We established a necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) rat model and explored the role of bifidobacteria in the intestines of the rats and its regulation on intestinal Toll-like receptors (TLRs). Seventy-five newborn Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 5 groups (15 rats/group): group A, artificial feeding group (formula-fed); group B, NEC model (LPS + formula-fed); group C, bifidobacterium...

According to current recommendations from the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),1 health workers should protect, promote and support exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months and continued breastfeeding up to 2 years of age or beyond. However, exclusive breastfeeding is not an option for all infants for several reasons. Newborn infants who need supplemen...

OBJECTIVE Nursing homes are increasingly the place where many Americans die. Thus, advance directives are critical to the preservation of the autonomous wishes at end-of-life. The purpose of this paper is to determine if preferences for artificial nutrition, as stated in the advance directives of nursing home residents, are honored in the last 2 months of life. DESIGN Secondary analysis. SE...

STUDY OBJECTIVE There is evidence suggesting that artificial feeding is associated with a reduction in cognitive function in infants and children, in contrast with breast feeding, but the available evidence suffers from confounding by social and educational factors. An opportunity arose in the Caerphilly cohort study to examine relations between cognitive function in older men and their feeding...

In the end, however, Heywood's conclusions are unsurprising. He decides that child labour ended in industrial sectors such as textiles because rising real wages by the end of the nineteenth century allowed parents to dispense with childrens' earnings at precisely the same time that compulsory elementary education became more strongly enforced. These two factors were more effective than legal co...

Supplementary feeding of ungulates, being widely used in game management, may have unwanted consequences. Its role in agricultural damage is well-studied, but few studies have considered the potential for the practice to attract ground nest predators. Our goal was to identify the factors influencing ground nest predation in the vicinity of year-round supplementary feeding sites for wild boar an...

Internal nutrient sensors play important roles in feeding behavior, yet their molecular structure and mechanism of action are poorly understood. Using Ca(2+) imaging and behavioral assays, we show that the gustatory receptor 43a (Gr43a) functions as a narrowly tuned fructose receptor in taste neurons. Remarkably, Gr43a also functions as a fructose receptor in the brain. Interestingly, hemolymph...

Infant feeding is recognized as having a profound influence on the life and health of the infant. In the West, where, before the war, the decline of breast feeding was causing anxiety, many studies were made of the reasons for this failure at one vital phase of the reproductive cycle. In India, there is little statistical indication of the position regarding the establishment and maintenance of...

Matches between the bills of hummingbirds and the flowers they visit have been interpreted as examples of coadaptation and feeding specialization. Observations of birds feeding at flowers longer or shorter than their bills combined with a lack of experimental evidence for foraging trade-offs, however, fail to support these interpretations. We addressed these inconsistencies by considering a sel...