Whistleblowing Need not Occur if Internal Voices Are Heard: From Deaf Effect to Hearer Courage; Comment on “Cultures of Silence and Cultures of Voice: The Role of Whistleblowing in Healthcare Organisations”

Whistleblowing by health professionals is an infrequent and extraordinary event and need not occur if internal voices are heard. Mannion and Davies’ editorial on “Cultures of Silence and Cultures of Voice: The Role of Whistleblowing in Healthcare Organisations” asks the question whether whistleblowing ameliorates or exacerbates the ‘deaf effect’ prevalent in healthcare organisations. This commentary argues that the focus should remain on internal processes and hearer courage

Promoting Client Welfare and Preserving Autonomy: Ethical Treatment of Eating Disorders

Counselors often experience an ethical dilemma when mandating treatment for clients with eating disorders. In this article, the authors will briefly discuss the characteristics of eating disorders, the impact of cognitive impairment on the decision to mandate treatment, and the ethical principles of autonomy, beneficence, and nonmalificence that counselors must consider when work-ing with clients from this population. To address ethical concerns, the authors will apply Welfel’s (2010) ethical decision-making model to a case involving a client with Anorexia Nervosa

Cultural proficiency in first nations health research : a mixed-methods, cross-cultural evaluation of a novel resource

Recent efforts have illustrated the efficacy of culturally proficient approaches to research, underpinned by robust partnerships between researchers and First Nations peoples and communities. This article seeks to determine differences in approaches to First Nations research engagement perceptions between First Nations and non-First Nations researchers, as well as whether participation in a cultural proficiency workshop improved the perceived cultural proficiency of non-First Nations health researchers. Also, whether a set of novel cultural proficiency resources, designed in the Sydney region could be applied broadly across First Nations contexts within Australia. The evaluation adopted a mixed-methods, cross-cultural (First Nations and non-First Nations) design to appraise the novel cultural proficiency resources, identifying participant perceptions to First Nations research engagement, as well as views regarding the feasibility of universal application of the resources. A quantitative pre- and post-workshop evaluation was also undertaken to measure differences in self-reported cultural proficiency. Qualitative data underwent thematic analysis and quantitative data were analysed applying t-tests. Both qualitative and quantitative evaluation showed minimal variation between the cultural groups regarding research engagement perceptions, based on viewing of the online resources. A statistically significant increase in self-reported cultural proficiency was found in non-First Nations workshop participants. Cultural proficiency education and training programs that promote an immersive, interactive, and ongoing framework can build the perceived cultural proficiency of non-First Nations health researchers, however First Nations expertise must validate this perceived cultural proficiency to be beneficial in practice. Based on the research findings, applying the underlying ethical principles of First Nations research with a local, context-centred approach allows for the broad application of cultural proficiency research education and training programs within Australia

Who's in Control? Proficiency and L1 Influence on L2 Processing

Abstract We report three reaction time (RT)/event-related brain potential (ERP) semantic priming lexical decision experiments that explore the following in relation to L1 activation during L2 processing: (1) the role of L2 proficiency, (2) the role of sentence context, and (3) the locus of L1 activations (ortho-graphic vs. semantic). All experiments used German (L1) homonyms translated into English (L2) to form prime-target pairs (pine-jaw for Kiefer) to test whether the L1 caused interference in an all-L2 experiment. Both RTs and ERPs were measured on targets. Experiment 1 revealed reversed priming in the N200 component and RTs for low-proficiency learners, but only RT interference for high-proficiency participants. Experiment 2 showed that once the words were processed in sentence context, the low-proficiency participants still showed reversed N200 and RT priming, whereas the high-proficiency group showed no effects. Experiment 3 tested native English speakers with the words in sentence context and showed a null result comparable to the high-proficiency group. Based on these results, we argue that cognitive control relating to translational activation is modulated by (1) L2 proficiency, as the early interference in the N200 was observed only for low-proficiency learners, and (2) sentence context, as it helps high-proficiency learners control L1 activation. As reversed priming was observed in the N200 and not the N400 component, we argue that (3) the locus of the L1 activations was orthographic. Implications in terms of bilingual word recognition and the functional role of the N200 ERP component are discussed.</jats:p

Reverse taxonomy for elucidating diversity of insect-associated nematodes: a case study with termites

BACKGROUND: The molecular operational taxonomic unit(MOTU)has recently been applied to microbial and microscopic animal biodiversity surveys. However, in many cases, some of the MOTUs cannot be definitively tied to any of the taxonomic groups in current databases. To surmount these limitations, the concept of "reverse taxonomy" has been proposed, i.e. to primarily list the MOTUs with morphological information, and then identify and/or describe them at genus/species level using subsamples or by re-isolating the target organisms. Nevertheless, the application of "reverse taxonomy" has not been sufficiently evaluated. Therefore, the practical applicability of "reverse taxonomy" is tested using termite-associated nematodes as a model system for phoretic/parasitic organisms which have high habitat specificity and a potential handle (their termite host species) for re-isolation attempts. METHODOLOGY: Forty-eight species (from 298 colonies) of termites collected from the American tropics and subtropics were examined for their nematode associates using the reverse taxonomy method and culturing attempts (morphological identification and further sequencing efforts). The survey yielded 51 sequence types (= MOTUs) belonging to 19 tentatively identified genera. Within these, four were identified based on molecular data with preliminary morphological observation, and an additional seven were identified or characterized from successful culturing, leaving eight genera unidentified. CONCLUSIONS: That 1/3 of the genera were not successfully identified suggests deficiencies in the depth of available sequences in the database and biological characters, i.e. usually isolated as phoretic/parasitic stages which are not available for morphological identification, and too many undiscovered lineages of nematodes. Although there still is the issue of culturability of nematodes, culturing attempts could help to make reverse taxonomy methods more effective. However, expansion of the database, i.e., production of more DNA barcodes tied to biological information by finding and characterizing additional new and known lineages, is necessary for analyzing functional diversity.Natsumi Kanzaki, Robin M. Giblin-Davis, Rudolf H. Scheffrahn, Hisatomo Taki, Alejandro Esquivel, Kerrie A. Davies and E. Allen Herr

Correcting misclassification errors in crowdsourced ecological data: A Bayesian perspective

Many research domains use data elicited from "citizen scientists" when a direct measure of a process is expensive or infeasible. However, participants may report incorrect estimates or classifications due to their lack of skill. We demonstrate how Bayesian hierarchical models can be used to learn about latent variables of interest, while accounting for the participants' abilities. The model is described in the context of an ecological application that involves crowdsourced classifications of georeferenced coral-reef images from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The latent variable of interest is the proportion of coral cover, which is a common indicator of coral reef health. The participants' abilities are expressed in terms of sensitivity and specificity of a correctly classified set of points on the images. The model also incorporates a spatial component, which allows prediction of the latent variable in locations that have not been surveyed. We show that the model outperforms traditional weighted-regression approaches used to account for uncertainty in citizen science data. Our approach produces more accurate regression coefficients and provides a better characterization of the latent process of interest. This new method is implemented in the probabilistic programming language Stan and can be applied to a wide number of problems that rely on uncertain citizen science data.Comment: 18 figures, 5 table

Small molecule screening in zebrafish: an in vivo approach to identifying new chemical tools and drug leads

In the past two decades, zebrafish genetic screens have identified a wealth of mutations that have been essential to the understanding of development and disease biology. More recently, chemical screens in zebrafish have identified small molecules that can modulate specific developmental and behavioural processes. Zebrafish are a unique vertebrate system in which to study chemical genetic systems, identify drug leads, and explore new applications for known drugs. Here, we discuss some of the advantages of using zebrafish in chemical biology, and describe some important and creative examples of small molecule screening, drug discovery and target identification