National Child Measurement Programme: Detailed Analysis of the 2006/07 National Dataset

The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) weighs and measures the height of children in Reception (typically aged 4–5 years) and Year 6 (aged 10–11 years). The findings are used to inform local planning and delivery of services for children and gather population-level surveillance data to allow analysis of trends in excess weight. The programme also seeks to raise awareness of the importance of healthy weight in children. The NCMP is part of the government’s strategy to tackle the continuing rise in excess weight across the population. This report analyses the NCMP 2007/08 national dataset provided by the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care (NHS IC). The NHS IC collates and analyses NCMP data centrally after they have been collected at a local level and submitted by Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), with the support and cooperation of schools, children and parents. This report follows on from the report National Child Measurement Programme: 2007/08 school year, headline results (NHS IC 2007/08 NCMP report) published by the NHS IC in December 2008. It presents detailed secondary analysis to further our understanding of the epidemiology of child height, weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) across the country, and attempts to explain some of the findings presented in the NHS IC 2007/08 NCMP report. The National Obesity Observatory (NOO) will conduct further analyses following this report. The existence of different approaches to defining obesity means that the interpretation and comparison of prevalence data is more complex than it might initially appear. Health Survey for England (HSE) findings, in agreement with other data, show that over the last twenty years the proportion of the child population classified as overweight or obese has increased. In addition, HSE data also show an increase in mean BMI over the past decade for children. The NCMP dataset contains anonymised information on individual children who have been measured. This, combined with the size of the dataset, means the NCMP data provide a powerful tool to examine changes in child weight status. This can provide much more detail than simply the prevalence of overweight and obesity. This report presents analysis of PCT participation levels and investigates data quality issues in the collection of the 2007/08 NCMP dataset. Data on prevalence of underweight, healthy weight, overweight and obesity are analysed, comparing the 2007/08 data to 2006/07 and the 1990 baseline. Analyses by deprivation and ethnic group are also included. The report goes on to examine how the distribution of BMI differs by age and sex of the child sample population and investigates changes since the 1990 baseline. It also looks at the association between obesity prevalence and characteristics of both the individual children and the PCTs in which they were measured, using regression analysis

Benefits of current percolation in superconducting coated conductors

The critical currents of MOD/RABiTS and PLD/IBAD coated conductors have been measured as a function of magnetic field orientation and compared to films grown on single crystal substrates. By varying the orientation of magnetic field applied in the plane of the film, we are able to determine the extent to which current flow in each type of conductor is percolative. Standard MOD/RABiTS conductors have also been compared to samples whose grain boundaries have been doped by diffusing Ca from an overlayer. We find that undoped MOD/RABiTS tapes have a less anisotropic in-plane field dependence than PLD/IBAD tapes and that the uniformity of critical current as a function of in-plane field angle is greater for MOD/RABiTS samples doped with Ca.EPSRC US Department of Energ

Influence of Nitrogen Availability on Aminotransferases in Lemna minor L

Protein contents and glutamate: glyoxylate, serine: glyoxylate, alanine: glyoxylate and glutamate: pyruvate aminotransferase activities per gram fresh weight declined sharply when Lemna minor L., previously grown on nitrate medium, was starved of nitrogen. Nitrogen replenishment after 5 d caused complete recovery of these parameters with higher values in ammonium-fed than nitrate-fed plants 7 d after transfer of plants from nitrogen-free medium. Glutamate: glyoxylate and alanine: glyoxylate aminotransferase specific activities (based on total extracted protein) showed little change with nitrogen availability. Serine: glyoxylate aminotransferase increased slowly during nitrogen starvation and decreased following nitrogen replenishment whether with ammonium or nitrate. After 1 d of nitrogen starvation the specific activity of glutamate: pyruvate aminotransferase declined; it increased following nitrogen replenishment and ammonium gave rise to agreater activity than nitrate. The results are discussed in relation to the differences in stability of the various enzymes relative to the overall protein turnover rat

Standard evaluation framework for weight management interventions

This document builds on the ‘Standard Evaluation Framework (SEF) for weight management interventions’, published by NOO in April 2009.1 It takes the principles described in the original SEF and applies them to dietary interventions. It contains a list of ‘essential’ and ‘desirable’ criteria for data required for a comprehensive and robust evaluation. Essential criteria are the minimum data and information recommended to perform a basic evaluation of an intervention that sets out to improve diet. Desirable criteria are additional data that would improve the quality of an evaluation, and enhance understanding about what has been achieved, and the processes that have taken place during the intervention. A glossary of terms is available on page 35

National child measurement programme: detailed analysis of the 2007/08 national dataset

This report presents detailed secondary analyses to further our understanding of the epidemiology of child height, weight and Body Mass Index (BMI) across England. It attempts to explain some of the findings presented in the NHS Information Centre for Health and Social Care 2007/08 NCMP report. The report provides analysis of PCT participation levels and investigates data quality issues in the collection of the 2007/08 NCMP dataset. Data on prevalence of underweight, healthy weight, overweight and obesity are analysed, comparing the 2007/08 data to the 2006/07, and the 1990 baseline. Analyses by deprivation and ethnic group are also included. The report further examines how the distribution of BMI differs by age and sex of the child sample population, and investigates changes since the 1990 baseline. It looks at the association between obesity prevalence and characteristics of the individual children and the PCTs in which they were measured using regression analysis

Meteoroid hazards in deep space Final report

Design and development of Sisyphus meteoroid detection system for interplanetary spacecraf

Cubic Augmentation of Planar Graphs

In this paper we study the problem of augmenting a planar graph such that it becomes 3-regular and remains planar. We show that it is NP-hard to decide whether such an augmentation exists. On the other hand, we give an efficient algorithm for the variant of the problem where the input graph has a fixed planar (topological) embedding that has to be preserved by the augmentation. We further generalize this algorithm to test efficiently whether a 3-regular planar augmentation exists that additionally makes the input graph connected or biconnected. If the input graph should become even triconnected, we show that the existence of a 3-regular planar augmentation is again NP-hard to decide.Comment: accepted at ISAAC 201