The Role of Household Structure and Composition in Influencing Complementary Feeding Practices in Ethiopia

While the household in which a child grows up is considered a critical environment that influences nutrition outcomes, there is little research examining the influence of household composition and structure on complementary feeding practices. This study examined the influence of household structure and composition on complementary feeding practices, using the Ethiopian Demographic and Health Survey (EDHS), 2000 to 2016. The composition variables were calculated from the attributes of household members (alters) and the structure variables from their kinship status. A multilevel mixed-effects regression model, specifying survey rounds as the random effect, was used to examine the association between household structure/composition and the Minimum Meal Frequency (MMF) and Minimum Dietary Diversity (MDD). The average Marginal Effects (MEs) were calculated to facilitate practical interpretation. Children of caregivers with a higher number of alters (degree), unique number of kinship category (effect size), closely related (constraint), and mixed-age alters (age diversity) seemed to increase the probability of meeting the MDD. Degree and effective size decreased the probability of meeting MMF, while constraint increased it. Overall, this study revealed some associations between household structure and composition and complementary feeding practices. Hence, complementary feeding interventions could be adapted to account for the household structure and composition variations.

Dynamic behavior of egg weight in free-range hens discriminated by productive indicators at sexual maturity

The effects on the dynamic pattern of egg weight of five traits at sexual maturity were characterized in Campero Casilda hens. When the first egg was laid, body weight, age (an indicator of sexual precocity), weight of the first 10 eggs (an indicator of their initial weight), days needed to lay them (an indicator of regularity) and coefficient of variation of these weights (an indicator of uniformity) were recorded. All the eggs laid between sexual maturity and 72 weeks of age was weighed. Longitudinal data relating weekly average egg weight versus laying age were adjusted by non-linear regression with the Weatherup & Foster model. Birds were categorized by the values of each trait measured at sexual maturity and the category effect on the estimators of the function parameters was evaluated. Less precocious birds were heavier and laid larger eggs at the beginning of the cycle and in the asymptote, without differences on the egg weight maturation rate, in comparison to those more precocious. The latter began the laying period irregularly, requiring a greater number of days to lay the first 10 eggs and the weight of these had a higher coefficient of variation. The birds that began laying more uniform eggs in weight maintained that difference throughout the curve. Early selection of birds that begin laying at an older age, with greater body weight, more regularly and with heavier eggs uniform in size would show a favorable dynamic pattern in egg weight.

The Asymmetric Mixed-Category Advantage in Visual Working Memory: An Attentional, Not Perceptual (Face-Specific) Account

The mixed-category advantage in visual working memory refers to improved memory for an image in a display containing two different categories relative to a display containing only one category (Cohen et al., 2014). Jiang et al. (2016) found that this advantage characterizes mainly faces and suggested that face-only displays suffer from enhanced interference due to the unique configural nature of faces. Faces, however, possess social and emotional significance that may bias attention toward them in mixed-category displays at the expense of their counterpart category. Consequently, the counterpart category may suffer from little/no advantage, or even an inversed effect. Using a change-detection task, we showed that a category that demonstrated a mixed-category disadvantage when paired with faces, demonstrated a mixed-category advantage when paired with other non-facial categories. Furthermore, manipulating the likelihood of testing a specific category (i.e., changing its task-relevance) in mixed-category trials, altered its advantaged/disadvantaged status, suggesting that the effect may be mediated by attention. Finally, to control for perceptual exposure factors, a sequential presentation experimental version was conducted. Whereas faces showed a typical mixed-category advantage, this pattern was again modulated (yielding an advantage for a non-facial category) when inserting a task-relevance manipulation. Taken together, our findings support a central resource allocation account, according to which the asymmetric mixed-category effect likely stems from an attentional bias to one of the two categories. This attentional bias is not necessarily spatial in its nature, and it presumably affects processing stages subsequent to the initial perceptual encoding phase in working memory.

Meningkatkan Minat Wirausaha Siswa SMK untuk Mengurangi Kemiskinan dengan Perceived Desirability dan Feasibility

The purpose of this study is how much influence is perceived desirability and feasibility on the interest of entrepreneurship in vocational students. The type of research used is descriptive, verification, with a total sample of 100 students. The data analysis technique used is multiple linear regression. The findings of the research on hypothesis testing can be seen that perceived desirability and feasibility have a positive / large category effect, both on the interest of entrepreneurship in vocational students. The originality of this research was found in the object of research, research period, measuring instruments and research results. The author also adds theories from foreign journals and foreign books.

Priority directions to improve the efficiency of swine production in agricultural enterprises

It was established that the increase of the enterprise efficiency is one of the fundamental problems of both economic theory and management theory. Activity efficiency is the leading criterion of sustainable enterprise development and the target indicator at any stage of its development. The study of the enterprise operation efficiency and its regularities and trends also requires a comprehensive study of causal relationships in the economy, their interdependence and interconnection. It is proved that the category of "economic efficiency" is not only the most generalizing concept, but also considered as a complex socio-economic category of reproduction, which characterizes the processes of productive forces development and industrial relations. It should be claimed that the concept of "efficiency" in relation to the processes of functioning and macroeconomic system development is ambiguous and controversial. The multilevel model of the macroeconomic system effectiveness allows us to consider the effectiveness of its various aspects, to systematize the essential understanding of effectiveness, depending on the peculiarities of its development. We believe that in the theoretical and methodological sense, the category of production efficiency is an integral system of market relations in order to obtain the highest return on aggregate expenditures and the greatest cost savings of social labor, the system-forming features of which are human capital, fixed capital and material costs. To sum up, the above-mentioned in the aspect of determining the efficiency criterion, we believe that efficient production of pork in agricultural enterprises will be achieved under the following conditions: maximum possible volume production of quality and safe products with the optimal amount of resources and regulatory losses at different stages of production; taking into account the social component of production (full satisfaction of the population needs in pig products in accordance with reasonable norms, ensuring the development of rural areas in order to minimize the differences in living standards of rural and urban population); taking into account the environmental component of production (minimizing the negative impact on the state of the environment, adhering to environmental requirements in the production of products, utilizing waste, etc.), as well as achieving the profitability level, which will ensure extended reproduction (more than 20% annually). Key words: efficiency, enterprise, category, effect, production and economic activity.

Environmental effects on pre-weaning traits in Santa Gertrudis cattle

We aimed to evaluate environmental effects on pre-weaning traits of Santa Gertrudis cattle. We used 213 standardized records for adjusted 205-day weight at weaning (W205), average daily gain from birth to weaning (AGD), and number of days to gain 160 kg from birth to weaning (D160), obtained from the Santa Gertrudis Breeders' Association for animals born between 1990 and 1997. The files were edited with information regarding cow age at calving (CAC) and contemporary group (CG), for which the effects of year and season of birth, animal category, herd, and sex were considered. It was observed that cow age at calving, which had linear and quadratic effects, and effect of contemporary group were significant (P < 0.0001) for the evaluated traits. Estimated averages were 198.05 ± 40.64 kg, 0.790 ± 0.198 kg day-1, and 288.05 ± 67.18 days for W205, ADG, and D160, respectively. Males were 4.67 kg heavier (197.17 kg) than females, on average. Regarding the animal category effect, the classified females were 2.3% heavier than the unclassified, on average. On average, animals born in the dry season were 1.6% lighter than those born in the rainy season (197.18 kg). Thus, environmental effects are important and should be considered in any analysis model.

Revisiting the Revised Hierarchical Model: Evidence for concept mediation in backward translation

A claim fundamental to the revised hierarchical model (Kroll & Stewart, 1994) was that concepts did not mediate backward translation, based on their findings of a category interference effect in forward translation in relatively fluent bilinguals but no category effect in backward translation. This study hypothesized that there was a category facilitation effect in L2-to-concept, which counterbalanced the category interference effect in concept-to-L1, resulting in an overall L2-to-L1 null category effect.In a novel English word-pair semantic comparison task, participants were presented with a sequence of English word-pairs, and judged which word's real-world referent was bigger in size. Results found a significant category facilitation effect in both L2-to-concept for young Chinese adults and L1-to-concept for young English adults when increasing the number of trials. The findings help explain why Kroll and Stewart's finding of an overall L2-to-L1 null category effect cannot be evidence against concept mediation in backward translation.

The colour lexicon of the Serbian language - a study of dark blue and dark red colour categories Part 2: Categorical facilitation with Serbian colour terms

Part 1 of this study (Jakovljev & Zdravkovic, 2018) isolated two frequent and salient non- BCTs in the Serbian language: teget ?dark blue? and bordo ?dark red?, that segregate the blue and the red part of the colour space respectively. Now we conducted two experiments to additionally test the cognitive salience of these terms, investigating whether they can produce the category effects in a colour discrimination task. We demonstrated within? and between-participants agreement about the placement of the boundary in the blue and the red part of the colour space, additionally showing that Serbian speakers have distinctive representations of these categories. Analysis of RT in the discrimination task showed category effects ? participants were faster when discriminating colour pairs that belong to different linguistic categories than the pairs from the same category. These results for the first time demonstrated category effect in the Serbian language as well as the category effect in speeded discrimination of the red part of the colour space for any language. They also support views that category effect is linked to higher cognitive processes; hence it can be language specific.