Digital Food Marketing to Children and Adolescents: Problematic Practices and Policy Interventions

Examines trends in digital marketing to youth that uses "immersive" techniques, social media, behavioral profiling, location targeting and mobile marketing, and neuroscience methods. Recommends principles for regulating inappropriate advertising to youth

On the Logic of Business Plan Composition

This article presents examples for improving the effectiveness of business plans by focusing on the logical structure of their composition

Advancing Understanding of Long-Distance and Intercity Travel with Diverse Data Sources

Long-distance travel is an ambiguous designation that is used to refer to an extremely diverse set of trips, differing from one another in mode, distance, and purpose. Long-distance travel encompasses everything from short long-distance surface trips between adjacent metropolitan areas through intercontinental air trips spanning thousands of miles. These trips serve a wide range of purposes including business travel, leisure travel, and travel to access essential services such as medical care. As such, long-distance travel is increasingly important for sustainable transportation planning both due to the environmental externalities associated with these trips and also because the benefits of access to long-distance travel are inequitably distributed throughout the population. This project drew on five survey datasets, a mobiledevice based dataset from AirSage Inc., and semi-structured interviews to address research questions related to how best to measure long-distance travel, how long-distance travel influences well-being, and how access to long-distance travel varies among socio-demographic groups. Adequately defining long-distance travel for data collection and modeling remains a challenge and long-distance travel behavior researchers are continuing to experiment with innovative data collection methods for measuring these trips. It is clear that the most common current long-distance data collection methods are suboptimal. Distance thresholds, such as trips over 50 or 75 miles, are a poor method for defining long-distance travel on a national or global scale and there is no consensus on the appropriate recall period for retrospective long-distance travel surveys. Several promising avenues for future research and data collection were identified through this project. Focusing on more memorable long-distance travel indicators within surveys, such as overnight trips, trips including air travel, or an individual\u27s maximum distance from home, may reduce recall error and provide useful outcome measures for assessing individuals\u27 overall long-distance travel tendencies. Project results indicated that expanded use of convenience samples may provide more cost-effective opportunities to measure long-distance trip length and destination distributions. Social network characteristics may be predictive of certain types of long-distance travel and additional methodological improvements are needed to understand how to more effectively collect social network information including network geography. Analysis of survey data in this project suggested that one-time, self-assessed travel frequency estimates (a common existing measure of longdistance travel) can provide only a crude approximation of the levels of long-distance travel and that self-assessment is most effective for identifying non-travelers and very infrequent travelers. Historically, transportation equity research has focused on access to local goods and services but access to long-distance travel and to more distant destinations is increasingly important for maintaining social networks and accessing economic opportunities and specialized services. Across multiple datasets in this project, there is ample evidence that lower-income individuals engage in less long-distance travel and have more unmet long-distance travel needs than their higher-income counterparts. Given both the theoretical and empirical evidence that longdistance and intercity travel is correlated with an individuals’ own sense of well-being, especially for leisure or personal purposes, inequitable access to long-distance travel cannot be ignored. This finding suggests generally that lack of equity in long-distance access has been masked by lack of data and is a policy concern that must be considered in sustainable transportation planning moving forward

Identifying Knowledge Gaps with Administrative Health Data: A Cohort Study of Traumatic and Non-Traumatic Spinal Cord Injury in Alberta

Introduction The Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) population consists of two main sub-groups: traumatic (TSCI) and non-traumatic (NTSCI). TSCI has been studied; however less attention has been given to NTSCI. It is important to understand both SCI sub-groups for identification of knowledge gaps and subsequent health service planning. Objectives and Approach The goal is to study the SCI population (both TSCI and NTSCI) in Alberta, Canada, leveraging recent administrative health data. It is difficult to identify NTSCI patients for their heterogeneous conditions, and relatively low prevalence. Consequently, we followed a validated algorithm using particular ICD-10-CA codes, to identify (and index) adult SCI patients from Ambulatory and Inpatient records between April 1, 2006 and March 31, 2016. Indexed patients were linked to various databases (inpatient, ambulatory, physician claims, provincial insurance registry), and analyzed in multiple perspectives such as demographics patterns, deaths, resource and cost utilization, geographic distribution, and care equity between groups. Results Through 10 years of data we have identified 5217 SCI patients (3309 TSCI; 1908 NTSCI). 68.7% TSCI and 58.6% NTSCI are male. NTSCI patients are approximately 10 years older (46.3 TSCI; 54.5 NTSCI), and have a 3-point higher Charlson score. 1-year mortality in NTSCI is approximately 2.4 times the TSCI group. Hospitalizations, ER visits, critical care time have also been examined. Patients with NTSCI had a higher median index LOS (14 days IQR (4-51)) compared to the traumatic group who had much higher variability (11 days IQR (11-65.5)). Noted 13.7% NTSCI patients and 19.5% TSCI do not have hospitalizations after index (a diverse characteristic of SCI). Resource Intensity Weights, physician billing, rural-urban area utilization have also been compared between the sub-groups. Conclusion/Implications With the use of administrative databases and a validated algorithm, we described a diverse patient cohort with two main sub-groups (TSCI/NTSCI). Both groups were analyzed upon multiple topics and showed variations. Our results have provided updated knowledge of a comprehensive SCI population in Alberta, Canada, and may lead to improvements on care-giving model

Operational Evaluatioin of Dynamic Weather Routes at American Airlines

Dynamic Weather Routes (DWR) is a search engine that continuously and automatically analyzes inflight aircraft in en route airspace and proposes simple route amendments for more efficient routes around convective weather while considering sector congestion, traffic conflicts, and active Special Use Airspace. NASA and American Airlines (AA) are conducting an operational trial of DWR at the AA System Operations Center in Fort Worth, TX. The trial includes only AA flights in Fort Worth Center airspace. Over the period from July 31, 2012 through August 31, 2012, 45% of routes proposed by DWR and evaluated by AA users - air traffic control coordinators and flight dispatchers - were rated as acceptable as proposed or with some modifications. The wind-corrected potential flying time savings for these acceptable routes totals 470 flying min, and results suggest another 1,500 min of potential savings for flights not evaluated due to staffing limitations. A sector congestion analysis shows that in only two out of 83 DWR routes rated acceptable by AA staff were the flights predicted to fly through a congested sector inside of 30 min downstream of present position. This shows that users considered sector congestion data provided by DWR automation and in nearly all cases did not accept routes through over-capacity sectors. It is estimated that 12 AA flights were given reroute clearances as a direct result of DWR for a total savings of 67 flying min

Assessment of Microplastics in the Surface Water of Sitio Pulo, Navotas, Metro Manila

Microplastics are synthetic polymer particles with a length of 5 mm or less with no well-defined lower boundary. These debris particles are known to affect marine and aquatic organisms which poses a threat to biodiversity and marine resources. In this study, the isolated microplastic from the coastal and lagoon surface waters of Sitio Pulo is described. Sitio Pulo is a barrier island mangrove sanctuary located at Brgy. Tanza I, Navotas City surrounded by Manila Bay. The samples collected last July 4 and 25, 2019, were isolated, profiled, and analyzed. A total of four hundred forty-nine (449) microplastic fragments were isolated from the surface water samples with a median length of 1.096 (IQR 0.809–1.578) mm. The isolated microplastics exhibit roundness, whiteness, and yellowing indicating signs of mechanical, chemical and photodegradation. It is also noted the putative effects of the weather disturbances in accelerating the discharge of nascent microplastics in Manila Bay. The isolated microplastic composition includes the commodity polymers polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP). The presence of microplastics in the surface waters of Sitio Pulo reflects the worsening plastic pollution problem in Metro Manila

An Association of Cancer Physicians' strategy for improving services and outcomes for cancer patients.

The Association of Cancer Physicians in the United Kingdom has developed a strategy to improve outcomes for cancer patients and identified the goals and commitments of the Association and its members.The ACP is very grateful to all of its members who have expressed views on the development of the strategy and to the sponsors of our workshops and publications, especially Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer SupportThis is the final version of the article. It was first available from Cancer Intelligence via http://dx.doi.org/10.3332/ecancer.2016.60

The role of digital marketing in political campaigns

Computational politics—the application of digital targeted-marketing technologies to election campaigns in the US and elsewhere—are now raising the same concerns for democratic discourse and governance that they have long raised for consumer privacy and welfare in the commercial marketplace. This paper examines the digital strategies and technologies of today’s political operations, explaining how they were employed during the most recent US election cycle, and exploring the implications of their continued use in the civic context. The paper concludes with a discussion of recent policy proposals designed to increase transparency and accountability in digital politics

The digital commercialisation of US politics — 2020 and beyond

The same micro-targeted programmatic advertising that has become central to the digital media and marketing ecosystem has now migrated into election campaigns in the US and elsewhere, raising a host of issues around privacy, discrimination, and manipulation. This paper examines the digital strategies and technologies of today's political campaigns, explaining how they will be deployed in the upcoming 2020 election cycle, and assessing regulatory and policy responses — both enacted and proposed — for increasing transparency and accountability in digital politics