Measuring Socioeconomic and Stress Disparities in Infant Declarative Memory Using the Visual Paired Comparison Task.

Research suggests that socioeconomic circumstances and stress predict memory skills in adults and older children, yet few studies have addressed this question in infancy. The current study used the visual-paired comparison paradigm to examine whether socioeconomic circumstances, maternal perceived stress, and/or maternal physiological stress, all measured prenatally, predict memory performance among 6-month-old infants. We found no significant associations between infant memory and any measure of socioeconomic circumstance or stress.

Perplexity as a provocation: revisiting the role of metaphor as a 'place holder' for the potential of COVID-19 antibodies.

This article revisits long-standing critiques of the role of metaphor in immunological discourse. Drawing on Alfred North Whitehead's speculative philosophy of organism, I focus on the use of metaphor to explain the process by which COVID-19 vaccine research is able to generate protective antibodies, the challenge of autoimmune disease and dengue fever antibodies. I suggest that metaphors are provoked by the perplexity that arises from presupposing that distinct morphological substances are the first order of reality.

What is nature capable of? Evidence, ontology and speculative medical humanities.

Expanding on the recent call for a 'critical medical humanities' to intervene in questions of the ontology of health, this article develops a what we call a 'speculative' orientation to such interventions in relation to some of the ontological commitments on which contemporary biomedical cultures rest. We argue that crucial to this task is an approach to ontology that treats it not as a question of first principles, but as a matter of the consequences of the images of nature that contemporary biomedical research practices espouse when they make claims to evidence, as well as the possible consequences of imagining different worlds in which health and disease processes partake. By attending to the implicit ontological assumptions involved in the method par excellence of biomedical research, namely the randomised controlled trial (RCT), we argue that the mechanistic ontology that tacitly informs evidence-based biomedical research simultaneously authorises a series of problematic consequences for understanding and intervening practically in the concrete realities of health.

Increasing Belief in the Effectiveness of HIV Treatment as Prevention: Results of Repeated, National Surveys of Australian Gay and Bisexual Men, 2013-15.

We surveyed Australian gay and bisexual men, assessing belief in HIV treatment as prevention (TasP) and support for early treatment. We identified the characteristics of participants who believed in TasP and supported early treatment using multivariate logistic regression. In 2013, 1316 men participated; 1251 participated in 2015.

Interest in using rectal microbicides among Australian gay men is associated with perceived HIV vulnerability and engaging in condomless sex with casual partners: results from a national survey.

Objective: We assessed interest in using rectal microbicides to prevent HIV transmission among gay men in Australia.

Methods: A national online survey was conducted in 2013. Interest in using rectal microbicides was measured on a seven-item scale (α=0.

Australian gay and bisexual men's attitudes to HIV treatment as prevention in repeated, national surveys, 2011-2013.

Objective: Assess the acceptability of HIV treatment as prevention and early antiretroviral treatment among gay and bisexual men in Australia and any changes in attitudes over time.

Methods: National, online, cross-sectional surveys of gay and bisexual men were repeated in 2011 and 2013. Changes in attitudes to HIV treatment over time were assessed with multivariate analysis of variance.

Willingness to use HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis has declined among australian gay and bisexual men: results from repeated national surveys, 2011-2013.

We surveyed willingness to use pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) and the likelihood of decreased condom use among Australian gay and bisexual men in 2011 and 2013 (n = 2384). Willingness to use PrEP declined from 28.2% to 23.

HIV-negative and HIV-positive gay men's attitudes to medicines, HIV treatments and antiretroviral-based prevention.

We assessed attitudes to medicines, HIV treatments and antiretroviral-based prevention in a national, online survey of 1,041 Australian gay men (88.3% HIV-negative and 11.7% HIV-positive).

Just how stable are escape rhythms after atrioventricular junction ablation?

Background: Atrioventricular (AV) node ablation with implantation of a permanent pacemaker is an established mode of therapy in the treatment of atrial fibrillation. However, concern exists regarding subsequent dependency on an entirely paced rhythm and the possible sequela of unheralded pacemaker failure. Data regarding escape rhythm lability, an important feature of pacemaker dependency, are limited.

The performative function of expectations in translating treatment to prevention: the case of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

This paper is about expectations of oral PrEP, 'a pill a day' HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis that could be the first systemic form of HIV prevention for sexual or needle stick exposures. If found safe and effective--a difficult criteria to establish and, as such, is central to this paper--PrEP has the potential to significantly alter HIV prevention, well ahead of a vaccine or topical microbicide. Hence, despite uncertainty about PrEP's viability, the potential significance of its impact on the HIV field requires early planning.

Evaluation of MRI for the diagnosis of appendicitis during pregnancy when ultrasound is inconclusive.

Background: To retrospectively evaluate the diagnostic performance and clinical utility of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in pregnant patients suspected of having acute appendicitis, when an ultrasound study generated an inconclusive result.

Methods: The medical records of 19 consecutive women who underwent abdominal and pelvic MRI at a tertiary care referral center (St. Paul's Hospital, Vancouver, Canada), as part of the work up of clinically suspected acute appendicitis, were retrospectively reviewed.

After the euphoria: HIV medical technologies from the perspective of their prescribers.

This paper focuses on the relationship of HIV medical technologies to current styles of medical practice and highlights issues posed by the technologies for those working and/or living with HIV. The paper examines HIV anti-retroviral combination therapies and associated tests from the perspective of their prescribers. The prescribers were interviewed during the later part of 2002 at three London HIV clinics.

Blood and bioidentity: ideas about self, boundaries and risk among blood donors and people living with hepatitis C.

Clinical medicine and biotechnology increasingly utilise and transform human bodily tissues in novel ways. Today more and more tissues--blood, whole organs, ova, embryos, sperm, skin, bone, heart valves, cellular material, bone marrow and corneas--can be transferred between donors and recipients. Hence more and more people in developed nations have the experience of giving a fragment of their body to another, or receiving such a fragment as part of some kind of therapy.

Heart rate variability and diastolic heart failure.

Diastolic heart failure accounts for up to 40% of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF), and is associated with a better prognosis as compared to patients with systolic dysfunction. Nevertheless, patients with diastolic dysfunction have a significantly higher mortality as compared to the normal population. Reduced heart rate variability (HRV), a marker of autonomic dysfunction, is associated with increased mortality in patients with systolic heart failure.

Transvenous pacemaker malposition in the systemic circulation and pacemaker infection: a case report and review of the literature.

Transvenous pacemaker malposition in the systemic circulation is a rare complication of pacemaker implantation; the incidence is not well known. However, with the aid of two-dimensional echocardiography, the problem of pacemaker malposition can be identified earlier. After pacemaker insertion, an electrocardiogram and a posterior-anterior and lateral chest x-ray should be routinely performed.

The nonextractable tined endocardial pacemaker lead.

With the advent of the tined pacemaker electrode to improve endocardial fixation, increasing difficulty in extracting them when needed has resulted in reports of serious complications. The authors reviewed their experience between January 1975 and January 1985. During this 10 year period, 942 pacemakers were inserted and 73 were reoperated upon.

Beyond pure parasystole: promises and problems in modeling complex arrhythmias.

The dynamics of pure parasystole, a cardiac arrhythmia in which two competing pacemakers fire independently, have recently been fully characterized. This model is now extended in an attempt to account for the more complex dynamics occurring with modulated parasystole, in which there exists nonlinear interaction between the sinus node and the ectopic ventricular focus. Theoretical analysis of modulated parasystole reveals three types of dynamics: entrainment, quasiperiodicity, and chaos.

A prospective trial of new versus refurbished cardiac pacemakers: a Canadian experience.

Pacemaker reimplantation in the same patient is common, and pacemaker transplantation or reuse in a second patient has been reported. No report prospectively compares the long term costs, the impact of reuse on the number of pacemakers implanted, the pacemaker related complications, the types of patients selected and the patient survival of those who receive new versus a refurbished pacemaker. The authors implanted 70 pacemakers of which 75% (52) were new and 25% (18) were refurbished.