (LM-CSA), to improve the performance of the LMCSA model.

A new CS algorithm is exploited in this paper, where the compression process undergoes three stages: designing of stable measurement matrix, signal compression and signal reconstruction. Here, the compression process falls under certain working principle, and is as follows: signal transformation, computation of Θ and normalization. As the main contribution, the theta value evaluation is proceeded by a new “Enhanced bi-orthogonal wavelet filter.” The enhancement is given under the scaling coefficients, where they are optimally tuned for processing the compression. However, the way of tuning seems to be the great crisis, and hence this work seeks the strategy of meta-heuristic algorithms. Moreover, a new hybrid algorithm is introduced that solves the above mentioned optimization inconsistency. The proposed algorithm is named as “Lion Mutated Crow search Algorithm (LM-CSA),” which is the hybridization of crow search algorithm (CSA) and lion algorithm (LA) to enhance the performance of the LM-CSA model.

Finally, the proposed LM-CSA model is compared over the traditional models in terms of certain error measures such as mean error percentage (MEP), symmetric mean absolute percentage error (SMAPE), mean absolute scaled error, mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error, L1-norm and L2-normand infinity-norm. For ECG analysis, under bior 3.1, LM-CSA is 56.6, 62.5 and 81.5% better than bi-orthogonal wavelet in terms of MEP, SMAPE and MAE, respectively. Under bior 3.7 for ECG analysis, LM-CSA is 0.15% better than genetic algorithm (GA), 0.10% superior to particle search optimization (PSO), 0.22% superior to firefly (FF), 0.22% superior to CSA and 0.14% superior to LA, respectively, in terms of L1-norm. Further, for EEG analysis, LM-CSA is 86.9 and 91.2% better than the traditional bi-orthogonal wavelet under bior 3.1. Under bior 3.3, LM-CSA is 91.7 and 73.12% better than the bi-orthogonal wavelet in terms of MAE and MEP, respectively. Under bior 3.5 for EEG, L1-norm of LM-CSA is 0.64% superior to GA, 0.43% superior to PSO, 0.62% superior to FF, 0.84% superior to CSA and 0.60% better than LA, respectively.

This paper presents a novel CS framework using LM-CSA algorithm for EEG and ECG signal compression. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first work to use LM-CSA with enhanced bi-orthogonal wavelet filter for enhancing the CS capability as well reducing the errors.

By integrating the diffusion of innovation (DOI) theory, technology acceptance model (TAM), and social capital theory, the purpose of this paper is to: develop a model of consumer behavior and trial willingness toward nano-foods from product, consumer, and social perspectives; examine the effects of innovative features, consumer characteristics, and trust in authority on subjective perceptions (perceived trustworthiness and perceived benefit) as well as the social influence on attitudes toward nano-foods and trial willingness; examine the moderating role of product uncertainty on the relationship between these characteristics and subjective perceptions; and examine the effect of perceived benefit on perceived trustworthiness.

The results of the structural equation model (SEM), with nano-food knowledge data collected from 431 respondents, supported the research model and revealed the main effects hypothesized in this study and the moderating effect of product uncertainty. Simple slope analysis was further adopted to test the significant moderating effects.

The SEM results indicated that innovative characteristics (relative advantage, lack of observability, and novelty), consumer characteristics (perceived technology application), and social characteristics (trust in authority) affect perceived trustworthiness or perceived benefit. Social influence also has a direct effect on attitude toward nano-foods and trial willingness. Product uncertainty significantly moderates the relationship between characteristics (relative advantage and perceived technology application) and subjective perceptions (perceived trustworthiness and perceived benefit).

With increasing numbers and kinds of nanotechnology products now being developed and sold, it is important to go further to determine consumer perceptions and attitudes toward these. This study, thus, applied the DOI, TAM, and social capital theory to examine this issue. However, other theories might also be used to carry out research from other perspectives. This study should, thus, be seen as preliminary, and it is hoped that more works will discuss consumer attitudes toward nanotechnology products in the future.

When a new nano-food is introduced, the current study suggests that food manufacturers use the description on the package as a communicative tool. Detailing the advantages of nano-foods on food packages might be a useful way to enhance trial willingness and to reduce the fears and insecurities related to the use of nano-related products. In addition, if food manufacturers could cooperate with organizations or individuals seen as having some authority in this area (e.g. nanotechnology researchers) in order to disseminate accurate information about nanotechnology and related food products, this might be an effective way to increase sales and profits.

This is the first paper integrating the DOI, the social capital theory and the TAM to empirically investigate consumer willingness to try nano-food products.