Portion Distortion Plays a Major Role in the American Obesity Epidemic

The prevalence of overweight and obesity among the American population is on the rise. This epidemic can be attributed to an increase in energy intake. Research has shown that increased consumption is associated with both individual and societal factors including an increase in the size of portions, the influence of the food industry, and confusion on the part of the consumer. The findings indicate that dietitians and other healthcare providers need to do their part by informing society of the importance of decreasing portions and helping the consumer recognize appropriate portion sizes

Perception of charter school principals on the provisions of charter school legislation

This study investigated the perceptions of charter school principals regarding ten provisions relevant to charter school legislation. In addition, this study determined if differences existed between the opinion of experts and the perception of charter school principals regarding the strengths and weaknesses related to ten provisions of charter school legislation. This study assessed the perceptions of practitioners, charter school principals, regarding charter school legislation. Experts within the charter school movement ranked and critiqued various provisions of charter school legislation from their frame of reference as policy analysts. However, charter school principals confront the ramifications of charter school legislation on a daily basis. The Center for Education Reform in their report, Charter School Laws Across the States 2000: Ranking Score Card and Legislative Profiles (2000), rated thirty-seven states\u27 charter school legislation according to ten provisions inherent to the concept of charter schools. Based upon the instrument used by The Center for Education Reform (2000), in which experts in policy analysis assessed charter school legislation, a questionnaire was developed to obtain similar assessments from practicing charter school principals. A questionnaire was distributed to all charter school principals within the states of Texas, California, Michigan and Pennsylvania. In addition, telephone interviews were conducted with two randomly selected principals from each state in order to confirm, enrich or query data derived from the questionnaire; Although experts within the charter school movement rated provisions of charter school legislation, this study assessed the perception of practitioners, charter school principals, regarding charter school legislation. This study suggested that a significant difference existed between the perception of charter school principals and the opinion of experts regarding provisions of charter school legislation. In addition, the results of this study suggested that the ideal charter school concept was not being implemented within the charter school movement based on the high level of bureaucratic oversight and the low level autonomy within the charter schools

New Frontiers of Quantified Self: Finding New Ways for Engaging Users in Collecting and Using Personal Data

In spite of the fast growth in the market of devices and applications that allow people to collect personal information, Quantified Self (QS) tools still present a variety of issues when they are used in everyday lives of common people. In this workshop we aim at exploring new ways for designing QS systems, by gathering different researchers in a unique place for imagining how the tracking, management, interpretation and visualization of personal data could be addressed in the future

Data set for influence of blends of diesel and renewable fuels on compression ignition engine emissions

The present data article is based on the research work which investigates the influence of blends of diesel and renewable fuels on compression ignition engine emissions. In this experimental work, a 2.4 L, turbocharged, direct injection compression ignition engine and water brake dynamometer were used. Different ternary blends were created by mixing diesel, biodiesel and ethanol together in accordance with a mixture design of experiments. The homogeneity of each ternary blend was qualitatively checked by observing the samples for 24 hours for visible separation. The engine was run over the WLTP drive cycle for each individual ternary blend and the exhaust emissions were recorded. NOVA 7466K and TESTO 350 gas analysers were used to record the exhaust emissions. A factory standard MAF sensor was used to record the inlet air mass flow and an aftermarket ECU was used to determine the fuel flow. The ternary blends were blended using standard laboratory measuring equipment

New Frontiers of Quantified Self 3: Exploring Understudied Categories of Users

Quantified Self (QS) field needs to start thinking of how situated needs may affect the use of self-tracking technologies. In this workshop we will focus on the idiosyncrasies of specific categories of users

Equity Evaluation of Vehicle Miles Traveled Fees in Texas

The Texas state gas tax has been 20.0 cents per gallon since 1991, and the federal gas tax has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993. The gas tax is not only stagnant, but depreciating in value due to inflation. Thus, damage is being done to the infrastructure but the money needed to maintain and improve roadways is not being adequately generated. One proposed alternative to the gas tax is the creation of a vehicle miles traveled (VMT) fee; with equity being a crucial issue to consider. This research used 2009 National Household Travel Survey (NHTS) Texas data to consider the equity impacts surrounding four VMT fee scenarios. Data were filtered and weighted to reflect results representative of Texas vehicle-owning households in 2008. Each scenario was run both statically and dynamically under the assumption that the VMT fee would replace the state gas tax. An assessment of the relative vertical equity of each scenario was made by calculating the Gini Coefficient associated with the proportion of state gas tax or VMT fee revenue generated by each household income level quintile. Results indicate that all VMT fee scenarios are essentially as equally vertically equitable than the current state gas tax system. Scenario 4 was designed to be inherently horizontally equitable because the per mile fee associated with each roadway type (urban or rural) was assessed to all vehicles driven on these roadway types at a rate calculated to generate needed funds to address the mobility and infrastructure needs of that roadway type. Scenario 3, a scenario favoring vehicles with high fuel efficiency, was found to be the least horizontally equitable. Scenarios 2-4 were able to generate additional revenue desired to meet the infrastructure and mobility needs of Texas set forth by the 2030 Texas Transportation Needs Committee. The large fee increase necessary to achieve the desired additional revenue may not be popular or possible. However, an evaluation of the philosophy governing each scenario designed to generate additional revenue is informative when it comes to equity impacts. No one VMT fee scenario affects all household income levels and geographic locations uniformly and it was not the goal of this research to design an equitable VMT fee scenario. Rather, the effect of each scenario on 2008 Texas vehicle-owning households disaggregated by household income level and geographic location are presented and left to the discretion of elected officials to decide which VMT fee, if any, would be best for their constituents

Intercultural matters : fiction and cultural identity

Socrates Programme 57087 - CP- 3- 2000- 1 - UK - Comenius-C31This booklet evolved from a European Teacher Training Intensive Course on “Fiction and Cultural Identity”, which took place during 2000 and 2001. The course, taught by teacher trainers from several European countries, had as its aim to explore, to compare, to analyse, through fiction, through cultural theories and theories of education an area of practice – literature, through which cultural difference, ordering and association are produced. Developed under the banner of program Comenius financed by the European Union, and with a view to promote Intercultural Education, the course had as its further aims the following: (a)to acknowledge the national and cultural diversity of Europe within its common aims and political/economical union; (b)to promote critical attitudes towards prejudices, stereotypes, social and cultural injustice; (c)to develop respect for those we see as ‘the other’ and understand the meaning of ‘difference’; (d)to develop competence for an European citizenship, i.e. an ‘interdependent citizenship’

Hvordan kan sykepleieren bidra i dagens depresjonsbehandling ved bruk av natur og fysisk aktivitet?

Studentarbeid i sykepleie (bachelorgrad) - Universitetet i Nordland, Bodø, 201

Hypo-osmotic stress induces the epithelial alarmin IL-33 in the colonic barrier of ulcerative colitis

Epithelial alarmins are gaining interest as therapeutic targets for chronic infammation. The nuclear alarmin interleukin-33 (IL-33) is upregulated in the colonic mucosa of acute ulcerative colitis (UC) and may represent an early instigator of the infammatory cascade. However, it is not clear what signals drive the expression of IL-33 in the colonic mucosa, nor is the exact role of IL-33 elucidated. We established an ex vivo model using endoscopic colonic biopsies from healthy controls and UC patients. Colonic biopsies exposed to hypo-osmotic medium induced a strong nuclear IL-33 expression in colonic crypts in both healthy controls and UC biopsies. Mucosal IL33 mRNA was also signifcantly increased following hypo-osmotic stress in healthy controls compared to non-stimulated biopsies (fold change 3.9, p-value < 0.02). We observed a modest induction of IL-33 in response to TGF-beta-1 stimulation, whereas responsiveness to infammatory cytokines TNF and IFN-gamma was negligible. In conclusion our fndings indicate that epithelial IL-33 is induced by hypo-osmotic stress, rather than prototypic proinfammatory cytokines in colonic ex vivo biopsies. This is a novel fnding, linking a potent cytokine and alarmin of the innate immune system with cellular stress mechanisms and mucosal infammation

Simulating galactic outflows with thermal supernova feedback

Cosmological simulations make use of sub-grid recipes for the implementation of galactic winds driven by massive stars because direct injection of supernova energy in thermal form leads to strong radiative losses, rendering the feedback inefficient. We argue that the main cause of the catastrophic cooling is a mismatch between the mass of the gas in which the energy is injected and the mass of the parent stellar population. Because too much mass is heated, the temperatures are too low and the cooling times too short. We use analytic arguments to estimate, as a function of the gas density and the numerical resolution, the minimum heating temperature that is required for the injected thermal energy to be efficiently converted into kinetic energy. We then propose and test a stochastic implementation of thermal feedback that uses this minimum temperature increase as an input parameter and that can be employed in both particle- and grid-based codes. We use smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations to test the method on models of isolated disc galaxies in dark matter haloes with total mass 10^10 and 10^12 h^-1 solar masses. The thermal feedback strongly suppresses the star formation rate and can drive massive, large-scale outflows without the need to turn off radiative cooling temporarily. In accord with expectations derived from analytic arguments, for sufficiently high resolution the results become insensitive to the imposed temperature jump and also agree with high-resolution simulations employing kinetic feedback.Comment: 21 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in MNRAS. High resolution pictures and movies can be found at http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/DS12/ (cleaner version, unchanged manuscript