We introduce a new experimental approach to measuring the effects of health insurance policy alternatives on behavior and health outcomes over the life course. In a virtual environment with multi-period lives, subjects earn virtual income and allocate spending, to maximize utility, which is converted into cash payment. We compare behavior across age, income and insurance plans-one priced according to an individual's expected cost and the other uniformly priced through employer-implemented cost sharing. We find that 1) subjects in the employer-implemented plan purchased insurance at higher rates; 2) the employer-based plan reduced differences due to income and age; 3) subjects in the actuarial plan engaged in more health-promoting behaviors, but still below optimal levels, and did save at the level required, so did realize the full benefits of the plan. Subjects had more difficulty optimizing choices in the Actuarial treatment, because it required more long term planning and evaluating benefits that compounded over time. Contrary, to model predictions, the actuarial priced insurance plan did not increase utility relative to the employer-based plan.
  To establish normative values of vibration perception thresholds (VPTs), using multi-frequency vibrometry at finger pulps and at metatarsal heads of the foot in healthy adults. We also aimed to investigate factors that could potentially affect VPTs such as age, sex, height, weight, foot- or handedness and skin temperature.
 
  VPTs were examined in 924 healthy and randomly selected subjects in the southern Sweden (mean 46 years; 628 women and 296 men). Inclusion criterias were adult subjects (>18 years) in considerable health without diabetes mellitus or other nerve affecting disorders. VPTs were measured at the finger pulps of index and little finger, as well as the first and fifth metatarsal heads of the foot, through multi-frequency vibrometry using the VibroSense Meter® I device. Patient characteristics were recorded and skin temperature was measured before assessment of VPTs.
 
  We present normative values of VPTs for a large population of both male and female subjects in various ages. VPTs detoriated as age increased (0.09-0.59 dB per year; p<0.001), i.e. progressing with normal aging. Increasing skin temperature affected VPTs in finger pulps, but not at metatarsal heads, with -0.2 to -1.6 dB, i.e. vibration perception improved with higher temperatures. Height was only found to affect the VPTs of metatarsal heads (250 Hz 0.42 dB per cm). Sex, weight and handedness did not affect the VPTs.
 
  We investigated the normative values of VPTs and presented affecting factors as age, skin temperature and height. With these results, VPT testing through multi-frequency vibrometry is enabled to be used in a clinical practice as a diagnostic tool when investigating neuropathy and other neurological disorders.
 We investigated the normative values of VPTs and presented affecting factors as age, skin temperature and height. With these results, VPT testing through multi-frequency vibrometry is enabled to be used in a clinical practice as a diagnostic tool when investigating neuropathy and other neurological disorders.
  In this study we aimed to 1) describe healthy ageing trajectory patterns, 2) examine the association between multimorbidity and patterns of healthy ageing trajectories, and 3) evaluate how different groups of diseases might affect the projection of healthy ageing trajectories over time.
 
  Our study was based on 130880 individuals from the Ageing Trajectories of Health Longitudinal Opportunities and Synergies (ATHLOS) harmonised dataset, as well as 9171 individuals from Waves 2-7 of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA).
 
  Using a healthy ageing index score, which comprised 41 items, covering various domains of health and ageing, as outcome, we employed the growth mixture model approach to identify the latent classes of individuals with different healthy ageing trajectories. A multinomial logistic regression was conducted to assess if and how multimorbidity status and multimorbidity patterns were associated with changes in healthy ageing, controlled for sociodemographic and lifestyle risk factors.
 ty was associated with higher odds of having poorer healthy ageing trajectories, the extent to which healthy ageing trajectories were projected to decline depended on the specific patterns of multimorbidity.We study correlations between the structure and properties of a free association network of the English language, and solutions of psycholinguistic Remote Association Tests (RATs). We show that average hardness of individual RATs is largely determined by relative positions of test words (stimuli and response) on the free association network. We argue that the solution of RATs can be interpreted as a first passage search problem on a network whose vertices are words and links are associations between words. We propose different heuristic search algorithms and demonstrate that in "easily-solving" RATs (those that are solved in 15 seconds by more than 64% subjects) the solution is governed by "strong" network links (i.e. strong associations) directly connecting stimuli and response, and thus the efficient strategy consist in activating such strong links. In turn, the most efficient mechanism of solving medium and hard RATs consists of preferentially following sequence of "moderately weak" associations.
  A meta-analysis was conducted to assess the effects of dietary chromium picolinate (CrPic) supplementation on broiler growth performance and to determine whether such effects are regulated by broiler strains, sex, environmental stress, or contextual factors including study area and years.
 
  Eligible studies were identified by searching the Web of Science, Springer, Elsevier, ScienceDirect, Taylor & Francis Online databases. Weighted average differences with corresponding 95% confidence intervals were computed with a random-effects model. We performed subgroup analysis stratified by study area, published years, broiler strains and sex, and environmental stress. Publication bias was assessed with Egger's test method. A total of 15 studies eligible for inclusion.
 
  The results indicated that CrPic supplementation significantly improved broiler growth performance and subgroup analysis confirmed this conclusion.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/ad-5584.html  We also found that Ross 308 or male broilers might be more sensitive to CrPic supplementation and showed better growth performance.