The Agricultural Dilemma: How Not to Feed the World

In The Agricultural Dilemma, Stone asserts that Malthus got it backwards: before industrialization, farmers skillfully intensified agriculture, increasing food production when population density required it. Stone debates neo-Malthusians (those who believe we must industrialize agriculture to prevent starvation due to population outstripping the food supply) with overwhelming evidence that intensification is a more sustainable and just strategy. Industrialized agriculture is characterized by appropriation, subsidies, and overproduction. Stone shows when scientists, government, and industry were most active in calling for industrialization to help farmers or the hungry, they were struggling to store or utilize overproduction; industrialization did not increase the rate agricultural yields grew by; and industrialization disproportionately benefitted the wealthiest farmers even when its advocates claimed it would help the poor.&nbsp

Successful Implementation of PBIS in an alternative school setting

Mountain Creek Academy is beginning the 6th year of PBIS implementation. Year before last they began to look for ways to make this program meaningful to the population they serve, as many students were placed there for punitive measures. They decided to use the Boys Town model to teach social skills in conjunction with the PBIS framework. This additional curriculum gave the academy the push it needed to move from emergent to operational status on the list of PBIS schools kept by the Georgia Department of Education. Office discipline referrals were reduced by 460%, and the climate of the school was changed. The most significant changes were experienced by the students. They learned necessary social skills and achieved success. Many have been able to generalize those skills to other settings, and many now choose to remain at Mountain Creek Academy due to the feelings of being successful and respected in that environment

2013 China-Latin America economic bulletin

This repository item contains a report and a summary from the Boston University Global Economic Governance Initiative. The Global Economic Governance Initiative (GEGI) is a research program of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy, the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, and the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies. It was founded in 2008 to advance policy-relevant knowledge about governance for financial stability, human development, and the environment

Supporting holistic care for patients with tuberculosis in a remote Indigenous community: a case report

Context: Tuberculosis (TB) is a serious infectious disease with high rates of morbidity and mortality if left untreated. In Australia, TB has been virtually eradicated in non-Indigenous Australian-born populations but in remote Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities TB presents a rare but significant public health issue. Remote health services are most likely to encounter patients with suspected and confirmed TB diagnosis but may be unprepared for supporting someone with this disease and the complexities of balancing public health risk with patient autonomy. Issue: This case study will outline the process for diagnosis and treatment of a TB patient in a remote Cape York community. This case involved significant delay in diagnosis and required several strategies to achieve successful disease eradication. The process of treatment, however, had a significant effect on the patient’s physical health, and social and emotional wellbeing. Lessons learned: This case highlights the importance of early collaboration between medical, nursing, Indigenous health worker and allied health services and the importance of technology such as electronic information records to support opportunistic access to diagnostic services and treatment. The enactment of the TB protocol should include discussions about the consequences of any restrictions of movement, employment or social/community roles. Identifying alternative opportunities to engage in meaningful roles may reduce the impact the disease has on a patient’s quality of life

Dietary manipulation and caloric restriction in the development of mouse models relevant to neurological diseases

AbstractManipulation of diet such as increasing the level of fat or inducing insulin resistance has been shown to exacerbate the pathology in several animal models of neurological disease. Caloric restriction, however, has been demonstrated to extend the life span of many organisms. Reduced calorie consumption appears to increase the resistance of neurons to intracellular and extracellular stress and consequently improves the behavioural phenotype in animal models of neurological diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease. We review the evidence from a variety of mouse models that diet is a risk factor that can significantly contribute to the development of neurological diseases

Characterisation and expression studies of a "Xenopus laevis rel" homologue

Homologues of developmentally important regulatory genes from other species have been found to be expressed in early amphibian development. The Drosophila dorso-ventral polarity .gene, dorsal, is involved in the formation of ventral structures and dorsal- mutants arise from a default state where only dorsal structures are formed. A Xenopus homologue of dorsal may play a crucial role in interpreting some of the earliest embryonic signals

I felt that I deserved it - experiences and implications of disability hate crime

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to summarise key findings and recommendations from the “Living in Fear” research project focusing on the experiences of people with learning disabilities and autism related to disability hate crime and the experience of the police in dealing with such incidents. Design/methodology/approach – Methods included: first, a postal survey with 255 people with learning disabilities or autism (or their carers for people with more severe disabilities), of whom 24 also took part in semi-structured interviews; and second, an electronic survey of the knowledge and experience of 459 police officers or support staff. Findings – Just under half of participants had experienced some form of victimisation. The Police reported problems with the definition of disability hate crime and challenges to responding effectively. Social implications – A case study from the research highlights some of the key findings and is linked to implications for people with learning disabilities and autism, carers, police and other agencies. Originality/value – Previous research has highlighted that victimisation is an issue for this group of people, but has never explored the prevalence and nature of such experiences in a representative sample. Neither has previous research brought together the perspectives of so many different agencies to offer recommendations that go across many sectors. The paper will be of interest to people with disabilities and their carers, professionals in health, social care and the Criminal Justice system

On-going frontal alpha rhythms are dominant in passive state and desynchronize in active state in adult gray mouse lemurs

The gray mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) is considered a useful primate model for translational research. In the framework of IMI PharmaCog project (Grant Agreement n°115009, www.pharmacog.org), we tested the hypothesis that spectral electroencephalographic (EEG) markers of motor and locomotor activity in gray mouse lemurs reflect typical movement-related desynchronization of alpha rhythms (about 8-12 Hz) in humans. To this aim, EEG (bipolar electrodes in frontal cortex) and electromyographic (EMG; bipolar electrodes sutured in neck muscles) data were recorded in 13 male adult (about 3 years) lemurs. Artifact-free EEG segments during active state (gross movements, exploratory movements or locomotor activity) and awake passive state (no sleep) were selected on the basis of instrumental measures of animal behavior, and were used as an input for EEG power density analysis. Results showed a clear peak of EEG power density at alpha range (7-9 Hz) during passive state. During active state, there was a reduction in alpha power density (8-12 Hz) and an increase of power density at slow frequencies (1-4 Hz). Relative EMG activity was related to EEG power density at 2-4 Hz (positive correlation) and at 8-12 Hz (negative correlation). These results suggest for the first time that the primate gray mouse lemurs and humans may share basic neurophysiologic mechanisms of synchronization of frontal alpha rhythms in awake passive state and their desynchronization during motor and locomotor activity. These EEG markers may be an ideal experimental model for translational basic (motor science) and applied (pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions) research in Neurophysiology

Multilevel Interventions To Address Health Disparities Show Promise In Improving Population Health

Multilevel interventions are those that affect at least two levels of influence—for example, the patient and the health care provider. They can be experimental designs or natural experiments caused by changes in policy, such as the implementation of the Affordable Care Act or local policies. Measuring the effects of multilevel interventions is challenging, because they allow for interaction among levels, and the impact of each intervention must be assessed and translated into practice. We discuss how two projects from the National Institutes of Health’s Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities used multilevel interventions to reduce health disparities. The interventions, which focused on the uptake of the human papillomavirus vaccine and community-level dietary change, had mixed results. The design and implementation of multilevel interventions are facilitated by input from the community, and more advanced methods and measures are needed to evaluate the impact of the various levels and components of such interventions