Breastfeeding practices in New Zealand during the first year postpartum

There is a lack of research observing breastfeeding (BF) practices in detail globally and in New Zealand (NZ). This longitudinal study examined BF patterns and the association between BF duration and frequency per day in NZ infants from the birth to 12 months old. A total of 61 self-selected women in the Manawatu region were recruited during the last stage of pregnancy. The average age was 32.1±0.6 years. BF practices were obtained by 24-hour recall noting all of the infant‘s activities through a telephone interview. The interviews were conducted at approximately 2 weeks after birth and then at 2 weekly intervals during the first three months, and then once per month until the infants first birthday. Results show that the majority of infants during the first four weeks postpartum were fully BF (81% at two weeks & 82% at four weeks), 8% infants were mixed-fed and 10% had stopped BF by four weeks. At 16 weeks, 61% infants were fully BF, and 9% infants had been introduced to complementary foods (CF). At 24 weeks, most infants (93%) were no longer fully BF and 24% were receiving no breastmilk. At 48 weeks, 48% infants had stopped BF. Regarding BF patterns, throughout the first 48 weeks postpartum there was a wide variation of BF frequency/day, the longest interval between BF and the length of BF sessions. For example, at two weeks fully BF infants were fed from 5-21 times/day (interquartile range (IQR): 8-10 times/day); at 48 weeks BF infants receiving CF had from 1-22 breastfeeds/day (IQR: 3-8.3 times/day). For the longest interval between BF, at two weeks for fully BF infants the longest interval ranged from 3-10 hours (IQR:4.3-5.5 hours), and at 48 weeks for BF infants receiving CF the longest interval ranged from 3-24 hours (IQR:6.4-12.5 hours). The length of BF session, at two weeks ranged from 2-205 minutes/feed (IQR: 12-30 minutes) for fully BF infants, and at 48 weeks ranged from 4-85 minutes/feed (IQR: 5-15 minutes) for BF infants receiving CF. At the majority of observations there was a significantly lower BF frequency/day and longer longest interval between breastfeeds for mixed-fed infants compared to infants who were fully BF (p0.05). There was a significantly positive, but weak correlation between BF duration and BF frequency/day at two weeks (p<0.01; r=0.352) and four weeks (p<0.01; r=0.404), and between BF duration and BF frequency/day of fully BF infants at four weeks (p<0.05; r=0.289). There was no significant correlation between duration of BF/fully BF and maternal and infant characteristics, with the exception of parity (there was a positive association between parity of two or more and BF duration, p<0.05). Case studies were made of four participants who were still breastfeeding their babies at 48 weeks and whose frequency of feeding in the first four weeks after birth was outside of the often recommended 8-12 times/day. Results show that their BF practices varied widely between women during 48 weeks. BF frequency and the total length of BF sessions decreased over time. For two infants who had higher BF frequency in the first four weeks, BF frequency remained relatively high through the end of the first year. For another two infants who had lower BF frequency in the first four weeks, BF frequency remained relatively low through the end of the first year. For all cases, the total length of BF sessions per day did not generally fluctuate with the changes of BF frequency. In conclusion, this longitudinal study supplies a detailed picture of BF practices by 24-hour recall. Results show that almost half infants had stopped BF by 48 weeks. There is a wide variation of BF practices associated with successful BF. Therefore, individuals‘ particularity should be considered when making suggestions to the mother. Overall, this thesis may contribute to the literature on BF practices in NZ

Influence of an Immersive Virtual Environment on Learning Effect and Learning Experience

To explore the influence of the immersive virtual environment on the learning process of students, it is necessary to analyze the learning effect and learning experience. The immersive virtual environment provides a new idea for education, changes the traditional teaching mode, adds an immersive experience in the teaching process, and increases the participation and fun of students in the classroom. The learning effect and learning experience were analyzed, the positive effect of the immersive virtual environment on students was verified, and the influence of the immersive virtual environment on learning effect and learning experience was explored. Results indicate that the comprehensive score of teaching effect obtained by students with the research method is higher than that before the use of the research method, before using research methods, the average score of students is 84.7, and the average score of students in the experimental class after adopting the method in this study and one month of learning increases by 10 points. The immersive virtual environment has a positive effect on the learning effect and learning experience of students in each discipline

Drosophila Myc restores immune homeostasis of Imd pathway via activating miR-277 to inhibit imd/Tab2.

Drosophila Myc (dMyc), as a broad-spectrum transcription factor, can regulate the expression of a large number of genes to control diverse cellular processes, such as cell cycle progression, cell growth, proliferation and apoptosis. However, it remains largely unknown about whether dMyc can be involved in Drosophila innate immune response. Here, we have identified dMyc to be a negative regulator of Drosophila Imd pathway via the loss- and gain-of-function screening. We demonstrate that dMyc inhibits Drosophila Imd immune response via directly activating miR-277 transcription, which further inhibit the expression of imd and Tab2-Ra/b. Importantly, dMyc can improve the survival of flies upon infection, suggesting inhibiting Drosophila Imd pathway by dMyc is vital to restore immune homeostasis that is essential for survival. Taken together, our study not only reports a new dMyc-miR-277-imd/Tab2 axis involved in the negative regulation of Drosophila Imd pathway, and provides a new insight into the complex regulatory mechanism of Drosophila innate immune homeostasis maintenance

Response Surface Methodology (RSM) Mediated Optimization of Medium Components for Mycelial Growth and Metabolites Production of <i>Streptomyces alfalfae</i> XN-04

Streptomyces alfalfae XN-04 has been reported for the production of antifungal metabolites effectively to control Fusarium wilt of cotton, caused by Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. vasinfectum (Fov). In this study, we used integrated statistical experimental design methods to investigate the optimized liquid fermentation medium components of XN-04, which can significantly increase the antifungal activity and biomass of XN-04. Seven variables, including soluble starch, KNO3, soybean cake powder, K2HPO4, MgSO4·7H2O, CaCO3 and FeSO4·7H2O, were identified as the best ingredients based on one-factor-at-a-time (OFAT) method. The results of Plackett–Burman Design (PBD) showed that soluble starch, soybean cake powder and K2HPO4 were the most significant variables among the seven variables. The steepest climbing experiment and response surface methodology (RSM) were performed to determine the interactions among these three variables and fine-tune the concentrations. The optimal compositions of medium were as follows: soluble starch (26.26 g/L), KNO3 (1.00 g/L), soybean cake powder (23.54 g/L), K2HPO4 (0.27 g/L), MgSO4·7H2O (0.50 g/L), CaCO3 (1.00 g/L) and FeSO4·7H2O (0.10 g/L). A verification experiment was then carried out under the optimized conditions, and the results revealed the mycelial dry weight of S. alfalfae XN-04 reaching 6.61 g/L. Compared with the initial medium, a 7.47-fold increase in the biomass was achieved using the optimized medium. Moreover, the active ingredient was purified from the methanol extract of S. alfalfae XN-04 mycelium and then identified as roflamycoin (a polyene macrolide antibiotic). The results may provide new insights into the development of S. alfalfae XN-04 fermentation process and the control of the Fusarium wilt of cotton and other plant diseases

Advances in Studies on Nitrogen and Phosphorus Removal by Microalgal-Bacterial Consortia

With the development of life and industry, the nutrients in sewage increased gradually. The emerging symbiotic system of algal and bacteria has remarkable effect in removing nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. In this paper, the influence of nitrogen and phosphorus on bacteria-algal consortia and the absorption mechanism of nitrogen and phosphorus by the interaction of bacteria-algal consortia were analyzed, and a variety of methods for studying bacteria-algal consortia were summarized, mainly using isotope tracer technology to study the research results of bacteria and algae absorbing nitrogen and phosphorus in water. This method is of great significance for analyzing the mechanism of the treatment of nitrogen and phosphorus by the bacterial-algal symbiosis system from the microscopic point of view

Overexpression of Sweet Potato Carotenoid Cleavage Dioxygenase 4 (IbCCD4) Decreased Salt Tolerance in Arabidopsis thaliana

Salt stress has a serious impact on normal plant growth and yield. Carotenoid cleavage dioxygenase (CCD) degrades carotenoids to produce apocarotenoids, which are involved in plant responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. This study shows that the expression of sweet potato IbCCD4 was significantly induced by salt and dehydration stress. The heterologous expression of IbCCD4 in Arabidopsis was induced to confirm its salt tolerance. Under 200 mM NaCl treatment, compared to wild-type plants, the rosette leaves of IbCCD4-overexpressing Arabidopsis showed increased anthocyanins and carotenoid contents, an increased expression of most genes in the carotenoid metabolic pathway, and increased malondialdehyde (MDA) levels. IbCCD4-overexpressing lines also showed a decreased expression of resistance-related genes and a lower activity of three antioxidant enzymes: peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT). These results indicate that IbCCD4 reduced salt tolerance in Arabidopsis, which contributes to the understanding of the role of IbCCD4 in salt stress

A Lightweight Efficient Person Re-Identification Method Based on Multi-Attribute Feature Generation

Person re-identification (re-ID) technology has attracted extensive interests in critical applications of daily lives, such as autonomous surveillance systems and intelligent control. However, light-weight and efficient person re-ID solutions are rare because the limited computing resources cannot guarantee accuracy and efficiency in detecting person features, which inevitably results in performance bottleneck in real-time applications. Aiming at this research challenge, this study developed a lightweight framework for generation of the person multi-attribute feature. The framework mainly consists of three sub-networks each conforming to a convolutional neural network architecture: (1) the accessory attribute network (a-ANet) grasps the person ornament information for an accessory descriptor; (2) the body attribute network (b-ANet) captures the person region structure for a body descriptor; and (3) the color attribute network (c-ANet) forms the color descriptor to maintain the consistency of the color of the person(s). Inspired by the human visual processing mechanism, these descriptors (each &ldquo;descriptor&rdquo; corresponds to the attribute of an individual person) are integrated via a tree-based feature-selection method to construct a global &ldquo;feature&rdquo;, i.e., a multi-attribute descriptor of the person serving as the key to identify the person. Distance learning is then exploited to measure the person similarity for the final person re-identification. Experiments have been performed on four public datasets to evaluate the proposed framework: CUHK-01, CUHK-03, Market-1501, and VIPeR. The results indicate that (1) the multi-attribute feature outperforms most of the existing feature-representation methods by 5&ndash;10% at rank@1 in terms of the cumulative matching curve criterion; and (2) the time required for recognition is as low as O(n) for real-time person re-ID applications

A Lightweight Efficient Person Re-Identification Method Based on Multi-Attribute Feature Generation

Person re-identification (re-ID) technology has attracted extensive interests in critical applications of daily lives, such as autonomous surveillance systems and intelligent control. However, light-weight and efficient person re-ID solutions are rare because the limited computing resources cannot guarantee accuracy and efficiency in detecting person features, which inevitably results in performance bottleneck in real-time applications. Aiming at this research challenge, this study developed a lightweight framework for generation of the person multi-attribute feature. The framework mainly consists of three sub-networks each conforming to a convolutional neural network architecture: (1) the accessory attribute network (a-ANet) grasps the person ornament information for an accessory descriptor; (2) the body attribute network (b-ANet) captures the person region structure for a body descriptor; and (3) the color attribute network (c-ANet) forms the color descriptor to maintain the consistency of the color of the person(s). Inspired by the human visual processing mechanism, these descriptors (each “descriptor” corresponds to the attribute of an individual person) are integrated via a tree-based feature-selection method to construct a global “feature”, i.e., a multi-attribute descriptor of the person serving as the key to identify the person. Distance learning is then exploited to measure the person similarity for the final person re-identification. Experiments have been performed on four public datasets to evaluate the proposed framework: CUHK-01, CUHK-03, Market-1501, and VIPeR. The results indicate that (1) the multi-attribute feature outperforms most of the existing feature-representation methods by 5–10% at rank@1 in terms of the cumulative matching curve criterion; and (2) the time required for recognition is as low as O(n) for real-time person re-ID applications

An experimental study on wearing of conical picks interacting with rock

Wearing of conical picks on a coal mining machine and roadheaders are investigated experimentally using a full-scale rotary cutting machine. This study considers three types of conical picks with different tip materials to examine the effects of the wear resistance of conical picks and the wear characteristics in response to cutting load. The influence of pick wear on the cutting load and the pick tip temperature is analyzed, thereby providing an experimental-based guideline for reducing the pick wear. The results indicated that the cemented carbide pick has the best wear resistance among the three kinds of picks, and the pick life can be significantly extended for picks with a wear-resistant coating surface. It is also found that the pick wear has the highest influence on the normal force. Thermal fatigue and overloading are two factors that cause the pick wear failure. The results can also be used for design the conical pick with wear-resistant coating and validate the numerical models.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author