Prevalence and socioeconomic determinants of the double burden of malnutrition in mother–child pairs in Latin America and the Caribbean

Background: The double burden of malnutrition (DBM), which refers to the coexistence of overnutrition and undernutrition among populations, households or individuals, is a growing problem in low/middle-income countries. The Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region has been particularly affected by the DBM, following a nutrition transition and a rapid increase in overweight, obesity and diet-related disease, while high levels of undernutrition persist. This study aims to describe the prevalence of four different DBM definitions in mother–child pairs across nine LAC countries and investigate the socioeconomic determinants of overweight mothers with at least one stunted child (SCOM). Methods: We used cross-sectional data from the Demographic and Health Surveys for all analyses. We used descriptive statistics to obtain prevalence rates and conducted multiple logistic regression analyses to investigate the association between SCOM households and socioeconomic determinants, including wealth index, maternal education, place of residency and whether the mother was working, adjusted for a range of variables. Results: Overweight/obese mothers with at least one anaemic child were the most common type of DBM, with a prevalence of 19.39%, followed by SCOM with a prevalence of 10.44%. Statistically significant socioeconomic predictors of SCOM were households with a lower wealth index, lower maternal education and living in rural areas. Conclusion: This study showed that the overall prevalence of most DBM definitions examined was high, which points to the need for urgent interventions in the LAC region. The unique set of socioeconomic predictors of SCOM identified in this study calls for future double-duty policies that simultaneously target food affordability, nutrition education and access to healthy food

Isolation of Agrobacterium vitis from grapevine propagating material by means of PCR after immunocapture cultivation

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Simple Formula for Nuclear Charge Radius

A new formula for the nuclear charge radius is proposed, dependent on the mass number (A) and neutron excess (N-Z) in the nucleus. It is simple and it reproduces all the experimentally available mean square radii and their isotopic shifts of even--even nuclei much better than other frequently used relations.Comment: The paper contains 7 pages in LateX and 6 figures (available upon request) in postscript. Email: [email protected]

The financial crisis in the German and English press: Metaphorical structures in the media coverage on Greece, Spain and Italy

The German media presentation of the so-called Greek financial crisis caused an unexpected uproar in Germany. An anti-Greek sentiment evolved and spread among German citizens and solidarity for crisis-hit Greece was mostly rejected. Public surveys revealed that many Germans even wanted Greece to exit the Eurozone immediately. This article highlights the crucial role of the media in shaping the negative public opinion. In 2010, a period which has lately been referred to as Greek bashing, the German press had discussed the Greek financial crisis heatedly and controversially. Europe's largest daily newspaper, BILD, published numerous reports that implicitly and explicitly constituted the myth of the corrupt and lazy Greeks in comparison to the hard-working Germans. In 2012, the crisis had spread much further, and not only Greece but other countries too were suffering from high debt, economic stagnation and unemployment. The news coverage became more moderate and conciliating and presented the dramatic social consequences for the respective population. This study highlights not only the development of the German media's tenor on the Greek crisis through time, but adds an international perspective and widens the view by comparing the media treatment of the different countries involved. Based on 122 online articles, the study methodologically focuses on the analysis of metaphorical language in the news coverage of three comparable international news magazines: SPIEGEL (Germany), The Economist (the UK) and TIME (the USA), and contrasts the representation of Greece with the depiction of larger indebted European countries like Spain and Italy. The analysis shows remarkable differences in the evaluation and presentation of the crisis, which can be linked to the degree of involvement of Germany, the UK and the USA in European policies. © The Author(s) 2014

Traveling waves of in vitro evolving RNA.

Populations of short self-replicating RNA variants have been confined to one side of a reaction-diffusion traveling wave front propagating along thin capillary tubes containing the Q beta viral enzyme. The propagation speed is accurately measurable with a magnitude of about 1 micron/sec, and the wave persists for hundreds of generations (of duration less than 1 min). Evolution of RNA occurs in the wavefront, as established by front velocity changes and gel electrophoresis of samples drawn from along the capillary. The high population numbers (approximately equal to 10(11], their well-characterized biochemistry, their short generation time, and the constant conditions make the system ideal for evolution experiments. Growth is monitored continuously by excitation of an added RNA-sensitive fluorescent dye, ethidium bromide. An analytic expression for the front velocity is derived for the multicomponent kinetic scheme that reduces, for a high RNA-enzyme binding constant, to the Fisher form v = 2 square root of kappa D, where D is the diffusion constant of the complex and kappa is the low-concentration overall replication rate coefficient. The latter is confirmed as the selective value-determining parameter by numerical solution of a two-species system

Looking through the eyes of the powerful

Across four experiments, we test the idea that power decreases metastereotyping, and that this effect is mediated by reduced perspective taking. Metastereotypes refer to the beliefs that members of group A share about the stereotypes that members of specific outgroup B typically have about ingroup A. We propose that the dominant psychological orientation of the powerless is aimed at seeing how others see them. In an intergroup situation they are therefore inclined to activate and apply metastereotypes. In the first three experiments we consistently find that low power leads to more metastereotyping than high power and control (in Experiment 3). Specifically, we show this effect with three different manipulations of power, namely a role manipulation (Experiment 1), experiential priming (Experiment 2), and parafoveal priming (Experiment 3). In the fourth experiment we uncover the mediating role of perspective taking. Together these findings provide strong evidence that powerlessness leads to metastereotyping