Breast feeding in Australia: A comparative study of Aboriginal and non Aboriginal women

The superiority of breast feeding over bottle feeding is universally acknowledged, and its crucial contribution to infant health is accepted by health authorities. Australia in recognition of the importance of breast feeding to infant health, aims to increase the prevalence of breast feeding. Breast feeding provides benefits for all children, however the health advantage that is gained by breast feeding in comparison to artificial feeding is more apparent among disadvantaged groups. Aboriginal Australians are identified as one such disadvantaged group. This study compares the available literature regarding the prevalence of breast feeding in Aboriginal and non Aboriginal women. It is apparent that breast feeding prevalence differs, between population groups within Australia. Aboriginal children are less likely to have been breast fed than non Aboriginal children. The comparison, indicates that there are deficiencies in the research regarding breast feeding prevalence in both population groups. Many factors affect a woman's decision to breast feed, and the duration of her breast feeding. These factors include, socioeconomic status, age, marital status, educational attainment, occupation and smoking status. These factors are clearly associated with breast feeding in non Aboriginal women. For Aboriginal women, the factors influencing breast feeding are more complex. It is recommended therefore, that it is essential for future research to examine the attitudinal and socialdeterminants of infant feeding practices in Aboriginal women. This is necessary, if educational or interventional strategies are to be effective for this population

Decentralized ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption schemes for lightweight devices

In a traditional attribute-based encryption (ABE) system, there is only one central authority who generates and hence knows the secret keys of all users, this problem is known as the key escrow problem. An ABE scheme which can deal with the aforementioned problem is so-called a decentralized (or multi-authority) ABE scheme. There have been several efforts to propose decentralized ABE schemes in the literature, and these schemes can enjoy some interesting properties such as fine-grained access control and full security. However, all of them suffer from two main weaknesses that are large secret key size and slow decryption time. These weaknesses are obviously not desirable for lightweight device applications such as Internet of Things applications. In this paper, we propose two decentralized ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption schemes. Our proposed schemes have some nice properties such as constant-size secret key, fast decryption, optimized ciphertext size and fine-grained access control. Our schemes, as a result, could be seen as a solution for lightweight device applications. For completeness, we implement our schemes and give some concrete benchmarks. - 2019 Elsevier B.V.This research is funded by Vietnam National Foundation for Science and Technology Development (NAFOSTED) under grant number 102.01-2018.301 .Scopu

Tuberculosis and HIV co-infection—focus on the Asia-Pacific region

Tuberculosis (TB) is the leading opportunistic disease and cause of death in patients with HIV infection. In 2013 there were 1.1 million new TB/HIV co-infected cases globally, accounting for 12% of incident TB cases and 360 000 deaths. The Asia-Pacific region, which contributes more than a half of all TB cases worldwide, traditionally reports low TB/HIV co-infection rates. However, routine testing of TB patients for HIV infection is not universally implemented and the estimated prevalence of HIV in new TB cases increased to 6.3% in 2013. Although HIV infection rates have not seen the rapid rise observed in Sub-Saharan Africa, indications are that rates are increasing among specific high-risk groups. This paper reviews the risks of TB exposure and progression to disease, including the risk of TB recurrence, in this vulnerable population. There is urgency to scale up interventions such as intensified TB case-finding, isoniazid preventive therapy, and TB infection control, as well as HIV testing and improved access to antiretroviral treatment. Increased awareness and concerted action is required to reduce TB/HIV co-infection rates in the Asia-Pacific region and to improve the outcomes of people living with HIV