Getting Ready for School: Piloting Universal Prekindergarten in an Urban County

Investments in high-quality early care and education have been shown to reap societal benefits across the lives of the children served. A key intervention point is in the lives of 3- to 5-year olds during the period prior to entering kindergarten. Many jurisdictions have developed broad-based prekindergarten initiatives. This study reports on a pilot universal prekindergarten program in 24 sites in the Cleveland, Ohio area. Child assessment data were collected on 204 children from early care classrooms for 3- to 5-year olds across 3 time points by trained observers using 2 standardized instruments. Changes in achievement scores were shown to be significantly predicted by race, parental education level, and whether the family spoke English as a second language, with largest gains shown among children who were most behind at baseline. The findings serve to illuminate the developmental trajectory of children before kindergarten and how data can be used to inform practice and policy

Establishing injury surveillance in emergency departments in Nepal: Protocol for mixed methods prospective study

Background: Globally, injuries cause more than 5 million deaths annually, a similar number to those from HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria combined. In people aged between 5 and 44 years of age trauma is the leading cause of death and disability and the burden is highest in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Like other LMICs, injuries represent a significant burden in Nepal and data suggest that the number is increasing with high morbidity and mortality. In the last 20 years there have been significant improvements in injury outcomes in high income countries as a result of organised systems for collecting injury data and using this surveillance to inform developments in policy and practice. Meanwhile, in most LMICs, including Nepal, systems for routinely collecting injury data are limited and the establishment of injury surveillance systems and trauma registries have been proposed as ways to improve data quality and availability. Methods: This study will implement an injury surveillance system for use in emergency departments in Nepal to collect data on patients presenting with injuries. The surveillance system will be introduced in two hospitals and data collection will take place 24 h a day over a 12-month period using trained data collectors. Prospective data collection will enable the description of the epidemiology of hospital injury presentations and associated risk factors. Qualitative interviews with stakeholders will inform understanding of the perceived benefits of the data and the barriers and facilitators to embedding a sustainable hospital-based injury surveillance system into routine practice. Discussion: The effective use of injury surveillance data in Nepal could support the reduction in morbidity and mortality from adult and childhood injury through improved prevention, care and policy development, as well as providing evidence to inform health resource allocation. This study seeks to test a model of injury surveillance based in emergency departments and explore factors that have the potential to influence extension to additional settings

Effect of Graded Levels of Condensed Tannin (CT) from \u3cem\u3eMimosa pudica\u3c/em\u3e on \u3cem\u3ein-Vitro\u3c/em\u3e Methane Production

Livestock in the country are primarily being fed on fibrous feed resulted in high enteric methane (CH4) emission along with low nutrients availability to host animal. Rumen methano genesis is necessary for the host system as this process ensure the removal of fermentative H2 through the reduction of CO2 into CH4. At the same time this process is wasteful because the emission also represents a loss of dietary energy (6-12% of gross energy intake) apart from contributing to global warming. Worldwide livestock contribute around 90-95 Tg methane to the pool with a contribution of 12-13% from the Indian livestock. Various nutritional and other approaches have been attempted with highly variable success rate in the country and elsewhere for the enteric methane amelioration. The cost of the item used for the mitigation purpose, adaptation of ruminal microbes and toxicity to either host animal or inhabiting microbes are few important criteria for an economic, sustainable and effective amelioration approach (Malik et al. 2015). Herbal materials are being used by the peoples since ages; however, their anti-methanogenic effect is recently established. The anti-methanogenic effect of different herbal materials mainly lies in their secondary metabolites which are highly effective even at very low concentration (Bhatta et al., 2014). Keeping these facts in view, a study was carried to ascertain the effect of varying levels of CT on in vitro total gas and methane production

Effect of Selected Tanniniferous Leaves on \u3cem\u3ein Vivo\u3c/em\u3e Enteric Methane Emission in Sheep

Concentration of methane is continuously increasing in atmosphere and now almost 155% (IPCC, 2007) more than that recorded during pre-industrial era. Livestock production is a major sector accountable for high methane emission into atmospheric pool. World’s livestock is contributing around 15% of total atmospheric methane on annual basis feeds (Moss et al., 2000). Additionally, methane emission from ruminants leads to a loss of 2 to 15% of the dietary energy (Holter and Young, 1992). Due to these two crucial issues, researchers are working tirelessly to find a suitable and effective way for enteric methane amelioration accompanied with minimal inputs. So far numerous interventions have been tried with variable results, but due to one or another reason the search for effective strategy is on the priority of animal scientist. One of the possible approaches for enteric methane amelioration may be the use of plant secondary metabolites which are being traditionally used by the people since ages. Under the ICAR sponsored outreach project on Estimation of methane emission under different feeding systems and development of mitigation strategies more than 1700 feed, herbs and grasses samples were screened through in vitro gas production technique at different participating centres and finally selected few plant & herbs for evaluating the secondary metabolites on in vivo enteric methane emission. Three selected tanniniferous leaves were evaluated for their effect on enteric methane emission and feed fermentability in adult sheep

Obstetric consequences of subfertility : a retrospective cohort study

Funding No funding was received for this study. Acknowledgements We would like to acknowledge the help and expertise provided by Fiona Chaloner who performed the data linkage and extraction from the databases. We also thank the medical statistics team, University of Aberdeen, and in particular Dr Lorna Aucott, for their advice on the analysis of the data. We would also like to thank Margery Heath for proofreading and formatting the paper.Peer reviewedPostprintPostprin

Effect of halogen addition to monolayer protected gold nanoparticles

The effects of N-halosuccinimide and halogen addition to monolayer protected gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) dispersed in organic media are described. Contrary to the expectation that nanoparticles dispersed in organic media are stable against aggregation, N-iodosuccinimide addition induced aggregation of octadecylamine capped gold nanoparticles in chloroform or toluene. It was observed that even KI and CuI addition could bring about the aggregation though they are very sparingly soluble in organic solvents. It was also found that even molecular iodine could bring about the above mentioned aggregation. Interestingly, when CuI is used the aggregated structures readily convert to very thin flat nanostructures upon exposure to an electron beam or UV irradiation. In fact when the aggregation is induced by the addition of KI or N-iodosuccinamide we do not see the flattening of the aggregated structures exemplifying the important role of Cu ions in making these flat structures

Agricultural innovation and adaptation to climate change: empirical evidence from diverse agro-ecologies in South Asia

While impacts of climate change on agricultural systems have been widely researched, there is still limited understanding of what agricultural practices evolves over time in response to both climatic and non-climatic drivers and how actors mobilize their resources, institutions and practices in South Asia. Through eight case studies and a survey of300 households in 15 locations in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, this paper generates empirical evidence on emerging agricultural interventions in contrasting socio-economic, geographical and agro-ecological contexts. The study shows that several farm practices emerge out in response to multiple drivers over time; some of them can be further adjusted to the challenge of climate change by planned adaptation programs. Most actors, however, have considered private risks in the short run. Although there has been some progress in streamlining climate change into strategic planning in different countries of South Asia, policy, research and extension systems lack adequate attention to wider resilience of the system. Based on this analysis, we recommend that adaptation policies should complement farmers’ responses to climate change through informed research and extension systems and pro-poor government policies that improve adaptation and coordinate activities of different actors