Sustainable Food Systems At Urban Public Universities: A Survey Of U‐21 Universities

Urban communities are challenged by the conventional food system in diverse ways. To mitigate these challenges, a growing sustainable food system (SFS) movement mobilizes existing resources—including public institutions—to resolve disparities in access to healthy food, increase economic opportunities, conserve natural resources, and build a stronger, more local food system. Many public universities located in inner cities have adopted missions committing themselves to the improvement of their cities and regions. They also perform anchoring roles to revitalize their immediate neighborhoods, and, in a contemporary extension of their civic purposes, embrace sustainability as an institutional goal. Urban public universities therefore can play many SFS leadership roles, including through links to innovative scholarship, campus dining halls, other food retail such as farmers markets, and civic engagement activities such as community gardens. Through a study of 21 urban public universities, this paper investigates the presence and characteristics of SFS leadership, underlying rationales, and factors that support and oppose leadership.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112274/1/juaf12149.pd

Comparing perception-based and geographic information systems (GIS) based characterizations of the local food environment

Measuring features of the local food environment has been a major challenge in studying the effect of the environment on diet. This study examined associations between alternate ways of characterizing the local food environment by comparing Geographic Information System (GIS)-derived densities of various types of stores to perception-based measures of the availability of healthy foods. Survey questions rating the availability of produce and low-fat products in neighborhoods were aggregated into a healthy food availability score for 5,774 residents of North Carolina, Maryland, and New York. Densities of supermarkets and smaller stores per square mile were computed for 1 mile around each respondent’s residence using kernel estimation. The number of different store types in the area was used to measure variety in the food environment. Linear regression was used to examine associations of store densities and variety with reported availability. Respondents living in areas with lower densities of supermarkets rated the selection and availability of produce and low-fat foods 17% lower than those in areas with the highest densities of supermarkets (95% CL, −18.8, −15.1). In areas without supermarkets, low densities of smaller stores and less store variety were associated with worse perceived availability of healthy foods only in North Carolina (8.8% lower availability, 95% CL, −13.8, −3.4 for lowest vs. highest small-store density; 10.5% lower 95% CL, −16.0, −4.7 for least vs. most store variety). In contrast, higher smaller store densities and more variety were associated with worse perceived healthy food availability in Maryland. Perception- and GIS-based characterizations of the environment are associated but are not identical. Combinations of different types of measures may yield more valid measures of the environment.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58001/1/Comparing perception based and geographic informatin systems GIS based characterizations of the local food environment.pd

Development of a polymer-metal nanocomposite dielectric by in situ reduction for embedded capacitor application

M.S.Committee Chair: C.P. Won

National and Organizational Culture Differences and International Joint Venture Performance

This study examines the effect of dimensions of national and organizational culture differences on international joint venture (IJV) performance. Based on data from a survey of executives from joint ventures between Indian partners and partners from other countries, we found that the presumed negative effect from culture distance on IJV performance originates more from differences in organizational culture than from differences in national culture

Numerical investigation of subcooled flow boiling in an annulus under the influence of eccentricity

The subcooled flow boiling phenomenon usually occurs in a number of industrial applications, such as Pressurized Heavy Water Reactors (PHWR) and heat exchangers in nuclear power plants. The pressure tube deformation, presence of spacer pads, etc., may result in the eccentricity (e) of the rod bundle which causes coolant flow maldistribution and hence influence the heat transfer characteristics. In the present study, the entire rod bundle is modeled as a single inner rod and Eulerian Eulerian Multiphase Flow (EEMF) and Wall Heat Flux Partition (WHFP) model framework is used to simulate the effect of eccentricity (e). This model is validated against the available experimental data in the literature and found to be in reasonably good agreement. This framework is also compared and contrasted against the subchannel analysis predictions to highlight the importance of detailed CFD simulations. Furthermore, in the present study, the thermal hydraulics of narrow and wide gap regions are numerically investigated in an eccentric annulus. Due to eccentricity, early phase change, higher wall temperature and vapour volume fraction were noticed in the narrow gap region, compared to the concentric case (), which is undesirable in the PHWR type reactors