Magnetic Field Effects on Redox Potential of Reduction and Oxidation Agents

Redox potentials of two reducing (sodium dithionite and glucose) and two oxidizing (hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite) agents were monitored at various concentrations and at different temperatures for 30–75 minutes after the exposure of their water solutions (glucose and hypochlorite solutions once; sodium dithionite and hydrogen peroxide solutions one, two and/or three-times) to the static magnetic field of flux density of 0.9 V s m–2. The aim of the investigation was to suggest improvements, i.e., intensification and stability, of the reduction-oxidation ability of selected agents applicable in textile fibre processing, primarily bleaching and vat dyeing. Results of the experiments show that magnetic treatment (of solutions) raises both the reducing ability of glucose and the oxidation ability of hydrogen peroxide and sodium hypochlorite, promising some technological and economical benefits for the textile industry as well as for other fields of chemistry

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative and Breastfeeding Duration: Relating the Evidence to the Australian Context

Objective: The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is an effort by UNICEF and WHO to improve health through promoting, protecting and supporting breastfeeding. The key strategy in this Initiative is in transforming care of newborn infants in maternity hospitals. The recently published Australian Breastfeeding Leadership Plan (ABLP)1 strongly advocates, as part of its overall plan to increase breastfeeding rates in Australia, the use of public funding and support to implement the BFHI in Australian hospitals. The purpose of this review is to present evidence related to the BFHI's impact on breastfeeding duration, comment on the relevance of this evidence to the Australian context, and to discuss the value of BFHI in an environment where enhancement of breastfeeding duration appears to be the primary goal. Findings: Australia finds itself in the unique situation of being a high-income country with comparatively high initiation of exclusive breastfeeding and rapid deterioration in exclusive breastfeeding rates to six months. While the BFHI itself has been shown to increase the duration of exclusive breastfeeding, much of the evidence is derived from studies where exclusive breastfeeding initiation is low prior to implementation or there are major socioeconomic or cultural differences between study contexts and the context observed in Australia. Principal Conclusions: There is little evidence to suggest that BFHI implementation has a positive impact on breastfeeding duration in the Australian context. There is an urgent need for research in this area to inform stakeholders in breastfeeding. While implementation of BFHI principles might protect against the deterioration of breastfeeding initiation, limited resources might be better utilised by directing them toward initiatives outlined in the ABLP1 that are known to increase breastfeeding duration in the Australian context, like improving workplace conditions for breastfeeding and enhancing the knowledge of health professionals in the community, such as general practitioners, who are likely to provide breastfeeding support to mothers once they leave hospital

Children’s Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables: Do School Environment and Policies Affect Choice At School and Away from School?

School environment and policies affect children’s healthy eating choices both at and away from school. We estimate their effect on fruit and vegetable intakes and control for the endogenous decision to participate in the National School Lunch Program. School meal participants consume more total fruits and vegetables, with relatively more at school and less away from school compared to nonparticipants. The policies had little effect on participation itself. Policies to restrict high fat milks or desserts for school lunch and selling competitive foods are associated with greater fruit and/or vegetable intake at school; some policies affected consumption of fruits and/or vegetables at home as well. Policies that encourage fruit and vegetable consumption can improve diets both at and away from school

Comparing general-purpose and domain-specific languages: an empirical study

Many domain-specific languages, that try to bring feasible alternatives for existing solutions while simplifying programming work, have come up in recent years. Although, these little languages seem to be easy to use, there is an open issue whether they bring advantages in comparison to the application libraries, which are the most commonly used implementation approach. In this work, we present an experiment, which was carried out to compare such a domain-specific language with a comparable application library. The experiment was conducted with 36 programmers, who have answered a questionnaire on both implementation approaches. The questionnaire is more than 100 pages long. For a domain-specific language and the application library, the same problem domain has been used – construction of graphical user interfaces. In terms of a domain-specific language, XAML has been used and C# Forms for the application library. A cognitive dimension framework has been used for a comparison between XAML and C# Forms

Comparison of XAML and C# frorms using cognitive dimensions framework

Many domain-specific languages arise in the past years, trying to bring feasible alternatives for existing solutions with purpose to simplify programmers work. Although these little languages seem to be easier to use, there is an open issue whether they bring advantages comparing to most commonly used implementation approach, application libraries. In this work we present an experiment, carried out to compare such domain-specific language with comparable application library. The experiment was conducted with 36 programmers, which were answering questions on more than 100 long pages on both implementation approaches. For domain-specific language and application library the same problem domain has been used { construction of graphical user interfaces. In terms of domain-specific language, XAML has been used and C# Forms for application library. For comparison of XAML and C# Forms cognitive dimension framework has been used.Bilateral project - GRICE

SLOCLIM: a high-resolution daily gridded precipitation and temperature dataset for Slovenia

We present a new publicly available daily gridded dataset of maximum and minimum temperature and precipitation data covering the whole territory of Slovenia from 1950 to 2018. It represents the great variability of climate at the crossroads between the Mediterranean, Alpine and continental climatic regimes with altitudes between 0-2864ma.s.l. We completely reconstructed (quality control and gap filling) the data for the three variables from 174 observatories (climatological, precipitation and automatic stations) with the original records all over the country. A comprehensive quality control process based on the spatial coherence of the data was applied to the original dataset, and the missing values were estimated for each day and location independently. Using the filled data series, a grid of 1 x 1 km spatial resolution with 20 998 points was created by estimating daily temperatures (minimum and maximum) and precipitation, as well as their corresponding uncertainties at each grid point. In order to show the potential applications, four daily temperature indices and two on precipitation were calculated to describe the spatial distribution of (1) the absolute maximum and minimum temperature, (2) the number of frost days, (3) the number of summer days, (4) the intensity of precipitation and (5) the maximum number of consecutive dry days. The use of all the available information, the complete quality control and the high spatial resolution of the grid allowed for an accurate estimate of precipitation and temperature that represents a precise spatial and temporal distribution of daily temperatures and precipitation in Slovenia. The SLOCLIM dataset is publicly available at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4108543 and http://www.sloclim.eu (last access: 10 June 2021) and can be cited as Skrk et al. (2020)

Tool-supported building of DSLs from OWL ontologies

Domain-specific languages (DSLs) are computer languages intended for problem solving in a specific domain. Ontology is a formal representation of a set of concepts from a particular domain and the relations between them. An ontology may be used to describe a domain and to reason about the entities within the domain. This paper presents an Ontology2DSL framework to build DSLs from OWL ontologies. Ontology2DSL enables the semi-automated construction of a formal grammar and programs from an OWL ontology. The design approach, the functionalities of the framework, and a case study are also addressed in this paper. Special attention is paid to the architecture that encompasses the following components: the transformation pattern builder, the OWL parser, the rule reader, the rule execution component and the transaction logger