528 research outputs found
Maternal Diet during Lactation and Breast-feeding Practices have Synergistic Association with Child Diet at 6 Years
Objective: Children breast-fed during infancy consume more fruits and vegetables than formula-fed children. This pattern is likely due, in part, to infant learning from flavours of the mother’s diet transmitted through breast milk, but more research is needed to understand associations between early flavour exposures and later dietary patterns. We examined whether breast-feeding and maternal fruit and vegetable consumption during nursing were synergistically associated with higher child fruit and vegetable consumption.
Design: Prospective cohort study of breast-feeding duration, maternal diet postpartum and child diet. Complete breast-feeding and maternal diet data were available for 1396 mother–child dyads; multiple imputation was used for missing data in other variables. In separate multivariable logistic regression models, we estimated the adjusted odds of high child fruit or vegetable consumption at 12 months or 6 years as a function of breast-feeding duration, maternal fruit or vegetable consumption during nursing, and their interaction.
Setting: The Infant Feeding Practices Study II and Year 6 Follow-Up.
Participants: Mother–child dyads followed from birth to 6 years during 2005–2012 in the USA.
Results: Longer breast-feeding duration was associated with high child fruit and vegetable consumption at 12 months. At 6 years, the interaction between breast-feeding duration and maternal vegetable consumption was associated with high child vegetable consumption.
Conclusions: Higher maternal vegetable consumption and longer breast-feeding duration were synergistically associated with high child vegetable consumption at 6 years, independent of sociodemographic characteristics and fruit and vegetable availability. Exposures to vegetable flavours through breast milk may promote later child vegetable consumption
Path integral approach to no-Coriolis approximation in heavy-ion collisions
We use the two time influence functional method of the path integral approach
in order to reduce the dimension of the coupled-channels equations for
heavy-ion reactions based on the no-Coriolis approximation. Our method is
superior to other methods in that it easily enables us to study the cases where
the initial spin of the colliding particle is not zero. It can also be easily
applied to the cases where the internal degrees of freedom are not necessarily
collective coordinates. We also clarify the underlying assumptions in our
approach.Comment: 11 pages, Latex, Phys. Rev. C in pres
Dynamic study on fusion reactions for Ca+Zr around Coulomb barrier
By using the updated improved Quantum Molecular Dynamics model in which a
surface-symmetry potential term has been introduced for the first time, the
excitation functions for fusion reactions of Ca+Zr at
energies around the Coulomb barrier have been studied. The experimental data of
the fusion cross sections for Ca+Zr have been reproduced
remarkably well without introducing any new parameters. The fusion cross
sections for the neutron-rich fusion reactions of Ca+Zr around
the Coulomb barrier are predicted to be enhanced compared with a
non-neutron-rich fusion reaction. In order to clarify the mechanism of the
enhancement of the fusion cross sections for neutron-rich nuclear fusions, we
pay a great attention to study the dynamic lowering of the Coulomb barrier
during a neck formation. The isospin effect on the barrier lowering is
investigated. It is interesting that the effect of the projectile and target
nuclear structure on fusion dynamics can be revealed to a certain extent in our
approach. The time evolution of the N/Z ratio at the neck region has been
firstly illustrated. A large enhancement of the N/Z ratio at neck region for
neutron-rich nuclear fusion reactions is found.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures,3 table
Reunifying from behind bars: A quantitative study of the relationship between parental incarceration, service use, and foster care reunification
Incarcerated parents attempting to reunify with their children in foster care can find it difficult to complete the activities on their court-ordered case plans, such as drug treatment services and visitation with children. Although much has been written regarding the obstacles that are likely to interfere with reunification for incarcerated parents, very little quantitative research has examined the topic. This study uses secondary data to examine the incarceration experiences and reunification outcomes of a sample of 225 parents in one large urban California county. In multivariate analysis controlling for problems and demographics, incarcerated parents were less likely to reunify with their children; however, service use appeared to mediate this relationship, as the negative association between incarceration and reunification did not persist when service use was included as a variable in the model. Suggestions are made for policy and practice changes to improve reunification outcomes for this population of parents.
Emission of intermediate mass fragments from hot Ba formed in low-energy Ni+Ni reaction
The complex fragments (or intermediate mass fragments) observed in the
low-energy Ni+NiBa reaction, are studied within
the dynamical cluster decay model for s-wave with the use of the
temperature-dependent liquid drop, Coulomb and proximity energies. The
important result is that, due to the temperature effects in liquid drop energy,
the explicit preference for -like fragments is washed out, though the
C (or the complementary Sn) decay is still predicted to be one
of the most probable -nucleus decay for this reaction. The production
rates for non- like intermediate mass fragments (IMFs) are now higher
and the light particle production is shown to accompany the IMFs at all
incident energies, without involving any statistical evaporation process in the
model. The comparisons between the experimental data and the (s-wave)
calculations for IMFs production cross sections are rather satisfactory and the
contributions from other -waves need to be added for a further
improvement of these comparisons and for calculations of the total kinetic
energies of fragments.Comment: 22 pages, 15 figure
Fusion versus Breakup: Observation of Large Fusion Suppression for ^9Be + ^{208}Pb
Complete fusion excitation functions for Be + Pb have been
measured to high precision at near barrier energies. The experimental fusion
barrier distribution extracted from these data allows reliable prediction of
the expected complete fusion cross-sections. However, the measured
cross-sections are only 68% of those predicted. The large cross-sections
observed for incomplete fusion products support the interpretation that this
suppression of fusion is caused by Be breaking up into charged fragments
before reaching the fusion barrier. Implications for the fusion of radioactive
nuclei are discussed.Comment: RevTex, 11 pages, 2 postscript figures, to appear in PR
Recent experimental results in sub- and near-barrier heavy ion fusion reactions
Recent advances obtained in the field of near and sub-barrier heavy-ion
fusion reactions are reviewed. Emphasis is given to the results obtained in the
last decade, and focus will be mainly on the experimental work performed
concerning the influence of transfer channels on fusion cross sections and the
hindrance phenomenon far below the barrier. Indeed, early data of sub-barrier
fusion taught us that cross sections may strongly depend on the low-energy
collective modes of the colliding nuclei, and, possibly, on couplings to
transfer channels. The coupled-channels (CC) model has been quite successful in
the interpretation of the experimental evidences. Fusion barrier distributions
often yield the fingerprint of the relevant coupled channels. Recent results
obtained by using radioactive beams are reported. At deep sub-barrier energies,
the slope of the excitation function in a semi-logarithmic plot keeps
increasing in many cases and standard CC calculations over-predict the cross
sections. This was named a hindrance phenomenon, and its physical origin is
still a matter of debate. Recent theoretical developments suggest that this
effect, at least partially, may be a consequence of the Pauli exclusion
principle. The hindrance may have far-reaching consequences in astrophysics
where fusion of light systems determines stellar evolution during the carbon
and oxygen burning stages, and yields important information for exotic
reactions that take place in the inner crust of accreting neutron stars.Comment: 40 pages, 63 figures, review paper accepted for EPJ
To Recycle or Not to Recycle? An Intergenerational Approach to Nuclear Fuel Cycles
This paper approaches the choice between the open and closed nuclear fuel cycles as a matter of intergenerational justice, by revealing the value conflicts in the production of nuclear energy. The closed fuel cycle improve sustainability in terms of the supply certainty of uranium and involves less long-term radiological risks and proliferation concerns. However, it compromises short-term public health and safety and security, due to the separation of plutonium. The trade-offs in nuclear energy are reducible to a chief trade-off between the present and the future. To what extent should we take care of our produced nuclear waste and to what extent should we accept additional risks to the present generation, in order to diminish the exposure of future generation to those risks? The advocates of the open fuel cycle should explain why they are willing to transfer all the risks for a very long period of time (200,000 years) to future generations. In addition, supporters of the closed fuel cycle should underpin their acceptance of additional risks to the present generation and make the actual reduction of risk to the future plausible
Quantum Tunneling in Nuclear Fusion
Recent theoretical advances in the study of heavy ion fusion reactions below
the Coulomb barrier are reviewed. Particular emphasis is given to new ways of
analyzing data, such as studying barrier distributions; new approaches to
channel coupling, such as the path integral and Green function formalisms; and
alternative methods to describe nuclear structure effects, such as those using
the Interacting Boson Model. The roles of nucleon transfer, asymmetry effects,
higher-order couplings, and shape-phase transitions are elucidated. The current
status of the fusion of unstable nuclei and very massive systems are briefly
discussed.Comment: To appear in the January 1998 issue of Reviews of Modern Physics. 13
Figures (postscript file for Figure 6 is not available; a hard copy can be
requested from the authors). Full text and figures are also available at
http://nucth.physics.wisc.edu/preprints
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