60419 research outputs found
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Breastfeeding support in low and middle-income countries: Secondary analysis of national survey data
No full textBackground: Early initiation of breastfeeding and exclusive breastfeeding can reduce infant mortality.
Breastfeeding support interventions such as counselling may improve adherence to recommended practices. However, it is not known if these interventions work at the population level.
Objective:The aim of this study was to assess the relationship between early postnatal breastfeeding
support and recommended breastfeeding practices.
Design/setting: We pooled data from 11 Demographic and Health Surveys in Africa (n = 7), South East
Asia (n = 2), the Americas (n = 1), and Europe (n = 1) to analyse these associations at the population
level.
Participants: We limited the data to the most recent live births in the two years before the survey,
including 41,431 births.
Analysis: We fitted three multivariable logistic regression models to estimate the relationship between
early postnatal breastfeeding support (a newborn postnatal check within an hour of birth plus counselling
and observation of breastfeeding within two days) and three breastfeeding outcomes (early initiation of
breastfeeding, absence of prelacteal feeding, and exclusive breastfeeding), adjusting for sociodemographic
characteristics and birth-related factors.
Findings: Early breastfeeding support was associated with a 24% increase (OR=1.24 95%CI=1.11,1.39) in
the odds of initiating breastfeeding within one hour of birth. No relationships were found between
breastfeeding support and prelacteal feeding in the first three days or exclusive breastfeeding at six
months.
Key conclusion: While postnatal breastfeeding counselling and observation may improve early initiation
of breastfeeding, impact is not persistent for longer term breastfeeding outcomes.
Implication for practice: Improved training for breastfeeding support and an enabling policy environment
are required to improve breastfeeding practices for women and newborns.</p
Medical complicity and the legitimacy of practical authority.
No full textIf medical complicity is understood as compliance with a directive to act against the professional's best medical judgment, the question arises whether it can ever be justified. This paper will trace the contours of what would legitimate a directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment (and in possible contravention of her oath) using Joseph Raz's service conception of authority. The service conception is useful for basing the legitimacy of authoritative directives on the ability of the putative authority to enable subjects to comply better with reasons that already apply to them. Hence, the service conception bases the legitimacy of practical authority on a certain kind of greater knowledge or expertise. This helps to focus the conundrum regarding complicity on the clash of expertise between the medical expert and the governing body tasked with coordinating behaviour and otherwise devising rules for the social good. The ethical dilemma presented by a hypothetically legitimate directive to act against a professional's best medical judgment also serves to highlight the moral dimension of one's duty to obey a legitimate authority
Text2Sign: Towards Sign Language Production Using Neural Machine Translation and Generative Adversarial Networks.
No full textWe present a novel approach to automatic Sign Language Production using recent developments in Neural Machine Translation (NMT), Generative Adversarial Networks, and motion generation. Our system is capable of producing sign videos from spoken language sentences. Contrary to current approaches that are dependent on heavily annotated data, our approach requires minimal gloss and skeletal level annotations for training. We achieve this by breaking down the task into dedicated sub-processes. We first translate spoken language sentences into sign pose sequences by combining an NMT network with a Motion Graph. The resulting pose information is then used to condition a generative model that produces photo realistic sign language video sequences. This is the first approach to continuous sign video generation that does not use a classical graphical avatar. We evaluate the translation abilities of our approach on the PHOENIX14T Sign Language Translation dataset. We set a baseline for text-to-gloss translation, reporting a BLEU-4 score of 16.34/15.26 on dev/test sets. We further demonstrate the video generation capabilities of our approach for both multi-signer and high-definition settings qualitatively and quantitatively using broadcast quality assessment metrics
A multi-scale analysis of the microbial response of Listeria to novel processing technologies, as affected by system (micro)structure and natural microflora
No full textMinimal food processing methods, e.g. cold atmospheric plasma (CAP), ultrasound and the use of natural antimicrobials, are of interest to replace traditional decontamination techniques, as they are milder and thus maintain “fresh-like” food characteristics. Synergistically combining these techniques can increase the inactivation efficiency by acting as a hurdle for microbial growth. However, the efficacy and mechanism of action of combined treatments remains unclear, potentially leading instead to stress adaptation, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) development and/or post-treatment bacterial survival. Natural microflora present in foods could also present a challenge to microbial growth.
Most studies on the inactivation of food-related pathogens by these novel processing methods are conducted in liquid broths, or in/on specific food products. However, many foods are solid(like) e.g. soft cheeses, meats, and studies in real foods are informative only for the product studied. Food structure can impact the non-thermal processing efficacy, and the diffusion/efficacy of natural antimicrobials. This thesis presents, for the first time, a fundamental study on microbial inactivation by natural antimicrobials, ultrasound and/or CAP in structured food model systems of controlled rheological composition and complexity.
In this thesis, viscoelastic food models of various compositions and (micro)structural characteristics are developed and characterised. Significant structural effects are identified on a microscopic scale, i.e. the system viscosity and growth morphology (surface/immersed/planktonic) affect Listeria colony size and growth location/distribution. Selective surface growth on the protein phase of a complex biphasic protein-polysaccharide model system is observed for the first time. Furthermore, the efficacy of combined novel processing technologies is shown to depend on the microbial species, the system viscosity, the growth morphology (surface/immersed/planktonic), and the order in which treatments are applied.
This work sheds light on the combined efficacy of novel processing techniques for the inactivation of Listeria in structured food models, highlighting the importance of accounting for structural effects when designing inactivation processes for the food industry
Repartitioning
No full textWe present a new phenomenon in inflectional morphology, ‘repartitioning’, based on data from
Soq (Trans New Guinea). In repartitioning, the semantic boundary between two sets of morphological forms is redrawn in a single domain; one feature value takes over part, but not all, of
the meaning of the other. In Soq the boundary is redrawn between the yesterday past tense and
the hodiernal; the domain is the lexeme s- ‘stay’. For this one verb, the yesterday past takes over
most of the range of the hodiernal, while the morphological forms remain regular. In clause chains
the repartitioned verb surprisingly shows no syntactic effects. We demonstrate key differences
from known phenomena, notably syncretism and overdifferentiation. Repartitioning is indeed
new. It can be modeled in a theory based on default inheritance, but poses problems for other
approaches. Finally, we present a typology of featural mismatches that situates Soq relative to
known phenomena.
The Future of EU Development Policy Post-2020
No full textUnder the current proposals, the EU development cooperation budget would increase by 30%. This paper explores how this potential increase is designed to assist the EU in consolidating its international identity in line with the aims of the Global Strategy (EUGS) by better aligning the money in the development budget to the global ambitions of the EU. This has reignited concerns that this represents further politicisation of the development activities of the EU beyond the Treaty commitment to poverty reduction and once again highlights the tension between development goals and broader strategic goals. This paper explores this tension between development and strategic goals in what is clearly a moving target area. Comparing how the vision for EU development policy has evolved between the 2006 and 2017 Consensus’ on Development provides the context for a comparison to broader vision for external action set out in the EU’s Global Strategy. The paper then explores the proposed budget reforms in light of this comparison highlighting the implications for the EU as a development actor. It shows how discussions around the size of the EU budget coincide with Brexit and the re-negotiation of the EU’s relationship with a key group of developing countries, the ACP. It shows that the future negotiations will focus on the overall amount of the EU development budget, how the budget will be used and where – decisions that will shine a light onto the priorities of the EU as a development actor
A Behavioural Assessment of Social Anxiety and Social Motivation in Fragile X, Cornelia de Lange and Rubinstein-Taybi Syndromes
No full textUnique socio-behavioural phenotypes are reported for individuals with different neurodevelopmental disorders. Here, the effects of adult familiarity and nature of interaction on social anxiety and social motivation were investigated in individuals with fragile X (FXS; n = 20), Cornelia de Lange (CdLS; n = 20) and Rubinstein-Taybi (RTS; n = 20) syndromes, compared to individuals with Down syndrome (DS; n = 20). The Social Anxiety and Motivation Rating Scale was employed whilst participants completed four social tasks, each administered separately by a familiar adult, and also by an unfamiliar adult. Compared to participants with DS, those with FXS and RTS exhibited high levels of social anxiety but similar levels of social motivation. Participants with CdLS showed heightened social anxiety and reduced social motivation only during interactions with an unfamiliar adult when active participation was voluntary
Polarization Modulation Design for Reduced RF Chain Wireless
No full textIn this treatise, we introduce a novel
polarization modulation (PM) scheme, where we
capitalize on the reconfigurable polarization antenna
design for exploring the polarization domain
degrees of freedom, thus boosting the system
throughput. More specifically, we invoke the
inherent properties of a dual polarized (DP) antenna
for transmitting additional information carried
by the axial ratio (AR) and tilt angle of
elliptic polarization, in addition to the information
streams transmitted over its vertical (V) and
horizontal (H) components. Furthermore, we propose
a special algorithm for generating an improved
PM constellation tailored especially for
wireless PM modulation. We also provide an analytical
framework to compute the average bit error
rate (ABER) of the PM system. Furthermore, we
characterize both the discrete-input continuousoutput
memoryless channel (DCMC) capacity and
the continuous-input continuous-output memoryless
channel (CCMC) capacity as well as the upper
and lower bounds of the CCMC capacity. The
results show the superiority of our proposed PM
system over conventional modulation schemes in
terms of both higher throughput and lower BER.
In particular, our simulation results indicate that
the gain achieved by the proposed Q-dimensional
PM scheme spans between 10dB and 20dB compared
to the conventional modulation. It is also
demonstrated that the PM system attains between
54% and 87.5% improvements in terms of ergodic
capacity. Furthermore, we show that this technique
can be applied to MIMO systems in a synergistic
manner in order to achieve the target data rate
target for 5G wireless systems with much less
system resources (in terms of bandwidth and thenumber of antennas) compared to existing MIMO
techniques
The impact of spatial clustering on the labour productivity of the UK tourism and hospitality industry
No full textThis research aims to investigate the impact of spatial clustering of T&H firms on the labour productivity of the UK T&H industry, specifically on the implications of agglomeration economies for labour productivity both within (direct effects, accounting for spatial feedback effects) and between (indirect spatial spillover effects) spatial units. Employing under-exploited micro-level datasets from the UK Office for National Statistics, the impact of spatial clustering and agglomeration economies (labour market pooling and knowledge spillovers) on T&H labour productivity within and between local authority districts (LADs) was examined using spatial panel modelling. Based on 373 LADs across England, Scotland and Wales and for the period 2006-2016, the fixed-effect spatial Durbin panel model was estimated. Findings concluded that the increase in the degree of clustering of T&H firms has had negative effects on labour productivity of T&H firms within the LADs but also across, and from, neighbouring LADs and back. Labour market pooling variables have shown positive effects regarding the pool of skilled labour but the effects on productivity were negative in terms of the share in high-skilled jobs. Knowledge spillover effects on labour productivity of T&H firms within a LAD were insignificant, but when considering its spatial spillover effects, they were complementary, suggesting the importance of human capital externalities and their spillover effects across geographical boundaries. Moreover, the long-run effects of agglomeration economies were significantly greater than the short-run effects on the labour productivity of T&H firms within and between LADs, suggesting the need to take a long-run perspective on how spatial clustering and agglomeration economies affect T&H labour productivity within and between neighbouring regions. Using geographically weighted regression modelling, significant spatial variations in the relationship between spatial clustering and agglomeration economies and T&H labour productivity were identified within each LAD but also spillover effects across the neighbouring districts
RTVue XR AngioVue Optical Coherence Tomography Angiography Software Upgrade Impacts on Retinal Thickness and Vessel Density Measurements
No full textPurpose: To determine the impact of an AngioVue software upgrade on total retinal
thickness (RT) and inner retinal vessel density (VD) measurements derived from optical
coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).
Methods:OptovueOCTA images (3×3mm) from126 individuals (105healthy eyes and
72 eyes with retinal disease)were acquired before an upgrade of the AngioVue software,
which resulted in an inward shift of the outer boundary of the inner retinal vessels and
improved Bruch’s membrane segmentation. Total RT and inner retinal VD values were
extracted before and after the software upgrade for comparison. Bias and limits of agreement
(LA) were calculated.
Results: The mean (SD) age of participants was 46 (17) years. Mean (LA) foveal RT
increased by 3.0 (–11 to +17) and 3.7 (–11 to +18) μm (P < 0.001) and parafoveal RT
increased by 9.7 (–3.8 to +23) and 6.4 (–2.5 to +15) μm (P < 0.001) in healthy and
diseased retina, respectively.Mean (LA) foveal inner retinal VD decreased by 6.6 (2.5–11)
and 7.7 (0.4–15) percentage units (P < 0.001) and parafoveal inner retinal VD decreased
by 4.1 (1.2–7.0) and 4.7 (0.5–8.9) percentage units (P < 0.001) in healthy and diseased
retina, respectively.
Conclusions: The AngioVue software upgrade resulted in an unexpected increase in
total RT and an expected reduction in inner retinal VD measurements in all regions due
to altered segmentation.
Translational Relevance: RT and VD measures derived from the newer AngioVue
software version are not directly comparable to the reported normative data derived
from the older software
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