Health impacts of a randomized biomass cookstove intervention in northern Ghana.

Background: Household air pollution (HAP) from cooking with solid fuels has adverse health effects. REACCTING (Research on Emissions, Air quality, Climate, and Cooking Technologies in Northern Ghana) was a randomized cookstove intervention study that aimed to determine the effects of two types of "improved" biomass cookstoves on health using self-reported health symptoms and biomarkers of systemic inflammation from dried blood spots for female adult cooks and children, and anthropometric growth measures for children only.

Methods: Two hundred rural households were randomized into four different cookstove groups.

Wild Bornean orangutans experience muscle catabolism during episodes of fruit scarcity.

Pronounced temporal and spatial variation in the availability of food resources can produce energetic deficits in organisms. Fruit-dependent Bornean orangutans face extreme variation in fruit availability and experience negative energy and protein balance during episodes of fruit scarcity. We evaluate the possibility that orangutans of different sexes and ages catabolize muscle tissue when the availability of fruit is low.

A Novel method for the identification and quantification of weight faltering.

Objective: We describe a new method for identifying and quantifying the magnitude and rate of short-term weight faltering episodes, and assess how (a) these episodes relate to broader growth outcomes, and (b) different data collection intervals influence the quantification of weight faltering.

Materials And Methods: We apply this method to longitudinal growth data collected every other day across the first year of life in Gambian infants (n = 124, males = 65, females = 59). Weight faltering episodes are identified from velocity peaks and troughs.

No correlation between short term weight gain and lower leg length gain in healthy German children.

: Length-for-age is considered the indicator of choice in monitoring the long-term impact of chronic nutritional deficiency. : We hypothesized that short term increments of body weight cross-correlate with increments of the lower leg length. : We re-analyzed the association between weekly measurements of weight and of lower leg length in 34 healthy German children, aged 2.

Evaluating Ketosis in Primate Field Studies: Validation of Urine Test Strips in Wild Bornean Orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus wurmbii).

The use of urine test strips (e.g., Roche Chemstrip®) has become the standard for quickly assessing the physiological condition and/or health of wild primates.