Building Social and Community Capital Through Gardening in Ypsilanti, MI

Through their events, programming, and community partnerships, the Ypsilanti-­‐based non-­‐ profit organization Growing Hope has envisioned a future of increased local food production, access, and sovereignty. By engaging in participant-­‐observation in gardens and conducting interviews with staff, volunteers, and people involved in Growing Hope’s programming and activities, I have learned how social networks go far beyond the confines of Growing Hope’s programming. Communities, gardens, organizations, events, markets, fundraisers, and social gatherings create a network of support for local gardening and farming activities—or “civic agriculture”—in both urban and rural settings. This paper will be informed by a survey of current literature on the topics of urban agriculture, community gardening, and non-­‐profit involvement in urban and collective agriculture projects in the United States. I will use insights from the literature in combination with ethnographic research to assess strengths and gaps in Growing Hope’s vision, program implementation, and organization.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/86075/1/Henry, Renee_Practicum.pd

Russian Poultry Industry Since the Advent of a Market Economy: Imports from the United States 1993 to 1996

The first three chapters are introduction chapters which may be skipped by people who are in the field ofRussian poultry analysis. The first chapter gives an overall view of world poultry trends including production, consumption, and trade. It allows one to compare the Russian poultry industry to those in other parts ofthe world. The second chapter is devoted to the Russian poultry industry specifically. It offers statistics which bring to light the problems within the industry and reasonings behind the decline. The third chapter describes the changes which have been occurring within agriculture since the breakup ofthe Soviet Union. I felt this was an important chapter to add for anyone who is not a "Soviet" expert so that everyone will go into the heart of this thesis with an understanding ofthe changing structure ofagriculture in Russia and the skepticism with which I enter into much ofthe analysis

Analysis of the Supporting Websites for the Use of Instructional Games in K-12 Settings

This article identifies resources to be included in a website designed to facilitate the integration of instructional games in K-12 settings. Guidelines and supporting components are based on a survey of K-12 educators who are integrating games, an analysis of existing instructional game websites, and summaries of literature on the use of educational software in K-12 settings and teacher technology training. The results indicate that educators face three main challenges when integrating games, including: (a) technical and logistical requirements, (b) curriculum integration, and (c) teacher training. To overcome these challenges, K-12 educators should be provided with: (a) curriculum resources, (b) game information and support, and (c) communication tools. Websites designed to facilitate the use of instructional games should be designed with appropriate structures (ie, grid, web, hierarchy) to optimize organization and simplicity. In addition, the websites should include teacher training that (a) apply a teacher training model, (b) address National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), (c) present contents in small doses, (d) make training and information as accessible as possible, and (e) model and mentor the use of instructional games

Sensory Integration: It\u27s Not Just for Children

Sensory integration theory and intervention techniques were originally developed by A. Jean Ayres, PhD, OTR, beginning in the late 1960s. Her pioneering work integrated scientific information from neuroscience, psychology, occupational therapy, and human development in an effort to help explain the relationship among experience, brain development, and function. Ayres\u27s theory of sensory integration provides a solid foundation for understanding the impact of sensation on occupational performance across the life span. Although much of the existing work related to sensory integration addresses occupational performance issues in children, some believe the theory and framework to be important across the life span. However, given the original emphasis on pediatrics, occupational therapy practitioners who work in other areas of practice likely do not have exposure to or training in sensory integration and, therefore, may not consider dysfunction in sensory integration as a contributing factor when evaluating clients at different ages or stages of life. This article makes a case that because humans are sensory beings and sensation is inherent in all occupations, the sensory integration framework is relevant to occupational therapy practice beyond pediatrics. Further, we propose that all occupational therapy practitioners should seek to understand the relevance of the sensory integration framework for the specific clientele with whom they work, regardless of age. We believe that the sensory integration framework can be a useful lens for interpreting behaviors and a guide for implementing strategies to enhance occupational performance in clients across the life span. To this end, some of the sensory-based experiences that persons may encounter across the life span are discussed, and the relevance of the sensory integration framework is proposed. We have chosen to present this information according to a developmental progression to express how dysfunction in sensory integration can be manifested across the life span

Simulations of the NASA Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel for the Juncture Flow Experiment

NASAs Transformational Tools and Technologies Programs Juncture Flow experiment aims to provide data to improve Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling in the juncture flow region. The experiment is planned to provide validation-quality data for CFD that focuses on the separation bubble near the wing-body juncture trailing edge region. Because wind tunnel tests associated with the Juncture Flow project have been designed for the purpose of CFD validation, considerable effort is going into modeling and simulating the wind tunnel. This is not only important because wind tunnel wall effects can play a role in integrated testing uncertainties, but also because the better the boundary conditions are known, the better CFD can accurately represent the experiment. This paper builds on the recent CFD efforts to model the NASA Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel. Current best practices in simulating wind tunnels are evaluated. The features of each method, as well as some of their pros and cons, are highlighted. Boundary conditions and modeling techniques currently used by CFD for empty-tunnel simulations are also described. Preliminary CFD studies associated with modeling the Juncture Flow model are summarized, with the intention to determine sensitivities of the flow near the wing-body juncture region of the model to a variety of modeling decisions

Is Socioeconomic Status of the Rearing Environment Causally Related to Obesity in the Offspring?

We attempt to elucidate whether there might be a causal connection between the socioeconomic status (SES) of the rearing environment and obesity in the offspring using data from two large-scale adoption studies: (1) The Copenhagen Adoption Study of Obesity (CASO), and (2) The Survey of Holt Adoptees and Their Families (HOLT). In CASO, the SES of both biological and adoptive parents was known, but all children were adopted. In HOLT, only the SES of the rearing parents was known, but the children could be either biological or adopted. After controlling for relevant covariates (e.g., adoptee age at measurement, adoptee age at transfer, adoptee sex) the raw (unstandardized) regression coefficients for adoptive and biological paternal SES on adoptee body mass index (BMI: kg/m2) in CASO were -.22 and -.23, respectively, both statistically significant (p = 0.01). Controlling for parental BMI (both adoptive and biological) reduced the coefficient for biological paternal SES by 44% (p = .034) and the coefficient for adoptive paternal SES by 1%. For HOLT, the regression coefficients for rearing parent SES were -.42 and -.25 for biological and adoptive children, respectively. Controlling for the average BMI of the rearing father and mother (i.e., mid-parental BMI) reduced the SES coefficient by 47% in their biological offspring (p≤.0001), and by 12% in their adoptive offspring (p = .09). Thus, despite the differing structures of the two adoption studies, both suggest that shared genetic diathesis and direct environmental transmission contribute about equally to the association between rearing SES and offspring BMI

Simulations of the Nasa Langley 14- by 22-Foot Subsonic Tunnel for the Juncture Flow Experiment

No abstract availabl

How AP CS A Matches College Courses

ABSTRACT The Advanced Placement (AP) Program provides a framework for high school students to obtain college credit and/or placement for work done in high school. Toward this end, the College Board outlines course descriptions and organizes examinations in several dozen disciplines, including computer science. To meet its goals, each AP course must align with college courses, so students taking an AP course will master needed content Several approaches are used to monitor this connection between AP courses and collegelevel courses. This session will review these approaches, considering how the AP CS A course matches introductory college computer science courses

MSCDA: Multi-level Semantic-guided Contrast Improves Unsupervised Domain Adaptation for Breast MRI Segmentation in Small Datasets

Deep learning (DL) applied to breast tissue segmentation in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has received increased attention in the last decade, however, the domain shift which arises from different vendors, acquisition protocols, and biological heterogeneity, remains an important but challenging obstacle on the path towards clinical implementation. In this paper, we propose a novel Multi-level Semantic-guided Contrastive Domain Adaptation (MSCDA) framework to address this issue in an unsupervised manner. Our approach incorporates self-training with contrastive learning to align feature representations between domains. In particular, we extend the contrastive loss by incorporating pixel-to-pixel, pixel-to-centroid, and centroid-to-centroid contrasts to better exploit the underlying semantic information of the image at different levels. To resolve the data imbalance problem, we utilize a category-wise cross-domain sampling strategy to sample anchors from target images and build a hybrid memory bank to store samples from source images. We have validated MSCDA with a challenging task of cross-domain breast MRI segmentation between datasets of healthy volunteers and invasive breast cancer patients. Extensive experiments show that MSCDA effectively improves the model's feature alignment capabilities between domains, outperforming state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, the framework is shown to be label-efficient, achieving good performance with a smaller source dataset. The code is publicly available at \url{https://github.com/ShengKuangCN/MSCDA}.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figure