Challenges of eCollaboration among SMEs

The challenges of eCollaboration for SMEs start with the decision to collaborate, and continues with the incorporation of enabling web technologies. This paper focuses on factors that influence eCollaboration by studying two collaborative groups, one in the toolmaking industry and one in the IT industry. Results indicate the need for an additional factor of independent facilitation and coordination, as well as a higher level of priority to be given to the time taken to build trust. Also, a team workspace to manage the process, alongside a web portal to manage the collaborative projects is recommended. The notion of SMEs collaborating with each other when previously they may have been competitors indicates a change in the way business is perceived

Incorporating economic evidence into cancer care: searching for the missing link

Since the early 1980s it has been identified that even though economic evaluation is considered useful by economist it is not widely used by health care decision-makers. One of the ways to close the gap is to involve decision-makers in the process. This project was set up to gain a better understanding of the information needs for resource allocation in the field of cancer care. The results of this project are intended to aid the development and use of the NSW Cancer Institute?s Standard Cancer Treatments (CI-SCAT) website in future years. This initiative is part of the NSW 2004-2006 Cancer to ensure that clinical practice is evidence-based and research driven. The CI-SCAT Reference Group develops and approves clinical protocols to provide clinicians with chemotherapy cancer protocols, including the evidence, cost, and drug dose calculation. Members of CI-SCAT Reference Groups were surveyed in their capacity as clinicians and decision-makers in the Australian Health Care System. The survey asked about participants? knowledge, use and views of economic evaluation in decision making. It also sought information about their knowledge and views on how resource allocation decisions were made within your local area/hospital and whether participants would value greater access to various types of economic information. This paper will explore what decision-makers at a state/local level value in terms of economic evidence.Economic evaluation, cancer, survey, decision-making, Australia

Contextual Effects on Explicature: Optional Pragmatics or Optional Syntax?

The debate between advocates of free pragmatic enrichment and those who maintain that any pragmatic contribution to explicature is mediated by a covert linguistic indexical took a new turn with the claim that these covert elements may be optional (Martí 2006). This prompted the conclusion (Recanati 2010b) that there is no longer any issue of substance between the two positions, as both involve optional elements of utterance meaning, albeit registered at different representational levels (conceptual or linguistic). We maintain, on the contrary, that the issue remains substantive and we make the case that, for a theory of the processes involved in utterance comprehension, the free pragmatic enrichment account is indispensable. We further argue that the criticism of free enrichment that motivates at least some indexicalist accounts rests on a mistaken assumption that it is the semantic component of the grammar (linguistic competence) that is responsible for delivering truth-conditional content (explicature)

Calicivirus Non-structural Proteins:Potential Functions in Replication and Host Cell Manipulation

The Caliciviridae are a family of viruses with a single-stranded, non-segmented RNA genome of positive polarity. The ongoing discovery of caliciviruses has increased the number of genera in this family to 11 (Norovirus, Nebovirus, Sapovirus, Lagovirus, Vesivirus, Nacovirus, Bavovirus, Recovirus, Salovirus, Minovirus, and Valovirus). Caliciviruses infect a wide range of hosts that include fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and marine and land mammals. All caliciviruses have a genome that encodes a major and a minor capsid protein, a genome-linked viral protein, and several non-structural proteins. Of these non-structural proteins, only the helicase, protease, and RNA-dependent RNA polymerase share clear sequence and structural similarities with proteins from other virus families. In addition, all caliciviruses express two or three non-structural proteins for which functions have not been clearly defined. The sequence diversity of these non-structural proteins and a multitude of processing strategies suggest that at least some have evolved independently, possibly to counteract innate and adaptive immune responses in a host-specific manner. Studying these proteins is often difficult as many caliciviruses cannot be grown in cell culture. Nevertheless, the study of recombinant proteins has revealed many of their properties, such as intracellular localization, capacity to oligomerize, and ability to interact with viral and/or cellular proteins; the release of non-structural proteins from transfected cells has also been investigated. Here, we will summarize these findings and discuss recent in silico studies that identified previously overlooked putative functional domains and structural features, including transmembrane domains that suggest the presence of viroporins

Scholarly Communications Journal Club Syllabus

This Medical Library Association Journal Club was conducted at the Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center at the University of New Mexico from August 2015 - May 2016. Ten topics within scholarly communications were studied, including an introduction and background to scholarly communications, academic publishing and the role of publishers, digital curation and preservation, copyright, open access and the role of peer review, scholarly communication in libraries, scholarly impact and metrics, and open educational resources (OERs). The readings for each topic are included, many of which are open access publications

Blood and saliva-derived exomes from healthy Caucasian subjects do not display overt evidence of somatic mosaicism

Somatic mosaicism is a normal occurrence during development in the tissues and organs. As part of establishing a “healthy population “(HP) background or base-line, we investigated whether such mosaicism can be routinely detected in the circulating DNA secured from a rigorously designed healthy human liquid biopsy clinical trial (saliva, blood). We deployed next generation (NG) whole exome sequencing (WES) at median exome coverage rates of 97.2 % (-to-30x) and 70.0 % (-to-100x). We found that somatic mosaicism is not detectable by such standard bulk WES sequencing assays in saliva and blood DNA in 24 normal healthy Caucasians of both sexes from 18 to 60 years of age. We conclude that for circulating DNA using standard WES no novel somatic mutational variants can be detected in protein-coding regions of normal healthy subjects. This implies that the extent within normal tissues of somatic mosaicism must be at a lower level, below the detection threshold, for these circulating DNA WES read depths. © 2020 The Author(s

Uncovering the microbiome of invasive sympatric European brown hares and European rabbits in Australia

Background European brown hares (Lepus europaeus) and European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) are invasive pest species in Australia, with rabbits having a substantially larger environmental impact than hares. As their spatial distribution in Australia partially overlaps, we conducted a comparative microbiome study to determine how the composition of gastrointestinal microbiota varies between these species, since this may indicate species differences in diet, physiology, and other internal and external factors. Methods We analysed the faecal microbiome of nine wild hares and twelve wild rabbits from a sympatric periurban reserve in Canberra, Australia, using a 16S rRNA amplicon-based sequencing approach. Additionally, we compared the concordance between results from Illumina and Nanopore sequencing platforms. Results We identified significantly more variation in faecal microbiome composition between individual rabbits compared to hares, despite both species occupying a similar habitat. The faecal microbiome in both species was dominated by the phyla Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes, typical of many vertebrates. Many phyla, including Actinobacteria, Proteobacteria and Patescibacteria, were shared between rabbits and hares. In contrast, bacteria from phylum Verrucomicrobia were present only in rabbits, while phyla Lentisphaerae and Synergistetes were represented only in hares. We did not identify phylum Spirochaetes in Australian hares; this phylum was previously shown to be present at high relative abundance in European hare faecal samples. These differences in the composition of faecal microbiota may be indicative of less discriminate foraging behaviour in rabbits, which in turn may enable them to adapt quicker to new environments, and may reflect the severe environmental impacts that this species has in Australia.Funding was provided by a Centre for Biodiversity Analysis ‘Ignition’ Grant, a collaborative initiative of the Australian National University, CSIRO and the University of Canberra

The effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of cytisine versus varenicline for smoking cessation in an Australian population: a study protocol for a randomized controlled non-inferiority trial

Smoking cessation medications are effective but often underutilised because of costs and side effects. Cytisine is a plant-based smoking cessation medication with over 50 years of use in Central and Eastern Europe. While cytisine has been found to be well-tolerated and more effective than nicotine replacement therapy, direct comparison with varenicline have not been conducted. This study evaluates the effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of cytisine compared with varenicline.Two arm, parallel group, randomised, non-inferiority trial, with allocation concealment and blinded outcome assessment.Australian population-based study.Adult daily smokers (N=1266) interested in quitting will be recruited through advertisements and Quitline telephone-based cessation support services.Eligible participants will be randomised (1:1 ratio) to receive either cytisine capsules (25-day supply) or varenicline tablets (12-week supply), prescribed in accordance with the manufacturer's recommended dosing regimen. The medication will be mailed to each participant's nominated residential address. All participants will also be offered standard Quitline behavioural support (up to six 10-12 minute sessions).Assessments will be undertaken by telephone at baseline, 4- and 7-months post-randomisation. Participants will also be contacted twice (two and four weeks post-randomisation) to ascertain adverse events, treatment adherence and smoking status. The primary outcome will be self-reported 6-month continuous abstinence from smoking, verified by carbon monoxide at 7-month follow-up. We will also evaluate the relative safety and cost-effectiveness of cytisine compared with varenicline. Secondary outcomes will include self-reported continuous and 7-day point prevalence abstinence and cigarette consumption at each follow-up interview.If cytisine is as effective as varenicline, its lower cost and natural plant-based composition may make it an acceptable and affordable smoking cessation medication that could save millions of lives worldwide

Method for culturing Candidatus Ornithobacterium hominis.

Candidatus Ornithobacterium hominis has been detected in nasopharyngeal microbiota sequence data from around the world. This report provides the first description of culture conditions for isolating this bacterium. The availability of an easily reproducible culture method is expected to facilitate deeper understanding of the clinical significance of this species