The Impacts of a Community-Based Health Education and Nutritional Support Program on Birth Outcomes Among Migrant Workers in Maesot, Thailand: A Retrospective Review

Here is presented a retrospective review of the Charis Project’s Family Engagement Program (FEN) as it existed in 2014-2017. FEN was a program of women’s health education, nutrition supplements, and family visitation. The education program consisted of a 12-week course on nutrition, maternity, and sex education taught individually and in groups, focusing on pregnant Burmese migrant laborers, but including approximately 20 percent male participation. The nutrition supplements consisted of 5 kilograms of fresh vegetables and 12 eggs weekly to pregnant mothers, from course onset to about six months after childbirth depending on family needs. Family visitation took place during food deliveries, and focused on individual counselling and family stability. The program served 39 families from 2014-2017. FEN did not reduce neonatal mortality (due to a miscarriage and severe congenital birth defect), but resulted in all surviving infants being born normal weight and surviving to the end of 2019, representing a significant improvement over the 25.6 percent low birth weights reported for Kayin State, Myanmar

Full body aero-tactile integration in speech perception

Abstract We follow up on our research demonstrating that aerotactile information can enhance or interfere with accurate auditory perception, even among uninformed and untrained perceiver

Phonological contrast and phonetic variation: The case of velars in iwaidja

2020, Linguistic Society of America. All rights reserved. A field-based ultrasound and acoustic study of Iwaidja, an endangered Australian Aboriginal language, investigates the phonetic identity of nonnasal velar consonants in intervocalic position, where past work has proposed a [+continuant] vs. [−continuant] phonemic contrast. We analyze the putative contrast within a continuous phonetic space, defined by both acoustic and articulatory parameters, and find gradient variation: from more consonantal realizations, such as [ɰ], to more vocalic realizations, such as [a]. The distribution of realizations across lexical items and speakers does not support the proposed phonemic contrast. This case illustrates how lenition that is both phonetically gradient and variable across speakers and words can give the illusion of a contextu-ally restricted phonemic contrast

The impacts of a community-based health education and nutritional support program on birth outcomes among migrant workers in maesot, thailand: A retrospective review

Since 2014, The Charis Project and later Shade Tree Foundation have been conducting community-based interventions focusing on nutritional support and education for pregnant and nursing mothers to alleviate immediate human security threats and encourage family stability. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effectiveness of the first iteration of interventions from 2014 to 2017 in meeting the objectives of increased human security and family stability

Speech air flow with and without face masks

Face masks slow exhaled air flow and sequester exhaled particles. There are many types of face masks on the market today, each having widely varying fits, filtering, and air redirection characteristics. While particle filtration and flow resistance from masks has been well studied, their effects on speech air flow has not. We built a schlieren system and recorded speech air flow with 14 different face masks, comparing it to mask-less speech. All of the face masks reduced air flow from speech, but some allowed air flow features to reach further than 40 cm from a speaker’s lips and nose within a few seconds, and all the face masks allowed some air to escape above the nose. Evidence from available literature shows that distancing and ventilation in higher-risk indoor environment provide more benefit than wearing a face mask. Our own research shows all the masks we tested provide some additional benefit of restricting air flow from a speaker. However, well-fitted mask specifically designed for the purpose of preventing the spread of disease reduce air flow the most. Future research will study the effects of face masks on speech communication in order to facilitate cost/benefit analysis of mask usage in various environments

GOES-R STATIONKEEPING AND MOMENTUM MANAGEMENT

The NOAA Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) fire thrusters to remain within a 1deg longitude-latitude box and to dump accumulated angular momentum. In the past, maneuvers have disrupted GOES imaging due to attitude transients and the loss of orbit knowledge. If the R-series of spacecraft to be launched starting in 2012 were to follow current practice, maneuvers would still fail to meet Image Navigation and Registration (INR) specifications during and after thruster firings. Although maneuvers and recovery take only one percent of spacecraft lifetime, they sometimes come at inopportune times, such as hurricane season, when coverage is critical. To alleviate this problem, thruster firings small enough not to affect imaging are being considered. Eliminating post-maneuver recovery periods increases availability and facilitates autonomous operation. Frequent maneuvers also reduce 1ongitudeAatitude variation and allow satellite co-location. Improved orbit observations come from a high-altitude GPS receiver, and improved attitude control comes from thruster torque compensation. This paper reviews the effects of thruster firings on position knowledge and pointing control and suggests that low-thrust burns plus GPS and feedforward control offer a less disruptive approach to GOES-R stationkeeping and momentum management

Bisimilarity and refinement for hybrid(ised) logics

The complexity of modern software systems entails the need for reconfiguration mechanisms governing the dynamic evolution of their execution configurations in response to both external stimulus or internal performance measures. Formally, such systems may be represented by transition systems whose nodes correspond to the different configurations they may assume. Therefore, each node is endowed with, for example, an algebra, or a first-order structure, to precisely characterise the semantics of the services provided in the corresponding configuration. Hybrid logics, which add to the modal description of transition structures the ability to refer to specific states, offer a generic framework to approach the specification and design of this sort of systems. Therefore, the quest for suitable notions of equivalence and refinement between models of hybrid logic specifications becomes fundamental to any design discipline adopting this perspective. This paper contributes to this effort from a distinctive point of view: instead of focussing on a specific hybrid logic, the paper introduces notions of bisimilarity and refinement for hybridised logics, i.e. standard specification logics (e.g. propositional, equational, fuzzy, etc) to which modal and hybrid features were added in a systematic way.FC

COVID-19 medical papers have fewer women first authors than expected.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in school closures and distancing requirements that have disrupted both work and family life for many. Concerns exist that these disruptions caused by the pandemic may not have influenced men and women researchers equally. Many medical journals have published papers on the pandemic, which were generated by researchers facing the challenges of these disruptions. Here we report the results of an analysis that compared the gender distribution of authors on 1893 medical papers related to the pandemic with that on papers published in the same journals in 2019, for papers with first authors and last authors from the United States. Using mixed-effects regression models, we estimated that the proportion of COVID-19 papers with a woman first author was 19% lower than that for papers published in the same journals in 2019, while our comparisons for last authors and overall proportion of women authors per paper were inconclusive. A closer examination suggested that women\u27s representation as first authors of COVID-19 research was particularly low for papers published in March and April 2020. Our findings are consistent with the idea that the research productivity of women, especially early-career women, has been affected more than the research productivity of men