Solenoid magnetic fields calculated from superposed semi-infinite solenoids

Calculation of a thick solenoid coils magnetic field components is made by a superposition of the fields produced by four solenoids of infinite length and zero inner radius. The field produced by this semi-infinite solenoid is dependent on only two variables, the radial and axial field point coordinates

Prevention and treatment of childhood malnutrition in rural Malawi: Lungwena nutrition studies

Malawi is one of the poorest countries in the world with poor health and nutritional indicators. It is sometimes only surpassed by countries under conflict. Such a situation necessitated a search for local causes of undernutrition which heavily contribute to childhood mortality in Malawi.Literature showed that certain aspects of undernutrition had not been wholly explained. The determination of when growth faltering starts had been hampered by lack of an appropriate reference standard. This raised a question when growth faltering actually start, as preventive strategies had to be instituted early in the development of the problem. Forthis, local studies were needed. The review highlighted the fact that determinants of malnutrition may not have the same importance in all settings and thus preventive strategies that work in one place may not work in all settings. This meant that determination of local causes and effective interventions was one way of alleviating the problem. It had been standard to consider underweight and stunting as being resultantfrom the same causal factors. The epidemiology of wasting and stunting and the relationship of weight and height gain suggested possible difference in aetiology and a need to develop a clear understanding of their relationship, which in turn could help in developing effective interventions

Compassionate pedagogy: the ethics of care in early childhood professionalism

This paper builds upon an earlier attempt (Taggart, 2011) to articulate a rationale for professional training in early childhood education and care (ECEC) which is ethical as opposed to one which is purely instrumental or rooted in a patriarchal notion of women’s supposed unique suitability. The argument proposes that a feminist approach to ethics, as both socially critical and psychologically affective or flexible, has a particular relevance to professional identity in ECEC. In particular, compassion, as a concept which has both sociological and psychological connotations, foregrounds the ethical dimension of the work whilst overcoming false dichotomies between discourses of ‘children’s rights’ and ‘care’. The implications for the training and professional identity of practitioners are discussed

Direct Generation of Neurosphere-Like Cells from Human Dermal Fibroblasts

Neural stem cell (NSC) transplantation replaces damaged brain cells and provides disease-modifying effects in many neurological disorders. However, there has been no efficient way to obtain autologous NSCs in patients. Given that ectopic factors can reprogram somatic cells to be pluripotent, we attempted to generate human NSC-like cells by reprograming human fibroblasts. Fibroblasts were transfected with NSC line-derived cellular extracts and grown in neurosphere culture conditions. The cells were then analyzed for NSC characteristics, including neurosphere formation, gene expression patterns, and ability to differentiate. The obtained induced neurosphere-like cells (iNS), which formed daughter neurospheres after serial passaging, expressed neural stem cell markers, and had demethylated SOX2 regulatory regions, all characteristics of human NSCs. The iNS had gene expression patterns that were a combination of the patterns of NSCs and fibroblasts, but they could be differentiated to express neuroglial markers and neuronal sodium channels. These results show for the first time that iNS can be directly generated from human fibroblasts. Further studies on their application in neurological diseases are warranted