58 research outputs found
Setting the Table for a Sustainable and Just Food System
Get PDF· As consumers and producers, people of color have been affected disproportionately by systemic problems in the food system.
· This article describes the Diversifying Leadership for Sustainable Food Policy initiative, a joint effort of the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to build the capacity of organizations led by people of color to engage in policy and advocacy work.
· Grantees successfully built their capacity to engage in policy work (e.g., increased capacity to identify policy targets), increased their organizational capacity (e.g., diversified boards), improved their communities’ capacity (e.g., created opportunities for dialogue and improved access to fresh foods), and impacted policies related to sustainable food (e.g., provided resources for small and new farmers)
Cesar Chavez with other strikers
No full textCesar Chavez with other strikers picketing at local grocery stores, Fort Worth, 1969. The signs read This store unfair to United farm Workers Organizing Comm , Farm Workers on strike UFWOC/AFL-CIOhttps://mavmatrix.uta.edu/specialcollections_ufwocfortworthboycott/1002/thumbnail.jp
A composite indicator of working conditions in the EU-15 for policy monitoring and analytical purposes
Get PDFA composite indicator Working conditions for comparing European countries is constructed from data of the Third European Survey on Working Conditions. The main findings are as follows: (a) European countries differ with respect to working conditions statistically more significantly than with respect to earnings; it implies a quite accurate discrimination threshold in ranking countries with respect to working conditions,(b) working conditions and earnings positively correlate over the whole of Europe but correlate little within single countries; it indicates at the prevailing role of national determinants over professional or social specificities as contributing to the average working conditions, and (c) earnings play no essential role in subjective estimations, including job satisfaction, which mainly depends on working conditions; consequently, more attention should be paid to improving the latter. The same approach is applied to constructing a three-dimensional indicator of Working time, reflecting its aspects duration, location (abnormality), and flexibility. It is found that abnormality and flexibility compensate each other, whereas the duration is not aflected by two other factors. --Composite indicators,quality of work,European Union,statistical indices,processing ordinal data
Constructing the composite indicator "Quality of work" from the third European survey on working conditions
Get PDFThe composite indicator "Quality of work" for comparing European countries is con- structed from data of the Third European Survey on Working Conditions. The main findings are as follows: (a) European countries differ with respect to working conditions statistically more significantly than with respect to earnings; it implies a quite accurate discrimination threshold in ranking countries with respect to quality of work, (b) working conditions and earnings positively depend over the whole of Europe but little correlate within single countries; it indicates at the prevailing role of national determinants over professional or social specificities as contributing to the average quality of work, (c) earnings play no role in subjective satisfaction from work which exclusively depends on working conditions; consequently, more attention should be paid to improving the latter, (d) working conditions of women are significantly better than that of men, which is explained by their inclination to service occupations. Processing ordinal rather than metrical data requires an addendum to the methodology of composite indicators. The corresponding mathematical model is proposed. --Quality of work,European Union,composite indicators,statistical indices,processing ordinal data
Cooperation enforcement in ad-hoc wireless networks
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.Ad-hoc networks consist of a system of wireless nodes that can freely and dynamically self-organise into a working network topology. This allows people to internetwork seamlessly in areas that have no preexisting communication infrastructure. Nodes are expected to forward the traffic of other nodes in order for the packets to reach their final destination. It is envisaged that community ad-hoc networks will become widespread in the near future, as they require no administrative support. Nodes will be able to enter and leave the network as they choose. An unfortunate result is that in an open multi-agent system such as this, the role-players tend to be unreliable and self-interested
The Challenges of Place, Capacity, and Systems Change: The Story of Yes we can!
Get PDF· Yes we can!, a comprehensive community initiative (CCI) funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, was designed to improve educational and economic outcomes within the foundation’s hometown of Battle Creek, Mich. Since 2002, Yes we can! has supported five core strategies designed to trigger the systems changes needed to reduce educational and economic inequities in Battle Creek.
· Yes we can! has achieved some important wins to date; for example, more residents are involved, more neighborhoods have stronger neighborhood associations, and more organizations are engaging residents in their decision-making processes. However, the scale of wins remains small, and the targeted systemic changes have not yet emerged.
· Some common CCI design elements featured in Yes we can! may have inadvertently bounded its success: a) community building efforts targeted small-scale places, restricting the scale and scope of wins; b) demands for current work competed with building capacities for future work; and c) local partners who were implementing their individual grants struggled to maintain a focus on the larger vision and collective work
The Pros and Cons of Comprehensive Community Initiatives at the City Level: The Case of the Urban Health Initiative
Get PDF· This article describes the trade-offs between the city-level and neighborhood-based approaches in examining the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) Urban Health Initiative (UHI), an $80 million, 10-year effort to improve the health and safety of young people.
· Eight cities engaged in a two-year planning process; five received funding for an eight-year implementation phase. Plans that engaged in bottom-up activities, but left power and control in the hands of civic, business, social service, and political leaders, were favored. Those who had focused exclusively on neighborhood-based approaches were not funded for implementation.
· RWJF chose a city-level focus because they believed neighborhood-level initiatives lacked the political clout to make sustainable changes in programs, institutions, systems, and policies. Furthermore, poor outcomes for children were not concentrated in a few neighborhoods, but were found in a substantial portion of the city’s communities.
· The UHI sites were successful in bringing existing efforts quickly under their umbrella, strengthening them by bringing added resources, data, technical expertise, and visibility. With citywide focus and leadership, the power between the initiative and local philanthropy was made more balanced. However, the fragmented nature of government service delivery systems at the city level created new obstacles to change in some cases.
· The UHI’s citywide focus meant that some of the important roles that neighborhood comprehensive community initiatives have assumed went unfilled. For instance, attention devoted during planning to cultural norms and values that might influence health and safety outcomes quickly ebbed during implementation
Analysis of Energy Conservation in Sensor Networks
Get PDFIn this paper we use the Erlang theory to quantitatively analyse the trade offs between energy conservation and quality of service in an ad-hoc wireless sensor network. Nodes can be either sleeping, where no transmission or reception can occur, or awake where traffic is processed. Increasing the proportion of time spent in the sleeping state will decrease throughput and increase packet loss and delivery delay. However there is a complex relationship between sleeping time and energy consumption. Increasing the sleeping time does not always lead to an increase in the energy saved. We identify the energy consumption profile for various levels of sensor network activity and derive an optimum energy saving curve that provides a basis for the design of extended-life ad hoc wireless sensor networks
- …
