How does the health and well-being of young Australian vegetarian and semi-vegetarian women compare with non-vegetarians?

Objective: To compare the sociodemographic characteristics, health status and health service use of vegetarians, semi-vegetarians and non-vegetarians. Design: In cross-sectional data analyses of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health in 2000, 9113 women (aged 22-27 years) were defined as non-vegetarians if they reported including red meat in their diet., as semi-vegetarians if they excluded red meat and as vegetarians if they excluded meat, poultry and fish from their diet. Results: The estimated prevalence was 3% and 10% for vegetarian and semi-vegetarian young women. Compared with non-vegetarians, vegetarians and semi-vegetarians were more likely to live in urban areas and to not be married. Vegetarians and semi-vegetarians had lower body mass index (mean (95% confidence interval): 22.2 (21.7-22.7) and 23.0 (22.7-23.3) kg m(-2)) than non-vegetarians (23.7 (23.6-23.8) kg m(-2)) and tended to exercise more. Semi-vegetarians and vegetarians had poorer mental health, with 21-22% reporting depression compared with 15% of non-vegetarians (P < 0.001). Low iron levels and menstrual symptoms were also more common in both vegetarian groups. Vegetarian and semi-vegetarian women were more likely to consult alternative health practitioners and semi-vegetarians reported taking more prescription and non-prescription medications. Compared with non-vegetarians, semi-vegetarians were less likely and vegetarians much less likely to be taking the oral contraceptive pill. Conclusion: The levels of physical activity and body mass indices of the vegetarian and semi-vegetarian women suggest they are healthier than non-vegetarians. However, the greater reports of menstrual problems and the poorer mental health of these young women may be of clinical significance.

Preliminary findings of a systematic review and expert opinion workshop on Biosecurity on cattle farms in the UK

In this paper risk factors for the introduction of IBR, BVD, Salmonella and Johne's disease to cattle farms are reported. Two sources of information were used: literature was searched systematically and an expert opinion workshop was held. The findings from both indicate that direct contact between cattle is an important risk factor. Indirect and occasional contact is considered of less importance. Therefore, in the development of biosecurity programmes for cattle farms emphasis should be put on preventing direct contact with cattle from outside the herd.

A scaleless data model for direct and progressive spatial query processing

A progressive spatial query retrieves spatial data based on previous queries (e.g., to fetch data in a more restricted area with higher resolution). A direct query, on the other side, is defined as an isolated window query. A multi-resolution spatial database system should support both progressive queries and traditional direct queries. It is conceptually challenging to support both types of query at the same time, as direct queries favour location-based data clustering, whereas progressive queries require fragmented data clustered by resolutions. Two new scaleless data structures are proposed in this paper. Experimental results using both synthetic and real world datasets demonstrate that the query processing time based on the new multiresolution approaches is comparable and often better than multi-representation data structures for both types of queries.