Culturally Relevant Health Education: A Foundation for Building Cultural Competence of Health Professionals

Background: Professionals educating ethnic minority populations should employ a cultural focus during development, training, refinement and implementation stages of an intervention. Purpose: This manuscript posits that the skill of developing a culturally relevant curriculum supports the increase of cultural competence proficiency of professionals, while promoting health equity. Methods: A community-based participatory research-trained staff, recruited 378 families with 2 to 8-year-old children. Eight intergenerational focus groups were conducted at neighborhood facilities. Graduate fellows conducted reviews of literature and health directives to conceptualize the curriculum. Spanish-speaking students and promotoras (community health workers) having participants’ confidence, presented healthy lifestyle information and taught practical skills to each group of 12-16 low-income Latino families from Long Beach, CA. With attention to participants’ preferred language, educational level, cultural beliefs, practices and food preferences, the intervention demonstrates a culturally relevant curriculum. Hands-on activities and motivational interviewing questions enriched the 4-hour intervention delivered in Spanish. Results: Graduate fellows’ cultural competence increased. More than 97% of participants reported sessions beneficial to their families’ health with 84% attending all sessions/assessments. Participants found the content easy to understand and helpful to eat healthier and be more active. Conclusion: Sanos y Fuertes is a model for developing a culturally relevant, family-based healthy lifestyle educational curriculum and building culturally competent health professionals

Primary Outcomes of a Healthy Lifestyle Interventions for Latino Families

Latinos, especially children, are disproportionately affected by obesity. Sanos y Fuertes is a community-based, participatory research project that created a culturally resonant, bilingual, healthy lifestyle intervention for Latinos in California. Results of the program for families are presented. Methods: The sample consisted of 390 Latino families with at least one 2 to 8-year-old child. Confidential, self-report, paper-and-pencil surveys and objective anthropometrics were assessed. Paired sample t-tests evaluated changes between baseline-to-follow-up assessments. Results: A significant decrease was observed in children’s percent body fat, but not in adults. Improvements were found in adult knowledge, frequency of food label use and serving MyPlate portions. Adult frequency of breakfast, fruit, and vegetable intake increased, while frequency of sugary beverage intake decreased. Concomitant increases in parent-reported frequencies of children’s intake of breakfast, fruits, and vegetables were observed along with a less frequent intake of sugary beverage. Conclusion: Sanos y Fuertes is a promising, short-term healthy lifestyle education program which may lower obesity risk among Latino families. Replication in a randomized controlled trial is needed to establish its effectiveness among diverse Latino populations

Insights into the provenance of the Chinese Loess Plateau from joint zircon U-Pb and garnet geochemical analysis of last glacial loess

The Chinese Loess Plateau, the world’s largest and oldest loess record, preserves evidence of Asia’s long-term dust source dynamics, but there is uncertainty over the source of the deposits. Recent single-grain detrital zircon U-Pb age analysis has progressed this issue, but debates remain about source changes, and the generation and interpretation of zircon data. To address this, we analyze different groupings of new and existing datasets from the Loess Plateau and potential sources. We also present the results of a first high resolution sampling, multi-proxy provenance analysis of Beiguoyuan loess using U-Pb dating of detrital zircons and detrital garnet geochemistry. The data shows that some small source differences seem to exist between different areas on the Loess Plateau. However, sediment source appears to be unchanging between loess and palaeosols, supporting a recent material recycling hypothesis. Our zircon and garnet data demonstrates, however, that Beiguoyuan experienced a temporary, abrupt source shift during the last glacial maximum, implying that local dust sources became periodically active during the Quaternary. Our results highlight that grouping data to achieve bigger datasets could cause identification of misleading trends. Additionally, we suggest that multi-proxy single-grain approaches are required to gain further insight into Chinese Loess Plateau dust sources

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Leveraging agriculture for nutrition in South Asia: What do we know, and what have we learned?

Despite significant improvements over recent decades, rates of undernutrition remain high in South Asia, with adverse impacts on morbidity and mortality. Overweight/obesity, among children and adults, is now an additional and major public health concern. While agriculture has the potential to improve nutrition through several pathways, this potential is currently not being realised in the region. The Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) research consortium (2012–2018) set out to improve understanding about how agriculture and related food policies and programs in South Asia (specifically in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan) can be better conceptualised and implemented in order to enhance impacts on nutrition outcomes, especially those of young children and adolescent girls. This paper provides a snapshot of the agriculture-nutrition nexus in the region, outlines the pathways through which agriculture can influence nutrition outcomes, elaborates on the objectives of the LANSA research consortium within this context, and highlights the core findings of the six papers that form the body of this Special Issue. The paper ends with five key lessons that have emerged from this research, during this decade

The Eighteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: Targeting and First Spectra from SDSS-V

The eighteenth data release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS) is the first one for SDSS-V, the fifth generation of the survey. SDSS-V comprises three primary scientific programs, or "Mappers": Milky Way Mapper (MWM), Black Hole Mapper (BHM), and Local Volume Mapper (LVM). This data release contains extensive targeting information for the two multi-object spectroscopy programs (MWM and BHM), including input catalogs and selection functions for their numerous scientific objectives. We describe the production of the targeting databases and their calibration- and scientifically-focused components. DR18 also includes ~25,000 new SDSS spectra and supplemental information for X-ray sources identified by eROSITA in its eFEDS field. We present updates to some of the SDSS software pipelines and preview changes anticipated for DR19. We also describe three value-added catalogs (VACs) based on SDSS-IV data that have been published since DR17, and one VAC based on the SDSS-V data in the eFEDS field.Comment: Accepted to ApJ

The 13th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the SDSS-IV Survey Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) began observations in July 2014. It pursues three core programs: APOGEE-2,MaNGA, and eBOSS. In addition, eBOSS contains two major subprograms: TDSS and SPIDERS. This paper describes the first data release from SDSS-IV, Data Release 13 (DR13), which contains new data, reanalysis of existing data sets and, like all SDSS data releases, is inclusive of previously released data. DR13 makes publicly available 1390 spatially resolved integral field unit observations of nearby galaxies from MaNGA,the first data released from this survey. It includes new observations from eBOSS, completing SEQUELS. In addition to targeting galaxies and quasars, SEQUELS also targeted variability-selected objects from TDSS and X-ray selected objects from SPIDERS. DR13 includes new reductions ofthe SDSS-III BOSS data, improving the spectrophotometric calibration and redshift classification. DR13 releases new reductions of the APOGEE-1data from SDSS-III, with abundances of elements not previously included and improved stellar parameters for dwarf stars and cooler stars. For the SDSS imaging data, DR13 provides new, more robust and precise photometric calibrations. Several value-added catalogs are being released in tandem with DR13, in particular target catalogs relevant for eBOSS, TDSS, and SPIDERS, and an updated red-clump catalog for APOGEE.This paper describes the location and format of the data now publicly available, as well as providing references to the important technical papers that describe the targeting, observing, and data reduction. The SDSS website, http://www.sdss.org, provides links to the data, tutorials and examples of data access, and extensive documentation of the reduction and analysis procedures. DR13 is the first of a scheduled set that will contain new data and analyses from the planned ~6-year operations of SDSS-IV.PostprintPeer reviewe

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: mapping the Milky Way, nearby galaxies, and the distant universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median ). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July

The 16th Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: First Release from the APOGEE-2 Southern Survey and Full Release of eBOSS Spectra

This paper documents the 16th data release (DR16) from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS), the fourth and penultimate from the fourth phase (SDSS-IV). This is the first release of data from the Southern Hemisphere survey of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2); new data from APOGEE-2 North are also included. DR16 is also notable as the final data release for the main cosmological program of the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS), and all raw and reduced spectra from that project are released here. DR16 also includes all the data from the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey and new data from the SPectroscopic IDentification of ERosita Survey programs, both of which were co-observed on eBOSS plates. DR16 has no new data from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey (or the MaNGA Stellar Library "MaStar"). We also preview future SDSS-V operations (due to start in 2020), and summarize plans for the final SDSS-IV data release (DR17)