Breastfeeding duration and authoritative feeding practices in first-time mothers

Background Longer breastfeeding duration appears to have a protective effect against childhood obesity. This effect may be partially mediated by maternal feeding practices during the first years of life. However, the few studies that have examined links between breastfeeding duration and subsequent feeding practices have yielded conflicting results. Objective Using a large sample of first-time mothers and a newly validated, comprehensive measure of maternal feeding (the Feeding Practices and Structure Questionnaire1), this study examined associations between breastfeeding duration and maternal feeding practices at child age 24 months. Methods Mothers (n = 458) enrolled in the NOURISH trial2 provided data on breastfeeding at child age 4, 14 and 24 months, and on feeding practices at 24 months. Structural Equation Modelling was used to examine associations between breastfeeding duration and five non-responsive and four structure-related ‘authoritative’ feeding practices, adjusting for a range of maternal and child characteristics. Results The model showed acceptable fit (χ2/df = 1.68; RMSEA = .04, CFI = .91 and TLI = .89) and longer breastfeeding duration was negatively associated with four out of five non-responsive feeding practices and positively associated with three out of four structure-related feeding practices. Overall, these results suggest that mothers who breastfeed longer reported using more appropriate feeding practices. Conclusion These data demonstrate an association between longer breastfeeding duration and authoritative feeding practices characterised by responsiveness and structure, which may partly account for the apparent protective effect of breastfeeding on childhood obesity.

Waste not want not: Applying an old adage to the modern issue of pharmaceutical waste

Our predecessors taught us, ‘waste not, want not’ – if we did not waste anything we would always have enough. Unfortunately, we did not heed their sage advice. Over the last three centuries, human kind’s wastefulness, or lack of respect for the finite resources of this planet, has contributed to climate change and negatively impacted on ‘ecosystem services’ with a significant, irreversible loss of biodiversity...

Identifying and addressing equivocal trouble in understanding within classroom interaction

Maintaining intersubjectivity is crucial for accomplishing coordinated social action. Although conversational repair is a recognised defence of intersubjectivity and routinely used to address ostensible sources of trouble in social interaction, it is less clear how people address more equivocal trouble. This study uses conversation analysis to examine preschool classroom interaction, focusing on practices used to identify and address such trouble. Repair is found to be a recurrent frontline practice for addressing equivocal trouble, occasioning space for further information that might enable identifying a specific trouble source. Where further information is forthcoming, a range of strategies are subsequently employed to address the trouble. Where this is not possible or does not succeed, a secondary option is to progress a broader activity-in-progress. This allows for the possibility of another opportunity to identify and address the trouble. Given misunderstandings can jeopardise interactants’ ability to mutually accomplish courses of action, these practices defend intersubjectivity against the threat of equivocal trouble.

Analysis Of Curved Laminated Beams Of Bimodulus Composite-Materials

Composite materials exhibiting different moduli in tension and in compression, commonly called as bimodular composites are being used in many engineering fields. A finite element analysis is carried out for small deflection static behavior of laminated curved beams of bi modulus materials for both solid and hollow circular cross-sections using an iterative procedure. The finite element has 16 d.o.f. and uses the displacement field in terms of first order Hermite in terpolation polynomials. The neutral surface, i.e. the locus of points having zero axial strain is found to vary drastically depending on the loading, lay up schemes and radius of curvature. As il lustrations, plots of the cross-sections of the ruled neutral-surface are presented for some of the investigated cases. Using this element a few problems of curved laminated beams of bimodulus materials are solved for both solid and hollow circular cross-sections.

Pulse-echo ultrasound transit time spectroscopy: A comparison of experimental measurements and simulation prediction

Considering ultrasound propagation through complex composite media as an array of parallel sonic rays, a comparison of computer simulated prediction with experimental data has previously been reported for transmission mode (where one transducer serves as transmitter, the other as receiver) in a series of ten acrylic step-wedge samples, immersed in water, exhibiting varying degrees of transit time inhomogeneity. In this study, the same samples were used but in pulse-echo mode, where the same ultrasound transducer served as both transmitter and receiver, detecting both ‘primary’ (internal sample interface) and ‘secondary’ (external sample interface) echoes. A transit time spectrum (TTS) was derived, describing the proportion of sonic rays with a particular transit time. A computer simulation was performed to predict the transit time and amplitude of various echoes created, and compared with experimental data. Applying an amplitude-tolerance analysis, 91.7±3.7% of the simulated data was within ±1 standard deviation (STD) of the experimentally measured amplitude-time data. Correlation of predicted and experimental transit time spectra provided coefficients of determination (R2) ranging from 100.0% to 96.8% for the various samples tested. The results acquired from this study provide good evidence for the concept of parallel sonic rays. Further, deconvolution of experimental input and output signals has been shown to provide an effective method to identify echoes otherwise lost due to phase cancellation. Potential applications of pulse-echo ultrasound transit time spectroscopy (PE-UTTS) include improvement of ultrasound image fidelity by improving spatial resolution and reducing phase interference artefacts.

Combining detached watchdog journalism with development ideals: An exploration of Fijian journalism culture

Development journalism has been a key focus of discussion among journalism scholars for around half a decade, but most of the attention has been firmly on African and Asian countries. This paper examines the situation on the little-researched island nation of Fiji, which has experienced considerable political instability since independence in 1970. Based on interviews with 77 of the country’s small population of just over 100 journalists, we find that journalism in Fiji exhibits similarities to Western journalism ideals, but also a significant development journalism orientation. A comparison with six other countries from the global South shows that this mix is not unique, and we argue that Western journalism approaches and development ideals are not by necessity mutually exclusive, as has often been argued. In this way, the article aims to contribute to a reassessment of our understanding of development journalism and how journalists in developing societies view their work.

'How much love are you going to give this brand?' Lifestyle journalists on commercial influences in their work

The news increasingly provides help, advice, guidance, and information about the management of self and everyday life, in addition to its traditional role in political communication. Yet such forms of journalism are still regularly denigrated in scholarly discussions, as they often deviate from normative ideals. This is particularly true in lifestyle journalism, where few studies have examined the impact of commercial influences. Through in-depth interviews with 89 Australian and German lifestyle journalists, this paper explores the ways in which journalists experience how the lifestyle industries try to shape their daily work, and how these journalists deal with these influences. We find that lifestyle journalists are in a constant struggle over the control of editorial content, and their responses to increasing commercial pressures vary between resistance and resignation. This has implications for our understanding of journalism as a whole in that it broadens it beyond traditional conceptualizations associated with political journalism.

Bayesian designs with frequentist and Bayesian error rate considerations

So far, most Phase II trials have been designed and analysed under a frequentist framework. Under this framework, a trial is designed so that the overall Type I and Type II errors of the trial are controlled at some desired levels. Recently, a number of articles have advocated the use of Bavesian designs in practice. Under a Bayesian framework, a trial is designed so that the trial stops when the posterior probability of treatment is within certain prespecified thresholds. In this article, we argue that trials under a Bayesian framework can also be designed to control frequentist error rates. We introduce a Bayesian version of Simon's well-known two-stage design to achieve this goal. We also consider two other errors, which are called Bayesian errors in this article because of their similarities to posterior probabilities. We show that our method can also control these Bayesian-type errors. We compare our method with other recent Bayesian designs in a numerical study and discuss implications of different designs on error rates. An example of a clinical trial for patients with nasopharyngeal carcinoma is used to illustrate differences of the different designs.

Foucault, Weber, neoliberalism and the politics of governmentality

This paper argues that Michel Foucault’s lectures that form The Birth of Biopolitics owe a considerable debt to the thought of Max Weber, particularly in their analysis of how different socio-legal regimes shape distinctive national forms of capitalist economies, and the role that is played by social and economic institutions in the shaping of individual identities. This is in contrast to a common interpretation of Foucault’s account of neoliberalism, which synthesizes his work into neo-Marxist notions of hegemony and capitalist domination. It also identifies Foucault’s approach to neoliberalism as an exploratory one, which considers insights into how a particular relationship between ideas and institutional practices may help in imagining socialist forms of government practice.

A robust approach to design a single facility layout plan in dynamic manufacturing environments using a permutation-based genetic algorithm

During the past few decades, developing efficient methods to solve dynamic facility layout problems has been focused on significantly by practitioners and researchers. More specifically meta-heuristic algorithms, especially genetic algorithm, have been proven to be increasingly helpful to generate sub-optimal solutions for large-scale dynamic facility layout problems. Nevertheless, the uncertainty of the manufacturing factors in addition to the scale of the layout problem calls for a mixed genetic algorithm–robust approach that could provide a single unlimited layout design. The present research aims to devise a customized permutation-based robust genetic algorithm in dynamic manufacturing environments that is expected to be generating a unique robust layout for all the manufacturing periods. The numerical outcomes of the proposed robust genetic algorithm indicate significant cost improvements compared to the conventional genetic algorithm methods and a selective number of other heuristic and meta-heuristic techniques.

Internationalizing school curriculum in Australasia: As niche, by test, or at heart?

Global citizenship has emerged as a pressing curricular priority which all educational systems are currently grappling with. The challenge is to negotiate how this orientation might sit alongside the more traditional mission of mass school curriculum in building collective ballast for a national identity through a common morality and shared narratives, or may conflict with efforts to protect and promote indigenous and minority identities. As a case study of how these agendas interact, this chapter will consider curricular responses to global imperatives in the variegated conditions across the Australasian region (defined as Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea). The chapter will outline recent developments in the social, economic and political contexts surrounding curricular reforms in these settings, and demonstrate how these developments have changed the conditions of possibility and strength of purpose behind efforts to internationalise school curricula. Three types of systemic responses are then described: firstly, an appetite for globally branded curricula such as the International Baccalaureate, Montessori, and Cambridge University Certificates to distinguish some in a stratified market; secondly, convergence in curriculum to improve national performance on international standardised tests; and thirdly, the infusion of cosmopolitan sensibilities, regional identities and intercultural competencies as a core curricular goal for all. The chapter considers the various pragmatic interpretations of ‘internationalisation’ in these responses, and argues that the third response seems both the most difficult to enact, and the most vulnerable to political interference.

Governance and regional variation of homicide rates: Evidence from cross-national data

Criminological theories of cross-national studies of homicide have underestimated the effects of quality governance of liberal democracy and region. Data sets from several sources are combined and a comprehensive model of homicide is proposed. Results of the spatial regression model, which controls for the effect of spatial autocorrelation, show that quality governance, human development, economic inequality, and ethnic heterogeneity are statistically significant in predicting homicide. In addition, regions of Latin America and non-Muslim Sub-Saharan Africa have significantly higher rates of homicides ceteris paribus while the effects of East Asian countries and Islamic societies are not statistically significant. These findings are consistent with the expectation of the new modernization and regional theories.

Acceptance of prostitution and its social determinants in Canada

The nature of collective perception of prostitution is understudied in Canada. Except some rudimentary reports on the percentages of the key legal options, multivariate analysis has never been used to analyze the details of public opinion on prostitution. The current study explores the trend of public attitude toward prostitution acceptability in Canada over a 25-year span and examines the social determinants of the acceptability of prostitution, using structural equation modeling (SEM), which allows researchers to elaborate both direct and indirect effects (through mediating variables) on the outcome variable. Results show that the public has become more acceptant of prostitution over time. In addition, the less religious, less authoritarian, and more educated are more acceptant of prostitution than the more religious, more authoritarian, and less well educated. The effects of religiosity and authoritarianism mediate out the direct effects of age, gender, gender equality, marriage, marriage as an outdated institution, Quebec, race, and tolerance. The findings may serve as a reference point for the law reform regarding the regulation of prostitution in Canada.

Major practicum as a learning site for exercise science professionals: A pilot study

Exercise science is now an integral part of the allied health framework in Australia and graduates from accredited programmes are equipped with skills recognised as being important in the prevention and management of lifestyle-related diseases. This pilot study sought to determine the experiences of 11 final-year exercise science students in their major practicum and identify skills learned and developed while on placement. Analysis of the interview data established that the students worked with clients from a broad range of sociocultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, both within and between practicum sites; the students’ experiences and their preparedness to engage with clients from different backgrounds varied as a result. Although the students generally reported being technically skilled for their major placement, many reported being underprepared to deal with people from different backgrounds. However, all participants held that their interpersonal skills greatly improved in response to their placement and several remarked that they developed their problem-solving skills through watching and assisting their supervisors work with clients. The present study confirms the practicum as a critical learning site for improving communication and problem-solving skills with exercise science and exercise physiology students.