Psychological Assessment and Motivations of Potential Donors Within the First Australian Uterine Transplant Trial.

Objective: This study aims to investigate the psychological characteristics, motivations and experiences of potential living donors assessed for the first uterus transplant (UTx) clinical trial in Australia.

Design: Mixed methods study.

Setting: Tertiary hospital.

New image, same tactics: global tobacco and vaping industry strategies to promote youth vaping.

E-cigarette use (or vaping) is widespread in young people and is a rapidly growing public health problem. While the tobacco and vaping industry has promoted vaping as a smoking cessation aid for adults, the industry has strategically targeted young people through marketing and appealing designs to orientate a new generation of consumers to use their products. These strategies are not new and replicate what we have previously seen employed by the tobacco industry in past decades to maintain and grow their tobacco profits.

A new dimension of leaf economic spectrum: temporal instability of relationships among genotypes.

Leaf economic spectrum (LES) relationships have been studied across many different plant lineages and at different organizational scales. However, the temporal stability of the LES relationships is largely unknown. We used the wild blueberry system with high genotypic diversity to test whether trait-trait relationships across genotypes demonstrate the same LES relationships found in the global database (GLOPNET) and whether they are stable across years.

Health behaviour and wellbeing trends among Australian adults before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2017-2022): An interrupted time-series analysis.

Objective: To explore population-level trends in health behaviours and wellbeing indicators from before (2017-2019) to during (2020-2022) the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.

Methods: Using cross-sectional data from New South Wales Adult Population Health Surveys (2017-2022, n = 73,680 responses), we calculated weighted prevalence estimates and interrupted time-series logit models to investigate trends in health behavioural risk factors (vegetable and fruit intake, physical activity, alcohol consumption, smoking, e-cigarette use), Body Mass Index (BMI) (overweight and obesity), and wellbeing indicators (psychological distress, self-rated health) among adults aged ≥ 16 years before and during the pandemic.

Results: From 2017 to 2022, the behavioural risk factors and BMI trends were mostly unchanged.

Addressing disparities: A systematic review of digital health equity for adolescent obesity prevention and management interventions.

Adolescence is a high-risk life stage for obesity. Digital strategies are needed to prevent and manage obesity among adolescents. We assessed if digital health interventions are contributing to disparities in obesity outcomes and assessed the adequacy of reporting of digital health equity criteria across four levels of influence within the digital environment.

When genetics and pediatric cancer collide: Understanding and optimizing families' experiences.

Background: Advances in our understanding of the genetic basis of childhood cancer, including primary central nervous system cancers, are improving the diagnosis, treatment, and clinical management of pediatric patients. To effectively translate scientific breakthroughs into enhanced clinical care, it is essential we understand and learn from the experiences of patients, families, and health professionals.

Methods: This report summarizes findings from 4 Australian psychosocial substudies exploring the perspectives of patients, parents, clinicians, and scientists participating in research related to childhood cancer genetics.

Barriers to access of precision guided therapies for children with high-risk cancer.

Introduction: Accessing compassionate access schemes to obtain novel therapeutic agents for children with hard-to-treat cancers can be fraught with challenges such as regulatory barriers and limited resources. This study aimed to explore clinician perspectives on the barriers, impacts and ethical considerations of accessing novel therapeutic agents within the context of a paediatric oncology precision medicine trial.

Methods: We gathered data from 37 semi-structured interviews with paediatric oncologists participating in the PRecISion Medicine for Children with Cancer (PRISM) study, a precision medicine clinical trial in Australia.

Stochastic diffusion using mean-field limits to approximate master equations.

Stochastic diffusion is the noisy and uncertain process through which dynamics like epidemics, or agents like animal species, disperse over a larger area. Understanding these processes is becoming increasingly important as we attempt to better prepare for potential pandemics and as species ranges shift in response to climate change. Unfortunately, modeling of stochastic diffusion is mostly done through inaccurate deterministic tools that fail to capture the random nature of dispersal or else through expensive computational simulations.

Effectiveness of the Go4Fun program: a comparison of face-to-face and digital delivery.

Unlabelled: Objectives and importance of study: Despite an increasing trend in digitally delivered health promotion programs, evidence of their effectiveness compared to face-to-face approaches is limited. Go4Fun is a 10-week, scaled-up healthy lifestyle program in New South Wales (NSW) for children 7-13 years who are above a healthy weight and their families, delivered either face-to-face or digitally. We compared the impact of Standard Go4Fun (face-to-face) and Go4Fun Online (digital) on children's weight and health behaviour outcomes and whether attendance levels influenced outcomes.

Trees have overlapping potential niches that extend beyond their realized niches.

Tree species appear to prefer distinct climatic conditions, but the true nature of these preferences is obscured by species interactions and dispersal, which limit species' ranges. We quantified realized and potential thermal niches of 188 North American tree species to conduct a continental-scale test of the architecture of niches. We found strong and consistent evidence that species occurring at thermal extremes occupy less than three-quarters of their potential niches, and species' potential niches overlap at a mean annual temperature of ~12°C.

Association between BMI Change, Transaminases, and Other Metabolic Parameters in Children with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.

Background: Weight loss and lifestyle interventions are the mainstay of treatment in pediatric NAFLD. There are gaps in the literature on the objective improvement in BMI to meaningfully impact NAFLD in children.

Aim: To determine the decrease in BMI associated with a significant decline in ALT and other metabolic parameters.

Co-design of a paediatric oncology medicines database (ProCure) to support complex care provision for children with a hard-to-treat cancer.

Objectives: Paediatric oncologists often encounter challenges when seeking compassionate access to off-label therapies for their patients. This study employed implementation science and co-design techniques to develop the ProCure medicines database, with the goal of streamlining the application process and addressing identified barriers in paediatric oncology.

Methods: This study utilised an exploratory qualitative research design.

Synthesis reveals approximately balanced biotic differentiation and homogenization.

It is commonly thought that the biodiversity crisis includes widespread declines in the spatial variation of species composition, called biotic homogenization. Using a typology relating homogenization and differentiation to local and regional diversity changes, we synthesize patterns across 461 metacommunities surveyed for 10 to 91 years, and 64 species checklists (13 to 500+ years). Across all datasets, we found that no change was the most common outcome, but with many instances of homogenization and differentiation.

Communicating with families of young people with hard-to-treat cancers: Healthcare professionals' perspectives on challenges, skills, and training.

Objectives: Hard-to-treat childhood cancers are those where standard treatment options do not exist and the prognosis is poor. Healthcare professionals (HCPs) are responsible for communicating with families about prognosis and complex experimental treatments. We aimed to identify HCPs' key challenges and skills required when communicating with families about hard-to-treat cancers and their perceptions of communication-related training.

Operationalizing cultural adaptation to climate change: contemporary examples from United States agriculture.

It has been proposed that climate adaptation research can benefit from an evolutionary approach. But related empirical research is lacking. We advance the evolutionary study of climate adaptation with two case studies from contemporary United States agriculture.

Sustainably sourced components to generate high-strength adhesives.

Nearly all adhesives are derived from petroleum, create permanent bonds, frustrate materials separation for recycling and prevent degradation in landfills. When trying to shift from petroleum feedstocks to a sustainable materials ecosystem, available options suffer from low performance, high cost or lack of availability at the required scales. Here we present a sustainably sourced adhesive system, made from epoxidized soy oil, malic acid and tannic acid, with performance comparable to that of current industrial products.

Impact Evaluation of the Get Healthy in Pregnancy Program: Evidence of Effectiveness.

The efficacy of lifestyle interventions for reduced gestational weight gain (GWG) is established, but evidence of their effectiveness is limited. The Get Healthy in Pregnancy (GHiP) program is a telephone health coaching program supporting healthy GWG delivered state-wide in New South Wales, Australia. This evaluation explores the impact of GHiP on behavioural outcomes and GWG, analysing GHiP participant data (n = 3702 for 2018-2019).

The psychosocial impact of childhood dementia on children and their parents: a systematic review.

Background: Childhood dementias are a group of rare and ultra-rare paediatric conditions clinically characterised by enduring global decline in central nervous system function, associated with a progressive loss of developmentally acquired skills, quality of life and shortened life expectancy. Traditional research, service development and advocacy efforts have been fragmented due to a focus on individual disorders, or groups classified by specific mechanisms or molecular pathogenesis. There are significant knowledge and clinician skill gaps regarding the shared psychosocial impacts of childhood dementia conditions.

Widespread shifts in body size within populations and assemblages.

Biotic responses to global change include directional shifts in organismal traits. Body size, an integrative trait that determines demographic rates and ecosystem functions, is thought to be shrinking in the Anthropocene. Here, we assessed the prevalence of body size change in six taxon groups across 5025 assemblage time series spanning 1960 to 2020.

Macrobehaviour: behavioural variation across space, time, and taxa.

We explore how integrating behavioural ecology and macroecology can provide fundamental new insight into both fields, with particular relevance for understanding ecological responses to rapid environmental change. We outline the field of macrobehaviour, which aims to unite these disciplines explicitly, and highlight examples of research in this space. Macrobehaviour can be envisaged as a spectrum, where behavioural ecologists and macroecologists use new data and borrow tools and approaches from one another.

Parents' expectations, preferences, and recall of germline findings in a childhood cancer precision medicine trial.

Background: Germline genome sequencing in childhood cancer precision medicine trials may reveal pathogenic or likely pathogenic variants in cancer predisposition genes in more than 10% of children. These findings can have implications for diagnosis, treatment, and the child's and family's future cancer risk. Understanding parents' perspectives of germline genome sequencing is critical to successful clinical implementation.