Effects of Family, Friends, and Relative Prices on Fruit and Vegetable Consumption by African American Youths

Facilitating healthy eating among young people, particularly among minorities who are at high risk for gaining excess weight, is at the forefront of current policy discussions and food program reviews. We investigate the effects of social interactions and relative prices on fruit and vegetable consumption by African American youths using rich behavioral data from the Family and Community Health Study and area-specific food prices. We find the presence of endogenous effects between a youth and parent, but not between a youth and friend. Lower relative prices of fruits and vegetables tend to increase intakes. Results suggest that health interventions targeting a family member may be an effective way to increase fruit and vegetable intake by African Americans as a result of spillover consumption effects between the youths and parents.social interactions, healthy food choices, fruit and vegetable consumption, African American youth, Agricultural and Food Policy, Consumer/Household Economics, Demand and Price Analysis, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, Institutional and Behavioral Economics, I12, J15, C35,

Dataset on the in-stream and off-stream economic value of water

This dataset contains 706 estimates of the economic value of water; it has been compiled from published sources. Economic values are provided for three off-stream uses (agriculture/irrigation, industry, and municipal) and three in-stream ecosystem services (recreation, waste assimilation, and wildlife habitat). The dataset covers per period and capitalised asset values. All value estimates have been standardised in USD (2014) per acre-foot. The data accompanies the research article entitled “Shifting from volume to economic value in virtual water allocation problems: a proposed new framework and methodology” [1]. The dataset can be used to facilitate benefits (or value) transfer

Chipper: discovering transcription-factor targets from chromatin immunoprecipitation microarrays using variance stabilization

Chromatin immunoprecipitation combined with microarray technology (Chip(2)) allows genome-wide determination of protein-DNA binding sites. The current standard method for analyzing Chip(2 )data requires additional control experiments that are subject to systematic error. We developed methods to assess significance using variance stabilization, learning error-model parameters without external control experiments. The method was validated experimentally, shows greater sensitivity than the current standard method, and incorporates false-discovery rate analysis. The corresponding software ('Chipper') is freely available. The method described here should help reveal an organism's transcription-regulatory 'wiring diagram'

Effects of Family, Friends, and Relative Prices on Fruit and Vegetable Consumption by African American Youths

We investigate the effects of parents, best friends, and relative prices on fruit and vegetable consumption by African American youths using behavioral data from the Family and Community Health Study and area-specific food prices from the Quarterly Food-at-Home Price Database. We construct a simultaneous equation ordered probit model that accounts for social interactions in fruit and vegetable consumption and specific aspects of the available food intake data. We estimate statistically significant endogenous consumption effects between a youth and a parent. Lower relative prices tend to increase intakes, particularly in the case of vegetables; however, the statistical significance of these effects is marginal. The results indicate the existence of social multipliers in fruit and vegetable consumption in African American families. The presence of these multipliers supports the design of youth-parent–based interventions to increase fruit and vegetable intake by African Americans. Additionally, intake also may be increased through relative price reductions

A Longitudinal Study of Racial Discrimination and Risk for Death Ideation in African American Youth

Though multiple studies have found that African Americans commonly experience racial discrimination, available studies have yet to examine how perceived racism might be related to suicide vulnerability in African American youth. The purpose of this study was to examine a framework for how perceived racial discrimination contributes to symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as subsequent suicide ideation and morbid ideation. Data were obtained from 722 African American youth at mean age 10.56 years (SD=0.64); a second wave of data was obtained two years later. Results revealed both a direct effect and mediated effects of perceived racism on later suicide and morbid ideation. For boys and girls the effect of perceived racism was mediated by symptoms of depression. However, the association was mediated by anxiety for girls, but not for boys in the current sample. Implications for future research and intervention are discussed

African American Children’s Depressive Symptoms: The Prospective Effects of Neighborhood Disorder, Stressful Life Events, and Parenting

The prospective effects of observed neighborhood disorder, stressful life events, and parents’ engagement in inductive reasoning on adolescents’ depressive symptoms were examined using data collected from 777 African American families. Multilevel analyses revealed that stressful life events experienced at age 11 predicted depressive symptoms at age 13. Furthermore, a significant interaction between neighborhood disorder and parents’ engagement in inductive reasoning was found, indicating that parental use of inductive reasoning was a protective factor for depressive symptoms particularly for youths living in highly disordered neighborhoods. The importance of examining correlates of depressive symptoms from a contextual framework, focusing on individuals, families, and neighborhood contexts, is emphasized

Teacher Development 3.0: How we can transform the professional education of teachers

We are a group of teachers, school leaders, teacher educators and researchers who want to promote the development of teaching as a profession in the best interests of children, young people and society as a whole. We are particularly interested in how universities can support a profession-led model of teacher development. We reject the terms of the polarised debates that are currently dominant: with regard to initial teacher education, ‘reform’ and ‘defend’ positions have become so entrenched that sustainable change for the good is ever more difficult to achieve. With reference to teaching, ‘traditional’ and ‘progressive’ have become meaningless terms flung around in the echo chambers of Twitter. In this pamphlet we promote 4 design principles that we believe are essential in transforming the professional education of teachers, both at the beginning and throughout their careers. We propose: * A long-life teaching profession; * Schools, universities and teachers at the heart of their communities; * Education as cultural and societal development as well as individual advantage; * A continuum of professional learning. We believe we need to take a long term view about the future of schools and teaching as a profession, responding to the significant societal challenges we face. We also offer 4 key design questions for teacher educators that might help them to enact the principles of Teacher Development 3.0

The psychometric structure of the Spanish language version of the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure in Spain and Chile

The present study investigated the structure of the Spanish version of the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM-E), an 11-item measure that assesses individual differences in social comparison orientation (SCO), i.e., the extent to which people compare themselves with others. Data came from samples from Spain (n = 1,133) and Chile (n = 2,757). Confirmatory Factor Analyses and Mokken Scale Analyses supported in both samples not the assumed two-factor structure, but a single factor structure, consisting of eight items. The resulting eight-item version of the INCOM-E was reliable in both samples, according the Gutmann's lambda-2 (.82 in Spain and.83 in Chile), and correlated very strongly with the full-length INCOM-E (.93 in Spain and.97 in Chile). In both samples, there were significant sex differences, ps <.001 with small effect sizes, ƞ2 in both samples =.01,but in the Spanish sample women scored higher, and in the Chilean sample men scored higher in SCO. The relationship with age was negative and significant (ps <.001) in both samples, albeit small (r =.22 in Spain and.13 in Chile) Based on the present research, it is advised to use the shortened eight-item version of the INCOM-E in Spanish speaking countries

An en masse phenotype and function prediction system for Mus musculus

Background: Individual researchers are struggling to keep up with the accelerating emergence of high-throughput biological data, and to extract information that relates to their specific questions. Integration of accumulated evidence should permit researchers to form fewer - and more accurate - hypotheses for further study through experimentation. Results: Here a method previously used to predict Gene Ontology (GO) terms for Saccharomyces cerevisiae (Tian et al.: Combining guilt-by-association and guilt-by-profiling to predict Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene function. Genome Biol 2008, 9(Suppl 1):S7) is applied to predict GO terms and phenotypes for 21,603 Mus musculus genes, using a diverse collection of integrated data sources (including expression, interaction, and sequence-based data). This combined 'guilt-by-profiling' and 'guilt-by-association' approach optimizes the combination of two inference methodologies. Predictions at all levels of confidence are evaluated by examining genes not used in training, and top predictions are examined manually using available literature and knowledge base resources. Conclusion: We assigned a confidence score to each gene/term combination. The results provided high prediction performance, with nearly every GO term achieving greater than 40% precision at 1% recall. Among the 36 novel predictions for GO terms and 40 for phenotypes that were studied manually, &gt;80% and &gt;40%, respectively, were identified as accurate. We also illustrate that a combination of 'guilt-by-profiling' and 'guilt-by-association' outperforms either approach alone in their application to M. musculus.Molecular and Cellular Biolog