Enteric pathogen testing importance for children with acute gastroenteritis: A modified Delphi study

The application of clinical diagnostics for gastroenteritis in children has implications for a broad collection of stakeholders, impacting clinical care, communicable disease control, and laboratory utilization. To support diagnostic stewardship as gastroenteritis testing options continue to advance, it is critical to understand which enteropathogens constitute priorities for testing across stakeholder groups. Using a modified Delphi technique, we elicited opinions of subject matter experts to determine clinical and public health testing priorities. There was a high level of overall agreement (≥80%) among stakeholders (final roun

Clinical surveillance of thrombotic microangiopathies in Scotland, 2003-2005

The prevalence, incidence and outcomes of haemolytic uraemic syndrome (HUS) and thrombotic thrombocytopaenic purpura (TTP) are not well established in adults or children from prospective studies. We sought to identify both outcomes and current management strategies using prospective, national surveillance of HUS and TTP, from 2003 to 2005 inclusive. We also investigated the links between these disorders and factors implicated in the aetiology of HUS and TTP including infections, chemotherapy, and immunosuppression. Most cases of HUS were caused by verocytotoxin-producing Escherichia coli (VTEC), of which serotype O157 predominated, although other serotypes were identified. The list of predisposing factors for TTP was more varied although use of immunosuppressive agents and severe sepsis, were the most frequent precipitants. The study demonstrates that while differentiating between HUS and TTP is sometimes difficult, in most cases the two syndromes have quite different predisposing factors and clinical parameters, enabling clinical and epidemiological profiling for these disorders

Dis-Locations: Mapping the Banlieue

Representations of the French suburbs in contemporary French film have, since the late 1980s, identified an apparent generic specificity that is linked closely to this location. I will explore the narrative tropes of alienation and exclusion—as dislocations—which have dominated the filmic representation of banlieue spaces and their populations before examining examples in which the realignment of sociocultural topographies and film space foregrounds the question of whether representations of the banlieue remain inherently and generically connected to realist discourses dominated by spatial representation of exclusions, or whether the over-determined spaces of the banlieue can act as décor, as setting and wider spatial frame. I will then focus on the presence and function of banlieue spaces and narratives in two recent French films—Girlhood/Bande de filles (Céline Sciamma 2014) and Palme d’or winner Dheepan (Jacques Audiard 2015)—suggesting that the banlieue continues to provide a complex site that both asserts socio-economic specificities and serves as a stylized setting through which to foreground other negotiations of territory and agency

Type I interferon rapidly restricts infectious hepatitis C virus particle genesis

Interferon-alpha (IFNα) has been used to treat chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection for over 20 years with varying efficacy, depending on the infecting viral genotype. The mechanism of action of IFNα is not fully understood, but is thought to target multiple stages of the HCV lifecycle, inhibiting viral transcription and translation leading to a degradation of viral RNA and protein expression in the infected cell. IFNα induces the expression of an array of interferon-stimulated genes within minutes of receptor engagement; however, the impact of these early responses on the viral lifecycle are unknown. We demonstrate that IFNα inhibits the genesis of infectious extracellular HCV particles within 2 hours of treating infected cells, with minimal effect on the intracellular viral burden. Importantly, this short duration of IFNα treatment of infected cells significantly reduced cell-free and cell-to-cell dissemination. The secreted viral particles showed no apparent change in protein content or density, demonstrating that IFNα inhibits particle infectivity but not secretion rates. To investigate whether particles released from IFNα-treated cells have a reduced capacity to establish infection we used HCV lentiviral pseudotypes (HCVpp) and demonstrated a defect in cell entry. Using a panel of monoclonal antibodies targeting the E2 glycoprotein, we demonstrate that IFNα alters glycoprotein conformation and receptor utilization. Conclusion: These observations show a previously unreported and rapid effect of IFNα on HCV particle infectivity that inhibits de novo infection events. Evasion of this response may be a contributing factor in whether a patient achieves early or rapid virological response, a key indicator of progression to sustained virological response or clearance of viral infection. (Hepatology 2014;60:1890–1900

Why the visual recognition system might encode the effects of illumination

A key problem in recognition is that the image of an object depends on the lighting conditions. We investigated whether recognition is sensitive to illumination using 3-D objects that were lit from either the left or right, varying both the shading and the cast shadows. In experiments 1 and 2 participants judged whether two sequentially presented objects were the same regardless of illumination. Experiment 1 used six objects that were easily discriminated and that were rendered with cast shadows. While no cost was found in sensitivity, there was a response time cost over a change in lighting direction. Experiment 2 included six additional objects that were similar to the original six objects making recognition more difficult. The objects were rendered with cast shadows, no shadows, and as a control, white shadows. With normal shadows a change in lighting direction produced costs in both sensitivity and response times. With white shadows there was a much larger cost in sensitivity and a comparable cost in response times. Without cast shadows there was no cost in either measure, but the overall performance was poorer. Experiment 3 used a naming task in which names were assigned to six objects rendered with cast shadows. Participants practised identifying the objects in two viewpoints lit from a single lighting direction. Viewpoint and illumination invariance were then tested over new viewpoints and illuminations. Costs in both sensitivity and response time were found for naming the familiar objects in unfamiliar lighting directions regardless of whether the viewpoint was familiar or unfamiliar. Together these results suggest that illumination effects such as shadow edges: (1) affect visual memory; (2) serve the function of making unambigous the three-dimensional shape

Social welfare [law] advice provision during the pandemic in England and Wales: a conceptual framework

An ambitious reform programme in the UK to digitalize the justice system has been underway since 2016. The report on Digitisation and accessing justice in the community (based on the Digitalisation Welfare Advice Survey), on how prepared advice providers were for digital assistance for welfare benefits, found that organisations were unable to meet the demand for services across all levels of social welfare law, and that there is a high demand for digital assistance. This was just before the pandemic. This paper explores the technical capability of the advice sector to provide remote social welfare delivery during the pandemic. It is based on a Pandemic Welfare Advice survey to help understand how advice providers have been working during the first seven months of the pandemic in 2020 and how the migration to remote advice delivery has changed their services and impacted their clients. A conceptual framework of needs is offered as a lens though which to think about the new sets of demands on advisers and clients

Cochlear SGN neurons elevate pain thresholds in response to music.

The C-tactile (CLTM) peripheral nervous system is involved in social bonding in primates and humans through its capacity to trigger the brain’s endorphin system. Since the mammalian cochlea has an unusually high density of similar neurons (type-II spiral ganglion neurons, SGNs), we hypothesise that their function may have been exploited for social bonding by co-opting head movements in response to music and other rhythmic movements of the head in social contexts. Music provides one of many cultural behavioural mechanisms for ‘virtual grooming’ in that it is used to trigger the endorphin system with many people simultaneously so as to bond both dyadic relationships and large groups. Changes in pain threshold across an activity are a convenient proxy assay for endorphin uptake in the brain, and we use this, in two experiments, to show that pain thresholds are higher when nodding the head than when sitting still