Cultivating Sustainable Coffee: Persistent Paradoxes

This chapter discusses the relationship and interconnections among changing the livelihoods of farmers, initiatives for sustainable coffee, and the production of shade-grown coffee. It examines the advantages and opportunities for farmers and producers engaged in coffee certification and diversification programs. The role of Fair Trade and organic networks in creating awareness of biodiversity conservation, the social and environment costs of coffee systems, and the need for supporting small farmers are also discussed. The methods to increase accountability and improve the efficiency of coffee cooperatives are presented in this chapter, as are the importance of understanding the sustainability initiatives and their implications for the regulators, along with the use of land patterns for coffee cultivation

Analyticity constraints for hadron amplitudes : going high to heal low energy issues

Analyticity constitutes a rigid constraint on hadron scattering amplitudes. This property is used to relate models in different energy regimes. Using meson photoproduction as a benchmark, we show how to test contemporary low-energy models directly against high-energy data. This method pinpoints deficiencies of the models and treads a path to further improvement. The implementation of this technique enables one to produce more stable and reliable partial waves for future use in hadron spectroscopy and new physics searches

On the η\eta and η′\eta' Photoproduction Beam Asymmetry at High Energies

We show that, in the Regge limit, beam asymmetries in $\eta$ and $\eta'$ photoproduction are sensitive to hidden strangeness components. Under reasonable assumptions about the couplings we estimate the contribution of the $\phi$ Regge pole, which is expected to be the dominant hidden strangeness contribution. The ratio of the asymmetries in $\eta'$ and $\eta$ production is estimated to be close to unity in the forward region $0 < -t/\text{GeV}^2 \leq 1$ at the photon energy $E_\text{lab} = 9$~GeV, relevant for the upcoming measurements at Jefferson Lab.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure

Structure of Pion Photoproduction Amplitudes

We derive and apply the finite energy sum rules to pion photoproduction. We evaluate the low energy part of the sum rules using several state-of-the-art models. We show how the differences in the low energy side of the sum rules might originate from different quantum number assignments of baryon resonances. We interpret the observed features in the low energy side of the sum rules with the expectation from Regge theory. Finally, we present a model, in terms of a Regge-pole expansion, that matches the sum rules and the high-energy observables.Comment: 19 pages, 15 figures and 4 table

Functional Approach to Stochastic Inflation

We propose functional approach to the stochastic inflationary universe dynamics. It is based on path integral representation of the solution to the differential equation for the scalar field probability distribution. In the saddle-point approximation scalar field probability distributions of various type are derived and the statistics of the inflationary-history-dependent functionals is developed.Comment: 20 pages, Preprint BROWN-HET-960, uses phyzz

Can food vouchers improve nutrition and reduce health inequalities in low-income mothers and young children: A multi-method evaluation of the experiences of beneficiaries and practitioners of the Healthy Start programme in England

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Good nutrition is important during pregnancy, breastfeeding and early life to optimise the health of women and children. It is difficult for low-income families to prioritise spending on healthy food. Healthy Start is a targeted United Kingdom (UK) food subsidy programme that gives vouchers for fruit, vegetables, milk, and vitamins to low-income families. This paper reports an evaluation of Healthy Start from the perspectives of women and health practitioners. Methods. The multi-method study conducted in England in 2011/2012 included focus group discussions with 49 health practitioners, an online consultation with 620 health and social care practitioners, service managers, commissioners, and user and advocacy groups, and qualitative participatory workshops with 85 low-income women. Additional focus group discussions and telephone interviews included the views of 25 women who did not speak English and three women from Traveller communities. Results: Women reported that Healthy Start vouchers increased the quantity and range of fruit and vegetables they used and improved the quality of family diets, and established good habits for the future. Barriers to registration included complex eligibility criteria, inappropriate targeting of information about the programme by health practitioners and a general low level of awareness among families. Access to the programme was particularly challenging for women who did not speak English, had low literacy levels, were in low paid work or had fluctuating incomes. The potential impact was undermined by the rising price of food relative to voucher value. Access to registered retailers was problematic in rural areas, and there was low registration among smaller shops and market stalls, especially those serving culturally diverse communities. Conclusions: Our evaluation of the Healthy Start programme in England suggests that a food subsidy programme can provide an important nutritional safety net and potentially improve nutrition for pregnant women and young children living on low incomes. Factors that could compromise this impact include erosion of voucher value relative to the rising cost of food, lack of access to registered retailers and barriers to registering for the programme. Addressing these issues could inform the design and implementation of food subsidy programmes in high income countries. © 2014 McFadden et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.The Policy Research Programme in the Department of Health, UK

Leveraging Epidemiology to Improve Risk Assessment.

The field of environmental public health is at an important crossroad. Our current biomonitoring efforts document widespread exposure to a host of chemicals for which toxicity information is lacking. At the same time, advances in the fields of genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, genetics and epigenetics are yielding volumes of data at a rapid pace. Our ability to detect chemicals in biological and environmental media has far outpaced our ability to interpret their health relevance, and as a result, the environmental risk paradigm, in its current state, is antiquated and ill-equipped to make the best use of these new data. In light of new scientific developments and the pressing need to characterize the public health burdens of chemicals, it is imperative to reinvigorate the use of environmental epidemiology in chemical risk assessment. Two case studies of chemical assessments from the Environmental Protection Agency Integrated Risk Information System database are presented to illustrate opportunities where epidemiologic data could have been used in place of experimental animal data in dose-response assessment, or where different approaches, techniques, or studies could have been employed to better utilize existing epidemiologic evidence. Based on the case studies and what can be learned from recent scientific advances and improved approaches to utilizing human data for dose-response estimation, recommendations are provided for the disciplines of epidemiology and risk assessment for enhancing the role of epidemiologic data in hazard identification and dose-response assessment

X-ray Emission from SN 2012ca: A Type Ia-CSM Supernova Explosion in a Dense Surrounding Medium

X-ray emission is one of the signposts of circumstellar interaction in supernovae (SNe), but until now, it has been observed only in core-collapse SNe. The level of thermal X-ray emission is a direct measure of the density of the circumstellar medium (CSM), and the absence of X-ray emission from Type Ia SNe has been interpreted as a sign of a very low density CSM. In this paper, we report late-time (500--800 days after discovery) X-ray detections of SN 2012ca in {\it Chandra} data. The presence of hydrogen in the initial spectrum led to a classification of Type Ia-CSM, ostensibly making it the first SN~Ia detected with X-rays. Our analysis of the X-ray data favors an asymmetric medium, with a high-density component which supplies the X-ray emission. The data suggest a number density $> 10^8$ cm$^{-3}$ in the higher-density medium, which is consistent with the large observed Balmer decrement if it arises from collisional excitation. This is high compared to most core-collapse SNe, but it may be consistent with densities suggested for some Type IIn or superluminous SNe. If SN 2012ca is a thermonuclear SN, the large CSM density could imply clumps in the wind, or a dense torus or disk, consistent with the single-degenerate channel. A remote possibility for a core-degenerate channel involves a white dwarf merging with the degenerate core of an asymptotic giant branch star shortly before the explosion, leading to a common envelope around the SN.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. Accepted to MNRA