Does social media usage ameliorate loneliness in rural youth? A cross sectional pilot study.

Aim: To investigate the relationship between social media use and loneliness and psychological wellbeing of youth in rural New South Wales.

Design: This was a web-based cross-sectional survey.

Methods: The survey consisted of 33 items including demography (12 items), participants' social media use (9 items), mood and anxiety (6 items), perceived loneliness (6 items), the impact of COVID-19 on social media usage or perceived loneliness (2 items).

Impact of COVID-19 on lifestyle and mental wellbeing in a drought-affected rural Australian population.

Introduction: The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has caused unprecedented social and economic disruption, accompanied by the enactment of a multitude of public health measures to restrain disease transmission. These public health and social measures have had a considerable impact on lifestyle and mental wellbeing, which has been well studied with metropolitan populations. However, limited literature concerning such effects on a selectively rural population is presently available.

Staff perceptions of the management of mental health presentations to the emergency department of a rural Australian hospital: qualitative study.

Introduction: Current research demonstrates higher prevalence of mental health related emergency department (ED) presentations in rural areas, despite similar overall prevalence of these conditions in rural and metropolitan contexts. This stems from shortages in availability of specialised mental health professionals, greater stigma against mental illness, greater socioeconomic disadvantages, and access to means of self-harm in rural regions. Little is known, however, about the specific characteristics of mental health presentations to rural emergency departments (EDs) in Australia.

Interprofessional education in the rural environment to enhance multidisciplinary care in future practice: Breaking down silos in tertiary health education.

Objective: Western Sydney University has implemented a rural interprofessional learning programme to promote collaborative care approaches to enhance cross-discipline communications, improve knowledge and clarity of roles and improve patient care and outcomes.

Design: Rural interprofessinal learning is an interprofessional educational approach, consisting of simulations of complex health events. Simulation methodology frames the study with a focus on human interaction.

The PiGeOn project: protocol of a longitudinal study examining psychosocial and ethical issues and outcomes in germline genomic sequencing for cancer.

Background: Advances in genomics offer promise for earlier detection or prevention of cancer, by personalisation of medical care tailored to an individual's genomic risk status. However genome sequencing can generate an unprecedented volume of results for the patient to process with potential implications for their families and reproductive choices. This paper describes a protocol for a study (PiGeOn) that aims to explore how patients and their blood relatives experience germline genomic sequencing, to help guide the appropriate future implementation of genome sequencing into routine clinical practice.

The PiGeOn project: protocol for a longitudinal study examining psychosocial, behavioural and ethical issues and outcomes in cancer tumour genomic profiling.

Background: Genomic sequencing in cancer (both tumour and germline), and development of therapies targeted to tumour genetic status, hold great promise for improvement of patient outcomes. However, the imminent introduction of genomics into clinical practice calls for better understanding of how patients value, experience, and cope with this novel technology and its often complex results. Here we describe a protocol for a novel mixed-methods, prospective study (PiGeOn) that aims to examine patients' psychosocial, cognitive, affective and behavioural responses to tumour genomic profiling and to integrate a parallel critical ethical analysis of returning results.

PIML: the Pathogen Information Markup Language.

Motivation: A vast amount of information about human, animal and plant pathogens has been acquired, stored and displayed in varied formats through different resources, both electronically and otherwise. However, there is no community standard format for organizing this information or agreement on machine-readable format(s) for data exchange, thereby hampering interoperation efforts across information systems harboring such infectious disease data.

Results: The Pathogen Information Markup Language (PIML) is a free, open, XML-based format for representing pathogen information.

Clinical psychology in general practice: a cohort study.

Objective: To evaluate whether a collaborative model of mental healthcare involving general practitioners and clinical psychologists benefits patients with common mental disorders in primary care.

Design And Participants: Cohort study of 276 general practice patients with mental health problems receiving collaborative treatment from clinical psychologists and GPs compared with a normative sample of 198 patients attending the same general practice surgeries.

Setting: Nine general practices in three regional cities (Bathurst, Armidale and Ballarat) and two single-doctor practices in two rural and remote townships (Rylstone and Trundle).

Fragilysin, the enterotoxin from Bacteroides fragilis, enhances the serum antibody response to antigen co-administered by the intranasal route.

Fragilysin, an extracellular zinc metalloprotease produced by enterotoxigenic strains of the anaerobic bacterium Bacteroides fragilis, disrupts the paracellular barrier by cleavage of the intercellular proteins between epithelial cells resulting in fluid secretion. Intranasal immunization of mice with fragilysin and co-administered ovalbumin (Ova) resulted in an Ova-specific serum IgG response that was over 18000-fold higher than Ova alone, as well as detectable levels of serum IgA. Serum IgG titers were comparable with those seen when whole cholera toxin was used as the adjuvant, although the responses obtained with fragilysin showed more variability between mice.

Observation of Scholte-like waves on the liquid-loaded surfaces of periodic structures.

The observation of Scholte-like ultrasonic waves travelling along the water-loaded surfaces of solids with periodically varying properties is reported. Results are presented for two 2D superlattices that intersect the surface normally: a laminated solid of alternating 0.5 mm thick layers of aluminium and a polymer, and a hexagonal array of polymer rods of lattice spacing 1 mm in an aluminium matrix.

Ribosomal DNA fragments enhance the stability of transfected DNA in Entamoeba histolytica.

Genetic manipulation of Entamoeba histolytica is limited by the inability to express foreign genes at high levels. We tested whether sequences from the E. histolytica rDNA episome, present in 200 copies per cell, could act to stabilize the episomal transfection vector pTCV1.

Regulation of adherence and virulence by the Entamoeba histolytica lectin cytoplasmic domain, which contains a beta2 integrin motif.

Killing of human cells by the parasite Entamoeba histolytica requires adherence via an amebic cell surface lectin. Lectin activity in the parasite is regulated by inside-out signaling. The lectin cytoplasmic domain has sequence identity with a region of the beta2 integrin cytoplasmic tail implicated in regulation of integrin-mediated adhesion.

A tetracycline-inducible gene expression system in Entamoeba histolytica.

We have developed an episomal inducible gene expression system in Entamoeba histolytica based on the TetR repressor. The tetR gene was placed under control of 5' and 3' ferredoxin (fdx) regulatory sequences on a plasmid encoding the hygromycin resistance gene directed by 5' and 3' hgl sequences. The reporter luciferase constructs were introduced on a second episome bearing the neomycin resistance gene controlled by 5' and 3' actin sequences.

Autophosphorylation of the focal adhesion kinase, pp125FAK, directs SH2-dependent binding of pp60src.

The phosphorylation of protein tyrosine kinases (PTKs) on tyrosine residues is a critical regulatory event that modulates catalytic activity and triggers the physical association of PTKs with Src homology 2 (SH2)-containing proteins. The integrin-linked focal adhesion kinase, pp125FAK, exhibits extracellular matrix-dependent phosphorylation on tyrosine and physically associates with two nonreceptor PTKs, pp60src and pp59fyn, via their SH2 domains. Herein, we identify Tyr-397 as the major site of tyrosine phosphorylation on pp125FAK both in vivo and in vitro.

Identification and characterization of a cytoskeleton-associated, epidermal growth factor sensitive pp60c-src substrate.

In studies aimed at identifying and characterizing pp60c-src substrates that participate in the enhanced mitogenic response to epidermal growth factor (EGF) observed in murine C3H10T1/2 fibroblasts overexpressing c-src, we have identified a 75-kDa protein (p75) whose properties are consistent with those expected of such a substrate. We present evidence to show that p75 is immunologically related to a recently described, cytoskeleton-associated, pp60v-src substrate [Wu et al. (1991).

pp125FAK a structurally distinctive protein-tyrosine kinase associated with focal adhesions.

Expression of the Rous sarcoma virus-encoded oncoprotein, pp60v-src, subverts the normal regulation of cell growth, which results in oncogenic transformation. This process requires the intrinsic protein-tyrosine kinase activity of pp60v-src and is associated with an increase in tyrosine phosphorylation of a number of cellular proteins, candidate substrates for pp60v-src. We report here the isolation of a cDNA encoding a protein, pp125, that is a major phosphotyrosine-containing protein in untransformed chicken embryo cells and exhibits an increase in phosphotyrosine in pp60v-src-transformed chicken embryo cells.