The Links Between the Neighborhood Food Environment and Childhood Nutrition

Identifies key studies on the availability of, and residents' access to, healthy foods and how they influence the choices of low-income children and their families. Discusses efforts to bring about improvements and new research and policy priorities

Delivering 3D advertising to mobile phones.

Directing advertising to mobile phones currently is limited to commercial text messages, short-code text-back messages, two dimensional (2D) images, or wireless access protocol (WAP) clickable push links. All of these traditional methods do not facilitate advertising approach were consumers can interact with prospective purchases. In this paper we introduce a novel and highly interactive location- and permission-based advertising system that allows 3D product adverts to be displayed on users' mobile phones. The paper provides a thorough discussion of the system covering its performance, implementation structure, platform-dependent optimizations and suggestions for future work. With mobile phones and 3D interactive tools, advertising becomes more engaging, rewarding and entertaining and provides marketing executives with new means of directing their campaigns to a more specific target audience

Mobslinger: The Fastest Mobile in the West.

Whilst there is a number of location sensing games emerging for mobile phones, from both commercial and academic sectors, there are few examples of social proximity based games that are effectively position independent. Bluetooth would seem an obvious choice for proximity based games, although the majority of games produced to-date simply uses it to provide a quasi peer to peer connection between users of multiplayer games. This is no-doubt due to the fact that proximity can often be implied from other location sensing technologies and that Bluetooth is often perceived as difficult to employ. In this paper we will show that Bluetooth can provide exciting game scenarios that can enable spontaneous stimulated social interaction using only proximity information. We illustrate this through the design rationale and subsequent implementation of ‘mobslinger’ which is a wild west, quick draw, ‘shoot-em-up’ game using mobile phones

Recipes for Change: Healthy Food in Every Community

Outlines funder and policy strategies to support comprehensive, coordinated efforts to create healthy food environments through retail and institutional environments, federal food and nutrition assistance programs, regional food systems, and agriculture

Future aspects of renal transplantation

New and exciting advances in renal transplantation are continuously being made, and the horizons for organ transplantation are bright and open. This article reviews only a few of the newer advances that will allow renal transplantation to become even more widespread and successful. The important and exciting implications for extrarenal organ transplantation are immediately evident. © 1988 Springer-Verlag

The Need for Peace Education for University Students in Lebanon

Lebanon’s young generations face the harshest outcomes of the country’s continuous state of turmoil and instability. Regardless of their distinct social, economic and educational backgrounds, Lebanese youth seem to be victims of the aggressive politics, degenerative culture and misleading notions of what it means to be a peaceful individual. These conditions, though over-simplified, tend to necessitate a more institutionalized approach in directing youth and equipping them with peace education. This paper aims to explore the need for peace education for university students in Lebanon. It also investigates the extent to which a sample of Lebanese students and instructors are aware of the presence of the peace concept, and its method of application to the education environment. It also examines the shortcomings of current university students’ peace education, and recommends some major changes that need to be introduced to their curricula.  Data is collected using a survey administered to 119 students from a variety of Lebanese universities, in addition to focus group discussions with 14 university professors. Research outcomes serve as a foundation for further research, application and or implementation of peace education in the curriculum of Lebanese universities

An Overview of the Mississippi Farm and Food Economy

This report provides an overview of the farm and food economy of Mississippi, outlining the realities faced by farmers, food workers, and consumers in Mississippi. An estimated 90% (or more) of the food consumed in the state is sourced outside of Mississippi. More than half of the population is overweight. 12.4% of the population has diabetes — the largest rate in the U.S. In response to these trends, many small but potent collaborations are beginning to form, largely below the radar. Striking new farming models are being created at the grassroots. Amidst a climate that is relatively dismissive, these innovators have built strong businesses by constructing solid networks around themselves. Participants in these emerging collaborations often are deeply skeptical of the potential for the public sector to play a positive role. Yet despite this skepticism, their work must be embraced and supported by the state of Mississippi, with the creation of supportive infrastructure, and proper incentives

Physical Layer Security for Combating Jammers and Eavesdroppers

Wirelessly connected devices play a vital role in people's daily life, especially with the rapid increase in the number of devices connected to the internet and the huge data being generated everyday. However, the open nature of the wireless channels makes them vulnerable to several threats. Two major threats are: eavesdropping attacks in which an adversary side tries to capture the transmitted data between two communicating parties, and jamming attacks in which an adversary side tries to disrupt the reception of useful signals by a legitimate receiver. The concept of physical layer security is gaining more and more attention from the research community nowadays. It makes use of the open nature and randomness of the wireless channel to achieve security in the communications system. In this thesis, the problem of combating passive eavesdroppers and jammers is studied. Multiple different scenarios are considered and security solutions based on the physical layer are proposed. The proposed solutions are based on the usage of massive planar antenna arrays. First, a solution for combating a single passive eavesdropper at a known location is proposed. It is based on dedicating some antenna sub-arrays for the communication link between the legitimate parties, while simultaneously sending jamming signals towards the eavesdropper. Next, a look-up table-based physical layer solution is proposed to perform anti-jamming against a single jammer at a known location. The solution is based on performing beamforming by maximizing the receiver's gain towards the transmitter, and simultaneously placing a null in the direction of the jammer, thus, achieving a high signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR). Finally, the proposed anti-jamming technique is extended, and machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) algorithms are deployed in order to build a robust, and cognitive anti-jamming system. The dataset on which the models were trained and tested was generated, and efficient anti-jamming performance was achieved. The proposed models are scalable and can be extended to scenarios with multiple jammers. Insights for an effective method for detecting the location of the jammer are drawn from the proposed ML/DL models and left for future investigation

Mapping the beach beneath the street:digital cartography for the playable city

Maps are an important component within many of the playful and gameful experiences designed to turn cities into a playable infrastructures. They take advantage of the fact that the technology used for obtaining accurate spatial information, such as GPS receivers and magnetometers (digital compasses), are now so wide-spread that they are considered as ‘standard’ sensors on mobile phones, which are themselves ubiquitous. Interactive digital maps, therefore, are are widely used by the general public for a variety of purposes. However, despite the rich design history of cartography digital maps typically exhibit a dominant aesthetic that has been de-signed to serve the usability and utility requirements of turn-by-turn urban navigation, which is itself driven by the proliferation of in-car and personal navigation services. The navigation aesthetic is now widespread across almost all spatial applications, even where a be-spoke cartographic product would be better suited. In this chapter we seek to challenge this by exploring novel neo-cartographic ap-proaches to making maps for use within playful and gameful experi-ences designed for the cities. We will examine the potential of de-sign approaches that can producte not only more aesthetically pleasing maps, but also offer the potential for influencing user be-haviour, which can be used to promote emotional engagement and exploration in playable city experiences