Infant feeding knowledge, attitudes,and beliefs predict antenatal intention among first-time mothers in Queensland

Aim: This study assessed infant feeding knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs among women from Queensland, Australia, in their first pregnancy. Antenatal feeding intention in this group was described, and the hypothesis was tested that antenatal knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about infant feeding are associated with antenatal intention for the duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding for the infant’s first year. Subjects and Methods: The Feeding Queensland Babies Study is a prospective survey of infant feeding attitudes and behaviors among first-time mothers in Queensland, Australia. Data on infant feeding knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and intention were collected antenatally, and an Infant Feeding Attitudes Score was calculated. Results: Although 85% of respondents endorsed breastfeeding as most appropriate for infants, 11% valued formula feeding equally. Intention to give any breastmilk during the first weeks was 98%, but it fell to 18% during the second year. More than one-quarter of women reported intention to introduce foods other than breastmilk before 5 months of infant age. The infant feeding attitudes and beliefs score correlated positively with feeding intention for breastfeeding and the introduction of complementary solids. Conclusions: Enhancing women’s knowledge of recommendations and their understanding of breastfeeding’s specific benefits and the reasons for recommended scheduling of feeding transitions may positively impact breastfeeding exclusivity and duration and the age-appropriate introduction of complementary solids. Communication of detailed feeding recommendations for the infant’s first year and specific information about the health benefits of breastfeeding should be a goal of healthcare providers working with pregnant women

The B_s and D_s decay constants in 3 flavor lattice QCD

Capitalizing on recent advances in lattice QCD, we present a calculation of the leptonic decay constants f_{B_s} and f_{D_s} that includes effects of one strange sea quark and two light sea quarks. The discretization errors of improved staggered fermion actions are small enough to simulate with 3 dynamical flavors on lattices with spacings around 0.1 fm using present computer resources. By shedding the quenched approximation and the associated lattice scale ambiguity, lattice QCD greatly increases its predictive power. NRQCD is used to simulate heavy quarks with masses between 1.5 m_c and m_b. We arrive at the following results: f_{B_s} = 260 \pm 7 \pm 26 \pm 8 \pm 5 MeV and f_{D_s} = 290 \pm 20 \pm 29 \pm 29 \pm 6 MeV. The first quoted error is the statistical uncertainty, and the rest estimate the sizes of higher order terms neglected in this calculation. All of these uncertainties are systematically improvable by including another order in the weak coupling expansion, the nonrelativistic expansion, or the Symanzik improvement program.Comment: 4 page

Renormalized Vacuum Polarization and Stress Tensor on the Horizon of a Schwarzschild Black Hole Threaded by a Cosmic String

We calculate the renormalized vacuum polarization and stress tensor for a massless, arbitrarily coupled scalar field in the Hartle-Hawking vacuum state on the horizon of a Schwarzschild black hole threaded by an infinte straight cosmic string. This calculation relies on a generalized Heine identity for non-integer Legendre functions which we derive without using specific properties of the Legendre functions themselves.Comment: This is an expanded version of a previous submission, we have added the calculation of the stress tensor. 28 pages, 7 figure

Injuries in Quidditch:A Prospective Study from a Complete UK Season

Background : Quidditch is a mixed-gender, full-contact sport founded in the USA in 2005, played worldwide by an estimated 25,000 players. It is one of the few mixed-gender full-contact sports, yet there remain few published studies regarding injury rates and patterns. A previous study suggested that the overall rate of injury in quidditch is in line with other contact sports, however raised concerns that female players were sustaining a higher rate of concussion when compared to male players. Purpose : To examine injury rates and injury patterns in UK quidditch athletes over the course of a single season. Study design: Prospective epidemiological study. Methods : Data were prospectively collected by professional first aid staff for the 2017-18 season spanning all major UK tournaments, involving 699 athletes. Anonymized player demographics were collected by an online survey. Time loss injury rates were measured per 1000 athletic exposures (AEs) and hours of play. Results: The overall time loss injury rate was 20.5 per 1000 hours or 8.0 per 1000 AEs. The combined rate of concussion was 7.3 per 1000 hours or 2.8 per 1000 AEs. There was no statistical difference between time loss injuries in males (20.9/1000 hours and 8.1/1000 AEs) and females (13.9/1000 hours and 5.4/1000 AEs) (p=0.30) and no statistical difference between concussion rates in males (n=7) and females (n=4) (p=0.60). Conclusions : Total time loss injury rates in quidditch appear to be comparable with other full-contact sports such as football. The rate of concussions for both males and females appear higher when compared to other contact sports. Level of evidence : 3Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Human geophagia, Calabash chalk and Undongo: Mineral element nutritional implications

The prime aim of our work is to report and comment on the bioaccessible concentrations – i.e., the soluble content of chemical elements in the gastrointestinal environment that is available for absorption – of a number of essential mineral nutrients and potentially harmful elements (PHEs) associated with the deliberate ingestion of African geophagical materials, namely Calabash chalk and Undongo. The pseudo-total concentrations of 13 mineral nutrients/PHEs were quantified following a nitric-perchloric acid digestion of nine different Calabash chalk samples, and bioaccessible contents of eight of these chemical elements were determined in simulated saliva/gastric and intestinal solutions obtained via use of the Fed ORganic Estimation human Simulation Test (FOREhST) in vitro procedure. The Calabash chalk pseudo-total content of the chemical elements is often below what may be regarded as average for soils/shales, and no concentration is excessively high. The in vitro leachate solutions had concentrations that were often lower than those of the blanks used in our experimental procedure, indicative of effective adsorption: lead, a PHE about which concern has been previously raised in connection with the consumption of Calabash chalk, was one such chemical element where this was evident. However, some concentrations in the leachate solutions are suggestive that Calabash chalk can be a source of chemical elements to humans in bioaccessible form, although generally the materials appear to be only a modest supplier: this applies even to iron, a mineral nutrient that has often been linked to the benefits of geophagia in previous academic literature. Our investigations indicate that at the reported rates of ingestion, Calabash chalk on the whole is not an important source of mineral nutrients or PHEs to humans. Similarly, although Undongo contains elevated pseudo-total concentrations of chromium and nickel, this soil is not a significant source to humans for any of the bioaccessible elements investigated

Evidence of discrete yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares) populations demands rethink of management for this globally important resource

Tropical tuna fisheries are central to food security and economic development of many regions of the world. Contemporary population assessment and management generally assume these fisheries exploit a single mixed spawning population, within ocean basins. To date population genetics has lacked the required power to conclusively test this assumption. Here we demonstrate heterogeneous population structure among yellowfin tuna sampled at three locations across the Pacific Ocean (western, central, and eastern) via analysis of double digest restriction-site associated DNA using Next Generation Sequencing technology. The differences among locations are such that individuals sampled from one of the three regions examined can be assigned with close to 100% accuracy demonstrating the power of this approach for providing practical markers for fishery independent verification of catch provenance in a way not achieved by previous techniques. Given these results, an extended pan-tropical survey of yellowfin tuna using this approach will not only help combat the largest threat to sustainable fisheries (i.e. illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing) but will also provide a basis to transform current monitoring, assessment, and management approaches for this globally significant species

Thermodynamics of (3+1)-dimensional black holes with toroidal or higher genus horizons

We examine counterparts of the Reissner-Nordstrom-anti-de Sitter black hole spacetimes in which the two-sphere has been replaced by a surface Sigma of constant negative or zero curvature. When horizons exist, the spacetimes are black holes with an asymptotically locally anti-de Sitter infinity, but the infinity topology differs from that in the asymptotically Minkowski case, and the horizon topology is not S^2. Maximal analytic extensions of the solutions are given. The local Hawking temperature is found. When Sigma is closed, we derive the first law of thermodynamics using a Brown-York type quasilocal energy at a finite boundary, and we identify the entropy as one quarter of the horizon area, independent of the horizon topology. The heat capacities with constant charge and constant electrostatic potential are shown to be positive definite. With the boundary pushed to infinity, we consider thermodynamical ensembles that fix the renormalized temperature and either the charge or the electrostatic potential at infinity. Both ensembles turn out to be thermodynamically stable, and dominated by a unique classical solution.Comment: 25 pages, REVTeX v3.1, contains 5 LaTeX figures. (Typos corrected, references and minor comments added. To be published in Phys. Rev. D.

Effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on orthopaedic trauma:a multicentre study across Scotland

Aims: The UK government declared a national lockdown on 23 March 2020 to reduce transmission of COVID-19. This study aims to identify the effect of lockdown on the rates, types, mechanisms, and mortality of musculoskeletal trauma across Scotland.Methods: Data for all musculoskeletal trauma requiring operative treatment were collected prospectively from five key orthopaedic units across Scotland during lockdown (23 March 2020 to 28 May 2020). This was compared with data for the same timeframe in 2019 and 2018. Data collected included all cases requiring surgery, injury type, mechanism of injury, and inpatient mortality.Results: A total of 1,315 patients received operative treatment from 23 March 2020 to 28 May 2020 compared with 1,791 in 2019 and 1,719 in 2018. The numbers of all injury types decreased, but the relative frequency of hip fractures increased (36.3% in 2020 vs 30.2% in 2019, p &lt; 0.0001 and 30.7% in 2018, p &lt; 0.0001). Significant increases were seen in the proportion of DIY-related injuries (3.1% in 2020 vs 1.7% in 2019, p = 0.012 and 1.6% in 2018, p &lt; 0.005) and injuries caused by falls (65.6% in 2020 vs 62.6% in 2019, p = 0.082 and 61.9% in 2018, p = 0.047). Significant decreases were seen in the proportion of road traffic collisions (2.6% in 2020 vs 5.4% in 2019, p &lt; 0.0001 and 4.2% in 2018, p = 0.016), occupational injuries (1.8% in 2020 vs 3.0% in 2019, p = 0.025 and 2.3% in 2018, p = 0.012) and infections (6.8% in 2020 vs 7.8% in 2019, p = 0.268 and 10.3% in 2018, p &lt; 0.012). Cycling injuries increased (78 in 2020 vs 64 in 2019 vs 42 in 2018). A significant increase in the proportion of self-harm injuries was seen (1.7% in 2020 vs 1.1% in 2019, p = 0.185 and 0.5% in 2018, p &lt; 0.0001). Mortality of trauma patients was significantly higher in 2020 (5.0%) than in 2019 (2.8%, p = 0.002) and 2018 (1.8%, p &lt; 0.0001).Conclusion: The UK COVID-19 lockdown has resulted in a marked reduction in musculoskeletal trauma patients undergoing surgery in Scotland. There have been significant changes in types and mechanisms of injury and, concerningly, mortality of trauma patients has risen significantly.</p