1,047 research outputs found
Exploring the functions of music in the lives of young people on the autism spectrum
Current research investigating the functions of music in everyday life has identified cognitive, emotional, and social functions of music. However, previous research focuses almost exclusively on neurotypical people and rarely considers the musical experiences of autistic people. In addition, there is limited research which focuses explicitly on the musical experiences of young people on the autism spectrum. Current research exploring the functions of music may therefore not accurately represent the experiences of the autistic community. This article aims to explore the function of music in the lives of young people on the autism spectrum through a series of interviews. Eleven young people on the autism spectrum age 12 to 25 (M = 19.4) were interviewed about the function of music in their lives. An adaptive interview technique, utilizing multiple methods of communication, was employed to account for the participants’ broad communicative and personal needs. Interpretative phenomenological analysis revealed four key functions of music in the participants’ lives: Cognitive, Emotional, Social, and Identity. Collectively, these results provide a unique insight into the musical experiences of young people on the autism spectrum
Technical note: Development of a gradient tube method for examining microbial population structures in floating sulphur biofilms
Floating biofilms occur in thin layers of between 50 μm and 500 μm on the surface of certain organic, sulphidic aquatic environments and, at times, may only be several cells deep. While these structures may be important in terms of energy flow pathways, and possibly also in wastewater treatment operations, little is known about their structural/functional properties. This is due, in part, to their flimsy nature but also to methodological constraints related to their sampling and manipulation. We have investigated floating sulphur biofilms that appear as white layers on the surface of anoxic sulphidic organic wastewaters and describe here the development of a novel gradient tube method for investigating these systems. This approach enables testing of the hypothesis that these floating sulphur biofilms are complex well-differentiated structures rather than disordered dispersions of microbial biomass as has been previously thought. Furthermore, if the former is correct, they would seem to resemble the structure and functionality of comparable complex bioflms that are attached to solid substrates. The gradient tube method involves the establishment of apposing gradients of sulphide and oxygen that are expanded across a tube of agarose 10 cm in length; this simulates the oxic/anoxic interface that occurs over only several micrometres in the natural biofilm system. A plug of sulphide-enriched agarose is first placed in the base of the tube. Samples of the floating sulphur biofilm are then mixed into agarose growth medium and, before it sets, this is overlaid on top of the plug. The tubes are then open capped and incubated. A variety of different microbial populations may thus become established in the separate physiological niches that are set up in this way within the gradient tube. The populations may be quite robustly sampled by extruding and then sectioning the agarose plug. This expansion of the biofilm enables more detailed molecular phylogenetic studies of the populations found in the various niches within the biofilm and also measurement of physico-chemical parameters within the system.Keywords: gradient tube method, floating biofilms, floating sulphur biofilms, microbial ecology, sulphur biotechnology, acid mine drainage wastewater
Evaluation of knowledge levels amongst village AIDS committees after undergoing HIV educational sessions: results from a pilot study in rural Tanzania
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Village AIDS committees (VAC) were formed by the Tanzanian government in 2003 to provide HIV education to their communities. However, their potential has not been realised due to their limited knowledge and misconceptions surrounding HIV, which could be addressed through training of VAC members. In an attempt to increase HIV knowledge levels and address common misconceptions amongst the VACs, an HIV curriculum was delivered to members in rural north western Tanzania.
METHODS:
An evaluation of HIV knowledge was conducted prior to and post-delivery of HIV training sessions, within members of three VACs in Kisesa ward. Quantitative surveys were used with several open-ended questions to identify local misconceptions and evaluate HIV knowledge levels. Short educational training sessions covering HIV transmission, prevention and treatment were conducted, with each VAC using quizzes, role-plays and participatory learning and action tools. Post-training surveys occurred up to seven days after the final training session.
RESULTS:
Before the training, "good" HIV knowledge was higher amongst men than women (p = 0.041), and among those with previous HIV education (p = 0.002). The trade-centre had a faster turn-over of VAC members, and proximity to the trade-centre was associated with a shorter time on the committee.Training improved HIV knowledge levels with more members achieving a "good" score in the post-training survey compared with the baseline survey (p = < 0.001). The training programme was popular, with 100% of participants requesting further HIV training in the future and 51.7% requesting training at three-monthly intervals.
CONCLUSIONS:
In this setting, a series of HIV training sessions for VACs demonstrated encouraging results, with increased HIV knowledge levels following short educational sessions. Further work is required to assess the success of VAC members in disseminating this HIV education to their communities, as well as up-scaling this pilot study to other regions in Tanzania with different misconceptions
Time preferences and risk aversion: tests on domain differences
The design and evaluation of environmental policy requires the incorporation of time and risk elements as many environmental outcomes extend over long time periods and involve a large degree of uncertainty. Understanding how individuals discount and evaluate risks with respect to environmental outcomes is a prime component in designing effective environmental policy to address issues of environmental sustainability, such as climate change. Our objective in this study is to investigate whether subjects' time preferences and risk aversion across the monetary domain and the environmental domain differ. Crucially, our experimental design is incentivized: in the monetary domain, time preferences and risk aversion are elicited with real monetary payoffs, whereas in the environmental domain, we elicit time preferences and risk aversion using real (bee-friendly) plants. We find that subjects' time preferences are not significantly different across the monetary and environmental domains. In contrast, subjects' risk aversion is significantly different across the two domains. More specifically, subjects (men and women) exhibit a higher degree of risk aversion in the environmental domain relative to the monetary domain. Finally, we corroborate earlier results, which document that women are more risk averse than men in the monetary domain. We show this finding to, also, hold in the environmental domain
Novel thoracoscopic approach to posterior mediastinal goiters: report of two cases
Trans-cervical resection of posterior mediastinal goiters is usually very difficult, requiring a high thoracotomy. Until recently, using conventional video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery to resect such tumors has been technically difficult and unsafe. By virtue of 3 dimensional visualization, greater dexterity, and more accurate dissection, the Da Vinci robot, for the first time, enables a completely minimally invasive approach to the posterior superior mediastinum
Long-term biological and behavioural impact of an adolescent sexual health intervention in Tanzania: follow-up survey of the community-based MEMA kwa Vijana Trial.
BACKGROUND: The ability of specific behaviour-change interventions to reduce HIV infection in young people remains questionable. Since January 1999, an adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) intervention has been implemented in ten randomly chosen intervention communities in rural Tanzania, within a community randomised trial (see below; NCT00248469). The intervention consisted of teacher-led, peer-assisted in-school education, youth-friendly health services, community activities, and youth condom promotion and distribution. Process evaluation in 1999-2002 showed high intervention quality and coverage. A 2001/2 intervention impact evaluation showed no impact on the primary outcomes of HIV seroincidence and herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) seroprevalence but found substantial improvements in SRH knowledge, reported attitudes, and some reported sexual behaviours. It was postulated that the impact on "upstream" knowledge, attitude, and reported behaviour outcomes seen at the 3-year follow-up would, in the longer term, lead to a reduction in HIV and HSV-2 infection rates and other biological outcomes. A further impact evaluation survey in 2007/8 ( approximately 9 years post-intervention) tested this hypothesis. METHODS AND FINDINGS: This is a cross-sectional survey (June 2007 through July 2008) of 13,814 young people aged 15-30 y who had attended trial schools during the first phase of the MEMA kwa Vijana intervention trial (1999-2002). Prevalences of the primary outcomes HIV and HSV-2 were 1.8% and 25.9% in males and 4.0% and 41.4% in females, respectively. The intervention did not significantly reduce risk of HIV (males adjusted prevalence ratio [aPR] 0.91, 95%CI 0.50-1.65; females aPR 1.07, 95%CI 0.68-1.67) or HSV-2 (males aPR 0.94, 95%CI 0.77-1.15; females aPR 0.96, 95%CI 0.87-1.06). The intervention was associated with a reduction in the proportion of males reporting more than four sexual partners in their lifetime (aPR 0.87, 95%CI 0.78-0.97) and an increase in reported condom use at last sex with a non-regular partner among females (aPR 1.34, 95%CI 1.07-1.69). There was a clear and consistent beneficial impact on knowledge, but no significant impact on reported attitudes to sexual risk, reported pregnancies, or other reported sexual behaviours. The study population was likely to have been, on average, at lower risk of HIV and other sexually transmitted infections compared to other rural populations, as only youth who had reached year five of primary school were eligible. CONCLUSIONS: SRH knowledge can be improved and retained long-term, but this intervention had only a limited effect on reported behaviour and no significant effect on HIV/STI prevalence. Youth interventions integrated within intensive, community-wide risk reduction programmes may be more successful and should be evaluated. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT0024846
Stage at diagnosis for childhood solid cancers in Australia: A population-based study
BACKGROUND: Stage of cancer at diagnosis is one of the strongest predictors of survival and is essential for population cancer surveillance, comparison of cancer outcomes and to guide national cancer control strategies. Our aim was to describe, for the first time, the distribution of cases by stage at diagnosis and differences in stage-specific survival on a population basis for a range of childhood solid cancers in Australia. METHODS: The study cohort was drawn from the population-based Australian Childhood Cancer Registry and comprised children (<15 years) diagnosed with one of 12 solid malignancies between 2006 and 2014. Stage at diagnosis was assigned according to the Toronto Paediatric Cancer Stage Guidelines. Observed (all cause) survival was calculated using the Kaplan-Meier method, with follow-up on mortality available to 31 December 2015. RESULTS: Almost three-quarters (1256 of 1760 cases, 71%) of children in the study had localised or regional disease at diagnosis, varying from 43% for neuroblastoma to 99% for retinoblastoma. Differences in 5-year observed survival by stage were greatest for osteosarcoma (localised 85% (95% CI = 72%-93%) versus metastatic 37% (15%-59%)), neuroblastoma (localised 98% (91%-99%) versus metastatic 60% (52%-67%)), rhabdomyosarcoma (localised 85% (71%-93%) versus metastatic 53% (34%-69%)), and medulloblastoma (localised 69% (61%-75%) versus metastases to spine 42% (27%-57%)). CONCLUSION: The stage-specific information presented here provides a basis for comparison with other international population cancer registries. Understanding variations in survival by stage at diagnosis will help with the targeted formation of initiatives to improve outcomes for children with cancer
Identification of plasma lipid biomarkers for prostate cancer by lipidomics and bioinformatics
Background:
Lipids have critical functions in cellular energy storage, structure and signaling. Many individual lipid molecules have been associated with the evolution of prostate cancer; however, none of them has been approved to be used as a biomarker. The aim of this study is to identify lipid molecules from hundreds plasma apparent lipid species as biomarkers for diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Methodology/Principal Findings:
Using lipidomics, lipid profiling of 390 individual apparent lipid species was performed on 141 plasma samples from 105 patients with prostate cancer and 36 male controls. High throughput data generated from lipidomics were analyzed using bioinformatic and statistical methods. From 390 apparent lipid species, 35 species were demonstrated to have potential in differentiation of prostate cancer. Within the 35 species, 12 were identified as individual plasma lipid biomarkers for diagnosis of prostate cancer with a sensitivity above 80%, specificity above 50% and accuracy above 80%. Using top 15 of 35 potential biomarkers together increased predictive power dramatically in diagnosis of prostate cancer with a sensitivity of 93.6%, specificity of 90.1% and accuracy of 97.3%. Principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical clustering analysis (HCA) demonstrated that patient and control populations were visually separated by identified lipid biomarkers. RandomForest and 10-fold cross validation analyses demonstrated that the identified lipid biomarkers were able to predict unknown populations accurately, and this was not influenced by patient's age and race. Three out of 13 lipid classes, phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), ether-linked phosphatidylethanolamine (ePE) and ether-linked phosphatidylcholine (ePC) could be considered as biomarkers in diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Conclusions/Significance:
Using lipidomics and bioinformatic and statistical methods, we have identified a few out of hundreds plasma apparent lipid molecular species as biomarkers for diagnosis of prostate cancer with a high sensitivity, specificity and accuracy
How one experiences and embodies compassionate mind training influences its effectiveness.
This paper explores indicators of practice quality of a brief compassion mind training (CMT) intervention and their impact on the development of an inner sense of one’s compassionate self (CS) and a range of self-report measures. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: compassionate mind training (CMT; n = 77) and wait-list control. Participants in the CMT condition practiced a range of CMT practices during 2 weeks. Each week, participants completed a feedback questionnaire, measuring practice frequency, helpfulness and embodiment of the practices in everyday life. Self-report measures of compassion, positive affect, shame, self-criticism, fears of compassion and psychopathological symptoms were also completed at pre and post. Practice frequency was associated with the frequency and easiness of embodiment of the CS. Perceived helpfulness of the practices was related to greater embodiment of the CS and to increases in compassion, reassured self, relaxed and safe affect and decreases in self-criticism. The embodiment variables of the CS were associated with higher compassion for the self, for others and from others and with improvements in reassured self, safe affect and compassionate goals. Embodiment of the CS and perceived helpfulness of the practices predicted compassion for the self and experience of compassion from others at post-intervention. Perceiving compassion cultivation practices as helpful and being able to embody the CS in everyday life is key to foster self-compassion and the experience of receiving compassion from others, as well as to promote feelings of safeness, contentment and calmness.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) Compassionate Mind Foundation charit
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