4,280 research outputs found
SMALL FARM POLYPERIOD PLANNING MODEL FOR DEVELOPING ECONOMIES
Farm Management,
The Role of Animal Source Foods in Improving Nutritional Health in Urban Informal Settlements: Identification of Knowledge Gaps and Implementation Barriers
Childhood undernutrition is a health crisis in the rapidly expanding informal settlements of low-income countries worldwide. Nearly half of Kenyan children in the Kibera settlement, in Nairobi, were reported to be stunted, indicating low height-for-age. Stunted children are at greater risk for poor cognitive and physical health outcomes in the long-term, problems that tend to be perpetuated in subsequent generations. Animal-source foods (ASF) supply a calorically dense source of micro- and macronutrients, and supplementation with ASF has been shown to improve linear growth and cognition. Correspondingly, increasing consumption of ASF by pregnant women and children has been proposed as a means to disrupt the intergenerational cycle of undernutrition caused by food insecurity. Household surveys indicate that consumption of ASF is low in urban slums, despite the availability of these foods in local markets. Here we review the studies addressing the role of ASF in the diets of the urban poor and identify knowledge gaps relevant to improving nutrition by increasing consumption of ASF. Based predominantly on studies in Kibera and greater Nairobi, these gaps include determining the minimal amount and frequency of dietary ASF to prevent stunting, defining how consumer preferences, markets, and income interact to impede or promote ASF consumption, and understanding the interaction between diet and both clinical and sub-clinical enteric disease on growth outcomes
Rapid prediction of lab-grown tissue properties using deep learning
The interactions between cells and the extracellular matrix are vital for the
self-organisation of tissues. In this paper we present proof-of-concept to use
machine learning tools to predict the role of this mechanobiology in the
self-organisation of cell-laden hydrogels grown in tethered moulds. We develop
a process for the automated generation of mould designs with and without key
symmetries. We create a large training set with cases by running
detailed biophysical simulations of cell-matrix interactions using the
contractile network dipole orientation (CONDOR) model for the self-organisation
of cellular hydrogels within these moulds. These are used to train an
implementation of the \texttt{pix2pix} deep learning model, reserving
cases that were unseen in the training of the neural network for training and
validation. Comparison between the predictions of the machine learning
technique and the reserved predictions from the biophysical algorithm show that
the machine learning algorithm makes excellent predictions. The machine
learning algorithm is significantly faster than the biophysical method, opening
the possibility of very high throughput rational design of moulds for
pharmaceutical testing, regenerative medicine and fundamental studies of
biology. Future extensions for scaffolds and 3D bioprinting will open
additional applications.Comment: 26 Pages, 11 Figure
High-throughput design of cultured tissue moulds using a biophysical model
The technique presented here identifies tethered mould designs, optimised for
growing cultured tissue with very highly-aligned cells. It is based on a
microscopic biophysical model for polarised cellular hydrogels. There is an
unmet need for tools to assist mould and scaffold designs for the growth of
cultured tissues with bespoke cell organisations, that can be used in
applications such as regenerative medicine, drug screening and cultured meat.
High-throughput biophysical calculations were made for a wide variety of
computer-generated moulds, with cell-matrix interactions and tissue-scale
forces simulated using a contractile-network dipole-orientation model.
Elongated moulds with central broadening and one of the following tethering
strategies are found to lead to highly-aligned cells: (1) tethers placed within
the bilateral protrusions resulting from an indentation on the short edge, to
guide alignment (2) tethers placed within a single vertex to shrink the
available space for misalignment. As such, proof-of-concept has been shown for
mould and tethered scaffold design based on a recently developed biophysical
model. The approach is applicable to a broad range of cell types that align in
tissues and is extensible for 3D scaffolds
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