Increasing the capacity of a local food hub to service the public school market

Cooperation with a local food hub can be beneficial for bringing together farmers and school district food services interested in serving local food to their students. This project in northeast Iowa successfully navigated some of the challenges for these groups to collaborate

Increasing local food consumption in rural communities by partnering with nontraditional food retailers

The project investigators partnered with small rural businesses (“nontraditional retailers”) to increase access to local, healthy foods, especially fruits and vegetables. The team purchased display coolers to use in these settings, and tested several locations

Implementing a seasonal cycle menu for public schools featuring Iowa-grown and processed foods

New nutrition regulations for student meals spurred a project to help schools use more Iowa-grown products with the creation of a seasonal, cycle menus. Utilizing cycle menus, training students in cafeteria coaching, and access to a local food hub yielded good results for several northeast Iowa schools

From Algebraic Word Problem to Program: A Formalized Approach

In this paper, we propose a pipeline to convert grade school level algebraic word problem into program of a formal languageA-IMP. Using natural language processing tools, we break the problem into sentence fragments which can then be reduced to functions. The functions are categorized by the head verb of the sentence and its structure, as defined by (Hosseini et al., 2014). We define the function signature and extract its arguments from the text using dependency parsing. We have a working implementation of the entire pipeline which can be found on our github repository.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures, Course project of Programming Language

Collecting Data for Collective Impact: A Guide for Coordinators in the Regional Food Systems Working Group

This manual outlines a shared measurement system for collecting economic data for coordinators of 17 Regional Food Groups that are part of the Regional Food Systems Working Group (RFSWG). The manual includes a sample farmer survey [PDF] to report local food sales and a sample institution survey [PDF] to report local food purchases, as well as instructions for coordinators to submit data [PDF]

Cheesy Pasta with Summer Veggies

A recipe for cheesy pasta with summer veggies

The Drosophila ETV5 Homologue Ets96B: Molecular Link between Obesity and Bipolar Disorder

Several reports suggest obesity and bipolar disorder (BD) share some physiological and behavioural similarities. For instance, obese individuals are more impulsive and have heightened reward responsiveness, phenotypes associated with BD, while bipolar patients become obese at a higher rate and earlier age than people without BD; however, the molecular mechanisms of such an association remain obscure. Here we demonstrate, using whole transcriptome analysis, that Drosophila Ets96B, homologue of obesity-linked gene ETV5, regulates cellular systems associated with obesity and BD. Consistent with a role in obesity and BD, loss of nervous system Ets96B during development increases triacylglyceride concentration, while inducing a heightened startle-response, as well as increasing hyperactivity and reducing sleep. Of notable interest, mouse Etv5 and Drosophila Ets96B are expressed in dopaminergic-rich regions, and loss of Ets96B specifically in dopaminergic neurons recapitulates the metabolic and behavioural phenotypes. Moreover, our data indicate Ets96B inhibits dopaminergic-specific neuroprotective systems. Additionally, we reveal that multiple SNPs in human ETV5 link to body mass index (BMI) and BD, providing further evidence for ETV5 as an important and novel molecular intermediate between obesity and BD. We identify a novel molecular link between obesity and bipolar disorder. The Drosophila ETV5 homologue Ets96B regulates the expression of cellular systems with links to obesity and behaviour, including the expression of a conserved endoplasmic reticulum molecular chaperone complex known to be neuroprotective. Finally, a connection between the obesity-linked gene ETV5 and bipolar disorder emphasizes a functional relationship between obesity and BD at the molecular level

A systematic review of resting-state functional-MRI studies in anorexia nervosa: Evidence for functional connectivity impairment in cognitive control and visuospatial and body-signal integration.

This paper systematically reviews the literature pertaining to the use of resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) in anorexia nervosa (AN), classifying studies on the basis of different analysis approaches. We followed PRISMA guidelines. Fifteen papers were included, investigating a total of 294 participants with current or past AN and 285 controls. The studies used seed-based, whole-brain independent component analysis (ICA), network-of-interest ICA based and graph analysis approaches. The studies showed relatively consistent overlap in results, yet little overlap in their analytical approach and/or a-priori assumptions. Functional connectivity alterations were mainly found in the corticolimbic circuitry, involved in cognitive control and visual and homeostatic integration. Some overlapping findings were found in brain areas putatively important in AN, such as the insula. These results suggest altered functional connectivity in networks/areas linked to the main symptom domains of AN, such as impaired cognitive control and body image disturbances. These preliminary evidences suggest that more targeted treatments need to be developed that focus on these two symptom domains. Further studies with multi-approach analyses and longitudinal designs are needed to better understand the complexity of AN