Successful nutrition programs in Africa : what makes them work?

Little of the literature on nutrition between 1960 and the 1980s included assessments of effective nutrition programs. In this important study, the author focuses on factors associated with successful nutrition programs in Africa. This report concentrates on summarizing the information received from a mail survey, telephone and personal interviews and in-depth case studies. Seven factors were mentioned repeatedly as important to the success of nutrition programs: (a) community participation; (b) program flexibility; (c) institutional structure; (d) recovery of recurrent costs; (e) multifaceted program activities; (f) well-trained and qualified staff; and (g) infrastructure. The author concludes that these findings are preliminary and require further validation.ICT Policy and Strategies,Housing&Human Habitats,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Health Economics&Finance,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis

An empirical analysis of the reasons why guests select and return to Las Vegas hotel/casino properties

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the reasons why guests select and return to Las Vegas hotel/casino properties. The study intended to investigate the importance of the host relationship in the guests\u27 reasons for selection and return to a particular property; Current marketing research indicates that customer retention is directly related to satisfaction and individualized service experiences. For this reason, research topics were identified as relationship marketing, customer satisfaction versus retention, and loyalty management. Findings suggest that guests with hosts and guests without hosts tend to be comprised of the same demographic group. Casino guests with hosts demonstrated longer hours spent gambling per day; larger average wagers; and a tendency to play table games rather than slot machines. Finally, the importance of the host relationship was determined as low

Color variation in museum specimens of birds: effects of stress, pigmentation, and duration of storage

Animal coloration often serves as a signal to others that may communicate traits about the individual such as toxicity, status, or quality. Colorful ornaments in many animals are often honest signals of quality assessed by mates, and different colors may beproduced by different biochemical pigments. Investigations of the mechanisms responsible for variation in color expression among birds are best when including a geographically and temporally broad sample. In order to obtain such a sample, studies such as this often use museum specimens; however, in order for museum specimens toserve as an accurate replacement, they must accurately represent living birds, or we must understand the ways in which they differ. In this thesis, I investigated the link between feather corticosterone, a hormone secreted in response to stress, and carotenoid-basedcoloration in the Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) in order to explore a mechanistic link between physiological state and color expression. Male Red-winged Blackbirds with lower feather corticosterone had significantly brighter red epaulets than birds with higher feather corticosterone, while I found no significant changes in red chroma. I also performed a methodological comparison of color change in museum specimens among different pigment types (carotenoid and psittacofulvin) and pigments in different locations in the body (feather and bill carotenoids) in order to quantify colorchange over time. Carotenoids and psittacofulvins showed significant reductions in red brightness and chroma over time in the collection, and carotenoid color changed significantly faster than psittacofulvin color. Both bill and feather carotenoids showed significant reductions in red brightness and red chroma over time, but change of both red chroma and red brightness occurred at a similar rate in feathers and bills. In order to use museum specimens of ecological research on bird coloration specimen age must be accounted for before the data can be used; however, once this is accomplished, museum- based color data may be used to draw conclusions about wild populations

Music and words: Connecting the love of music with language

Children from different cultures have a natural affinity for rhymes, rhythm and music. Imagine if students were able, from the beginning of their education and experiences with academic writing and literacy, to access their unconscious and original selves from which to create their writing. The study of music can help to access this aware, inventive side that can enhance anyone’s writing. As an early childhood writing teacher and a composition teacher, we draw on our experiences with young children with words and music. We examine the relationship between music and words in an effort to bring the primitive drive of music into the emergent writing capabilities of children

What prevents universities from ‘building back better’? Fault lines in university structures of care during the COVID-19 pandemic

Universities may have coped with the COVID-19 pandemic, but we argue there are still important lessons to be learnt from that experience of coping. In this paper, we explore whether universities could improve what they do, rather than just returning to pre-lockdown ways of working. We do this by analyzing a series of interviews with staff, recorded during the lockdown in the UK, using Tronto’s political theory of care. This analysis does not suggest that universities simply need to be more caring; it shows, instead, that they were already full of complex and overlapping caring activities. What staff accounts highlighted, however, were the fault lines between responsibilities for academic work and the tasks of caring; the competing priorities staff faced, between work, home and self; and how the burden of caring work was (and still is) unfairly distributed, with consequences for the wellbeing of staff. We conclude by suggesting that better-integrated caring practices are needed, and that developing these will require paying attention to the labour it takes to sustain academic work, and taking responsibility for helping the often-overlooked people who do this

Design patterns for promoting peer interaction in discussion forums in MOOCs

Design patterns are a way of sharing evidence-based solutions to educational design problems. The design patterns presented in this paper were produced through a series of workshops, which aimed to identify Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) design principles from workshop participants’ experiences of designing, teaching and learning on these courses. MOOCs present a challenge for the existing pedagogy of online learning, particularly as it relates to promoting peer interaction and discussion. MOOC cohort sizes, participation patterns and diversity of learners mean that discussions can remain superficial, become difficult to navigate, or never develop beyond isolated posts. In addition, MOOC platforms may not provide sufficient tools to support moderation. This paper draws on four case studies of designing and teaching on a range of MOOCs presenting seven design narratives relating to the experience in these MOOCs. Evidence presented in the narratives is abstracted in the form of three design patterns created through a collaborative process using techniques similar to those used in collective autoethnography. The patterns: “Special Interest Discussions”, “Celebrity Touch” and “Look and Engage”, draw together shared lessons and present possible solutions to the problem of creating, managing and facilitating meaningful discussion in MOOCs through the careful use of staged learning activities and facilitation strategies

Chemically-stabilized allosteric modulators of leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (lrrk2)

The present disclosure describes synthetic polypeptides for the inhibition or modulation of the activity of leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) along with methods of using the same in the treatment of medical conditions, for example neurological diseases or disorders