Pregnant women's responses to a tailored smoking cessation intervention: turning hopelessness into competence

Background: Cognitive behavioral interventions consisting of brief counseling and the provision of self-help material designed for pregnancy have been documented as effective smoking cessation interventions for pregnant women. However, there is a need to understand how such interventions are perceived by the targeted group. Aim: To understand the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses of pregnant women to a clinic-based smoking cessation intervention. Methods: In-depth interviews with women attending four antenatal clinics in Cape Town, South Africa, who were exposed to a smoking intervention delivered by midwives and peer counselors. Women were purposively selected to represent a variation in smoking behavior. Thirteen women were interviewed at their first antenatal visit and 10 were followed up and reinterviewed later in their pregnancies. A content analysis approach was used, which resulted in categories and themes describing women's experiences, thoughts, and feelings about the intervention. Results: Five women quit, five had cut down, and three could not be traced for follow-up. All informants perceived the intervention positively. Four main themes captured the intervention's role in influencing women's smoking behavior. The process started with ‘understanding their reality,’ which led to ‘embracing change’ and ‘deciding to hold nothing back,’ which created a basis for ‘turning hopelessness into a feeling of competence.’Conclusion: The intervention succeeded in shifting women from feeling pessimistic about ever quitting to feeling encouraged to try and quit. Informants rated the social support they received very highly and expressed the need for the intervention to become a routine component of clinic services

Effective Rheology of Bubbles Moving in a Capillary Tube

We calculate the average volumetric flux versus pressure drop of bubbles moving in a single capillary tube with varying diameter, finding a square-root relation from mapping the flow equations onto that of a driven overdamped pendulum. The calculation is based on a derivation of the equation of motion of a bubble train from considering the capillary forces and the entropy production associated with the viscous flow. We also calculate the configurational probability of the positions of the bubbles.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

The prevalence of stunting, overweight and obesity, and metabolic disease risk in rural South African children.

BACKGROUND: Low- to middle-income countries are undergoing a health transition with non-communicable diseases contributing substantially to disease burden, despite persistence of undernutrition and infectious diseases. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and patterns of stunting and overweight/obesity, and hence risk for metabolic disease, in a group of children and adolescents in rural South Africa. METHODS: A cross-sectional growth survey was conducted involving 3511 children and adolescents 1-20 years, selected through stratified random sampling from a previously enumerated population living in Agincourt sub-district, Mpumalanga Province, South Africa. Anthropometric measurements including height, weight and waist circumference were taken using standard procedures. Tanner pubertal assessment was conducted among adolescents 9-20 years. Growth z-scores were generated using 2006 WHO standards for children up to five years and 1977 NCHS/WHO reference for older children. Overweight and obesity for those or = 25 and > or = 30 kg/m2 for overweight and obesity respectively were used for those > or = 18 years. Waist circumference cut-offs of > or = 94 cm for males and > or = 80 cm for females and waist-to-height ratio of 0.5 for both sexes were used to determine metabolic disease risk in adolescents. RESULTS: About one in five children aged 1-4 years was stunted; one in three of those aged one year. Concurrently, the prevalence of combined overweight and obesity, almost non-existent in boys, was substantial among adolescent girls, increasing with age and reaching approximately 20-25% in late adolescence. Central obesity was prevalent among adolescent girls, increasing with sexual maturation and reaching a peak of 35% at Tanner Stage 5, indicating increased risk for metabolic disease. CONCLUSIONS: The study highlights that in transitional societies, early stunting and adolescent obesity may co-exist in the same socio-geographic population. It is likely that this profile relates to changes in nutrition and diet, but variation in factors such as infectious disease burden and physical activity patterns, as well as social influences, need to be investigated. As obesity and adult short stature are risk factors for metabolic syndrome and Type 2 diabetes, this combination of early stunting and adolescent obesity may be an explosive combination

Growth and weight status in treatment-naïve 12-16 year old adolescents with Alcohol Use Disorders in Cape Town, South Africa

The original publication is available at http://www.nutritionj.com/Publication of this article was funded by the Stellenbosch University Open Access Fund.Abstract: Background Heavy alcohol consumption during adolescence has many known harmful health and social consequences and is strongly associated with numerous health risk behaviours. The consequences of heavy alcohol use during adolescence on nutritional status, specifically growth and weight status are largely unknown at this time. Methods Substance use, anthropometric indices of growth and weight, dietary energy intake and physical activity in heavy drinking adolescents (meeting DSM-IV criteria for alcohol use disorders) and matched light/non-drinking control adolescents were assessed. Results Lifetime alcohol dose, measured in standard drinks of alcohol, was orders of magnitude higher in adolescents with alcohol use disorders (AUDs) compared to controls. The AUDs group was selected to represent relatively 'pure' AUDs, with minimal other drug use and no psychiatric diagnoses. The growth and weight status of adolescents with AUDs were generally comparable to that of controls, and is in line with the growth and weight status of the South African adolescent population. A greater proportion of overweight/obese females was found in both groups, with this percentage tending to be greater, although not significantly so, in the AUDs group. Adolescent females with AUDs had increased odds of being overweight/obese compared to controls, after adjustment for smoking, physical activity and energy intake. Conclusion Anthropometric indices of growth and weight status of participants in the Control and AUD groups were generally comparable. Female adolescents with AUDs may have an increased risk of being overweight/obese compared to adolescent females without AUDs. The presence of an AUD in our adolescent sample was associated with higher energy intake. Longitudinal studies are needed to elucidate the effects of heavy alcohol use on energy balance, growth and weight status in adolescents as they age. Nonetheless, the current study contributes to our understanding of the impacts of heavy alcohol consumption on important aspects of adolescent development.Publishers' versio

Response of the Cutworm Spodoptera litura to Sesame Leaves or Crude Extracts in Diet

The effects of extracts of sesame, Sesamum indicum L. (Liamiales: Pedaliaceae), and whole leaves of some selected cultivars of sesame were tested using a natural host Spodoptera litura (F.) (Lepidoptera: Noctuidae). Indices taken using the immature stages include; diet utilization, growth and development and induction of detoxification enzymes. The results indicate that S. litura generally selects its food amongst cultivars within 6 hours after food presentation. Growth and development of the insect is controlled also by plant acceptability and quality. Although all the cultivars tested significantly limit insect growth and development the variety 56S-radiatum did not allow a complete life cycle as pupation from first instar stage was 0%. Generally the crucial period for immature S. litura was the larval period, especially the first two instars where the weight of an insect fed on an experimental diet was three times lower than that of a control diet. The larval developmental period was greater than 40 days as compared to 17 days for insects fed a control diet. S. litura also had lowered efficiency in utilizing ingested food, from a low of 13% in a sesame cultivar to 45% in the control diet. The key detoxification enzyme was a glutathione s-transferase that was confirmed by a 6-fold increase between S. litura fed a plant cultivar vs. a control diet towards the substrate 1,2-dichloro-4-nitrobenzene. First and second instars of S. litura have a relatively reduced detoxification of enzymes in response to plant cultivar diets leading to low survival. A 3% v/w crude extract of the cultivars increased enzyme induction towards all the tested substrates

Evidence for perinatal and child health care guidelines in crisis settings: can Cochrane help?

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>It is important that healthcare provided in crisis settings is based on the best available research evidence. We reviewed guidelines for child and perinatal health care in crisis situations to determine whether they were based on research evidence, whether Cochrane systematic reviews were available in the clinical areas addressed by these guidelines and whether summaries of these reviews were provided in Evidence Aid.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Broad internet searches were undertaken to identify relevant guidelines. Guidelines were appraised using AGREE and the clinical areas that were relevant to perinatal or child health were extracted. We searched The Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews to identify potentially relevant reviews. For each review we determined how many trials were included, and how many were conducted in resource-limited settings.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Six guidelines met selection criteria. None of the included guidelines were clearly based on research evidence. 198 Cochrane reviews were potentially relevant to the guidelines. These reviews predominantly addressed nutrient supplementation, breastfeeding, malaria, maternal hypertension, premature labour and prevention of HIV transmission. Most reviews included studies from developing settings. However for large portions of the guidelines, particularly health services delivery, there were no relevant reviews. Only 18 (9.1%) reviews have summaries in Evidence Aid.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We did not identify any evidence-based guidelines for perinatal and child health care in disaster settings. We found many Cochrane reviews that could contribute to the evidence-base supporting future guidelines. However there are important issues to be addressed in terms of the relevance of the available reviews and increasing the number of reviews addressing health care delivery.</p

Modeling Brain Resonance Phenomena Using a Neural Mass Model

Stimulation with rhythmic light flicker (photic driving) plays an important role in the diagnosis of schizophrenia, mood disorder, migraine, and epilepsy. In particular, the adjustment of spontaneous brain rhythms to the stimulus frequency (entrainment) is used to assess the functional flexibility of the brain. We aim to gain deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying this technique and to predict the effects of stimulus frequency and intensity. For this purpose, a modified Jansen and Rit neural mass model (NMM) of a cortical circuit is used. This mean field model has been designed to strike a balance between mathematical simplicity and biological plausibility. We reproduced the entrainment phenomenon observed in EEG during a photic driving experiment. More generally, we demonstrate that such a single area model can already yield very complex dynamics, including chaos, for biologically plausible parameter ranges. We chart the entire parameter space by means of characteristic Lyapunov spectra and Kaplan-Yorke dimension as well as time series and power spectra. Rhythmic and chaotic brain states were found virtually next to each other, such that small parameter changes can give rise to switching from one to another. Strikingly, this characteristic pattern of unpredictability generated by the model was matched to the experimental data with reasonable accuracy. These findings confirm that the NMM is a useful model of brain dynamics during photic driving. In this context, it can be used to study the mechanisms of, for example, perception and epileptic seizure generation. In particular, it enabled us to make predictions regarding the stimulus amplitude in further experiments for improving the entrainment effect

Alignment of the ALICE Inner Tracking System with cosmic-ray tracks

37 pages, 15 figures, revised version, accepted by JINSTALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) is the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) experiment devoted to investigating the strongly interacting matter created in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC energies. The ALICE ITS, Inner Tracking System, consists of six cylindrical layers of silicon detectors with three different technologies; in the outward direction: two layers of pixel detectors, two layers each of drift, and strip detectors. The number of parameters to be determined in the spatial alignment of the 2198 sensor modules of the ITS is about 13,000. The target alignment precision is well below 10 micron in some cases (pixels). The sources of alignment information include survey measurements, and the reconstructed tracks from cosmic rays and from proton-proton collisions. The main track-based alignment method uses the Millepede global approach. An iterative local method was developed and used as well. We present the results obtained for the ITS alignment using about 10^5 charged tracks from cosmic rays that have been collected during summer 2008, with the ALICE solenoidal magnet switched off.Peer reviewe