1,814 research outputs found
Recommended from our members
Household demand persistence for child micronutrient supplementation.
Addressing early-life micronutrient deficiencies can improve short- and long-term outcomes. In most contexts, private supply chains will be key to effective and efficient preventative supplementation. With established vendors, we conducted a 60-week market trial for a food-based micronutrient supplement in rural Burkina Faso with randomized price and non-price treatments. Repeat purchases - critical for effective supplementation - are extremely price sensitive. Loyalty cards boost demand more than price discounts, particularly in non-poor households where the father is the cardholder. A small minority of households achieved sufficient supplementation for their children through purely retail distribution, suggesting the need for more creative public-private delivery platforms informed by insights into household demand persistence and heterogeneity
Integrating Economic Analysis with a Randomized Controlled Trial: Willingness-to-Pay for a New Maternal Nutrient Supplement
Maternal nutrition during pregnancy can have significant implications for a child’s prenatal growth and development, and undernutrition experienced during the prenatal period increases the risk of early childhood morbidity and mortality and can permanently impair a child’s physical growth and cognitive development. We use new data from Ghana generated using contingent valuation and experimental auction techniques to estimate willingness-to-pay (WTP) for LNS, a new nutrient supplement aimed at preventing maternal undernutrition during pregnancy. We also explore the relative importance of individual and household characteristics as well as information about the long-term benefits of preventing undernutrition on WTP. We find that WTP is positive for a large majority of individuals in our samples, and the level of WTP varies significantly with individual and household characteristics including gender, household food insecurity, and household expenditures. These findings suggest important policy implications for the development of delivery options and pricing mechanisms for LNS.Economic Development, Nutrition, Willingness-to-Pay, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Health Economics and Policy, International Development,
Building consensus on interactions between population health researchers and the food industry: two-stage, online, international Delphi study and stakeholder survey
Abstract
Key to scientific integrity is ensuring that research findings are considered credible by scientific peers, practitioners, policymakers and the public. Industry sponsorship of nutritional research can result in bias and raises significant professional, public and media concern. Yet, there is no international consensus on how to prevent or manage conflicts of interest for researchers considering engaging with the food industry. This study aimed to determine internationally agreed principles to guide interactions between population health researchers and the food industry to prevent or manage conflicts of interest. We used a two-stage, online Delphi study for researchers (n=100 in 28 countries), and an online survey for stakeholders (n=84 in 26 countries). Levels of agreement were sought with 56 principles derived from a systematic review. Respondent comments were analysed using qualitative content analysis. High levels of agreement on principles were achieved for both groups (researchers 68%; stakeholders 65%). Highest levels of agreement were with principles concerning research methods and governance. More contentious were principles that required values-based decision-making, such as determining which elements of the commercial sector are acceptable to interact with. These results provide the basis for developing internationally-agreed guidelines for population health researchers governing interactions with the food industry.The work was undertaken under the auspices of the Centre for Diet and Activity Research (CEDAR), a UKCRC Public Health Research Centre of Excellence which is funded by the British Heart Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Economic and Social Research Council, Medical Research Council, the National Institute for Health Research, and the Wellcome Trust
Detection of an Optical Counterpart to the ALFALFA Ultra-compact High Velocity Cloud AGC 249525
We report on the detection at 98% confidence of an optical counterpart to
AGC 249525, an Ultra-Compact High Velocity Cloud (UCHVC) discovered by the
ALFALFA blind neutral hydrogen survey. UCHVCs are compact, isolated HI clouds
with properties consistent with their being nearby low-mass galaxies, but
without identified counterparts in extant optical surveys. Analysis of the
resolved stellar sources in deep - and -band imaging from the WIYN pODI
camera reveals a clustering of possible Red Giant Branch stars associated with
AGC 249525 at a distance of 1.640.45 Mpc. Matching our optical detection
with the HI synthesis map of AGC 249525 from Adams et al. (2016) shows that the
stellar overdensity is exactly coincident with the highest-density HI contour
from that study. Combining our optical photometry and the HI properties of this
object yields an absolute magnitude of , a stellar
mass between and , and an HI to stellar mass ratio between 9 and 144. This object has
stellar properties within the observed range of gas-poor Ultra-Faint Dwarfs in
the Local Group, but is gas-dominated.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures; accepted to ApJ
Constraints on the Intergalactic Transport of Cosmic Rays
Motivated by recent experimental proposals to search for extragalactic cosmic
rays (including anti-matter from distant galaxies), we study particle
propagation through the intergalactic medium (IGM). We first use estimates of
the magnetic field strength between galaxies to constrain the mean free path
for diffusion of particles through the IGM. We then develop a simple analytic
model to describe the diffusion of cosmic rays. Given the current age of
galaxies, our results indicate that, in reasonable models, a completely
negligible number of particles can enter our Galaxy from distances greater than
Mpc for relatively low energies ( GeV/n). We also find
that particle destruction in galaxies along the diffusion path produces an
exponential suppression of the possible flux of extragalactic cosmic rays.
Finally, we use gamma ray constraints to argue that the distance to any
hypothetical domains of anti-matter must be roughly comparable to the horizon
scale.Comment: 24 pages, AAS LaTex, 1 figure, accepted to Ap
- …