Based in Washington, D. C. Leadership for Healthy Communities is a $10-million national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation designed to engage and support local and state government leaders nationwide in their efforts to advance public policies that support healthier communities and prevent childhood obesity; the program places an emphasis on policies with the greatest potential for increasing sustainable opportunities for physical activity and healthy eating among children at highest risk for obesity, including African-American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian-American and Pacific Islander children living in lower-income communities. The foundation's primary goal is the reversal of the childhood obesity epidemic by 2015; the program awards grants to influential policy-maker organizations that provide technical assistance to state and local policy-makers who are poised to prevent childhood obesity through public policy levers. Current grantees of the national program include the American Association of School Administrators, International City/County Management Association, Local Government Commission, Council of State Governments, National Association of Counties, National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund, National Association of State Boards of Education, National Conference of State Legislatures, National League of Cities, National School Boards Association and the U.

S. Conference of Mayors. Leadership for Healthy Communities has worked with the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation and the National Congress of American Indians to address childhood obesity in the African-American and American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Leadership for Healthy Communities believes that policy action can help expand opportunities for physical activity and access to healthy foods in schools and communities; the guiding principle of this program is that initiatives led by policy-makers and community leaders at all levels play an important role in supporting healthy children. By highlighting policies and programs that can impact the health of children in schools and communities, Leadership for Healthy Communities and grantees of the program encourage policy-makers to collaborate to reverse the childhood obesity epidemic and create healthier environments. Since 2007, the Leadership for Healthy Communities national program has been led by Dr. Maya Rockeymoore Cummings.

She is the CEO of Global Policy Solutions. Known as Leadership for Active Living and Active Living Leadership, the Leadership for Healthy Communities national program started in 2002 and was managed at San Diego State University. Initial support during 2002-2003 focused on five states: California, Kentucky and Washington. At that time, the program was a partnership effort among the International City/County Management Association, the National Association of Counties, the Local Government Commission, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices, the United States Conference of Mayors. Over the past four decades, obesity rates have increased among all age groups. Today, nearly one third of children and adolescents in the United States are either overweight or obese. According to a national poll, parents now rank childhood obesity as the number one potential threat to their children's health—topping drugs and tobacco use. Other studies have found that obese children and adolescents are much more to become obese adults.

In fact, an obese 4-year-old has a 20 percent chance of becoming an obese adult, an obese older teenager has up to an 80 percent chance of becoming an obese adult. In addition, obese children and adolescents are targets of social discrimination and at greater risk for a host of other serious illnesses, including heart disease and type 2 diabetes; as more children become obese, type 2 diabetes—a disease, once called "adult-onset diabetes" and can lead to blindness, loss of feeling and circulation in the extremities and death—is found in younger and younger age groups. The financial consequences are significant—obesity costs the United States $117 billion each year in direct medical expenses and indirect costs, such as lost productivity; the medical costs of obesity outweighs the cost of eating healthy, maintaining physical activity, educating the population for this increasing problem occurring in today's' society. Research has found that many children do not have regular opportunities to be physically active or access to healthy foods.

Moreover, the environmental barriers to healthy behaviors are larger in lower-income areas. Lower-income communities are less to have places where people can be physically active, such as parks, green spaces, bicycle paths and lanes, and although easy access to supermarkets that offer fresh fruits and vegetables is associated with lower body mass index, many neighborhoods in racial and ethnic minority, lower-income and rural areas tend to have more fast-food restaurants and convenience stores and fewer grocery stores than predominantly white, higher-income areas. Although obesity affects people of all demographics, the prevalence rates are more alarming for racial and ethnic minorities, lower-income families and people in the Southeast region of the United States. Other important factors that researchers say have contributed to the childhood obesity epidemic are fewer hours of physical activity and an increase of junk foods in schools. Fewer than 4 percent of elementary schools provide the weekly recommended 150 minutes o

Malladi Chandrasekhara Sastry is a scholar and television personality who has specialized in the Vedas and Puranas texts in the Telugu and Sanskrit languages. His works have included commentaries on All India Radio during Bhadrachalam's Sitarama Kalyanam and Brahmotsavam festivals. For Ugadi day, he recites the Panchanga Sravanam. On television he hosts a show Dharma Sandehalu and Dharma Sukshmalu where he answers questions regarding the Purana and various aspects of Hinduism; the show is telecast on the Sri Venkateswara Bhakti Channel and on the Doordarshan Saptagiri Channel. He is the principal of a college run by the trust named Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams where they do pravachan on the Puranas, he received the Raja-Lakshmi Award in 2005, has been conferred the title of Purana Vachaspati. Sastry was born to a Dakshinamurthy couple at Hassanabada village, located in Krosuru mandal, in the Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh, he is a native of Guntur district. His grandfather, Sriman Malladi Ramakrishna Chainulu, was not only an authority in Vedic and Sanskrit literature, but a propagator of the Advaita Vedanta Siddhanta over Andhra Pradesh.

Sastry studied in the fields of Vedas, tarkam, poorva meemamsa, vedanta sastram. He studied the Puranas in Hinduism; when he was 19, he delivered Pravachan about the Ramayana. His speaking ability allowed him to give a discourse at an event presided by scholar Viswanatha Satyanarayana at Vijayawada. Sastry cites the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, the oratorios of Dattatreya among his favorite works for discourses. Sastry has established himself as an authority in the Astadasha Puranas texts, he provided commentaries on All India Radio during Bhadrachalam's Sitarama Kalyanam and Brahmotsavam festivals. On television, he hosts a show Dharma Sandehalu and Dharma Sukshmalu where he answers questions regarding the Purana and various aspects of Hinduism; the show is telecast on the Sri Venkateswara Bhakti Channel and on the Doordarshan Saptagiri Channel. On Ugadi day, he recites the Panchanga Sravanam. Writers have noted that he delivers his orations "with a pinch of humour", he is the principal of a college run by the trust named Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams where they do pravachan on the Puranas.

Sastry was given the title "Abhinava Vyasa" for his writings and discourses and for compiling and codifying the Vedas and Puranas texts. Sastry was conferred the title of Purana Vachaspati. In 2005, Sastry received an award from the Sri Raja-Lakshmi Foundation. Sringeri Sankara Mutt presented him with the title of "Savyasachi"; the Sanathana Dharma Trust presented him with the Eminent Citizens Award

USNS Cheyenne was a Phoenix-class miscellaneous auxiliary acquired by the U. S. Navy in 1962, crewed by a civilian crew from the Military Sea Transportation Service, sent to the Philippines to serve as a delivery ship of parts and supplies to other navy ships and stations in the Asian area. Cheyenne remained until the late 1960s. In 1966 she was manned by Korean merchant seaman. AT that time she was one of 4 cargo ships and 19 USNS LSTs operating out of the MSTS Office Pusan providing support in the Viet Nam theater, her master was a former ROK Navy captain, best known as "Speedy Pak". She was struck by the navy in 1973. Cheyenne was constructed as the victory ship SS Middlesex Victory under U. S. Maritime Commission contract at Oregon Shipbuilding Corporation, Oregon, she was launched on 26 June 1945 and renamed SS Wyoming in 1947. In 1963, she was placed in-service as USNS Cheyenne, a Special Project Ship, manned by the Military Sea Transportation Service with a civilian crew. DANFS has no information on the operation of this ship.

However, a review of the history of USNS Phoenix and USNS Provo indicates her operations to be similar to theirs: acting as a point to point cargo carrier, delivering military supplies to Okinawa and Vietnam from stocking points in Japan and Subic Bay. Along with Phoenix and Provo, Cheyenne was struck from the Navy List on 15 June 1973 and disposed of by MARAD sale, 1 May 1973, her ultimate fate is not known. NavSource Online: Service Ship Photo Archive - T-AG-174 Cheyenne USNS Phoenix USNS Provo

Kuruvilla Pandikattu is an Indian Jesuit priest and Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth: Institute of Philosophy and Religion, Maharashtra, India. He is Director of JDV Centre for Science-Religion Studies and Association of Science and Religion, Pune, he has written more than 160 academic articles. He has been involved as co-founder and co-publisher with two journals, Jnanadeepa: Pune Journal of Religious Studies and AUC: Asian Journal of Religious Studies. Further, he has organised more than forty academic conferences, his weekly column on "Contemporary Spirituality" appears on Tuesdays in Financial Chronicle. He has been contributing to both academic and popular journals, he is involved in science-religion dialogue and science-related activities, in which topic he has been teaching four courses. His areas of interest include: Science-Religion Dialogue; the two starting points of his academic research works are in physics and religion: quest for the unification of the fourfold forces of nature in physics and the hermeneutics of dialogue in Paul Ricoeur.

This led him to seek further the interpretative and symbolic nature of religious experience and resulted in his first doctoral thesis: “Idols to die, so that symbols might live.” He traces the idol-symbol tension in every aspect of human experience. He look up the dialogical dimension of not only of religions, but of human existence. So his second doctoral thesis on Bede Griffiths was published under the title, "Dialog as Way of Life." Further, he took up issues in science-religion dialogue, which according to him is "not an option but an obligation" for the survival of the human species. This calls for radial commitment. Two main areas of his research are viable or sustainable life-style, he has been writing on philosophical anthropology. His view on the human person could be summarised as the "between before and beyond." Following Martin Heidegger, he holds that we always carry with us our past and anticipate our future and experience the healthy tension as the "between" or the present. Further, he would say that human freedom, is the "finite search for the infinite."

This infinite or God is the elusive dimension of our human life. God is approachable, but never attainable exhaustively. Like the horizon, that invites and cajoles us and recedes from us, God is always near and far at the same time, he bases this insight on scientific details like the lowest temperature reachable and knowing that the beginning of Big Bang and is like the "horizon", never attainable. He says; the paradox of love is that when two people, who have accepted their own emptiness and recognises their own nothingness, affirm each other, there emerges authentic love, infinite. Thus, when one looks at reality, accepts its nothingness there emerges traces of infinity; that is the paradoxical beauty of love and of our existence. He has been involved in science-religion dialogue, he is interested in looking at both science and religion critically and creatively, so that they can enrich each other and the humanity. In this area he has delivered numerous lectures, written numerous articles and books and organised conferences.

Approachable, Never Attainable: Science-Religion Dialogue in India. Pune: CreatiVentures, 2014. Gratefully and Gracefully: Scientific and Religious Reflections on Death and After. Pune: CreatiVentures, 2014. Between Beneath and Beyond: An Exploration of the Human Condition Based on Paul Ricoeur. Pune: CreatiVentures, 2013; the Bliss of Being Human: Science and Religion for Self-Realisation. Pune: Jnanam, 2004. Religion@scientist.com. Pune: Jnanam, 2001. Religious Dialogue as Hermeneutics: Bede Griffiths’ Advaitic Approach. Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change Series Iiib, South Asia Vol 3. Washington: Research in Values and Philosophy, 2001. Dialogue as the Way of Life: Bede Griffiths’ Attempt at Integrating Religions and Sciences. Mumbai: Zen Publications, 2001. Meaning through Science and Religion. Pune: JDV, 2000. Idols to Die, Symbols to Live: Dynamic Interaction between Language and the Divine. New Delhi: Intercultural Pub, 1999. Lifting up the Spirit, Uplifting the Body: Interfacing Religion and Social Work in India.

Pune: Samajdarshan Prakashan, 2013. Edited with Suresh Pathare. Committed to the Church and the Country: Reflections on Christian Living in India in Honour of Professor Kurien Kunnumpuram SJ. Delhi: ISPCK, 2013. Edited with James Ponniah and Thomas Kuriacose. Reasons for Hope: Its Nature and Future. Washington: Research in Values and Philosophy, 2005. Gandhi, Giriraj. Ahmedabad: Navajivan Pub, 2004. Bend Without Fear: Hopes and Possibilities for an Indian Church: Essays in Honour of Professor Kurien Kunnumpuram SJ. New Delhi: ISPCK, 2003. Edited with Rosario Rocha. Religion and Economy. Frankfurt u.a.: P. Lang, 2003. Yours… Pune: Jnanam, 2002. Let Life Be. Pune: Jnanam, 2002. Dreams and Visions: New Horizons for an Indian Church: Essays in Honour of Professor Kurien Kunnumpuram SJ. Pune: JDV, 2002. Edited with Rosario Rocha Human Longing and Fulfilment: East Encounters West. Pune: JDV, 2002. Gandhi: The Meaning of Mahatma for th

Matej Mészáros is a Slovak sport shooter. He was selected to compete for the Slovak team at the 2004 Summer Olympics, finishing ninth in air rifle. Having started the sport since the age of eight, Meszaros trained as a member of the shooting team for the Slovak Republic State Sport Representation Centre of Interior Ministry in his native Bratislava under personal coach František Fesco. Meszaros qualified for the Slovak squad in the men's 10 m air rifle at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, by having attained a minimum qualifying score of 595 and finishing sixth to secure one of the Olympic slots available from the European Championships in Gothenburg, Sweden. Meszaros shot 594 out of 600 points to finish in a seventh-place tie with four other shooters in the qualifying stage, but fell abruptly in a shoot-off for the final round by 100 to 98, dropping him to ninth. ISSF Profile