Parental Beliefs about Returns to Child Health Investments

Childhood obesity has adverse health and productivity consequences and it poses negative externalities to health services. To shed light on the role of parents, we elicit parental beliefs about the returns and the persistence of a healthy diet and exercise routine in childhood. Parents believe both types of investments to improve child and adult health outcomes. Consistent with a model of taste formation, parents believe that childhood health behaviors persist into adulthood. We show that perceived returns are predictive of health investments and outcomes, and that less educated parents view the returns to health investments to be lower. Our descriptive evidence suggests that beliefs contribute to the socioeconomic inequality in health outcomes and the intergenerational transmission of obesity

Photoelectrochemical fabrication of spectroscopic diffraction gratings, phase 2

This program was directed toward the production of Echelle diffraction gratings by a light-driven, electrochemical etching technique (photoelectrochemical etching). Etching is carried out in single crystal materials, and the differential rate of etching of the different crystallographic planes used to define the groove profiles. Etching of V-groove profiles was first discovered by us during the first phase of this project, which was initially conceived as a general exploration of photoelectrochemical etching techniques for grating fabrication. This highly controllable V-groove etching process was considered to be of high significance for producing low pitch Echelles, and provided the basis for a more extensive Phase 2 investigation

Integer quantum Hall effect and Hofstadter's butterfly spectra in three-dimensional metals in external periodic modulations

We propose that Hofstadter's butterfly accompanied by quantum Hall effect that is similar to those predicted to occur in 3D tight-binding systems by Koshino {\it et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 86}, 1062 (2001)] can be realized in an entirely different system -- 3D metals applied with weak external periodic modulations (e.g., acoustic waves). Namely, an effect of two periodic potentials interferes with Landau's quantization due to an applied magnetic field \Vec{B}, resulting generally in fractal energy gaps as a function of the tilting angle of \Vec{B}, for which the accompanying quantized Hall tensors are computed. The phenomenon arises from the fact that, while the present system has a different physical origin for the butterfly from the 3D tight-binding systems, the mathematical forms are remarkably equivalent.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Interactive Exploration of Chemical Space with Scaffold Hunter

The supporting information is composed of the following files: I. pyruvatekinasedata.zip The pyruvate kinase data set used for the analysis described in the referenced publication is contained in this file. The analysis is based on the Pyruvate Kinase Screen as published in PubChem under the assay ID 361. It contains all compounds checked in this screen together with the scaffold tree generated from it. Scaffold Hunter can be used to query the database and interactively display the scaffold tree. This file is a dump from a MySQL 5.1 database and was generated with MySQL Administrator 1.2.5. It can be restored with the same program. II. scaffoldhunter_profiles.zip Scaffold Hunter saves the user profiles either on the hard disk or in a database. The corresponding database schema is contained in this zip file. This schema must be contained in the MySQL database before Scaffold Hunter can be run. This file is a dump from a MySQL 5.1 database and was generated with MySQL Administrator 1.2.5. It can be restored with the same program. III. InstallationGuide_Databases.pdf This document describes the installation of a local MySQL database server and the graphical user interface MySQL Administrator. Restoration of the profiles and sample databases are also described. IV. run_ScaffoldHunter.bat Windows batch file to run Scaffold Hunter with 1024 MByte of Memory. V. run_ScaffoldTreeGenerator.bat Windows batch file to run ScaffoldTreeGenerator with 1024 MByte of Memory. VI. ScaffoldHunter_readme.txt Textfile with advice for the installation of Scaffold Hunter. VII. ScaffoldTreeGenerator_readme.txt Textfile with advice for the installation of ScaffoldTree Generator

Characterization of fast-growing foams in bottling processes by endoscopic imaging and convolutional neural networks

Regardless of whether the occurrence of foams in industrial processes is desirable or not, the knowledge about the characteristics of their formation and morphology is crucial. This study addresses the measuring of characteristics in foam and the trailing bubbly liquid that result from air bubble entrainment by a plunging jet in the environment of industry-like bottling process es of non-carbonated beverages. Typically encountered during the bottling of fruit juices, this process configuration is characterized by very fast filling speeds with high dynamic system parameter changes. Especially in multiphase systems with a sensitive disperse phase like gas bubbles, the task of its measurement turns out to be difficult. The aim of the study is to develop and employ an image processing capability in real geometries under realistic industrial conditions, e.g. as opposed to a narrow measurement chamber. Therefore, a typically sized test bottle was only slightly modified to adapt an endoscopic measurement technique and to acquire image data in a minimally invasive way. Two convolutional neural networks (CNNs) were employed to analyze irregular non-overlapping bubbles and circular overlapping bubbles. CNNs provide a robust object recognition for varying image qualities and therefore can cover a broad range of process conditions at the cost of a time-consuming training process. The obtained single bubble and population measurements allow approximation, correlation and interpretation of the bubble size and shape distributions within the foam and in the bubbly liquid. The classification of the measured foam morphologies and the influence of operating conditions are presented. The applicability to the described test case as an industrial multiphase process reveals high potential for a huge field of operations for particle size and shape measurement by the introduced method

Triangle Diagram with Off-Shell Coulomb T-Matrix for (In-)Elastic Atomic and Nuclear Three-Body Processes

The driving terms in three-body theories of elastic and inelastic scattering of a charged particle off a bound state of two other charged particles contain the fully off-shell two-body Coulomb T-matrix describing the intermediate-state Coulomb scattering of the projectile with each of the charged target particles. Up to now the latter is usually replaced by the Coulomb potential, either when using the multiple-scattering approach or when solving three-body integral equations. General properties of the exact and the approximate on-shell driving terms are discussed, and the accuracy of this approximation is investigated numerically, both for atomic and nuclear processes including bound-state excitation, for energies below and above the corresponding three-body dissociation threshold, over the whole range of scattering angles.Comment: 22 pages, 11 figures, figures can be obtained upon request from the Authors, revte

Prenatal Insecticide Exposures and Birth Weight and Length among an Urban Minority Cohort

We reported previously that insecticide exposures were widespread among minority women in New York City during pregnancy and that levels of the organophosphate chlorpyrifos in umbilical cord plasma were inversely associated with birth weight and length. Here we expand analyses to include additional insecticides (the organophosphate diazinon and the carbamate propoxur), a larger sample size (n = 314 mother–newborn pairs), and insecticide measurements in maternal personal air during pregnancy as well as in umbilical cord plasma at delivery. Controlling for potential confounders, we found no association between maternal personal air insecticide levels and birth weight, length, or head circumference. For each log unit increase in cord plasma chlorpyrifos levels, birth weight decreased by 42.6 g [95% confidence interval (CI), −81.8 to −3.8, p = 0.03] and birth length decreased by 0.24 cm (95% CI, −0.47 to −0.01, p = 0.04). Combined measures of (ln)cord plasma chlorpyrifos and diazinon (adjusted for relative potency) were also inversely associated with birth weight and length (p < 0.05). Birth weight averaged 186.3 g less (95% CI, −375.2 to −45.5) among newborns with the highest compared with lowest 26% of exposure levels (p = 0.01). Further, the associations between birth weight and length and cord plasma chlorpyrifos and diazinon were highly significant (p ≤ 0.007) among newborns born before the 2000–2001 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regulatory actions to phase out residential use of these insecticides. Among newborns born after January 2001, exposure levels were substantially lower, and no association with fetal growth was apparent (p > 0.8). The propoxur metabolite 2-isopropoxyphenol in cord plasma was inversely associated with birth length, a finding of borderline significance (p = 0.05) after controlling for chlorpyrifos and diazinon. Results indicate that prenatal chlorpyrifos exposures have impaired fetal growth among this minority cohort and that diazinon exposures may have contributed to the effects. Findings support recent regulatory action to phase out residential uses of the insecticides

Direct detection and characterization of foot-and-mouth disease virus in East Africa using a field-ready real-time PCR platform

Effective control and monitoring of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) relies upon rapid and accurate disease confirmation. Currently, clinical samples are usually tested in reference laboratories using standardized assays recommended by The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE). However, the requirements for prompt and serotype-specific diagnosis during FMD outbreaks, and the need to establish robust laboratory testing capacity in FMD-endemic countries have motivated the development of simple diagnostic platforms to support local decision-making. Using a portable thermocycler, the T-COR™ 8, this study describes the laboratory and field evaluation of a commercially available, lyophilized pan-serotype-specific real-time RT-PCR (rRT-PCR) assay and a newly available FMD virus (FMDV) typing assay (East Africa-specific for serotypes: O, A, Southern African Territories [SAT] 1 and 2). Analytical sensitivity, diagnostic sensitivity and specificity of the pan-serotype-specific lyophilized assay were comparable to that of an OIE-recommended laboratory-based rRT-PCR (determined using a panel of 57 FMDV-positive samples and six non-FMDV vesicular disease samples for differential diagnosis). The FMDV-typing assay was able to correctly identify the serotype of 33/36 FMDV-positive samples (no cross-reactivity between serotypes was evident). Furthermore, the assays were able to accurately detect and type FMDV RNA in multiple sample types, including epithelial tissue suspensions, serum, oesophageal–pharyngeal (OP) fluid and oral swabs, both with and without the use of nucleic acid extraction. When deployed in laboratory and field settings in Tanzania, Kenya and Ethiopia, both assays reliably detected and serotyped FMDV RNA in samples (n = 144) collected from pre-clinical, clinical and clinically recovered cattle. These data support the use of field-ready rRT-PCR platforms in endemic settings for simple, highly sensitive and rapid detection and/or characterization of FMDV