Feasibility of repeated 24-h dietary recalls combined with a food-recording booklet, using EPIC-Soft, among preschoolers

Background/Objectives: This study evaluates the feasibility among preschoolers of the 224-h dietary recalls (24-HDRs) method combined with a food-recording booklet (FRB), using EPIC-Soft pc-program for the 24-HDR (the software developed to conduct 24-HDRs in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) Study).
Subjects/Methods: A total of 20 and 25 (4- to 5-year-old) children were recruited, as a convenience sample, through worksites or day or healthcare in Denmark and Spain, respectively. One parent (or both parents together) completed two face-to-face 24- HDR, combined with an optional use of a FRB. Feasibility was evaluated by evaluation questionnaires completed by parents and interviewers.
Results: The face-to-face interviews were primarily conducted with the mothers. The FRB was used by 90% of the participants, and proxy persons, other than the parent, were also involved; involvement of proxy persons seems necessary in a majority of the recalls in both the countries.
Conclusions: The results suggest that 224-HDR with one parent combined with a FRB is feasible for registering preschoolers’ diet. An FRB and/or information from proxy persons, other than the parent, is needed for a majority of the parents. In future studies, it may be beneficial to develop the FRB more like a structured food record (FR), which might, in principle, change the method to a one-day FR method from more than a 24-HDR method. It is recommended then to further investigate the use of EPIC-Soft as a data-entry tool.

Untitled : live cinema performance

Over the last 30 years Melbourne-based film-maker, writer and academic Dirk de Bruyn has made numerous experimental, documentary and animation films and videos, continuing to maintain a no-budget, independent, self-funded focus for much of his work. De Bruyns distinctive style entails cut-up collages that draw on animation, found footage and fragments of dialogue - dyeing, painting, incising and stencilling the film strip. Live De Bruyn’s anarchic multi projection performances can involve performance, freeform vocal workouts and De Bruyn, ‘bent over and mouthing into a microphone like a demented seagull, totally involved in the relentlessly unravelling collage of home-processed footage’.Penny Webb. Ian Helliwell provided a live electronic soundtrack.

Pre-visualization techniques with live lensing system enhances workflow for interactive performance creation.

Vincs & Divers, with dancer Steph Hutchinson, present a new system for real-time previsualization in Motion Builder that enables choreographers and artists making interactive 3D work to make on-the-fly lensing decisions. Using motion capture to drive a ‘character’ created from a cloth simulation in real time, the presentation highlights the advantage of live lensing for interactive work-flow in creating 3D dance visualizations. This work forms part of Vincs’ ARC Discovery project ‘Building innovative capacity in Australian dance through new visualization technologies’ (DP120101695).

Recording heritage destruction in Iraq

In October 2012, I began a monthlong visit to Iraq to begin developing a database that documents the destruction of heritage in the country over a crucial nine-year period (2003–2009). This database will enable researchers to more fully understand the extent of the destruction and will help the Iraqi government and international community to prioritize the heritage sites in Iraq that most urgently need protection and restoration. The primary purpose of the database, however, is to examine the extent of the relationship between the recorded destruction of heritage sites and spikes of violence, as documented in existing and reliable measures such as the Iraq Body Count database. Over the next three years, with funding from the Australian Research Council’s Discovery (DECRA) scheme and supported by the Centre for Citizenship and Globalization at Deakin University, our research team of Australians, Americans, and Iraqis will build the database.

Recording Australian animation history

Animation has been practised in Australia from a relatively early stage in the worldwide history of cinematic animation, as evidenced by quite mature examples of cutout animation by cartoonist Harry Julius beginning in 1912. It may therefore seem odd that there is comparatively little written of its history. In America and Europe established histories of animation have been recorded. The growth of the medium in these other countries led to the comparatively early establishment of institutions teaching its history and practice.

Ghosts in the machine : do the dead live on in Facebook?

Of the many ways in which identity is constructed and performed online, few are as strongly ‘anchored’ to existing offline relationships as in online social networks like Facebook and Myspace. These networks utilise profiles that extend our practical, psychological and even corporeal identity in ways that give them considerable phenomenal presence in the lives of spatially distant people. This raises interesting questions about the persistence of identity when these online profiles survive the deaths of the users behind them, via the practice of ‘memorialising’ social network profile pages. I situate these practices within a phenomenology of grief that accounts for the ways in which the dead can persist as moral patients, and show how online survival in this case illuminates an important difference between persons and selves within contemporary philosophy of personal identity. Ultimately, the online persistence of the dead helps bring into view a deep ontological contradiction implicit in our dealings with death: the dead both live on as objects of duty and yet completely cease to exist.

Mohair research update 18 : the importance of the live weight of Angora goats on husbandry and production

The live weight of farm animals is strongly associated with production, profitability, management requirements and animal survival (Table 1). The mature live weight of farm animals and of goats is positively associated with their potential to grow rapidly. Live weight is directly related to the nutrient requirements of goats, irrespective of their productive state.

For Angora goats in particular, live weight is associated with mohair production and mohair fibre diameter, age at puberty, reproductive performance and ovulation rate, carcass attributes, meat production and sale value at the end of their productive life. Live weight also affects the timing of the eruption of incisor teeth.

Trivalent live attenuated influenza-simian immunodeficiency virus vaccines: efficacy and evolution of cytotoxic T lymphocyte escape in macaques.

There is an urgent need for a human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine that induces robust mucosal immunity. CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs) apply substantial antiviral pressure, but CTLs to individual epitopes select for immune escape variants in both HIV in humans and SIV in macaques. Inducing multiple simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV)-specific CTLs may assist in controlling viremia. We vaccinated 10 Mane-A1*08401+ female pigtail macaques with recombinant influenza viruses expressing three Mane-A1*08401-restricted SIV-specific CTL epitopes and subsequently challenged the animals, along with five controls, intravaginally with SIVmac251. Seroconversion to the influenza virus vector resulted and small, but detectable, SIV-specific CTL responses were induced. There was a boost in CTL responses after challenge but no protection from high-level viremia or CD4 depletion was observed. All three CTL epitopes underwent a coordinated pattern of immune escape during early SIV infection. CTL escape was more rapid in the vaccinees than in the controls at the more dominant CTL epitopes. Although CTL escape can incur a "fitness" cost to the virus, a putative compensatory mutation 20 amino acids upstream from an immunodominant Gag CTL epitope also evolved soon after the primary CTL escape mutation. We conclude that vaccines based only on CTL epitopes will likely be undermined by rapid evolution of both CTL escape and compensatory mutations. More potent and possibly broader immune responses may be required to protect pigtail macaques from SIV.