Globally, anthropogenic climate change has caused declines of seagrass ecosystems necessitating proactive restoration approaches that would ideally anticipate future climate scenarios, such as marine warming. In eastern Australia, estuaries with meadows of the endangered seagrass s have warmed and acidified over the past decade, and seagrass communities have declined in some estuaries. Securing these valuable habitats will require proactive conservation and restoration efforts that could be augmented with restoration focussed on boosting resilience to future climate.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To outline the procedural implementation and optimization of rapid diagnostic test (RDT) results for bloodstream infections (BSIs) and to evaluate the combination of RDTs with real-time antimicrobial stewardship team (AST) support plus clinical surveillance platform (CSP) software on time to appropriate therapy in BSIs at a single health system.
Methods: Blood culture reporting and communication were reported for four time periods: (i) a pre-BCID [BioFire® FilmArray® Blood Culture Identification (BCID) Panel] implementation period that consisted of literature review and blood culture notification procedure revision; (ii) a BCID implementation period that consisted of BCID implementation, real-time results notification via CSP, and creation of a treatment algorithm; (iii) a post-BCID implementation period; and (iv) a BCID2 implementation period. Time to appropriate therapy metrics was reported for the BCID2 time period.
Sebum is a biofluid excreted by sebaceous glands in the skin. In recent years sebum has been shown to contain endogenous metabolites diagnostic of disease, with remarkable results for Parkinson's Disease. Given that sebum sampling is facile and non-invasive, its potential for use in clinical biochemistry diagnostic assays should be explored including the parameters for standard operating procedures around collection, transport, and storage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present the genome assembly of the pennate diatom strain UHM3201 (Ochrophyta; Bacillariophyceae; Rhopalodiales; Rhopalodiaceae) and that of its cyanobacterial endosymbiont (Chroococcales: Aphanothecaceae). The genome sequence of the diatom is 60.3 megabases in span, and the cyanobacterial genome has a length of 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe amygdala is important for human fear processing. However, recent research has failed to reveal specificity, with evidence that the amygdala also responds to other emotions. A more nuanced understanding of the amygdala's role in emotion processing, particularly relating to fear, is needed given the importance of effective emotional functioning for everyday function and mental health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCashing out is a popular feature of modern 'in-play' sports betting that allows sports bettors to withdraw a bet before the sporting event on which the bet was placed is finalized. Previous studies have shown that use of the cash out feature is positively related to problem gambling symptomatology. However, little is known about demographic and psychological characteristics of in-play sports bettors who use the cash out feature, or their motivations for use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Ocean warming combined with extreme climatic events, such as marine heatwaves and flash flooding events, threaten seagrasses globally. How seagrasses cope with these challenges is uncertain, particularly for range-edge populations of species such as in Shark Bay, Western Australia. Analyzing gene expression while manipulating multiple stressors provides insight into the genetic response and resilience of seagrasses to climate change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims And Method: We aimed to co-design an intervention optimising the benefits of online arts and culture for mental health in young people for subsequent testing in a trial. Co-design followed the double diamond phases of design, discover, define, develop and deliver.
Results: Navigating the views of all co-designers to produce a testable resource demanded in-depth understanding, and frequent iterations in multiple modalities of the theoretical basis of the intervention, amplification of youth voice and commitment to a common goal.
Psychol Addict Behav
September 2024
Objective: Women in academia publish fewer papers and receive fewer citations than men. These gender gaps likely reflect systemic biases operating over several levels, from journal editorial policies to academic career progression. This study sought to characterize gender gaps for publications and citations in the field of gambling studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntimicrob Steward Healthc Epidemiol
December 2023
Objective: Antibiotic prescribing at hospital discharge is an important focus for antimicrobial stewardship efforts. This study set out to determine the impact of a pharmacist-led intervention at hospital discharge on appropriate antimicrobial prescribing.
Design: This was a pre-/post-study evaluating the impact of a pharmacist-led review on antibiotic prescribing at hospital discharge.
Community Dent Health
November 2023
Introduction: Looked-After-Children (LAC) frequently are more likely to have untreated dental caries, periodontal diseases or dental trauma (McMahon et al., 2018). The COVID-19 pandemic reduced the availability of dental appointments, including for LAC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderstanding sexual reproduction and recruitment in seagrasses is crucial to their conservation and restoration. Flowering, seed production, seed recruitment, and seedling establishment data for the seagrass was collected annually between 2013 and 2018 in meadows at six locations around Rottnest Island, Western Australia. Variable annual rates of flowering and seed production were observed among meadows between northern and southern sides of the island and among years.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClimate change and extreme climatic events, such as marine heatwaves (MHWs), are threatening seagrass ecosystems. Metabolomics can be used to gain insight into early stress responses in seagrasses and help to develop targeted management and conservation measures. We used metabolomics to understand the temporal and mechanistic response of leaf metabolism in seagrasses to climate change.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHistorical and contemporary processes drive spatial patterns of genetic diversity. These include climate-driven range shifts and gene flow mediated by biogeographical influences on dispersal. Assessments that integrate these drivers are uncommon, but critical for testing biogeographic hypotheses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Pediatr Gastroenterol Nutr
March 2023
Background/objectives: Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is an inflammatory disease of unclear etiology. The aim of this study was to use untargeted plasma metabolomics to identify metabolic pathway alterations associated with EoE to better understand the pathophysiology.
Methods: This prospective, case-control study included 72 children, aged 1-17 years, undergoing clinically indicated upper endoscopy (14 diagnosed with EoE and 58 controls).
The mechanisms of B-cell diversification differ greatly between aves and mammals, but both produce B cells and antibodies capable of supporting an effective immune response. To see how differences in the generation of diversity might affect overall repertoire diversity, we have compared the diversity characteristics of immunoglobulin genes from domestic chickens to those from humans. Both use V(D)J gene rearrangement and somatic hypermutation, but only chickens use somatic gene conversion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAs cities expand across the globe, understanding factors that underlie variation in urban tolerance is vital for predicting changes in patterns of biodiversity. Endocrine traits, like circulating hormone concentrations and regulation of endocrine responses, might contribute to variation in species' ability to cope with urban challenges. For example, variation in glucocorticoid and androgen concentrations has been linked to life-history and behavioural traits that are associated with urban tolerance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, and identification of robust biomarkers to complement clinical diagnosis will accelerate treatment options. Here, we demonstrate the use of direct infusion of sebum from skin swabs using paper spray ionization coupled with ion mobility mass spectrometry (PS-IM-MS) to determine the regulation of molecular classes of lipids in sebum that are diagnostic of PD. A PS-IM-MS method for sebum samples that takes 3 min per swab was developed and optimized.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe effect of COVID-19 infection on the human metabolome has been widely reported, but to date all such studies have focused on a single wave of infection. COVID-19 has generated numerous waves of disease with different clinical presentations, and therefore it is pertinent to explore whether metabolic disturbance changes accordingly, to gain a better understanding of its impact on host metabolism and enable better treatments. This work used a targeted metabolomics platform (Biocrates Life Sciences) to analyze the serum of 164 hospitalized patients, 123 with confirmed positive COVID-19 RT-PCR tests and 41 providing negative tests, across two waves of infection.
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