2012 State of Metropolitan Housing Report

This report updates Metropolitan Housing Coalition's nine annual measures of fair and affordable housing for the Louisville, KY Metropolitan Statistical Area: Concentration of Subsidized Housing; Housing Segregation; Renters with Excessive Cost Burden; Production and Rehabilitation of Affordable Housing; Homeownership Rate; Access to Homeownership; Foreclosures; Homelessness; and Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) and HOME Funds.The 2012 State of Metropolitan Housing Report clearly demonstrates Metropolitan Louisville's growing need for safe, fair, and affordable housing. For the first time, the tenth annual State of Metropoltian Housing Report includes data on the number of children experiencing homelessness in the MSA's public school systems; before MHC reported only on Jefferson County Public Schools.The 2012 report also includes a focus topic: vacant properties and their impact on the community as well as current efforts and best practices that to address this issue. Additionally, the report also drills down into the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, a federal program designed to address the issue of vacant properties, and how it was used in Louisville

Birthday Booktalks: Fostering Emergent Literacy and Self-esteem in Young Children

The celebration of birthdays provides teachers the opportunity to recognize and honor each child, thereby nurturing feelings of self-esteem. When combined with birthday celebrations, booktalks on literature selections related to birthdays are recommended to promote emergent literacy as well as self-esteem. Examples that demonstrate different booktalk formats are given in this article. At the end of the article are additional suggested titles on which teachers may do birthday booktalks

Psychological consistency, inconsistency and cognitive dissonance in the relationship between eating meat and evaluating animals.

Despite much research into vegetarianism, the psychological relationship between eating meat and evaluating animals remains relatively neglected. Through focus groups, questionnaires and experiments, this study investigated whether people experienced psychological inconsistency in this relationship and, if so, how they handled that inconsistency. Unlike vegetarians' attitudes, the content of meat-eaters' attitudes towards eating meat rarely included animals. Meat-eaters' positive attitudes towards eating meat were consistent with their eating behaviour; however, their attitudes towards farm animals were more positive than their attitudes towards eating meat. It therefore depends upon which attitudes are salient at any given time to determine whether psychological consistency is maximised overall. By focusing on the relationship between their own genuinely-held attitudes towards farm animals, animals' slaughter, and eating meat, meat-eaters' cognitive dissonance increased. Their attitudes towards eating meat were expected to become more positive in order to restore consonance between their attitudes and eating behaviour. However, meat-eaters' attitudes towards eating meat became less positive and their attitudes towards animals' slaughter became more negative. In contrast, their attitudes towards farm animals resisted change. Therefore meat-eaters' attitudes towards farm animals became relatively even more positive than their attitudes towards eating meat and animals' slaughter. Hence, the attitudes stimulated by this research, in an environment which prevented psychological denial strategies, caused (a) meat eaters' attitudes to become more inconsistent with their behaviour and (b) the consequent lack of consonance restoration. This study both helps to understand the empirical relationship between eating meat and evaluating animals and extends cognitive dissonance theory's explanatory power to real-world complex phenomena

Envisioning the Future of Academic Libraries

A group of librarians, other information professionals, scientists and research administrators met to discuss the challenges that research libraries are currently facing. After the meeting a survey was conducted to obtain additional input from the group on several key challenges that arose from the discussions. The purpose of the meeting and survey was threefold: 1. Examine in detail, from a variety of perspectives, how the world of research is changing and the impact these changes have on the direction of research libraries. 2. Create an informed vision of how research libraries can be a vital partner to researchers. 3. Suggest a strategic approach for realizing this vision. The strategic approach presented in this white paper incorporates feedback from various sized research libraries, each with its own mission.The expectation is that individual libraries will use it as a guide in formulating strategies that are appropriate to their research communities, financial circumstances, and organizational reporting structur

A commentary on studies presenting projections of the future prevalence of dementia.

BACKGROUND: Population ageing over the first half of this century is likely to lead to dramatic increases in the prevalence of dementia. This will affect all regions of the world, but particularly developing regions. Dementia projections have been used extensively to support policy. It is therefore important these projections are as accurate as possible. DISCUSSION: In this paper we provide a commentary on studies projecting the future prevalence of dementia for the world or for individual continents. We identify some important limitations of the methods used in published projections and provide recommendations to improve the accuracy of future projections, and allow for the checking of the accuracy of the predictions. SUMMARY: Accurate projections of dementia incidence, at both the global and local level, are essential for healthcare planners.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Prevalence studies of dementia in mainland china, Hong Kong and taiwan: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Many studies have considered the prevalence of dementia in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. However, area level estimates have not been produced. This study examines area differences across mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan adjusting for the effect of methodological factors with the aim of producing estimates of the numbers of people with dementia in these areas. METHOD AND FINDINGS: A search of Chinese and English databases identified 76 dementia prevalence studies based on samples drawn from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1980 and 2012. A pattern of significantly decreasing prevalence was observed from northern, central, southern areas of mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Area variations in dementia prevalence were not explained by differences in methodological factors (diagnostic criteria, age range, study sample size and sampling method), socioeconomic level or life expectancy between areas. The results of meta-analysis were applied to current population data to provide best estimate. Based on the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria, the total number of people aged 60 and over with dementia in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan is 8.4 million (4.6%, 95% CI: 3.4, 5.8) and in northern, central and southern areas are 3.8 (5.1%, 95% CI: 4.1, 6.1), 3.2 (4.4%, 95% CI: 3.2, 5.6) and 1.2 (3.9%, 95% CI: 2.3, 5.4) million respectively. These estimates were mainly based on the studies existing in highly developed areas and potentially affected by incomplete and insufficient data. CONCLUSIONS: The findings of this review provide a robust estimate of area differences in dementia prevalence. Application of the estimated prevalence to population data reveals the number of people with dementia is expected to double every 20 years, areas in mainland China will be facing the greatest dementia challenge.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from the Public Library of Science via http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.006625

In search of lost time: When people start an exercise program, where does the time come from? A randomized controlled trial

The objective of this study was to investigate changes in use of time when undertaking a structured exercise program.This study used a randomized, multi-arm, controlled trial design.A total of 129 insufficiently active adults aged 18-60 years were recruited and randomly allocated to one of three groups, a Moderate or Extensive six-week exercise group (150 and 300 additional minutes of exercise per week, respectively) or a Control group. Prescribed exercise was accumulated through both group and individual sessions. Use of time was measured at baseline and end-program using the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adults, a computerized 24-h recall instrument. Daily minutes of activity in activity domains and energy expenditure zones were determined.Relative to changes in the control group, daily time spent in the physical activity [F (2, 108)=20.21,

Effect of Fibre Supplementation on Body Weight and Composition, Frequency of Eating and Dietary Choice in Overweight Individuals

Fibre supplementation can potentially reduce energy intake and contribute to weight loss. The mechanism may be reduced frequency of eating, resulting in reduced food consumption. The objective of this research was to determine the effectiveness of fibre supplementation with PolyGlycopleX® (PGX®), on body weight and composition, frequency of eating and dietary intake in 118 overweight adults. In a three-arm, parallel, blind, randomised controlled trial participants were randomised to one of three groups; 4.5 g PGX as softgels (PGXS), 5 g PGX granules (PGXG) or 5 g rice flour (RF) control. Prior to supplementation and at 12 weeks, participants captured before and after images of all food and beverages consumed within 4 days using a mobile food record app (mFR). The mFR images were analysed for food group serving sizes and number of eating occasions. In the PGXG group, intention-to-treat analysis showed there was a significant reduction in waist circumference (2.5 cm; p = 0.003). Subgroup analysis showed that PGXG supplementation at the recommended dose resulted in a reduction in body weight (-1.4 ± 0.10 kg, p < 0.01), body mass index (BMI) reduction (-0.5 ± 0.10, p < 0.01), reduced number of eating occasions (-1.4 ± 1.2, p < 0.01) and a reduced intake of grain food (-1.52 ± 1.84 serves, p = 0.019). PGXG at the recommended dose resulted in a reduction in weight and BMI which was significantly greater than that for RF (p = 0.001). These results demonstrate the potential benefits of PGX fibre in controlling frequency of eating and in weight loss

Cumulative effects of bullying and racial discrimination on adolescent health in Australia

This study examined how cumulative exposure to racial discrimination and bullying victimization influences the health of Australian adolescents (n=2802) aged 10-11 years (19.3% visible ethnic minorities (non-White, non-Indigenous); 2.6% Indigenous) using data from 3 waves (2010-2014) of the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Cumulative exposure to racial discrimination and bullying victimization had incremental negative effects on socioemotional difficulties. Higher accumulated exposure to both stressors across time was associated with increased BMI z-scores, and risk of overweight/obesity. Studies that examine exposure to single risk factors such as bullying victimization or racial discrimination at 1 time point only are likely to miss key determinants of health for adolescents from stigmatized racial/ethnic backgrounds and under-estimate their stressor burden