Organic foods in public catering: Organisational development or a locomotive to boost organic sales

In many countries public procurement policies of organic foods have become a popular instrument to increase the sale of organic produce. However, unlike the relatively uncomplicated “organic” change process in private households, the processes related to implementation of foods in public food systems have proved to be quite complicated. In order to study the nature of these systems and their ability to implement organic consumption a study of the Danish Green Procurement Programme (GPP) method was carried out. The GPP aimed at supporting organic consumption in public catering. The study included document analysis, qualitative interviews and a questionnaire based survey among practitioners at catering and municipal level. The results show that organic conversion processes in municipal catering is a multifaceted process. The process is not only concerned with substituting conventional foods with organic ones but involves a number of significant spin offs and ramifications. Instead of being a simple replacement process the conversion also functions as a change opportunity in which public food systems can develop and innovate. However the Danish case also shows that if organic procurement policies should be a reliable alternative sales channel, it is important at all times to keep the goal of the conversion in mind and not to neglect the need for constant monitoring of the progress of the organic procurement policy in terms of actual amounts of organic products. The case shows that such monitoring is needed both at institutional, municipal and national levels

Optimal Online Edge Coloring of Planar Graphs with Advice

Using the framework of advice complexity, we study the amount of knowledge about the future that an online algorithm needs to color the edges of a graph optimally, i.e., using as few colors as possible. For graphs of maximum degree $\Delta$, it follows from Vizing's Theorem that $O(m\log \Delta)$ bits of advice suffice to achieve optimality, where $m$ is the number of edges. We show that for graphs of bounded degeneracy (a class of graphs including e.g. trees and planar graphs), only $O(m)$ bits of advice are needed to compute an optimal solution online, independently of how large $\Delta$ is. On the other hand, we show that $\Omega (m)$ bits of advice are necessary just to achieve a competitive ratio better than that of the best deterministic online algorithm without advice. Furthermore, we consider algorithms which use a fixed number of advice bits per edge (our algorithm for graphs of bounded degeneracy belongs to this class of algorithms). We show that for bipartite graphs, any such algorithm must use at least $\Omega(m\log \Delta)$ bits of advice to achieve optimality.Comment: CIAC 201

Eminent Domain after Kelo v. City of New London: Compensating for the Supreme Court’s Refusal to Enforce the Fifth Amendment

Governments, both state and federal, have the right to take private property for public use, provided that just compensation is paid. The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution sets the legal standard for these propositions; this power is known as the right of eminent domain. In the landmark decision, Kelo v. City of New London, the Supreme Court held that the taking of a citizen’s private property for economic development qualified as a public use within the meaning of the Fifth Amendment. Several scholars, legislatures, and individuals, have objected to Kelo’s extension of the power of eminent domain. The ruling has extended the government’s power of eminent domain to areas once thought unimaginable

A frontotemporal regional model of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

The flashback is a phenomenon in Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in which traumatic memories are replayed as a reaction to a stimulus. However, the underlying neural mechanisms for this phenomenon are still under investigation. We created a multi-layer model of visual input, entorhinal cortex, hippocampus, prefrontal cortex, basolateral amygdala, and the central nucleus of the amygdala, as a multi-area network to determine how these regions may be distinctively encoding the traumatic events that produce these replays. The current model dynamic shows that highly emotional visual stimuli can be generalized to similar stimuli, more so than events related to neutral stimuli. This result mimics electrophysiological results in the amygdala (Ghosh & Chattarji, 2015). Our network dynamics can be used to create a more nuanced approach to PTSD treatments: it could replicate outcomes of techniques such as Prolonged Exposure (PE) and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and improve the spatial and temporal configuration of the technique. Our model characterizes the spatio-temporal aspects of the flashback phenomenon and as such aids in the spatio-temporal fine-tuning of treatments such as EMDR. As a future direction, we can incorporate in the model individual and developmental differences in plasticity in responding to current treatments based on visual stimuli to come up with optimized treatment for each individual affected by PTSD.Published versio

The Links Between the Neighborhood Food Environment and Childhood Nutrition

Identifies key studies on the availability of, and residents' access to, healthy foods and how they influence the choices of low-income children and their families. Discusses efforts to bring about improvements and new research and policy priorities

Aquaculture-Fisheries Interactions

In this paper, I investigate aquaculture externalities on fisheries, affecting either habitat, wild fish stock genetics, or fishing efficiency under open-access and rent-maximising fisheries. This is done with a Verhulst-Schaefer model of fish population-dynamics and production, coupled with a simple aquaculture production model. Externalities are modelled by letting carrying capacity, the stock’s intrinsic growth rate, or catchability coefficient in the fishery depend on aquaculture production. The different externalities can give totally opposite results on steady-state fishing effort, yield, and stock, even for only negative externalities. With a catchability externality, increased unit cost of fishing effort implies reduced aquaculture production to maximise benefits to society under reasonable assumptions. Resource allocation between the industries is analysed under three different coastal management regimes: 1) aquaculture has a primary right of use; 2) joint management of aquaculture and fishery; 3) fishers have a primary right of use, including the right to sell marine farming rights.Aquaculture, fisheries, externality, interactions, carrying capacity, intrinsic growth rate, catchability coefficient, habitat, genetics., Environmental Economics and Policy, International Relations/Trade, Public Economics, Q22, R52,

Does organic school food service provide more healthy eating environments than their non organic counterparts?

Organic food strategies are increasingly developing within European school food services at the same time as these services are being involved in measures aiming at promoting healthy eating at school and counteracting obesity. Schools have an important role to play in teaching children fundamental life skills, including good food habits according to a number of authoritative policy papers from Council of Europe, the WHO and the EU platform. Although there are great national differences, European school food culture seems to be in a transitional state in which both healthy eating as well as sustainable consumption strategies are contributing to shaping the future school food culture. It is therefore imperative to study how these changes in agendas influences each other and to study the associations between healthy eating and organic supply strategies at school. This has been the point of departure for Working Package 5 (WP5): Nutrition and Health. The WP5 study has included Denmark, Norway, Germany, Finland and Italy. The WP has been asking questions about the possible spin offs and ramification on nutrition and health that the emerging public organic food strategies might have had. The WP is a part of the project “innovative Public Organic food Procurement for Youth” (iPOPY) and the WP5 has been carried out by Aalborg University Denmark. The research presented here has been conducted in Germany, Finland, and Italy

HEALTH POLICY INTERVENTION IN SCHOOLS PROMOTE PHYSICAL ACTIVITIES AMONG THE PUPILS

Today, more and more children are overweight or obese than ever before. Schools can play a prominent role in easing the situation. Schools have a great potential through the curriculum, health promoting programming and transportation to preventing children from becoming obese and overweight. However schools are complex social systems that does not necessarily by themselves adapt to this new health promoting role and thus committed management support is needed. Since schools are complex organizational structures convenient organizational structure are needed to formalize the praxis that stakeholders at schools should perform. Policies has become the preferred organizational instrument that management can use to frame the health promoting intentions. However since schools are expected to perform more and more educational obligations, policies seem to emerge in many sub domains of the schools setting. For instance schools are expected to have food and nutrition policy (FNP), physical activity policy (PAP) and a health policy. However instead of seeing these policies as separate entities this paper speculate that there is a possible interrelatedness between the policies. In other words could it be that it is not so much the specific content of the policy as it is the policy process or the awareness raising related do it that produce healthier behaviour

DOES ORGANIC FOOD INTERVENTION IN SCHOOL LEAD TO CHANGED DIETARY PATTERNS?

During adolescence food habits, physical activity, and life style of young people are easily influenced by a number of actors and phenomena in the environment including parents, friends, advertisements and all of the changes occurring in society. The meal patterns formed during adolescence will be continuously influenced into their adulthood even following generations in the future. Since school increasingly is taking a role in both food provision and in health, environment and nutrition education of young people by implementing healthy and environmental friendly policies, it is relevant to investigate the relation between the different components of such interventions. In other words it is relevant to ask the question: does organic food supply police go hand in hand with healthy eating policies. This study that has been made possible through the iPOPY project looks at the relationship in Danish and Norwegian school food setting by asking school headmaster about their policies and operational procedure in relation to school food. The purpose of the study is to explore the relationship “green” food policies & praxises to “healthy” food policies & praxises in public school food settings. The outcome of the research/questionnaire will be a mapping of serving practices in relation to healthy eating and the relation to attitudes and practices of organic procurement and policies