Rural smokers : a prevention opportunity

Background: Smoking is the largest single cause of preventable death and disease in Australia. This study describes smoking prevalence and the characteristics of rural smokers to guide general practitioners in targeting particular groups.Methods: Cross sectional surveys in the Greater Green Triangle region of southeast Australia using a random population sample (n=1563, participation rate 48.7%) aged 25&ndash;74 years. Smoking information was assessed by a self administered questionnaire.Results: Complete smoking data were available for 1494 participants. Overall age adjusted current smoking prevalence was 14.9% (95% CI: 13.1&ndash;16.7). In both genders, current smoking prevalence decreased with age. Those aged 25&ndash;44 years were more likely to want to stop smoking and to have attempted cessation, but less likely to have received cessation advice than older smokers.Discussion: This study provides baseline smoking data for rural health monitoring and identifies intervention opportunities. General practice is suited to implement interventions for smoking prevention and cessation at every patient encounter, particularly in younger individuals.<br /

AMPHION: Specification-based programming for scientific subroutine libraries

AMPHION is a knowledge-based software engineering (KBSE) system that guides a user in developing a diagram representing a formal problem specification. It then automatically implements a solution to this specification as a program consisting of calls to subroutines from a library. The diagram provides an intuitive domain oriented notation for creating a specification that also facilitates reuse and modification. AMPHION'S architecture is domain independent. AMPHION is specialized to an application domain by developing a declarative domain theory. Creating a domain theory is an iterative process that currently requires the joint expertise of domain experts and experts in automated formal methods for software development

Increased awareness of event-driven PrEP and knowledge of how to use it: results from a cross-sectional survey of gay and bisexual men in Australia

Background: Recent changes to Australian PrEP prescribing guidelines support the use of event-driven pre-exposure prophylaxis (ED-PrEP) to prevent HIV among gay and bisexual men (GBM). Social marketing campaigns to increase awareness of ED-PrEP were conducted in early 2021. This study aimed to assess the awareness and knowledge of this method after these campaigns. Methods: We conducted a national cross-sectional online survey about PrEP knowledge and attitudes from March to May 2021. Participants were asked if they had heard of ED-PrEP. Among aware participants, questions about the ‘2-1-1’ method were asked to assess knowledge. Bivariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess the characteristics of those who were aware of ED-PrEP, and those who had correct knowledge of ED-PrEP. Analysis was restricted to non-HIV-positive cis-GBM who were aware of PrEP. Results: Among the 419 participants eligible for this analysis, 286 (68.3%) had heard of ED-PrEP. Awareness was associated with living in a postcode with ≥10% gay men, PrEP experience, and belief ED-PrEP is effective. Of these 286 participants, 125 (43.7%) correctly answered questions about how to take ED-PrEP. Correct knowledge was associated with PrEP experience and belief ED-PrEP is effective. Conclusions: A growing proportion of GBM are aware of ED-PrEP, but many still do not know how to take it as per clinical guidelines. More work is needed to increase knowledge among GBM to promote effective use of this method

Behavioral deficits in an Angelman syndrome model: Effects of genetic background and age

Angelman syndrome (AS) is a severe neurodevelopmental disorder associated with disruption of maternally inherited UBE3A (ubiquitin protein ligase E3A) expression. At the present time, there is no effective treatment for AS. Mouse lines with loss of maternal Ube3a (Ube3am–/p+) recapitulate multiple aspects of the clinical AS profile, including impaired motor coordination, learning deficits, and seizures. Thus, these genetic mouse models could serve as behavioral screens for preclinical efficacy testing, a critical component of drug discovery for AS intervention. However, the severity and consistency of abnormal phenotypes reported in Ube3am–/p+ mice can vary, dependent upon age and background strain, which is problematic for the detection of beneficial drug effects. As part of an ongoing AS drug discovery initiative, we characterized Ube3am–/p+ mice on either a 129S7/SvEvBrd-Hprtb-m2 (129) or C57BL/6J (B6) background across a range of functional domains and ages to identify reproducible and sufficiently large phenotypes suitable for screening therapeutic compounds. The results from the study showed that Ube3am–/p+ mice have significant deficits in acquisition and reversal learning in the Morris water maze. The findings also demonstrated that Ube3am–/p+ mice exhibit motor impairment in a rotarod task, hypoactivity, reduced rearing and marble-burying, and deficient fear conditioning. Overall, these profiles of abnormal phenotypes can provide behavioral targets for evaluating effects of novel therapeutic strategies relevant to AS

Extending Metadata Definitions by Automatically Extracting and Organizing Glossary Definitions

Metadata descriptions of database contents are required to build and use systems that access and deliver data in response to user requests. When numerous heterogeneous databases are brought together in a single system, their various metadata formalizations must be homogenized and integrated in order to support the access planning and delivery system. This integration is a tedious process that requires human expertise and attention. In this paper we describe a method of speeding up the formalization and integration of new metadata. The method takes advantage of the fact that databases are often described in web pages containing natural language glossaries that define pertinent aspects of the data. Given a root URL, our method identifies likely glossaries, extracts and formalizes aspects of relevant concepts defined in them, and automatically integrates the new formalized metadata concepts into a large model of the domain and associated conceptualizations

Rescue of behavioral and electrophysiological phenotypes in a Pitt-Hopkins syndrome mouse model by genetic restoration of Tcf4 expression

Pitt-Hopkins syndrome (PTHS) is a neurodevelopmental disorder caused by monoallelic mutation or deletion in the transcription factor 4 (TCF4) gene. Individuals with PTHS typically present in the first year of life with developmental delay and exhibit intellectual disability, lack of speech, and motor incoordination. There are no effective treatments available for PTHS, but the root cause of the disorder, TCF4 haploinsufficiency, suggests that it could be treated by normalizing TCF4 gene expression. Here, we performed proof-of-concept viral gene therapy experiments using a conditional Tcf4 mouse model of PTHS and found that postnatally reinstating Tcf4 expression in neurons improved anxiety-like behavior, activity levels, innate behaviors, and memory. Postnatal reinstatement also partially corrected EEG abnormalities, which we characterized here for the first time, and the expression of key TCF4-regulated genes. Our results support a genetic normalization approach as a treatment strategy for PTHS, and possibly other TCF4-linked disorders