Early impact of a new food store intervention on health-related outcomes

Neighbourhood food environments influence what people choose to eat and consequently affect their health. Literature suggests that having supermarkets/grocery stores with healthier food options in a neighbourhood supports intake of healthy food as opposed to having abundance of fast food and convenience stores. This thesis systematically reviewed published literature on new food store interventions on health-related outcomes (manuscript 1), and examined early health-related impact of a community-based food intervention in Saskatoon (manuscript 2). The systematic review addressed the question ‘How do new food store (supermarket/grocery store) interventions influence health-related outcomes in adults?’ The review followed the guidelines recommended by the Effective Public Health Practice Project (EPHPP) and identified 11 records representing 7 interventions. The methodological quality rating found that 6 studies were of ‘weak’ methodological quality, one was of ‘moderate’ and two studies had ‘strong’ methodological quality. Relevant outcomes reported by these studies were fruit and vegetable consumption, self-rated health, psychological health, BMI, perceptions of food access, and household food availability. Of these outcomes, perceptions of food access and psychological health showed significant improvement; however, other outcomes showed mixed results. A prospective longitudinal study was conducted to investigate the health-related impact of a new food store in a former food desert in Saskatoon. One hundred and fifty-six shoppers of the new food store were followed-up repeatedly and their health-related outcomes were assessed using a questionnaire. A generalized estimating equations approach was used for data analysis. Study participants were mainly female, Aboriginal, of low income, and had high school and some post-secondary education. They showed dose-response associations between the frequency of use of the new grocery store and the odds of reporting household food security, mental health, and BMI over time, and these associations were significantly modified by participants’ level of education, household income, and pre-existing chronic conditions, respectively. Further, having multiple disadvantaged conditions (Aboriginal ethnicity, seniors, low-income and low-education) significantly modified the effect of the new grocery store use on participants’ mental health. Although the systematic review suggested that previous studies yielded conflicting findings, this thesis research revealed convincing results. In contrast to the limited body of literature, this study found that when the shopping frequency is taken into account, the new grocery store did have a positive effect on mitigating household food security, mental health, and BMI. Further, socioeconomic status, multiple disadvantage, and previous chronic diseases moderate these effects. The results are valuable to advance the knowledge in food environment interventions research

Enhanced Thermoelectric Power and Electronic Correlations in RuSe2_2

We report the electronic structure, electric and thermal transport properties of Ru$_{1-x}$Ir$_{x}$Se$_2$ ($x \leq 0.2$). RuSe$_2$ is a semiconductor that crystallizes in a cubic pyrite unit cell. The Seebeck coefficient of RuSe$_2$ exceeds -200 $\mu$V/K around 730 K. Ir substitution results in the suppression of the resistivity and the Seebeck coefficient, suggesting the removal of the peaks in density of states near the Fermi level. Ru$_{0.8}$Ir$_{0.2}$Se$_{2}$ shows a semiconductor-metal crossover at about 30 K. The magnetic field restores the semiconducting behavior. Our results indicate the importance of the electronic correlations in enhanced thermoelectricity of RuSb$_{2}$.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Design of an Intelligent Motorcycle System Using Microcontrol-Based Fingerprinting

Fingerprint scanners are one of those technological developments that can only be used by persons who have fingerprints embedded in their fingerprints. A gadget that captures a digital image of a person's fingerprints. The fingerprint sensor has two stages. The image acquisition process and the image matching process are the two procedures. Fingerprint recognition devices can use a variety of technologies, the most prevalent of which being optical scanning. Fingerprints are now exclusively used in institutions to authenticate the existence and suitability of a person's fingerprints, as well as as a smartphone security mechanism. However, its application in the field of automotive technology, such as in two-wheeled vehicles, is still not widely used, particularly for security in the most recent model cars. It turns out that fingerprints can be used as a substitute for ignition, open a car door and turn on and off to turn it off. In the event that the driver loses the ignition, he can still start and stop the car, providing more protection for two-wheeled vehicles that lack a sophisticated security system. The method employed is to install a fingerprint sensor in two-wheeled vehicles in place of a switch to turn on and off the engine. The benefit of this research is that the vehicle is safer and can still be started using the fingerprint sensor even if the motorcycle key is lost. Meanwhile, its shortcomings include the inability to be managed remotely, Because fingerprint sensors installed directly on motorcycles cannot be utilised on smartphones, although software can be developed to control them remotely, and fingerprint sensors are expensive. As a result, the authors conducted research titled Designing an Intelligent Two-Wheel Motorised Vehicle System with a Microcontroller-Based Fingerprint Application so that vehicle userscan remotely turn on and off the vehicle using fingerprints via a smartphone and do not need to buy. Because it uses the fingerprint that is already on the smartphone with the application, it is a fingerprint sensor. The distance of using wifi with a frequency of 2.4 Gz with the farthest distance of 20 metres works normally, but this system does not yet have extra features like as GPS and alarms, so for car safety and tracking system cannot be utilised and is the next stage of study.<br/

A Numerical Thermo-Chemo-Flow Analysis of Thermoset Resin Impregnation in LCM Processes

This paper presents a numerical framework for modelling and simulating convection–diffusion–reaction flows in liquid composite moulding (LCM). The model is developed in ANSYS Fluent with customised user-defined-functions (UDFs), user-defined-scalar (UDS), and user-defined memory (UDM) codes to incorporate the cure kinetics and rheological characteristics of thermoset resin impregnation. The simulations were performed adopting volume-of-fluid (VOF)—a multiphase flow solution—based on finite volume method (FVM). The developed numerical approach solves Darcy’s law, heat transfer, and chemical reactions in LCM process simultaneously. Thereby, the solution scheme shows its ability to provide information on flow-front, viscosity development, degree of cure, and rate of reaction at once unlike existing literature that commonly focuses on impregnation stage and cure stage in isolation. Furthermore, it allows online monitoring, controlled boundary conditions, and injection techniques (for design of manufacturing) during the mould filling and curing stages. To examine the validity of the model, a comparative analysis was carried out for a simple geometry, in that the numerical results indicate good agreement—3.4% difference in the degree of cure compared with previous research findings