Evaluating the South African National School Nutrition Programme

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.This paper examines the effects of the South African National School Nutrition Programme on nutritional outcomes using a regression discontinuity design applied to the first wave of the National Income Dynamic Study. There is tentative evidence to suggest that the programme has a positive effect on weight-for- age and BMI-for-age z-scores, but data constraints necessitating the employment of a proxy selection variable and potentially unobserved discontinuity in other variables around the cut-off call into question the validity of the identification strategy. As such, these results should be interpreted with caution. The paper also serves to communicate ideas for identification strategies and estimation techniques that are conditional on the imminent release of new data

Omega-3 DHA and Sleep in UK Children: Results From the DOLAB Study

Results from the DHA-Oxford-Learning-and-Behaviour study (DOLAB) on the benefits of DHA supplementation for childrens' sleep. See also the article: Fatty acids and sleep in UK children: subjective and pilot objective sleep results from the DOLAB study – a randomized controlled trial. (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/jsr.12135/

Blood Omega-3 Concentrations are Associated With Reading, Working Memory and Behaviour in Healthy Children Aged 7-9 Years

Epidemiological results from the DHA-Oxford-Learning-and-Behaviour study (DOLAB). Presented at the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) conference 2012 in Vancouver

Enabling data linkage to maximise the value of public health research data: Summary report

Summary for the Wellcome Trust report on Enabling Data Linkage, including example case studies, key findings, and recommendation

Synthesis of Diarylthiobarbituric acid Chromophores with Enhanced Second-order Optical Nonlinearities and Thermal Stability

In summary, the compounds reported here demonstrate that it is possible to design chromophores that simultaneously exhibit large nonlinearity and good thermal stability. Furthermore, with the synthesis of bis(4-hydroxyphenyl)thiobarbituric acid, we believe that it should be possible to covalently incorporate these and other rather nonlinear chromophores into poled polymers at high concentrations. Experiments to test this hypothesis are in progress

Vertebral fractures and daily pain are associated with lower physical activity in postmenopausal women with back pain

Around 12% of women have vertebral fractures (VFs), and many of these individuals also have back pain which limits physical activity (PA). PA is important for health, but little is known about how VFs affect PA, and if so how this compares with individuals with back pain due to other causes. Therefore, we recruited 37 postmenopausal women from primary care with back pain, in whom the presence or absence of VFs was ascertained by spine radiographs. To provide an objective PA measure, vertical accelerations were recorded at 100 Hz for 7 days using a hip-worn GT3X+ accelerometer (Actigraph, USA). The number of low (0.5g-2g) was recorded. Participants also recorded their average back pain each day using a 10-point Likert scale. Linear mixed-effects models were used to assess group differences (fracture/nofracture cases) in low, medium and high-impact PA, and associations between daily pain and different PA impact levels. Daily PA and pain data had non-normal distributions and were log transformed. 12 women were found to have previously sustained VFs. These participants had lower levels of lowimpact PA (regression coefficient -0.64, 95%CI -1.03 to -0.25, P=0.002) but not medium or highimpact PA (both P>0.2). Across all participants, higher daily pain was associated with lower highimpact PA levels (-0.08, 95%CI -0.14 to -0.02, P=0.014) and weakly with medium–impact PA (-0.1, 95%CI -0.22 to 0.02, P=0.081) but not low-impact PA (P=0.25). These results suggest that VFs and daily pain are associated with lower levels of low and high-impact PA respectively, shown previously to differentially affect components of health. Low levels of low impact PA in women with VFs may impair weight control in these women. In contrast, reduced PA, in particular high-impact PA, in women with higher daily pain levels may increase the risk of sarcopenia and osteoporosis

Emotional disregulation, rumiation and suicide ideation in students of general studies of a university Metropolitan Lima public

La presente investigación aborda las relaciones entre la desregulación emocional, la rumiación y la ideación suicida. El estudio comprende primeramente la elucidación de los conceptos teóricos de las variables implicadas, entendiéndolas bajo un marco paradigmático de referencia llamado “contextualismo funcional”. Respecto al método, las variables se miden por medio de las Escalas de Dificultades de la Regulación Emocional, de Respuestas Rumiativas y de Ideación Suicida Positiva y Negativa, aplicándose todas a una muestra de 1330 estudiantes de la Escuela de Estudios Generales de una Universidad Pública de Lima, matriculados en el año Académico 2018. Los resultados muestran que sí existen correlaciones significativas entre desregulación emocional, rumiación e ideación suicida, siendo la mayor la encontrada entre desregulación emocional y rumiación. En particular, se ve también que los ingresantes al área de humanidades son en promedio más vulnerables a padecerlas.In the present investigation, the relationships between emotional dysregulation, rumination and suicidal ideation are addressed. The study first includes the elucidation of the theoretical concepts of the variables involved, understanding them under a reference paradigmatic framework called "functional contextualism". Regarding the method, the variables are measured by means of the Difficulties Scales of Emotional Regulation, Ruminative Responses and Positive and Negative Suicidal Ideation, all applying to a sample of 1330 students from the School of General Studies of a Public University of Lima, enrolled in the Academic year 2018. The results show that there are significant correlations between emotional dysregulation, rumination and suicidal ideation, the highest being found between emotional deregulation and rumination. In particular, it is also seen that those entering the humanities area are on average more vulnerable to suffer them