Luton Culture

Age Concern is the leading movement in the UK working with and for older people.Age Concerns are independent charities that work together in agreed ways, sharing the name and a commitment to making later life fulfi lling, enjoyable and productive.They do this by providing as little or as much help as older people

The prelims comprise: Half Title Title Copyright Contents List of Contributors Preface Introduction

This chapter contains section titled: Fatigue Management Nutrition and Healthy Eating Continence Sleep Travel and Holidays Vaccinations Sexuality References

Intangibility is one of the distinctive characteristics of service. However, the literature also highlights “tangibles” as one of the basic service quality dimensions. Investigates the importance of tangibles and intangibles in perceptions of service quality as assessed by both customers and service providers. Selects four service industries to reflect a range from high to low levels of tangible components and degree of intangibility in both service process and output. Based on 400 telephone interviews with consumers, shows that the level of tangible components has a positive impact on the perceived importance of the tangible dimension in service quality. However, the second phase of this research, involving a qualitative study with managers in the studied industries, shows that the tangibles dimension is relatively neglected in service industries with high tangible involvement. Presents a model of tangibility and intangibility to aid managers in understanding customers’ perceptions, and to stimulate further research.

The aim of this study was to develop a method to monitor the synthetic activity of neurons which secrete the neurohypophysial melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH), a hormone implicated in two separate physiological roles in fish-pigmentary regulation and the response to stress. Trout hypothalamic fragments, containing the MCH neuronal cell bodies, were incubated in vitro in a medium including [(35) S]methionine. Labelled MCH-related products were separated by immunoprecipitation. Gel electrophoresis showed that radioactive methionine was incorporated into MCH precursors and into mature MCH, much as in vivo. Thus, de novo hormone synthesis continues in vitro. Trout reared at a fish-farm and adapted to black or white tanks for 39 days displayed nearly a 2-fold difference in their rate of methionine incorporation. Transferring fish from a black to a white background also doubled the rate of incorporation within 7 days and this rate increased only very slightly during the following 3 weeks. The rate of methionine incorporation by tissue from trout reared in black tanks was very depressed, and 4-fold lower than that of fish reared in white tanks, suggesting that very long-term adaptation to one or other background has increasingly marked effects on the activity and perhaps the number of synthetically active neurons. Stress also influenced the rate of methionine incorporation: a mild daily stress was stimulatory but more frequent stress had an inhibitory effect in many cases. The effects of daily dexamethasone administration were inconclusive. It is suggested that these differences in methionine incorporation reflect the relative rates of MCH synthesis in vivo, and that the method is useful to investigate conditions which modulate the biosynthesis of MCH in the trout.