Seizing the Opportunity to Sustain Economic Growth by Investing in Nutrition in Zambia

It is to the credit of the Zambian leadership and the development community that a great deal of momentum for nutrition has been built in the past few years. The level of undernutrition in Zambia is high and persistent, with almost one in every two children stunted for their age. In June 2013 the Zambian Government pledged to cut this rate by half over the next ten years. The challenge now is to turn that momentum into increased, and more equitable, programme coverage, improved quality of service delivery and a wider set of nutrition-sensitive interventions that support nutrition. While government buy-in and effort are necessary, they are not sufficient; undernutrition eduction requires a concerted cross-sectoral effort, including civil society, researchers,the private sector, the media and international development partners. The current strong economic growth in Zambia can be used as a positive driver to improve nutrition and therefore improve long-term human development and economic productivity

Ethnic identity and aspirations among rural Alaska youth

The villages of rural Alaska comprise one of the most exceptional, yet least visible, sociocultural environments in the United States They are geographically remote, and set off from the mainstream also by their unique Eskimo, Indian or Aleut cultures. At the same time many economic, legal and cultural connections pull these villages toward the dominant U.S. society, impelling continual and rapid social change. Our research focuses on adolescents growing up in this culturally complex and changing environment. We employ survey data from adolescents in 19 rural schools to explore relationships between ethnic identity and students\u27 expectations about moving away or attending college. Many students describe their ethnic identity as mixed, both Native and non-Native. On some key variables, the responses of mixed-identity students fall between those of Natives and non-Natives, supporting a theoretical conception of ethnicity as a matter of degree rather than category. Migration and college expectations vary with ethnic identity, but the college expectations/identity relationship fades when we adjust for other variables. Ethnicity affects expectations for the most part indirectly, through “cultural tool kit” variables including family role models and support. Gender differences in expectations, on the other hand, remain substantial even after adjusting for other variables

BIOMECHANICAL STUDY OF MID-FLIGHT BODY SEGMENT ACTION AND ITS EFFECT ON HANG-TIME FOR VOLLEYBALL SPIKE JUMPS

This study examined pilot data exploring approaches to testing whether the existing explanation about the biomechanics of hang-time in a basketball jump shot proposed by Bishop and Hay (1979) is applicable for spike jumps in volleyball and to identifying possible additional factors that could have an influence on hang-time in volleyball. Kinematics of spike jumps of volleyball players (n=3) using a technique that would theoretically increase hang-time were compared to jumps using a technique that would theoretically decrease it. The results suggested that the mechanisms creating hang-time in volleyball spike jumps are not the same as those in a basketball jump shot. These results suggested that the leg contributions are different and that the motion of the trunk also contributes to hang-time

Seizing the Opportunity to Sustain Economic Growth by Investing in Undernutrition in Zambia

It is to the credit of the Zambian leadership and the development community that a great deal of momentum for nutrition has been built in the past few years. The level of undernutrition in Zambia is high and persistent, with almost one in every two children stunted for their age. In June 2013 the Zambian Government pledged to cut this rate by half over the next ten years. The challenge now is to turn that momentum into increased, and more equitable, programme coverage, improved quality of service delivery and a wider set of nutrition-sensitive interventions that support nutrition. While government buy-in and effort are necessary, they are not sufficient; undernutrition reduction requires a concerted cross-sectoral effort, including civil society, researchers, the private sector, the media and international development partners. The current strong economic growth in Zambia can be used as a positive driver to improve nutrition and therefore improve long-term human development and economic productivity

Turning Rapid Growth into Meaningful Growth: Sustaining the Commitment to Nutrition in Zambia

The level of undernutrition in Zambia is high and persistent. The increasing commitment of Zambian and international stakeholders to changing this situation holds out the prospect of a real decline in undernutrition over the coming years. In addition, the current strong growth of GDP per capita is potentially a positive driver of future undernutrition decline. Despite these increased opportunities for undernutrition reduction, however, there are several real threats to progress. Based on a combination of research evidence and long experience of working in the country, the authors in this IDS Special Collection describe some of these opportunities and threats in Zambia and suggest ways of seizing the former and dealing with the latter. The articles in this IDS Special Collection show how the commitment to nutrition has been built in Zambia, and provide some pointers and guides to the ways in which that increased commitment could be leveraged to raise resources and how to allocate these. Zambia is potentially on the cusp of a great economic transformation. Can gains in economic growth from temporary mineral resources be translated into gains in child growth which reduce mortality and suffering, as well as serving to power economic growth in a sustainable way? Or will we see a situation where current fast economic growth is another redundant flash in the pan? By investing much more of their increasing stream of tax revenues in malnutrition-reducing efforts, Zambian policymakers can make the transformation vision much more likely. In this way, economic growth can be made more sustainable and more transformative. Investing in the most vulnerable members of its society – children under the age of two and their mothers – is a sure-fire way for Zambia to turn fast economic growth into meaningful growth, not only of its economy, but of its population

ANALYSIS OF SIMULATED ANNEALING BASED OPTIMIZATION OF HUMAN MOVEMENT FOR PERFORMANCE ENHANCEMENT

Technique is a defining feature of success in sport performance. In aerial phases of sport skills, in particular, it is the interplay among articulated body segments that optimizes the outcome. This interplay is characterized by intersegmental interactions during the projectile trajectory, the aerial phase, of the body’s center of mass. The purpose of this study was to examine mathematical optimization approaches to finding the best balance of intersegmental interaction and in that process maximizing the desired performance outcome. We compared optimization using two different search algorithms, brute-force and simulated annealing and found that using simulated annealing is an efficient way to search for optimal solutions for biomechanical problems

Introduction – Turning Rapid Growth into Meaningful Growth: Sustaining the Commitment to Nutrition in Zambia

Zambia suffers high levels of child stunting and is struggling to achieve the nutrition-related MDGs, with significant constraints in the provision of services to address every one of the underlying determinants of undernutrition. Motivated by increasing advocacy for nutrition under the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, the Zambian government pledged in June 2013 to cut chronic malnutrition by half over the next ten years. The country has come some way recently in creating coherent policies and strategies for nutrition, and has had some notable successes. However, important challenges remain, not least in coordination, capacity, finances and evidence. This article argues that if these challenges are to be met, political attention is not enough. Sustained focus and country ownership are needed to implement the necessary nutrition programmes across sectors, and real political and system commitment to reducing the number of malnourished children in Zambia is required in order to translate recent interest into impact

OPTIMIZATION OF HANG-TIME TECHNIQUE FOR VOLLEYBALL SPIKE JUMPS

In a previous study, we found that hang-time can have potential benefits on athlete performance during volleyball spikes, but hang-time usually comes at a cost of decreased peak height. To address this loss in peak height, we tested whether the trajectories of the "non-performing segments" (legs and non-hitting arm) can be modified to maximize the performance of the hitting arm without affecting the hang-time (defined by vertical motion of the head and trunk). The purpose of this study was to present details of an optimizer to facilitate a wide range of future studies aimed at maximizing performance. Using optimization we predict that for males the peak height of the hitting arm and its sagittal plane velocity at its peak can be increased by 52k11 mm (

USE OF MUSCULOSKELETAL MODELING TO FIND THE BALANCE BETWEEN PERFORMANCE AND INJURY PREVENTION IN SPORTS – A PROOF OF CONCEPT

In this study we used musculoskeletal modelling with mathematical optimization tools to find whole-body kinematics that simultaneously reduce risk of injury and enhance sports performance. Combining these objectives has long been the goal of sports science research. We focused on improving hang-time parameters in volleyball (Gupta et al., 2015). We were able to preserve an advantage of hang-time (late swing) and address its disadvantage (potential loss in peak height of the hitting arm) by increasing the height of the hitting wrist by 1 cm, while at the same time not increasing the shoulder moments. This study provided a proof of concept that this optimization framework can potentially find a balance between performance and injury prevention in a complex sports task

Exploring Cyber Harassment among Women Who Use Social Media

The number of Internet users around the word is at an all-time high. The majority of North Americans are internet users and over two-thirds participate in some kind of social network (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.). Social networks and mobile technology enable individuals to connect instantaneously or asynchronously, across geographic boundaries publicly or anonymously. Few studies exploring cyber harassment have been conducted, primarily because these technologies are relatively recent. The purpose of this descriptive study was to examine U.S. women\u27s experiences with and attitudes toward cyber harassment by way of an anonymous electronic survey. A total of 293 adult women (mean age 24.6) recruited from popular social networking sites participated in the research. The majority of participants (58.5%) reported being a student enrolled at a college or university. Close to 20% repeatedly received an unsolicited sexually obscene message and/or sexual solicitation (excluding Spam messages for all categories) on the Internet. More than 10% (11.5%, n = 33) repeatedly received pornographic messages from someone they did not know. More than a third of those who did experience some form of cyber harassment reported feeling anxious. One- fifth indicated they noticed changes in their sleeping and eating patterns as well as feeling helpless because of the harassment. Implications and recommended strategies for health education and personal safety in the online environment are provided