Stage 1 Initial Findings Report for the Emerging Priorities Program: An examination of primary teacher, student and parent experiences of arts learning online during COVID-19 lockdowns

The last few years of COVID-19 lockdowns and online learning has resulted resulted in tired teachers, disengaged students, and exhausted parents and caregivers. Primary-aged students have neither had enough time at school to experience collaborative learning nor develop relationships with their peers.The lockdowns in Australia necessitated a recalibration in how arts programs could be delivered in school-based education. The arts offered “critical contributions to the healing, reflection,and political transformation of the nation” (Jacobs, Finneran & D’Acosta,2021, p. 31), and learning the arts improves both student engagement and well-being (i.e. student self-esteem,collaboration, emotional communication and development of socialization)(Ewing, 2011). Where the usual teacher /student and student / student relationships were disrupted by online learning and social distancing (Patstonet al., 2021), approaches to the arts in schools enabled connection and communication with students (Coleman & MacDonald, 2020; Joseph & Lennox,2021; Naidoo et al., 2022; O’Connor & Estellés, 2021).The “EPP Arts Learning Online”research is an examination of primary student, teacher and parent experiences of arts learning online during COVID-19 lockdowns

Perturbation of microbiota in one-day old broiler chickens with antibiotic for 24 hours negatively affects intestinal immune development

Background: Gut microbial colonization and development of immune competence are intertwined and are influenced by early-life nutritional, environmental, and management factors. Perturbation of the gut microbiome at young age affects the crosstalk between intestinal bacteria and host cells of the intestinal mucosa.Results: We investigated the effect of a perturbation of the normal early life microbial colonization of the jejunum in 1-day old chickens. Perturbation was induced by administering 0.8 mg amoxicillin per bird per day) via the drinking water for a period of 24 h. Effects of the perturbation were measured by 16S rRNA profiling of the microbiome and whole genome gene expression analysis. In parallel to what has been observed for other animal species, we hypothesized that such an intervention may have negative impact on immune development.Trends were observed in changes of the composition and diversity of the microbiome when comparing antibiotic treated birds with their controls. in the jejunum, the expression of numerous genes changed, which potentially leads to changes in biological activities of the small intestinal mucosa. Validation of the predicted functional changes was performed by staining immune cells in the small intestinal mucosa and a reduction in the number of macrophage-like (KUL01+) cells was observed due to a direct or indirect effect of the antibiotic treatment. We provide evidence that a short, early life antibiotic treatment affects both the intestinal microbiota (temporarily) and mucosal gene expression over a period of 2 weeks.Conclusion: These results underscore the importance of early life microbial colonization of the gut in relation to immune development and the necessity to explore the capabilities of a variety of early life dietary and/or environmental factors to modulate the programming for immune competence in broilers.<br/

Perturbation of microbiota in one-day old broiler chickens with antibiotic for 24 hours negatively affects intestinal immune development

Background: Gut microbial colonization and development of immune competence are intertwined and are influenced by early-life nutritional, environmental, and management factors. Perturbation of the gut microbiome at young age affects the crosstalk between intestinal bacteria and host cells of the intestinal mucosa.Results: We investigated the effect of a perturbation of the normal early life microbial colonization of the jejunum in 1-day old chickens. Perturbation was induced by administering 0.8 mg amoxicillin per bird per day) via the drinking water for a period of 24 h. Effects of the perturbation were measured by 16S rRNA profiling of the microbiome and whole genome gene expression analysis. In parallel to what has been observed for other animal species, we hypothesized that such an intervention may have negative impact on immune development.Trends were observed in changes of the composition and diversity of the microbiome when comparing antibiotic treated birds with their controls. in the jejunum, the expression of numerous genes changed, which potentially leads to changes in biological activities of the small intestinal mucosa. Validation of the predicted functional changes was performed by staining immune cells in the small intestinal mucosa and a reduction in the number of macrophage-like (KUL01+) cells was observed due to a direct or indirect effect of the antibiotic treatment. We provide evidence that a short, early life antibiotic treatment affects both the intestinal microbiota (temporarily) and mucosal gene expression over a period of 2 weeks.Conclusion: These results underscore the importance of early life microbial colonization of the gut in relation to immune development and the necessity to explore the capabilities of a variety of early life dietary and/or environmental factors to modulate the programming for immune competence in broilers.<br/

Aliskiren accumulates in renin secretory granules and binds plasma prorenin

The vascular effects of aliskiren last longer than expected based on its half life, and this renin inhibitor has been reported to cause a greater renin rise than other renin-angiotensin system blockers. To investigate whether aliskiren accumulation in secretory granules contributes to these phenomena, renin-synthesizing mast cells were incubated with aliskiren, washed, and exposed to forskolin in medium without aliskiren (0.1 to 1000 nmol/L). (Pro)renin concentrations were measured by renin- and prorenin-specific immunoradiometric assays, and renin activity was measured by enzyme-kinetic assay. Without aliskiren, the culture medium predominantly contained prorenin, the cells exclusively stored renin, and forskolin doubled renin release. Aliskiren dose-dependently bound to (pro)renin in the medium and cell lysates and did not alter the effect of forskolin. The aliskiren concentrations required to bind prorenin were 1 to 2 orders of magnitude higher than those needed to bind renin. Blockade of cell lysate renin activity ranged from 27±15% to 79±5%, and these percentages were identical for the renin that was released by forskolin, indicating that they represented the same renin pool, ie, the renin storage granules. Comparison of renin and prorenin measurements in blood samples obtained from human volunteers treated with aliskiren, both before and after prorenin activation, revealed that ≤30% of prorenin was detected in renin-specific assays. In conclusion, aliskiren accumulates in renin granules, thus allowing long-lasting renin-angiotensin system blockade beyond the half-life of this drug. Aliskiren also binds to prorenin. This allows its detection as renin, and might explain, in part, the renin rise during renin inhibition

Cancer detection in mass spectrometry imaging data by dilated convolutional neural networks

Imaging mass spectrometry (IMS) is a novel molecular imaging technique to investigate how molecules are distributed between tumors and within tumor region in order to shed light into tumor biology or find potential biomarkers. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have proven to be very potent classifiers often outperforming other machine learning algorithms, especially in computational pathology. To overcome the challenge of complexity and high-dimensionality of the IMS data, the proposed CNNs are either very deep or use large kernels, which results in large amount of parameters and therefore a high computational complexity. An alternative is down-sampling the data, which inherently leads to a loss of information. In this paper, we propose using dilated CNNs as a possible solution to this challenge, since it allows for an increase of the receptive field size, neither by increasing the network parameters nor by decreasing the input signal resolution. Since the mass signature of cancer biomarkers are distributed over the whole mass spectrum, both locally- and globally-distributed patterns need to be captured to correctly classify the spectrum. By experiment, we show that employing dilated convolutions in the architecture of a CNN leads to a higher performance in tumor classification. Our proposed model outperforms the state-of-the-art for tumor classification in both clinical lung and bladder datasets by 1-3%

Decreased Time to Viral Suppression after Implementation of Targeted Testing and Immediate Initiation of Treatment of Acute Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection among Men Who Have Sex with Men in Amsterdam

Background: Men who have sex with men (MSM) with acute human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (AHI) are a key source of new infections. To curb transmission, we implemented a strategy for rapid AHI diagnosis and immediate initiation of combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) in Amsterdam MSM. We assessed its effectiveness in diagnosing AHI and decreasing the time to viral suppression. Methods: We included 63 278 HIV testing visits in 2008-2017, during which 1013 MSM were diagnosed. Standard of care (SOC) included HIV diagnosis confirmation in &lt; 1 week and cART initiation in &lt; 1 month. The AHI strategy comprised same-visit diagnosis confirmation and immediate cART. Time from diagnosis to viral suppression was assessed for 3 cART initiation periods: (1) 2008-2011: cART initiation if CD4 &lt; 500 cells/μL (SOC); (2) January 2012-July 2015: cART initiation if CD4 &lt; 500 cells/μL, or if AHI or early HIV infection (SOC); and (3a) August 2015-June 2017: universal cART initiation (SOC) or (3b) August 2015-June 2017 (the AHI strategy). Results: Before implementation of the AHI strategy, the proportion of AHI among HIV diagnoses was 0.6% (5/876); after implementation this was 11.0% (15/137). Median time (in days) to viral suppression during periods 1, 2, 3a, and 3b was 584 (interquartile range [IQR], 267-1065), 230 (IQR, 132-480), 95 (IQR, 63-136), and 55 (IQR, 31-72), respectively (P &lt;. 001). Conclusions: Implementing the AHI strategy was successful in diagnosing AHI and significantly decreasing the time between HIV diagnosis and viral suppression.</p