COVID-19 as a nonprofit workplace crisis: Seeking insights from the nonprofit workers’ perspective

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofit organizations face increased demands for services alongside decreased revenues and must make tough choices on how to weather these stressors. Alongside these organizational changes, COVID-19 impacts nonprofit workers and could be a career shock for these individuals, potentially altering how they think of their work and career intentions, even jeopardizing their commitment to the sector. Therefore, this paper outlines a research agenda to understand how the pandemic impacts nonprofit workers and their commitment to working in the sector. Several areas for future research are identified including human resource policy, leadership development, generational differences, gender effects, nonprofit graduate education, and mission-specific work effects

Flavonoid occurrence, regulation in plant tissues and dietary contribution to health

Interest in the flavonol content of food products continues to be fuelled by reports of wide ranging health benefits, many dependent on the ability of flavonols to act as powerful antioxidants (Rice-Evans et al, 1997). Recent work has identified tomato fruits as a rich source of flavonols (Hertog et al, 1992, Crozier et al., 1997). In this study the flavonol content of tomato fruits was investigated in relation to variety, size, season and country of origin. The flavonol content of ten commonly consumed tomato based food products was also assessed. Free and conjugated flavonols were identified and quantified using reversed phase HPLC with sensitive detection by UV and fluorescence detection. The total flavonol content of tomato varieties analysed in this study varied from 0.9-22.2 mug/g fresh weight. Smaller cherry tomato fruits grown in warm sunny climates such as Spain and Israel were found to contain far higher concentrations of flavonols than British fruits. The adoption of 'high flavonol' tomato varieties and production methods allowing greater sun exposure of developing tomato fruits may allow for an increase in the flavonol content of British produce. Tomato flavonols were able to survive industrial processing methods and could be detected in a wide range of tomato-based food products. Tomato juice and tomato puree were found to be particularly rich in flavonols, 14-16 mg/L and 70 mug/gfwt respectively. This study has enabled the identification of tomato fruits and processed products rich in flavonols. Identification of flavonol rich foods is clearly important with respect to their potential nutritional value. However, it is also necessary to determine whether these flavonols are absorbed by the human body during digestion. Following consumption of Spanish cherry tomatoes or tomato juice, conjugated quercetin was detected unchanged in plasma and urine. This suggests that tomato flavonols are absorbable and bioavailable. Flavonol synthesis in plants involves complex environmental regulation, the principal components of which include light, nutrition, disease and temperature. Previous studies indicated a link between plant nutrition and flavonoid accumulation but were unable to identify individual flavonoid compounds. In addition, although tomato was frequently used as a test system for the study of nutrient stress on flavonoid accumulation, the effects of nutrition on tomato fruit tissues were not assessed. The effect of reduced nitrogen and phosphorus nutrition on the flavonol content of plant tissues was initially tested on seedlings of Arabidopsis thaliana and tomato. Conjugated quercetin, kaempferol and isorhamnetin were detected in both Arabidopsis and tomato seedling tissues. Exposure to nitrogen or phosphate stress demonstrated a clear inverse relationship between nitrogen and phosphate nutrition and flavonol content. On the basis of this observation, a trial was established under commercial conditions to determine the effect of nutrient stress on the flavonol content of tomato leaf and fruit tissue. In line with previous work (Carpena et al., 1982; Bongue-Bartelsman & Phillips, 1995) reduced nitrogen availability caused an increase in the flavonol content in the leaves of tomato plants, reduced phosphorus nutrition did not elicit this response. Low nitrogen or phosphate availability caused an increase in the flavonol content of tomato fruit skins early in the ripening process. Any effect of nutrient stress on the flavonol content of tomato fruit tissues was lost as ripening progressed. This study provides clear evidence that the flavonol content of plant tissues is influences by their nutritional status. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)

Improving Reliability of Subject-Level Resting-State fMRI Parcellation with Shrinkage Estimators

A recent interest in resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) lies in subdividing the human brain into anatomically and functionally distinct regions of interest. For example, brain parcellation is often used for defining the network nodes in connectivity studies. While inference has traditionally been performed on group-level data, there is a growing interest in parcellating single subject data. However, this is difficult due to the low signal-to-noise ratio of rsfMRI data, combined with typically short scan lengths. A large number of brain parcellation approaches employ clustering, which begins with a measure of similarity or distance between voxels. The goal of this work is to improve the reproducibility of single-subject parcellation using shrinkage estimators of such measures, allowing the noisy subject-specific estimator to "borrow strength" in a principled manner from a larger population of subjects. We present several empirical Bayes shrinkage estimators and outline methods for shrinkage when multiple scans are not available for each subject. We perform shrinkage on raw intervoxel correlation estimates and use both raw and shrinkage estimates to produce parcellations by performing clustering on the voxels. Our proposed method is agnostic to the choice of clustering method and can be used as a pre-processing step for any clustering algorithm. Using two datasets---a simulated dataset where the true parcellation is known and is subject-specific and a test-retest dataset consisting of two 7-minute rsfMRI scans from 20 subjects---we show that parcellations produced from shrinkage correlation estimates have higher reliability and validity than those produced from raw estimates. Application to test-retest data shows that using shrinkage estimators increases the reproducibility of subject-specific parcellations of the motor cortex by up to 30%.Comment: body 21 pages, 11 figure

Anxiety symptoms prior to a prostate cancer diagnosis: Associations with knowledge and openness to treatment

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135536/1/bjhp12222.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/135536/2/bjhp12222_am.pd

Structural insights into the calcium-dependent interaction between calbindin-D28K and caspase-3

AbstractThe regulation of apoptosis involves a complicated cascade requiring numerous protein interactions including the pro-apoptotic executioner protein caspase-3 and the anti-apoptotic calcium-binding protein calbindin-D28K. Using isothermal titration calorimetry, we show that calbindin-D28K binds caspase-3 in a Ca2+-dependent fashion. Molecular docking and conformational sampling studies of the Ca2+-loaded capase-3/calbindin-D28K interaction were performed in order to isolate potentially crucial intermolecular contacts. Residues in the active site loops of caspase-3 and EF-hands 1 and 2 of calbindin-D28K were shown to be critical to the interaction. Based on these studies, a model is proposed to help understand how calbindin-D28K may deactivate caspase-3 upon binding.Structured summary of protein interactionsCalbindin-D28K and Caspase-3 bind by isothermal titration calorimetry (View interaction

Anticholinergic burden for prediction of cognitive decline or neuropsychiatric symptoms in older adults with mild cognitive impairment or dementia

Acknowledgements We would like to thank Dr Kate Wang, Dr Andrew Stafford, Ms Catherine Hofstetter, and Dr Joanna Damen for their helpful peer review comments on this protocol.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Characterization of herpes simplex virus clinical isolate Y3369 as a glycoprotein G variant and its bearing on virus typing

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Herpes simplex viruses exist as two major serotypes, type 1 (HSV-1) and type 2 (HSV-2). Determination of type, either HSV-1 or HSV-2, is important in accurate diagnosis and clinical control of transmission. Several tests are available for typing HSV, including a monoclonal antibody specific for glycoprotein G and several PCR assays.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>A clinical isolate was identified as herpes simplex virus, but tested negative for both HSV-1 and HSV-2 antigens using type-specific monoclonal antibody assays. The isolate was determined to be HSV-1 by PCR analysis. A mutation which likely caused the monoclonal antibody non-reactivity was found in glycoprotein G. Phylogenetic analysis revealed two groups of HSV, one with the mutation and one without. Three population studies examining mutations in HSV-1 glycoprotein G were analyzed by chi-squared test. To this point, the epitope which the monoclonal antibody recognizes was only found in HSV-1 isolates from human European populations (<it>p </it>< 0.0001).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These findings suggest that the PCR-based methods for HSV typing may be more useful than the standard monoclonal antibody test in areas of the world where the variant in glycoprotein G is more prevalent.</p

Is the pharmacy profession innovative enough?: meeting the needs of Australian residents with chronic conditions and their carers using the nominal group technique

Background Community pharmacies are ideally located as a source of support for people with chronic conditions. Yet, we have limited insight into what innovative pharmacy services would support this consumer group to manage their condition/s. The aim of this study was to identify what innovations people with chronic conditions and their carers want from their ideal community pharmacy, and compare with what pharmacists and pharmacy support staff think consumers want. Methods We elicited ideas using the nominal group technique. Participants included people with chronic conditions, unpaid carers, pharmacists and pharmacy support staff, in four regions of Australia. Themes were identified via thematic analysis using the constant comparison method. Results Fifteen consumer/carer, four pharmacist and two pharmacy support staff groups were conducted. Two overarching themes were identified: extended scope of practice for the pharmacist and new or improved pharmacy services. The most innovative role for Australian pharmacists was medication continuance, within a limited time-frame. Consumers and carers wanted improved access to pharmacists, but this did not necessarily align with a faster or automated dispensing service. Other ideas included streamlined access to prescriptions via medication reminders, electronic prescriptions and a chronic illness card. Conclusions This study provides further support for extending the pharmacist’s role in medication continuance, particularly as it represents the consumer’s voice. How this is done, or the methods used, needs to optimise patient safety. A range of innovative strategies were proposed and Australian community pharmacies should advocate for and implement innovative approaches to improve access and ensure continuity of care