Putative risk and resiliency factors after an augmented training program for preventing posttraumatic stress injuries among public safety personnel from diverse sectors.

Mental health disorders are particularly prevalent among public safety personnel (PSP). Emotional Resilience Skills Training (ERST) is a cognitive behavioural training program for PSP based on the Unified Protocol for the Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders (i.e.

Factors influencing the likelihood of females passing the Ottawa paramedic physical ability test.

The Ottawa Paramedic Physical Ability Test (OPPAT) was launched in Ontario as a physical employment standard for front-line paramedics. When considering pass rates based on sex, males had a higher likelihood of passing than females. To help understand how to improve pass rates among females we aimed to understand if factors such as participant demographics, college type, employment status and/or peak heart rate (a surrogate of fitness level) were related to OPPAT pass rates.

Seeing through the eyes of the sabertooth Thylacosmilus atrox (Metatheria, Sparassodonta).

The evolution of mammalian vision is difficult to study because the actual receptor organs-the eyes-are not preserved in the fossil record. Orbital orientation and size are the traditional proxies for inferring aspects of ocular function, such as stereoscopy. Adaptations for good stereopsis have evolved in living predaceous mammals, and it is reasonable to infer that fossil representatives would follow the same pattern.

Assessing the impact of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) protocol and Emotional Resilience Skills Training (ERST) among diverse public safety personnel.

Background: Public safety personnel (PSP; e.g., border services personnel, correctional workers, firefighters, paramedics, police, public safety communicators) are frequently exposed to potentially psychologically traumatic events.

Pleistocene mitogenomes reconstructed from the environmental DNA of permafrost sediments.

Traditionally, paleontologists have relied on the morphological features of bones and teeth to reconstruct the evolutionary relationships of extinct animals. In recent decades, the analysis of ancient DNA recovered from macrofossils has provided a powerful means to evaluate these hypotheses and develop novel phylogenetic models. Although a great deal of life history data can be extracted from bones, their scarcity and associated biases limit their information potential.

Collapse of the mammoth-steppe in central Yukon as revealed by ancient environmental DNA.

The temporal and spatial coarseness of megafaunal fossil records complicates attempts to to disentangle the relative impacts of climate change, ecosystem restructuring, and human activities associated with the Late Quaternary extinctions. Advances in the extraction and identification of ancient DNA that was shed into the environment and preserved for millennia in sediment now provides a way to augment discontinuous palaeontological assemblages. Here, we present a 30,000-year sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) record derived from loessal permafrost silts in the Klondike region of Yukon, Canada.

CCWORK protocol: a longitudinal study of Canadian Correctional Workers' Well-being, Organizations, Roles and Knowledge.

Introduction: Knowledge about the factors that contribute to the correctional officer's (CO) mental health and well-being, or best practices for improving the mental health and well-being of COs, have been hampered by the dearth of rigorous longitudinal studies. In the current protocol, we share the approach used in the Canadian Correctional Workers' Well-being, Organizations, Roles and Knowledge study (CCWORK), designed to investigate several determinants of health and well-being among COs working in Canada's federal prison system.

Methods And Analysis: CCWORK is a multiyear longitudinal cohort design (2018-2023, with a 5-year renewal) to study 500 COs working in 43 Canadian federal prisons.

Isotope data from amino acids indicate Darwin's ground sloth was not an herbivore.

Fossil sloths are regarded as obligate herbivores for reasons including peculiarities of their craniodental morphology and that all living sloths feed exclusively on plants. We challenge this view based on isotopic analyses of nitrogen of specific amino acids, which show that Darwin's ground sloth Mylodon darwinii was an opportunistic omnivore. This direct evidence of omnivory in an ancient sloth requires reevaluation of the ecological structure of South American Cenozoic mammalian communities, as sloths represented a major component of these ecosystems across the past 34 Myr.

New radiometric Ar-Ar dates and faunistic analyses refine evolutionary dynamics of Neogene vertebrate assemblages in southern South America.

The vertebrate fossil record of the Pampean Region of Argentina occupies an important place in South American vertebrate paleontology. An abundance of localities has long been the main basis for constructing the chronostratigraphical/geochronological scale for the late Neogene-Quaternary of South America, as well as for understanding major patterns of vertebrate evolution, including the Great American Biotic Interchange. However, few independently-derived dates are available for constraining this record.

Ancient horse genomes reveal the timing and extent of dispersals across the Bering Land Bridge.

The Bering Land Bridge (BLB) last connected Eurasia and North America during the Late Pleistocene. Although the BLB would have enabled transfers of terrestrial biota in both directions, it also acted as an ecological filter whose permeability varied considerably over time. Here we explore the possible impacts of this ecological corridor on genetic diversity within, and connectivity among, populations of a once wide-ranging group, the caballine horses (Equus spp.

No evidence for widespread island extinctions after Pleistocene hominin arrival.

The arrival of modern humans into previously unoccupied island ecosystems is closely linked to widespread extinction, and a key reason cited for Pleistocene megafauna extinction is anthropogenic overhunting. A common assumption based on late Holocene records is that humans always negatively impact insular biotas, which requires an extrapolation of recent human behavior and technology into the archaeological past. Hominins have been on islands since at least the early Pleistocene and for at least 50 thousand y (ka).

Environmental genomics of Late Pleistocene black bears and giant short-faced bears.

Analysis of ancient environmental DNA (eDNA) has revolutionized our ability to describe biological communities in space and time, by allowing for parallel sequencing of DNA from all trophic levels. However, because environmental samples contain sparse and fragmented data from multiple individuals, and often contain closely related species, the field of ancient eDNA has so far been limited to organellar genomes in its contribution to population and phylogenetic studies. This is in contrast to data from fossils where full-genome studies are routine, despite these being rare and their destruction for sequencing undesirable.

Assessment of different screening methods for selecting palaeontological bone samples for peptide sequencing.

Ancient proteomics is being applied to samples dating further and further back in time, with many palaeontological specimens providing protein sequence data for phylogenetic analysis as well as protein degradation studies. However, fossils are a precious material and proteomic analysis is destructive and costly. In this paper we consider three different techniques (ATR-FTIR, MALDI-ToF MS and chiral AA analysis) to screen fossil material for potential protein preservation, aiming to maximise the proteomic information recovered and saving costly time consuming analyses which may produce low quality results.

American mastodon mitochondrial genomes suggest multiple dispersal events in response to Pleistocene climate oscillations.

Pleistocene glacial-interglacial cycles are correlated with dramatic temperature oscillations. Examining how species responded to these natural fluctuations can provide valuable insights into the impacts of present-day anthropogenic climate change. Here we present a phylogeographic study of the extinct American mastodon (Mammut americanum), based on 35 complete mitochondrial genomes.

Evaluation of Polyethylene Glycol-Based Antimicrobial Coatings on Urinary Catheters in the Prevention of Infections in a Rabbit Model.

Catheter-associated urinary tract infections are a major cause of patient morbidity and mortality. Despite many attempts to design biomaterials that might reduce the risk, none has had a profound impact on reducing the incidence of this most common nosocomial infection. Recent work, however, has shown promise for a silver-based biomaterial coating composed of methoxylated polyethylene glycol 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (mPEG-DOPA) in reducing uropathogen attachment and biofilm formation.

Sleep Quality and Mental Disorder Symptoms among Canadian Public Safety Personnel.

Poor sleep quality is associated with numerous mental health concerns and poorer overall physical health. Sleep disturbances are commonly reported by public safety personnel (PSP) and may contribute to the risk of developing mental disorders or exacerbate mental disorder symptoms. The current investigation was designed to provide estimates of sleep disturbances among PSP and explore the relationship between sleep quality and mental health status.

Assessing the Relative Impact of Diverse Stressors among Public Safety Personnel.

Public Safety Personnel (PSP; e.g., correctional workers and officers, firefighters, paramedics, police officers, and public safety communications officials (e.

Evaluating the effect of a strength and conditioning program to improve paramedic candidates' physical readiness for duty.

Background: The Ottawa Paramedic Physical Ability Test (OPPAT™) is a physical employment standard for the paramedic sector. If a candidate is unsuccessful in meeting the OPPAT™ performance standard they should be provided with an appropriate accommodation, such as a strength and conditioning program, to improve performance.

Objective: Develop, implement and evaluate the effectiveness of a 4-week strength and conditioning program on improving OPPAT™ performance and associated fitness measures in paramedic candidates.

Palaeoproteomics resolves sloth relationships.

The living tree sloths Choloepus and Bradypus are the only remaining members of Folivora, a major xenarthran radiation that occupied a wide range of habitats in many parts of the western hemisphere during the Cenozoic, including both continents and the West Indies. Ancient DNA evidence has played only a minor role in folivoran systematics, as most sloths lived in places not conducive to genomic preservation. Here we utilize collagen sequence information, both separately and in combination with published mitochondrial DNA evidence, to assess the relationships of tree sloths and their extinct relatives.

Application of Novel 3,4-Dihydroxyphenylalanine-Containing Antimicrobial Polymers for the Prevention of Uropathogen Attachment to Urinary Biomaterials.

Urinary catheters and stents are frequently prone to catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) through biofilm formation. Several strategies have been evaluated in search of a stent coating to reliably prevent adherence of bacteria and biofilm. Previous and research with methoxylated polyethylene glycol 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (DOPA) copolymer as a candidate coating showed promising results to reduce the bacterial attachment.

The Ottawa Paramedic Physical Ability Test: test-retest reliability and analysis of sex-based performance differences.

The Ottawa Paramedic Physical Ability Test (OPPAT) is a physical employment standard (PES) that candidates must pass as a pre-hire requirement and that incumbents may have to pass prior to returning to work after absence, to demonstrate their physical capabilities as required to safely meet the demands of paramedic work. Consistent with best practice guidelines for PES development, it is important to establish reliability and to investigate sex-based performance differences. Active duty paramedics completed the OPPAT twice while candidates completed the OPPAT six times.

Mental health training, attitudes toward support, and screening positive for mental disorders.

Public Safety Personnel (PSP; e.g. correctional workers, dispatchers, firefighters, paramedics, police) are frequently exposed to potentially traumatic events (PTEs).