Perceived eating norms and children's eating behaviour: an informational social influence account.

open access articleThere is initial evidence that beliefs about the eating behaviour of others (perceived eating norms) can influence children's vegetable consumption, but little research has examined the mechanisms explaining this effect. In two studies we aimed to replicate the effect that perceived eating norms have on children's vegetable consumption, and to explore mechanisms which may underlie the influence of perceived eating norms on children's vegetable consumption. Study 1 investigated whether children follow perceived eating norms due to a desire to maintain personal feelings of social acceptance. Study 2 investigated whether perceived eating norms influence eating behaviour because eating norms provide information which can remove uncertainty about how to behave. Across both studies children were exposed to vegetable consumption information of other children and their vegetable consumption was examined. In both studies children were influenced by perceived eating norms, eating more when led to believe others had eaten a large amount compared to when led to believe others had eaten no vegetables. In Study 1, children were influenced by a perceived eating norm regardless of whether they felt sure or unsure that other children accepted them. In Study 2, children were most influenced by a perceived eating norm if they were eating in a novel context in which it may have been uncertain how to behave, as opposed to an eating context that children had already encountered. Perceived eating norms may influence children's eating behaviour by removing uncertainty about how to behave, otherwise known as informational social influence

Perceived eating norms and vegetable consumption in children

open access articleBackground Beliefs about the eating behaviour of others (perceived eating norms) have been shown to influence eating behaviour in adults, but no research has examined whether young children are motivated by perceived eating norms. Findings Here we investigated the effect on vegetable intake of exposing children to information about the vegetable intake of other children. One hundred and forty three children aged 6–11 years old took part in a between-subjects experiment. Children were exposed to information suggesting that other children had eaten a large amount of carrots, no carrots, or control information. Children ate more carrots when they believed that other children had eaten a large amount of carrots, compared to all other conditions. Conclusions Perceived eating norms can influence vegetable intake in young children and making use of eating norms to promote healthier eating in children warrants investigation

Health Care Doesn't Have to Cost an Arm and a Leg: 29 Reasons for Optimism from Comparisons between Countries and U.S. States

Residents of 29 countries live longer lives, on average, than Americans -- while spending up to eight times less on their health. A new report by American Human Development Project ranks the 50 states and Washington, D.C. against 80 countries in the world on life expectancy at birth, infant death rates, and annual per person spending on health care. The results powerfully demonstrate how better care and reining in costs are not incompatible

Halve the Gap by 2030: Youth Disconnection in America's Cities

One in every seven Americans between the ages of 16 and 24—5.8 million young people in all—are neither working nor in school. These vulnerable teens and young adults are unmoored from institutions that provide knowledge, networks, skills, identity, and direction. Most young people never recover from long spells of disconnection. They carry scars of their lost years for the rest of their lives in the form of lower wages and marriage rates, and higher incarceration and unemployment rates. Early spells of disconnection rain serious blows on long-term health, happiness, and job satisfaction" (p.5-6). This report uses updated data to build on a previous report that ranked the country's 25 largest metropolitan areas as well as the nation's largest racial and ethnic groups in terms of youth disconnection. The report also maps the landscape of youth disconnection and presents the data disaggregated by neighborhood cluster for twenty-five US metro areas

A Century Apart: New Measures of Well-Being for U.S. Racial and Ethnic Groups

Our national conversation about race tends to take place in black and white, yet the greatest disparities in human well-being to be found in the U.S. are between Asian Americans in New Jersey and Native Americans in South Dakota. An entire century of human progress separates the worst-off from the best-off groups within the U.S., according to the latest update of the American Human Development (HD) Index. What's new in this report?American HD Index scores for racial and ethnic group in each state, using the most recent government data to create a composite measure of progress on health, education, and income indicators. Previous reports have presented scores for racial and ethnic groups for the entire country and within specific states. This is the first time that American HD Index scores have been computed for racial and ethnic groups in each state. Rankings by state, for each major racial and ethnic group, on the American HD Index. The index reveals that the starkest disparities in well-being fall not between blacks and whites, but between Native Americans and Asian Americans. Asian Americans as a group top the rankings, with Asian Americans in New Jersey coming in at number one. If current trends continue, it will take Native Americans in South Dakota an entire century to catch up with where New Jersey Asian Americans are now in terms of life expectancy, educational enrollment and attainment, and median earnings.Analysis of what's driving the differences in human development outcomes for different groups.Disaggregated data on life expectancy, educational enrollment, educational degree attainment, and median personal earnings, all from the latest official government releases. Although the numbers tell a sobering tale, this data can be the start of a conversation about where in the country different groups of Americans are thriving -- and where others are falling behind -- and why. A holistic approach using official statistics paints a picture of today and helps us monitor change for a better tomorrow; as such, the American HD Index can serve as a tool for action

Goals for the Common Good: Exploring the Impact of Education

Those who advocate for greater investment in education often make the economic argument: more education leads to higher wages and is critical for financial stability and independence. They're right. Robust evidence supports the view that higher levels of educational attainment are linked to higher incomes, less unemployment, less poverty, and less reliance on public assistance. But education is about more than just better jobs and bigger paychecks, important though they are in making families and individuals more financially stable. More education is also linked to better physical and mental health, longer lives, fewer crimes, less incarceration, more voting, greater tolerance, and brighter prospects for the next generation. More education is good for individuals who stay in school to earn their high school degree or who enter and graduate college, but it is also good for all of us, paying big dividends in the form of increased civic engagement, greater neighborhood safety, and a healthy, vibrant democracy. This report is a companion piece to the online Common Good ForecasterTM, a joint product of United Way and the American Human Development Project. It takes a closer look at the ten indicators featured on the Forecaster and makes the case for why education matters to each of these critical areas. The Common Good ForecasterTM is an online tool available at www.measureofamerica.org/forecaster and www.liveunited.org/forecaster

Transformational Solar Array Option I Final Report

This report summarizes the work performed under NASA contract NNC16CA19C from May 2, 2017 through April 2, 2018. This work is directed toward meeting the goals of the associated NASA NRA and, of course, the requirements of the contract. In brief, the goals are: (1) Over 47% beginning of life cell efficiency at 5 AU and -125 C (2) Over 32% end of life efficiency at the blanket level at 50 W m-2, -125 C and 4E15 1 MeV e cm-2 (3) Over 8 W kg-1 at EOL for the entire array including structure, deployment, and pointing mechanisms using beginning of life performance. (4) A stowed packaging density of greater than 66 kW m-3 (5) An ability to survive launch and numerous deploy retract cycles without degradation (6) An output higher than 300 V (7) An ability to operate in a plasma generated by xenon thrusters, typically 1E8 cm-3 ions with an average energy of 2 eV (8) A design compatible with electrostatic and magnetic cleanliness (9) Record breaking inverted metamorphic (IMM) 6 junction solar cells (10) IMM solar cells that have no anomalous flat spot behavior at low irradiance and low temperature (11) A mock-up production line for the low-cost manufacture of spacecraft blanket arrays. The Option I phase of the project continued efforts, started in the base-phase, to eliminate or reduce to very low levels the flat spots that reduce power to an unacceptable value in a significant percentage of cells and to reduce outgassing contamination of the concentrators to acceptable levels. Option I adds tasks to increase the efficiency of IMM cells from those produced in the Base Phase, to eliminate delamination of the coatings that were present in previous versions of the concentrator mirrors, to evaluate pressure sensitive adhesive as a method of fixing solar cell assemblies to blankets, to design a magnetically clean brake for ROSA, to test the robustness of a sample blanket in deploy and retract, to test for the adequate performance of a blanket in vibration and thermal environments, and to define the capital equipment needed to optimize production of the Transformational Array. 5 Work for this Final Report showed that the greatest likely improvement in the solar cells would be by emphasizing the effort for the IMM4 solar cells and stopping work on other IMM cells. For this phase, the solar cell work was primarily on the IMM4 cells with little work on IMM5 and none on IMM6 cells

The effectiveness of a social media intervention for reducing portion sizes in young adults and adolescents

open access journalAbstract Objective: Adolescents and young adults select larger portions of energy-dense food than recommended. The majority of young people have a social media profile, and peer influence on social media may moderate the size of portions selected. Methods: Two pilot-interventions examined whether exposure to images of peers’ portions of high-energy-dense (HED) snacks and sugar-sweetened-beverages (SSBs) on social media (Instagram) would influence reported desired portions selected on a survey. Confederate peers posted ‘their’ portions of HED snacks and SSBs on Instagram. At baseline and intervention end participants completed surveys that assessed desired portion sizes. Results: In intervention 1, Undergraduate students (N=20, Mean age=19.0y, SD=0.65y) participated in a two-week intervention in a within-subjects design. Participants reported smaller desired portions of HED snacks and SSBs following the intervention, and smaller desired portions of HED snacks for their peers. In intervention 2, adolescents (N=44, Mean age=14.4y, SD=1.06y) participated in a four-week intervention (n=23) or control condition (n=21) in a between-subjects design. Intervention 2 did not influence adolescents to reduce their desired reported portion sizes of HED snacks or SSBs relative to control. Conclusions: These preliminary studies demonstrated that social media is a feasible way to communicate with young people. However, while the intervention influenced young adults’ reported desired portions and social norms regarding their peers’ portions, no significant impact on desired reported portion sizes was found for HED snacks and SSBs in adolescents. Desired portion sizes of some foods and beverages may be resistant to change via a social media intervention in this age group

Intimate partner violence among African American and African Caribbean women: prevalence, risk factors, and the influence of cultural attitudes.

BackgroundWomen of African descent are disproportionately affected by intimate partner abuse; yet, limited data exist on whether the prevalence varies for women of African descent in the United States and those in the US territories.ObjectiveIn this multisite study, we estimated lifetime and 2-year prevalence of physical, sexual, and psychological intimate partner abuse (IPA) among 1,545 women of African descent in the United States and US Virgin Islands (USVI). We also examined how cultural tolerance of physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) influences abuse.DesignBetween 2009 and 2011, we recruited African American and African Caribbean women aged 18-55 from health clinics in Baltimore, MD, and St. Thomas and St. Croix, USVI, into a comparative case-control study. Screened and enrolled women completed an audio computer-assisted self-interview. Screening-based prevalence of IPA and IPV were stratified by study site and associations between tolerance of IPV and abuse experiences were examined by multivariate logistic regression analysis.ResultsMost of the 1,545 screened women were young, of low-income, and in a current intimate relationship. Lifetime prevalence of IPA was 45% in St. Thomas, 38% in St. Croix, and 37% in Baltimore. Lifetime prevalence of IPV was 38% in St. Thomas, 28% in St. Croix, and 30% in Baltimore. Past 2-year prevalence of IPV was 32% in St. Thomas, 22% in St. Croix, and 26% in Baltimore. Risk and protective factors for IPV varied by site. Community and personal acceptance of IPV were independently associated with lifetime IPA in Baltimore and St. Thomas.ConclusionsVariance across sites for risk and protective factors emphasizes cultural considerations in sub-populations of women of African descent when addressing IPA and IPV in given settings. Individual-based interventions should be coupled with community/societal interventions to shape attitudes about use of violence in relationships and to promote healthy relationships

Twenty eight years of ICP Vegetation: an overview of its activities

Here we look back at the activities and achievements in the 28 years of the International Cooperative Programme on the Effects of Air Pollution on Natural Vegetation and Crops (ICP Vegetation). The ICP Vegetation is a subsidiary body of the Working Group on Effects of the UNECE Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution (LTRAP), established in 1979. An important role of the ICP Vegetation is to provide evidence for air pollution impacts on vegetation in support of policy development and review of the LRTAP Convention and its Protocols. The activities and participation in the ICP Vegetation have grown over the years. The main activities include: • Collate evidence of ozone impacts on vegetation, assess spatial patterns and temporal trends across Europe; • Develop dose-response relationships, establish critical levels for vegetation and provide European risk maps of ozone impacts; • Reviewing the literature on ozone impacts on vegetation and produce thematic scientific reports and policy-relevant brochures; • Determine spatial patterns and temporal trends of heavy metals, nitrogen and persistent organic pollutants concentrations in mosses as a biomonitoring tool of atmospheric deposition of these compounds