Learning from COVID-19: strengthening Australia's research capacity through preparedness and collaboration.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has highlighted that preparedness for and responsiveness to pandemics requires public health platforms and processes which are nimble and evidence-based and a research ecosystem which is rapidly responsive to the evolving needs of society and decision-makers. The national BEAT COVID-19 research consortium was funded in 2020 by the Snow Medical Research Foundation (Snow Medical). Its Expert Advisory Committee met with the consortium post-pandemic to summarise the research undertaken and to consider lessons learned through the research response to COVID-19 in Australia.

Presence of emerging organic contaminants and microbial indicators in surface water and groundwater in urban India.

This study presents a first combined assessment of emerging organic contaminants (EOC) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) indicators in the South Indian city of Bengaluru from multiple sources, addressing a knowledge gap on EOCs and AMR occurrences and relationships in different water sources in urban India. A unique approach in this study was to combine the detection of EOCs with an assessment of the AMR-indicating class 1 integron-integrase gene, intI1. Twenty-five samples collected from groundwater, local surface waters, and tap water imported from the Cauvery Basin were screened for 1499 EOCs.

A critical meta-analysis of predicted no effect concentrations for antimicrobial resistance selection in the environment.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the greatest threats to human health with a growing body of evidence demonstrating that selection for AMR can occur at environmental antimicrobial concentrations. Understanding the concentrations at which selection for resistance may occur is critical to help inform environmental risk assessments and highlight where mitigation strategies are required. A variety of experimental and data approaches have been used to determine these concentrations.

IFEM model curriculum: emergency medicine learning outcomes for undergraduate medical education.

Background: The International Federation for Emergency Medicine (IFEM) published its model curriculum for medical student education in emergency medicine in 2009. Because of the evolving principles of emergency medicine and medical education, driven by societal, professional, and educational developments, there was a need for an update on IFEM recommendations. The main objective of the update process was creating Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs) and providing tier-based recommendations.

A deep learning method for reflective boundary estimation.

Environment estimation is a challenging task in reverberant settings such as the underwater and indoor acoustic domains. The locations of reflective boundaries, for example, can be estimated using acoustic echoes and leveraged for subsequent, more accurate localization and mapping. Current boundary estimation methods are constrained to high signal-to-noise ratios or are customized to specific environments.

Do storm overflows influence AMR in the environment and is this relevant to human health? A UK perspective on a global issue.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global public health threat, and the environment has been identified as an important reservoir for resistant microorganisms and genes. Storm overflows (SOs) discharge wastewater and stormwater, and are found throughout many wastewater networks. While there are no data currently showing the impact of SOs on the environment with respect to AMR in the UK, there is a small but growing body of evidence globally highlighting the potential role of SOs on environmental AMR.

Comparative assessment of Nanotrap and polyethylene glycol-based virus concentration in wastewater samples.

Wastewater-based epidemiology is now widely used in many countries for the routine monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses at a community level. However, efficient sample processing technologies are still under investigation. In this study, we compared the performance of the novel Nanotrap® Microbiome Particles (NMP) concentration method to the commonly used polyethylene glycol (PEG) precipitation method for concentrating viruses from wastewater and their subsequent quantification and sequencing.

Exploring indoor and outdoor dust as a potential tool for detection and monitoring of COVID-19 transmission.

This study investigated the potential of using SARS-CoV-2 viral concentrations in dust as an additional surveillance tool for early detection and monitoring of COVID-19 transmission. Dust samples were collected from 8 public locations in 16 districts of Bangkok, Thailand, from June to August 2021. SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations in dust were quantified, and their correlation with community case incidence was assessed.

Application of an Interactive, Hands-On Nutritional Curriculum for Pediatric Residents.

Currently, there exists a scarcity of suitable nutrition training resources for the primary care physician (PCP) and a paucity of educational materials for pediatric residency programs. Barriers to nutritional education include: a lack of well-defined competencies, a dearth of centralized resources for nutritional education, and a reliance on didactic teaching methodology. Because PCPs often cite a lack of confidence as a primary reason for not providing nutritional counseling, we created an interactive 3-pronged nutritional curriculum for pediatric residents with the aim of increasing their confidence to provide nutritional counseling to patients.

Diurnal changes in pathogenic and indicator virus concentrations in wastewater.

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has been commonly used for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks. As sampling times and methods (i.e.

High throughput qPCR unveils shared antibiotic resistance genes in tropical wastewater and river water.

The global challenge posed by rising antimicrobial resistance, and the adoption of a One Health approach, has led to the prioritisation of surveillance for antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in various environments. Herein lies an information gap, particularly in the context of Thailand, where there is scarce data on ARG prevalence across diverse environmental matrices and throughout different seasons. This study aimed to fill this void, analysing ARG prevalence by high-throughput qPCR in influent (n = 12) and effluent wastewater (n = 12) and river water (n = 12).

"You've Got Gratitude!"- A Multispecialty and Multi-institution Program Encouraging Expressions of Gratitude.

Objective: Efforts to improve physician well-being have focused on gratitude, which predicts health and happiness. Despite reported benefits, expressions of gratitude in healthcare can seem infrequent. Here, we describe Gratitude-Grams, an intervention to cultivate expressions of gratitude throughout a department.

Complete genome sequence of containing .

Here, we provide the genome sequence of a isolated from a screen of an environmental bacterial isolate library for resistance to the plant flavonoid berberine. We detected the colistin resistance gene , located on an IncFII(pECLA) plasmid.

Citizen science reveals landscape-scale exposures to multiazole-resistant bioaerosols.

Using a citizen science approach, we identify a country-wide exposure to aerosolized spores of a human fungal pathogen, , that has acquired resistance to the agricultural fungicide tebuconazole and first-line azole clinical antifungal drugs. Genomic analysis shows no distinction between resistant genotypes found in the environment and in patients, indicating that at least 40% of azole-resistant infections are acquired from environmental exposures. Hotspots and coldspots of aerosolized azole-resistant spores were not stable between seasonal sampling periods.

COVID-19 monitoring with sparse sampling of sewered and non-sewered wastewater in urban and rural communities.

Equitable SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in low-resource communities lacking centralized sewers is critical as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) progresses. However, large-scale studies on SARS-CoV-2 detection in wastewater from low-and middle-income countries is limited because of economic and technical reasons. In this study, wastewater samples were collected twice a month from 186 urban and rural subdistricts in nine provinces of Thailand mostly having decentralized and non-sewered sanitation infrastructure and analyzed for SARS-CoV-2 RNA variants using allele-specific RT-qPCR.

Wastewater monitoring for detection of public health markers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Near-source monitoring of schools in England over an academic year.

Background: Schools are high-risk settings for infectious disease transmission. Wastewater monitoring for infectious diseases has been used to identify and mitigate outbreaks in many near-source settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, including universities and hospitals but less is known about the technology when applied for school health protection. This study aimed to implement a wastewater surveillance system to detect SARS-CoV-2 and other public health markers from wastewater in schools in England.