Frequency of Traditional Food Use by Three Yukon First Nations Living in Four Communities

This study documented the frequency of use of traditional food species among 122 adults from three Yukon First Nations. The informants resided in four communities: Haines Junction, Old Crow, Teslin, and Whitehorse. Food patterns were examined in two ways: (1) estimated frequency of household use of traditional food species over a one-year period, and (2) frequency of traditional foods in four daily diet recalls of men and women, collected once per season. On average, Yukon Indian households used traditional foods over 400 times annually. Moose was consumed on average 95 times yearly, caribou 71, chinook salmon 22, Labrador tea 20, cranberries and crowberries each 14, and blueberries 11 times yearly. According to household estimates, traditional foods were consumed almost as often in Whitehorse as in Haines Junction. Teslin surpassed both these, while Old Crow had the highest frequency. Daily diets of adult individuals indicated that traditional foods were consumed on average 1.14 times per day. Traditional foods were reported twice daily in Old Crow diets, once daily in each of Teslin and Haines Junction, and 0.5 times daily in Whitehorse diets. Measured by frequency of use, traditional foods - especially moose, caribou and salmon - remain extremely important in contemporary diets of these Yukon Indian people.Key words: traditional foods, aboriginal foods, Yukon First Nations, Yukon Indian peopleCette étude documente la fréquence d'utilisation des aliments traditionnels parmi 122 adultes venant de trois Premières Nations du Yukon. Les informateurs résidaient dans quatre communautés: Haines Junction, Old Crow, Teslin et Whitehorse. Le mode d'alimentation a été examiné de deux façons: (1) la fréquence d'utilisation des aliments traditionnels au foyer, estimée sur une période d'un an, et (2) la fréquence des aliments traditionnels dans quatre enquêtes par interview sur le régime quotidien d'hommes et de femmes, effectuées une fois par saison. Les foyers indiens du Yukon utilisent les aliments traditionnels plus de 400 fois par an, en moyenne. L'orignal était consommé en moyenne 95 fois par an, le caribou 71 fois, le saumon du Pacifique 22 fois, le thé du Labrador 20 fois, les airelles et les camarines noires 14 fois chacune, et les bleuets 11 fois. D'après les estimations dans les foyers, les aliments traditionnels étaient consommés presqu'aussi souvent à Whitehorse qu'à Haines Junction. La fréquence de consommation était supérieure à Teslin, et elle était la plus grande à Old Crow. Le régime quotidien des adultes indiquait que les aliments traditionnels étaient consommés en moyenne 1,14 fois par jour. On a relevé la présence d'aliments traditionnels deux fois par jour à Old Crow, une fois par jour à Teslin et à Haines Junction, et 0,5 fois par jour à Whitehorse. Lorsqu'on les juge par leur fréquence d'utilisation, les aliments traditionnels - en particulier l'orignal, le caribou et le saumon - demeurent extrêmement importants dans le régime contemporain des Indiens du Yukon.Mot clés: aliments traditionnels, nourriture aborigène, Premières Nations du Yukon, Indiens du Yuko

How robust are reconstruction thresholds for community detection?

The stochastic block model is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous models for studying clustering and community detection. In an exciting sequence of developments, motivated by deep but non-rigorous ideas from statistical physics, Decelle et al. conjectured a sharp threshold for when community detection is possible in the sparse regime. Mossel, Neeman and Sly and Massoulié proved the conjecture and gave matching algorithms and lower bounds. Here we revisit the stochastic block model from the perspective of semirandom models where we allow an adversary to make 'helpful' changes that strengthen ties within each community and break ties between them. We show a surprising result that these 'helpful' changes can shift the information-theoretic threshold, making the community detection problem strictly harder. We complement this by showing that an algorithm based on semidefinite programming (which was known to get close to the threshold) continues to work in the semirandom model (even for partial recovery). This suggests that algorithms based on semidefinite programming are robust in ways that any algorithm meeting the information-theoretic threshold cannot be. These results point to an interesting new direction: Can we find robust, semirandom analogues to some of the classical, average-case thresholds in statistics? We also explore this question in the broadcast tree model, and we show that the viewpoint of semirandom models can help explain why some algorithms are preferred to others in practice, in spite of the gaps in their statistical performance on random models.National Science Foundation (U.S.). Faculty Early Career Development Program (Award CCF-1453261)Google Faculty Research AwardNihon Denki Kabushiki Kaish

Food Consumption Patterns and Use of Country Foods by Native Canadians Near Wood Buffalo National Park, Canada

This study examined food consumption patterns of native (Indian and Metis) Canadians living in a boreal forest area with good access to both store-bought and country foods (traditional foods from the land, such as wild animals, birds, fish and berries). Frequency of use by season of 48 country foods by 120 households was examined by interview with the female household head. Twenty-four-hour recalls of individual food consumption on four separate days over two seasons were obtained by interview with 178 persons (71 males, 107 females) age 13-86 years, and the mean values per person were used to represent their usual intakes. The mean reported household frequency of use (number of occasions per year) was as follows: all country foods 319, including large mammals 128, berries 63, fish 62, birds 32, and small mammals 27. The upper quintile of households used country food two and one-half times more often than the sample as a whole. Recalls of individual food consumption showed that country food was consumed on average 4.2 times per week and averaged 0.5 kg per week. Country meat, birds and fish accounted for one-third of the total consumption of meat, birds and fish. Young people consumed less country food than did their elders. Thus, country food constitutes an important part of the food supply, especially of meat and fish of many native people of this region.Key words: country food, food consumption patterns, Indians, Metis, native CanadiansMots clés: aliments provenant directement de la nature, schémas de consommation alimentaire, Indiens, Métis, autochtones canadien