Putting an Emphasis on Local and Healthy Living

Local First is an organization located in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that works to promote a lifestyle built upon local product consumption. Local First works with a wide variety of compa-­‐ nies to achieve this goal and is not limited to one specific area of the market. Four students from Grand Valley State University have teamed up with Local First to address and improve ar-­‐ eas in need of attention. Nutrition, Diversity, and public awareness of Local First are current areas described as needing improvement by both the students and the Local First executive as-­‐ sistant. Students designed, printed, and distributed a brochure specifically focused on increas-­‐ ing public awareness of the importance of eating nutritional food, as well as how to do so through local food sources. Determining what information is most effective for the limited space a brochure offers is one of the challenge we dealt with during the early design stages of the project. Despite the initial success of the brochure, further work is needed with Local First in order to keep expanding on the importance of nutritional eating achieved locally. Future partners should focus on working with more Local First partners (restaurant owners, farmers, local market owners, etc…) in order to provide the Grand Rapids community with more options on where to obtain nutritional local food

Mayoral governance in Bristol: Has it made a difference?

This research report on the impact of mayoral governance in Bristol analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the mayoral model. Researchers at the University of Bristol and the University of the West of England, Bristol have gathered data over an eight-year period. This latest report from the Bristol Civic Leadership Project compares people’s views about the quality of city governance in Bristol in 2012, before Bristol had a directly elected mayor, with current views about the strengths and weaknesses of the mayoral governance. The research shows that the mayoral model has increased the visibility of city leadership and led to the creation of a more broadly recognised vision for the city. It also suggests that first two mayors of Bristol have been successful in raising the international and national profile of Bristol. However, the research also shows that the mayoral model has unnecessarily restricted the role of councillors in decision-making. In the light of the analysis the report outlines steps that should be taken by central and local government to improve the performance of mayoral governance

Testing the Effects of a Bio-Derived Alternative Aviation Gasoline on Aircraft Materials In Comparison to 100 Low Lead Aviation Gasoline

Within the past decades, there has been increasing interest in alternative fuels in the aviation industry. However for these alternative fuels to be accepted they must show they do not affect materials, particularly elastomers, in aircraft significantly different than standard 100 low lead (100LL). This research is focused on comparing the effects of a proprietary bio-derived alternative fuel on elastomers against 100LL. Materials to be tested are Buna-N vinyl, neoprene, nitrile, plain cork, neoprene and cork (backed cork), Viton, high-purity silicone, polyester, polysulfide and rubber hose. The testing to be performed includes volume swell, tensile strength, elongation, durometer hardness and density. The samples were soaked in fuel for a period of 28 days at room temperature, 71°C and 93°C. All testing will be done in accordance with respective ASTM standards. Due to proprietary concerns, actual measurement cannot be reported, but differences between the two fuels can, i.e. the percentage difference between materials soaked in 100LL and the bio-derived alternative. Statistical methods were applied to the volume change, tensile strength and elongation tests to determine significant differences. The largest difference in volume swell was for backed cork, the largest difference in tensile and elongation was in neoprene, the largest difference in density was in nitrile, and plain cork exhibited the largest difference in durometer hardness. Viton and polyester exhibited no significant differences. Limited testing conducted with a second bio-derived alternative showed polysulfide as having the greatest difference between the two bio-derived fuels

Is Primary Care Providers’ Trust in Socially Marginalized Patients Affected by Race?

Interpersonal trust plays an important role in the clinic visit. Clinician trust in the patient may be especially important when prescribing opioid analgesics because of concerns about misuse. Previous studies have found that non-white patients are perceived negatively by clinicians.To examine whether clinicians' trust in patients differed by patients' race/ethnicity in a socially marginalized cohort.Cross-sectional study of patient-clinician dyads.169 HIV infected indigent patients recruited from the community and their 61 primary care providers (PCPs.)The Physician Trust in Patients Scale (PTPS), a validated scale that measures PCPs' trust in patients.The mean PTPS score was 43.2 (SD 10.8) out of a possible 60. Reported current illicit drug use and prescription opioid misuse were similar across patients' race or ethnicity. However, both patient illicit drug use and patient non-white race/ethnicity were associated with lower PTPS scores. In a multivariate model, non-white race/ethnicity was independently associated with PTPS scores 6.3 points lower than whites (95% CI: -9.9, -2.7). Current illicit drug use was associated with PTSP scores 5.5 lower than no drug use (95% CI -8.5, -2.5).In a socially marginalized cohort, non-white patients were trusted less than white patients by their PCPs, despite similar rates of illicit drug use and opioid analgesic misuse. The effect was independent of illicit drug use. This finding may reflect unconscious stereotypes by PCPs and may underlie disparities in chronic pain management

Potential Agronomic Benefits of Wood Ash Application on Reclaimed Surface Mined Lands

Wood ash is a by-product generated by paper companies, lumber manufacturing plants and utilities that bum wood products, bark and papermill sludge as a means of disposal and/or energy production. Large quantities of wood ash are generated by these industries since wood generally contains 6 to 10% ash. Most of these ashes are landfilled or discarded in lagoons. However, the increasing expense of landfill disposal has led to increased interest in the land application of industry generated wood ash

Influence of uncertain identification of triggering rainfall on the assessment of landslide early warning thresholds

Abstract. Uncertainty in rainfall datasets and landslide inventories is known to have negative impacts on the assessment of landslide-triggering thresholds. In this paper, we perform a quantitative analysis of the impacts of uncertain knowledge of landslide initiation instants on the assessment of rainfall intensity–duration landslide early warning thresholds. The analysis is based on a synthetic database of rainfall and landslide information, generated by coupling a stochastic rainfall generator and a physically based hydrological and slope stability model, and is therefore error-free in terms of knowledge of triggering instants. This dataset is then perturbed according to hypothetical reporting scenarios that allow simulation of possible errors in landslide-triggering instants as retrieved from historical archives. The impact of these errors is analysed jointly using different criteria to single out rainfall events from a continuous series and two typical temporal aggregations of rainfall (hourly and daily). The analysis shows that the impacts of the above uncertainty sources can be significant, especially when errors exceed 1 day or the actual instants follow the erroneous ones. Errors generally lead to underestimated thresholds, i.e. lower than those that would be obtained from an error-free dataset. Potentially, the amount of the underestimation can be enough to induce an excessive number of false positives, hence limiting possible landslide mitigation benefits. Moreover, the uncertain knowledge of triggering rainfall limits the possibility to set up links between thresholds and physio-geographical factors

Stellar Stratifications on Classifying Spaces

We extend Bj\"orner's characterization of the face poset of finite CW complexes to a certain class of stratified spaces, called cylindrically normal stellar complexes. As a direct consequence, we obtain a discrete analogue of cell decompositions in smooth Morse theory, by using the classifying space model introduced in arXiv:1612.08429. As another application, we show that the exit-path simplicial set $\mathrm{Exit}(X)$ of a finite cylindrically normal CW stellar complex $X$ is a quasicategory.Comment: 23 pages. v2 updated according to referee's comment