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Research

In addition to being a source of nutrients for the developing newborn, human milk contains thousands of bioactive compounds, which influence infant health in the short-term as exemplified by its major benefits on infectious disease prevention. Many of the human milk compounds also have the required characteristics to instruct immune development and guide long-term health.

Research

Vigilant Attention (VA) is a critical cognitive function allowing to maintain our attention, particularly in redundant or intellectually unchallenging situations. Evidence has shown that, as the brain develops, VA abilities rapidly improve throughout childhood and adolescence.

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Differential cell counts is a challenging task when applying computer vision algorithms to pathology. Existing approaches to train cell recognition require high availability of multi-class segmentation and/or bounding box annotations and suffer in performance when objects are tightly clustered.

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The benefits of physical activity in reducing the risk of non-communicable diseases are well documented. Physical inactivity contributes to 6–10% of the burden of coronary heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and breast and colon cancers.

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Children with comorbidities are at greater risk of severe influenza outcomes compared with healthy children. In Australia, influenza vaccination was funded for those with comorbidities from 2010 and all children aged <5 years from 2018. Influenza vaccine coverage remains inadequate in children with and without comorbidities.

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Interventions to promote breakfast consumption are a popular strategy to address early life inequalities. It is important to understand the epidemiology of children and adolescents who skip breakfast so that interventions and policy can be appropriately considered.

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First Nations children hospitalised with acute lower respiratory infections (ALRIs) are at increased risk of future bronchiectasis (up to 15-19%) within 24-months post-hospitalisation. An identified predictive factor is persistent wet cough a month after hospitalisation and this is likely related to protracted bacterial bronchitis which can progress to bronchiectasis, if untreated.

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ATP Binding Cassette Subfamily A Member 3 (ABCA-3) is a lipid transporter protein highly expressed in type-II alveolar (AT-II) cells. Mutations in ABCA3 can result in severe respiratory disease in infants and children. To study ABCA-3 deficiency in vitro, primary AT-II cells would be the cell culture of choice although sample accessibility is limited. Our aim was to investigate the suitability of primary nasal epithelial cells, as a surrogate culture model for AT-II cells, to study ABCA-3 deficiency.

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To investigate in a population-based pediatric cohort: prevalence of moderate-severe diabetic ketoacidosis at type 1 diabetes diagnosis over two decades and its association with long-term glycemic control.

Research

Australian families increasingly rely on eating foods from outside the home, which in-creases intake of energy‐dense nutrient‐poor foods. ‘Kids’ Menus’ are designed to appeal to families and typically lack healthy options. However, the nutritional quality of Kids’ Menus from cafes and full‐service restaurants (as opposed to fast‐food outlets) has not been investigated in Australia. The aim of this study was to evaluate the nutritional quality of Kids’ Menus in restaurants and cafés in metropolitan Perth, Western Australia.