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There is concern about food security and nutrition during the summer when low-income children do not have access to school meals. The Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC) demonstration tested impacts on child nutrition of food benefits of $60 or $30 per eligible child per summer month. A $60 benefit increased children’s mean fruit/vegetable consumption by 0.4 cup-equivalents, whole grains by 0.5 ounce-equivalents, and dairy items by 0.2 cup-equivalents. The $60 benefit had twice the impacts of the $30 benefit, and the SEBTC Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) model had the largest improvements in dietary quality at both benefit levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Federal summer meals programs serve less than one-sixth of children that receive free or reduced-price meals during the school year. To address this gap in food assistance for school-aged children, the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC) Demonstrations provided summer food assistance in the form of electronic benefits transfer cards to households with school-aged children certified for free or reduced-price meals during the school year. METHODS: Over 2011-2013, the SEBTC demonstrations were evaluated by using a random assignment design. Households were randomly assigned a monthly $60-per-child benefit, a monthly $30-per-child benefit, or no benefit, depending on the study year. Key outcomes included children's food security and consumption of foods and food groups related to a healthful diet (diet quality). At baseline (in the spring) and again in the summer, the evaluation surveyed -52 000 households over the course of the 3 years of the impact study. RESULTS: SEBTC reduced the prevalence of very low food security among children by one-third. It also had positive impacts on 6 of the 8 child nutrition outcomes measured (amounts of fruits and vegetables; whole grains; dairy foods; and added sugars). CONCLUSIONS: SEBTC is a promising model to improve food security and the dietary quality of low-income school-aged children in the summer months. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the summers of 2011 through 2013 in selected demonstration locations, the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC) Demonstration randomly assigned levels of additional food assistance to school-age children in low-income households in order to improve children’s food security in the summer, when many children lose access to federal school meals programs. The findings are simple and dramatic: a $60 per-child monthly SEBTC benefit reduces very low food security among children by one-third (a 3.0 percentage-point decline from a control group level of 9.1%) and food insecurity among children by one-fifth (an 8.3 percentage-point decline from a control group level of 43.0%). Additional benefits also improve food security for the adults in the household. There is some evidence of larger impacts among those households that were more disadvantaged at baseline. These results suggest that an SEBTC-like program would have substantial impacts on child, adult, and household food security. More broadly, they suggest that a moderate (e.g., $100 per household per month) increase in more general food assistance would also have substantial impacts on food security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Previous genomewide association studies ( GWASs) have identified a number of putative risk loci for alcohol dependence ( AD). However, only a few loci have replicated and these replicated variants only explain a small proportion of AD risk. Using an innovative approach, the goal of this study was to generate hypotheses about potentially causal variants for AD that can be explored further through functional studies. Methods We employed targeted capture of 71 candidate loci and flanking regions followed by next-generation deep sequencing (mean coverage 78X) in 806 European Americans. Regions included in our targeted capture library were genes identified through published GWAS of alcohol, all human alcohol and aldehyde dehydrogenases, reward system genes including dopaminergic and opioid receptors, prioritized candidate genes based on previous associations, and genes involved in the absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion of drugs. We performed single-locus tests to determine if any single variant was associated with AD symptom count. Sets of variants that overlapped with biologically meaningful annotations were tested for association in aggregate. Results No single, common variant was significantly associated with AD in our study. We did, however, find evidence for association with several variant sets. Two variant sets were significant at the q-value <0.10 level: a genic enhancer for ADHFE1 ( p = 1.47 × 10−5; q = 0.019), an alcohol dehydrogenase, and ADORA1 ( p = 5.29 × 10−5; q = 0.035), an adenosine receptor that belongs to a G-protein-coupled receptor gene family. Conclusions To our knowledge, this is the first sequencing study of AD to examine variants in entire genes, including flanking and regulatory regions. We found that in addition to protein coding variant sets, regulatory variant sets may play a role in AD. From these findings, we have generated initial functional hypotheses about how these sets may influence AD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the military career of British Army Captain John Tucker from 1800 to 1816 and the contemporary press in Great Britain. Topics include the five charges brought against Tucker by his battalion commander Colonel Lemuel Warren on November 1, 1815, the injuries he sustained at the 1815 Battle of Waterloo, and the letter to the editor in the "Times" magazine which sought to disassociate Tucker from the British Army regiment.

Background: Plasmodium falciparum (P. falciparum) malaria remains a significant cause of mortality and morbidity throughout the world. Development of an effective vaccine would be a key intervention to reduce the considerable social and economic impact of malaria. Methodology: We conducted a Phase Ia, non-randomized, clinical trial in 24 healthy, malaria-naïve adults of the chimpanzee adenovirus 63 (ChAd63) and modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) replication-deficient viral vectored vaccines encoding the circumsporozoite protein (CS) of P. falciparum. Results: ChAd63-MVA CS administered in a heterologous prime-boost regime was shown to be safe and immunogenic, inducing high-level T cell responses to CS. With a priming ChAd63 CS dose of 5×109 vp responses peaked at a mean of 1947 SFC/million PBMC (median 1524) measured by ELIspot 7 days after the MVA boost and showed a mixed CD4+/CD8+ phenotype. With a higher priming dose of ChAd63 CS dose 5×1010 vp T cell responses did not increase (mean 1659 SFC/million PBMC, median 1049). Serum IgG responses to CS were modest and peaked at day 14 post ChAd63 CS (median antibody concentration for all groups at day 14 of 1.3 µg/ml (range 0–11.9), but persisted throughout late follow-up (day 140 median antibody concentration groups 1B & 2B 0.9 µg/ml (range 0–4.7). Conclusions: ChAd63-MVA is a safe and highly immunogenic delivery platform for the CS antigen in humans which warrants efficacy testing. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schizophrenia is an idiopathic mental disorder with a heritable component and a substantial public health impact. We conducted a multi-stage genome-wide association study (GWAS) for schizophrenia beginning with a Swedish national sample (5,001 cases and 6,243 controls) followed by meta-analysis with previous schizophrenia GWAS (8,832 cases and 12,067 controls) and finally by replication of SNPs in 168 genomic regions in independent samples (7,413 cases, 19,762 controls and 581 parent-offspring trios). We identified 22 loci associated at genome-wide significance; 13 of these are new, and 1 was previously implicated in bipolar disorder. Examination of candidate genes at these loci suggests the involvement of neuronal calcium signaling. We estimate that 8,300 independent, mostly common SNPs (95% credible interval of 6,300-10,200 SNPs) contribute to risk for schizophrenia and that these collectively account for at least 32% of the variance in liability. Common genetic variation has an important role in the etiology of schizophrenia, and larger studies will allow more detailed understanding of this disorder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]