Potential economic impacts from improving breastfeeding rates in the UK

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.RATIONALE: Studies suggest that increased breastfeeding rates can provide substantial financial savings, but the scale of such savings in the UK is not known. OBJECTIVE: To calculate potential cost savings attributable to increases in breastfeeding rates from the National Health Service perspective. DESIGN AND SETTINGS: Cost savings focussed on where evidence of health benefit is strongest: reductions in gastrointestinal and lower respiratory tract infections, acute otitis media in infants, necrotising enterocolitis in preterm babies and breast cancer (BC) in women. Savings were estimated using a seven-step framework in which an incidence-based disease model determined the number of cases that could have been avoided if breastfeeding rates were increased. Point estimates of cost savings were subject to a deterministic sensitivity analysis. RESULTS: Treating the four acute diseases in children costs the UK at least £89 million annually. The 2009-2010 value of lifetime costs of treating maternal BC is estimated at £959 million. Supporting mothers who are exclusively breast feeding at 1 week to continue breast feeding until 4 months can be expected to reduce the incidence of three childhood infectious diseases and save at least £11 million annually. Doubling the proportion of mothers currently breast feeding for 7-18 months in their lifetime is likely to reduce the incidence of maternal BC and save at least £31 million at 2009-2010 value. CONCLUSIONS: The economic impact of low breastfeeding rates is substantial. Investing in services that support women who want to breast feed for longer is potentially cost saving

Changes in Pasture Growth Rate Due to Fertiliser and Grazing Management

It is imperative that sheep production systems in southern Australia continue to be refined so producers remain financially viable but at the same time the environment is not degraded. As part of a national thrust for development and promotion of better production systems, one research site has been established in Victoria where pastures and animal production are measured together with water and nutrient movement. Results for pasture growth rates over two years are presented here and will be used to develop best industry practice at completion of the project

What happens when you tell someone you self-injure? The effects of disclosing NSSI to adults and peers

Background: Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) is associated with significant adverse consequences, including increased risk of suicide, and is a growing public health concern. Consequently, facilitating help-seeking in youth who self-injure is an important goal. Although young people who disclose their NSSI typically confide in peers and family, it is unclear how this disclosure and related variables (e.g. support from family and friends, coping behaviours, reasons for living) affect help-seeking over time. The aim of this study was to advance understanding of the impact of disclosure of NSSI by young people and to investigate these effects over time. Methods: A sample of 2637 adolescents completed self-report questionnaires at three time points, one year apart. Results: Of the sample, 526 reported a history of NSSI and 308 of those who self-injured had disclosed their behaviour to someone else, most commonly friends and parents. Conclusions: Overall, we observed that disclosure of NSSI to parents facilitates informal help-seeking, improves coping and reduces suicidality, but that disclosure to peers might reduce perceived social support and encourage NSSI in others. We discuss these findings in light of their clinical and research implications

Housing Policy in the United States

The most significant and most expensive housing policy in the United States is the treatment of owner-occupied housing for tax purposes. This treatment of housing under the tax code is analogous to that in many other countries (for example, Sweden), but certainly not in all developed countries (for example, Canada). Federal subsidies to US renter households are much smaller. Policy has evolved from programmes in which the government built, owned, and managed dwellings to programmes emphasizing housing demand through vouchers and rent certificates awarded to eligible households

Adaptive Path Planning for Depth Constrained Bathymetric Mapping with an Autonomous Surface Vessel

This paper describes the design, implementation and testing of a suite of algorithms to enable depth constrained autonomous bathymetric (underwater topography) mapping by an Autonomous Surface Vessel (ASV). Given a target depth and a bounding polygon, the ASV will find and follow the intersection of the bounding polygon and the depth contour as modeled online with a Gaussian Process (GP). This intersection, once mapped, will then be used as a boundary within which a path will be planned for coverage to build a map of the Bathymetry. Methods for sequential updates to GP's are described allowing online fitting, prediction and hyper-parameter optimisation on a small embedded PC. New algorithms are introduced for the partitioning of convex polygons to allow efficient path planning for coverage. These algorithms are tested both in simulation and in the field with a small twin hull differential thrust vessel built for the task.Comment: 21 pages, 9 Figures, 1 Table. Submitted to The Journal of Field Robotic

Changes in women’s facial skin color over the ovulatory cycle are not detectable by the human visual system

Human ovulation is not advertised, as it is in several primate species, by conspicuous sexual swellings. However, there is increasing evidence that the attractiveness of women’s body odor, voice, and facial appearance peak during the fertile phase of their ovulatory cycle. Cycle effects on facial attractiveness may be underpinned by changes in facial skin color, but it is not clear if skin color varies cyclically in humans or if any changes are detectable. To test these questions we photographed women daily for at least one cycle. Changes in facial skin redness and luminance were then quantified by mapping the digital images to human long, medium, and shortwave visual receptors. We find cyclic variation in skin redness, but not luminance. Redness decreases rapidly after menstrual onset, increases in the days before ovulation, and remains high through the luteal phase. However, we also show that this variation is unlikely to be detectable by the human visual system. We conclude that changes in skin color are not responsible for the effects of the ovulatory cycle on women’s attractiveness

Selection on non-social traits limits the invasion of social cheats

While the conditions that favour the maintenance of cooperation have been extensively investigated, the significance of non-social selection pressures on social behaviours has received little attention. In the absence of non-social selection pressures, patches of cooperators are vulnerable to invasion by cheats. However, we show both theoretically, and experimentally with the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens, that cheats may be unable to invade patches of cooperators under strong non-social selection (both a novel abiotic environment and to a lesser extent, the presence of a virulent parasite). This is because beneficial mutations are most likely to arise in the numerically dominant cooperator population. Given the ubiquity of novel selection pressures on microbes, these results may help to explain why cooperation is the norm in natural populations of microbes