Post Procedural Care of Patients Receiving Percutaneous Transhepatic Biliary Drainage Catheter Placement

A recent review of patients undergoing transhepatic biliary drainage catheter placement showed a 30-day readmission rate of 28%. New post-procedural processes were created to standardize the care of this patient population to decrease readmission rates and improve patient satisfaction

Can Changes in Eye Movement Scanning Alter the Age-Related Deficit in Recognition Memory?

Older adults typically exhibit poorer face recognition compared to younger adults. These recognition differences may be due to underlying age-related changes in eye movement scanning. We examined whether older adults’ recognition could be improved by yoking their eye movements to those of younger adults. Participants studied younger and older faces, under free viewing conditions (bases), through a gaze-contingent moving window (own), or a moving window which replayed the eye movements of a base participant (yoked). During the recognition test, participants freely viewed the faces with no viewing restrictions. Own-age recognition biases were observed for older adults in all viewing conditions, suggesting that this effect occurs independently of scanning. Participants in the bases condition had the highest recognition accuracy, and participants in the yoked condition were more accurate than participants in the own condition. Among yoked participants, recognition did not depend on age of the base participant. These results suggest that successful encoding for all participants requires the bottom-up contribution of peripheral information, regardless of the locus of control of the viewer. Although altering the pattern of eye movements did not increase recognition, the amount of sampling of the face during encoding predicted subsequent recognition accuracy for all participants. Increased sampling may confer some advantages for subsequent recognition, particularly for people who have declining memory abilities

DNA end-directed and processive nuclease activities of the archaeal XPF enzyme

The XPF/Mus81 family of structure-specific nucleases cleaves branched or nicked DNA substrates and are implicated in a wide range of DNA repair and recombination processes. The structure of the crenarchaeal XPF bound to a DNA duplex has revealed a plausible mechanism for DNA binding, involving DNA distortion into upstream and downstream duplexes engaged by the two helix–hairpin–helix domains that form a dimeric structure at the C-terminus of the enzyme. A flexible linker joins these to the dimeric nuclease domain, and a C-terminal motif interacts with the sliding clamp, which is essential for the activity of the enzyme. Here, we demonstrate the importance of the downstream duplex in directing the endonuclease activity of crenarchaeal XPF, which is similar to that of Mus81-Eme1, and suggest a mechanistic basis for this control. Furthermore, our data reveal that the enzyme can digest a nicked DNA strand processively over at least 60 nt in a 3′–5′ direction and can remove varied types of DNA lesions and blocked DNA termini. This in vitro activity suggests a potential role for crenarchaeal XPF in a variety of repair processes for which there are no clear pathways in archaea

Derivation of Economic and Social Indicators for a Spatial Decision Support System to Evaluate the Impacts of Urban Development on Water Bodies in New Zealand

There is mounting evidence that urban development in New Zealand has contributed to poor water quality and ecological degradation of coastal and fresh water receiving waters. As a consequence, local governments have identified the need for improved methods to guide decision making to achieve improved outcomes for those receiving waters. This paper reports progress on a research programme to develop a catchmentscale spatial decision-support system (SDSS) that will aid evaluation of the impacts of urban development on attributes such as water and sediment quality; ecosystem health; and economic, social and cultural values. The SDSS aims to express indicators of impacts on these values within a sustainability indexing system in order to allow local governments to consider them holistically over planning timeframes of several decades. The SDSS will use a combination of deterministic and probabilistic methods to, firstly, estimate changes to environmental stressors such as contaminant loads from different land use and stormwater management scenarios and, secondly, use these results and information from a range of other sources to generate indicator values. This paper describes the project’s approach to the derivation of indicators of economic and social well being associated with the effects of urban storm water run-off on freshwater and estuarine receiving waters.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Development of the cariogenic oral biofilm coincident with the evolution of immune responses in very young children

Dental caries remains one of the most common chronic infectious childhood diseases and individuals remain susceptible to the disease throughout their lifetime. The disease continues to inflict a substantial economic burden. Moreover, dental caries demonstrates considerable socioeconomic disparities with the lowest socioeconomic groups suffering the greatest burden of disease. There is an unmet need to improve prevention and therapeutics and yet there remain fundamental gaps in the knowledge of the interrelationships between caries-associated risk factors, in particular how the immune system interacts with the evolving cariogenic biofilm in young children. This thesis sought to investigate the immune response to cariogenic biofilms. Three different approaches were used to achieve this. Firstly, the salivary immune response and development of the oral biofilm in very young children were investigated prior to the onset of caries, as part of a pilot longitudinal clinical study, using a dental public health program as a platform. Secondly, the initiation of adaptive immune responses to S. mutans exposure were investigated using a series of In vitro and In vivo studies. Thirdly, a novel S. mutans In vitro biofilm model was developed and optimised. Childsmile is a dental health improvement programme for children in Scotland and provides children with specific dental health interventions depending on need, from birth and up to 16-years of age. To achieve the first and primary aim of this thesis, plaque and saliva samples were collected from children aged one-year and again at age three-years. At follow-up, dental disease scores were also measured. Additionally, the biological mechanisms underlying the socioeconomic disparities in the dental health of young children were investigated, including the measurement of salivary cortisol as a surrogate measure of stress. Sixty-three Childsmile participants aged one-year were recruited to the study at baseline. Twenty-three children aged three-years were successfully recalled at follow-up. This work demonstrated that variables hypothesised to influence the development of carious disease can be collected and successfully quantified in children aged one- to three-years. Nonetheless, it was extremely challenging to recruit children of this age and the data were compromised by the small sample sizes. During the study period both the intensity and incidence of S. mutans colonisation increased in the dental plaque of children aged one- to three-years. Coincidentally, concentrations of salivary antimicrobial proteins increased, including lactoferrin, LL37, calprotectin, the HNPs 1-3 and sIgA antibody titres specific for oral streptococci. It could not be determined from these studies whether the increased colonisation with S. mutans or the concentrations of salivary antimicrobial proteins influenced the prevalence of dental caries. The major limitation of this study was the low recruitment rates which resulted in low power to detect statistically significant differences. As a consequence there was insufficient evidence to identify the potential biological pathways that may underlie the socioeconomic disparities of dental caries. From this pilot study a number of valuable lessons were learned regarding the recruitment of children of this age and recommendations for future clinical studies conducted within Childsmile are made. In children with high risk of developing dental caries effective salivary antibody responses are required to provide protection. The mechanisms leading to effective antibody responses remain unclear. Thus, the second aim of this thesis was to investigate the initiation of an adaptive immune response to S. mutans, in an attempt to elucidate the mechanisms that lead to effective antibody production. Using a novel system, In vitro evidence indicated that S. mutans does not elicit a robust inflammatory immune response upon colonisation of the host. Dendritic cells exposed to S. mutans were not functionally mature and failed to induce antigen-specific T cell proliferation. Furthermore, In vivo, dendritic cells failed to become activated in response to oral exposure to S. mutans. An In vitro S. mutans sucrose-dependent biofilm model was developed and optimised. Using this model an antibody fragment known as a minibody, denoted ‘SS2’ was demonstrated to inhibit S. mutans biofilm formation. This biofilm model represents an important first step for examining the potential of therapeutic molecules to inhibit S. mutans biofilm formation, prior to their application in In vivo models of dental caries and possible subsequent use in human clinical trials. Data described here indicate that S. mutans colonises the oral cavity at a time when children are immunologically immature. Increased colonisation by S. mutans coincides with the maturation of salivary immune responses. Moreover, In vitro and In vivo evidence suggest that S. mutans does not elicit a robust immune response upon colonisation of the host. Thus, early acquisition of S. mutans in a relatively immunologically immature host together with the absence of an inflammatory immune response likely aids the colonisation of S. mutans and its persistence within the oral biofilm and subsequent contribution to dental caries

Transcranial magnetic stimulation to the occipital place area biases gaze during scene viewing

We can understand viewed scenes and extract task-relevant information within a few hundred milliseconds. This process is generally supported by three cortical regions that show selectivity for scene images: parahippocampal place area (PPA), medial place area (MPA) and occipital place area (OPA). Prior studies have focused on the visual information each region is responsive to, usually within the context of recognition or navigation. Here, we move beyond these tasks to investigate gaze allocation during scene viewing. Eye movements rely on a scene’s visual representation to direct saccades, and thus foveal vision. In particular, we focus on the contribution of OPA, which is i) located in occipito-parietal cortex, likely feeding information into parts of the dorsal pathway critical for eye movements, and ii) contains strong retinotopic representations of the contralateral visual field. Participants viewed scene images for 1034 ms while their eye movements were recorded. On half of the trials, a 500 ms train of five transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) pulses was applied to the participant’s cortex, starting at scene onset. TMS was applied to the right hemisphere over either OPA or the occipital face area (OFA), which also exhibits a contralateral visual field bias but shows selectivity for face stimuli. Participants generally made an overall left-to-right, top-to-bottom pattern of eye movements across all conditions. When TMS was applied to OPA, there was an increased saccade latency for eye movements toward the contralateral relative to the ipsilateral visual field after the final TMS pulse (400ms). Additionally, TMS to the OPA biased fixation positions away from the contralateral side of the scene compared to the control condition, while the OFA group showed no such effect. There was no effect on horizontal saccade amplitudes. These combined results suggest that OPA might serve to represent local scene information that can then be utilized by visuomotor control networks to guide gaze allocation in natural scenes

Reconceptualising assessment to promote student learning, resilience and wellbeing

In this workshop we present results from a longitudinal mixed methods study which evidences that dialogic feed-forward assessment asserts a positive influence on the undergraduate student experience in a number of inter-related cognitive and affective ways (Hill & West, 2019). Staff-student dialogue impacts positively upon learning, uncovering emotion and enhancing resilience and wellbeing (Hill et al., 2019). Through activities and discussion a staff-student team will encourage workshop participants to reconceptualise assessment and feedback as a collaborative process at a number of scales within their institutions. Participants will be encouraged to plan assessment approaches conscious of student stressors and emotions, maximising the potential for sustainable learning and academic success

Two roles for ecological surrogacy : indicator surrogates and management surrogates

Ecological surrogacy - here defined as using a process or element (e.g., species, ecosystem, or abiotic factor) to represent another aspect of an ecological system - is a widely used concept, but many applications of the surrogate concept have been controversial. We argue that some of this controversy reflects differences among users with different goals, a distinction that can be crystalized by recognizing two basic types of surrogate. First, many ecologists and natural resource managers measure "indicator surrogates" to provide information about ecological systems. Second, and often overlooked, are "management surrogates" (e.g., umbrella species) that are primarily used to facilitate achieving management goals, especially broad goals such as "maintain biodiversity" or "increase ecosystem resilience." We propose that distinguishing these two overarching roles for surrogacy may facilitate better communication about project goals. This is critical when evaluating the usefulness of different surrogates, especially where a potential surrogate might be useful in one role but not another. Our classification for ecological surrogacy applies to species, ecosystems, ecological processes, abiotic factors, and genetics, and thus can provide coherence across a broad range of uses. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Philip Barton" is provided in this record*