Bullying and sexual abuse and their association with harmful behaviours, antidepressant use and health-related quality of life in adulthood: a population-based study in South Australia

BACKGROUND:Few representative sample studies have reported estimates of bullying and sexual abuse in Australia. By using face-to-face interviews and self-labelling questions, we investigated the prevalence of these forms of abuse and their relationship with current harmful behaviours (smoking dependence, excessive alcohol intake, binge eating), antidepressant use, and the physical (PCS) and mental (MCS) components of health-related quality of life. METHODS:This study was a population-based survey that investigated 2873 South Australians in 2015 (48.8 ± 18.1 years; 49.3% males). Bullying and sexual abuse (age of onset and duration) and their outcomes were investigated through household interviews. Associations were adjusted for sociodemographic variables by using regression models. RESULTS:45.6% (95% CI 43.3-47.9) of the participants were bullied, and 10.4% (95% CI 9.1-11.9) sexually abused; 7.3% (95% CI 6.2-8.5) reported experiencing both forms of abuse. Moreover, 15.8% of those bullied and 15.0% of those sexually abused suffered from these forms of abuse for > 24 months. Smoking dependence (7.8%) was twice as frequent among those who experienced bullying for > 24 months or when sexual abuse occurred in childhood ( 24 months. Binge eating (8.1%) was more frequent among those bullied or sexually abused in adulthood, but duration did not show a clear pattern. Antidepressant use was up to four times more likely, and PCS or MCS lower among those who were bullied or sexually abused, independent of when these forms of abuse started or their duration. The cumulative adverse relationship of bullying and sexual abuse with the investigated outcomes was more evident for smoking dependence, binge eating, PCS, and MCS than for antidepressant use, but no association was observed with alcohol intake. CONCLUSIONS:The use of self-labelling questions to investigate sensitive areas such as bullying and sexual abuse in a survey is feasible. Such questions provided estimates that are consistent with findings from studies using more detailed instruments. Bullying and sexual abuse have an additive adverse association with various outcomes. Identifying survivors of both forms of abuse is important to avoid more serious consequences.David Alejandro González-Chica, Julio Licinio, Michael Musker, Mali Wong, Jacqueline Bowden, Phillipa Hay, Catherine Chittleborough and Nigel Stock

Hydrothermal vents and methane seeps: rethinking the sphere of influence

Although initially viewed as oases within a barren deep ocean, hydrothermal vents and methane seep chemosynthetic communities are now recognized to interact with surrounding ecosystems on the sea floor and in the water column, and to affect global geochemical cycles. The importance of understanding these interactions is growing as the potential rises for disturbance of the systems from oil and gas extraction, seabed mining and bottom trawling. Here we synthesize current knowledge of the nature, extent and time and space scales of vent and seep interactions with background systems. We document an expanded footprint beyond the site of local venting or seepage with respect to elemental cycling and energy flux, habitat use, trophic interactions, and connectivity. Heat and energy are released, global biogeochemical and elemental cycles are modified, and particulates are transported widely in plumes. Hard and biotic substrates produced at vents and seeps are used by "benthic background" fauna for attachment substrata, shelter, and access to food via grazing or through position in the current, while particulates and fluid fluxes modify planktonic microbial communities. Chemosynthetic production provides nutrition to a host of benthic and planktonic heterotrophic background species through multiple horizontal and vertical transfer pathways assisted by flow, gamete release, animal movements, and succession, but these pathways remain poorly known. Shared species, genera and families indicate that ecological and evolutionary connectivity exists among vents, seeps, organic falls and background communities in the deep sea: the genetic linkages with inactive vents and seeps and background assemblages however, are practically unstudied. The waning of venting or seepage activity generates major transitions in space and time that create links to surrounding ecosystems, often with identifiable ecotones or successional stages. The nature of all these interactions is dependent on water depth, as well as regional oceanography and biodiversity. Many ecosystem services are associated with the interactions and transitions between chemosynthetic and background ecosystems, for example carbon cycling and sequestration, fisheries production, and a host of non-market and cultural services. The quantification of the sphere of influence of vents and seeps could be beneficial to better management of deep-sea environments in the face of growing industrialization

Primary Invasive Aspergillosis of the Digestive Tract: Report of Two Cases and Review of the Literature

BACKGROUND: Disseminated aspergillosis is thought to occur as a result of vascular invasion from the lungs with subsequent bloodstream dissemination, and portals of entry other than sinuses and/or the respiratory tract remain speculative. METHODS: We report two cases of primary aspergillosis in the digestive tract and present a detailed review of eight of the 23 previously-published cases for which detailed data are available. RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: These ten cases presented with symptoms suggestive of typhlitis, with further peritonitis requiring laparotomy and small bowel segmental resection. All cases were characterized by the absence of pulmonary disease at the time of histologically-confirmed gastrointestinal involvement with vascular invasion by branched Aspergillus hyphae. These cases suggest that the digestive tract may represent a portal of entry for Aspergillus species in immunocompromised patients

A cross-institutional analysis of the effects of broadening trainee professional development on research productivity

PhD-trained scientists are essential contributors to the workforce in diverse employment sectors that include academia, industry, government, and nonprofit organizations. Hence, best practices for training the future biomedical workforce are of national concern. Complementing coursework and laboratory research training, many institutions now offer professional training that enables career exploration and develops a broad set of skills critical to various career paths. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded academic institutions to design innovative programming to enable this professional development through a mechanism known as Broadening Experiences in Scientific Training (BEST). Programming at the NIH BEST awardee institutions included career panels, skill-building workshops, job search workshops, site visits, and internships. Because doctoral training is lengthy and requires focused attention on dissertation research, an initial concern was that students participating in additional complementary training activities might exhibit an increased time to degree or diminished research productivity. Metrics were analyzed from 10 NIH BEST awardee institutions to address this concern, using time to degree and publication records as measures of efficiency and productivity. Comparing doctoral students who participated to those who did not, results revealed that across these diverse academic institutions, there were no differences in time to degree or manuscript output. Our findings support the policy that doctoral students should participate in career and professional development opportunities that are intended to prepare them for a variety of diverse and important careers in the workforce

On the mechanisms governing gas penetration into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection

A new 1D radial fluid code, IMAGINE, is used to simulate the penetration of gas into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection (MGI). The main result is that the gas is in general strongly braked as it reaches the plasma, due to mechanisms related to charge exchange and (to a smaller extent) recombination. As a result, only a fraction of the gas penetrates into the plasma. Also, a shock wave is created in the gas which propagates away from the plasma, braking and compressing the incoming gas. Simulation results are quantitatively consistent, at least in terms of orders of magnitude, with experimental data for a D 2 MGI into a JET Ohmic plasma. Simulations of MGI into the background plasma surrounding a runaway electron beam show that if the background electron density is too high, the gas may not penetrate, suggesting a possible explanation for the recent results of Reux et al in JET (2015 Nucl. Fusion 55 093013)

Velocity-space sensitivity of the time-of-flight neutron spectrometer at JET

The velocity-space sensitivities of fast-ion diagnostics are often described by so-called weight functions. Recently, we formulated weight functions showing the velocity-space sensitivity of the often dominant beam-target part of neutron energy spectra. These weight functions for neutron emission spectrometry (NES) are independent of the particular NES diagnostic. Here we apply these NES weight functions to the time-of-flight spectrometer TOFOR at JET. By taking the instrumental response function of TOFOR into account, we calculate time-of-flight NES weight functions that enable us to directly determine the velocity-space sensitivity of a given part of a measured time-of-flight spectrum from TOFOR

Relationship of edge localized mode burst times with divertor flux loop signal phase in JET

A phase relationship is identified between sequential edge localized modes (ELMs) occurrence times in a set of H-mode tokamak plasmas to the voltage measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region. We focus on plasmas in the Joint European Torus where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which ELMs are observed in the Be II emission at the divertor. The ELMs analysed arise from intrinsic ELMing, in that there is no deliberate intent to control the ELMing process by external means. We use ELM timings derived from the Be II signal to perform direct time domain analysis of the full flux loop VLD2 and VLD3 signals, which provide a high cadence global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux. Specifically, we examine how the time interval between pairs of successive ELMs is linked to the time-evolving phase of the full flux loop signals. Each ELM produces a clear early pulse in the full flux loop signals, whose peak time is used to condition our analysis. The arrival time of the following ELM, relative to this pulse, is found to fall into one of two categories: (i) prompt ELMs, which are directly paced by the initial response seen in the flux loop signals; and (ii) all other ELMs, which occur after the initial response of the full flux loop signals has decayed in amplitude. The times at which ELMs in category (ii) occur, relative to the first ELM of the pair, are clustered at times when the instantaneous phase of the full flux loop signal is close to its value at the time of the first ELM