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Background Adolescence is a high-risk period for obesity, and it is crucial and urgent to implement obesity control among adolescents. However, existing interventions commonly face challenges in sustainability and scalability. Asset assessment to identify and leverage existing community assets and strengths is essential to facilitate and maintain the implementation of these programs. Objective To assess assets for obesity control among middle school students, and to identify the advantages and deficiencies in the current policy, physical, social, and information environments, along with suggestions for improvements. Methods From 2023 to January 2024, purposive sampling method was adopted, face-to-face one-by-one interviews were conducted with 11 staff members involved in obesity control for middle school students from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Education Bureau, and three middle schools in a major city in East China. Additionally, eight parents and their children from each of the three schools were invited to participate in focus group discussions, with 6 groups and 8 participants per group. Thematic analysis was applied to analyze the interview data. Results This study found that the advantages in obesity control for middle school students primarily included policies and conditions ensured for obesity surveillance, nutritional school lunch and physical activity, along with media for health communication. The main deficiencies were the lack of specific policies for efficient obesity control, insufficient physical and social assets to support healthy eating and physical activity, and the quality and intensity of information assets supporting to facilitate changes in knowledge, attitude, and behaviors. In response to these challenges, participants suggested the implementation of both rigid regulations and flexible incentives, improvement of asset accessibility, encouragement of multi-stakeholder cooperation, and strengthening of health communication. Integrating existing assets and suggestions for improvement has formed an asset assessment checklist, corresponding to 10 assets from the policy environment, 8 from the physical environment, 20 from the social environment, and 12 from the information environment. Conclusion Several assets exist for obesity control among middle school students and identifies areas for improvement. Subsequent efforts in obesity control for middle school students should be made on promoting intervention strategies to better align with the context based on the asset assessment checklist to diagnose the current status of assets, thus enhancing the efficacy and sustainability of the program.

Background: Parents play an important role in shaping youth's lifestyle behaviors. This study aimed to investigate physical activity parenting practices (PAPP) for Chinese early adolescents and compare reporting discrepancies between parents and adolescent boys and girls. Methods: Fifty-five adolescent–parent dyads participated in 16 paired focus group interviews, and an additional 122 dyads completed questionnaire surveys with open-ended questions. Participants were recruited from 3 public middle schools in Suzhou, China. Qualitative data were analyzed inductively using an open-coding scheme. Frequencies of codes were compared by parent–child role and adolescent gender using chi-square tests. Results: Eighteen types of PAPP were identified and grouped into 6 categories: goals/control, structure, parental physical activity participation, communication, support, and discipline. These PAPP were viewed as promotive, preventive, or ineffective. Participants had mixed opinions on the effects of 11 PAPP and identified parental, adolescent, and environmental barriers for parents to promote youth physical activity. Compared with parents, adolescents were more likely to value the effects of setting expectation, scheduling, and coparticipation as well as dislike pressuring, restriction, and punishment. Girls were more likely to favor coparticipation and were more sensitive about negative communication than boys. Parents paid more attention to environmental barriers, whereas adolescents, especially girls, focused more on personal issues. Conclusions: Future studies need to address both positive and negative PAPP as well as perception discrepancies by child–parent role and adolescent gender to generate more evidence to promote parents as favorable socialization agents of youth physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to resolve the key problems of emergency decision making, command and site disposal, and avoid the occurrence of mine rescue teams’ casualties, combining with the survey data from mine rescue teams, the formation mechanism of disaster area environment in underground coal mine gas explosion accidents was studied based on the explosion mechanics and the fluid mechanics. And the changing rule of disaster area environment and emergency rescue method were analyzed for gas explosions happened in the typical locations which were coal face, heading face and roadway. The results show that the disaster area environment has important relationship with explosion intensity, space size of explosion location, gas emission quantity, facilities and rescue measures. The formation of disaster environment can be divided into 3 stages which are the destruction of explosion shock wave and flame front, the redistribution of heat and harmful gas, and the disturbance of rescue measures. Furthermore, in line with the changing rule of disaster area environment, we propose an emergency rescue method that takes targeted measures to improve the disaster environment gradually for safety rescue on the basis of making a strict assessment of disaster area environment. And preventing the rescuers’ casualties should be focused on during the disturbance of the rescue measures.

Latino adolescents face challenges to performing energy balance-related behaviors (EBRBs) to prevent childhood obesity, including healthy dietary intake, adequate physical activity, and limited screen time. Fathers are underrepresented in family-based obesity interventions but could be influential in shaping the EBRBs of Latino children. Three types of parenting practices (setting expectations/limits, role modeling, managing availability and accessibility) have shown relatively consistent positive relationships with children's EBRBs in studies that have mostly involved mothers. The purpose of this study was to develop measures to assess Latino fathers' parenting practices based on existing measurement instruments, focus groups and cognitive testing. Criterion validity of the measures (40 items) was examined with Latino fathers and their early adolescents (10-14 years old, n = 96 dyads) who were predominantly from low-income, two-parent households. Criterion validity was indicated by significantly higher intakes of fruit and vegetables; lower intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages, sweets/salty snacks and fast foods; more weekly physical activity hours; and fewer daily screen time hours among adolescents who reported high versus low levels/frequencies of supportive parenting practices. In addition, nearly all scales of adolescent-reported paternal behavioral modeling and availability/accessibility practices were significantly correlated with adolescents' corresponding EBRBs (r = 0.22 to 0.54). However, poor validity and agreement with early adolescents' reports were found for most father-reported parenting practices. Overall, this study indicated that the measures were acceptable for assessing adolescents' report of Latino fathers' parenting practices around EBRBs. The findings also indicate the importance of including early adolescents' reports in measuring paternal parenting practices.

It is widely recognized that polyester (PET) fibers with swelling properties are necessary for advanced applications of PET fibers in waterproof fabrics. This study presented the UV‐initiated methods to graft polyacrylamide (PAM) hydrogel on the surface of PET fibers. In the one‐step method, PET fibers are impregnated with a mixed solution of the photoinitiator benzophenone (BP) and the monomer acrylalkylamine (AM). Then, the PET fiber was directly exposed to UV light. In the two‐step method, PET fibers were first impregnated with a photoinitiator solution to generate BP radicals. Then, the fibers impregnated with a monomer solution before being grafted by UV light. Both two methods ultimately achieve PAM gelation‐modified PET fibers. The chemical composition and surface structure were detected by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope. The findings demonstrate that the PAM hydrogel was successfully grafted on the PET fibers through one‐step method or a two‐step method. In addition, the properties of the grafted PET fibers were evaluated by grafting yield, contact angle, and swelling test. The study indicated that the modified PET fibers via a two‐step method exhibited a superior grafting yield up to 29.3% (PET‐2n) and 54% (PET‐2) compared to the one‐step technique (PET‐1). It was shown that the grafting efficacy of PET fibers modified by two‐step method is better than one‐step method. The static contact angles of PET fibers by UV‐Induced were all reduced. For instance, the contact angles of PET‐2n were decreased from 115° to 62.9°; and the two‐step modified PET fiber after acetone cleaning (PET‐2) decreased from 115° to 60°. It was suggested that the hydrophilicity of the modified PET fibers significantly increased. In addition, the research shows that the gelation‐modified fibers were all possessed swelling properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A bare polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane has poor antifouling and antibacterial performance in the application process. In this work, the silver nanoparticle layer (AgNP-layer) was deposited onto the PTFE membrane surface via the magnetron sputtering process to overcome these limitations. Several spectra and microscopic analyses were taken to characterize the synthesized PTFE/AgNP-layer composite membranes. The effects of magnetron sputtering time on the AgNP-layer distribution, microstructure, antifouling, and antibacterial properties were systematically investigated. Our results showed the successful deposition and grafting of the AgNP-layer on the PTFE membrane surface and inside the cross-sectional pores near the membrane surface. The AgNP-layer not only improved the composite membrane wettability but also reduced its protein adsorption capacity from 88 to 39 μg, thus improving the antifouling ability of the membrane. The composite membranes could also achieve 99% and 88% antibacterial rates against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus, respectively, exhibiting good antibacterial activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]