It's fair for us: Diversity structures cause women to legitimize discrimination

This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain.The article is available in final published form via: doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2014.11.010Three experiments tested the hypothesis that the mere presence (vs. absence) of diversity structures makes it more difficult for women to detect sexism. In Experiment 1, even when a company's hiring decisions disadvantaged women, women perceived the company as more procedurally just for women and were less supportive of sexism litigation when the company offered diversity training, compared to when it did not. In Experiment 2, women perceived a company as more procedurally just for women and as less likely to have engaged in sexism when the company offered diversity training, compared to when it did not. This effect was not moderated by women's endorsement of status legitimizing beliefs. In Experiment 3, women perceived a company as more procedurally just and less discriminatory when the company had been recognized for positive gender diversity practices compared to when it had not. Additionally, these effects were most pronounced among women who endorsed benevolent sexist beliefs and mitigated among those who rejected benevolent sexist beliefs. Together, these experiments demonstrate that diversity structures can make it difficult for women to detect and remedy discrimination, especially women who hold benevolent sexist beliefs.National Science Foundatio

Broadening public participation in systematic reviews : a case example involving young people in two configurative reviews

Background: Arguments supporting the involvement of users in research have even more weight when involving the public in systematic reviews of research. We aimed to explore the potential for public involvement in systematic reviews of observational and qualitative studies. Methods: Two consultative workshops were carried out with a group of young people (YP) aged 12–17 years to examine two ongoing reviews about obesity: one about children's views and one on the link between obesity and educational attainment. YP were invited to comment on the credibility of themes, to propose elements of interventions, to suggest links between educational attainment and obesity and to comment on their plausibility. Results: Researchers had more confidence in review findings, after checking that themes identified as important by YP were emphasised appropriately. Researchers were able to use factors linking obesity and attainment identified as important by YP to identify limitations in the scope of extant research. Conclusion: Consultative workshops helped researchers draw on the perspectives of YP when interpreting and reflecting upon two systematic reviews. Involving users in judging synthesis credibility and identifying concepts was easier than involving them in interpreting findings. Involvement activities for reviews should be designed with review stage, purpose and group in mind

Why not? Understanding the spatial clustering of private facility-based delivery and financial reasons for homebirths in Nigeria.

BACKGROUND: In Nigeria, the provision of public and private healthcare vary geographically, contributing to variations in one's healthcare surroundings across space. Facility-based delivery (FBD) is also spatially heterogeneous. Levels of FBD and private FBD are significantly lower for women in certain south-eastern and northern regions. The potential influence of childbirth services frequented by the community on individual's barriers to healthcare utilization is under-studied, possibly due to the lack of suitable data. Using individual-level data, we present a novel analytical approach to examine the relationship between women's reasons for homebirth and community-level, health-seeking surroundings. We aim to assess the extent to which cost or finance acts as a barrier for FBD across geographic areas with varying levels of private FBD in Nigeria. METHOD: The most recent live births of 20,467 women were georeferenced to 889 locations in the 2013 Nigeria Demographic and Health Survey. Using these locations as the analytical unit, spatial clusters of high/low private FBD were detected with Kulldorff statistics in the SatScan software package. We then obtained the predicted percentages of women who self-reported financial reasons for homebirth from an adjusted generalized linear model for these clusters. RESULTS: Overall private FBD was 13.6% (95%CI = 11.9,15.5). We found ten clusters of low private FBD (average level: 0.8, 95%CI = 0.8,0.8) and seven clusters of high private FBD (average level: 37.9, 95%CI = 37.6,38.2). Clusters of low private FBD were primarily located in the north, and the Bayelsa and Cross River States. Financial barrier was associated with high private FBD at the cluster level - 10% increase in private FBD was associated with + 1.94% (95%CI = 1.69,2.18) in nonusers citing cost as a reason for homebirth. CONCLUSIONS: In communities where private FBD is common, women who stay home for childbirth might have mild increased difficulties in gaining effective access to public care, or face an overriding preference to use private services, among other potential factors. The analytical approach presented in this study enables further research of the differentials in individuals' reasons for service non-uptake across varying contexts of healthcare surroundings. This will help better devise context-specific strategies to improve health service utilization in resource-scarce settings

My Hand or Yours? Markedly Different Sensitivity to Egocentric and Allocentric Views in the Hand Laterality Task

In the hand laterality task participants judge the handedness of visually presented stimuli – images of hands shown in a variety of postures and views - and indicate whether they perceive a right or left hand. The task engages kinaesthetic and sensorimotor processes and is considered a standard example of motor imagery. However, in this study we find that while motor imagery holds across egocentric views of the stimuli (where the hands are likely to be one's own), it does not appear to hold across allocentric views (where the hands are likely to be another person's). First, we find that psychophysical sensitivity, d', is clearly demarcated between egocentric and allocentric views, being high for the former and low for the latter. Secondly, using mixed effects methods to analyse the chronometric data, we find high positive correlation between response times across egocentric views, suggesting a common use of motor imagery across these views. Correlations are, however, considerably lower between egocentric and allocentric views, suggesting a switch from motor imagery across these perspectives. We relate these findings to research showing that the extrastriate body area discriminates egocentric (‘self’) and allocentric (‘other’) views of the human body and of body parts, including hands

Radiation-associated sarcoma of the skull base after irradiation for pituitary adenoma

Secondary, radiation-induced neoplasms represent a significant long-term risk after radiation treatment, and radiation-induced sarcomas (RAS) have an especially poor prognosis. These have rarely been reported after irradiation for pituitary adenomas

Current realities versus theoretical optima: quantifying efficiency and sociospatial equity of travel time to hospitals in low-income and middle-income countries.

BACKGROUND: Having hospitals located in urban areas where people, resources and wealth concentrate is efficient, but leaves long travel times for the rural and often poorer population and goes against the equity objective. We aimed to assess the current efficiency (mean travel time in the whole population) and equity (difference in travel time between the poorest and least poor deciles) of hospital care provision in four sub-Saharan African countries, and to compare them against their theoretical optima. METHODS: We overlaid the locations of 480, 115, 3787 and 256 hospitals in Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Tanzania, respectively, with high-resolution maps of travel time, population and wealth to estimate current efficiency and equity. To identify the potential optima, we simulated 7500 sets of hospitals locations based on various population and wealth weightings and percentage reallocations for each country. RESULTS: The average travel time ranged from 38 to 79 min across countries, and the respective optima were mildly shorter (<15%). The observed equity gaps were wider than their optima. Compared with the best case scenarios, differences in the equity gaps varied from 7% in Tanzania to 77% in Nigeria. In Kenya, Malawi and Tanzania, narrower equity gaps without increasing average travel time were seen from simulations that held 75%-90% of hospitals at their current locations. INTERPRETATIONS: Current hospital distribution in the four sub-Saharan African countries could be considered efficient. Simultaneous gains in efficiency and equity do not necessarily require a fundamental redesign of the healthcare system. Our analytical approach is readily extendible to aid decision support in adding and upgrading existing hospitals

Bridging topological and functional information in protein interaction networks by short loops profiling

Protein-protein interaction networks (PPINs) have been employed to identify potential novel interconnections between proteins as well as crucial cellular functions. In this study we identify fundamental principles of PPIN topologies by analysing network motifs of short loops, which are small cyclic interactions of between 3 and 6 proteins. We compared 30 PPINs with corresponding randomised null models and examined the occurrence of common biological functions in loops extracted from a cross-validated high-confidence dataset of 622 human protein complexes. We demonstrate that loops are an intrinsic feature of PPINs and that specific cell functions are predominantly performed by loops of different lengths. Topologically, we find that loops are strongly related to the accuracy of PPINs and define a core of interactions with high resilience. The identification of this core and the analysis of loop composition are promising tools to assess PPIN quality and to uncover possible biases from experimental detection methods. More than 96% of loops share at least one biological function, with enrichment of cellular functions related to mRNA metabolic processing and the cell cycle. Our analyses suggest that these motifs can be used in the design of targeted experiments for functional phenotype detection.This research was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/H018409/1 to AP, ACCC and FF, and BB/J016284/1 to NSBT) and by the Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research (to NSBT and FF). SSC is funded by a Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research Gordon Piller PhD Studentship

Prevalence of Disorders Recorded in Dogs Attending Primary-Care Veterinary Practices in England

Purebred dog health is thought to be compromised by an increasing occurence of inherited diseases but inadequate prevalence data on common disorders have hampered efforts to prioritise health reforms. Analysis of primary veterinary practice clinical data has been proposed for reliable estimation of disorder prevalence in dogs. Electronic patient record (EPR) data were collected on 148,741 dogs attending 93 clinics across central and south-eastern England. Analysis in detail of a random sample of EPRs relating to 3,884 dogs from 89 clinics identified the most frequently recorded disorders as otitis externa (prevalence 10.2%, 95% CI: 9.1-11.3), periodontal disease (9.3%, 95% CI: 8.3-10.3) and anal sac impaction (7.1%, 95% CI: 6.1-8.1). Using syndromic classification, the most prevalent body location affected was the head-and-neck (32.8%, 95% CI: 30.7-34.9), the most prevalent organ system affected was the integument (36.3%, 95% CI: 33.9-38.6) and the most prevalent pathophysiologic process diagnosed was inflammation (32.1%, 95% CI: 29.8-34.3). Among the twenty most-frequently recorded disorders, purebred dogs had a significantly higher prevalence compared with crossbreds for three: otitis externa (P = 0.001), obesity (P = 0.006) and skin mass lesion (P = 0.033), and popular breeds differed significantly from each other in their prevalence for five: periodontal disease (P = 0.002), overgrown nails (P = 0.004), degenerative joint disease (P = 0.005), obesity (P = 0.001) and lipoma (P = 0.003). These results fill a crucial data gap in disorder prevalence information and assist with disorder prioritisation. The results suggest that, for maximal impact, breeding reforms should target commonly-diagnosed complex disorders that are amenable to genetic improvement and should place special focus on at-risk breeds. Future studies evaluating disorder severity and duration will augment the usefulness of the disorder prevalence information reported herein

A pragmatic cluster randomised trial evaluating three implementation interventions

Background Implementation research is concerned with bridging the gap between evidence and practice through the study of methods to promote the uptake of research into routine practice. Good quality evidence has been summarised into guideline recommendations to show that peri-operative fasting times could be considerably shorter than patients currently experience. The objective of this trial was to evaluate the effectiveness of three strategies for the implementation of recommendations about peri-operative fasting. Methods A pragmatic cluster randomised trial underpinned by the PARIHS framework was conducted during 2006 to 2009 with a national sample of UK hospitals using time series with mixed methods process evaluation and cost analysis. Hospitals were randomised to one of three interventions: standard dissemination (SD) of a guideline package, SD plus a web-based resource championed by an opinion leader, and SD plus plan-do-study-act (PDSA). The primary outcome was duration of fluid fast prior to induction of anaesthesia. Secondary outcomes included duration of food fast, patients' experiences, and stakeholders' experiences of implementation, including influences. ANOVA was used to test differences over time and interventions. Results Nineteen acute NHS hospitals participated. Across timepoints, 3,505 duration of fasting observations were recorded. No significant effect of the interventions was observed for either fluid or food fasting times. The effect size was 0.33 for the web-based intervention compared to SD alone for the change in fluid fasting and was 0.12 for PDSA compared to SD alone. The process evaluation showed different types of impact, including changes to practices, policies, and attitudes. A rich picture of the implementation challenges emerged, including inter-professional tensions and a lack of clarity for decision-making authority and responsibility. Conclusions This was a large, complex study and one of the first national randomised controlled trials conducted within acute care in implementation research. The evidence base for fasting practice was accepted by those participating in this study and the messages from it simple; however, implementation and practical challenges influenced the interventions' impact. A set of conditions for implementation emerges from the findings of this study, which are presented as theoretically transferable propositions that have international relevance. Trial registration ISRCTN18046709 - Peri-operative Implementation Study Evaluation (POISE

ZNF804a Regulates Expression of the Schizophrenia-Associated Genes PRSS16, COMT, PDE4B, and DRD2

ZNF804a was identified by a genome-wide association study (GWAS) in which a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP rs1344706) in ZNF804a reached genome-wide statistical significance for association with a combined diagnosis of schizophrenia (SZ) and bipolar disorder. Although the molecular function of ZNF804a is unknown, the amino acid sequence is predicted to contain a C2H2-type zinc-finger domain and suggests ZNF804a plays a role in DNA binding and transcription. Here, we confirm that ZNF804a directly contributes to transcriptional control by regulating the expression of several SZ associated genes and directly interacts with chromatin proximal to the promoter regions of PRSS16 and COMT, the two genes we find upregulated by ZNF804a. Using immunochemistry we establish that ZNF804a is localized to the nucleus of rat neural progenitor cells in culture and in vivo. We demonstrate that expression of ZNF804a results in a significant increase in transcript levels of PRSS16 and COMT, relative to GFP transfected controls, and a statistically significant decrease in transcript levels of PDE4B and DRD2. Furthermore, we show using chromatin immunoprecipitation assays (ChIP) that both epitope-tagged and endogenous ZNF804a directly interacts with the promoter regions of PRSS16 and COMT, suggesting a direct upregulation of transcription by ZNF804a on the expression of these genes. These results are the first to confirm that ZNF804a regulates transcription levels of four SZ associated genes, and binds to chromatin proximal to promoters of two SZ genes. These results suggest a model where ZNF804a may modulate a transcriptional network of SZ associated genes