Urban After-School Partnership Teaches Cooking and My Plate Nutrition

Seventeen percent of children in the U.S. are clinically obese and many more are overweight and at risk for obesity. The consequences of childhood overweight and obesity warrant greater efforts in early prevention. A key factor associated with energy intake and weight gain is consumption of foods away from home. Programs to promote eating more home-prepared foods present an encouraging area of intervention for improving children’s diet quality and diminishing childhood obesity. This study reports on an urban after-school cooking program implemented through a partnership between Rutgers Cooperative Extension and the Boys and Girls Club. Post-test measures and qualitative observations found that the program increased cooking skills and enjoyment, interest in healthy eating and exposure to healthy foods, and provided knowledge and tools to help modify students’ eating habits away from school. Partnerships between after-school providers and Cooperative Extension can provide effective programming in areas with widespread poverty and limited resources

Volitional limbic neuromodulation has a multifaceted clinical benefit in Fibromyalgia patients

Volitional neural modulation using neurofeedback has been indicated as a potential treatment for chronic conditions that involve peripheral and central neural dysregulation. Here we utilized neurofeedback in patients suffering from Fibromyalgia - a chronic pain syndrome that involves sleep disturbance and emotion dysregulation. These ancillary symptoms, which have an amplification effect on pain, are known to be mediated by heightened limbic activity. In order to reliably probe limbic activity in a scalable manner fit for EEG-neurofeedback training, we utilized an Electrical Finger Print (EFP) model of amygdala-BOLD signal (termed Amyg-EFP), that has been successfully validated in our lab in the context of volitional neuromodulation. We anticipated that Amyg-EFP-neurofeedback training aimed at limbic down modulation should improve chronic pain in patients suffering from Fibromyalgia, by balancing disturbed indices for sleep and affect. We further expected that improved clinical status would correspond to successful training as indicated by improved down modulation of the Amygdala-EFP signal. Thirty-Four Fibromyalgia patients (31F; age 35.6 ± 11.82) participated in a randomized placebo-controlled trial with biweekly Amyg-EFP-neurofeedback sessions and placebo of sham neurofeedback (n = 9) for a total duration of five consecutive weeks. Following training, participants in the Real-neurofeedback group were divided into good (n = 13) or poor (n = 12) modulators according to their success in the neurofeedback training. Before and after treatment, self-reports on pain, depression, anxiety, fatigue and sleep quality were obtained, as well as objective sleep Indices. Long-term clinical follow-up was made available, within up to three years of the neurofeedback training completion. REM latency and objective sleep quality index were robustly improved following the treatment course only in the Real-neurofeedback group (both time × group p < 0.05) and to a greater extent among good modulators (both time*sub-group p < 0.05). In contrast, self-report measures did not reveal a treatment-specific response at the end of the treatment. However, the follow-up assessment revealed a delayed improvement in chronic pain and subjective sleep experience, evident only in the Real-neurofeedback group (both time × group p < 0.05). Moderation analysis showed that the enduring clinical effects on pain evident in the follow-up assessment were predicted by the immediate improvements following training in objective sleep and subjective affect measures. Our findings suggest that Amyg-EFP- neurofeedback that specifically targets limbic activity down modulation offers a successful principled approach for volitional EEG based neuromodulation training in Fibromyalgia patients. Importantly, it seems that via its immediate sleep improving effect, the neurofeedback training induced a delayed reduction in the target subjective symptom of chronic pain, far and beyond the immediate placebo effect. This indirect approach to chronic pain management reflects the necessary link between somatic and affective dysregulation that can be successfully targeted using neurofeedback

Urban After-School Partnership Teaches Cooking and My Plate Nutrition

Seventeen percent of children in the U.S. are clinically obese and many more are overweight and at risk for obesity. The consequences of childhood overweight and obesity warrant greater efforts in early prevention. A key factor associated with energy intake and weight gain is consumption of foods away from home. Programs to promote eating more home-prepared foods present an encouraging area of intervention for improving children’s diet quality and diminishing childhood obesity. This study reports on an urban after-school cooking program implemented through a partnership between Rutgers Cooperative Extension and the Boys and Girls Club. Post-test measures and qualitative observations found that the program increased cooking skills and enjoyment, interest in healthy eating and exposure to healthy foods, and provided knowledge and tools to help modify students’ eating habits away from school. Partnerships between after-school providers and Cooperative Extension can provide effective programming in areas with widespread poverty and limited resources

Sedimentological Characteristics of the 2015 Tropical Cyclone Pam Overwash Sediments From Vanuatu, South Pacific

The interpretation of sediments deposited by prehistoric tropical cyclones (TC\u27s) is limited by a lack of modern analogues, particularly in the South Pacific. On 13 March 2015, TC Pam made landfall on Vanuatu, reaching Category 5 intensity with 10-minute sustained wind speeds as high as 270 km/h. Three months after landfall, we measured flow height (terrain elevation plus storm flow depth) and inland extent of TC Pam\u27s maximum coastal inundation (composed of astronomical tides, storm surge, and superimposed storm waves), and described the sedimentological characteristics of the TC Pam overwash sediments from trenches and transects at two sites (Manuro and Port Resolution Bay). At Manuro (a mixed-carbonate embayment), the maximum flow height was 5.29 m mean sea level (MSL), with an inland extent of 106 m. The TC Pam sediments transition from a coarse to medium grained (mean: 1.07 Φ) carbonate sand (≤ 10 cm thick) to pumice (≤ 18 cm thick) that extends 400 m inland into Lake Otas. The TC Pam overwash sediments are characterized by a coarsening upward sequence (1.45 to 0.23 Φ) followed by a finer grained eolian cap. At Port Resolution Bay (a volcaniclastic beach, PRB), the maximum flow height was 3.30 m MSL (1.51 m flow depth), with an inland extent of 117 m. The TC Pam overwash sediments transition from a medium grained (mean: 1.76 Φ) volcanic sand (≤ 44 cm thick) to pumice (≤ 5 cm thick) that extends 320 m from the shoreline. A subtle fining upward sequence was present in trench PRB2, whereas PRB1, PRB3, and PRB4 contained TC Pam sediments that were laminated and showed little to no vertical gradation in grain size. At PRB, we applied an inverse sediment transport model to reconstruct maximum flow depths using laboratory derived settling velocities and the distance from the berm. The reconstructed flow depths at PRB2 (1.43 m), PRB3 (1.36 m), and PRB4 (1.34 m) compare favorably with the observed estimate (1.51 m), illustrating the applicability of the inverse sediment transport model to reconstruct flow depths of prehistoric landfalling TC\u27s

Foraminifera Reveal a Shallow Nearshore Origin for Overwash Sediments Deposited by Tropical Cyclone Pam In Vanuatu (South Pacific)

Tropical cyclone inundation is a major threat to the highly exposed islands of the South Pacific. This vulnerability was highlighted in March 2015 when Tropical Cyclone (TC) Pam made landfall on Vanuatu as a Category 5 storm, impacting coastlines with storm surges that produced high water marks up to 7 m above mean sea level (MSL) and deposited overwash sediments up to 400 m inland. We examined the foraminiferal assemblages contained within TC Pam sediments at two locations in Vanuatu: a mixed-carbonate embayment at Manuro on Efate Island and a volcaniclastic beach at Port Resolution Bay on Tanna Island. At Manuro, the TC Pam sediments were up to 10 cm thick and composed of coarse to medium sand that contained abundant foraminifera (955 to 2015 individuals per 5 cm3) and fragments of corals and mollusks. At Port Resolution Bay, TC Pam sediments were up to 44 cm thick and composed of medium sand-sized volcaniclastics with low to moderate abundances of foraminifera (27 to 206 individuals per 5 cm3). TC Pam sediments could be discriminated from underlying units by a sharp basal contact, an abrupt decrease in organic matter, and an increase in the concentration of foraminifera. Foraminiferal assemblages between the two sites varied in terms of taxonomy and taphonomy. At both sites, the TC Pam assemblage was generally dominated by intertidal (e.g., Amphistegina spp., Baculogypsina sphaerulata, Calcarina mayori, Elphidium spp., Pararotalia spp.) and subtidal (e.g., Peneroplis pertusus, Quinqueloculina spp.) foraminifera that are characteristic of beach, reef flat, and reef crest environments. The TC Pam assemblage at Manuro was characterized by individuals that were dominantly unaltered (i.e., pristine), but also those that showed signs of abrasion (including edge rounded fragments). By contrast, TC Pam sediments at Port Resolution Bay contained fewer unaltered and more corraded (i.e., combined influence of corrosion and abrasion) foraminifera. We compared modern surface foraminiferal distributions with those from TC Pam sediments to assess provenance. Partitioning Around a Medoid (PAM) cluster analysis discriminated six subenvironments within the modern coastal zone: open bay, forereef, reef crest, reef flat, mangrove, and beach. Discrete intervals sampled from TC Pam sediments at Manuro were individually clustered with the surface samples and revealed a shallow nearshore to supratidal (reef crest to beach; − 4.9 to 1.3 m above MSL) source for the sand