Pelvic Floor Dysfunction After Childbirth: Occupational Impact and Awareness of Available Treatment.

Postpartum pelvic floor dysfunction (PFD) has been identified as a significant public health issue. The study aimed to (a) identify the impact of PFD on parous women's occupations, (b) explore how PFD impacts daily life, and (c) determine the level of awareness regarding availability of PFD treatment. The preliminary study utilized a mixed-methods descriptive design.

Experiences of health service providers establishing an Aboriginal-Mainstream partnership to improve maternity care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in an urban setting.

Australian policy encourages multiagency partnerships between hospitals and Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations to improve the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Service planners remain unsure about how to implement such partnerships in maternity care, and there is a lack of appropriate tools designed to gauge the state of such partnerships for the Australian Indigenous context. In 2013, two Aboriginal health services and a major tertiary hospital partnered to deliver best practice maternity care to Indigenous families in Brisbane, Australia.

Establishing teams aiming to provide culturally safe maternity care for Indigenous families.

Problem: It is not well known how to prepare new multidisciplinary teams aiming to provide culturally safe maternity care for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families in an urban setting.

Background: National policies recommend increasing the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workforce and cultural competencies of the non-Indigenous workforce as key drivers of culturally safe care.

Question: What are the key learnings from staff experiences establishing multidisciplinary teams aiming to provide culturally safe maternity care that aims to privilege Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing?

Methods: As part of a larger participatory action research project, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted December 2014-April 2015 with 21 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and non-Indigenous healthcare staff.

CaRuby-Nano: a novel high affinity calcium probe for dual color imaging.

The great demand for long-wavelength and high signal-to-noise Ca(2+) indicators has led us to develop CaRuby-Nano, a new functionalizable red calcium indicator with nanomolar affinity for use in cell biology and neuroscience research. In addition, we generated CaRuby-Nano dextran conjugates and an AM-ester variant for bulk loading of tissue. We tested the new indicator using in vitro and in vivo experiments demonstrating the high sensitivity of CaRuby-Nano as well as its power in dual color imaging experiments.

Calcium dynamics in astrocyte processes during neurovascular coupling.

Enhanced neuronal activity in the brain triggers a local increase in blood flow, termed functional hyperemia, via several mechanisms, including calcium (Ca(2+)) signaling in astrocytes. However, recent in vivo studies have questioned the role of astrocytes in functional hyperemia because of the slow and sparse dynamics of their somatic Ca(2+) signals and the absence of glutamate metabotropic receptor 5 in adults. Here, we reexamined their role in neurovascular coupling by selectively expressing a genetically encoded Ca(2+) sensor in astrocytes of the olfactory bulb.