The Health Component of Head Start: Potential Impacts on Childhood Obesity, Immunizations, and Dental Health

Head Start, an early intervention program administered by the Administration for Children and Families of the Department of Health and Human Services, offers children of low-income families comprehensive services in an effort to even the playing field with their more advantaged peers upon entering kindergarten. Despite the many areas that Head Start addresses, evaluative efforts continuously focus primarily on cognitive gains as a result of Head Start as an intervention. This study examined the potential long-term effects of the health component of Head Start. More specifically, the study investigated whether Head Start impacts a family?s ability to make positive changes in the home in the way of preventive health measures with regard to childhood obesity, immunizations, and dental health, three important areas of childhood health. Participants in the research study included children enrolled in Head Start between 2004 and 2006, and children on the waiting list within the same time. Followup interviews were conducted with families in both groups that inquired about health behaviors specifically related to childhood obesity, immunizations, and dental health. The Head Start (HS) Group and Waiting List Control (WLC) Group were compared to determine if Head Start made a difference in a family?s probability of engaging in more proactive health measures. Responses of the HS Group were also compared with responses from their initial health assessment upon enrolling in Head Start to determine if they demonstrate positive changes. Results did not support hypotheses, and in many instances the WLC Group demonstrated better proactive health measures than the HS Group. Because of operational difficulties, there is limited inference about the impact of the Head Start program. Possible contributors to the results include a small sample size due to the mobility of the target population and overrepresentation of Hispanic children in the study. Limited differences observed between the HS and WLC groups confirms the importance of further investigating the long-term impact of Head Start in areas other than cognitive gains

The Health Component of Head Start: Potential Impacts on Childhood Obesity, Immunizations, and Dental Health

Head Start, an early intervention program administered by the Administration for Children and Families of the Department of Health and Human Services, offers children of low-income families comprehensive services in an effort to even the playing field with their more advantaged peers upon entering kindergarten. Despite the many areas that Head Start addresses, evaluative efforts continuously focus primarily on cognitive gains as a result of Head Start as an intervention. This study examined the potential long-term effects of the health component of Head Start. More specifically, the study investigated whether Head Start impacts a family?s ability to make positive changes in the home in the way of preventive health measures with regard to childhood obesity, immunizations, and dental health, three important areas of childhood health. Participants in the research study included children enrolled in Head Start between 2004 and 2006, and children on the waiting list within the same time. Followup interviews were conducted with families in both groups that inquired about health behaviors specifically related to childhood obesity, immunizations, and dental health. The Head Start (HS) Group and Waiting List Control (WLC) Group were compared to determine if Head Start made a difference in a family?s probability of engaging in more proactive health measures. Responses of the HS Group were also compared with responses from their initial health assessment upon enrolling in Head Start to determine if they demonstrate positive changes. Results did not support hypotheses, and in many instances the WLC Group demonstrated better proactive health measures than the HS Group. Because of operational difficulties, there is limited inference about the impact of the Head Start program. Possible contributors to the results include a small sample size due to the mobility of the target population and overrepresentation of Hispanic children in the study. Limited differences observed between the HS and WLC groups confirms the importance of further investigating the long-term impact of Head Start in areas other than cognitive gains

Controlled Delivery of Sdf-1 Alpha and Igf-1: Cxcr4(+) Cell Recruitment and Functional Skeletal Muscle Recovery

Therapeutic delivery of regeneration-promoting biological factors directly to the site of injury has demonstrated its efficacy in various injury models. Several reports describe improved tissue regeneration following local injection of tissue specific growth factors, cytokines and chemokines. Evidence exists that combined cytokine/growth factor treatment is superior for optimizing tissue repair by targeting different aspects of the regeneration response. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the therapeutic potential of the controlled delivery of stromal cell-derived factor-1alpha (SDF-1 alpha) alone or in combination with insulin-like growth factor-I (SDF-1 alpha/IGF-I) for the treatment of tourniquet-induced ischemia/reperfusion injury (TK-I/R) of skeletal muscle. We hypothesized that SDF-1 alpha will promote sustained stem cell recruitment to the site of muscle injury, while IGF-I will induce progenitor cell differentiation to effectively restore muscle contractile function after TK-I/R injury while concurrently reducing apoptosis. Utilizing a novel poly-ethylene glycol PEGylated fibrin gel matrix (PEG-Fib), we incorporated SDF-1 alpha alone (PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha) or in combination with IGF-I (PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha/IGF-I) for controlled release at the site of acute muscle injury. Despite enhanced cell recruitment and revascularization of the regenerating muscle after SDF-1 alpha treatment, functional analysis showed no benefit from PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha therapy, while dual delivery of PEG-Fib/SDF-1 alpha/IGF-I resulted in IGF-I-mediated improvement of maximal force recovery and SDF-1 alpha-driven in vivo neovasculogenesis. Histological data supported functional data, as well as highlighted the important differences in the regeneration process among treatment groups. This study provides evidence that while revascularization may be necessary for maximizing muscle force recovery, without modulation of other effects of inflammation it is insufficient.Kinesiology and Health Educatio

Input-to-state stability of non-uniform linear hyperbolic systems of balance laws via boundary feedback control

Please read abstract in the article.http://link.springer.com/journal/2452021-10-22hj2021Mathematics and Applied Mathematic

HDTQ: Managing RDF Datasets in Compressed Space

HDT (Header-Dictionary-Triples) is a compressed representation of RDF data that supports retrieval features without prior decompression. Yet, RDF datasets often contain additional graph information, such as the origin, version or validity time of a triple. Traditional HDT is not capable of handling this additional parameter(s). This work introduces HDTQ (HDT Quads), an extension of HDT that is able to represent quadruples (or quads) while still being highly compact and queryable. Two HDTQ-based approaches are introduced: Annotated Triples and Annotated Graphs, and their performance is compared to the leading open-source RDF stores on the market. Results show that HDTQ achieves the best compression rates and is a competitive alternative to well-established systems

Evaluation of measurement accuracies of the Higgs boson branching fractions in the International Linear Collider

Precise measurement of Higgs boson couplings is an important task for International Linear Collider (ILC) experiments and will facilitate the understanding of the particle mass generation mechanism. In this study, the measurement accuracies of the Higgs boson branching fractions to the $b$ and $c$ quarks and gluons, $\Delta Br(H\to b\bar{b},\sim c\bar{c},\sim gg)/Br$, were evaluated with the full International Large Detector model (\texttt{ILD\_00}) for the Higgs mass of 120 GeV at the center-of-mass (CM) energies of 250 and 350 GeV using neutrino, hadronic and leptonic channels and assuming an integrated luminosity of $250 {\rm fb^{-1}}$, and an electron (positron) beam polarization of -80% (+30%). We obtained the following measurement accuracies of the Higgs cross section times branching fraction ($\Delta (\sigma \cdot Br)/\sigma \cdot Br$) for decay of the Higgs into $b\bar{b}$, $c\bar{c}$, and $gg$; as 1.0%, 6.9%, and 8.5% at a CM energy of 250 GeV and 1.0%, 6.2%, and 7.3% at 350 GeV, respectively. After the measurement accuracy of the cross section ($\Delta\sigma/\sigma$) was corrected using the results of studies at 250 GeV and their extrapolation to 350 GeV, the derived measurement accuracies of the branching fractions ($\Delta Br/Br$) to $b\bar{b}$, $c\bar{c}$, and gg were 2.7%, 7.3%, and 8.9% at a CM energy of 250 GeV and 3.6%, 7.2%, and 8.1% at 350 GeV, respectively.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure