Returning to work after stroke: perspectives of employer stakeholders, a qualitative study.

Purpose: More than 40 % of working age adults with stroke fail to return to work. The work context is a key factor in return to work, but little is known about the experiences of employers in supporting employees with stroke. The aim of this study was to explore return to work after stroke from the employer perspective, to identify key features associated with success and to seek participants’ views regarding the role of healthcare in return to work. Methods: Data was gathered through 18 semi-structured interviews with employer stakeholders and included small business owners, line managers, human resources and occupational health staff. Data was analysed thematically. Results: The main themes identified were: the impact of stroke on the employer, characteristics of the employee, communication, knowledge and information, experience of other stakeholders, integrating healthcare in return to work. Conclusion: Employers face complex emotional and practical issues when helping an employee return to work after stroke, for which many lack knowledge and experience. The range and quality of support networks that they access is variable and advice and support from clinicians is welcomed. Further research is necessary to investigate how such support could be funded and integrated within existing service provision

Who Eats Whom in a Pool? A Comparative Study of Prey Selectivity by Predatory Aquatic Insects

Predatory aquatic insects are a diverse group comprising top predators in small fishless water bodies. Knowledge of their diet composition is fragmentary, which hinders the understanding of mechanisms maintaining their high local diversity and of their impacts on local food web structure and dynamics. We conducted multiple-choice predation experiments using nine common species of predatory aquatic insects, including adult and larval Coleoptera, adult Heteroptera and larval Odonata, and complemented them with literature survey of similar experiments. All predators in our experiments fed selectively on the seven prey species offered, and vulnerability to predation varied strongly between the prey. The predators most often preferred dipteran larvae; previous studies further reported preferences for cladocerans. Diet overlaps between all predator pairs and predator overlaps between all prey pairs were non-zero. Modularity analysis separated all primarily nectonic predator and prey species from two groups of large and small benthic predators and their prey. These results, together with limited evidence from the literature, suggest a highly interconnected food web with several modules, in which similarly sized predators from the same microhabitat are likely to compete strongly for resources in the field (observed Pianka’s diet overlap indices >0.85). Our experiments further imply that ontogenetic diet shifts are common in predatory aquatic insects, although we observed higher diet overlaps than previously reported. Hence, individuals may or may not shift between food web modules during ontogeny

A complex network of factors with overlapping affinities represses splicing through intronic elements

To better understand splicing regulation, we used a cell-based screen to identify ten diverse motifs that inhibit splicing from introns. Motifs were validated in another human cell type and gene context, and their presence correlated with in vivo splicing changes. All motifs exhibited exonic splicing enhancer or silencer activity, and grouping these motifs according to their distributions yielded clusters with distinct patterns of context-dependent activity. Candidate regulatory factors associated with each motif were identified, to recover 24 known and new splicing regulators. Specific domains in selected factors were sufficient to confer intronic-splicing-silencer activity. Many factors bound multiple distinct motifs with similar affinity, and all motifs were recognized by multiple factors, which revealed a complex overlapping network of protein-RNA interactions. This arrangement enables individual cis elements to function differently in distinct cellular contexts, depending on the spectrum of regulatory factors present.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant 2-R01-GM085319