Pasteurization of Human Donor Milk

Appropriate and adequate nutrition is critical to reduce the risk of mortality in the preterm infant (Parker, 2019). Mother’s own milk (MOM) is the best source of nutrition and reduces the risk of common neonatal complications, including necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), infections resulting in late-onset sepsis, and retinopathy of prematurity (Li et al., 2017). When MOM is unavailable to the neonate, the World Health Organization and the American Academy of Pediatrics both recommend that human donor milk is the next best option (Peila et al., 2016). Donor milk can be obtained from a human milk bank and is considered safe for consumption following a pasteurization process to eliminate the risk of infectious microbial agents passing to the immunocompromised patient. Two methods of pasteurization of HDM are commonly utilized; thermal and nonthermal. Each method has been shown to reduce biochemical components of the milk, with the potential to adversely affect neonate growth (Pitino et al., 2019). This project explores the nutrient content of HDM and the pasteurization methods utilized by human milk banks. Thermal and nonthermal pasteurization methods of human donor milk are examined to assess the impact on nutritional components beneficial to the vulnerable neonatal population

The initial impact of COVID-19 and policy responses on household incomes

As soon as the scale of the coronavirus shock to the economy became clear, the UK government introduced three policies to protect directly household incomes: a Job Retention Scheme, to pay the wages of employees who were temporarily furloughed; a Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, to give grants to established self-employed people whose businesses had been affected; and a package of increases to entitlements to social security benefits, with Universal Credit at the core, that bolstered the UK’s means-tested ‘safety net’. This paper analyses the design and beneficiaries of these policies and, given the distributional pattern of the labour market shock, considers the emerging overall impact on living standards, particularly of low-income households

Family Matters: Links Between Family Structure and Early Child Health

This paper reviews the research of the past two decades that addresses the relationship between family structure and early child health outcomes. Specifically, we focus on family structure’s influence on child health during pregnancy, birth, and infancy. We briefly summarize the most pervasive changes to family structure in the US during recent decades and discuss how early child health is linked to future outcomes for children and adults. We review research that highlights the mechanisms linking family structure to early child health and identify key risk and protective factors for children from the prenatal period through infancy. We conclude with a critical assessment of current policy efforts to strengthen families and make recommendations for how best to address this issue for America’s families going forward

Reading Recovery in South Carolina: 2016-2017 State Report

Developed by New Zealand educator Dr. Marie M. Clay, Reading Recovery® is a short-term early intervention for first grade students who have the lowest achievement on measures of literacy outcomes. Students meet individually with a specially trained teacher for 30 minutes each day for a period of 12-20 weeks. The goal during this period is for children to develop a network of reading and writing strategies so they may independently perform within the average range of their class

Enzyme-Free Detection of Mutations in Cancer DNA Using Synthetic Oligonucleotide Probes and Fluorescence Microscopy

Rapid reliable diagnostics of DNA mutations are highly desirable in research and clinical assays. Current development in this field goes simultaneously in two directions: 1) high-throughput methods, and 2) portable assays. Non-enzymatic approaches are attractive for both types of methods since they would allow rapid and relatively inexpensive detection of nucleic acids. Modern fluorescence microscopy is having a huge impact on detection of biomolecules at previously unachievable resolution. However, no straightforward methods to detect DNA in a non-enzymatic way using fluorescence microscopy and nucleic acid analogues have been proposed so far.Here we report a novel enzyme-free approach to efficiently detect cancer mutations. This assay includes gene-specific target enrichment followed by annealing to oligonucleotides containing locked nucleic acids (LNAs) and finally, detection by fluorescence microscopy. The LNA containing probes display high binding affinity and specificity to DNA containing mutations, which allows for the detection of mutation abundance with an intercalating EvaGreen dye. We used a second probe, which increases the overall number of base pairs in order to produce a higher fluorescence signal by incorporating more dye molecules. Indeed we show here that using EvaGreen dye and LNA probes, genomic DNA containing BRAF V600E mutation could be detected by fluorescence microscopy at low femtomolar concentrations. Notably, this was at least 1000-fold above the potential detection limit.Overall, the novel assay we describe could become a new approach to rapid, reliable and enzyme-free diagnostics of cancer or other associated DNA targets. Importantly, stoichiometry of wild type and mutant targets is conserved in our assay, which allows for an accurate estimation of mutant abundance when the detection limit requirement is met. Using fluorescence microscopy, this approach presents the opportunity to detect DNA at single-molecule resolution and directly in the biological sample of choice