Fifth survey of parents of three and four year old children and their use of early years services (Summer 2000 to Spring 2001)

The main aim of the survey was to establish rates of participation for three and four year olds in all forms of pre-school provision in England... The survey also investigated the characteristics of providers used and parents’ opinions of the quantity and quality of provision in the local area in general as well as of the providers they used, and the influences on their choice of providers

Minimal change in children’s lifestyle behaviours and adiposity following a home-based obesity intervention: results from a pilot study

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background/Methods: Families of overweight and obese children require support to make sustainable lifestyle changes to improve their child’s diet and activity behaviours and in turn weight status. The aim of this pre-post intervention pilot study was to evaluate the feasibility of an individualised home-based intervention for treatment seeking overweight/obese 4–12 year olds and their caregivers. Baseline measures were used to develop a family-specific intervention to improve the quality of the home environment. The intervention was delivered as individualised written recommendations and resources plus phone call and home visit support. Baseline measures were repeated approximately 6 months later. Results: Complete data for 24 children was available. Parents reported that 43 % of intervention recommendations were implemented ‘very much’. Some descriptive changes were observed in the home environment, most commonly including fruit and vegetables in their child’s lunchbox, not providing food treats, and restricting children’s access to chips/savoury snack biscuits. At the group level, minimal change was detected in children’s diet and activity behaviours or weight status (all p > 0.05). Conclusion: The study findings did not support intervention feasibility in its current form. Future interventions should target the family food and activity environment, but also utilise an approach to address the complex social circumstances which limit parent’s ability to prioritise healthy family lifestyle behaviours. Trial registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry (ANZCTR) 3/12/2014. http://www.ANZCTR.org.au. ACTRN1261400126467

‘Is this a time of beautiful chaos?’: reflecting on international feminist legal methods

This article considers how Margaret Jane Radin’s theory of the feminist double bind can bring conceptual clarity to the difficulties feminisms face in engaging with political and legal institutions of global governance. I draw on her theory to reinitiate a conversation on ideal and nonideal theory, in order to answer the call of key proponents in international legal feminism to reevaluate methodologies in critiquing mainstream institutions. By providing an account of how to navigate the double bind, this article brings conceptual clarity to the tension between resistance and compliance that has been argued to lie at the heart of the feminist project in international law. I demonstrate how this theoretical framework can foster greater pluralist perspectives in feminist engagement of ideal theories to temper the deradicalising and conservative risk of navigating feasibility constrained nonideal strategies

Citizen science reveals widespread negative effects of roads on amphibian distributions

Landscape structure is important for shaping the abundance and distribution of amphibians, but prior studies of landscape effects have been species or ecosystem-specific. Using a large-scale, citizen science-generated database, we examined the effects of habitat composition, road disturbance, and habitat split (i.e. the isolation of wetland from forest by intervening land use) on the distribution and richness of frogs and toads in the eastern and central United States. Undergraduates from nine biology and environmental science courses collated occupancy data and characterized landscape structure at 1617 sampling locations from the North American Amphibian Monitoring Program. Our analysis revealed that anuran species richness and individual species distributions were consistently constrained by both road density and traffic volume. In contrast, developed land around wetlands had small, or even positive effects on anuran species richness and distributions after controlling for road effects. Effects of upland habitat composition varied among species, and habitat split had only weak effects on species richness or individual species distributions. Mechanisms underlying road effects on amphibians involve direct mortality, behavioral barriers to movement, and reduction in the quality of roadside habitats. Our results suggest that the negative effects of roads on amphibians occur across broad geographic regions, affecting even common species, and they underscore the importance of developing effective strategies to mitigate the impacts of roads on amphibian populations

Has the biobank bubble burst? Withstanding the challenges for sustainable biobanking in the digital era

Biobanks have been heralded as essential tools for translating biomedical research into practice, driving precision medicine to improve pathways for global healthcare treatment and services. Many nations have established specific governance systems to facilitate research and to address the complex ethical, legal and social challenges that they present, but this has not lead to uniformity across the world. Despite significant progress in responding to the ethical, legal and social implications of biobanking, operational, sustainability and funding challenges continue to emerge. No coherent strategy has yet been identified for addressing them. This has brought into question the overall viability and usefulness of biobanks in light of the significant resources required to keep them running. This review sets out the challenges that the biobanking community has had to overcome since their inception in the early 2000s. The first section provides a brief outline of the diversity in biobank and regulatory architecture in seven countries: Australia, Germany, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK, and the USA. The article then discusses four waves of responses to biobanking challenges. This article had its genesis in a discussion on biobanks during the Centre for Health, Law and Emerging Technologies (HeLEX) conference in Oxford UK, co-sponsored by the Centre for Law and Genetics (University of Tasmania). This article aims to provide a review of the issues associated with biobank practices and governance, with a view to informing the future course of both large-scale and smaller scale biobanks

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin