Food waste generation and potential interventions at Rhodes University, South Africa.

Estimation of food waste generation represents the first step when considering efforts to reduce waste generation and monitor food waste reduction against set targets. This study reports on an estimation of food waste generated in university dining halls at Rhodes University, South Africa. Daily food waste generation was estimated at about 555g per student or 2tonnes across all sample dining halls, translating to about 450tonnes per year.

Stability, Continuity, and Similarity of Parenting Stress in European American Mothers and Fathers across their Child's Transition to Adolescence.

OBJECTIVE: Experiencing some degree of parenting stress is virtually unavoidable, particularly as children enter early adolescence and assert their independence. In this study, we examined how parenting stress attributed to the parent, the child, or the dyad changed in mean level and relative standing across their child's transition to adolescence. We also compared mothers and fathers from the same families in terms of parenting stress and explored how one parent's stress affected the other parent's stress.

Parenting stress, perceived parenting behaviors, and adolescent self-concept in European American families.

This study assesses whether the stresses associated with parenting a child are indirectly related to adolescent self-concept through parenting behaviors. We examined longitudinal associations among mothers' and fathers' parenting stress at age 10, children's perceptions of parenting at age 10, and adolescents' self-concept at age 14 in 120 European American families. Mothers' and fathers' parenting stress was related to children's perceptions of acceptance and psychologically controlling behavior, and psychologically controlling behavior (and lax control for fathers) was related to adolescent self-concept.

Maternal Sensitivity and Child Responsiveness: Associations with Social Context, Maternal Characteristics, and Child Characteristics in a Multivariate Analysis.

This study examined unique associations of multiple distal context variables (family socioeconomic status [SES], maternal employment, and paternal parenting) and proximal maternal (personality, intelligence, and knowledge; behavior, self-perceptions, and attributions) and child (age, gender, representation, language, and sociability) characteristics with maternal sensitivity and child responsiveness in 254 European American mothers and their firstborn 20-month-olds. Specific unique relations emerged in hierarchical regression analyses. Mothers who worked fewer hours per week and reported less dissonance in their husbands' didactic parenting, whose children spoke using more vocabulary, and who reported less limit setting in their parenting and attributed their parenting failures to internal causes were observed to be more sensitive in their interactions with their children.

Short-Term Reliability and Continuity of Emotional Availability in Mother-Child Dyads Across Contexts of Observation.

Emotional availability (EA) is a prominent index of socioemotional adaptation in the parent-child dyad. Is EA affected by context? In this methodological study, 34 mothers and their 2-year-olds were observed in 2 different settings (home vs. laboratory) 1 week apart.

Cross-linguistic analysis of vocabulary in young children: spanish, dutch, French, hebrew, italian, korean, and american english.

The composition of young children's vocabularies in 7 contrasting linguistic communities was investigated. Mothers of 269 twenty-month-olds in Argentina, Belgium, France, Israel, Italy, the Republic of Korea, and the United States completed comparable vocabulary checklists for their children. In each language and vocabulary size grouping (except for children just learning to talk), children's vocabularies contained relatively greater proportions of nouns than other word classes.

What does fetal movement predict about behavior during the first two years of life?

This study evaluated whether motor activity prior to birth is predictive of motor behavior and temperament in neonates, infants, and toddlers. Three measures of fetal motor activity (activity level, amplitude, and number of movements) were collected at 24, 30, and 36 weeks of gestation in 52 healthy fetuses using Doppler-based actography. Postnatal data collection included a neurobehavioral assessment at 2-weeks postpartum (n = 41), and laboratory-based behavioral observations at 1 and 2 years of age (ns = 35).

Naturalistic language sampling in typically developing children.

This study compared naturalistic samples of three features of language in 30 two-year-olds--total utterances, word roots, and MLU--in the home in three contrasting situations: the child observed playing by her/himself with mother near by, the child and mother observed in direct play interaction, and the child and mother unobserved at a time the mother judged would provide a sample of the child's 'optimal' language. Children produced more utterances and word roots and expressed themselves in longer MLU when in interaction than when playing 'alone', but children's utterances, word roots, and MLU were greatest in the 'optimal' language production situation. Girls used more word roots and spoke in longer MLU (especially in the 'optimal' language situation) than boys.