The Impact of Feeding Methods on Exclusion from Child Care for Infants under Six Months of Age

The increasing numbers of women entering the work force have created a greater need for accessible, quality, and affordable child care. Concurrently there is rising concern about the transmission of infection in child care settings. There is evidence, but no consensus, that breastfeeding may offer protection from infection, especially during the first months of life. However, employed/student mothers report that efforts to maintain breastfeeding are not well supported at the work/school site. The purpose of this investigation was to examine the impact of infant feeding methods on the exclusion rate due to illness among infants less than six months of age during the first five weeks of enrollment at child care; to ascertain whether exclusion affected the mother\u27s absenteeism from employment/school; and if other selected factors impacted on the exclusion rate. A five-part instrument, including a graduated infant feeding scale, was designed and validated for use in the research. The study took place in the regional San Diego area with 37 participating mother-infant pairs attending four different types of child care facilities. Information obtained was analyzed in a quantitative and qualitative manner using Pearson\u27s r, ANOVA, regression, and cross tabulations. The results indicated that infant feeding mode was significantly correlated with exclusion rate; i.e., the more extensively the infants were breastfed the less likely they were excluded. In turn, maternal lost time from work/school was highly related to infant exclusion. Most other factors examined failed to show significant impact. Findings support breastfeeding as the ideal mode of infant feeding and reinforce a need for on-site child care

Ethnic discrimination in private rental housing markets in Australia

Over the last two decades new and significant demographic, economic, social and environmental changes and challenges have shaped the production and consumption of housing in Australia and the policy settings that attempt to guide these processes. These changes and challenges, as outlined in this book, are many and varied. While these issues are new they raise timeless questions around affordability, access, density, quantity, type and location of housing needed in Australian towns and cities. The studies presented in this text also provide a unique insight into a range of housing production, consumption and policy issues that, while based in Australia, have implications that go beyond this national context. For instance how do suburban-based societies adjust to the realities of aging populations, anthropogenic climate change and the significant implications such change has for housing? How has policy been translated and assembled in specific national contexts? Similarly, what are the significantly different policy settings the production and consumption of housing in a post-Global Financial Crisis period require? Framed in this way this book accounts for and responds to some of the key housing issues of the 21st century

Neural network-based classification of X-ray fluorescence spectra of artists' pigments: an approach leveraging a synthetic dataset created using the fundamental parameters method

X-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy is an analytical technique used to identify chemical elements that has found widespread use in the cultural heritage sector to characterise artists' materials including the pigments in paintings. It generates a spectrum with characteristic emission lines relating to the elements present, which is interpreted by an expert to understand the materials therein. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) are an effective method for automating such classification tasks—an increasingly important feature as XRF datasets continue to grow in size—but they require large libraries that capture the natural variation of each class for training. As an alternative to having to acquire such a large library of XRF spectra of artists' materials a physical model, the Fundamental Parameters (FP) method, was used to generate a synthetic dataset of XRF spectra representative of pigments typically encountered in Renaissance paintings that could then be used to train a neural network. The synthetic spectra generated—modelled as single layers of individual pigments—had characteristic element lines closely matching those found in real XRF spectra. However, as the method did not incorporate effects from the X-ray source, the synthetic spectra lacked the continuum and Rayleigh and Compton scatter peaks. Nevertheless, the network trained on the synthetic dataset achieved 100% accuracy when tested on synthetic XRF data. Whilst this initial network only attained 55% accuracy when tested on real XRF spectra obtained from reference samples, applying transfer learning using a small quantity of such real XRF spectra increased the accuracy to 96%. Due to these promising results, the network was also tested on select data acquired during macro XRF (MA-XRF) scanning of a painting to challenge the model with noisier spectra Although only tested on spectra from relatively simple paint passages, the results obtained suggest that the FP method can be used to create accurate synthetic XRF spectra of individual artists' pigments, free from X-ray tube effects, on which a classification model could be trained for application to real XRF data and that the method has potential to be extended to deal with more complex paint mixtures and stratigraphies

Genotypic variation in phosphorus efficiency between wheat cultivars grown under greenhouse and field conditions

Phosphorus (P) efficiency (relative growth), which is described as the ratio of shoot dry matter or grain yield at deficient P supply to that obtained under adequate P supply, was compared in 25 winter wheat cultivars grown under greenhouse and field conditions with low and adequate P levels in a P-deficient calcareous soil. Adequate P supply resulted in significant increases in shoot dry weight and grain yield under both experimental conditions. In the greenhouse experiment, the increases in shoot dry weight under adequate P supply (80 mg kg(-1)) were from 0% (cv: C-1252) to 34% (cv: Dagdas). Under field conditions, the cultivars showed much greater variation in their response to adequate P supply (60 kg ha(-1)): the increases in shoot dry weight and grain yield with adequate P supply were between -2% (cv: Sivas-111/33) and 25% (cv: Kirac-66) for shoot dry matter production at the heading stage and between 0% (cv: Kirkpinar-79) and 76% (cv: Kate A-1) for grain yield at maturity. Almost all cultivars behaved totally different in their response to P deficiency under greenhouse and field conditions. Phosphorus efficiency ratios (relative growth) under greenhouse conditions did not correlate with the P efficiency ratios under field conditions. In general, durum wheat cultivars were found to be more P efficient compared with bread wheat cultivars. The results of this study indicated that there is wide variation in tolerance to P deficiency among wheat cultivars that can be exploited in breeding new wheat cultivars for high P deficiency tolerance. The results also demonstrated that P efficiency was expressed differently among the wheat cultivars when grown under greenhouse and field conditions and, therefore, special attention should be paid to growth conditions in screening wheat for P efficiency

The British Society for Rheumatology Biologics Registers in Ankylosing Spondylitis (BSRBR-AS) study: Protocol for a prospective cohort study of the long-term safety and quality of life outcomes of biologic treatment

This is the final version of the article. Available from BioMed Central via the DOI in this record.BACKGROUND: Axial spondyloarthropathy typically has its onset in early adulthood and can impact significantly on quality of life. In the UK, biologic anti-tumour necrosis factor therapy is recommended for patients who are unresponsive to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. There remain several unresolved issues about the long-term safety and quality of life outcomes of biologic treatment in axial spondyloarthropathy. Long-term "real-world" surveillance data are required to complement data from randomised controlled trials. METHODS/DESIGN: We are conducting a UK-wide prospective cohort study of patients with axial spondyloarthropathy who are naïve to biologic therapy at the time of recruitment. Those about to commence anti-tumour necrosis factor biologic therapy will enter a "biologic" sub-cohort with other patients assigned to a "non-biologic" sub-cohort. The primary objective is to determine whether the use of biologic therapy is associated with an increased risk of serious infection, while secondary objectives are to assess differences in malignancy, serious comorbidity, all-cause mortality but also assess impact on specific clinical domains (physical health, mental health and quality of life) including work outcomes between biologic and non-biologic patient cohorts. Patients will be followed-up for up to 5 years. Data are obtained at baseline and at standard clinical follow-up visits - at 3, 6 and 12 months and then annually for the biologic cohort and annually for the non-biologic cohort. This study will also collect biological samples for genetic analysis. DISCUSSION: Although biologic therapy is widely used for ankylosing spondylitis patients who are unresponsive to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, the majority of the available safety information comes from rheumatoid arthritis, where increased infection risk has consistently been shown. However, given the typical demographic differences between rheumatoid arthritis and axial spondyloarthropathy patients, it is important to develop an epidemiologically rigorous cohort of patients receiving biologic therapy to effectively evaluate outcomes with regard not only to safety but also to quantify benefits across clinical, psychosocial and work outcomes. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION: This is an observational cohort study and clinical trial registration was not required or obtained.BSRBR-AS is funded by the BSR, which in turn receives funding from the manufacturers of the biologic therapies included in this study (currently AbbVie, Pfizer and UCB). Pharmaceutical companies providing funds to BSR do not have a role in the oversight of the study, but they do receive advance notice of publications on which they are able to comment. They do not have access to the data collected but can request analyses of the data, for which additional funds are provided. GJM chairs a Pfizer competitive grant committee for which he receives an honorarium. GJM and GTJ have received separate funding from AbbVie and Pfizer to study spondyloarthritis in the Scotland Registry for Ankylosing Spondylitis (SIRAS) study. LK has received an unrestricted educational grant from UCB. AK has received research funding from Abbvie and Pfizer as well as speaker/chairman fees and payments for attending advisory boards from Abbvie, Pfizer and UCB. The remaining authors have no competing interests

A census of post-AGB stars in Gaia DR3: evidence for a substantial population of Galactic post-RGB stars

This paper presents the first census of Galactic post-asymptotic giant branch (post-AGB) stars in the Hertzsprung–Russell (HR) diagram. We combined Gaia DR3 parallax-based distances with extinction corrected integrated fluxes and derived luminosities for a sample of 185 stars that had been proposed to be post-AGB stars in the literature. The luminosities allow us to create an HR diagram containing the largest number of post-AGB candidate objects to date. A significant fraction of the objects fall outside the typical luminosity range as covered by theoretical evolutionary post-AGB tracks as well as observed for planetary nebula central stars. These include massive evolved supergiants and lower luminosity objects. Here, we highlight the fact that one-third of the post-AGB candidates are underluminous and we identify these with the recently recognized class of post-red giant branch objects thought to be the result of binary evolution

Regulation of xanthine dehydrogensase gene expression and uric acid production in human airway epithelial cells

© 2017 Huff et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Introduction: The airway epithelium is a physical and immunological barrier that protects the pulmonary system from inhaled environmental insults. Uric acid has been detected in the respiratory tract and can function as an antioxidant or damage associated molecular pattern. We have demonstrated that human airway epithelial cells are a source of uric acid. Our hypothesis is that uric acid production by airway epithelial cells is induced by environmental stimuli associated with chronic respiratory diseases. We therefore examined how airway epithelial cells regulate uric acid production. Materials and methods: Allergen and cigarette smoke mouse models were performed using house dust mite (HDM) and cigarette smoke exposure, respectively, with outcome measurements of lung uric acid levels. Primary human airway epithelial cells isolated from clinically diagnosed patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) were grown in submerged cultures and compared to age-matched healthy controls for uric acid release. HBEC-6KT cells, a human airway epithelial cell line, were grown under submerged monolayer conditions for mechanistic and gene expression studies. Results: HDM, but not cigarette smoke exposure, stimulated uric acid production in vivo and in vitro. Primary human airway epithelial cells from asthma, but not COPD patients, displayed elevated levels of extracellular uric acid in culture. In HBEC-6KT, production of uric acid was sensitive to the xanthine dehydrogenase (XDH) inhibitor, allopurinol, and the ATP Binding Cassette C4 (ABCC4) inhibitor, MK-571. Lastly, the pro-inflammatory cytokine combination of TNF-α and IFN-γ elevated extracellular uric acid levels and XDH gene expression in HBEC-6KT cells. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the active production of uric acid from human airway epithelial cells may be intrinsically altered in asthma and be further induced by pro-inflammatory cytokines

Early responses to H7N9 in southern mainland China

This article is made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund. © 2014 Goodwin and Sun; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: H7N9 posed potentially serious health challenges for Chinese society. The previous SARS outbreak in this country was accompanied by contradictory information, while worries about wide-spread influenza led to discrimination worldwide. Early understanding of public threat perceptions is therefore important for effective public health communication and intervention. Methods: We interviewed 1011 respondents by phone two weeks after the first case. Questions examined risk awareness and media use, beliefs about the emergence of the threat and those most at risk, anxiety about infection and preventive and avoidant behaviours. Results: Results demonstrate moderate levels of anxiety but relatively high levels of trust towards government officials. Threat emergence was associated with hygiene levels, temperature change, floating pigs in the Huangpu River and migration to the city. Anxiety predicted both recommended and non-recommended behavioural changes. Conclusions: Comparatively high levels of trust in Chinese government advice about H7N9 contrast positively with previous pandemic communications in China. Anxiety helped drive both recommended and non-recommended behaviours, with potentially important economic and social implications. This included evidence of 'othering’ of those associated with the threat (e.g. migrants). Findings emphasise the need to manage public communications early during new influenza outbreaks.Fudan Tydall Centre and Fudan Media and Public Opinion Center

Finite Element Model of Stress Wave Topology in Unidirectional Graphite/Epoxy: Wave Velocities and Flux Deviations

Until recently, the use of a finite element model (FEM) to simulate stress wave propagation has been limited to solutions where the number of degrees of freedom are kept to a minimum, because of hardware limitations on computer memory and computational speed. With the advent of a numte