Healthy babies through infant-centered feeding protocol: an intervention targeting early childhood obesity in vulnerable populations

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Poor feeding practices during infancy contribute to obesity risk. As infants transition from human milk and/or formula-based diets to solid foods, these practices interfere with infant feeding self-regulation and healthy growth patterns. Compared with other socioeconomic groups, lower-income mothers are more likely to experience difficulty feeding their infants. This may include misinterpreting feeding cues and using less-than-optimal feeding styles and practices, such as pressuring infants during mealtimes and prematurely introducing solid food and sweetened beverages. The Healthy Babies trial aims to determine the efficacy of a community-based randomized controlled trial of an in-home intervention with economically and educationally disadvantaged mother-infant dyads. The educational intervention is being conducted during the infant's first 6 months of life to promote healthy transition to solids during their first year and is based on the theory of planned behavior.</p> <p>Methods/Design</p> <p>We will describe our study protocol for a multisite randomized control trial being conducted in Colorado and Michigan with an anticipated sample of 372 economically and educationally disadvantaged African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian mothers with infants. Participants are being recruited by county community agency staff. Participants are randomly assigned to the intervention or the control group. The intervention consists of six in-home visits by a trained paraprofessional instructor followed by three reinforcement telephone contacts when the baby is 6, 8, and 10 months old. Main maternal outcomes include a) maternal responsiveness, b) feeding style, and c) feeding practices. Main infant outcome is infant growth pattern. All measures occur at baseline and when the infant is 6 and 12 months old.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>If this project is successful, the expected outcomes will address whether the home-based early nutrition education intervention is effective in helping mothers develop healthy infant feeding practices that contribute to improving infant health and development and reducing the risk of early-onset childhood obesity.</p> <p>Trial Registration</p> <p>Current Controlled Trials <a href="http://www.anzctr.org.au/ACTRN126100000415000.aspx">ACTRN126100000415000</a></p

A chopper system for the MAX IV thermionic pre-injector

The MAX IV pro-injector will have one thermionic and one photocathode S-band RF gun, where the former will be used for ring injections. During ring injections, the bunches leaving the pre-injector have a structure that consists of ten 10 ns bunch trains, each containing three bunches. A chopper system consisting of two striplines and an adjustable aperture is used, where the desired bunch structure is obtained by superposing RE signals. The design of the chopper system and the initial tests of the thermionic pre-injector are presented in this paper. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved

Double-bunches for two-color soft X-ray free-electron laser at the MAX IV Laboratory

The ability to generate two-color free-electron laser (FEL) radiation enables a wider range of user experiments than just single-color FEL radiation. There are different schemes for generating the two colors, the original being to use a single bunch and two sets of undulators with different K-parameters. An alternative scheme was recently shown, where two separate bunches in the same RF bucket are used for lasing at different wavelengths in a single set of undulators. We here investigate the feasibility of accelerating and compressing a double-bunch time structure generated in the photocathode electron gun for subsequent use in a soft X-ray FEL at the MAX IV Laboratory

Beamline Design for Plasma-Wakefield Acceleration Experiments at MAX IV

The MAX IV Laboratory is a synchrotron radiation user facility located just outside the city of Lund, Sweden. The facility is made up of two storage rings, at 3 GeV and 1.5 GeV, respectively, and a linear accelerator, serving as a full-energy injector for the rings as well as a driver for the Short-Pulse Facility (SPF) located downstream of the extraction point to the 3 GeV ring. Recently, as part of the Soft X-ray Laser (SXL) project, a design study towards using the linac as a soft X-ray free-electron laser (FEL) driver was started. Part of the study is the design and commissioning of a diagnostics beamline based on a Transverse Deflecting Structure (TDS). Moreover, the PlasMAX collaboration is working towards using the MAX IV linac also for beam-driven plasma-wakefield (PWFA) experiments. Therefore, the design of the diagnostics beamline is being done to also accommodate an interaction chamber and final focusing, located upstream of the TDS. This proceeding details the current status of the beamline design and shows some preliminary single- and double-bunch current measurements

Driver-witness-bunches for plasma-wakefield acceleration at the MAX IV Linear Accelerator

Beam-driven plasma-wakefield acceleration is an acceleration scheme promising accelerating fields of at least two to three orders of magnitude higher than in conventional radiofrequency accelerating structures. The scheme relies on using a charged particle bunch (driver) to drive a non-linear plasma wake, into which a second bunch (witness) can be injected at an appropriate distance behind the first, yielding a substantial energy gain of the witness bunch particles. This puts very special demands on the machine providing the particle beam. In this article, we use simulations to show that, if driver-witness-bunches can be generated in the photocathode electron gun, the MAX IV Linear Accelerator could be used for plasma-wakefield acceleration