UNDERSTANDING VEGETABLE FEEDING PRACTICES AMONG FAMILIES WITH YOUNG CHILDREN USING FARMERS’ MARKET COUPON PROGRAMS: DOES PARTICIPATION INCREASE CHILDREN’S VEGETABLE CONSUMPTION?

Background: Children consistently consume low levels of vegetables. Research shows that adults participating in incentivized vegetable programs purchase and consume more vegetables. It is not clear if children in those households eat more vegetables. Objective: To understand vegetable feeding practices of families with young children using farmers’ market coupon programs: current experiences, program impacts, and additional supports. Study Design, Settings, Participants: A mixed-methods design was used, which included a demographic survey, children’s vegetable screener, and semi-structured interview. Participants were parents/caregivers (n=23) of children ages 2 to 5 years, using coupons (WIC Farmer’s Market Nutrition Program, Health Bucks) at a downtown farmers’ market in a northeastern state in summer 2017. Measureable Outcomes/Analysis: Experiences of feeding vegetables to young children, impacts of coupon programs, and additional supports needed to increase children’s vegetable intake were examined using qualitative data analysis techniques. Results: Participants had mixed familiarity with feeding guidelines, received feeding advice from a range of sources, and used a variety of strategies for introducing vegetables into children’s diets. Common barriers to children’s vegetable consumption include cost, time, negative influences of others, pickiness, and parent not having or cooking vegetables at home. The majority thought their child ate enough vegetables and also wanted them to eat more. Program benefits included increasing accessibility to fresh vegetables and providing supports in using vegetables. In addition to lower cost and more coupons, participants wanted greater support in feeding practices. Conclusion: It is not clear if study participants were more motivated to purchase and serve vegetables to their children; however, having access to lower-cost, high-quality produce removed one barrier to doing so. Other individual, family, and policy barriers also need to be considered when dietetics professionals work to help increase children’s vegetable intake. These include helping parents understand typical trends in children’s taste development, helping parents overcome their own food dislikes, teaching parents about effective feeding strategies, and offering additional financial supports

Some long-run effects of growing markets and renewable fuel standards on additives markets and the US ethanol industry

The effects of likely regulatory and policy changes in the US gasoline and additives market are compared to a reference baseline. The baseline reflects existing EPA policies about fuel quality regulation and likely petroleum and gasoline expansions. The market and welfare effects are presented for implementing a renewable fuel standard; imposing a national ban on the additive MTBE; and removing the oxygen standard for reformulated fuel. Market and welfare estimates are based on adjusting product market demands and factor supplies. Product market and price analyses include quality-differentiated products, such as refinery gasoline, chemical additives and ethanol at the wholesale level; and gasoline grades in conventional, reformulated and oxygenated markets at the ratail level. Factor market analyses include supplies for petroleum, natural gas byproducts, and corn. The analysis includes the welfare cost of fuel to consumers and income in agriculture and the petroleum sector

Missing Data Frequency and Correlates in Two Randomized Surgical Trials for Urinary Incontinence in Women

INTRODUCTION AND HYPOTHESIS: Missing data is frequently observed in clinical trials; high rates of missing data may jeopardize trial outcome validity. PURPOSE: We determined the rates of missing data over time, by type of data collected and compared demographic and clinical factors associated with missing data among women who participated in two large randomized clinical trials of surgery for stress urinary incontinence, the Stress Incontinence Surgical Treatment Efficacy Trial (SISTEr) and the Trial of Midurethral Sling (TOMUS). METHODS: The proportions of subjects who attended and missed each follow-up visit were calculated. The chi-squared test, Fisher\u27s exact test and t test were used to compare women with and without missing data, as well as the completeness of the data for each component of the composite primary outcome. RESULTS: Data completeness for the primary outcome computation in the TOMUS trial (62.3%) was nearly double that in the SISTEr trial (35.7%). The follow-up visit attendance rate decreased over time. A higher proportion of subjects attended all follow-up visits in the TOMUS trial and overall there were fewer missing data for the period that included the primary outcome assessment at 12 months. The highest levels of complete data for the composite outcome variables were for the symptoms questionnaire (SISTEr 100 %, TOMUS 99.8%) and the urinary stress test (SISTEr 96.1%, TOMUS 96.7%). In both studies, the pad test was associated with the lowest levels of complete data (SISTEr 85.1%, TOMUS 88.3%) and approximately one in ten subjects had incomplete voiding diaries at the time of primary outcome assessment. Generally, in both studies, a higher proportion of younger subjects had missing data. This analysis lacked a patient perspective as to the reasons for missing data that could have provided additional information on subject burden, motivations for adherence and study design. In addition, we were unable to compare the effects of the different primary outcome assessment time-points in an identically designed trial. CONCLUSIONS: Missing visits and data increased with time. Questionnaire data and physical outcome data (urinary stress test) that could be assessed during a visit were least prone to missing data, whereas data for variables that required subject effort while away from the research team (pad test, voiding diary) were more likely to be missing. Older subjects were more likely to provide complete data

Techno-Economic Analysis of a Secondary Air Stripper Process

We present results of an initial techno-economic assessment on a post-combustion CO2 capture process developed by the Center for Applied Energy Research (CAER) at the University of Kentucky using Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems’ H3-1 aqueous amine solvent. The analysis is based on data collected at a 0.7 MWe pilot unit combined with laboratory data and process simulations. The process adds a secondary air stripper to a conventional solvent process, which increases the cyclic loading of the solvent in two ways. First, air strips additional CO2 from the solvent downstream of the conventional steam-heated thermal stripper. This extra stripping of CO2 reduces the lean loading entering the absorber. Second, the CO2-enriched air is then sent to the boiler for use as secondary air. This recycling of CO2 results in a higher concentration of CO2 in the flue gas sent to the absorber, and hence a higher rich loading of the solvent exiting the absorber. A process model was incorporated into a full-scale supercritical pulverized coal power plant model to determine the plant performance and heat and mass balances. The performance and heat and mass balance data were used to size equipment and develop cost estimates for capital and operating costs. Lifecycle costs were considered through a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) assessment based on the capital cost estimate and modeled performance. The results of the simulations show that the CAER process yields a regeneration energy of 3.12 GJ/t CO2, a $53.05/t CO2 capture cost, and LCOE of$174.59/MWh. This compares to the U.S. Department of Energy\u27s projected costs (Case 10) of regeneration energy of 3.58 GJ/t CO2, a $61.31/t CO2 capture cost, and LCOE of$189.59/MWh. For H3-1, the CAER process results in a regeneration energy of 2.62 GJ/tCO2 with a stripper pressure of 5.2 bar, a capture cost of $46.93/t CO2, and an LCOE of$164.33/MWh

Comparative Omics-Driven Genome Annotation Refinement: Application across Yersiniae

Genome sequencing continues to be a rapidly evolving technology, yet most downstream aspects of genome annotation pipelines remain relatively stable or are even being abandoned. The annotation process is now performed almost exclusively in an automated fashion to balance the large number of sequences generated. One possible way of reducing errors inherent to automated computational annotations is to apply data from omics measurements (i.e. transcriptional and proteomic) to the un-annotated genome with a proteogenomic-based approach. Here, the concept of annotation refinement has been extended to include a comparative assessment of genomes across closely related species. Transcriptomic and proteomic data derived from highly similar pathogenic Yersiniae (Y. pestis CO92, Y. pestis Pestoides F, and Y. pseudotuberculosis PB1/+) was used to demonstrate a comprehensive comparative omic-based annotation methodology. Peptide and oligo measurements experimentally validated the expression of nearly 40% of each strain's predicted proteome and revealed the identification of 28 novel and 68 incorrect (i.e., observed frameshifts, extended start sites, and translated pseudogenes) protein-coding sequences within the three current genome annotations. Gene loss is presumed to play a major role in Y. pestis acquiring its niche as a virulent pathogen, thus the discovery of many translated pseudogenes, including the insertion-ablated argD, underscores a need for functional analyses to investigate hypotheses related to divergence. Refinements included the discovery of a seemingly essential ribosomal protein, several virulence-associated factors, a transcriptional regulator, and many hypothetical proteins that were missed during annotation