Tobacco use in the third trimester of pregnancy and its relationship to birth weight. A prospective study in Spain

Background Few studies have been carried out in Spain examining the use of tobacco amongst expectant mothers and its effect on birth weight. Aims To observe the proportion of expectant mothers who smoke during their pregnancy, and the impact of tobacco consumption on maternal and birth weight. We also aimed to identify the trimester of pregnancy in which tobacco use produced the greatest reduction in birth weight. Methods Prospective observational study in Spain. A random sampling strategy was used to select health centres and participant women. A total of 137 individuals were enrolled in the study. Exposure to tobacco was measured through a self-reported questionnaire. Regressions were performed to obtain a predictive model for birth weight related to smoking. Findings Overall, 35% of study participants were smokers during the pre-gestational period (27% in the first trimester, 21.9% in the second and 21.2% in the third). 38.7% of smoking cessation attempts took place in the third-trimester. Pregnant women who smoked up to the third trimester had a higher risk of giving birth to a baby under 3000 g, compared to non-smokers (OR = 5.94, CI 95%: 1.94–18.16). Each additional unit of tobacco consumed daily in the 3rd trimester led to a 32 g reduction in birth weight. Conclusion An important proportion of pregnant women in Spain smoke during pregnancy. Pregnant women exposed to tobacco have newborns with lower birth weight. Smoking during the 3rd trimester of pregnancy is associated with the greatest risk of lower birth weight

Invasive species in the Northeastern and Southwestern Atlantic Ocean: A review

The spread of non-native species has been a subject of increasing concern since the 1980s when human-mediated transportation, mainly related to ships' ballast water, was recognized as a major vector for species transportation and spread, although records of non-native species go back as far as 16th Century. Ever increasing world trade and the resulting rise in shipping have highlighted the issue, demanding a response from the international community to the threat of non-native marine species. In the present study, we searched for available literature and databases on shipping and invasive species in the North-eastern (NE) and South-western (SW) Atlantic Ocean and assess the risk represented by the shipping trade between these two regions. There are reports of 44 species associated with high impacts for the NE Atlantic and 15 for the SW Atlantic, although this may be an underestimate. Vectors most cited are ballast water and biofouling for both regions while aquaculture has also been a very significant pathway of introduction and spread of invasive species in the NE Atlantic. Although the two regions have significant shipping traffic, no exchange of invasive species could be directly associated to the shipping between the two regions. However, it seems prudent to bring the exchange of ballast water between the two regions under control as soon as possible

Learning About Development at A-Level

Young people’s interest in development issues has been the focus of numerous studies but there has been little research that looks at the impact of learning of a specific educational course. This research paper looks at the impact of studying A-level World Development on young people in England and Wales. It summarises the outcomes of research by Bowes in 2011 and a further survey in 2012 with students who have completed the course. This study looks specifically at the relevance, effectiveness and impact of the course on students. The evidence suggests that the A-level is popular and seen as relevant to young people’s lives and views about the world. Both teachers and students state that the themes discussed are up-to-date and accessible to study. In terms of effectiveness of the course overall, there is evidence of understanding of the key issues in development, although the priorities given to particular themes varied from school and college. Programmes and projects on learning about development have often been promoted because there is an assumption that mere engagement with these themes has an impact on young people’s learning in terms of changing their behaviour and attitudes towards taking action to reduce global poverty. The evidence from this research shows a complex picture of impact with the emphasis appearing to be more on the social and moral aspects of development than the political. The research indicates positive changes in perceptions of global poverty and inequality in the world, but less so on the more social and political aspects. There is evidence that studying the A-level has had an impact upon the students’ future learning in higher education with Geography and Development Studies becoming more popular. The first full World Development A-level began in 2008 so the examination is still relatively new. The sample taken for this study and the research by Bowes covered a relatively small number of students. However, what is clear from this research is that an A-level of this type can play an important contribution in deepening a young person’s learning and understanding about development and that it is a subject that is seen as popular and relevant to their lives

Electronic Liquid Crystal Phases of a Doped Mott Insulator

The character of the ground state of an antiferromagnetic insulator is fundamentally altered upon addition of even a small amount of charge. The added charges agglomerate along domain walls at which the spin correlations, which may or may not remain long-ranged, suffer a $\pi$ phase shift. In two dimensions, these domain walls are ``stripes'' which are either insulating, or conducting, i.e. metallic rivers with their own low energy degrees of freedom. However, quasi one-dimensional metals typically undergo a transition to an insulating ordered charge density wave (CDW) state at low temperatures. Here it is shown that such a transition is eliminated if the zero-point energy of transverse stripe fluctuations is sufficiently large in comparison to the CDW coupling between stripes. As a consequence, there exist novel, liquid-crystalline low-temperature phases -- an electron smectic, with crystalline order in one direction, but liquid-like correlations in the other, and an electron nematic with orientational order but no long-range positional order. These phases, which constitute new states of matter, can be either high temperature supeconductors or two-dimensional anisotropic ``metallic'' non-Fermi liquids. Evidence for the new phases may already have been obtained by neutron scattering experiments in the cuprate superconductor, La_{1.6-x}Nd_{0.4}Sr_xCuO_{4}.Comment: 5 pages in RevTex with two figures in ep

SL(2,R)SL(2,R) symmetry and quasi-normal modes in the BTZ black hole

With the help of two new intrinsic tensor fields associated with the $SL(2,R)$ quadratic Casimir of Killing fields, we uncover the $SL(2,R)$ symmetry satisfied by the solutions to the equations of motion for various fields in the BTZ black hole in a uniform way by performing tensor and spinor analysis without resorting to any specific coordinate system. Then with the standard algebraic method developed recently, we determine the quasi-normal modes for various fields in the BTZ black hole. As a result, the quasi-normal modes are given by the infinite tower of descendants of the chiral highest weight mode, which is in good agreement with the previous analytic result obtained by exactly solving equations of motion instead.Comment: JHEP style, 1+13 pages, version to appear in JHE

Government transparency measurement through prioritized distance operators

© 2018 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved. The prioritized induced probabilistic ordered weighted average distance (PIPOWAD) has been developed. This new operator is an extension of the ordered weighted average (OWA) operator that can be used in cases where we have two sets of data that want to be compared. Some of the main characteristics of this new operator are: 1) Not all the decision makers are equally important, so the information needs to be prioritized, 2) The information has a probability to occur and 3) The decision makers can change the importance of the information based in an induced variable. Additionally, characteristics and families of the PIPOWAD operator are presented. Finally, an application of the PIPOWAD operator in order to measure government transparency in Mexico is presented

Assimilation of healthy and indulgent impressions from labelling influences fullness but not intake or sensory experience

Background: Recent evidence suggests that products believed to be healthy may be over-consumed relative to believed indulgent or highly caloric products. The extent to which these effects relate to expectations from labelling, oral experience or assimilation of expectations is unclear. Over two experiments, we tested the hypotheses that healthy and indulgent information could be assimilated by oral experience of beverages and influence sensory evaluation, expected satiety, satiation and subsequent appetite. Additionally, we explored how expectation-experience congruency influenced these factors. Results: Results supported some assimilation of healthiness and indulgent ratings—study 1 showed that indulgent ratings enhanced by the indulgent label persisted post-tasting, and this resulted in increased fullness ratings. In study 2, congruency of healthy labels and oral experience promoted enhanced healthiness ratings. These healthiness and indulgent beliefs did not influence sensory analysis or intake—these were dictated by the products themselves. Healthy labels, but not experience, were associated with decreased expected satiety. Conclusions: Overall labels generated expectations, and some assimilation where there were congruencies between expectation and experience, but oral experience tended to override initial expectations to determine ultimate sensory evaluations and intake. Familiarity with the sensory properties of the test beverages may have resulted in the use of prior knowledge, rather than the label information, to guide evaluations and behaviour