A mother's nutritional choices while pregnant may have a great influence on her baby's development in the womb and during infancy. There is evidence that what a mother eats during pregnancy interacts with her genes to affect her child's susceptibility to poor health outcomes including childhood obesity, pre-diabetes, allergy and asthma. Furthermore, after what an infant eats can change his or her intestinal bacteria, which can further influence the development of these poor outcomes. In the present paper, we review the importance of birth cohorts, the formation and early findings from a multi-ethnic birth cohort alliance in Canada and summarise our future research directions for this birth cohort alliance. We summarise a method for harmonising collection and analysis of self-reported dietary data across multiple cohorts and provide examples of how this birth cohort alliance has contributed to our understanding of gestational diabetes risk; ethnic and diet-influences differences in the healthy infant microbiome; and the interplay between diet, ethnicity and birth weight. Ongoing work in this birth cohort alliance will focus on the use of metabolomic profiling to measure dietary intake, discovery of unique diet–gene and diet–epigenome interactions, and qualitative interviews with families of children at risk of metabolic syndrome. Our findings to-date and future areas of research will advance the evidence base that informs dietary guidelines in pregnancy, infancy and childhood, and will be relevant to diverse and high-risk populations of Canada and other high-income countries.

Inkjet printing, of the researched techniques for printing of hydrogels, gives perhaps the best potential control over the shape and composition of the final hydrogel. It is, however, fundamentally limited by the low viscosity of the printed ink, which means that crosslinking of the hydrogel must take place after printing. This can be particularly problematic for hydrogels as the slow diffusion of the crosslinking species through the gel results in very slow vertical printing speeds, leading to dehydration of the gel and (if simultaneously deposited) cell death. Previous attempts to overcome this limitation have involved the sequential printing of alternating layers to reduce the diffusion distance of reactive species. In this work we demonstrate an alternative approach where the crosslinker and gelator are printed so that they collide with each other before impinging upon the substrate, thereby facilitating hydrogel synthesis and patterning in a single step. Using a model system based upon sodium alginate and calcium chloride a series of 3D structures are demonstrated, with vertical printing speeds significantly faster than previous work. The droplet collision is shown to increase advective mixing before impact, reducing the time taken for gelation to occur, and improving definition of printed patterns. With the facile addition of more printing inks, this approach also enables spatially varied composition of the hydrogel, and work towards this will be discussed.

Historical enquiry into diseases with morbidity or mortality predilections for particular demographic groups can permit clarification of their emergence, endemicity, and epidemicity. During community-wide outbreaks of hepatitis A in the pre-vaccine era, clinical attack rates were higher among juveniles rather than adults. In community-wide hepatitis E outbreaks, past and present, mortality rates have been most pronounced among pregnant women. Examination for these characteristic predilections in reports of jaundice outbreaks in the USA traces the emergence of hepatitis A and also of hepatitis E to the closing three decades of the 19th century. Thereafter, outbreaks of hepatitis A burgeoned, whereas those of hepatitis E abated. There were, in addition, community-wide outbreaks that bore features of neither hepatitis A nor E; they occurred before the 1870s. The American Civil War antedated that period. If hepatitis A had yet to establish endemicity, then it would not underlie the jaundice epidemic that was widespread during the war. Such an assessment may be revised, however, with the discovery of more extant outbreak reports.

In this paper, a switch function-based gas-kinetic scheme (SF-GKS) is presented for the simulation of inviscid and viscous compressible flows. With the finite volume discretization, Euler and Navier-Stokes equations are solved and the SF-GKS is applied to evaluate the inviscid flux at cell interface. The viscous flux is obtained by the conventional smooth function approximation. Unlike the traditional gas-kinetic scheme in the calculation of inviscid flux such as Kinetic Flux Vector Splitting (KFVS), the numerical dissipation is controlled with a switch function in the present scheme. That is, the numerical dissipation is only introduced in the region around strong shock waves. As a consequence, the present SF-GKS can well capture strong shock waves and thin boundary layers simultaneously. The present SF-GKS is firstly validated by its application to the inviscid flow problems, including 1-D Euler shock tube, regular shock reflection and double Mach reflection. Then, SF-GKS is extended to solve viscous transonic and hypersonic flow problems. Good agreement between the present results and those in the literature verifies the accuracy and robustness of SF-GKS.

A lattice Boltzmann flux solver (LBFS) is presented in this work for simulation of incompressible viscous and inviscid flows. The new solver is based on Chapman-Enskog expansion analysis, which is the bridge to link Navier-Stokes (N-S) equations and lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE). The macroscopic differential equations are discretized by the finite volume method, where the flux at the cell interface is evaluated by local reconstruction of lattice Boltzmann solution from macroscopic flow variables at cell centers. The new solver removes the drawbacks of conventional lattice Boltzmann method such as limitation to uniform mesh, tie-up of mesh spacing and time interval, limitation to viscous flows. LBFS is validated by its application to simulate the viscous decaying vortex flow, the driven cavity flow, the viscous flow past a circular cylinder, and the inviscid flow past a circular cylinder. The obtained numerical results compare very well with available data in the literature, which show that LBFS has the second order of accuracy in space, and can be well applied to viscous and inviscid flow problems with non-uniform mesh and curved boundary.

An electrospun polymer jet issued from a Taylor cone follows a straight-line motion before experiencing electrical bending instability resulting in curling and spiralling of the jet in three-dimensional space. Experiments are performed to characterize the fluid dynamics of an electrospun polymer jet. Appropriate image processing is performed to systematically analyse flow regimes of the electrospun jet. These regimes include Taylor cone formation/jet initiation and the straight section of the jet. Dimensional analysis was performed to identify the salient dimensionless parameters, which govern the electrospun jet characteristics. Three new correlation formulae were obtained to characterize the dimensionless jet diameter at the apex of the Taylor cone $(\tilde {d} = 1. 03{\tilde {Q} }^{0. 44} )$ , the dimensionless jet diameter at different locations along the jet’s straight section $(\tilde {d} {\tilde {z} }^{1/ 4} = 1. 09{\tilde {Q} }^{1/ 2} )$ , as well as the length of the straight section of the jet $({\tilde {Z} }_{in} = 86{\tilde {Q} }^{0. 42} )$ . These correlation formulae are valid for the analysed range of dimensionless flow rates $(2. 6{{\times 10}}^{- 4} \lt \tilde {Q} \lt 3. 6{{\times 10}}^{7} )$ and dimensionless electric fields $(7. 4{{\times 10}}^{- 4} \lt \tilde {E} \lt 1. 4{{\times 10}}^{- 1} )$ . In addition, the correlation formulae are valid for the analysed range of Deborah numbers De and Reynolds numbers Re based on nozzle radius, $3. 3\times {10}^{- 7} \lt {\mathit{De}}_{{r}_{o} } \lt 3. 8\times {10}^{- 2} $ and $5. 8\times {10}^{- 4} \lt {\mathit{Re}}_{{r}_{o} } \lt 7. 0\times {10}^{- 1} $ . The proposed new correlation formulae are instrumental in the design as well as controlled manipulation/optimization of the electrospinning phenomenon.

The aim of this study was to estimate the amount of childhood hepatitis B virus transmission in children born in the UK, a very low-prevalence country, that is preventable only by universal hepatitis B immunization of infants. Oral fluid specimens were collected from schoolchildren aged 7–11 years in four inner city multi-ethnic areas and tested for the presence of antibody to hepatitis B core antigen (anti-HBc). Those found positive or indeterminate were followed up with testing on serum to confirm their hepatitis B status. The overall prevalence of anti-HBc in children was low [0·26%, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0·14–0·44]. The estimated average annual incidence of hepatitis B was estimated to be 29·26/100 000 children (95% CI 16·00–49·08). The total incidence that is preventable only by a universal infant immunization programme in the UK was estimated to be between 5·00 and 12·49/100 000. The study demonstrates that the extent of horizontal childhood hepatitis B virus transmission is low in children born in the UK and suggests that schools in the UK are an uncommon setting for the transmission of the virus. Targeted hepatitis B testing and immunization of migrants from intermediate- and high-prevalence countries is likely to be a more effective measure to reduce childhood transmission than a universal infant immunization programme.

Space–time clustering of people who fall acutely ill with jaundice, then slip into coma and death, is an alarming phenomenon, more markedly so when the victims are mostly or exclusively pregnant. Documentation of the peculiar, fatal predisposition of pregnant women during outbreaks of jaundice identifies hepatitis E and enables construction of its epidemic history. Between the last decade of the 18th century and the early decades of the 20th century, hepatitis E-like outbreaks were reported mainly from Western Europe and several of its colonies. During the latter half of the 20th century, reports of these epidemics, including those that became serologically confirmed as hepatitis E, emanated from, first, the eastern and southern Mediterranean littoral and, thereafter, Southern and Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the rest of Africa. The dispersal has been accompanied by a trend towards more frequent and larger-scale occurrences. Epidemic and endemic hepatitis E still beset people inhabiting Asia and Africa, especially pregnant women and their fetuses and infants. Their relief necessitates not only accelerated access to potable water and sanitation but also vaccination against hepatitis E.

Ceria has been aggressively explored for applications as a fuel cell electrolyte or in catalytic converter due to its high oxygen ion conductivity, or as a UV absorption material. It is proven that the properties and applications of ceria nanoparticles are related to their morphologies and sizes. This ability to control the shape and morphology of CeO2 nanoparticles allows the corresponding tuning of their chemical and physical properties. Most of the applications require the use of non-agglomerated nanoparticles, as aggregated nano-particles lead to inhomogeneous mixing, poor sinterability and compromised properties. However, nano-crystals with a primary particle size < 5 nm have a strong tendency to agglomerate. In this work, nano-crystalline particles of CeO2 have been synthesized by a low temperature hydrothermal and solvent thermal synthesis process. Using the precursors of Ce(NO3)3.6H2O:NaOH in different mixing ratio, using polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) as the surfactant, the CeO2 particles were synthesized via 24 h hydrothermal and solvent thermal process treatment at reaction temperature of 100 °C and 180 °C using Teflon-lined hydrothermal autoclave. We have optimized the conditions for the two synthesized methods, hydrothermal and solvent thermal, to yield highly crystallized particle with controllable shape, sizes and morphology. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM) analysis were used to characterize the crystalline and morphology of the synthesized CeO2 nanoparticles. The optimal reaction condition to prepare the CeO2 of the desired octahedron shaped fluorite structure was established. Based on the results, the hydrothermal synthesis method yields nanocrystalline CeO2 sizes of ∼6 nm, while the solvent synthesis method yields nanocrystalline CeO2 sizes of 2-3 nm at the optimal conditions. The hydrothermal synthesis method produced better particles in terms of crystallinity and morphology under HR-TEM. Temperature also plays a part in crystallinity and sizes of the CeO2 nanoparticles. The crystallinity and size of the CeO2 nanoparticles increases when using higher treatment temperature for both hydrothermal and solvent thermal methods. The growth mechanism of the shape and morphology of the CeO2 will also be discussed.

Memory effect in a metal-insulator-silicon (MIS) structure with the insulator layer consisting of a sputtered capping SiO2 / Ge nanocrystals embedded in SiO2/ rapid thermal oxide structure has been observed. For the devices with a co-sputtered SiO2+Ge middle layer, larger nanocrystals were formed devices with a higher Ge concentration. It was noted that for such devices, the RTO and the capping oxide layers were able to confine the nanocrystals within the middle layer to some extent. However, in devices with pure sputtered Ge middle layer, the RTO and capping oxide layers were not as effective in confining the Ge nanocrystals. In addition, we have consistently observed memory effect from devices annealed in Ar and the absence of memory effect from devices annealed in forming gas. However, Ge nanocrystals were found in devices annealed in both ambient. This implies that having nanocrystals does not necessarily imply the presence of charge storage or memory effect.

We report observations by high resolution electron microscopy of model catalysts produced by impregnating MgO smoke particles with inorganic clusters. With the use of very low beam currents the substrates are of sufficiently low noise that we have been able to image cleanly both single atoms and very small clusters of size l-2nm in sufficient detail to determine their atomic structure. Two types of metal structures are observed: single atoms decorating atomic steps and in a few cases two-dimensional surface rafts, and a population of mainly single crystal with a few multiply twinned particles. The single crystal particles are pseudomorphically epitaxed on the MgO substrates.

II-VI semiconductor alloys have recently received considerable attention for their possible use in double heterostructure (DH) blue laser diodes (LDs).1-4 The purpose of this paper is to present the empirical pseudopotential method within virtual crystal approximation for calculating the band structure of MgZnSSe quaternary alloy. The dependence of band gap energies on alloy composition has shown that MgZnSSe can be a direct or an indirect semiconductor. Electron and hole effective masses are calculated for different composition. Camel's back structure for the X valley conduction band has been found for certain composition range.

Monoclinic ZrO2 and its supported catalysts Co/Ni/ZrO2 for catalytic decomposition of N2O have been studied with FTIR, EDAX, XPS, and the evaluation of activity of the catalysts. It is found that monoclinic ZrO 2 alone has the catalytic effect for N2O decomposition although the gas decomposes on Co/Ni/ZrO2 more efficiently. The XPS study shows that only Co exists in the surface region of ZrO2. In evaluation experiments, it is found that when Co/Ni exceeds a threshold concentration, the conversion of N2O is no longer accelerated with the increase of Co/Ni content. The gas decomposition on Co/Ni/ZrO2 can be described as first order with respect to partial pressure of N2O. No nitrogen N(ls) photoelectrons were detected for the catalysts after N2O decomposition. Surface reactions on ZrO2 and Co/Ni/ZrO2, including the behaviour of retained carbon (Cls) and N2O decomposition mechanism, will also be addressed.

We investigated the performance of 65nm pFETs whereby the source and drain extensions (SDE) were implanted with Carborane, (C2B10H12) a novel form of molecular species. The high atomic mass of this molecule (146 a.m.u.) and the number of boron atoms transported per ion enables the productivity at low energy required for manufacturing of ultra shallow junctions for advanced scaling. In this investigation, Carborane was implanted at 13 keV to produce a Boron profile near equivalent to that produced by the reference BF2 implant. Results of electrical measurements did not exhibit any compromise in the I-V characteristics in terms of Id-Vg and Id-Vd and Ion-Ioff. External resistance and Vt roll-off shifted slightly with respect to the reference devices. This is attributed to a deeper junction with Carborane due to slight offset in the profile matching. It will be shown that with fully matched profiles, a perfect match of the device characteristics can be achieved.

An alternative method for seeding catalyst nanoparticles for carbon nanotubes and nanowires growth is presented. Ni nanoparticles are formed inside a 450 nm SiO2 film on (100) Si wafers through the implantation of Ni ions at fluences of 7.5×1015 and 1.7×1016 ions cm−2 and post-annealing treatment at 700, 900 and 1100 °C. After exposed to the surface by HF dip etching, the Ni nanoparticles are used as catalyst for the growth of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes by direct current plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition.

Surveillance reports and prevalence studies have indicated that injecting drug users (IDUs) contribute more to the hepatitis C epidemic in the United Kingdom than any other risk group. Information on both the prevalence and incidence of hepatitis C in IDUs is therefore essential to understanding the epidemiology of this infection. The prevalence of hepatitis C in specimens from the Unlinked Anonymous Prevalence Monitoring Programme collected in 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001 was determined using residual syphilis serology specimens from IDUs attending 15 genitourinary medicine (GUM) clinics in and outside London. These specimens were tested for antibodies to hepatitis C virus (anti-HCV). Using this cross-sectional design, anti-HCV-negative specimens were tested for HCV RNA to identify incident infections during the ‘window’ period of infection, and thus to estimate HCV incidence. Results of the multivariable analysis showed that there was marked variation in prevalence by clinic (P<0·0001) and age (P<0·0001). Overall the majority of infections were in males and the overall prevalence in injectors declined over the study period from 36·9% to 28·7%. The annual incidence in these injectors was estimated as being 3·01% (95% CI 1·25–6·73). Over the study period HCV incidence decreased by 1·2% per year. Genotyping of the incident infections identified the most common genotype as type 1 with type 3 being more frequently seen after 1998. Of the prevalent infections, genotype 1 was the most common. The study has confirmed a higher prevalence of anti-HCV in IDUs in the London area compared to those outside London. How representative of the current injecting drug user population are IDUs attending GUM clinics is unclear. Even so, such studies allow prevalence and incidence to be estimated in individuals who have ever injected drugs and inform ongoing public health surveillance.