Attempting to Close the Food Gap: An Evaluation of the 2011 Fair Share Program in Gettysburg, PA

Background: Families in Adams County with an income between 160% and 250% of the Federal Poverty Income Guidelines and ineligible for federal food assistance programs were determined to be in the “food gap.” In collaboration with Adams County Farm Fresh Markets and the Center for Public Service at Gettysburg College, the Adams County Food Policy Council developed the Fair Share Program to provide monthly food vouchers and educational sessions to a group of families in the food gap to use at farmers markets in Gettysburg, PA. The goals of the program were to provide families not eligible for federal food assistance with an increased ability to purchase healthy foods, increase fruit and vegetable consumption, support local farms the local economy, and provide nutrition education and support. Purpose: We sought to identify the effectiveness of the pilot Fair Share Program in reaching its goals and to determine ways to improve the program in the future. Methods: 25 families who participated in the Fair Share Program during the summer of 2011 were given surveys at the start of the program, and interviews were conducted with participants at the end of the program. Surveys were given to the participating vendors at the farmers markets at the conclusion of the program. A bivariate analysis of the participant survey was done comparing results from Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants using SPSS Statistics 17.0, while the vendor surveys and interviews were evaluated qualitatively. Results: There were several noteworthy differences between the habits and perceptions of the Hispanic and non-Hispanic participants, including fruit and vegetable consumption patterns, reasons for not shopping at the farmer’s markets, and where food is typically obtained from. Interviews indicated that both participants and vendors had overall positive experiences with the program even though challenges including price and language differences were experienced. Conclusion: The Fair Share Project reached its goals and had a positive impact on the community. Improvements should be made if the program is to be continued in the future to address the challenges participants faced while participating, and there is strong support for continuation and extension of the program

Locally Stable Marriage with Strict Preferences

We study stable matching problems with locality of information and control. In our model, each agent is a node in a fixed network and strives to be matched to another agent. An agent has a complete preference list over all other agents it can be matched with. Agents can match arbitrarily, and they learn about possible partners dynamically based on their current neighborhood. We consider convergence of dynamics to locally stable matchings -- states that are stable with respect to their imposed information structure in the network. In the two-sided case of stable marriage in which existence is guaranteed, we show that the existence of a path to stability becomes NP-hard to decide. This holds even when the network exists only among one partition of agents. In contrast, if one partition has no network and agents remember a previous match every round, a path to stability is guaranteed and random dynamics converge with probability 1. We characterize this positive result in various ways. For instance, it holds for random memory and for cache memory with the most recent partner, but not for cache memory with the best partner. Also, it is crucial which partition of the agents has memory. Finally, we present results for centralized computation of locally stable matchings, i.e., computing maximum locally stable matchings in the two-sided case and deciding existence in the roommates case.Comment: Conference version in ICALP 2013; to appear in SIAM J. Disc Mat

Generators and relations for (generalised) Cartan type superalgebras

In Kac's classification of finite-dimensional Lie superalgebras, the contragredient ones can be constructed from Dynkin diagrams similar to those of the simple finite-dimensional Lie algebras, but with additional types of nodes. For example, $A(n-1,0) = \mathfrak{sl}(1|n)$ can be constructed by adding a "gray" node to the Dynkin diagram of $A_{n-1} = \mathfrak{sl}(n)$, corresponding to an odd null root. The Cartan superalgebras constitute a different class, where the simplest example is $W(n)$, the derivation algebra of the Grassmann algebra on $n$ generators. Here we present a novel construction of $W(n)$, from the same Dynkin diagram as $A(n-1,0)$, but with additional generators and relations.Comment: 6 pages, talk presented at Group32, Prague, July 2018. v2: Minor change

Generators and relations for Lie superalgebras of Cartan type

We give an analog of a Chevalley-Serre presentation for the Lie superalgebras W(n) and S(n) of Cartan type. These are part of a wider class of Lie superalgebras, the so-called tensor hierarchy algebras, denoted W(g) and S(g), where g denotes the Kac-Moody algebra A_r, D_r or E_r. Then W(A_{n-1}) and S(A_{n-1}) are the Lie superalgebras W(n) and S(n). The algebras W(g) and S(g) are constructed from the Dynkin diagram of the Borcherds-Kac-Moody superalgebras B(g) obtained by adding a single grey node (representing an odd null root) to the Dynkin diagram of g. We redefine the algebras W(A_r) and S(A_r) in terms of Chevalley generators and defining relations. We prove that all relations follow from the defining ones at level -2 and higher. The analogous definitions of the algebras in the D- and E-series are given. In the latter case the full set of defining relations is conjectured.Comment: 42 pages. v2: Minor changes. Version accepted for publication in J. Phys.

Structure and Kinematics of Molecular Disks in Fast-Rotator Early-Type Galaxies

We present interferometric observations resolving the CO emission in the four gas-rich lenticular galaxies NGC 3032, NGC 4150, NGC 4459, and NGC 4526, and we compare the CO distribution and kinematics to those of the stars and ionized gas. Counterrotation documents an external origin for the gas in at least one case (NGC 3032), and the comparisons to stellar and ionized gas substructures in all four galaxies offer insights into their formation histories. The molecular gas is found in kpc-scale disks with mostly regular kinematics and average surface densities of 100 to 200 \msunsqpc. The disks are well aligned with the stellar photometric and kinematic axes. In the two more luminous Virgo Cluster members NGC 4459 and NGC 4526 the molecular gas shows excellent agreement with circular velocities derived independently from detailed modeling of stellar kinematic data. There are also two puzzling instances of disagreements between stellar kinematics and gas kinematics on sub-kpc scales. In the inner arcseconds of NGC 3032 the CO velocities are significantly lower than the inferred circular velocities, and the reasons may possibly be related to the external origin of the gas but are not well understood. In addition, the very young population of stars in the core of NGC 4150 appears to have the opposite sense of rotation from the molecular gas.Comment: ApJ, accepte

Delivering effective nursing care to children and young people outside of a hospital setting

This report may be reproduced for the purposes of private research and study; in addition, excerpts may be included in professional journals or conference presentations as long as acknowledgement is given and there is no association with advertisingOver the course of the last fifty years, there has been a reduction of approximately 75 per cent in the total number of children’s hospital beds in the United Kingdom [UK]; at the same time, there has been an increase in the amount and range of care now being provided in other environments that are located within outside of hospital settings. This shift in terms of the location and provision of care has meant that there has been an impact on the preparation and training that healthcare staff require. The Health Outcomes Forum specifically recommended: “That HEE [Health Education England] address the workforce education, training and development requirements (including capacity and capability) to refocus service provision at home or closer to home” (Department of Health, 2012: 52). This scoping project was financed and commissioned by Health Education North Central and East London Local Education and Training Board [HE NCEL LETB] in January 2014 and was undertaken by the University of Hertfordshire between February 2014 - August 2014. The project was funded to facilitate the consideration of the educational needs of the nursing workforce in relation to out of hospital care for children and young people, thus enabling the future potential development of out of hospital services to meet the health needs of the children and young people living in the HE NCEL geographical are

Development of taxane resistance in a panel of human lung cancer cell lines

Using a selection process designed to reflect clinically relevant conditions, a panel of taxane-selected variants were developed to study further the mechanisms of resistance in lung cancer. Unlike continuous or pulse exposure to high concentrations of chemotherapeutic drugs which yield high resistance and often cross resistance, most variants developed here displayed low level resistance to the selecting drug with slight cross-resistance. Pulsing with taxol resulted in more highly resistant clones (up to 51.4-fold). Analysis of taxol and taxotere in the four major lung cancer cell types showed the taxanes to be more effective against NSCLC (with the exception of SKMES-taxane selected variants) than against the SCLC. Comparison of taxol and taxotere shows that taxol induces higher levels of resistance than taxotere. Further, in taxotere-selected cell lines, the cells are more resistant to taxol than taxotere, suggesting that taxotere may be a superior taxane from a clinical view. Taxol treatment resulted in increased cross-resistance to 5-FU in all classes of lung cancer except DMS-53. The high levels of Pgp in the DMS-53 and selected variant suggests this mechanism is not related to Pgp expression. Analysis of the Pgp and MRP-1 status by combination inhibitory assays and Western blotting showed no consistent relationship between expression of the membrane pumps Pgp or MRP-1 and resistance. However, where high level resistance was seen, the parent cell line expressed Pgp or MRP-1 and was accompanied by increased levels in the variants. Overall we found that the clinically relevant models used here are useful for investigating mechanisms of taxane resistance