Liberation

The intent of this paper is two fold. Firstly I wanted to identify the organizations that is involved in the Trokosi reform. Secondly I wanted to get a clear understanding of what the liberation process entails. During my initial research I had heard the term \u27Liberated\u27 over and over again. I begun to wander who was doing the liberation? Were these Trokosis happy to be liberated? This paper seeks to answer those questions. I begun with the News papers and ended up in the field meeting these women and men. This paper is record of those experiences and my attempt to qualify the liberation process

The Growing Concern of Poverty in the United States: an exploration of food prices and poverty on obesity rates for low-income citizens

Studies demonstrate the link between income and obesity, determining factors to explain the strong correlation between high body mass index and low socioeconomic status. Many focus on uncovering predictors but few use a systems approach: identifying the interaction among predictors and their relative magnitude concerning obesity. This study asks: do poverty or food price indicators have a statistically stronger relationship with obesity? By collecting data, evaluating trends, and analyzing statistics, this study extends research by revealing a stronger relationship between obesity and food prices as opposed to obesity and poverty

Automated prompting technologies in rehabilitation and at home

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to test the efficacy of an interactive verbal prompting technology (Guide) on supporting the morning routine. Data have already established the efficacy of such prompting during procedural tasks, but the efficacy of such prompting in tasks with procedural and motivational elements remains unexamined. Such tasks, such as getting out of bed in the morning and engaging in personal care, are often the focus of rehabilitation goals. Design/methodology/approach - A single-n study with a male (age 61) who had severe cognitive impairment and was having trouble completing the morning routine. An A-B-A'-B'-A?-B? design was used, with the intervention phase occurring both in an in-patient unit (B, B') and in the participant's own home (B?). Findings - Interactive verbal prompting technology (Guide) significantly reduced support worker prompting and number of errors in the in-patient setting and in the participant's own home. Research limitations/implications - The results suggest that interactive verbal prompting can be used to support motivational tasks such as getting out of bed and the morning routine. This study used a single subject experimental design and the results need to be confirmed in a larger sample. Originality/value - This is the first report of use of interactive verbal prompting technology to support rehabilitation of a motivational task. It is also the first study to evaluate Guide in a domestic context

Specialist palliative care: Current and future service challenges

Introduction/Background: Those working in palliative care face several current challenges, including: to reach beyond cancer and the physical to other dimensions of care; to start much earlier than at terminal stages of illness; to extend from specialist services to generalists; and to support primary carers. Research Question: How well does the Calvary Health Care Bethlehem (CHCB) model of specialist palliative care tackle these challenges? Methodology: We conducted a mixed‐method, multi‐perspective study in which thirty palliative care patients and their nominated carers and health care professionals (HCPs) were interviewed over a six month period. HCPs also participated in focus groups. Results were analysed using a thematic content analysis framework. HCP accounts of the CHCB service were used to construct a narrative description of the CHCB model of specialist palliative care. Policy Implications: Recent policy reports from the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission and the Productivity Commission’s draft report Caring for Older Australians advocated greater use of coordination and teamwork in palliative care. This study helps define what this might mean in practice

Enhanced heterogeneity of rpoB in Mycobacterium tuberculosis found at low pH.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to gain an insight into the molecular mechanisms of the evolution of rifampicin resistance in response to controlled changes in the environment. METHODS: We determined the proportion of rpoB mutants in the chemostat culture and characterized the sequence of mutations found in the rifampicin resistance-determining region of rpoB in a steady-state chemostat at pH 7.0 and 6.2. RESULTS: The overall proportion of rpoB mutants of strain H37Rv remained constant for 37 days at pH 7.0, ranging between 3.6 x 10(-8) and 8.9 x 10(-8); however, the spectrum of mutations varied. The most commonly detected mutation, serine to leucine mutation at codon 531 (S531L), increased from 40% to 89%, while other mutations (S531W, H526Y, H526D, H526R, S522L and D516V) decreased over the 37 day sampling period. Changing the pH from 7.0 to 6.2 did not significantly alter the overall proportion of mutants, but resulted in a decrease in the percentage of strains harbouring S531L (from 89% to 50%) accompanied by an increase in the range of different mutations from 4 to 12. CONCLUSIONS: The data confirm that the fitness of strains with the S531L mutation is greater than that of strains containing other mutations. We also conclude that at low pH the environment is permissive for a wider spectrum of mutations, which may provide opportunities for a successful mutant to survive

Associations between statin use and negative affective bias during COVID-19: an observational, longitudinal UK study investigating depression vulnerability

Background There is growing interest in the antidepressant potential of statins. We tested whether statin use is associated with cognitive markers previously found to indicate psychological vulnerability to depression within the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods Between April 2020 and February 2021, we conducted an observational online study of 2043 adults in the United Kingdom. Participants completed cognitive tasks assessing processes related to depression vulnerability, including affective bias and reward processing. We also measured working memory, medication use, and current psychiatric symptoms. Using mixed analysis of covariance and regression models, we compared participants on statins alone (n = 81), antihypertensive medication alone (n = 126), both medications (n = 111), and on neither medication (n = 1725). Results Statin use was associated with reduced recognition of angry and fearful faces (F1 = 9.19, p = .002; F1 = 6.9, p = .009) and with increased misclassification of these expressions as positive. Increased recognition of angry faces at baseline predicted increased levels of depression and anxiety 10 months later (β = 3.61, p = .027; β = 2.37, p = .002). Statin use was also associated with reduced learning about stimuli associated with loss (F1,1418 = 9.90, p = .002). These indicators of reduced negative bias were not seen in participants taking antihypertensive medication alone, suggesting that they were related to statin use in particular rather than nonspecific demographic factors. In addition, we found no evidence of an association between statin use and impairment in working memory. Conclusions Statin use was associated with cognitive markers indicative of reduced psychological vulnerability to depression, supporting their potential use as a prophylactic treatment for depression

Positive and negative personality descriptors: UK dataset of self-referential valence, imageability and subjective frequency ratings of 300 adjectives for use in cognitive-emotional tasks

Experimental tasks comparing participants’ performance for categorising, remembering, and recognising positive and negative words are widely used in the emotional cognitive domain. Such tasks are commonly used in experimental psychology and psychiatry research, and have been shown to be sensitive biomarkers of depression and antidepressant drug action. In addition, several of these tasks investigate self-referential processing i.e., the processing of information relevant to oneself; this has been shown to modify the way emotional words are encoded and remembered and may be a target that is amenable to treatment. In practice, the development of such tasks for implementation in research studies often depends on the selection and matching of words according to characteristics such as valence or arousal, imageability, word frequency and word length to investigate differences in a chosen domain of interest whilst keeping important confounds constant. This introduces a need for ratings covering a range of word attributes that have been shown to affect processing. In particular, ratings of self-referential valence (how positively or negatively subjects feel about a word when this is used to describe themselves/their circumstances) have been seldom included in databases, despite the frequent investigation of the concept in research. Other important attributes often considered in the process of matching and selection are word imageability and subjective frequency. To facilitate the word selection and matching process required in cognitive-emotional task development, the present dataset provides subjective ratings for 150 positive and 150 negative adjectives describing personality characteristics. Across four online surveys, the 300 words were rated on self-referential valence, imageability and subjective frequency by representative samples of 200 UK-based, English-speaking adults. Basic demographics and data on depressive symptoms and state anxiety were collected from all participants. Comprehensive descriptive statistics and word length were calculated for each of the 300 words. All data cleaning and statistical analysis was performed in R. Our work is based on years of experience using the Oxford Emotional Task Battery and may be particularly relevant for researchers using self-referential cognitive tasks with UK-based samples

High speed multiphoton imaging

Intravital multiphoton microscopy has emerged as a powerful technique to visualize cellular processes in-vivo. Real time processes revealed through live imaging provided many opportunities to capture cellular activities in living animals. The typical parameters that determine the performance of multiphoton microscopy are speed, field of view, 3D imaging and imaging depth; many of these are important to achieving data from in-vivo. Here, we provide a full exposition of the flexible polygon mirror based high speed laser scanning multiphoton imaging system, PCI-6110 card (National Instruments) and high speed analog frame grabber card (Matrox Solios eA/XA), which allows for rapid adjustments between frame rates i.e. 5 Hz to 50 Hz with 512 x 512 pixels. Furthermore, a motion correction algorithm is also used to mitigate motion artifacts. A customized control software called Pscan 1.0 is developed for the system. This is then followed by calibration of the imaging performance of the system and a series of quantitative in-vitro and in-vivo imaging in neuronal tissues and mice