Spatial Reference in Momu

Spatial reference - how we communicate notions such as location, motion and direction - is an important area of current research. Recent studies involving detailed analysis of geographically and typologically diverse languages have uncovered extensive and unexpected variation in the means languages utilise to encode spatial relations. This thesis aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about the cross-linguistic representation of the spatial domain. It is an analysis of fieldwork data which was collected for a preliminary investigation into the spatial reference system of Momu (also known as Fas), a Kwomtari language spoken in the West Sepik region of Papua New Guinea. The analysis focuses on descriptions of static location, motion and the use of frames of reference. In Momu, all basic locative, directional and motion verbs are deictically anchored, such that there are few expressions of spatial reference that do not obligatorily require deictic specification. This thesis demonstrates the particular attention Momu pays to the specification of deixis across all major sub-areas of the spatial domain.Australian Research Council [William Foley, Chief Investigator

The genome of the protozoan parasite Cystoisospora suis and a reverse vaccinology approach to identify vaccine candidates

Vaccine development targeting protozoan parasites remains challenging, partly due to the complex interactions between these eukaryotes and the host immune system. Reverse vaccinology is a promising approach for direct screening of genome sequence assemblies for new vaccine candidate proteins. Here, we applied this paradigm to Cystoisospora suis, an apicomplexan parasite that causes enteritis and diarrhea in suckling piglets and economic losses in pig production worldwide. Using Next Generation Sequencing we produced an ∼84 Mb sequence assembly for the C. suis genome, making it the first available reference for the genus Cystoisospora. Then, we derived a manually curated annotation of more than 11,000 protein-coding genes and applied the tool Vacceed to identify 1,168 vaccine candidates by screening the predicted C. suis proteome. To refine the set of candidates, we looked at proteins that are highly expressed in merozoites and specific to apicomplexans. The stringent set of candidates included 220 proteins, among which were 152 proteins with unknown function, 17 surface antigens of the SAG and SRS gene families, 12 proteins of the apicomplexan-specific secretory organelles including AMA1, MIC6, MIC13, ROP6, ROP12, ROP27, ROP32 and three proteins related to cell adhesion. Finally, we demonstrated in vitro the immunogenic potential of a C. suis-specific 42 kDa transmembrane protein, which might constitute an attractive candidate for further testing

Recombinant anticoccidial vaccines - a cup half full?

Eimeria species parasites can cause the disease coccidiosis, most notably in chickens. The occurrence of coccidiosis is currently controlled through a combination of good husbandry, chemoprophylaxis and/or live parasite vaccination; however, scalable, cost-effective subunit or recombinant vaccines are required. Many antigens have been proposed for use in novel anticoccidial vaccines, supported by the capacity to reduce disease severity or parasite replication, increase body weight gain in the face of challenge or improve feed conversion under experimental conditions, but none has reached commercial development. Nonetheless, the protection against challenge induced by some antigens has been within the lower range described for the ionophores against susceptible isolates or current live vaccines prior to oocyst recycling. With such levels of efficacy it may be that combinations of anticoccidial antigens already described are sufficient for development as novel multi-valent vaccines, pending identification of optimal delivery systems. Selection of the best antigens to be included in such vaccines can be informed by knowledge defining the natural occurrence of specific antigenic diversity, with relevance to the risk of immediate vaccine breakthrough, and the rate at which parasite genomes can evolve new diversity. For Eimeria, such data are now becoming available for antigens such as apical membrane antigen 1 (AMA1) and immune mapped protein 1 (IMP1) and more are anticipated as high-capacity, high-throughput sequencing technologies become increasingly accessible

Sex, Drugs and Coercive Control: Gendered Narratives of Methamphetamine Use, Relationships, and Violence

While many of the motives people provide for using drugs transcend gender, there are also notable gendered differences. These differences in motive talk aid in stigma management, shape gender performances, and can encourage or constrain behavior. Using data from a photo-ethnography with 52 people who use methamphetamine in rural Alabama, we find that men and women articulate their motives for drug use in distinctly gendered ways. Most notably, men emphasized the benefits of sex on meth while most of the women did not. Men’s stories of meth as a sex drug shaped how they interacted with women often leading them to use violence and coercion to control when, where, and with whom women used meth. Women were less likely to say that increased sexual feelings was their primary motive for using meth. They drew on gendered themes of femininity (e.g., motherhood, home keeper) when explaining their drug use. They also sought ways to resist coercive control that were intertwined with their gendered narratives of drug use. The findings point to the importance of gendered narratives in shaping interactions, and significantly, how narratives can contribute to harm and reinforce gender inequality in drug markets

Mitigating the Psychological Impact of COVID-19 on Healthcare Workers: A Digital Learning Package

The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) will undoubtedly have psychological impacts for healthcare workers, which could be sustained; frontline workers will be particularly at risk. Actions are needed to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on mental health by protecting and promoting the psychological wellbeing of healthcare workers during and after the outbreak. We developed and evaluated a digital learning package using Agile methodology, within the first three weeks of UK outbreak. This e-package includes evidence-based guidance, support and signposting relating to psychological wellbeing for all UK healthcare employees. A three-step rapid development process included public involvement activities (PPI) (STEP 1), content and technical development with iterative peer review (STEP 2), delivery and evaluation (STEP 3). The package outlines the actions that team leaders can take to provide psychologically safe spaces for staff, together with guidance on communication and reducing social stigma, peer and family support, signposting others through Psychological First Aid (PFA), self-care strategies (e.g. rest, work breaks, sleep, shift-work, fatigue, healthy lifestyle behaviours), and managing emotions (e.g. moral injury, coping, guilt, grief, fear, anxiety, depression, preventing burnout and psychological trauma). The e-package includes advice from experts in mental wellbeing as well as those with direct pandemic experiences from the frontline, as well as signposting to public mental health guidance. Rapid delivery in STEP 3 was achieved via direct emails through professional networks, and social media. Evaluation included assessment of fidelity and implementation qualities. Essential content was identified through PPI (n=97) and peer review (n=10) in STEPS 1 and 2. The most important messages to convey were deemed to be normalisation of psychological responses during a crisis, and encouragement of self-care and help-seeking. Within 7 days of completion the package had been accessed 17,633 times, and healthcare providers have confirmed immediate adoption within their health and wellbeing provisions. Evaluation (STEP 3, n=55) indicated high user satisfaction with content, usability and utility. Assessment of implementation qualities indicated that the package was perceived to be usable, practical, low-cost and low burden. Our digital support package on 'Psychological Wellbeing for Healthcare Workers' is free to use, has been positively evaluated and was highly accessed within one week of release. It is available here: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/toolkits/play_22794. This package was deemed to be appropriate, meaningful and useful for the needs of UK healthcare workers. We recommend provision of this e-package to healthcare workers alongside wider strategies to support their psychological wellbeing during and after the COVID-19 pandemic

Wild forest elephants shake down fruit and leaves from trees

This short paper reviews aspects of observed feeding behaviour of forest elephants in the vicinity Bomassa near of the headquarters of Nouabale-Ndoki NP, near the Dzanga Clearing and in Gamba. These observations suggest that 'forest elepants frequently manipulate both objects and inedible parts of food plants to obtain food as part of their behavioural repertoire'. The assumption that forest elephant simply eat the fallen fruit is no longer valid, these observations note animals knocking fruit down by throwing sticks, using branches to swipe at fruit and foliage, shake trees, and push at trunks in order to bring down fruit. Night observations in the vicinity Bomassa and assessment of the appearance of the ground around favoured food trees in other areas notes fruits from trees such as Pseudospondias microcarpa, Myrianthus aboreus and Tetrapleura tetraptera, Omphalocarpum elatum and Chrysophyllum lacourteanum are taken by either repeatedly shaking the trunks of the smaller trees or repeatedly pushing against the larger ones. Near the Dzanga Clearing elephants have been heard and observed knocking fruit from additional tree species. Pygmies claim that elephants wait for fruit of certain trees to ripen and fall rather than attempt to gain quick access to the fruits by knocking them down. A film crew in Gamba noted elephant knocking Borassus aethiopum fruits down

Designing for Sustainability: Involving Communities in Developing ICT Interventions to Support Water Resource Management

Rural Africans have poor access to clean and safe water compared to other developing areas. Many Information and Communication Technology (ICT) interventions have been implemented to address the information gaps that hinder improved service delivery but have subsequently failed. The inability to provide suitable content, failure to address priority needs of communities and foster local buy-in are seen as the main causes. The transition from developing technologies for users to developing with users has created the need to harness collective ideation. Developing community-based ICT interventions collaboratively with the user communities provides a better understanding of the cultural nuances that can easily affect the use and adoption of an intervention. In this paper, we present a landscape analysis of rural water supply management in Uganda and an ICT intervention implemented to support the community management model. We present findings and a justification for a more user-centered approach to developing sustainable ICT interventions through co-design

Assessing the genetic architecture of epithelial ovarian cancer histological subtypes.

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is one of the deadliest common cancers. The five most common types of disease are high-grade and low-grade serous, endometrioid, mucinous and clear cell carcinoma. Each of these subtypes present distinct molecular pathogeneses and sensitivities to treatments. Recent studies show that certain genetic variants confer susceptibility to all subtypes while other variants are subtype-specific. Here, we perform an extensive analysis of the genetic architecture of EOC subtypes. To this end, we used data of 10,014 invasive EOC patients and 21,233 controls from the Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium genotyped in the iCOGS array (211,155 SNPs). We estimate the array heritability (attributable to variants tagged on arrays) of each subtype and their genetic correlations. We also look for genetic overlaps with factors such as obesity, smoking behaviors, diabetes, age at menarche and height. We estimated the array heritabilities of high-grade serous disease ([Formula: see text] = 8.8 ± 1.1 %), endometrioid ([Formula: see text] = 3.2 ± 1.6 %), clear cell ([Formula: see text] = 6.7 ± 3.3 %) and all EOC ([Formula: see text] = 5.6 ± 0.6 %). Known associated loci contributed approximately 40 % of the total array heritability for each subtype. The contribution of each chromosome to the total heritability was not proportional to chromosome size. Through bivariate and cross-trait LD score regression, we found evidence of shared genetic backgrounds between the three high-grade subtypes: serous, endometrioid and undifferentiated. Finally, we found significant genetic correlations of all EOC with diabetes and obesity using a polygenic prediction approach.The Ovarian Cancer Association Consortium is supported by a grant from the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund thanks to donations by the family and friends of Kathryn Sladek Smith (PPD/RPCI.07). The Nurses’ Health Studies would like to thank the participants and staff of the Nurses' Health Study and Nurses' Health Study II for their valuable contributions as well as the following state cancer registries for their help: AL, AZ, AR, CA, CO, CT, DE, FL, GA, ID, IL, IN, IA, KY, LA, ME, MD, MA, MI, NE, NH, NJ, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, OR, PA, RI, SC, TN, TX, VA, WA, WY. The authors assume full responsibility for analyses and interpretation of these data. Funding of the constituent studies was provided by the California Cancer Research Program (00-01389V-20170, N01-CN25403, 2II0200); the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (MOP-86727); Cancer Australia; Cancer Council Victoria; Cancer Council Queensland; Cancer Council New South Wales; Cancer Council South Australia; Cancer Council Tasmania; Cancer Foundation of Western Australia; the Cancer Institute of New Jersey; Cancer Research UK (C490/A6187, C490/A10119, C490/A10124); the Danish Cancer Society (94-222-52); the ELAN Program of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg; the Eve Appeal; the Helsinki University Central Hospital Research Fund; Helse Vest; the Norwegian Cancer Society; the Norwegian Research Council; the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund; Nationaal Kankerplan of Belgium; the L & S Milken Foundation; the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (4 PO5C 028 14, 2 PO5A 068 27); the Roswell Park Cancer Institute Alliance Foundation; the US National Cancer Institute (K07-CA095666, K07-CA80668, K07-CA143047, K22-CA138563, N01-CN55424, N01-PC67001, N01-PC067010, N01-PC035137, P01-CA017054, P01-CA087696, P30-CA072720, P30-CA15083, P30-CA008748, P50-CA159981, P50-CA105009, P50-CA136393, R01-CA149429, R01-CA014089, R01-CA016056, R01-CA017054, R01-CA049449, R01-CA050385, R01-CA054419, R01-CA058598, R01-CA058860, R01-CA061107, R01-CA061132, R01-CA063678, R01-CA063682, R01-CA067262, R01-CA071766, R01-CA074850, R01-CA080978, R01-CA083918, R01-CA087538, R01-CA092044, R01-CA095023, R01-CA122443, R01-CA112523, R01-CA114343, R01-CA126841, R01-CA136924, R03-CA113148, R03-CA115195, U01-CA069417, U01-CA071966, UM1-CA186107, UM1-CA176726 and Intramural research funds); the NIH/National Center for Research Resources/General Clinical Research Center (MO1-RR000056); the US Army Medical Research and Material Command (DAMD17-01-1-0729, DAMD17-02-1-0666, DAMD17-02-1-0669, W81XWH-07-0449, W81XWH-10-1-02802); the US Public Health Service (PSA-042205); the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (199600 and 400281); the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research of Germany Programme of Clinical Biomedical Research (01GB 9401); the State of Baden-Wurttemberg through Medical Faculty of the University of Ulm (P.685); the German Cancer Research Center; the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance; the Mayo Foundation; the Fred C. and Katherine B. Andersen Foundation; the Lon V. Smith Foundation (LVS-39420); the Oak Foundation; Eve Appeal; the OHSU Foundation; the Mermaid I project; the Rudolf-Bartling Foundation; the UK National Institute for Health Research Biomedical Research Centres at the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University College Hospital ‘Womens Health Theme’ and the Royal Marsden Hospital; and WorkSafeBC 14. Investigator-specific funding: G.C.P receives scholarship support from the University of Queensland and QIMR Berghofer. Y.L. was supported by the NHMRC Early Career Fellowship. G.C.T. is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council. S.M. was supported by an ARC Future Fellowship