Healthy returns: Opportunities for market-based solutions to childhood obesity

Healthy Returns is a report looking at opportunities for market-based solutions to childhood obesity, focusing on the growing number of challenger brands and products and how they can address the unmet need for healthy, affordable food options for families on low incomes

Long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the quality of life of people with dementia and their family carers

\ua9 The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Geriatrics Society. INTRODUCTION: Few studies have longitudinally mapped quality of life (QoL) trajectories of newly diagnosed people with dementia and their carers, particularly during coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). METHODS: In a UK cohort study, 261 newly diagnosed people with dementia and 206 family carers were assessed prior to the pandemic (July 2019-March 2020), followed up after the first lockdown (July-October 2020) and then again a year and 2 years later. Latent growth curve modelling examined the level and change of QoL over the four time-points using dementia-specific QoL measures (DEMQOL and C-DEMQOL). RESULTS: Despite variations in individual change scores, our results suggest that generally people with dementia maintained their QoL during the pandemic and experienced some increase towards the end of the period. This contrasted with carers who reported a general deterioration in their QoL over the same period. \u27Confidence in future\u27 and \u27Feeling supported\u27 were the only carer QoL subscales to show some recovery post-pandemic. DISCUSSION: It is positive that even during a period of global disruption, decline in QoL is not inevitable following the onset of dementia. However, it is of concern that carer QoL declined during this same period even after COVID-19 restrictions had been lifted. Carers play an invaluable role in the lives of people with dementia and wider society, and our findings suggest that, post-pandemic, they may require greater support to maintain their QoL

Lunatic Fringe Deficiency Cooperates with the Met/Caveolin Gene Amplicon to Induce Basal-like Breast Cancer

Basal-like breast cancers (BLBC) express a luminal progenitor gene signature. Notch receptor signaling promotes luminal cell fate specification in the mammary gland, while suppressing stem cell self-renewal. Here we show that deletion of Lfng, a sugar transferase that prevents Notch activation by Jagged ligands, enhances stem/progenitor cell proliferation. Mammary-specific deletion of Lfng induces basal-like and claudin-low tumors with accumulation of Notch intracellular domain fragments, increased expression of proliferation-associated Notch targets, amplification of the Met/Caveolin locus, and elevated Met and Igf-1R signaling. Human BL breast tumors, commonly associated with JAGGED expression, elevated MET signaling, and CAVEOLIN accumulation, express low levels of LFNG. Thus, reduced LFNG expression facilitates JAG/NOTCH luminal progenitor signaling and cooperates with MET/CAVEOLIN basal-type signaling to promote BLBC

Lunatic Fringe Deficiency Cooperates with the Met/Caveolin Gene Amplicon to Induce Basal-Like Breast Cancer

Basal-like breast cancers (BLBC) express a luminal progenitor gene signature. Notch receptor signaling promotes luminal cell fate specification in the mammary gland, while suppressing stem cell self-renewal. Here we show that deletion of Lfng, a sugar transferase that prevents Notch activation by Jagged ligands, enhances stem/progenitor cell proliferation. Mammary-specific deletion of Lfng induces basal-like and claudin-low tumors with accumulation of Notch intracellular domain fragments, increased expression of proliferation-associated Notch targets, amplification of the Met/Caveolin locus, and elevated Met and Igf-1R signaling. Human BL breast tumors, commonly associated with JAGGED expression, elevated MET signaling, and CAVEOLIN accumulation, express low levels of LFNG. Thus, reduced LFNG expression facilitates JAG/NOTCH luminal progenitor signaling and cooperates with MET/CAVEOLIN basal-type signaling to promote BLBC

Natural disaster funding a submission by the Australian Psychological Society to the Productivity Commission /

Executive Summary and Recommendations: Prevention and preparedness are crucially important considerations in determining natural disaster funding priorities and are capable of having much greater magnitude of influence and cost effectiveness compared to emergency response and recovery. Natural disaster funding also needs to include psychosocial recovery, which is an essential component of restoring individuals’ and communities’ mental health and wellbeing. Natural disasters will almost always overwhelm existing psychosocial services, and Federal funding is needed to augment services to meet increased demand. The APS makes the following recommendations in relation to the Inquiry: Recommendation: Preventive and preparedness initiatives are crucial Preventive and preparedness initiatives are a crucial funding priority. These initiatives equip a community to protect itself from a future disaster, reduce the impact of an event on individuals and communities, hasten the recovery, and have a much greater magnitude of influence and effectiveness than initiatives that come after the disaster. From a psychological perspective, these initiatives would include a host of risk reduction initiatives, including behavioural risk reduction strategies, improved warning systems and public messaging, community disaster preparedness education programs, psychological and household preparedness, psychological first aid, as well as thorough evaluation of program effectiveness so that evidence-based best practices are prioritised. Recommendation: Psychosocial recovery models need to be 3-tiered, flexible, integrated and local Funding a 3-tiered model of psychosocial care is critical to cost-effective funding options as it directs the majority of an affected population to the least expensive, population-based assistance which is likely to meet their needs, and reduces the demands on primary and specialist mental health care resources. Funding mechanisms for identifying mental health risk and need in a timely way throughout the population impacted by disaster are essential. This enables rapid mental health triage so that people at high risk can be rapidly matched to brief, evidence-based care. The use of these triage systems for mental health enables rational allocation of limited resources. Psychosocial recovery funding needs to be provided to local leaders in disaster-affected regions so that they can develop an integrated system of psychosocial and mental health care for disaster recovery tailored to their particular area. This funding can also be used to provide additional training in levels 1, 2 and 3 psychosocial care to saturate the workforce and bolster the existing pathways of care. Funding of a centralised, non-governmental agency designed to promote excellence in psychosocial recovery would improve the quality, consistency, and coordination of psychosocial responses to disasters in Australia. Local leaders in a disaster-affected area could consult with this agency for support in planning, designing, administering and implementing large-scale psychosocial recovery programs, without having to reinvent the wheel each time a disaster affects a different area

Submission to the Environment and Communications References Committee Inquiry on Recent Trends in and Preparedness for Extreme Weather Events

Overview The Australian Psychological Society believes that the threat of extreme weather events on Australian communities requires coordinated, evidence-based efforts across 3 levels of government and across sectors to improve communities’ capacity to prepare, respond and recover. Our submission focuses on the health sector and emergency services in particular, with special attention paid to the mental health, psychological and social wellbeing of people at risk of, or impacted by extreme weather events. Overall we believe that State and Federal agencies need to broaden their frame for examining extreme weather events, and accept that the altered, climate-changed world in which Australians are now living requires a broader framing of risk communications and adaptation responses that encompasses both extreme weather events and climate change. This may require a rethinking of whether event-specific and season-specific disaster preparedness and warning initiatives are the best strategies going forward. In our submission we have made the following key recommendations

The New-England magazine.

Editors: July 1831-May 1833, J.T. Buckingham, Edwin Buckingham; June 1833-Dec. 1834, J.T. Buckingham; Jan.-Feb. 1835, S.G. Howe, J.O. Sargent; Mar.-Dec. 1835, Park Benjamin.Title from vol. title page.Mode of access: Internet