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BackgroundAn appropriate diet is critical for the growth and development of infants, especially in the first two years of life. Despite considerable efforts made by government and local authorities to raise awareness, mothers still lack basic knowledge of weaning practices; as a result, infants face a growing number of health problems in their later years of life. This research aims to investigate the association between malnutrition and knowledge of different weaning practices among mothers and to study the factors influencing it.

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Loss of organ and tissue due to injuries or diseases led to the development of regenerative therapies to decrease reliance on organ transplantations. It deals with employing the self-renewal ability of stem cells to differentiate into numerous lineages to assist in providing effective treatment for a range of various injuries and diseases. Regenerative engineering of organs or tissues represents an ever-expanding field that is aimed at developing biological replacements for dysfunctional organs or injured tissues. The critical issue, however, with the engineering of organs outside the human body is the insufficient availability of human cells, the absence of a suitable matrix with the same architecture and composition as the target tissue, and the maintenance of organ viability in the absence of the blood supply. The issue regarding the maintenance of the engineered organ viability can be solved using bioreactors consisting of mediums with defined chemical composition, i.e., nutrients, cofactors, and growth factors that can successively sustain the target cell's viability. Engineered extracellular matrices and stem cells to regenerate organs outside the human body are also being used. Clinically, various adult stem cell therapies are readily under practice. This review will focus on the regeneration of organs through various types of stem cells and tissue engineering techniques.

Sewage water contains toxic heavy metals which can be translocated and accumulated in plants and subsequently transferred to human body through the food chain, yet it has become the most commonly used water source for irrigating vegetable crops in peri-urban or urban areas of several countries including in Pakistan. Karachi, the metropolitan city of Pakistan, is the largest industrial and financial hub of the country with an estimated 16 Million population of multilingual, multi-cultural and multi-religious peoples. The current study was conducted to examine the accumulation of six heavy metals (Cr, Ni, Cd, Pb, As and Hg) in cabbage, radish, turnip, cauliflower, and carrot crops, irrigated with sewage water (SW) of peri-urban area of the Karachi. Four treatments were designed, the fresh water (FW) was used as the control (T 0 ), whereas T 1 , T 2 T 3 and T 4 contained 25, 50, 75 and 100% of SW respectively. The samples analyzed through atomic absorption spectrophotometer using flame atomic absorption techniques revealed that among the five treatments, accumulation of the six metals was found higher with 100% SW, which was decreased with decrease in SW concentration up to 25% SW. The minimum accumulation of the metal was noted with 100% FW (control). Among the five types of vegetables, cabbage and cauliflower revealed a high tendency of accumulating the metals. Hence, in order to avoid exposure of excess heavy metals to human health through vegetables, the cabbage and cauliflower crops may not be grown in the vicinity of Karachi city where the source of irrigation water is only sewage water.