The food environment within the primary school fringe

Purpose – The school fringe environment (peripheral 400m buffer) offers an important opportunity for young people to obtain food and drink. There is international evidence to suggest socio-economic influence on food outlet availability and healthfulness within these environments; however the situation in the UK is unclear. The purpose of this paper is to describe food outlet provision (frequency and type) within primary school fringes across the spectrum of deprivation. Design/methodology/approach – Ten primary schools in Newcastle upon Tyne were purposefully selected from a comprehensive list of all schools within the region. Two schools were chosen at random from each quintile of deprivation. A total of 400-metre buffer zones around schools were audited. School fringe food environments were classified using a Food Outlet Classification System. Access (i.e. frequency), and type of food outlets were compared to area level deprivation, obesity prevalence rates and area type. Findings – Food outlet frequency was highest in the most deprived school fringe area. Convenience stores and takeaways represented the greatest proportion of total food outlets across all school fringe environments. More total food outlets were observed in fringes with above national average obesity prevalence rates for children. Research limitations/implications – UK case study approach limits widespread and international applicability. Practical implications – Informs school, health and urban planning disciplines regarding current picture of UK school fringes. Originality/value – Provides evidence in UK context that area deprivation and Census 2001 Supergroup class show significant correlations with school fringe food environment

South African Child Gauge 2010/2011

The South African Child Gauge is a special book about children in South Africa, produced anually to monitor government and civil society's progress towards realising children's rights. This collection of papers focuses on 'the meaning of children’s right to social services,' specifically dealing with children and the legal system, children as citizens, and key numeric indicators on the state of children's socioeconomic rigjts. This resource can be used for independent study/research or for integration into child development curriculum

Coherent Captain Mills: The Search for Sterile Neutrinos

The observation of neutrino oscillations confirms that the active neutrinos (νe, νμ, ντ) are comprised of three mass eigenstates with Δm2 values between 10-3 to 10-5 eV2 . However, a persistent phenomenon has been observed at LSND, MiniBooNE and other shortbaseline experiments (SBE) where Δm2 ~ 1eV2 and is not compatible with the current mixing between mass eigenstates. However, a 4th neutrino, a sterile neutrino (νs) that doesn’t participate in weak interactions could explain the phenomena observed as SBE’s. An experiment has been constructed at TA-53 at Los Alamos National Laboratory to investigate this large Δm2 ~ 1eV2 and determine conclusively whether or not this large Δm2 is due to a “new” sterile neutrino. POSTER PRESENTATION IGNITE AWAR

Theory of NMR as a local probe for the electronic structure in the mixed state of the high-TcT_c cuprates

We argue that nuclear magnetic resonance experiments are a site-sensitive probe for the electronic spectrum in the mixed state of the high-$T_c$ cuprates. Within a spin-fermion model, we show that the Doppler-shifted electronic spectrum arising from the circulating supercurrent changes the low-frequency behavior of the imaginary part of the spin-susceptibility. For a hexagonal vortex lattice, we predict that these changes lead to {\it (a)} a unique dependence of the $^{63}$Cu spin lattice relaxation rate, $1/T_1$, on resonance frequency, and {\it (b)} a temperature dependence of $T_1$ which varies with frequency. We propose a nuclear quadrupole experiment to study the effects of a uniform supercurrent on the electronic structure and predict that $T_1$ varies with the direction of the supercurrent.Comment: RevTex, 5 pages, 3 figures embedded in the tex

Chavis Heights Public Housing Community, Southeast Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina : action-oriented community diagnosis : findings and next steps of action

During the 2002-2003 academic year, six students from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education within the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health, under the guidance of a preceptor from Wake County Human Services and faculty of the program, conducted an Action Oriented Community Diagnosis (AOCD) of the Chavis Heights public housing community in Southeast Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina. The purpose of this document is to summarize the AOCD process, present findings, and suggest future action steps to improve life within the community. The paper begins with an introduction to the AOCD process, a basic history of the Chavis Heights public housing community, and some demographic information about Chavis Heights residents. This is followed by a description of the qualitative methodology used by the student team to conduct the community diagnosis. Findings from the data collection process are reported on six prominent domains identified during the AOCD process; those domains include crime, sense of community, services, youth, health, and schools/education. Under each domain, emergent themes are discussed, including a presentation of insiders’ and outsiders’ perspectives, secondary data analysis, and participant observations. Conclusions are then drawn about how well the four sources of information about the Chavis Heights community match up. A description of the community meeting, the culminating event of the diagnosis, and potential action steps discussed at this event are also discussed. This is followed by conclusions and recommendations made by the student team at the end of the diagnosis. While residents of Chavis Heights face many challenges, the AOCD shows that community members and service providers working in the area agree on which issues should receive priority attention. It is clear that the Chavis Heights residents have a number of strengths, including a strong devotion to the many children who live within the community. The coordination of outside resources and community input would certainly enhance the lives of many community members. It is the student team’s hope that with improved communication between service providers and community members, this document can serve as a useful resource for those working to make Chavis Heights a better place in the years to come.Master of Public Healt

Comparative CPTED Conference

The Sydney Institute of Criminology (University of Sydney) hosted a one-day Comparative CPTED Conference on 24 January 2012. This conference explored recent developments in CPTED practice and theory and brought together an exciting array of academics and practitioners from England, New Zealand, Western Australia, Victoria, Queensland and other locations. National trends and local case studies revealed different approaches and innovative developments in CPTED practice from numerous jurisdictions.SJB Urbi

Fine sediment reduces vertical migrations of Gammarus pulex (Crustacea: Amphipoda) in response to surface water loss

Surface and subsurface sediments in river ecosystems are recognized as refuges that may promote invertebrate survival during disturbances such as floods and streambed drying. Refuge use is spatiotemporally variable, with environmental factors including substrate composition, in particular the proportion of fine sediment (FS), affecting the ability of organisms to move through interstitial spaces. We conducted a laboratory experiment to examine the effects of FS on the movement of Gammarus pulex Linnaeus (Crustacea: Amphipoda) into subsurface sediments in response to surface water loss. We hypothesized that increasing volumes of FS would impede and ultimately prevent individuals from migrating into the sediments. To test this hypothesis, the proportion of FS (1–2 mm diameter) present within an open gravel matrix (4–16 mm diameter) was varied from 10 to 20% by volume in 2.5% increments. Under control conditions (0% FS), 93% of individuals moved into subsurface sediments as the water level was reduced. The proportion of individuals moving into the subsurface decreased to 74% at 10% FS, and at 20% FS no individuals entered the sediments, supporting our hypothesis. These results demonstrate the importance of reducing FS inputs into river ecosystems and restoring FS-clogged riverbeds, to promote refuge use during increasingly common instream disturbances

Limiting global-mean temperature increase to 1.5-2°C could reduce the incidence and spatial spread of dengue fever in Latin America

The Paris Climate Agreement aims to hold global-mean temperature well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Whilst it is recognized that there are benefits for human health in limiting global warming to 1.5°C, the magnitude with which those societal benefits will be accrued remains unquantified. Crucial to public health preparedness and response is the understanding and quantification of such impacts at different levels of warming. Using dengue in Latin America as a study case, a climatedriven dengue generalized additive mixed model was developed to predict global warming impacts using five different global circulation models, all scaled to represent multiple global-mean temperature assumptions. We show that policies to limit global warming to 2°C could reduce dengue cases by about 2.8 (0.8–7.4) million cases per year by the end of the century compared with a no-policy scenario that warms by 3.7°C. Limiting warming further to 1.5°C, produces an additional drop in cases of about 0.5 (0.2–1.1) million per year. Furthermore, we found that by limiting global warming we can limit the expansion of the disease towards areas where incidence is currently low. We anticipate our study to be a starting point for more comprehensive studies incorporating socioeconomic scenarios and how they may further impact dengue incidence. Our results demonstrate that although future climate change may amplify dengue transmission in the region, impacts may be avoided by constraining the level of warming

Correlation between Subtypes of Cryptosporidium parvum in Humans and Risk

Multilocus microsatellite analysis discriminates among C. parvum strains and is a potential tool for identifying anthroponotic or zoonotic transmission