1,250 research outputs found
Health strategies for the control of childhood malnutrition
Malnutrition is the most important cause of morbidity and mortality
of young children in non-industrialized poor countries. The control of
protein - energy malnutrition is more complex than the prevention of most
other common killing diseases of children. It requires a multi-disciplinary
approach including involvement of departments and staff responsible for
agriculture, social services, education, economic development, health and
possibly others. The aetiology of the problem is complex and is closely
related to poverty, deprivation, ignorance and prevalent infectious diseases.
Intervention programmes should be considered a legitimate part of national
and local development plans.
This paper, while briefly discussing the planning of nutrition
programmes, deals primarily with those interventions in which health
personnel play a leading role. The need for base-line data, for continuing
surveillance and for planned evaluation of programmes is discussed. The
major part of the paper consists of a critical examination of the three
levels of treatment and prevention now commonly favoured: the hospital,
the nutrition rehabilitation centre and the health clinic
Nutrition planning and policy for African countries: summary report of a seminar held 2-19 June, 1976
This paper is the summary report of a seminar which was held at
the Institute for Development Studies from 2 to 19 June 1976, The seminar
was sponsored by USAID through a contract to Cornell University in Ithaca,
New York. Participants were government officers and employees of nongovernment
agencies from ten English-speaking African countries whose
responsibilities are clearly related to nutrition planning and policy making.
The report includes short summaries of the sessions conducted
by the seminar staff members. Some of these sessions were devoted to the
salient nutritional problems of Africa and their complex causes, to sociocultural
factors that influence the condition and its alleviation, and to
the basic economic considerations relating to the cause and control of
malnutrition and food shortages. However, much more time was devoted to
planning and policy relating to nutrition. The participants formed working
groups and prepared short reports on nutrition planning for Tanzania's
Ujamaa villages, on nutrition activities and goals in Kenya, on increased
wheat consumption and the trend toward bottle feeding in West Africa, and
on nutrition actitivities in the Sudan. The working group reports are also
included in this paper
Transits and Occultations of an Earth-Sized Planet in an 8.5-Hour Orbit
We report the discovery of an Earth-sized planet () in
an 8.5-hour orbit around a late G-type star (KIC 8435766, Kepler-78). The
object was identified in a search for short-period planets in the {\it Kepler}
database and confirmed to be a transiting planet (as opposed to an eclipsing
stellar system) through the absence of ellipsoidal light variations or
substantial radial-velocity variations. The unusually short orbital period and
the relative brightness of the host star ( = 11.5) enable robust
detections of the changing illumination of the visible hemisphere of the
planet, as well as the occultations of the planet by the star. We interpret
these signals as representing a combination of reflected and reprocessed light,
with the highest planet dayside temperature in the range of 2300 K to 3100 K.
Follow-up spectroscopy combined with finer sampling photometric observations
will further pin down the system parameters and may even yield the mass of the
planet.Comment: Accepted for publication, ApJ, 10 pages and 6 figure
Randomized Efficacy Trial of a Micronutrient-Fortified Beverage in Primary School Children in Tanzania.
Dietary supplements providing physiologic amounts of several micronutrients simultaneously have not been thoroughly tested for combating micronutrient deficiencies. We determined whether a beverage fortified with 10 micronutrients at physiologic doses influenced the iron and vitamin A status and growth of rural children (aged 6-11 y) attending primary schools. In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled efficacy trial, children were assigned to receive the fortified beverage or an unfortified beverage at school for 6 mo. There were nonsignificant differences at baseline between children in the fortified and nonfortified groups in iron status, serum retinol, and anthropometry. At the 6-mo follow-up, among children with anemia (hemoglobin < 110 g/L), there was a significantly larger increase in hemoglobin concentration in the fortified group than in the nonfortified group (9.2 and 0.2 g/L, respectively). Of those who were anemic at baseline, 69.4% in the nonfortified group and 55.1% in the fortified group remained anemic at follow-up (RR: 0.79), a cure rate of 21%. The prevalence of children with low serum retinol concentrations (< 200 microg/L) dropped significantly from 21.4% to 11.3% in the fortified group compared with a nonsignificant change (20.6% to 19.7%) in the nonfortified group. At follow-up, mean incremental changes in weight (1.79 compared with 1.24 kg), height (3.2 compared with 2.6 cm), and BMI (0.88 compared with 0.53) were significantly higher in the fortified group than in the nonfortified group. The fortified beverage significantly improved hematologic and anthropometric measurements and significantly lowered the overall prevalence of anemia and vitamin A deficiency
Detecting the Companions and Ellipsoidal Variations of RS CVn Primaries: I. sigma Geminorum
To measure the properties of both components of the RS CVn binary sigma
Geminorum (sigma Gem), we directly detect the faint companion, measure the
orbit, obtain model-independent masses and evolutionary histories, detect
ellipsoidal variations of the primary caused by the gravity of the companion,
and measure gravity darkening. We detect the companion with interferometric
observations obtained with the Michigan InfraRed Combiner (MIRC) at Georgia
State University's Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array
with a primary-to-secondary H-band flux ratio of 270+/-70. A radial velocity
curve of the companion was obtained with spectra from the Tillinghast Reflector
Echelle Spectrograph (TRES) on the 1.5-m Tillinghast Reflector at Fred Lawrence
Whipple Observatory (FLWO). We additionally use new observations from the
Tennessee State University Automated Spectroscopic and Photometric Telescopes
(AST and APT, respectively). From our orbit, we determine model-independent
masses of the components (M_1 = 1.28 +/- 0.07 M_Sun, M_2 = 0.73 +/- 0.03
M_Sun), and estimate a system age of 5 -/+ 1 Gyr. An average of the 27-year APT
light curve of sigma Gem folded over the orbital period (P = 19.6027 +/- 0.0005
days) reveals a quasi-sinusoidal signature, which has previously been
attributed to active longitudes 180 deg apart on the surface of sigma Gem. With
the component masses, diameters, and orbit, we find that the predicted light
curve for ellipsoidal variations due to the primary star partially filling its
Roche lobe potential matches well with the observed average light curve,
offering a compelling alternative explanation to the active longitudes
hypothesis. Measuring gravity darkening from the light curve gives beta < 0.1,
a value slightly lower than that expected from recent theory.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 11 pages, 6 figures, 8 table
Five Planets Transiting a Ninth Magnitude Star
The Kepler mission has revealed a great diversity of planetary systems and
architectures, but most of the planets discovered by Kepler orbit faint stars.
Using new data from the K2 mission, we present the discovery of a five planet
system transiting a bright (V = 8.9, K = 7.7) star called HIP 41378. HIP 41378
is a slightly metal-poor late F-type star with moderate rotation (v sin(i) = 7
km/s) and lies at a distance of 116 +/- 18 from Earth. We find that HIP 41378
hosts two sub-Neptune sized planets orbiting 3.5% outside a 2:1 period
commensurability in 15.6 and 31.7 day orbits. In addition, we detect three
planets which each transit once during the 75 days spanned by K2 observations.
One planet is Neptune sized in a likely ~160 day orbit, one is sub-Saturn sized
likely in a ~130 day orbit, and one is a Jupiter sized planet in a likely ~1
year orbit. We show that these estimates for the orbital periods can be made
more precise by taking into account dynamical stability considerations. We also
calculate the distribution of stellar reflex velocities expected for this
system, and show that it provides a good target for future radial velocity
observations. If a precise orbital period can be determined for the outer
Jovian planet through future observations, it will be an excellent candidate
for follow-up transit observations to study its atmosphere and measure its
oblateness.Comment: Accepted by ApJL. 12 pages, 6 figures, 2 table
Detecting the Companions and Ellipsoidal Variations of RS CVn Primaries: II. omicron Draconis, a Candidate for Recent Low-Mass Companion Ingestion
To measure the stellar and orbital properties of the metal-poor RS CVn binary
o Draconis (o Dra), we directly detect the companion using interferometric
observations obtained with the Michigan InfraRed Combiner at Georgia State
University's Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) Array. The
H-band flux ratio between the primary and secondary stars is the highest
confirmed flux ratio (370 +/- 40) observed with long-baseline optical
interferometry. These detections are combined with radial velocity data of both
the primary and secondary stars, including new data obtained with the
Tillinghast Reflector Echelle Spectrograph on the Tillinghast Reflector at the
Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory and the 2-m Tennessee State University
Automated Spectroscopic Telescope at Fairborn Observatory. We determine an
orbit from which we find model-independent masses and ages of the components
(M_A = 1.35 +\- 0.05 M_Sun, M_B = 0.99 +\- 0.02 M_Sun, system age = 3.0 -\+ 0.5
Gyr). An average of a 23-year light curve of o Dra from the Tennessee State
University Automated Photometric Telescope folded over the orbital period newly
reveals eclipses and the quasi-sinusoidal signature of ellipsoidal variations.
The modeled light curve for our system's stellar and orbital parameters confirm
these ellipsoidal variations due to the primary star partially filling its
Roche lobe potential, suggesting most of the photometric variations are not due
to stellar activity (starspots). Measuring gravity darkening from the average
light curve gives a best-fit of beta = 0.07 +\- 0.03, a value consistent with
conventional theory for convective envelope stars. The primary star also
exhibits an anomalously short rotation period, which, when taken with other
system parameters, suggests the star likely engulfed a low-mass companion that
had recently spun-up the star.Comment: 14 pages, 13 figures, Accepted to Ap
Bodies, technologies and action possibilities: when is an affordance?
Borrowed from ecological psychology, the concept of affordances is often said to offer the social study of technology a means of re-framing the question of what is, and what is not, ‘social’ about technological artefacts. The concept, many argue, enables us to chart a safe course between the perils of technological determinism and social constructivism. This article questions the sociological adequacy of the concept as conventionally deployed. Drawing on ethnographic work on the ways technological artefacts engage, and are engaged by, disabled bodies, we propose that the ‘affordances’ of technological objects are not reducible to their material constitution but are inextricably bound up with specific, historically situated modes of engagement and ways of life
The First Detection of Blue Straggler Stars in the Milky Way Bulge
We report the first detections of Blue Straggler Stars (BSS) in the bulge of
the Milky Way galaxy. Proper motions from extensive space-based observations
along a single sight-line allow us to separate a sufficiently clean and
well-characterized bulge sample that we are able to detect a small population
of bulge objects in the region of the color-magnitude diagram commonly occupied
young objects and blue strgglers. However, variability measurements of these
objects clearly establish that a fraction of them are blue stragglers. Out of
the 42 objects found in this region of the color-magnitude diagram, we estimate
that at least 18 are genuine BSS. We normalize the BSS population by our
estimate of the number of horizontal branch stars in the bulge in order to
compare the bulge to other stellar systems. The BSS fraction is clearly
discrepant from that found in stellar clusters. The blue straggler population
of dwarf spheroidals remains a subject of debate; some authors claim an
anticorrelation between the normalised blue straggler fraction and integrated
light. If this trend is real, then the bulge may extend it by three orders of
magnitude in mass. Conversely, we find that the genuinely young (~5Gy or
younger) population in the bulge, must be at most 3.4% under the most
conservative scenario for the BSS population.Comment: ApJ in press; 25 pages, 6 figures, 2 table
Kepler-16: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet
We report the detection of a planet whose orbit surrounds a pair of low-mass
stars. Data from the Kepler spacecraft reveal transits of the planet across
both stars, in addition to the mutual eclipses of the stars, giving precise
constraints on the absolute dimensions of all three bodies. The planet is
comparable to Saturn in mass and size, and is on a nearly circular 229-day
orbit around its two parent stars. The eclipsing stars are 20% and 69% as
massive as the sun, and have an eccentric 41-day orbit. The motions of all
three bodies are confined to within 0.5 degree of a single plane, suggesting
that the planet formed within a circumbinary disk.Comment: Science, in press; for supplemental material see
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/suppl/2011/09/14/333.6049.1602.DC1/1210923.Doyle.SOM.pd
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