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Iron deficiency and anemia are associated with impaired neurocognitive development and immune function in young children. Total body iron, calculated from serum ferritin and soluble transferrin receptor concentrations, and hemoglobin allow for monitoring of the iron and anemia status of children in the United States. The purpose of this analysis is to describe the prevalence of iron deficiency (ID), anemia, and iron deficiency anemia (IDA) among children 1–5 years using data from the 2007–2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Prevalence of ID, anemia, and IDA among children 1–5 years was 7.1% (5.5, 8.7), 3.9% (2.0, 4.3), and 1.1% (0.6, 1.7), respectively. The prevalence of both ID and anemia were higher among children 1–2 years (p < 0.05). In addition, 50% of anemic children 1–2 years were iron deficient. This analysis provides an update on the prevalence of ID, anemia, and IDA for a representative sample of US children. Our results suggest little change in these indicators over the past decade. Monitoring of ID and anemia is critical and prevention of ID in early childhood should remain a public health priority.

The Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network (CHAMPS) identifies causes of under-5 mortality in high mortality countries. To address challenges in postmortem nutritional assessment, we evaluated the impact of anthropometry training and the feasibility of 3D imaging on data quality within the CHAMPS Kenya site. Staff were trained using World Health Organization (WHO)-recommended manual anthropometry equipment and novel 3D imaging methods to collect postmortem measurements. Following training, 76 deceased children were measured in duplicate and were compared to measurements of 75 pre-training deceased children. Outcomes included measures of data quality (standard deviations of anthropometric indices and digit preference scores (DPS)), precision (absolute and relative technical errors of measurement, TEMs or rTEMs), and accuracy (Bland-Altman plots). WHO growth standards were used to produce anthropometric indices. Post-training surveys and in-depth interviews collected qualitative feedback on measurer experience with performing manual anthropometry and ease of using 3D imaging software. Manual anthropometry data quality improved after training, as indicated by DPS. Standard deviations of anthropometric indices exceeded limits for high data quality when using the WHO growth standards. Reliability of measurements post-training was high as indicated by rTEMs below 1.5%. 3D imaging was highly correlated with manual measurements; however, on average 3D scans overestimated length and head circumference by 1.61 cm and 2.27 cm, respectively. Site staff preferred manual anthropometry to 3D imaging, as the imaging technology required adequate lighting and additional considerations when performing the measurements. Manual anthropometry was feasible and reliable postmortem in the presence of rigor mortis. 3D imaging may be an accurate alternative to manual anthropometry, but technology adjustments are needed to ensure accuracy and usability.

This article considers the future of financialisation as it is entwined with that of cities. It poses the question of how cities can regulate financialisation. ‘Financialization’ is understood here to encompass the myriad of social, economic, legal and political dimensions of the transition from industrial capitalism to finance capitalism. This transition implicates the financial sector and their motives as well as the new roles that financial ideas play in everyday lives. That new role for finance has been understood to be a ‘normative order of reason’ that informs public decision-making and governance. While the efforts of national and transnational law to regulate the financial sector have been studied, there has been far less focus on local governments. Local governments, however, play a crucial role in how financial capitalism takes hold through their regulation of real estate and urban space (real estate being a key current engine of financial markets). Local governments mediate the ways that finance takes hold in cities and the built environment and the way that those transformations exclude certain populations. In short, they mediate the ‘spatialization’ of finance. This triangular constitution of local governance, financialisation and urban space can be observed in the shrinking of public space. The article first examines the relationship between public space and democracy, and the role of law as the underlying structure that allocates urban space towards the use of the public or the use of private real estate actors. This engagement demonstrates how urban space is a key site of financialisation’s dual dimensionality: as a sector with material accumulation of resources and as a constellation of rationalities and cultures. The article then turns to a discussion of city efforts to regulate the financial sector, and popular resistance to the ideologies of finance. Through that examination, this article hopes to demonstrate that efforts to regulate the financial sector are only one level on which to regulate financialisation. ‘Regulation’ here becomes a complex endeavour, requiring an engagement with the modes of reasoning and culture promulgated by financialisation as well as the financial sector and its activities.

Green Supply Chain Management (GSCM) has gained increasing attention as a means of ensuring sustainable manufacturing and a sustainable society. This study examines the relationship between GSCM practices and top management performance to understand its effect on low-carbon performance, sustainable manufacturing, and sustainable society. Data were gathered from 389 top-, middle-, and lower-level managers working in bag-manufacturing firms in India. The data were analyzed using a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. The findings indicate positive and significant relationships among the constructs, with \"green product and product design\" showing the most substantial influence on \"top management performance\" (β = 0.274, p  < 0.001). This top management performance significantly boosts \"low carbon performance\" (β = 0.375, p  < 0.001), which in turn positively impacts “sustainable manufacturing” (β = 0.283, p  < 0.001) and “sustainable society” (β = 0.347, p  < 0.001). The SEM model explained 20% of the variance in \"top management performance,\" 19.5% in \"low carbon performance,\" 16.1% in \"sustainable society,\" and 14.7% in \"sustainable manufacturing.\" The link between “low-carbon performance” and \"Top Management Performance\" is found to have a medium effect size, indicating a strong and discernible correlation between the two variables. In practical terms, an organization will likely make significant strides toward sustainability and carbon emissions reduction when senior management actively supports and implements these measures. This study highlights that adopting GSCM practices is limited to improving firm performance and goes beyond creating sustainable manufacturing and society. This study is in the exploratory stage and adopts a holistic approach to understand the impacts of GSCM practices. Further studies on GSCM practices should be conducted to gain deeper insights. The model provides a broader picture for manufacturers to develop a long-term vision while adopting GSCM practices for sustainable manufacturing and sustainability.

The Indian healthcare system continues to remain unstructured leading to sub-optimal health outcomes, not just in rural but even in urban areas. While physicians play a crucial role in shaping treatment trajectories and managing the referral process, their perspective on the referral system has received very limited academic attention in India. This study attempts to understand the archetypical physician's referral mechanism and the factors influencing their referral practices. This study also highlights the challenges and possible solutions in operationalising an efficient referral process as suggested by the professionals. In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with sixty-two physicians consisting of both general physicians and specialists from 19 different disciplines, associated with public and private hospitals in Bengaluru, India. The data, thus collected, was subjected to thematic analysis to generate relevant themes. Five themes emerged from the thematic analysis from a phenomenological perspective based on the physicians' lived experience. First of all, specialist physicians' availability, accessibility, experience, and reputation strongly influenced referral recommendations. It was also observed that due to lack of a comprehensive healthcare provider database, personal connections and professional networks are utilised. Moreover, although physicians prioritize patients' affordability and accessibility factors, referral counselling and caregiver-patient communication remained inadequate and required formalization. While the fourth theme clusters around several barriers related to communication, system inefficiencies, lack of awareness, accessibility and affordability among patients; the final theme suggests that the physicians emphasized on urgent need for clear guidelines, regulations and policies to streamline and monitor the referral system. This research highlights that physicians recognize the systemic gaps leading to unsolicited health outcomes; yet they are helpless in most cases. The participants emphasized that robust information systems connecting all relevant stakeholders are essential. The exploration reveals that the system will not adopt a structured referral method without the government taking interest in it.

This book is a multi-disciplinary effort that involves world-wide experts from diverse fields, such as artificial intelligence, human computer interaction, information technology, data mining, statistics, adaptive user interfaces, decision support systems, marketing, and consumer behavior.  It comprehensively covers the topic of recommender.

From the continuation of colonial power structures in global economic development institutions, to immigration policies that favor applicants from white-majority European countries, to the use of counter-terrorism law to target primarily Muslim people, international law and its domestic analogues reflect and further inscribe racial distinctions and hierarchies. Racialization in international law occurs in the more visible areas of public decision making but also in mundane, administrative practices. In this essay, I argue that digital technologies are at the heart of automating processes of racialization in international law. Digital technological instruments effectively divide the global population, decision by decision, in adherence to the logics of racial hierarchy: they distribute social and material rights and privileges through financial, welfare, and immigration decisions while simultaneously deepening and entrenching state surveillance, policing, and violence.

Plants recruit positive and negative regulators for fine tuning the balance between growth and development. Negative regulators of pathogen defense generally modulate defense hormone biosynthesis and signaling. Here, we report a mechanism for attenuation of the defense response in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana), which is mediated by the polycomb-group repressor MEDEA (MEA). Our results showed that pathogen inoculation or exogenous application of salicylic acid, methyl jasmonate, or the bacterial 22-amino acid domain of flagellin peptide induces the expression of MEA. MEA expression was higher when plants were inoculated with the avirulent strain of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato (Pst) carrying the AvrRpt2 effector (Pst-AvrRpt2) compared to the virulent Pst strain. MEA remains suppressed during the vegetative phase via DNA and histone (H3K27) methylation, and only the maternal copy is expressed in the female gametophyte and endosperm via histone and DNA demethylation. In contrast, Pst-AvrRpt2 induces high levels of MEA expression via hyper-accumulation of H3K4me3 at the MEA locus. MEA-overexpressing transgenic plants are susceptible to the fungal pathogen Botrytis cinerea and bacterial pathogens Pst and Pst-AvrRpt2, whereas mea mutant plants are more resistant to bacterial pathogens. AvrRpt2-mediated immunity requires the function of RESISTANCE TO P. SYRINGAE2 (RPS2) in Arabidopsis. Using transcriptional analysis and chromatin immunoprecipitation, we established that MEA directly targets RPS2 and suppresses its transcription. We screened an Arabidopsis cDNA library using MEA as the bait in a yeast two-hybrid assay and identified DROUGHT-INDUCED19, a transcription factor that interacts with MEA and recruits it at the RPS2 promoter. The results identified a previously unknown mechanism of defense response attenuation in plants.

Early dietary patterns can have long-term health consequences. This study describes food consumption patterns among US children ≤23 months. We used one 24 h dietary recall from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2009–2014 to estimate the percentage of children ≤23 months who consumed selected food/beverage categories on any given day by age and race/Hispanic origin. Among 0 to 5 month olds, 42.9% (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 37.0%, 49.1%) consumed breast milk, with non-Hispanic blacks less likely (21.2%, 95% CI: 13.2%, 32.2%) compared with non-Hispanic whites (49.0%, 95% CI: 39.0%, 59.1%) (p < 0.001). The percentage of children consuming vegetables was 57.4%, 48.2%, and 45.1% for ages 6 to 11, 12 to 18 and 19 to 23 months, respectively (p < 0.01 for trend). The percentage of children consuming sugar-sweetened beverages was 6.6%, 31.8% and 38.3% for ages 6 to 11, 12 to 18 and 19 to 23 months, respectively (p < 0.01 for trend). Among children aged ≥6 months, lower percentages of non-Hispanic black and Hispanic children consumed vegetables, and higher percentages consumed sugar-sweetened beverages and 100% juice compared with non-Hispanic white children, although differences were not always statistically significant. Compared with children in the second year of life, a higher percentage of children 6 to 11 months of age consumed vegetables and a lower percentage consumed 100% juice, sugar-sweetened beverages, snacks, or sweets; with differences by race/Hispanic origin. These data may be relevant to the upcoming 2020–2025 federal dietary guidelines.

In the emerging field of nanomedicine, nanoparticles have been widely considered as drug carriers and are now used in various clinically approved products. Therefore, in this study, we synthesized superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) via green chemistry, and the SPIONs were further coated with tamoxifen-conjugated bovine serum albumin (BSA-SPIONs-TMX). The BSA-SPIONs-TMX were within the nanometric hydrodynamic size (117 ± 4 nm), with a small poly dispersity index (0.28 ± 0.02) and zeta potential of −30.2 ± 0.09 mV. FTIR, DSC, X-RD, and elemental analysis confirmed that BSA-SPIONs-TMX were successfully prepared. The saturation magnetization (Ms) of BSA-SPIONs-TMX was found to be ~8.31 emu/g, indicating that BSA-SPIONs-TMX possess superparamagnetic properties for theragnostic applications. In addition, BSA-SPIONs-TMX were efficiently internalized into breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and T47D) and were effective in reducing cell proliferation of breast cancer cells, with IC50 values of 4.97 ± 0.42 μM and 6.29 ± 0.21 μM in MCF-7 and T47D cells, respectively. Furthermore, an acute toxicity study on rats confirmed that these BSA-SPIONs-TMX are safe for use in drug delivery systems. In conclusion, green synthesized superparamagnetic iron-oxide nanoparticles have the potential to be used as drug delivery carriers and may also have diagnostic applications.