The Gleaning Workshop Project; A Workshop Curriculum for the Heartside Gleaning Initiative of Grand Rapids, MI

The Heartside Gleaning Initiative Project, founded by Grand Valley professor Lisa Sisson, has made incredible strides in its mere one season of operation. The project gathers unsold produce from the two local Grand Rapids farmers markets, and brings it to lower-income residents of the Heartside Neighborhood of the city. These residents don’t have access to this bounty of produce regularly, and the Gleaning Initiative Project has made the possibility of regularly having such fruits and vegetables more of a reality. While this project has undeniably made great waves of progress in the well-being and nutrition of the Heartside Neighborhood, one primary issue is that many of the recipients don’t have substantial experience in cooking with a wide array of vegetables. The goal of the Gleaning Workshop Project is to provide the residents of the Heartside Neighborhood with a basis of techniques, tips, and practices to aid them in preparing the produce they receive from the Gleaning Initiative Project. The Gleaning Workshop’s plan is to conduct eight workshops per year, each focusing on a different aspect of nutrition and food preparation. Our hope is to develop a well-balanced curriculum of workshops, that will both aid and inspire the recipients of Gleaning Initiative produce in making healthy and delicious food choices

The Grand Gleaners Project Analysis

The Heartside Gleaning Initiative (HGI) is a Grand Rapids based non-profit organization that collects unsold produce from the city’s two farmers markets and distributes it to the low-income residents of the Heartside Neighborhood. Through their efforts they increase access to healthy and local foods as well as combat food waste in the Heartside Community. Seeing the value of this work, we, an interdisciplinary team of Grand Valley State University students, sought to further the mission of the HGI by focusing predominantly on two vital aspects of any non-profit business: promoting and funding. In the winter semester of 2015 we established three courses of action. Our first course of action was to create a crowdfunding “how-to” guide for the HGI. By illustrating how to proficiently utilize crowdfunding platforms this “how-to” guide will also aid other nonprofits. Our second course of action was to develop a storyboard intended to be used in the creation of a short promotional video for the HGI. Finally, we contacted local film professionals to aid HGI in completing a promotional video during its 2015 gleaning season. It is our hope that these efforts will increase the exposure for the Heartside Gleaning Initiative and provide them with the tools to efficiently utilize this exposure

Prompt Ia Supernovae Are Significantly Delayed

The time delay between the formation of a population of stars and the onset of type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) sets important limits on the masses and nature of SN Ia progenitors. Here we use a new observational technique to measure this time delay by comparing the spatial distributions of SNe Ia to their local environments. Previous work attempted such analyses encompassing the entire host of each SN Ia, yielding inconclusive results. Our approach confines the analysis only to the relevant portions of the hosts, allowing us to show that even so-called "prompt" SNe Ia that trace star-formation on cosmic timescales exhibit a significant delay time of 200-500 million years. This implies that either the majority of Ia companion stars have main-sequence masses less than 3 solar masses, or that most SNe Ia arise from double-white dwarf binaries. Our results are also consistent with a SNe Ia rate that traces the white dwarf formation rate, scaled by a fixed efficiency factor.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures, ApJ, in pres

COVID-19 symptoms at hospital admission vary with age and sex: results from the ISARIC prospective multinational observational study

Background: The ISARIC prospective multinational observational study is the largest cohort of hospitalized patients with COVID-19. We present relationships of age, sex, and nationality to presenting symptoms. Methods: International, prospective observational study of 60 109 hospitalized symptomatic patients with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 recruited from 43 countries between 30 January and 3 August 2020. Logistic regression was performed to evaluate relationships of age and sex to published COVID-19 case definitions and the most commonly reported symptoms. Results: ‘Typical’ symptoms of fever (69%), cough (68%) and shortness of breath (66%) were the most commonly reported. 92% of patients experienced at least one of these. Prevalence of typical symptoms was greatest in 30- to 60-year-olds (respectively 80, 79, 69%; at least one 95%). They were reported less frequently in children (≤ 18 years: 69, 48, 23; 85%), older adults (≥ 70 years: 61, 62, 65; 90%), and women (66, 66, 64; 90%; vs. men 71, 70, 67; 93%, each P < 0.001). The most common atypical presentations under 60 years of age were nausea and vomiting and abdominal pain, and over 60 years was confusion. Regression models showed significant differences in symptoms with sex, age and country. Interpretation: This international collaboration has allowed us to report reliable symptom data from the largest cohort of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19. Adults over 60 and children admitted to hospital with COVID-19 are less likely to present with typical symptoms. Nausea and vomiting are common atypical presentations under 30 years. Confusion is a frequent atypical presentation of COVID-19 in adults over 60 years. Women are less likely to experience typical symptoms than men

BIOL 488: Gene Editing: Taking the wheel of evolution

The world of genetics is rapidly advancing, and new developments occur at a breakneck pace. With that being said, the world has currently not offered a sufficient answer on how we ought to deal with these new issues. In our report we endeavor to lay out some of the facts of CRISPR and gene editing to try and make these questions more approachable. We cover the development of CRISPR, current events and experiments surrounding the technology, and some of the future outlook of the science. It is our goal that reports such as the one we have created will lead to a more secure governmental framework so that CRISPR might be used to our benefit rather than our detriment