Enhancing the implementation of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle: policy and practice considerations

Overview The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle ("the Principle") was developed in recognition of the devastating effects of forced separation of Indigenous children from families, communities and culture. The Principle exists in legislation and policy in all Australian jurisdictions, and while its importance is recognised in many boards of inquiry and reviews into child protection and justice systems, there are significant concerns about the implementation of the Principle. Recent estimates suggest the Principle has been fully applied in as few as 13% of child protection cases involving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. The purpose of this paper is to explore the contemporary understanding of the Principle, and review the multiple and complex barriers at the policy and practice levels which are impeding its implementation. Promising approaches that might address these barriers are also examined. Key messages The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child Placement Principle was developed in response to the trauma experienced by individuals, families and communities from government policies that involved the widespread removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. „ The fundamental goal of the Principle is to enhance and preserve Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children’s connection to family and community, and sense of identity and culture. „ The Principle is often conceptualised as the “placement hierarchy”, in which placement choices for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children start with family and kin networks, then Indigenous non-related carers in the child’s community, then carers in another Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander community. If no other suitable placement with Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander carers can be sought, children are placed with non-Indigenous carers as a last resort, provided they are able to maintain the child’s connections to their family, community and cultural identity

Among-site variability in the stochastic dynamics of East African coral reefs

Coral reefs are dynamic systems whose composition is highly influenced by unpredictable biotic and abiotic factors. Understanding the spatial scale at which long-term predictions of reef composition can be made will be crucial for guiding conservation efforts. Using a 22-year time series of benthic composition data from 20 reefs on the Kenyan and Tanzanian coast, we studied the long-term behaviour of Bayesian vector autoregressive state-space models for reef dynamics, incorporating among-site variability. We estimate that if there were no among-site variability, the total long-term variability would be approximately one third of its current value. Thus among-site variability contributes more to long-term variability in reef composition than does temporal variability. Individual sites are more predictable than previously thought, and predictions based on current snapshots are informative about long-term properties. Our approach allowed us to identify a subset of possible climate refugia sites with high conservation value, where the long-term probability of coral cover <= 0.1 was very low. Analytical results show that this probability is most strongly influenced by among-site variability and by interactions among benthic components within sites. These findings suggest that conservation initiatives might be successful at the site scale as well as the regional scale.Comment: 97 pages, 49 figure

Analysis of relative abundances with zeros on environmental gradients: a multinomial regression model

Ecologists often analyze relative abundances, which are an example of compositional data. However, they have made surprisingly little use of recent advances in the field of compositional data analysis. Compositions form a vector space in which addition and scalar multiplication are replaced by operations known as perturbation and powering. This algebraic structure makes it easy to understand how relative abundances change along environmental gradients. We illustrate this with an analysis of changes in hard-substrate marine communities along a depth gradient. We fit a quadratic multivariate regression model with multinomial observations to point count data obtained from video transects. As well as being an appropriate observation model in this case, the multinomial deals with the problem of zeros, which often makes compositional data analysis difficult. We show how the algebra of compositions can be used to understand patterns in dissimilarity. We use the calculus of simplex-valued functions to estimate rates of change, and to summarize the structure of the community over a vertical slice. We discuss the benefits of the compositional approach in the interpretation and visualization of relative abundance data

Cladosporium cladosporioides keratomycosis : a case report.

Keratomycosis is a frequent cause of ocular morbidity and blindness. Filamentous fungi such as Fusarium and Aspergillus have been reported to be leading causes of keratomycosis in India1 and China.2 Keratomycosis caused by Cladosporium cladosporioides, a pigmented fi lamentous fungus, is very rare. We report a case of Cladosporium cladosporioides keratomycosis identifi ed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA typing

Rapid Screening of Calcium Carbonate Precipitation in the Presence of Amino Acids: Kinetics, Structure, and Composition

Soluble additives are widely used to control crystallization, leading to a definition of properties including size, morphology, polymorph, and composition. However, because of the number of potential variables in these experiments, it is typically extremely difficult to identify reaction conditions—as defined by solution compositions, temperatures, and combinations of additives—that give the desired product. This article introduces a high-throughput methodology which addresses this challenge and enables the streamlined preparation and characterization of crystalline materials. Using calcium carbonate precipitated in the presence of selected amino acids as a model system, we use well plates as microvolume crystallizers, and an accurate liquid-handling pipetting workstation for sample preparation. Following changes in the solution turbidity using a plate reader delivers information about the reaction kinetics, while semiautomated scanning electron microscopy, powder X-ray diffraction, and Raman microscopy provide structural information about the library of crystalline products. Of particular interest for the CaCO3 system is the development of fluorescence-based protocols which rapidly evaluate the amounts of the additives occluded within the crystals. Together, these methods provide a strategy for efficiently screening a broad reaction space, where this can both accelerate the ability to generate crystalline materials with target properties and develop our understanding of additive-directed crystallization

Religiosity, Religious Coping and Distress Among Outpatients with Psychosis in Singapore

This study aimed to investigate the prevalence of religious coping and explore the association between religious coping, religiosity, and distress symptoms amongst 364 outpatients diagnosed with psychosis in Singapore. Positive and Negative Religious Coping (PRC and NRC), religiosity (measuring the constructs of Organised Religious Activity (ORA), Non-Organised Religious Activity (NORA), and Intrinsic Religiosity (IR)) and severity of distress symptoms (depression, anxiety and stress) were self-reported by the participants. The majority of participants (68.9%) reported religion to be important in coping with their illness. Additionally, multiple linear regression analyses found that NRC was significantly associated with higher symptoms of distress. In contrast, ORA was significantly associated with lower anxiety symptom scores. Overall, the study indicates the importance of religion in coping with psychosis and the potential value in incorporating religious interventions in mental health care

Prion diseases are efficiently transmitted by blood transfusion in sheep

The emergence of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, following on from the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) epidemic, led to concerns about the potential risk of iatrogenic transmission of disease by blood transfusion and the introduction of costly control measures to protect blood supplies. We previously reported preliminary data demonstrating the transmission of BSE and natural scrapie by blood transfusion in sheep. The final results of this experiment, reported here, give unexpectedly high transmission rates by transfusion of 36% for BSE and 43% for scrapie. A proportion of BSE-infected tranfusion recipients (3 of 8) survived for up to 7 years without showing clinical signs of disease. The majority of transmissions resulted from blood collected from donors at more than 50% of the estimated incubation period. The high transmission rates and relatively short and consistent incubation periods in clinically positive recipients suggest that infectivity titers in blood were substantial and/or that blood transfusion is an efficient method of transmission. This experiment has established the value of using sheep as a model for studying transmission of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease by blood products in humans. (Blood. 2008; 112: 4739-4745

Emergent Lag Phase in Flux-Regulation Models of Bacterial Growth

Lag phase is observed in bacterial growth during a sudden change in conditions: growth is inhibited whilst cells adapt to the environment. Bi-phasic, or diauxic growth is commonly exhibited by many species. In the presence of two sugars, cells initially grow by consuming the preferred sugar then undergo a lag phase before resuming growth on the second. Biomass increase is characterised by a diauxic growth curve: exponential growth followed by a period of no growth before a second exponential growth. Recent literature lacks a complete dynamic description, artificially modelling lag phase and employing non-physical representations of precursor pools. Here, we formulate a rational mechanistic model based on flux-regulation/proteome partitioning with a finite precursor pool that reveals core mechanisms in a compact form. Unlike earlier systems, the characteristic dynamics emerge as part of the solution, including the lag phase. Focussing on growth of Escherichia coli on a glucose-lactose mixture we show results accurately reproduce experiments. We show that for a single strain of E. coli, diauxic growth leads to optimised biomass yields. However, intriguingly, for two competing strains diauxic growth is not always the best strategy. Our description can be generalised to model multiple different microorganisms and investigate competition between species/strains

What Matters to Us:Impact of Telemedicine During the Pandemic in the Care of Patients With Sarcoma Across Scotland

In Scotland, approximately 350 sarcoma cases are diagnosed per year and treated in one of the five specialist centers. Many patients are required to travel long distances to access specialist care. The COVID-19 pandemic brought a number of rapid changes into the care for patients with cancer, with increasing utilization of telemedicine. We aimed to evaluate how the utilization of telemedicine affects professionals and patients across Scotland and care delivery, at the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre Sarcoma Unit. Between June 8 and August 25, 2020, we invited patients and professional sarcoma multidisciplinary team members to participate in separate online anonymous survey questionnaires, to assess their attitudes toward telemedicine. Data were extracted, and descriptive statistics were performed. Patient satisfaction (n = 64) with telemedicine was high (mean = 9.4/10) and comparable with traditional face-to-face appointments (mean = 9.5/10). Patients were receptive to the use of telemedicine in certain situations, with patients strongly opposed to being told bad news via telemedicine (88%). Providers recommended the use of telemedicine in certain patient populations and reported largely equivalent workloads when compared with traditional consultations. Providers reported that telemedicine should be integrated into regular practice (66%), with patients echoing this indicating a preference for a majority of telemedicine appointments (57%). Telemedicine in sarcoma care is favorable from both clinician and patient perspectives. Utilization of telemedicine for patients with rare cancers such as sarcomas is an innovative approach to the delivery of care, especially considering the time and financial pressures on patients who often live a distance away from specialist centers. Patients and providers are keen to move toward a more flexible, mixed system of care