Providing Nutrition Education at a Food Pantry Affects Food-Related Behavior of Participants

We investigated effects of nutrition education provided to food pantry clients by trained volunteers. Specifically, we assessed effects on food security, nutrition practices, and food safety by examining the food pantry clients\u27 intent to use beneficial kitchen practices and self-reported behavior following the education. Participants who engaged in at least one educational lesson completed an intent survey after the education. After the 4-month period during which the lessons were provided, participants and members of a comparison group completed retrospective questionnaires. Participants reported both high intent to use resources and behavior change (p ≤ .05). Offering nutrition education in food pantries is useful for participants and constitutes worthwhile Extension programming

Spatial clustering of emergency department visits by asthmatic children in an urban area: south-western Detroit, Michigan

Objective This ecological study evaluates the correlation of asthma clusters with outdoor air pollution, race, and household income in South-western Detroit, Michigan. Design To attain this objective (1) a geographic information aystem (GIS) is utilized to evaluate the relationships between rates of emergency department (ED) admissions for asthma, race, and socio-economic status at the neighborhood block group level of analysis; (2) cluster statistical analyses are performed using Geomed software; and (3) the asthma risk from industrial air pollution was evaluated with windrose data and Screen3 air pollution model. Sample Data from five major hospitals with ED admissions of asthma patients (code 493), aged 0–15 years, are used to select a region of analysis with good geographical representation based on the catchment areas of hospitals in the study. A total of 2067 of the reported cases between 1 January 1993 and 30 June 1998, are successfully geocoded to a map, generating a no-match rate of 8.4%. Data on racial characteristics, population density, and household income levels are obtained from neighborhood block groups in the 1990 census report. Locations of major polluting industries within the study area are obtained from the Toxics Release Inventory. Results Spatial analysis identified a local asthma cluster roughly 2 km east (the predominant downwind direction) of the second and third largest air polluters (in terms of tonnage) in Wayne County. Evaluation of the industrial pollution with a focused cluster test, Screen3 air pollution model, and windrose figures, displayed weak association between ED asthma admissions and estimated levels of outdoor air pollution from these two facilities. The neighborhood block groups in the local asthma cluster are more closely correlated with high proportions of African Americans and low median household income. Implications for practice This study illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of GIS in the public health arena. It highlights the difficulty of disentangling the effects of exposure to outdoor air pollutants and socio-economic factors on ED asthmatics (reflecting asthma severity) among an urban population. This study also illustrates the need for population-based, as opposed to hospital-based, asthma data, and the need for block-groups, as opposed to zip codes, as a spatial unit of analysis in the evaluation and analysis of asthma-related risk factors.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73994/1/j.1467-0658.2001.00143.x.pd

Food Insecurity Prevalence Across Diverse Sites During COVID-19: A Year of Comprehensive Data

Key Findings NFACT includes 18 study sites in 15 states as well as a national poll, collectively representing a sample size of more than 26,000 people. Some sites have implemented multiple survey rounds, here we report results from 22 separate surveys conducted during the year since the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. 18 out of 19 surveys in 14 sites with data for before and since the pandemic began found an increase in food insecurity since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as compared to before the pandemic. In nearly all surveys (18/19) that measured food insecurity both before and during the pandemic, more Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) were classified as food insecure during the pandemic as compared to before it began. Prevalence of food insecurity for BIPOC respondents was higher than the overall population in the majority of surveys (19/20) sampling a general population. In almost all surveys (21/22), the prevalence of food insecurity for households with children was higher than the overall prevalence of food insecurity. Food insecurity prevalence was higher for households experiencing a negative job impact during the pandemic (i.e. job loss, furlough, reduction in hours) in nearly all surveys and study sites (21/22). Food insecurity prevalence in most sites was significantly higher before COVID-19 than estimates from that time period. Reporting a percent change between pre and during COVID-19 prevalence may provide additional information about the rate of change in food insecurity since the start of the pandemic, which absolute prevalence of food insecurity may not capture. Results highlight consistent trends in food insecurity outcomes since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, across diverse study sites, methodological approaches, and time

Asthma Prevalence and Severity in Arab American Communities in the Detroit Area, Michigan

Immigrant populations provide a unique intersection of cultural and environmental risk factors implicated in asthma etiology. This study focuses on asthma prevalence and severity in 600 Arab American households in metro Detroit, the largest immigrant reception zone for Arab Americans in North America. The survey method introduced a number of novel features: (a) a ranking scheme for the key environmental risk factors for asthma was used to derive an aggregated environmental risk index (ERI) for each household, and (b) an aggregate measure of asthma severity based on symptom frequency and intensity. Environmental risk factors and surrogates for socioeconomic status (SES) were found to be stronger predictors of asthma prevalence than asthma severity, while demographic variables such as English fluency and birth in the United States were better predictors of asthma severity than asthma prevalence. These results suggest that SES variables may be more reflective of environmental exposures in communities involved in this study, while English fluency and birth in the United States may be linked to health care access and utilization behavior that can influence the asthma management. We also found a significant relationship between asthma prevalence and degree of acculturation. Asthma prevalence was highest among moderately acculturated immigrants compared with new immigrants and those who were well acculturated, suggesting that among Arab Americans in the Detroit area, risk factors associated with new immigrant status are replaced by “western” risk factors as the population becomes more acculturated.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44945/1/10903_2005_Article_3673.pd

Influence of Bessey Creek on the water chemistry and biota of the sandy littoral region of Douglas Lake, Michigan.

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/53629/1/2064.pdfDescription of 2064.pdf : Access restricted to on-site users at the U-M Biological Station

Ecological aspects of soybean production and pest management in Nicaragua.

Integrated pest management (IPM), which emphasizes the use of biological control factors and minimization of chemical insecticides, is a pest management approach particularly appropriate for developing countries which currently import expensive, hazardous pest control chemicals. I review the economic and ecological aspects of agricultural technology in Nicaragua, emphasizing the role of pesticides. The recent introduction of soybeans necessitates the development of IPM techniques for this crop because the dominant pest, Spodoptera exigua (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae) is insecticide-resistant and highly polyphagous. I review the biology of this pest, particularly those aspects that contribute to its status as an agricultural pest. I investigate the potential for IPM in soybeans in Nicaragua in field research on Spodoptera exigua, examining the possible use of weeds as a control agent in contrast to insecticides. Because weeds can reduce pest abundance, but also complete with the crop, I measure the effect of weeds and insecticides on pest abundance and yield of two varieties of soybeans, Cristalina and Tropical. Populations of S. exigua were reduced by weeds in 1987 but not in 1988. The reduced abundance of S. exigua larvae in weedy soybean plots is apparently a consequence of reduced oviposition in weedy plots relative to weed-free plots. Insecticides, in contrast to weeds, did not reduce pest abundance relative to insecticide-free plots, suggesting that these are inseciticide-resistant pest populations. Chrysoperla carnea (Neuroptera: Chrysopidae), an abundant natural enemy in this agroecosystem was not reduced by insecticides, suggesting that it is also insecticide-resistant, and has potential use in programs integrating chemical and biological pest control tactics. Weeds neither significantly reduced total seed yield of either soybean variety, nor affected the number of pods produced, number of seeds per pod, or average weight per seed. Plant height of the Cristalina variety, but not the Tropical variety, was increased by weeds. Insecticides did not affect total seed yield per plant of either variety, but increased average seed weight of the Cristalina variety. Plant height of both the Cristalina and Tropical varieties was increased in insecticide treated plots. The implications of these results for soybean production and pest management in Nicaragua are discussed.Ph.D.Biological SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/104160/1/9034506.pdfDescription of 9034506.pdf : Restricted to UM users only

Mitigating Inter-Job Interference via Process-Level Quality-of-Service

Jobs on most high-performance computing (HPC) systems share the network with other concurrently executing jobs. This sharing creates contention that can severely degrade performance. We investigate the use of Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms to reduce the negative impacts of network contention. Our results show that careful use of QoS reduces the impact of contention for specific jobs, resulting in up to a 27% performance improvement. In some cases the impact of contention is completely eliminated. These improvements are achieved with limited negative impact to other jobs; any job that experiences performance loss typically degrades less than 5%, often much less. Our approach can help ensure that HPC machines maintain high throughput as per-node compute power continues to increase faster than network bandwidth.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Mitigating Inter-Job Interference via Process-Level Quality-of-Service

Jobs on most high-performance computing (HPC) systems share the network with other concurrently executing jobs. Network sharing leads to contention that can severely degrade performance. This article investigates the use of Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms to reduce the negative impacts of network contention. QoS allows users to manage resource sharing between network flows and to provide bandwidth guarantees to specific flows. Our results show that careful use of QoS reduces the impact of network contention for specific jobs, resulting in up to a 40% performance improvement. In some cases, it completely eliminates the impact of contention. It achieves these improvements with limited negative impact to other jobs; any job that experiences performance loss typically degrades less than 5%, and often much less. Our approach can help ensure that HPC machines maintain high levels of throughput as per-node compute power continues to increase faster than network bandwidth.Lawrence Livermore National LaboratoryThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

I/O Aware Power Shifting

Power limits on future high-performance computing (HPC) systems will constrain applications. However, HPC applications do not consume constant power over their lifetimes. Thus, applications assigned a fixed power bound may be forced to slow down during high-power computation phases, but may not consume their full power allocation during low-power I/O phases. This paper explores algorithms that leverage application semantics-phase frequency, duration and power needs-to shift unused power from applications in I/O phases to applications in computation phases, thus improving system-wide performance. We design novel techniques that include explicit staggering of applications to improve power shifting. Compared to executing without power shifting, our algorithms can improve average performance by up to 8% or improve performance of a single, high-priority application by up to 32%.No embargo.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]