Life Sciences Commons^™

Food Justice Now!, Mark Vallianatos

Mark Vallianatos

No abstract provided.

Adjustment Of Value Productivity Estimates To Changes In Price And Technical Relationships , David Brown

David C. Brown

No abstract provided.

Farm To School: Strategies For Urban Health, Combatting Sprawl, And Establishing Community Food Systems, Mark Vallianatos, Robert Gottlieb, Margaret Haase

Mark Vallianatos

Farm-to-school is a new, innovative strategy with multiple planning-related objectives. The article evaluates the significance of farm-to-school in relation to improving the health and nutrition of school-age children, particularly low-income youth; strengthening the capacity of local farmers, particularly those engaged in sustainable practices; adding to the toolkit of strategies designed to contain and ultimately reduce sprawl-inducing developments by helping preserve farmland; and helping establish a community food systems approach no longer entirely dependent on the global food system that has come to dominate food growing, processing, distribution, and consumption patterns around the world.

Food Justice And Food Retail In Los Angeles, Mark Vallianatos

Mark Vallianatos

No abstract provided.

Acute Effects Of Whole-Body Vibration On Lower Extremity Muscle Performance In Persons With Multiple Sclerosis, Kurt Jackson, Harold Merriman, Paul Vanderburgh, C. Brahler

C. Jayne Brahler

Background and Purpose: Whole-body vibration (WBV) is a relatively new form of exercise training that may influence muscle performance. This study investigated the acute effects of high (26 Hz) and low (2 Hz) frequency WBV on isometric muscle torque of the quadriceps and hamstrings in persons with multiple sclerosis (MS).

Participants and Method: Fifteen individuals (mean age = 54.6 years, SD = 9.6) with MS and Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) scores ranging from 0-6.5 (mean = 4.2, SD = 2.3) participated in this randomized cross-over study. Following baseline measures of isometric quadricep and hamstring torque, subjects were exposed to …

Healthy School Food Policies: A Checklist, Mark Vallianatos

Mark Vallianatos

No abstract provided.

Characterizing The Performance And Behaviors Of Runners Using Twitter, Qian He, Emmanuel Agu, Diane Strong, Bengisu Tulu, Peder Pedersen

Emmanuel O. Agu

Running is a popular physical activity that improves physical and mental wellbeing. Unfortunately, up-to- date information about runners’ performance and psychological wellbeing is limited. Many questions remain unanswered, such as how far and how fast runners typically run, their preferred running times and frequencies, how long new runners persist before dropping out, and what factors cause runners to quit. Without hard data, establishing patterns of runner behavior and mitigating the challenges they face are difficult. Collecting data manually from large numbers of runners for research studies is costly and time consuming. Emerging Social Networking Services (SNS) and fitness tracking devices …

Fresh From The Farm... And Into The Classroom, Margaret Haase, Andrea Azuma, Robert Gottlieb, Mark Vallianatos

Mark Vallianatos

No abstract provided.

Food Access, Availability, And Affordability In 3 Los Angeles Communities, Project Cafe, 2004-2006, Andrea Azuma, Susan Gilliland, Mark Vallianatos, Robert Gottlieb

Mark Vallianatos

Introduction Racial/ethnic minority communities are at increasingly high risk for chronic diseases related to obesity. Access to stores that sell affordable, nutritious food is a prerequisite for adopting a healthful diet. The objective of this study was to evaluate food access, availability, and affordability in 3 nonoverlapping but similar low-income communities in urban Los Angeles, California. Methods Using a community-based participatory research approach, we trained community members to conduct a food assessment to 1) map the number and type of retail food outlets in a defined area and 2) survey a sample of stores to determine whether they sold selected …

Intersectoral And Interagency Partnerships To Investigate Youth Help-Seeking And The Reponses Of At-Risk Young Men To Intervention Services, Coralie Wilson, Frank Deane, Joseph Ciarrochi

joseph Ciarrochi

No abstract provided.

Suicidal Ideation And Help-Negation: Not Just Hopelessness Or Prior Help, Frank Deane, Coralie Wilson, Joseph Ciarrochi

joseph Ciarrochi

This article reports the first study of its kind to specifically examine help-negation for suicidal thoughts (i.e., the inverse relationship between help-seeking intentions for suicidal thinking and levels of suicidal ideation) in a non-clinical university sample. The study establishes the existence of the phenomenon in individuals before levels of suicidal ideation become acute and raises numerous implications for national and international mental health policy development, clinical practice, and directions for prevention and early intervention.

The Increasing Incidence Of Suicide: Economic Development, Individualism, And Social Integration, Gregory Scott, Joseph Ciarrochi, Frank Deane

joseph Ciarrochi

Despite significant improvement in physical health, suicide continues to represent a significant burden in the economically advanced countries. Given that the causes of suicide are not fully known, and that suicide cannot be predicted nor prevented at the individual level, national suicide rates might best be reduced by reducing the overall number of people exposed to suicide risk factors. However, economic development promotes individualism and low social integration, both of which increase suicide risk. For example, high female labor force participation and divorce, indicative of low social integration, are associated with higher suicide rates. Similarly, there appear to be social …

Can Hopelessness And Adolescents' Beliefs And Attitudes About Seeking Help Account For Help Negation?, Coralie Wilson, Joseph Ciarrochi, Frank Deane

joseph Ciarrochi

This article reports the first time the help-negation relationship for suicidal thoughts (i.e., the inverse relationship between help-seeking intentions for suicidal thinking and levels of suicidal ideation) has been specifically examined, and established, in a non-clinical adolescent sample. The study raises major implications for national and international suicide prevention policy development, clinical practice and strategies for ongoing prevention and early intervention

Development Of The Levels Of Emotional Awareness Scale For Children (Leas-C), Joseph Ciarrochi, Frank Deane, Jane Bajgar, Richard Lane

joseph Ciarrochi

A performance-based assessment of the structure and complexity of emotional awareness was developed, the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale for Children (LEAS-C). A pilot study (N=6, ages 9-12, M(age) =10.2 years) was conducted to construct, trial, and select scenarios suitable for the scale. A larger validity study (N=51, ages 10-11, M(age) =10.3 years) examined the relationship between the LEAS-C and two emotion knowledge tasks: emotion expressions and emotion comprehension; two verbal tasks: vocabulary and verbal productivity; and a cognitive developmental measure: the Parental Descriptions Scale (PDS). Gender differences in LEAS-C performance were also examined. The LEAS-C was significantly related to …

Social Habituation And Dishabituation In Cd-1 Mice Treated With The Norepinephrine Neurotoxin N-(2-Chloroethyl)-N-Ethyl-2-Bromobenzylamine (Dsp-4), Hewlet Mcfarlane

Hewlet McFarlane

Male CD-1 mice between postnatal days 60 and 90 were injected intraperitoneally (i.p) with either water vehicle (controls) or 50$\mu$g/g of the norepinephrine neurotoxin N-(2-chloroethyl)-N-ethyl-2-bromobenzylamine (DSP-4). They were tested 3 to 6 days later on the odors of adult males in a four-trial habituation/dishabituation paradigm. There were four groups: group CSS were water injected and exposed to the same male on all four trials; group CSN were water injected and exposed to the same male on the first three trials and a novel one on the fourth; group DSN were DSP-4 treated and exposed the same male on the first …

Probabilistic Atlases For Face And Biological Motion Perception: An Analysis Of Their Reliability And Overlap, Andrew Engell

Andrew Engell

Neuroimaging research has identified several category-selective regions in visual cortex that respond most strongly when viewing an exemplar image from a preferred category, such as faces. Recent studies, however, have suggested a more complex pattern of activation that has been heretofore unrecognized, e.g., the presence of additional patches of activation to faces beyond the well-studied fusiform face area, and the activation of ostensible face selective regions by animate motion of non-biological forms. Here, we characterize the spatial pattern of brain activity evoked by viewing faces or biological motion in large fMRI samples (N > 120). We create probabilistic atlases for both …

Common Neural Mechanisms For The Evaluation Of Facial Trustworthiness And Emotional Expressions As Revealed By Behavioral Adaptation, Andrew Engell

Andrew Engell

People rapidly and automatically evaluate faces along many social dimensions. Here,we focus on judgments of trustworthiness, which approximate basic valence evaluation of faces, and test whether these judgments are an overgeneralization of the perception of emotional expressions. We used a behavioral adaptation paradigm to investigate whether the previously noted perceptual similarities between trustworthiness and emotional expressions of anger and happiness extend to their underlying neural representations. We found that adapting to angry or happy facial expressions causes trustworthiness evaluations of subsequently rated neutral faces to increase or decrease, respectively. Further, we found no such modulation of trustworthiness evaluations after participants …

Differential Activation Of Frontoparietal Attention Networks By Social And Symbolic Spatial Cues, Andrew Engell

Andrew Engell

Perception of both gaze-direction and symbolic directional cues (e.g. arrows) orient an observer’s attention toward the indicated location. It is unclear, however, whether these similar behavioral effects are examples of the same attentional phenomenon and, therefore, subserved by the same neural substrate. It has been proposed that gaze, given its evolutionary significance, constitutes a ‘special’ category of spatial cue. As such, it is predicted that the neural systems supporting spatial reorienting will be different for gaze than for non-biological symbols. We tested this prediction using functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the brain’s response during target localization in which laterally …

The Fmri Bold Signal Tracks Electrophysiological Spectral Perturbations, Not Event-Related Potentials., Andrew Engell

Andrew Engell

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) are primary tools of the psychological neurosciences. It is therefore important to understand the relationship between hemodynamic and electrophysiological responses. An early study by Huettel and colleagues found that the coupling of fMRI blood-oxygen-level-dependent signal (BOLD) and subdurally-recorded signal-averaged event-related potentials (ERPs) was not consistent across brain regions. Instead, a growing body of evidence now indicates that hemodynamic changes measured by fMRI reflect non-phase-locked changes in high frequency power rather than the phase-locked ERP. Here, we revisit the data from Huettel and colleagues and measure event-related spectral perturbations (ERSPs) to examine the …

Selective Attention Modulates Face-Specific Induced Gamma Oscillations Recorded From Ventral Occipitotemporal Cortex, Andrew Engell

Andrew Engell

EEG studies from subdural electrodes have demonstrated a face-specific event-related potential (face-N200) recorded from human ventral occipitotemporal cortex. The insensitivity of face-N200 to task manipulations has supported the proposal that face-N200 reflects an initial obligatory response to faces. This result stands in striking contrast to results of neuroimaging studies that have demonstrated strong task sensitivity of the fusiform hemodynamic response evoked by faces, and thus has created a paradox in the face perception literature. We recorded field potentials directly from the cortical surface of 16 patients while they selectively attended to faces or houses. Here we report that face-specific gamma …

Facial Expression And Gaze-Direction In Human Superior Temporal Sulcus, Andrew Engell

Andrew Engell

The perception of facial expression and gaze-direction are important aspects of non-verbal communication. Expressions communicate the internal emotional state of others while gaze-direction offers clues to their attentional focus and future intentions. Cortical regions in the superior temporal sulcus(STS) play a central role in the perception of expression and gaze, but the extent to which the neural representations of these facial gestures are overlapping is unknown. In the current study 12 subjects observed neutral faces with direct-gaze, neutral faces with averted-gaze, or emotionally expressive faces with direct-gaze while we scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), allowing a …

Implicit Trustworthiness Decisions: Automatic Coding Of Face Properties In Human Amygdala, Andrew Engell

Andrew Engell

Deciding whether an unfamiliar person is trustworthy is one of the most important decisions in social environments. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to show that the amygdala is involved in implicit evaluations of trustworthiness of faces, consistent with prior findings. The amygdala response increased as perceived trustworthiness decreased in a task that did not demand person evaluation. More importantly, we tested whether this response is due to an individual’s idiosyncratic perception or to face properties that are perceived as untrustworthy across individuals. The amygdala response was better predicted by consensus ratings of trustworthiness than by an individual’s own judgments. …

Parkinson’S Disease Disrupts Both Automatic And Controlled Processing Of Action Verbs, L. Fernandino, L. Conant, J. Binder, K. Blindauer, B. Hiner, K. Spangler, Rutvik Desai

Rutvik Desai

No abstract provided.

Anatomy Is Strategy: Skilled Reading Differences Associated With Structural Connectivity Differences In The Reading Network, W. Graves, J. Binder, Rutvik Desai, C. Humphries, B. Stengel, M. Seidenberg

Rutvik Desai

No abstract provided.

Where Is The Semantic System? A Critical Review And Meta-Analysis Of 120 Functional Neuroimaging Studies, J. Binder, Rutvik Desai, W. Graves, L. Conant

Rutvik Desai

No abstract provided.

Undergraduate Student Internships In Natural Resources At Virginia 4-H Educational Centers, Jeff Kirwan, Barry Fox, Barry Garst

Barry A Garst

Virginia has six 4-H educational centers that provide residential camping experiences for over 22,000 youth per year, the second largest 4-H camping program in the United States. These children may have many learning opportunities in the areas of natural resources and outdoor living skills. Beginning in 1995, the Chesapeake Bay Program in cooperation with the Virginia Division of Soil and Water Conservation provided funds for water quality instructors at each of the 4-H Centers. In 1998, the Virginia Forestry Educational Foundation began supporting a similar internship program for undergraduate students to serve as forestry instructors. Nearly 50 undergraduate students have …

Water-Smart Growth: Integrating Water Management And Land Use Planning, Enjie Li

Enjie Li

Water and urban growth are inextricably interconnected, particularly in arid regions. Urban growth and water management have generated multi-dimensional conflicts. Growing cities that seek to quench their continuously increasing thirst with limited available water resources often have adverse impacts on the environment or region from which the water is drawn. Given that land use planning is an effective tool to control and manage urban growth and it has direct influence on urban water management, a holistic land-water planning approach is needed to cope with rapid growth and water scarcity in the arid western United States. However, this land-water planning approach …

Body Mass Bias In Exercise Physiology, Paul Vanderburgh

Paul M. Vanderburgh

In certain physically demanding occupations, especially the military, body mass bias has substantive implications. Work physiologists have determined that despite body mass bias in the common military physical fitness tests, the larger service members were often better performers of the physically demanding occupational tasks (Bilzon et al., 2002; Lyons et al., 2005; Rayson et al., 2000). That is, they could carry more, more easily evacuate casualties, and better engage in heavy materiel handling. Yet, the smaller personnel were achieving better scores on the physical fitness tests, the results of which have significant promotion and advancement implications (Vanderburgh & Mahar , …

Books And Our Human Stories, Paul Benson

Paul H. Benson

An essay on the impact of the works in the Imprints and Impressions: Milestones in Human Progress, an exhibition of rare books from the collection of Stuart Rose. Exhibition was held Sept. 29-Nov. 9, 2014, at the University of Dayton.

Collaboration In Sport Research: A Case From The Field, Corinne Daprano, Jennifer Bruening, Donna Pastore, T. Greenwell, Marlene Dixon, Yong Ko, Jeremy Jordan, Sonja Lilienthal, Brian Turner

Corinne M. Daprano

Faculty members mindful of the ticking tenure and promotion clock seek ways to balance the competing and sometimes overwhelming demands of research, teaching, and service. One way to balance these demands is to find opportunities for collaboration with colleagues, especially in research. There are several compelling reasons to pursue joint research projects with colleagues; however, collaboration can be challenging. This article discusses the benefits and challenges of working on collaborative research projects with colleagues from the same discipline as well as across disciplines.