Older Adults' Perspectives of Smart Technologies to Support Aging at Home: Insights from Five World Café Forums.

Globally, there is an urgent need for solutions that can support our aging populations to live well and reduce the associated economic, social and health burdens. Implementing smart technologies within homes and communities may assist people to live well and 'age in place'. To date, there has been little consultation with older Australians addressing either the perceived benefits, or the potential social and ethical challenges associated with smart technology use.

Understanding culturally safe aged care from the perspectives of older Aboriginal Australians in rural and remote communities.

Issue Addressed: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples face challenges in accessing aged care and are less likely to use some services than their non-Indigenous counterparts. Culturally safe care is increasingly recognised as an enabler to improve access and quality of care. This study explored older Aboriginal peoples' perceptions and experience of culturally safe aged care.

Objective and subjective measures of the neighbourhood environment: Associations with frailty levels.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate whether perceptions of the neighbourhood environment (NE) and objective measures of the NE were associated with frailty in older adults.

Methods: A cross-sectional study in Adelaide, Australia, recruited a sample of 115 community-dwelling adults aged ≥60 years. Respondents' perceptions of their NEs were assessed using the Neighbourhood Environment Walkability Scale (NEWS).

A Multidisciplinary Exploratory Approach for Investigating the Experience of Older Adults Attending Hospital Services.

Background: The public areas of the hospital built environment have hardly been investigated for their age-friendliness.

Objective: This exploratory, multidisciplinary pilot study investigates the relationship between the physical environment and design of hospital spaces and older people's outpatient experience.

Methods: Sixteen participants were recruited from a geriatric Outpatient Clinic at a metropolitan public hospital in Australia.

Built Environment and Frailty: Neighborhood Perceptions and Associations With Frailty, Experience From the Nagoya Longitudinal Study.

Neighborhood physical characteristics have been consistently associated with the health of older adults. This article investigates links between frailty and perceptions of the neighborhood environment. Using a cross-sectional analysis of 370 community-dwelling older adults from Nagoya, Japan, neighborhood perceptions were assessed using the Neighborhood Environmental Walkability Scale (NEWS) in addition to frailty, using a frailty index.

Creating Age-Friendly Communities: Housing and Technology.

Taking an international perspective of healthy ageing, people are living longer and are generally in better health than previous generations [...

Using Citizen Science to Explore Neighbourhood Influences on Ageing Well: Pilot Project.

Outdoor and indoor environments impact older people's mobility, independence, quality of life, and ability to "age in place". Considerable evidence suggests that not only the amount, but also the quality, of public green spaces in the living environment is important. The quality of public green spaces is mostly measured through expert assessments by planners, designers and developers.

Refugee Youth and Transition to Further Education, Training, and Employment in Australia: Protocol for a Mixed Methods Study.

Background: Young people with refugee experiences are widely acknowledged as encountering multiple disadvantages that affect their school completion and retention, university entry, and subsequent employment. This paper discusses the rationale for and protocol of a mixed methods investigation focusing on improving education and employment outcomes among refugee background youth aged 15 to 24 years from three focus regions: the Middle East (Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria), South Asia (Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar/Burma, Pakistan) and Africa (Sudan, South Sudan, Liberia, Ethiopia, Somalia, DR Congo).

Objective: The rationale of the project is to identify the facilitators and barriers to successful transition from school to further education and employment; investigate participant awareness of support systems available when faced with education and employment difficulties; redress the disadvantages encountered by refugee background youth; and bridge the gap between research, policy, and practice in relation to social inclusion and participation.

Frailty prevalence using Frailty Index, associated factors and level of agreement among frailty tools in a cohort of Japanese older adults.

Unlabelled: Frailty prevalence defined by the deficit accumulation model (Frailty Index) has limited exploration in a Japanese population. The objective of this paper is to investigate the prevalence of frailty by Frailty Index among a cohort of healthy Japanese older adults, define risk factors associated with pre-frailty and frailty status and evaluate Frailty Index's agreement with Frailty Phenotype and Kihon checklist.

Methods: Data from 673 participants of the 2014 wave of the Nagoya Longitudinal Study - Healthy Elderly were used.

Macrophage secretory products induce an inflammatory phenotype in hepatocytes.

Aim: To investigate the influence of macrophages on hepatocyte phenotype and function.

Methods: Macrophages were differentiated from THP-1 monocytes via phorbol myristate acetate stimulation and the effects of monocyte or macrophage-conditioned medium on HepG2 mRNA and protein expression determined. The in vivo relevance of these findings was confirmed using liver biopsies from 147 patients with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.

Interleukin-32: a new proinflammatory cytokine involved in hepatitis C virus-related liver inflammation and fibrosis.

Unlabelled: Interleukin 32 (IL-32) is a recently described proinflammatory cytokine that activates p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and nuclear factor kappa B (NF-κB), thereby inducing proinflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). We investigated the role of IL-32 in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Steady-state hepatic messenger RNA (mRNA) levels of IL-32 were determined in a cohort of 90 subjects; anti-IL-32 staining was used in a second cohort of 132 consecutive untreated chronic HCV patients.

No evidence of the unfolded protein response in patients with chronic hepatitis C virus infection.

Background And Aim: Hepatitis C virus (HCV) proteins activate the unfolded protein response (UPR) in experimental models. The role of the UPR in the pathogenesis of HCV-induced liver injury has not been determined. Our aim was to investigate the role of the UPR in the pathogenesis of chronic HCV.

Investigation of the role of SREBP-1c in the pathogenesis of HCV-related steatosis.

Background/aims: Increased expression of sterol regulatory element binding protein (SREBP)-1c, a transcription factor regulating lipogenesis, has been reported in HCV core protein-transfected hepatocytes. Our aim was to investigate the role of SREBP-1c in the pathogenesis of HCV-related steatosis.

Methods: One hundred and twenty-four patients with HCV and 13 subjects with histologically normal liver (NDL) were studied.

Obesity and steatosis influence serum and hepatic inflammatory markers in chronic hepatitis C.

Unlabelled: Obesity and fatty liver are commonly observed among patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) and are risk factors for increased hepatic fibrosis. Obesity is accompanied by a low-grade, chronic inflammatory response that may contribute to pathogenesis of obesity-related comorbidities. To assess whether obesity and steatosis potentiate expression of inflammatory markers in chronic HCV, serum protein and hepatic messenger RNA (mRNA) levels of c-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) were measured in 171 patients with chronic HCV.

Denaturing gradient gel electrophoretic multilocus sequence typing of Staphylococcus aureus isolates.

To obviate the need for multilocus sequencing, a method using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) was developed for the multilocus sequence typing (MLST) of Staphylococcus aureus isolates. Sequence types (STs) were obtained on the basis of sequences of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products from seven housekeeping genes and compared to the reference MLST database. The melt curves, sequences and DGGE profiles were compared for 100 STs (i) to determine PCR conditions with 40-mer GC-clamps attached to the forward and reverse primers; (ii) to choose single restriction enzyme sites for digestion of PCR products into two fragments each with a GC-clamp attached and (iii) to optimize DGGE conditions.

Typing of Staphylococcus aureus strains by PCR-amplification of variable-length 16S-23S rDNA spacer regions: characterization of spacer sequences.

To develop a rapid and accurate method of typing large numbers of clinical isolates of Staphylococcus aureus, the spacer region C of the rRNA operon [1391-507 (16S-23S)] was enzymically amplified from 322 strains. When the products were separated by denaturing PAGE, 15 variable-length rrn alleles were demonstrated, ranging in size from 906 to 1223 bp. The variable-length HpaII-digested region C [(region E; 1446-196 (16S-23S)] amplification products were cloned into M13mp18RF to sequence separate variable-length alleles.