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ACA chefs adopt a school: An evaluation
This document summarises an evaluation of a cooking in schools initiative called Chefs Adopt a School (CAAS) which is delivered by the Academy of Culinary Arts.1 At present, sessions are provided all over England from Cumbria to Cornwall subject to demand and resources (with a few sessions being delivered in Scotland too). Annually, 21,000 children take part in the initiative. Delivered by professional chefs, the programme aim is to teach children about food, food provenance, health, nutrition and cookery. The evaluation was informed by a rapid systematic review of the existing literature on cooking in schools.
This research has been carried out at a time when cooking in schools is being put forward as a solution to improving diets and reducing obesity. It is currently the only evaluation of school cooking in the UK that measures outcomes that impact on health, such as: eating behaviour, cooking confidence and confidence asking for fruit, vegetables and ingredients at home. As such, it can inform future UK school cooking initiative interventions and evaluations. It also highlights the need to incorporate evaluation into school cooking initiatives, as findings provide valuable information necessary to fine tune an
intervention.
In the core programme, chefs link with local schools, usually primary, where they deliver 2-3 sessions to one year group within a school. This process is then repeated each year. Key issues covered include hygiene, healthy eating, an appreciation of food through the senses (particularly taste) and practical cooking/food preparation. The first session covers healthy eating and the sensory appreciation of food while the second and third sessions are practical
Revisiting the Hubble sequence in the SDSS DR7 spectroscopic sample: a publicly available bayesian automated classification
We present an automated morphological classification in 4 types
(E,S0,Sab,Scd) of ~700.000 galaxies from the SDSS DR7 spectroscopic sample
based on support vector machines. The main new property of the classification
is that we associate to each galaxy a probability of being in the four
morphological classes instead of assigning a single class. The classification
is therefore better adapted to nature where we expect a continuos transition
between different morphological types. The algorithm is trained with a visual
classification and then compared to several independent visual classifications
including the Galaxy Zoo first release catalog. We find a very good correlation
between the automated classification and classical visual ones. The compiled
catalog is intended for use in different applications and can be downloaded at
http://gepicom04.obspm.fr/sdss_morphology/Morphology_2010.html and soon from
the CasJobs database.Comment: A&A in press, english corrections from language editor adde
Galaxy size trends as a consequence of cosmology
We show that recently documented trends in galaxy sizes with mass and
redshift can be understood in terms of the influence of underlying cosmic
evolution; a holistic view which is complimentary to interpretations involving
the accumulation of discreet evolutionary processes acting on individual
objects. Using standard cosmology theory, supported with results from the
Millennium simulations, we derive expected size trends for collapsed cosmic
structures, emphasising the important distinction between these trends and the
assembly paths of individual regions. We then argue that the observed variation
in the stellar mass content of these structures can be understood to first
order in terms of natural limitations of cooling and feedback. But whilst these
relative masses vary by orders of magnitude, galaxy and host radii have been
found to correlate linearly. We explain how these two aspects will lead to
galaxy sizes that closely follow observed trends and their evolution, comparing
directly with the COSMOS and SDSS surveys. Thus we conclude that the observed
minimum radius for galaxies, the evolving trend in size as a function of mass
for intermediate systems, and the observed increase in the sizes of massive
galaxies, may all be considered an emergent consequence of the cosmic
expansion.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures. Accepted by MNRA
Comparing PyMorph and SDSS photometry. II. The differences are more than semantics and are not dominated by intracluster light
The Sloan Digital Sky Survey pipeline photometry underestimates the
brightnesses of the most luminous galaxies. This is mainly because (i) the SDSS
overestimates the sky background and (ii) single or two-component Sersic-based
models better fit the surface brightness profile of galaxies, especially at
high luminosities, than does the de Vaucouleurs model used by the SDSS
pipeline. We use the PyMorph photometric reductions to isolate effect (ii) and
show that it is the same in the full sample as in small group environments, and
for satellites in the most massive clusters as well. None of these are expected
to be significantly affected by intracluster light (ICL). We only see an
additional effect for centrals in the most massive halos, but we argue that
even this is not dominated by ICL. Hence, for the vast majority of galaxies,
the differences between PyMorph and SDSS pipeline photometry cannot be ascribed
to the semantics of whether or not one includes the ICL when describing the
stellar mass of massive galaxies. Rather, they likely reflect differences in
star formation or assembly histories. Failure to account for the SDSS
underestimate has significantly biased most previous estimates of the SDSS
luminosity and stellar mass functions, and therefore Halo Model estimates of
the z ~ 0.1 relation between the mass of a halo and that of the galaxy at its
center. We also show that when one studies correlations, at fixed group mass,
with a quantity which was not used to define the groups, then selection effects
appear. We show why such effects arise, and should not be mistaken for physical
effects.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. The PyMorph
luminosities and stellar masses are available at
https://www.physics.upenn.edu/~ameert/SDSS_PhotDec
The high mass end of the stellar mass function: Dependence on stellar population models and agreement between fits to the light profile
We quantify the systematic effects on the stellar mass function which arise
from assumptions about the stellar population, as well as how one fits the
light profiles of the most luminous galaxies at z ~ 0.1. When comparing results
from the literature, we are careful to separate out these effects. Our analysis
shows that while systematics in the estimated comoving number density which
arise from different treatments of the stellar population remain of order < 0.5
dex, systematics in photometry are now about 0.1 dex, despite recent claims in
the literature. Compared to these more recent analyses, previous work based on
Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) pipeline photometry leads to underestimates of
rho_*(> M_*) by factors of 3-10 in the mass range 10^11 - 10^11.6 M_Sun, but up
to a factor of 100 at higher stellar masses. This impacts studies which match
massive galaxies to dark matter halos. Although systematics which arise from
different treatments of the stellar population remain of order < 0.5 dex, our
finding that systematics in photometry now amount to only about 0.1 dex in the
stellar mass density is a significant improvement with respect to a decade ago.
Our results highlight the importance of using the same stellar population and
photometric models whenever low and high redshift samples are compared.Comment: 18 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. The PyMorph
luminosities and stellar masses are available at
https://www.physics.upenn.edu/~ameert/SDSS_PhotDec
Soft clustering analysis of galaxy morphologies: A worked example with SDSS
Context: The huge and still rapidly growing amount of galaxies in modern sky
surveys raises the need of an automated and objective classification method.
Unsupervised learning algorithms are of particular interest, since they
discover classes automatically. Aims: We briefly discuss the pitfalls of
oversimplified classification methods and outline an alternative approach
called "clustering analysis". Methods: We categorise different classification
methods according to their capabilities. Based on this categorisation, we
present a probabilistic classification algorithm that automatically detects the
optimal classes preferred by the data. We explore the reliability of this
algorithm in systematic tests. Using a small sample of bright galaxies from the
SDSS, we demonstrate the performance of this algorithm in practice. We are able
to disentangle the problems of classification and parametrisation of galaxy
morphologies in this case. Results: We give physical arguments that a
probabilistic classification scheme is necessary. The algorithm we present
produces reasonable morphological classes and object-to-class assignments
without any prior assumptions. Conclusions: There are sophisticated automated
classification algorithms that meet all necessary requirements, but a lot of
work is still needed on the interpretation of the results.Comment: 18 pages, 19 figures, 2 tables, submitted to A
Matrix factorizations for quantum complete intersections
We introduce twisted matrix factorizations for quantum complete intersections
of codimension two. For such an algebra, we show that in a given dimension,
almost all the indecomposable modules with bounded minimal projective
resolutions correspond to such matrix factorizations.Comment: 13 page
Physiological responses of adipose tissue to different models of physical activity and inactivity
Childhood is a critical time of growth, and decisions made during this time lead to positive and negative health consequences, specifically pertaining to adiposity. There is convincing evidence that children who are overweight and obese are at higher risk for adult obesity and risk factors associated with obesity for their whole life course. Puberty is a critical time of adipose tissue expansion, and it is accepted by most that this is the age where the number of adipocytes is set for adulthood. Further it is believed that before puberty, adipose tissue expands by hyperplasia, while after puberty, adipose tissue expands by hypertrophy. The time leading up to puberty represents a critical time. Yet, little is known about the interaction between age, physical activity, and adipose tissue expansion in young, growing animals. Thus, I employed a unique model of childhood obesity to test whether: 1) seven days of decreased physical activity (wheel lock) in 49-56 day old rats and 70-77 day old rats would result in gains in visceral adipose mass seen in age-matched sedentary rats concurrent with an increase in adipocyte size and inflammatory mRNA expression (Chapter 2), and 2) glucocorticoid block would attenuate the visceral adipose depot gains seen with wheel lock in rats at sexual maturity (Chapter 3). Here, I present evidence that the age at which wheel lock occurs influences visceral adipose tissue growth and propose a mechanism for this growth at two ages of pre-pubertal growth (49-56 days of age and 70-77 days of age). Specifically, rats that undergo wheel lock for 7 days at 49-56 days of age show no differences in total body mass, mean adipocyte diameter, or mass of omental, epididymal, and perirenal adipose tissue depots compared to rats that remained physically active. However, rats that undergo wheel lock for 7 days at 70-77 days of age have an increased rate of body mass, fat mass, and % body fat gained and have increased depot mass and total number of adipocytes in epididymal and perirenal adipose tissue,
Letter to Sonora Dodd from The A. M. Davis Company, May 23, 1911
Letter to Sonora Dodd from the A. M. Davis Company, with envelope.https://digitalcommons.whitworth.edu/fathers-day-correspondence/1003/thumbnail.jp
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