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Background: The prevalence of obesity in English adults and children has reached critical levels. Obesity is determined by a wide range of factors including the environment and actions to reduce obesity prevalence requires a whole systems approach. The spatial planning system empowers local authorities to manage land use and development decisions to tackle obesogenic environments.

Methods: This research aimed to better understand what and how planning powers are being utilised by local authorities to help tackle population obesity. It reviewed literature on the six planning healthy weight environments themes. It identified what powers exist within the planning system to address these themes. It collated professionals’ perspectives on the barriers and opportunities through focus groups within local authorities and semi-structured interviews with national stakeholders.

Results: The research complements current research on the association between the environment and obesity outcomes, though methods employed by researchers in the literature were inconsistent. It identified three categories of planning powers available to both require and encourage those with responsibilities for and involvement in planning healthy weight environments. Through direct engagement with practitioners, it highlighted challenges in promoting healthy weight environments, including wider systems barriers such as conflicting policy priorities, lack of policy prescription and alignment at local levels, and impact from reduced professional and institutional capacity in local government.

Conclusions: The conclusions support a small but increasing body of research which suggests that policy makers need to ensure barriers are removed before planning powers can be effectively used to promote healthy weight environments as part of a whole systems approach. The research is timely with continuing policy and guidance focus on tackling obesity prevalence from national government departments and their agencies. This research was conducted as part of a Master of Research at Leeds Beckett University associated with a national whole-systems to obesity programme.

As other researchers have done previously, we conceptualize innovation not as a linear process but as a cyclical one (e.g., Van de Ven, Polley, Garud, & Venkataraman, 1999), which consist periods of innovation initiation, implementation, adaptation, and stabilization (West, 1990). Within this cycle it is possible to distinguish two major components: the beginning of the cycle, which is dominated by the generation of ideas that is generally also designated as creativity; whereas the dominant activity at the end of the cycle which is the implementation of ideas (hereafter referred to as the implementation of innovation). Creativity is then likely to be most evident in the early stages of the innovation process, when those in teams are required to develop or offer ideas in response to a perceived need for innovation. Creative thinking is also likely when teams proactively initiate proposals for change and consider their initial implementation. As the innovation is adapted to organizational circumstances, there is less need for creativity. At the outset of the process, creativity dominates, to be superseded later by innovation implementation processes. Of course, it can be argued that creativity is important throughout the innovation process, but in general, the requirements for creative ideas will be greater at the earlier stages of the innovation process than the later stages.

Reports on a study designed to analyse the effectiveness of real and created spokespersons in advertisements. Compares male and female spokespersons′ effectiveness by audience gender. Concludes that celebrities can be used to gain attention and maintain sales, while created spokespersons′ effectiveness is in establishing a lifelong link with the product.

Sternberg & Lubart (1991); Sternberg & Lubart (1992).

When an institution diversifies its student body, its effort must extend past admissions to ensuring students an inclusive learning environment. We describe the changes made and proposed by the College of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL) following the university’s commitment to becoming more racially and socioeconomically diverse, as a case study for institutions engaged in similar efforts. In developing proposals for change, we consider design challenges such as how to define our target populations specifically enough to allow for meaningful engagement while avoiding stigmatizing or further marginalizing the students we want to help. New initiatives include: faculty and staff training, curricular change, and development of a more robust academic early warning system. We continue building mentoring programs and enhancing existing cohort building programs. While the success of particular programs may be tied in part to institutional specifics, certain lessons can be generalized. Communication about new initiatives, during both development and implementation prove critical, as students interact with often siloed offices within the university. Small-scale pilots with specific student populations can be effective stop-gaps while the university makes larger institutional changes and as experiments with different approaches. Assessment of initiatives, though challenging, must be attempted to understand whether new activities impact outcomes, and if so, which components provide the most value. A straightforward formula for an inclusive college environment which fosters success equally for all students appears unlikely, but the development of evidence-based best practices provides a starting point for institutions interested in change.

International tourism is a major source of export receipts for many countries worldwide. Although it is not yet one of the most important industries in Taiwan (or the Republic of China), an island in East Asia off the coast of mainland China (or the People's Republic of China), the leading tourism source countries for Taiwan are Japan, followed by USA, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, UK, Germany and Australia. These countries reflect short, medium and long haul tourist destinations. Although the People's Republic of China and Hong Kong are large sources of tourism to Taiwan, the political situation is such that tourists from these two sources to Taiwan are reported as domestic tourists. Daily data from 1 January 1990 to 30 June 2007 are obtained from the National Immigration Agency of Taiwan. The heterogeneous autoregressive (HAR) model is used to capture long memory properties in the data. In comparison with the HAR(1) model, the estimated asymmetry coefficients for GJR(1,1) are not statistically significant for the HAR(1,7) and HAR(1,7,28) models, so that their respective GARCH(1,1) counterparts are to be preferred. These empirical results show that the conditional volatility estimates are sensitive to the long memory nature of the conditional mean specifications. Although asymmetry is observed for the HAR(1) model, there is no evidence of leverage. The quasi-maximum likelihood estimators (QMLE) for the GARCH(1,1), GJR(1,1) and EGARCH(1,1) models for international tourist arrivals to Taiwan are statistically adequate and have sensible interpretations. However, asymmetry (though not leverage) was found only for the HAR(1) model and not for the HAR(1,7) and HAR(1,7,28) models.

Observes racial stereotypes and explains the way human beings “see” one another because of this. Adumbrates that even as far back as 1798, the media stereotyped people into various groups, and subsequent surveys only seem to emphasize this. Lists out the more common racial stereotypes using (US) surveys to collect peoples’ thoughts and feelings. Shows how to overcome racial stereotypes. Sums up that communication barriers can ensue from stereotyping races and that people should be responsible in overlooking media influences in this area.

National cultural heritage months often highlight superficial elements such as food, arts, crafts, and music, but behind these celebrations lie generations of pioneers who have shaped the historical and cultural heritage of America. Over the past seven years, in championing cultural awareness, the San Francisco Public Library has collaborated with the Asian American Studies Department at San Francisco State University, The Association of Chinese Teachers, and other community organizations to commemorate Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Heritage Month every year in May. This annual program illustrates how efforts led by APIAs have contributed to the historical, cultural, and literary landscape of America, affording them the recognition they deserve. Multicollaborative efforts led to the creation of a premiere APIA Biography Project (apiabiography.sfsu.edu) – a digital repository of instructional resources that educators across the nation can adapt to their curriculum. By bridging collaboration, public engagement, and community partnerships, public libraries unify multiple constituencies to educate the public on the diverse communities they serve.