You Are What You (Can) Eat: Cultivating Resistance through Food, Justice, and Gardens on the South Side of Chicago

Though food is widely recognized as a basic necessity for humanity, disparate access to it highlights whose bodies, environments, health, nutrition, and utter existence has mattered most in American society—and whose has mattered the least. Through interviews with residents of the South Side of Chicago about the alternative food pathway they’ve forged for themselves, we learn that food becomes much more than just sustenance. Interviewees describe our present day food system as undeniably rooted in a history of enslavement and exploitation of Black and Brown bodies; they regard food justice work by communities of color as an important source of empowerment as it not only is an act of survival, but also an act of reclamation of spaces they’ve long been historically denied. For them, community gardens are safe spaces for neighbors of all ages to congregate, discuss issues happening in the neighborhood, and ultimately keep the community alive and healthy; they are transformative spaces for community building, learning, and collective healing. Residents become better stewards to the earth and to each other. Ultimately, community-led urban agriculture has the power to transform urban communities and their relationship with food, land, the environment, and each other. Ineffective public health initiatives often fail to sufficiently historicize and contextualize the relationship between social factors, unhealthy urban landscapes, and poor health outcomes. By placing the agency of the affected community at the center of research, however, we might better understand the relationship between positionality, food access, adverse health outcomes and any efforts we make to improve them

Brief Note: The Effect of Alpha-Chlorohydrin on the Fertility of Male Rats

Author Institution: Center for Environmental Research and Services, Bowling Green Universit

MESUROL AS A BIRD REPELLENT ON GRAPES IN OHIO

Schafer and Brunton (1971) determined that methiocarb [3,5-dimethyl-4-(methylthio)phenol methylcarbamate] was efficaceous as a bird repellent, reporting low R50 and LD50 values for several bird species. Guarino (1972) suggested that bird damage to corn, soybeans, rice, sorghum, cherries, and grapes could be reduced by spraying with methiocarb. Crase and DeHaven (1976) concluded that methiocarb could be an effective broad-spectrum bird repellent and crop protectant. Bollengier et al. (1973), Stone et al. (1974), Ali (1978), Teklehaimanot (1978), and Jackson et al. (1978) reported that bird damage to blueberries was significantly lower in methiocarb-treated fields than in the untreated fields. Rogers (1974) describes Mesurol as a conditioning repellent that has post-ingestional effects. Guarino (1972) reported that house finches (Carpodacus mexicanus), and starlings (Sturnus vulgarus) constituted 51.5% and 28.8%, respectively, of the birds observed in grape fields in California. In New Hampshire, robins (Turdus migratorius), primarily, and starlings, catbirds, (Dumetella carolinensis), and scarlet tanagers (Piranga olivacea) fed heavily on grapes (Guarino 1972). The birds damaged the upper, exposed clusters more than those on lower, covered branches. Crase et al. (1976) estimated the amount of bird damage to grapes in the U.S.A. at $4.4 million. Peck damage was reported higher than pluck damage. Larger birds, such as starlings and robins, were observed taking the whole berry, while smaller birds (finches, sparrows, and bluebirds) were pecking holes in the individual berry (Crase et al., 1976). Crase (1975), while reporting a high ratio of pecked to plucked fruit in treated fields, observed a higher proportion of plucked in the untreated area; house sparrows (Passer-domesticus) were the most prevalent species. He suggested that birds may be first pecking, and, if no effect is detected, they would take the whole grape. Previous observations in California had indicated Mesurol treatments to vineyards were efficaceous (Crase 1975, 1976; Crase et al. 1976). Bailey and Smith (1979) obtained twice the yield on vines protected from blackbirds (Turdus merula) and silvereyes (Zosterops lateralis) in South Australia with this compound. While failures have been reported in protecting cherries (Stickley and Ingram 1973) and blueberries (Dolbeer et al. 1973), their experimental designs may have been deficient. The objective of the present study was to evaluate methiocarb bird repellency in five selected grape fields in Ohio. The methiocarb formulation used was 75% wettable powder (WP), which is registered as Mesurol. These experiments were conducted under an experimental use permit (#3125-EUP-140). Additional details are found in Kassa and Jackson (1978)

Rice value chain in Metema District, North Gondar, Ethiopia: Challenges and opportunities for innovation

Rice is a new crop for the country in general and the study area, Metema, in particular. There is an immense potential rice production area and high consumer demand. However, the rice sector is not fully developed as compared to the potential. Many institutional, organizational and technological factors were attributed to existing inefficiencies in rice production and utilization. This study was undertaken in Metema District of North Gondar Zone, Amhara National Regional State and has been designed to throw light on the challenges, opportunities and entry points for infusing further innovation (technological institutional and organizational) for upgrading the rice value chain. Identification of actors, their role, linkage, attitudes, habits and practices in the value chain; analyzing the institutional arrangements and enabling environment that affect the functioning of the value chain; and identifying recent innovation activities and their immediate outcomes in the District were the focus of this study. Primary data was collected from 100 randomly selected farm households and other rice value chain actors including input suppliers, marketing agents, consumers and support services. Data was collected using both qualitative and quantitative methods which incorporated semi-structured interview schedule, focus group discussions, key informant interview and personal observation. The main findings of the research revealed that, there are multiple public and non-public actors involved along the rice value chain, upstream from input supply to downstream consumers, playing different role. However, there is no mechanism to coordinate multiple actors together for effective and efficient functioning of the value chain. There is public sector actors’ domination with limited private sector involvement in the value chain. A long tradition of limited responsiveness, top-down, hierarchical, non participatory/ exclusiveness and less risk taking type of organizational culture and, habits and practices lead DoARD to have weak interaction, knowledge and information sharing with the various actors along the value chain. As to the linkage, weak and informal linkage between chain actors characterizes the rice value chain. Lack of post harvest processing technology( rice polisher), limited access to and supply of inputs, severe termite attack, non availability of well developed rice market, high labor demand for crop management, absence of responsible body who works on actors interaction were some of the challenges identified for innovation at various stages of rice value chain. Absence of rice polisher machine was the most critical problem that affects the whole value chain. On the contrary, increased farmer’s awareness about and availability of improved rice varieties, existence of favorable land and climatic condition, presence of high consumer demand, and increased institutional support from different GOs and NGOs were mentioned as opportunities for innovation. In order to address the existing problems and to increase competitive advantage of the rice production, plat forms and partnerships have to be created between value chain actors to create an enabling environment for sharing of information, knowledge and solve existing problems of shortage of rice polisher machine and input supply services. The existing extension service should also be strengthened in a way that enables working in harmony with relevant actors to bring about change for efficient and effective delivery of agricultural inputs/services

Enhancing first year chemistry student’s participation in practical chemistry course

In this study, enhancing student’s participation in practical analytical chemistry course at Haramaya University with various reasons was conducted. The data were collected from I year chemistry undergraduate students of class size 56 of which 23 were females and 33 were males. The class was arranged in to two groups for laboratory class and the experiment was conducted once per week in analytical laboratory. The research used mainly three kinds of data collection techniques namely questionnaire and laboratory report and demonstration result to gather the required qualitative and quantitative data for improving the participation of first year chemistry students. From the result, it was found that students were interested towards the practical analytical courses on the basis of condition such as, necessity of the chemistry with life, their participation in the laboratory, getting experience from the laboratory and performing the experiment in group. The results of the study support the notion that, students were more interested to a group work rather than individual work since they share idea, read their manual before coming to laboratory which contributed to their own participation in learning practical chemistry courses. The research has also shown that student’s activity through experimental demonstration in group increases student’s participations in the laboratory effectively by achieving better results than using laboratory report writing methods. The findings also revealed that some of the causes of students’ negative attitudes towards learning practical Chemistry were mainly due to problems in preparing a flow chart for the experiments by themselves and lack of exposure to well-equipped laboratory for conducting demonstrations. In view of the findings and conclusions drawn in the study, Chemistry laboratories should be adequately equipped to ensure a smooth running of the practical classes and students should be encouraged to participate on practical chemistry courses and appropriate motivation should be given so that they will develop positive attitude towards the practical sessions

On modeling and measuring viscoelasticity with dynamic Atomic Force Microscopy

The interaction between a rapidly oscillating atomic force microscope tip and a soft material surface is described using both elastic and viscous forces with a moving surface model. We derive the simplest form of this model, motivating it as a way to capture the impact dynamics of the tip and sample with an interaction consisting of two components: interfacial or surface force, and bulk or volumetric force. Analytic solutions to the piece-wise linear model identify characteristic time constants, providing a physical explanation of the hysteresis observed in the measured dynamic force quadrature curves. Numerical simulation is used to fit the model to experimental data and excellent agreement is found with a variety of different samples. The model parameters form a dimensionless impact-rheology factor, giving a quantitative physical number to characterize a viscoelastic surface that does not depend on the tip shape or cantilever frequency.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figure