Evaluation of a community-based food waste campaign using a national control group.

Communities are increasingly interested in bolstering sustainability by implementing local campaigns to reduce wasted food and divert it from landfills. Evaluation can be challenging, however, as community-engaged interventions may reach all community members, making it difficult to find an appropriate control group. We leverage a recently validated online survey instrument with samples from both the treated community of Upper Arlington, Ohio, USA, and from the United States at large to provide an additional mode for assessing community-based campaign efficacy. We find that the amount of wasted food reported by Upper Arlington households declined by 23% after a multi-modal local implementation of the 'Save More Than Food' campaign while the national sample reported a 29% increase in wasted food over the same period with the 52% net difference between these trends being statistically significant. A contemporaneous curbside audit of Upper Arlington households revealed a 17% reduction in wasted food and a 30% reduction in inedible food scraps where only the latter pre/post campaign reduction was statistically significant and no parallel national curbside audit data was available. There were few significant differences across neighborhoods that received differential intensities of campaign elements, which emphasizes the importance of identifying and conducting parallel measurement in a control group. The inclusion of the parallel national control group survey provided a cost-effective means to improve the accuracy and robustness of local campaign evaluation. We also discuss the campaign's effects on awareness, attitudes, composting behaviors, and non-organic waste rates.

On a question of Mordell.

We make several improvements to methods for finding integer solutions to [Formula: see text] for small values of k. We implemented these improvements on Charity Engine's global compute grid of 500,000 volunteer PCs and found new representations for several values of k, including 3 and 42. This completes the search begun by Miller and Woollett in 1954 and resolves a challenge posed by Mordell in 1953.

Vaginal CO2 laser for the treatment of vulvovaginal atrophy in women with breast cancer: LAAVA pilot study.

PURPOSE: Vulvovaginal atrophy (VVA) is a commonly reported issue among breast cancer patients, and its aetiology is multifactorial. Treatment is difficult in these women, particularly because the use of oestrogens has traditionally been discouraged. Vaginal laser treatment has been reported to improve symptoms. We aimed to assess the impact on symptoms and sexual function of vaginal laser in women with early breast cancer (EBC). METHODS: We performed a single-arm investigator initiated pilot study of female EBC patients with symptomatic VVA. A total of 3 vaginal laser treatments were administered 4 weeks apart. Questionnaires were completed at baseline, 4, 8 and 12 weeks. Our primary endpoint was symptomatic improvement of VVA at 12 weeks on 10 cm visual analogue scales. Our secondary endpoints were improvement in sexual function using the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) and patient-reported improvements in symptoms, sexual function and quality of life. Statistical analysis was performed with a Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. RESULTS: 26 patients were enrolled between February 2016 and August 2017. All patients were post-menopausal, 25 of whom had received anti-oestrogen therapy for their breast cancer. Questionnaire compliance was high (98%) and all patients received the three pre-planned treatments. There was significant improvement in each of the VVA symptoms: dryness (p < 0.001), itch (p < 0.001), burning (p = 0.003), dysuria (p < 0.001) and dyspareunia (p < 0.001). Patients also reported improvement in sexual function on the FSFI (p ≤ 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Patients receiving vaginal laser had improvement in VVA symptoms and sexual function. Further randomised sham-controlled trials are needed to further assess this treatment.