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- Creators: Barrett, The Honors College
- Status: Published
For those families that rely on food banks as their main source of groceries for the week, it is not uncommon for the parents or children to not know how to prepare the ingredients in a way that can provide as much nutritional value as possible. A cookbook with a collection of recipes that specialize in using ingredients commonly found in food banks would be one way to help improve the physical and mental health of families while also teaching children how to cook and prepare nutritious meals at home. I was inspired to create these recipes because I wanted to work with food banks and pantries to help educate their clients about healthy eating and cooking techniques. I wanted to show families that they can cook various meals using many of the same ingredients in different ways. I also wanted to develop recipes that encourage children to cook, become more familiar with different food items, and improve their relationship with food since a significant portion of clients are children, meaning they grow up relying on the ingredients food banks offer. After finding out which recipes and other nutritional aid programs currently exist, I spoke with a few different food banks to learn what types of food are typically distributed from food banks. From there, I drafted a list of recipes, worked with AZ Health Zone to analyze the nutrients for each recipe, and revised the recipes to better meet the nutrition standards of AZ Health Zone. As of now, a handful of food pantries, including the AZ Health Zone, agreed to share my total of 9 recipes (in English and Spanish) with their clients.
Migration allows animals to track favorable environments and avoid harmful conditions but is energetically costly. There are different types of migration, such as tidal/daily, seasonal, and lifetime. Locust migratory swarms are one such famous phenomena that can have dramatic effects on human livelihoods. During long-distance flight, locusts rely on lipid oxidation from fat stores, while initial flight is fueled by carbohydrates. However, limited studies have tested how dietary macronutrients affect insect flight performance. Therefore, we asked: How do different dietary macronutrient ratios affect prolonged flight migration? We predicted that high carbohydrate diets would lead to high body lipid synthesis which would increase flight performance. We reared locusts in three crowded cages from 5th instar to adulthood on artificial diet varying in p:c ratio, supplemented with lettuce and water tubes, ad libitum. We used 7-14-day old adult males for flight performance assays where each day we used new individuals for tethered flight for 12 h in wind tunnels (~12 km·h-1) and video recorded their flight. We found that locust flight duration and quality increased with a decrease of dietary p:c ratio. Using control groups of locusts, we estimated that across 1 day of flight (up to 12 h), locusts lost on average in all treatments ~25 or ~30% of their total body lipid content. We concluded that long distance flight is improved by a high carbohydrate and low protein diet for L. migratoria by increasing their fuel sources. This work was supported by NSF # 1942054.
trend. These photographs are later analyzed when the data is being entered into a form or
system. Previously, these forms or systems have not been assessed for usability. This research
study looks at three iterations of a digital plate waste observation system developed for the
School Lunch Study at Arizona State University. The System Usability Scale was used to
understand the functionality of the digital plate waste observation system. An area for free
responses was used to understand aspects of the system that were liked by research assistants
and what technical difficulties the research assistants encountered. These responses were used to
develop the next version of the digital plate waste observation system. Time to complete a task
was calculated to see the trends across all versions of the system. With each version, the System
Usability Scale scores increased along with the time to complete a task. This study found that
following the workflow of research assistants, being able to manipulate a photograph, having
menu items populated, and decreasing the amount of typing performed by adding selections to be
useful design aspects. Future digital plate waste observation systems can implement the
successful design aspects of this system, be aware of errors experienced, and implement helpful
features not found in this system. Future studies can look at the effect proctored training sessions
have on the time to complete a task and the relation of System Usability Scale scores with the
success of data entry.
Link to documentary on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1JfwZc31Bk