Work-related psychological health among clergywomen in Australia

Drawing on the classic model of balanced affect, the Francis Burnout Inventory conceptualises good work-related psychological health among clergy in terms of negative affect being balanced by positive affect. This paper sets out to explore the relationship between work-related psychological health and psychological type (as assessed by the Francis Psychological-Type Scales) among a sample of 212 Australian clergywomen who completed the National Church Life Survey Form L in 2006. The data supported the internal consistency reliability of the Francis Burnout Inventory and Francis Psychological-Type Scales and found that work-related psychological health was positively related to extraversion and sensing

Psychological type and prayer preferences: a study among Anglican clergy in the United Kingdom

This study applies the framework of Jungian psychological type theory to define eight aspects of prayer preference, namely: introverted prayer, extraverted prayer, sensing prayer, intuitive prayer, feeling prayer, thinking prayer, judging prayer, and perceiving prayer. On the basis of data provided by 1,476 newly ordained Anglican clergy from England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, eight 7-item scales were developed to access these aspects of prayer preferences. Significant correlations were found between each prayer preference and the relevant aspect of psychological type accessed by the Keirsey Temperament Sorter. These data support the theory that psychological type influences the way in which people pray

Sexually transmitted infections: challenges ahead.

: WHO estimated that nearly 1 million people become infected every day with any of four curable sexually transmitted infections (STIs): chlamydia, gonorrhoea, syphilis, and trichomoniasis. Despite their high global incidence, STIs remain a neglected area of research. In this Commission, we have prioritised five areas that represent particular challenges in STI treatment and control. Chlamydia remains the most commonly diagnosed bacterial STI in high-income countries despite widespread testing recommendations, sensitive and specific non-invasive testing techniques, and cheap effective therapy. We discuss the challenges for chlamydia control and evidence to support a shift from the current focus on infection-based screening to improved management of diagnosed cases and of chlamydial morbidity, such as pelvic inflammatory disease. The emergence and spread of antimicrobial resistance in Neisseria gonorrhoeae is globally recognised. We review current and potential future control and treatment strategies, with a focus on novel antimicrobials. Bacterial vaginosis is the most common vaginal disorder in women, but current treatments are associated with frequent recurrence. Recurrence after treatment might relate to evidence that suggests sexual transmission is integral to the pathogenesis of bacterial vaginosis, which has substantial implications for the development of effective management approaches. STIs disproportionately affect low-income and middle-income countries. We review strategies for case management, focusing on point-of-care tests that hold considerable potential for improving STI control. Lastly, STIs in men who have sex with men have increased since the late 1990s. We discuss the contribution of new biomedical HIV prevention strategies and risk compensation. Overall, this Commission aims to enhance the understanding of some of the key challenges facing the field of STIs, and outlines new approaches to improve the clinical management of STIs and public health.<br/

Epidemiology of Malaria in an Area Prepared for Clinical Trials in Korogwe, North-eastern Tanzania.

Site preparation is a pre-requesite in conducting malaria vaccines trials. This study was conducted in 12 villages to determine malariometric indices and associated risk factors, during long and short rainy seasons, in an area with varying malaria transmission intensities in Korogwe district, Tanzania. Four villages had passive case detection (PCD) of fever system using village health workers. Four malariometric cross-sectional surveys were conducted between November 2005 and May 2007 among individuals aged 0-19 years, living in lowland urban, lowland rural and highland strata. A total of 10,766 blood samples were collected for malaria parasite diagnosis and anaemia estimation. Blood smears were stained with Giemsa while haemoglobin level was measured by HaemoCue. Socio-economic data were collected between Jan-Apr 2006. Adjusting for the effect of age, the risk of Plasmodium falciparum parasitaemia was significantly lower in both lowland urban, (OR = 0.26; 95%CI: 0.23-0.29, p < 0.001) and highlands, (OR = 0.21; 95%CI: 0.17-0.25, p < 0.001) compared to lowland rural. Individuals aged 6-9 years in the lowland rural and 4-19 years in both lowland urban and highlands had the highest parasite prevalence, whilst children below five years in all strata had the highest parasite density. Prevalence of splenomegaly and gametocyte were also lower in both lowland urban and highlands than in lowland rural. Anaemia (Hb <11 g/dl) prevalence was lowest in the lowland urban. Availability of PCD and higher socio-economic status (SES) were associated with reduced malaria and anaemia prevalence. Higher SES and use of bed nets in the lowland urban could be the important factors for low malaria infections in this stratum. Results obtained here were used together with those from PCD and DSS in selecting a village for Phase 1b MSP3 vaccine trial, which was conducted in the study area in year 2008

Severe childhood malaria syndromes defined by plasma proteome profiles

BACKGROUND Cerebral malaria (CM) and severe malarial anemia (SMA) are the most serious life-threatening clinical syndromes of Plasmodium falciparum infection in childhood. Therefore it is important to understand the pathology underlying the development of CM and SMA, as opposed to uncomplicated malaria (UM). Different host responses to infection are likely to be reflected in plasma proteome-patterns that associate with clinical status and therefore provide indicators of the pathogenesis of these syndromes. METHODS AND FINDINGS Plasma and comprehensive clinical data for discovery and validation cohorts were obtained as part of a prospective case-control study of severe childhood malaria at the main tertiary hospital of the city of Ibadan, an urban and densely populated holoendemic malaria area in Nigeria. A total of 946 children participated in this study. Plasma was subjected to high-throughput proteomic profiling. Statistical pattern-recognition methods were used to find proteome-patterns that defined disease groups. Plasma proteome-patterns accurately distinguished children with CM and with SMA from those with UM, and from healthy or severely ill malaria-negative children. CONCLUSIONS We report that an accurate definition of the major childhood malaria syndromes can be achieved using plasma proteome-patterns. Our proteomic data can be exploited to understand the pathogenesis of the different childhood severe malaria syndromes

Interactions and potential implications of Plasmodium falciparum-hookworm coinfection in different age groups in south-central Côte d'Ivoire

BACKGROUND: Given the widespread distribution of Plasmodium and helminth infections, and similarities of ecological requirements for disease transmission, coinfection is a common phenomenon in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere in the tropics. Interactions of Plasmodium falciparum and soil-transmitted helminths, including immunological responses and clinical outcomes of the host, need further scientific inquiry. Understanding the complex interactions between these parasitic infections is of public health relevance considering that control measures targeting malaria and helminthiases are going to scale.METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional survey was carried out in April 2010 in infants, young school-aged children, and young non-pregnant women in south-central Côte d'Ivoire. Stool, urine, and blood samples were collected and subjected to standardized, quality-controlled methods. Soil-transmitted helminth infections were identified and quantified in stool. Finger-prick blood samples were used to determine Plasmodium spp. infection, parasitemia, and hemoglobin concentrations. Iron, vitamin A, riboflavin, and inflammation status were measured in venous blood samples.PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Multivariate regression analysis revealed specific association between infection and demographic, socioeconomic, host inflammatory and nutritional factors. Non-pregnant women infected with P. falciparum had significantly lower odds of hookworm infection, whilst a significant positive association was found between both parasitic infections in 6- to 8-year-old children. Coinfected children had lower odds of anemia and iron deficiency than their counterparts infected with P. falciparum alone.CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings suggest that interaction between P. falciparum and light-intensity hookworm infections vary with age and, in school-aged children, may benefit the host through preventing iron deficiency anemia. This observation warrants additional investigation to elucidate the mechanisms and consequences of coinfections, as this information could have important implications when implementing integrated control measures against malaria and helminthiases

Coupled biogeochemical cycles : eutrophication and hypoxia in temperate estuaries and coastal marine ecosystems

Author Posting. © Ecological Society of America, 2011. This article is posted here by permission of Ecological Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 9 (2011): 18–26, doi:10.1890/100008.Nutrient fluxes to coastal areas have risen in recent decades, leading to widespread hypoxia and other ecological damage, particularly from nitrogen (N). Several factors make N more limiting in estuaries and coastal waters than in lakes: desorption (release) of phosphorus (P) bound to clay as salinity increases, lack of planktonic N fixation in most coastal ecosystems, and flux of relatively P-rich, N-poor waters from coastal oceans into estuaries. During eutrophication, biogeochemical feedbacks further increase the supply of N and P, but decrease availability of silica – conditions that can favor the formation and persistence of harmful algal blooms. Given sufficient N inputs, estuaries and coastal marine ecosystems can be driven to P limitation. This switch contributes to greater far-field N pollution; that is, the N moves further and contributes to eutrophication at greater distances. The physical oceanography (extent of stratification, residence time, and so forth) of coastal systems determines their sensitivity to hypoxia, and recent changes in physics have made some ecosystems more sensitive to hypoxia. Coastal hypoxia contributes to ocean acidification, which harms calcifying organisms such as mollusks and some crustaceans.Funding was supplied in part by NOAA through the Coastal Hypoxia Research Program, by the NSF through the Biocomplexity Coupled Biogeochemical Cycles competition, and by DR Atkinson through an endowment given to Cornell University

Evolution of hindlimb muscle anatomy across the tetrapod water-to-land transition, including comparisons with forelimb anatomy

Tetrapod limbs are a key innovation implicated in the evolutionary success of the clade. Although musculoskeletal evolution of the pectoral appendage across the fins‐to‐limbs transition is fairly well documented, that of the pelvic appendage is much less so. The skeletal elements of the pelvic appendage in some tetrapodomorph fish and the earliest tetrapods are relatively smaller and/or qualitatively less similar to those of crown tetrapods than those of the pectoral appendage. However, comparative and developmental works have suggested that the musculature of the tetrapod forelimb and hindlimb was initially very similar, constituting a “similarity bottleneck” at the fins‐to‐limbs transition. Here we used extant phylogenetic bracketing and phylogenetic character optimization to reconstruct pelvic appendicular muscle anatomy in several key taxa spanning the fins‐to‐limbs and water‐to‐land transitions. Our results support the hypothesis that transformation of the pelvic appendages from fin‐like to limb‐like lagged behind that of the pectoral appendages. Compared to similar reconstructions of the pectoral appendages, the pelvic appendages of the earliest tetrapods had fewer muscles, particularly in the distal limb (shank). In addition, our results suggest that the first tetrapods had a greater number of muscle‐muscle topological correspondences between the pectoral and pelvic appendages than tetrapodomorph fish had. However, ancestral crown‐group tetrapods appear to have had an even greater number of similar muscles (both in terms of number and as a percentage of the total number of muscles), indicating that the main topological similarity bottleneck between the paired appendages may have occurred at the origin of the tetrapod crown group

Search for QTL affecting the shape of the egg laying curve of the Japanese quail

BACKGROUND: Egg production is of critical importance in birds not only for their reproduction but also for human consumption as the egg is a highly nutritive and balanced food. Consequently, laying in poultry has been improved through selection to increase the total number of eggs laid per hen. This number is the cumulative result of the oviposition, a cyclic and repeated process which leads to a pattern over time (the egg laying curve) which can be modelled and described individually. Unlike the total egg number which compounds all variations, the shape of the curve gives information on the different phases of egg laying, and its genetic analysis using molecular markers might contribute to understand better the underlying mechanisms. The purpose of this study was to perform the first QTL search for traits involved in shaping the egg laying curve, in an F(2 )experiment with 359 female Japanese quail. RESULTS: Eight QTL were found on five autosomes, and six of them could be directly associated with egg production traits, although none was significant at the genome-wide level. One of them (on CJA13) had an effect on the first part of the laying curve, before the production peak. Another one (on CJA06) was related to the central part of the curve when laying is maintained at a high level, and the four others (on CJA05, CJA10 and CJA14) acted on the last part of the curve where persistency is determinant. The QTL for the central part of the curve was mapped at the same position on CJA06 than a genome-wide significant QTL for total egg number detected previously in the same F(2). CONCLUSION: Despite its limited scope (number of microsatellites, size of the phenotypic data set), this work has shown that it was possible to use the individual egg laying data collected daily to find new QTL which affect the shape of the egg laying curve. Beyond the present results, this new approach could also be applied to longitudinal traits in other species, like growth and lactation in ruminants, for which good marker coverage of the genome and theoretical models with a biological significance are available

A Randomised Trial to Compare the Safety, Tolerability and Efficacy of Three Drug Combinations for Intermittent Preventive Treatment in Children

BACKGROUND: Results from trials of intermittent preventive treatment (IPT) in infants and children have shown that IPT provides significant protection against clinical malaria. Sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) given alone or in combination with other drugs has been used for most IPT programmes. However, SP resistance is increasing in many parts of Africa. Thus, we have investigated whether SP plus AQ, SP plus piperaquine (PQ) and dihydroartemisinin (DHA) plus PQ might be equally safe and effective when used for IPT in children in an area of seasonal transmission. METHODS: During the 2007 malaria transmission season, 1008 Gambian children were individually randomized to receive SP plus amodiaquine (AQ), SP plus piperaquine (PQ) or dihydroartemisinin (DHA) plus PQ at monthly intervals on three occasions during the peak malaria transmission season. To determine the risk of side effects following drug administration, participants in each treatment group were visited at home three days after the start of each round of drug administration and a side effects questionnaire completed. To help establish whether adverse events were drug related, the same questionnaire was administered to 286 age matched control children recruited from adjacent villages. Morbidity was monitored throughout the malaria transmission season and study children were seen at the end of the malaria transmission season. RESULTS: All three treatment regimens showed good safety profiles. No severe adverse event related to IPT was reported. The most frequent adverse events reported were coughing, diarrhoea, vomiting, abdominal pain and loss of appetite. Cough was present in 15.2%, 15.4% and 18.7% of study subjects who received SP plus AQ, DHA plus PQ or SP plus PQ respectively, compared to 19.2% in a control group. The incidence of malaria in the DHA plus PQ, SP plus AQ and SP plus PQ groups were 0.10 cases per child year (95% CI: 0.05, 0.22), 0.06 (95% CI: 0.022, 0.16) and 0.06 (95% CI: 0.02, 0.15) respectively. The incidence of malaria in the control group was 0.79 cases per child year (0.58, 1.08). CONCLUSION: All the three regimens of IPT in children were safe and highly efficacious TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00561899