Maternal gestational weight gain (GWG) is an important determinant of infant birth weight, and having adequate total GWG has been widely recommended. However, the association of timing of GWG with birth weight remains controversial. We aimed to evaluate this association, especially among women with adequate total GWG. In a prospective cohort study, pregnant women’s weight was routinely measured during pregnancy, and their GWG was calculated for the ten intervals: the first 13, 14–18, 19–23, 24–28, 29–30, 31–32, 33–34, 35–36, 37–38 and 39–40 weeks. Birth weight was measured, and small-for-gestational-age (SGA) and large-for-gestational-age were assessed. Generalized linear and Poisson models were used to evaluate the associations of GWG with birth weight and its outcomes after multivariate adjustment, respectively. Of the 5049 women, increased GWG in the first 30 weeks was associated with increased birth weight for male infants, and increased GWG in the first 28 weeks was associated with increased birth weight for females. Among 1713 women with adequate total GWG, increased GWG percent between 14 and 23 weeks was associated with increased birth weight. Moreover, inadequate GWG between 14 and 23 weeks, compared with the adequate GWG, was associated with an increased risk of SGA (43 (13·7 %) v. 42 (7·2 %); relative risk 1·83, 95 % CI 1·21, 2·76). Timing of GWG may influence infant birth weight differentially, and women with inadequate GWG between 14 and 23 weeks may be at higher risk of delivering SGA infants, despite having adequate total GWG.

Various studies suggest that the maritime industry will continue to face the challenge of seafarer shortages. Young seafarer turnover has become a serious issue that cannot be underestimated. This paper aims to identify the root causes of young seafarer attrition in China and explore relevant solutions. It collects information via semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. Independent sample t-test, one-way ANOVA and least-significant difference are utilised for the variance analysis. The findings of the study show that occupational recognition and family responsibility are the two major factors contributing to young seafarers’ outflow. Chinese seafarers’ health status is another important factor that has received little attention. In addition, young seafarers of 31–35 years old have the most possibility of turnover, due to a number of reasons discussed in this paper. Age 40 or thereabouts is viewed as the watershed moment in a seafarer's career, so efforts should be made to help young seafarers pass through the hard period in their early thirties. This paper suggests that a clear career plan could be a potential solution to retain this backbone group as prospective senior officers.

Flexible electronics has emerged as a very promising field, in particular,wearable, bendable, and stretchable strain sensors with high sensitivity which could be used for human motion detection, sports performance monitoring, etc. In this paper, a highly stretchable and sensitive strain sensor composed of reduced graphene oxide foam and elastomer composite is fabricated by assembly and followed by a polymer immersing process. The strain sensor has demonstrated high stretchability and sensitivity. Furthermore, the device was employed for gauging muscle-induced strain which results in high sensitivity and reproducibility. The developed strain sensors showed great application potential in fields of biomechanical systems.

We report on the absorption, static, and transient luminescence spectra of Sm3+-doped glasses. The dependences between absorption and emission cross sections as well as between luminescence quantum efficiencies and Sm3+ doping concentration are examined. The large stimulated absorption cross section and emission cross section combined with the long fluorescent lifetime make phosphate glasses doped with Sm3+ promising material for visible fiber lasers. Moreover, ΔT(Tx − Tg) of these glasses is about 290 °C, which guarantees their thermal stability against crystallization during the fiber drawing process.

A simple empirical method that extracts the elastic moduli of both thin films and the underlying substrates is proposed and validated by both new nanoindentation experiments and published data. Deconvolution of thin film’s elastic properties from the substrate is achieved by statistical estimation, where a simple function relating the elastic moduli of the thin film and substrate to the film-substrate composite modulus is used to fit the experimental data plotted against the logarithmic indentation depth normalized by film thickness. Experimental data from a wide range of soft and hard films on substrate were used to demonstrate the deconvolution and validate the method. The estimated elastic moduli of thin films and substrates agree well with their corresponding standard values or values obtained by other methods. The advantages of this method are discussed, and recommendations are made on how to design experiments to obtain reliable data for this method.

A diagnostic neutral beam (DNB) is applied to measure the plasma ion temperature and rotation speed in the HT-7 tokamak. Also, a heating neutral beam (HNB) is suggested as an effective method of heating a plasma for the EAST tokamak. As a necessary step to evaluate the required beam power in both applications, the attenuation of the injected neutral beam has been numerically calculated and analyzed considering the effect of various plasma parameters, such as electron temperature, electron density, impurity concentration, and so on. Three basic atomic processes are considered here. It is shown that at the same electron density neutral beam particles can penetrate deeper at higher injection energies and a DNB with the same full energy can attenuate faster at higher electron densities. The impurity effect on the attenuation of a DNB is discussed, and the attenuation of a HNB on the EAST tokamak is also considered.