A tool to describe diet and eating behaviour in children at risk of malnutrition : the International Complementary Feeding Evaluation Tool (ICFET)

Purpose: The International Complementary Feeding Evaluation tool (ICFET) is a new tool that provides a standardised description of caregiver feeding and child eating behaviour and diet in young children. It is designed to be relevant to undernutrition in low- and-middle-income countries (LMICs) and to be valid in multiple languages. This paper aims to describe the full content of the ICFET and its performance in various settings, cross-sectionally and longitudinally. Method: ICFETs were completed by parents of 473 children aged 6-24 months in the UK, Kenya, Pakistan, and Guatemala. Repeated ICFETs were obtained for 62 children starting treatment for moderate acute malnutrition (MAM) in Kenya and Pakistan. Findings: Solids were started much earlier in the UK than other countries; in Kenya and Pakistan self-feeding was less, and force feeding more common than in Guatemala and the UK. In the LMIC samples only 23% children were eating foods from 5/8 of the recommended food groups daily. In the MAM treatment centres, Avidity was low: Kenya mean Z scores (SD) -1.76 (0.9); Pakistan -2.79 (0.9); and food refusal high: Kenya 0.77 (1.3), Pakistan 1.53 (0.9) compared to healthy UK infants, suggesting that they are capturing enduring appetitive characteristics; both showed moderate to good stability over time (Kenya Avidity Spearman’s r= 0.517, p= 0.023 Refusal r= 0.557, p=0.013; Pakistan Avidity r=0.959, p<0.001; Refusal 0.462 p=0.002). Conclusions: The ICFET provides valid eating and feeding behaviour measures which track within children over time, as well as a range of useful contextual measures of diet in the complementary feeding period

Depressive symptoms, overweight/obesity, and ADHD from childhood to adolescence: a cross-cohort study of cultural and timing effects

Background: Children who are persistently overweight/obese have a higher risk of ADHD symptoms. Comorbid ADHD increases psychosocial challenges that could worsen mental health problems in children with overweight/obesity. This study analyzed data from England and Hong Kong to examine whether, and why, comorbid ADHD and persistent overweight/obesity is associated with depressive symptoms during the transition into adolescence. Methods: Body mass index and ADHD symptoms were measured in childhood (T1) and early adolescence (T2) on 4340 participants of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) in England and 184 individuals of the Healthy Kids cohort in Hong Kong. Depressive symptoms were also measured at T2. Moderated mediation analysis was conducted to examine whether early (T1 & T2) ADHD accounted for the association between persistent overweight/obesity (T1 & T2) and depressive symptoms at T2. Results: In Hong Kong, risk of depression in adolescence was highest among children with both conditions of early ADHD and persistent overweight/obesity. Also, persistent overweight/obesity was associated with depressive symptoms in adolescence only among children with early ADHD; and this was primarily explained by persistence of ADHD into adolescence (β = 1.66, 95 %CI [0.44, 3.36]). These findings were not replicated in the England cohort. Conclusions: In some cultural settings, persistent ADHD symptoms have the potential to exacerbate depressive symptoms in adolescence. Early detection and intervention of ADHD symptoms is crucial for promoting long-term mental well-being

Enhancing flood prediction in the Lower Mekong River Basin by a scale-independent interpretable deep learning model

Climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of extreme floods in the Lower Mekong River Basin (LMB). This study leverages the Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model to evaluate its performance in predicting river discharge across the LMB and to identify the key variables contributing to flood prediction through SHapley Additive exPlanation (SHAP) and Universal Multifractal (UM) analyses, in a scale-dependent and scale-independent manner, respectively. The performance of the LSTM model is satisfactory, with Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) values exceeding 0.9 for all subbasins when using all input features. The model tends to underestimate the largest peak flows in the midstream subbasins that experienced extreme rainfall events. According to SHAP, soil-related variables are important contributors to discharge prediction, with their impacts partially manifested through interactions with precipitation and runoff. Furthermore, the dominant contributing variables influencing flood prediction vary over time: soil-related variables and vegetation-related variables played a more significant role in earlier years, whereas hydrometeorological variables became more dominant after 2017. The UM analysis investigates the scaling behaviours of contributing variables, showing that hydrometeorological-related variables have a greater influence on predicting extreme discharge across the small temporal scales. Additionally, the UM analysis indicates that the model's performance improves as the temporal variability in extremes of the combined features decreases across 1 to 16 days. Overall, this study provides a comprehensive assessment of the LSTM model's performance in discharge prediction, emphasising the impact of the variability in the extremes of combined features through the scale-independent interpretation. These findings will offer valuable insights for stakeholders to improve flood risk management across the LMB

Structural aspects of the Student Project Allocation problem

We study the Student Project Allocation problem with lecturer preferences over students (spa-s), which involves the assignment of students to projects based on student preferences over projects, lecturer preferences over students, and capacity constraints on both projects and lecturers. The goal is to find a stable matching that ensures no student and lecturer can mutually benefit by deviating from a given assignment to form an alternative arrangement involving some project. We explore the structural properties of spa-s and characterise the set of stable matchings for an arbitrary spa-s instance. We prove that, similar to the classical Stable Marriage problem (sm) and the Hospital Residents problem (hr), the set of all stable matchings in spa-s forms a distributive lattice. In this lattice, the student-optimal and lecturer-optimal stable matchings represent the minimum and maximum elements, respectively. Our results extend known structural characterisations from bipartite models to the more complex spa-s setting, and provide a basis for the development of efficient algorithms to address several open problems in spa-s and its extensions

Tetraevangelia in Orthodox Liturgical Calendars: Byzantine Manuscripts and Church Practices

No abstract available

Coalition formation and firm representatives’ answers to complainers on social media: Their interplay and the coalition ripple effect

We ask whether complaint answers by firm representatives depend on coalition formation—others taking sides with complainers or firm representatives—and whether coalition formation by third actors depends on complaint answers. An online field study revealed that, from the firm representative perspective, the 73.2 % probability of a complaint answer in the absence of any coalition decreases to 10.9 %–12.8 % in the presence of a prior coalition with a firm representative or complainer. From the third actor perspective, the probability of the formation of a coalition with a firm representative decreases by one-third in the presence versus absence of a prior complaint answer; coalitions with complainers are not curtailed. Furthermore, a coalition with a firm representative shifts the average complaint answer from somewhat favorable to unfavorable, which facilitates coalitions with complainers, creating a coalition ripple effect. The results offer managerial guidance, as dissatisfying online complaint handling remains problematic

A hybrid offline-online model order reduction approach for damage propagation problems

Accurately modelling damage propagation in composites with 3D explicit finite element methods requires high-dimensional models, making simulations computationally prohibitive. Conventional reduced-order models (ROMs) trained offline are ineffective for fracture problems, since stress redistribution and crack growth cannot be anticipated a priori. In this work, a hybrid offline–online ROM that couples elastic-only offline training with adaptive online enrichment of the reduced basis during damage evolution is introduced. Proper Orthogonal Decomposition (POD) is combined with Energy-Conserving Mesh Sampling and Weighting (ECSW) and Gappy data reconstruction to achieve efficient time integration with 3D solid and cohesive elements. Unlike existing domain decomposition approaches, the proposed framework does not require prior knowledge of crack paths and can refine the basis anywhere in the domain as damage develops. The method is demonstrated on open-hole tensile tests at two distinct length scales, capturing delamination, fibre failure and failure stress with good accuracy when compared to full-order simulations and experiments. Improved computational savings are achieved, with efficiency gains increasing with model size. These results establish the hybrid ROM as a scalable and general approach for modelling distributed, path-dependent fracture in composite materials

Real-Time CFD in the simulation of aerial firefighting

Aerial firefighting is crucial in the combat of wildfires, as the speed, range, and payload (water, fire-retardant, crew) advantages provided by aircraft enable much easier access to remote areas and much faster response to active fires than ground vehicles. However, the challenging mission scopes and flight conditions, including low-altitude operations, smoke-induced low visibility, fire-induced turbulence, and complex terrain, encountered during these operations place the pilot and crew under high workload and at considerable risk of accidents. With the increased frequency and intensity of wildfires seen in recent years due to climate change and other factors, research into safer and more efficient aerial firefighting techniques, strategies, and training is essential. This paper presents a high-fidelity simulation environment, leveraging real-time computational fluid dynamics (CFD) in the loop and capable of evaluating different aerial platforms and firefighting techniques

Do the effects of krill oil supplementation on skeletal muscle function and size in older adults differ by sex, age or BMI: a secondary analysis of a randomised controlled trial

This study examined whether the effects of krill oil supplementation on muscle function and size differ by sex, age or BMI in healthy older adults. This was a secondary exploratory analysis of a previous randomised controlled trial. Men and women aged ≥65 years, with BMI < 35 kg/m² and engaging in <1 h per week of structured exercise, were enrolled in a randomised, double-blind, controlled trial (NCT04048096) between March 2018 and March 2020. Participants received either 4 g/day krill oil or a control oil for 6 months. Ninety-four participants were included (Control n = 45; 27 women, 18 men; Krill n = 49; 26 women, 23 men) with muscle size, strength and neuromuscular function measured before and after the intervention period. Responses to intervention were compared between subgroups by sex (male/female), age (≤70 years/>70 years) and BMI (≤24.9 kg/m2/>25 kg/m2). Increases in muscle strength, size, and physical function in response to krill oil supplementation were comparable across age, sex and BMI subgroups (all P > 0.05). This was similar for neuromuscular measures although increases in the Mwave the response to krill oil supplementation differed by sex, with no change over time in females in either krill or control groups, but an increase in Mwave in males in the krill group (+3.80 [1.72–5.88] mV, p = 0.016) with a tendency for a decrease in the control group (−3.71 [1.58–6.05] mV, p = 0.059). In conclusion, krill oil supplementation improved muscle strength and size in older adults regardless of age, sex and BMI status, although neuromuscular effects of krill oil on membrane excitability, via the Mwave, may be more pronounced in men. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT0404809