Assessing the effectiveness of the CHOW mobile grocery store in Broome County in increasing fruit and vegetable consumption

Access to healthy food is known to be important to maintaining good health. With obesity on the rise in America, this is even more important. Recently mobile market stores have been used to increase access to healthy foods in many underserved communities that are considered food deserts. The purpose of this study is to research and evaluate if there is a significant increase in the consumption of fruits and vegetables in Broome County communities where access to mobile markets is available. To address this, I conducted interviews with volunteers who worked on the mobile market in order to gauge if the mobile market produced any changes in eating behaviors or food choices. I believe the results will show that, after shopping at the mobile market, fruit and vegetable consumption increased and people were more aware of healthy eating and buying habits. However access to foods may not be enough, increasing community awareness and engagement by providing nutrition education, taste testing, and seasonal recipes may be helpful in increasing healthfully minded behaviors. This study emphasizes the importance of increased food access in food deserts and underserved communities. The use of a mobile market is a convenient way to do so and its mobility allows it to help more people in need. Towns and cities should consider implementing mobile markets into their communities

Thailand\u27s Ban on Commercial Surrogacy: Why Thailand Should Regulate, Not Attempt to Eradicate

International commercial surrogacy is when a person or couple from one country hires a surrogate in a different country. In recent years, this form of reproductive tourism has been a booming industry in Thailand due to the lack of meaningful regulation, relatively low cost, and unavailability in other countries. After a string of scandals involving Thai surrogacy arrangements arose, however, the Thai government enacted the Protection for Children Born Through Assisted Reproductive Technologies Act (the “ART Act”), prohibiting Thai commercial surrogacy from serving foreign clients, and only allowing Thai heterosexual couples to make use of surrogacy arrangements. As a result, many couples with existing surrogacy arrangements feared for their futures, were stuck in limbo at home, or unable to leave Thailand with their newborn babies. This Note examines the detrimental effects a complete ban on commercial surrogacy will have on all parties involved. Because the ART Act will likely drive Thailand’s surrogacy industry underground, this Note proposes that the Thai government should look to both Israel’s regulatory approach to commercial surrogacy and the American Bar Association Model Act Governing Assisted Reproductive Technology and adapt them to Thailand’s needs to create regulatory laws and procedures. In doing so, Thailand will be able to regulate commercial surrogacy in a manner that affords protections to all parties, but is not so stringent as to drive commercial surrogacy practices underground

A Study of the Relationship between Women’s Autonomy and Family Planning Use in Urban India

This study examines the relationship between women’s autonomy and use of family planning by type of method (non-use, traditional, spacing, and permanent) among women living in urban Gorakhpur, India. Autonomy is measured in terms of decision-making, mobility, and financial control over resources. After controlling for possible confounding, the results from multinomial logistic regression show that women with decision-making autonomy are significantly more likely to use both permanent and spacing methods as opposed to no method, compared with women without autonomous decision-making. No significant relationship was found between mobility or financial control and family planning use. These findings should be taken into consideration as government and non-government agencies in Gorakhpur implement family planning interventions, with possible increases in modern family planning use deriving from attention to increasing women’s decision-making capacity.Master of Public Healt

Plato on Well-Being

Plato's dialogues use several terms for the concept of well-being, which concept plays a central ethical role as the ultimate goal for action and a central political role as the proper aim for states. But the dialogues also reveal sharp debate about what human well-being is. I argue that they endorse a Socratic conception of well-being as virtuous activity, by considering and rejecting several alternatives, including an ordinary conception that lists a variety of goods, a Protagorean conception that identifies one's well-being with what appears one to be one's well-being, and hedonistic conceptions

Neighborhood Context and Perceptions of Stress Over Time: An Ecological Model of Neighborhood Stressors and Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Resources

We examine the association between neighborhood socio‐economic disadvantage and perceived stress during middle and late adolescence among African American youth (N = 665; 51 % female; M = 15.9 years at baseline). In addition, we explored the ways through which neighborhood stressors interacted with an individual’s intra‐ and interpersonal resources (e.g., coping, social support and substance use), to affect their perceived stress trajectories during adolescence. First, we tested a neighborhood stressors model and found that youth who lived in neighborhoods with greater socioeconomic disadvantage had higher baseline stress and a steeper increase in stress over time. When we included individual‐level risk and promotive factors in the model, however, the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on perceived stress was no longer significant, and the stress trajectory was explained by adolescent substance use, social support and perceptions of the neighborhood. Our results support theories of stress and coping, and the importance of proximal intra‐ and interpersonal factors in either amplifying or mitigating perceptions of stress. We discuss implications of the neighborhood context and how our findings may inform future prevention and intervention related to adolescent stress and development.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117087/1/ajcp9571.pd

Resource allocation by the marine cyanobacterium Synechococcus WH8102 in response to different nutrient supply ratios

Differences in relative availability of nitrate vs. phosphate may contribute to regional variations in plankton elemental stoichiometry. As a representative of the globally abundant marine Synechococcus, strain WH8102 was grown in 16 chemostats up to 52  d at a fixed growth rate with nitrogen–phosphorus ratios (N : Psupply) of 1–50. Initially, the phosphate and nitrate concentrations in the vessel decreased when the respective nutrient was limiting. Cell growth generally stabilized, although several chemostats had apparent oscillations in biomass. We observed extensive plasticity in the elemental content and ratios. N : Pcell matched the supply values between N : Psupply 5 and 20. The C : Pcell followed a similar trend. In contrast, the mean C : Ncell was 6.8 and did not vary as a function of supply ratios. We also observed that induction of alkaline phosphatase, the fraction of P allocated to nucleic acids, and the lipid sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerol : phosphatidyglycerol ratio inversely correlated with P availability. Our results suggest that this extensive plasticity in the elemental content and ratios depends both on the external nutrient availability as well as past growth history. Thus, our study provides a quantitative understanding of the regulation of the elemental stoichiometry of an abundant ocean phytoplankton lineage

Busy Streets Theory: The Effects of Communityâ engaged Greening on Violence

Lack of maintenance on vacant neighborhood lots is associated with higher levels of depression, anxiety, and stress for nearby residents. Overgrown grasses and dense brush provide hiding spots for criminals and space to conduct illicit activities. This study builds upon previous research by investigating greening programs that engage community members to conduct routine maintenance on vacant lots within their neighborhoods. The Clean & Green program is a communityâ based solution that facilitates residentâ driven routine maintenance of vacant lots in a midsized, Midwestern city. We use mixed effects regression to compare assault and violent crime counts on streets where vacant lot(s) are maintained by community members (N = 216) versus streets where vacant lots were left alone (N = 446) over a 5â year timeframe (2009â 2013). Street segments with vacant lots maintained through the Clean & Green program had nearly 40% fewer assaults and violent crimes than street segments with vacant, abandoned lots, which held across 4 years with a large sample and efforts to test counterfactual explanations. Communityâ engaged greening programs may not only provide a solution to vacant lot maintenance, but also work as a crime prevention or reduction strategy. Engaging the community to maintain vacant lots in their neighborhood reduces costs and may increase the sustainability of the program.HighlightsBlighted and abandoned properties generate substantial costs and risk for postindustrial cities.Communityâ engaged maintenance of properties can reduce blight and increase social cohesion.We compare levels of crime on streets with â greenedâ versus unmaintained vacant lots.Community greened lots may reduce blight and crime at lower cost to cities and build social capital.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146412/1/ajcp12270_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146412/2/ajcp12270.pd