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It is estimated that a quarter of the mainstream school workforce in the UK are learning support staff. This is a substantial number of adults who have the potential to foster learning. This paper provides a brief summary regarding the impact of support staff on children and young people’s learning. It describes how the Mediating Learning Support Assistant (MeLSA) training programme was developed to meet a training gap identified in the literature. This paper also details the psychological theories and research evidence which provide the foundations for MeLSA and describes the format of the training programme, which consists of six days (mediating learning and mindset, thinking about thinking, memory and recall, mathematics, literacy, and implementation) followed by ongoing supervision. The aim of MeLSA is to ensure that learning support staff have the psychological and evidence-informed expertise to enable those with whom they are working to become competent and independent learners.

This paper reports the findings of a recent scoping study on the nature, evidence base and policy context of breakfast clubs and school holiday projects in the UK and aims to do three things. Firstly, bring child feeding initiatives firmly into the critical food and poverty debate. Secondly, critically assess the state of evidence on these projects and their perceived role in the lives of children at risk of, or experiencing, poverty. Thirdly, set out the next steps which will be required to build a systematic body of research on child feeding projects within the food and poverty research agenda.

The occurrence of avian influenza A(H5N1) in Hong Kong in 1997 led to the development of a "One-Health" approach to deal with emerging infectious diseases that has been applied to other emergent diseases such as SARS and the pandemic H1N1 2009. Evaluation of poultry marketing and production systems and investigations at the animal-human interface, led to defining the routes of human exposure to avian influenza and factors that allowed virus to multiply and persist. Active and systematic surveillance of apparently healthy as well as diseased poultry and wild birds provided evidence of ongoing virus evolution in the wider region. Epidemiological studies, supplemented with molecular epidemiology, helped to elucidate the role of the poultry marketing system and live poultry markets in the persistence of avian influenza viruses and provided evidence for the impact of interventions designed to interrupt virus transmission. Enhanced bio-security, active surveillance together with targeted and evidence-based interventions in the poultry production, and marketing system together with poultry vaccination has prevented further human H5N1 disease and minimized outbreaks of poultry disease in Hong Kong. Similar strategies have led to the understanding of the emergence of SARS and provided options for preventing the re-emergence of this disease. Surveillance of influenza in swine has provided insights into the emergence of the 2009 pandemic, to the reverse zoonosis of the pandemic virus from humans to swine and to the emergence of novel reassortant viruses within swine. "One Health" strategies are not "cost-free" and require sensitive implementation to optimize food-safety and food security, while safeguarding the economics of animal husbandry and the environment and remaining sensitive to cultural practices.

The objective of this study was to assess the preweaning performance, health, and survival of calves fed fresh colostrum from their dams compared to calves receiving colostrum that was not from their dams, and had been stored frozen or refrigerated. A total of 182 Holstein heifer calves born during July and August 2010 at a north-central Florida dairy farm were included. Explanatory variables included colostrum source, adjusted colostrum score, total estimated IgG intake, time to colostrum feeding, and calf-serum total protein determination as a measure of colostral immunoglobulin absorption. Control variables comprised birth weight and dam parity number. Average daily weight gain (ADG) was not affected by colostrum source. Number of disease events was the only variable showing a significant negative association with ADG (P=0.001), but there was a tendency to significance for lower-birth weight to be associated with a higher number of disease events; P=0.08. Source of colostrum did not affect the number of disease events or the total number of days on treatment. Similarly, no significant association with calf mortality was found for colostrum source. Time to event analyses did not indicate any significant association between morbidity and mortality and any of the explanatory variables, including colostrum source. We concluded that colostrum source was not significantly associated with performance, health, and survival in this population of dairy calves., The Bovine Practitioner, Vol. 49, No. 1 (2015 Spring)

Adequate colostrum feeding is the most important management factor determining calf health and survival. Colostrum not only provides immunoglobulins, but it is also an important source of nutrients and nonspecific immune factors, including maternal leukocytes and cytokine proteins, all of which protect the newborn calf against infectious diseases early in life. Considering the potential role of these non-immunoglobulin factors, our hypothesis was that dairy calves fed fresh colostrum from their dams would perform better than those fed colostrum from cows other than their dams that had been stored cold and had a preservative added. The objective was to assess performance (growth and survival) of calves fed fresh colostrum from their dams, compared with that of calves fed colostrum from cows other than their dams that had been treated with a potassium sorbate preservative and stored refrigerated (up to 48 hours) or frozen., American Association of Bovine Practitioners Proceedings of the Annual Conference, 2012

A study was undertaken to examine nutrition surveillance activities and their usefulness in managing programs of nutrition intervention. Questionnaires were returned by 24 of 26 directors of nutrition units in State or metropolitan health departments participating in 1981 in the coordinated nutrition surveillance system of the Centers for Disease Control, which monitors high risk pediatric patients and pregnant women. The mean years of experience in surveillance activities among the agencies was 4. Only 25 percent of the responding departments reported a self-sufficient computerized surveillance system. Personnel most involved in the coordinating, analyzing, and interpreting of the data were nutritionists who spent an average of 17 hours per month. Major uses of surveillance data reported for purposes of the nutrition programs were to (a) identify collection sites with problems such as errors in measuring heights and weights and hematocrits warranting checks for quality control, (b) define the extent of nutrition-related disorders in the target populations, (c) provide objective local data to assist in decision-making and program planning, (d) enhance followup of specific clients, and (e) provide feedback to clinic staffs about the quality and relative impact of their services. The survey results yielded evidence that nutrition surveillance activities have important consequences for the planning, implementation, and evaluation of programs of nutritional intervention.