NEST PROVISIONING AND HOMING BEHAVIOR OF CERCERIS FUMIPENNIS (HYMENOPTERA, CRABRONIDAE): A USEFUL TOOL IN THE BIOSURVEILLANCE OF BUPRESTID BEETLES

Cerceris fumipennis (Hymenoptera, Crabronidae) is a ground-dwelling wasp that provisions its nest with woodboring jewel beetles (Buprestidae), making it a useful tool in biosurveillance of forest pests. In particular, C. fumipennis aggregations have been used for monitoring the invasive Emerald Ash Borer (Agrilus planipennis (Coleoptera, Buprestidae)) and by using this biosurveillance technique researchers have tracked the spread of this pest into new states and provinces. However, despite its success as a biosurveillance tool, information about much of the biology of Cerceris fumipennis is lacking. This study is focused on the biology and life history of C. fumipennis to better understand its use in long-term pest monitoring, in particular the nest provisioning and homing behaviors of this species are examined. The nests of Cerceris fumipennis were observed through the summers of 2016 and 2017. Nest creation and abandonment was recorded and analyzed, plus nests were also excavated and the contents of each nest was examined to determine the maternal investment and prey constancy of each wasp. Maternal investment was divided into three categories: number of young, the number of beetles brought back to the nest, and the biomass of these beetles. Each of these three categories was determined for each cell and for each nest. Nests that had regular human interference and nests that had been left undisturbed throughout the summer had similar rates of maternal investment in each of the three categories. The constancy of prey species selection by each wasp was examined by looking at the species composition of the prey from each nest. The homing range of the wasps was studied by releasing Cerceris fumipennis from three distances from their nests: 0.2 km, 0.4 km, and 1 km. The wasps returned from all three distances, with a significant difference in the average time that it took for wasps to return from 0.2 km and 1 km. This suggests that 1 km is well within the homing range of C. fumipennis. Determination of the homing range of the wasp is an initial step in determination of their hunting range, and produce information on their flight behavior

Models of Primary Health Care Psychotherapy and Counselling

This literature review was commissioned by the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing to inform the development of the Access to Allied Health Services component of the Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care Initiative.This review looks at psychotherapy and counselling services in primary health care provided by persons from the Allied Health Professions. The report makes a number of recommendations regarding location of the service, fundholding and employment, practitioner support, reporting and confidentiality.Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing Better Outcomes in Mental Health Care Initiative

Altered standards of care for health care providers in the pandemic influenza

Pandemic influenza will pose tremendous challenges to health care providers, state public health authorities, and the public. All will have to conduct business under the most adverse of circumstances. It will be difficult for providers to meet the customary legal standards of care imposed by state and federal regulatory authorities, as well as the common law tort system. This white paper will explore the legal issues associated with altered standards of care in pandemic influenza.William S. and Christine S. Hall Center for Law and Health at the Indiana University School of Law – Indianapolis; Indiana University Center for Bioethics; Indiana State Department of Healt

Rapid nano-gram scale screening method of micro-arrays to evaluate drug-polymer blends using high-throughput printing technology

A miniaturized, high-throughput assay was optimized to screen polymer-drug solid dispersions using a 2-D Ink-jet printer. By simply printing nanoliter amounts of polymer and drug solutions onto an inert surface, drug:polymer micro-dots of tunable composition were produced in an easily-addressable micro-array format. The amount of material printed for each dried spot ranged from 25 ng to 650 ng. These arrays were used to assess the stability of drug:polymer dispersions with respect to recrystallization, using polarized light microscopy. One array with a panel of 6 drugs formulated at different ratios with Poly (vinylpyrrolidone-vinyl acetate) copolymer (PVPVA) was developed to estimate a possible bulk (gram-scale) approximation threshold from the final printed nano amount of formulation. Another array was printed at a fixed final amount of material to establish a literature comparison of one drug formulated with different commercial polymers for validation. This new approach may offer significant efficiency in pharmaceutical formulation screening, with each experiment in the nano-micro-array format requiring from 3 up to 6 orders of magnitude lower amounts of sample than conventional screening methods

A novel preference-informed complementary trial (PICT) design for clinical trial research influenced by strong patient preferences

Background: Patients and their families often have preferences for medical care that relate to wider considerations beyond the clinical effectiveness of the proposed interventions. Traditionally, these preferences have not been adequately considered in research. Research questions where patients and families have strong preferences may not be appropriate for traditional randomized controlled trials (RCTs) due to threats to internal and external validity, as there may be high levels of drop-out and non-adherence or recruitment of a sample that is not representative of the treatment population. Several preference-informed designs have been developed to address problems with traditional RCTs, but these designs have their own limitations and may not be suitable for many research questions where strong preferences and opinions are present. Methods: In this paper, we propose a novel and innovative preference-informed complementary trial (PICT) design which addresses key weaknesses with both traditional RCTs and available preference-informed designs. In the PICT design, complementary trials would be operated within a single study, and patients and/or families would be given the opportunity to choose between a trial with all treatment options available and a trial with treatment options that exclude the option which is subject to strong preferences. This approach would allow those with strong preferences to take part in research and would improve external validity through recruiting more representative populations and internal validity. Here we discuss the strengths and limitations of the PICT design and considerations for analysis and present a motivating example for the design based on the use of opioids for pain management for children with musculoskeletal injuries. Conclusions: PICTs provide a novel and innovative design for clinical trials with more than two arms, which can address problems with existing preference-informed trial designs and enhance the ability of researchers to reflect shared decision-making in research as well as improving the validity of trials of topics with strong preferences