Using Ecological Diversity Analyses to Characterize the Availability of Healthy Food and Socio-Economic Food Deserts

“Food deserts” are usually defined as geographic areas without local access to fresh, healthy food. We used community ecology statistics in supermarkets to quantify the availability of healthy food and to potentially identify food deserts as areas without a diverse selection of food, rather than a binary as to whether fresh food is present or not. We test whether produce diversity is correlated with neighborhood income or demographics. Abundance and diversity of fresh produce was quantified in supermarkets in Broward County, Florida, USA. Neighborhood income level and racial/ethnic makeup were retrieved from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey. Although diversity varied, there were no communities that had consistently less available fresh food, although the percent of a neighborhood identifying as “white” was positively correlated with produce diversity. There may be fewer choices in neighborhoods with a higher proportion of minorities, but there were no consistent patterns of produce diversity in Broward County. This method demonstrates an easy, inexpensive way to characterize food deserts beyond simple distance, and results in precise enough information to identify gaps in the availability of healthy foods.

Barriers to dietary modifications for people living with type 2 diabetes in a rural indigenous Guatemalan community

In Guatemala, the prevalence of diabetes continues to increase with a disproportionate burden falling on indigenous rural communities. In this study, we assessed barriers to making dietary modifications for people living with type 2 diabetes in a rural indigenous Guatemalan population. Structed interviews (n=32) were conducted with participants selected from a convenience sample of adults with type 2 diabetes living in villages in and around San Lucas Tolimán, Guatemala. Frequencies were calculated for closed-ended questions and content analysis was used to evaluate open-ended questions. Most participants (81%) were women with low-levels of formal education and average daily food expenditure of just over $1 USD. The majority of participants were able to identify foods important in a diabetic diet, however, with significant barriers to making dietary modifications. Commonly cited perceived barriers included high costs of food due to travel and storage, inadequate local access to fresh fruits and vegetables and incompatibility with traditional diet. Several structural and cultural barriers exist to prevent dietary modifications for people living with type 2 diabetes in this rural indigenous population.

Prospects for the use of IT for the selection and assessment of suppliers of materials and components

The purpose of this work is to use information technology to help management decisions. The crux of the problem is the choice of suppliers of materials and components for mechanical engineering companies. Periodically, in the procurement process, suppliers should be assessed on a number of criteria. The importance of rating is due to the fact that in today's market there are a large number of suppliers of the same material resources. Purchase is made from the most competitive suppliers, constantly confirming their status as a reliable business partner. The company developed a method of evaluating suppliers based on the system of management of the bases of the bath Microsoft Office Access. MS Access works in the Windows operating environment and allows users to organize a local database (DB). The local Access database has its own tables, forms, reports and other DB facilities of the organization with a relatively small amount of data. With the help of the scoring method, suppliers are ranked by their level of reliability. The relationship is terminated with a supplier that does not meet the required level of reliability. In this way, management solutions for logistics of supply receive a tool to hang the efficiency and get good results of the enterprise, to achieve its market stability.

Incentives can spur COVID-19 vaccination uptake

Recent evidence suggests that vaccination hesitancy is too high in many countries to sustainably contain COVID-19. Using a factorial survey experiment administered to 20,500 online respondents in Germany, we assess the effectiveness of three strategies to increase vaccine uptake, namely, providing freedoms, financial remuneration, and vaccination at local doctors. Our results suggest that all three strategies can increase vaccination uptake on the order of two to three percentage points (PP) overall and five PP among the undecided. The combined effects could be as high as 13 PP for this group. The returns from different strategies vary across age groups, however, with older cohorts more responsive to local access and younger cohorts most responsive to enhanced freedoms for vaccinated citizens.

Remote Access NVMe SSD via NTB

NVMe SSDs are deployed in data centers for applications with high performance, but its capacity and bandwidth are often underutilized. Remote access NVMe SSD enables flexible scaling and high utilization of Flash capacity and bandwidth within data centers. The current issue of remote access NVMe SSD has significant performance overheads. The research focuses on remote access NVMe SSD via NTB (non-transparent bridge). NTB is a type of PCI-Express; its memory mapping technology can allow to access memory belonging to peer servers. NVMe SSD supports multiple I/O queues to maximize the I/O parallel processing of flash; hence, NVMe SSD can provide significant performance when comparing with traditional hard drives. The research proposes a novel design based on features of NTB memory mapping and NVMe SSD multiple I/O queues. The remote and local servers can access the same NVMe SSD concurrently. The experimental results show the performance of remote access NVMe SSD can approach the local access. It is significantly excellent and proved feasible.

Vertical expansions : assessing the feasibility of building private residential space atop existing public community centres and libraries through a public-private partnership in Toronto's inner-suburbs

The aim of this study is to analyze the feasibility of building private residential space on top of existing publicly-owned inner-suburban Toronto community centres and library buildings through a public-private partnership. The numerous benefits and feasibility of these 'vertical expansions' to the community and government is validated by the potential ability to increase local access to services, compatibility with wider government planning objectives such as smart growth, and by the capacity to kickstart a virtuous economic cycle to increase quality of place. The appeal to private developers is demonstrated through considerations of the market, money, production, people and environment. Pilot sites where vertical expansions could best succeed are identified based on facility type, 'city 3' suburban status, potential marketability, and basic physical & structural considerations. 16 pilot sites were identified, which were further refined based on property value to identify the pilot sites with the highest potential for success. A model for a reductionist and mutually equitable P3 arrangement for both the development and post-construction management was proposed and informed by the literature review of past P3 case studies.

Vertical expansions : assessing the feasibility of building private residential space atop existing public community centres and libraries through a public-private partnership in Toronto's inner-suburbs

The aim of this study is to analyze the feasibility of building private residential space on top of existing publicly-owned inner-suburban Toronto community centres and library buildings through a public-private partnership. The numerous benefits and feasibility of these 'vertical expansions' to the community and government is validated by the potential ability to increase local access to services, compatibility with wider government planning objectives such as smart growth, and by the capacity to kickstart a virtuous economic cycle to increase quality of place. The appeal to private developers is demonstrated through considerations of the market, money, production, people and environment. Pilot sites where vertical expansions could best succeed are identified based on facility type, 'city 3' suburban status, potential marketability, and basic physical & structural considerations. 16 pilot sites were identified, which were further refined based on property value to identify the pilot sites with the highest potential for success. A model for a reductionist and mutually equitable P3 arrangement for both the development and post-construction management was proposed and informed by the literature review of past P3 case studies.