Domestic violence and its prevalence in small island developing states - South Pacific region

This paper reviews the collective studies of domestic violence in Small Island Developing States (SIDS), in particular, Fiji, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands. Domestic violence is one form of gender inequality. Studies have shown that domestic violence is the most severe violation of human rights causing social and economic repercussions to countries. SIDS are no exception, with increase rate of domestic violence, the countries suffer through loss of productive labour and increase costs to the government, victims and society. By addressing domestic violence through education and workshops at the grass root level monetary funds can be diverted into other sectors within the economy, thus lifting a country’s status quo. More importantly, women and girls will have equal outcomes as men and boys; eradicating the vicious cycle of domestic violence, thus enabling a country to reach its full economic potential

Interviewing in virtual environments: Towards understanding the impact of rapport-building behaviours and retrieval context on eyewitness memory.

Given the complexities of episodic memory and necessarily social nature of in-person face-to-face interviews, theoretical and evidence-based techniques for collecting episodic information from witnesses, victims, and survivors champion rapport-building. Rapport is believed to reduce some of the social demands of recalling an experienced event in an interview context, potentially increasing cognitive capacity for remembering. Cognitive and social benefits have also emerged in remote interview contexts with reduced anxiety and social pressure contributing to improved performance. Here, we investigated episodic memory in mock-eyewitness interviews conducted in virtual environments (VE) and in-person face-to-face (FtF), where rapport-building behaviours were either present or absent. Main effects revealed when rapport was present and where interviews were conducted in a VE participants recalled more correct event information, made fewer errors and were more accurate. Moreover, participants in the VE plus rapport-building present condition outperformed participants in all other conditions. Feedback indicated both rapport and environment were important for reducing the social demands of a recall interview, towards supporting effortful remembering. Our results add to the emerging literature on the utility of virtual environments as interview spaces and lend further support to the importance of prosocial behaviours in applied contexts. [Abstract copyright: © 2022. The Author(s).

Hfq binding changes the structure of Escherichia coli small noncoding RNAs OxyS and RprA, which are involved in the riboregulation of rpoS

OxyS and RprA are two small noncoding RNAs (sRNAs) that modulate the expression of rpoS, encoding an alternative sigma factor that activates transcription of multiple Escherichia coli stress-response genes. While RprA activates rpoS for translation, OxyS down-regulates the transcript. Crucially, the RNA binding protein Hfq is required for both sRNAs to function, although the specific role played by Hfq remains unclear. We have investigated RprA and OxyS interactions with Hfq using biochemical and biophysical approaches. In particular, we have obtained the molecular envelopes of the Hfq–sRNA complexes using small-angle scattering methods, which reveal key molecular details. These data indicate that Hfq does not substantially change shape upon complex formation, whereas the sRNAs do. We link the impact of Hfq binding, and the sRNA structural changes induced, to transcript stability with respect to RNase E degradation. In light of these findings, we discuss the role of Hfq in the opposing regulatory functions played by RprA and OxyS in rpoS regulation

Challenges and innovations in the economic evaluation of the risks of climate change

A large discrepancy exists between the dire impacts that most natural scientists project we could face from climate change and the modest estimates of damages calculated by mainstream economists. Economic assessments of climate change risks are intended to be comprehensive, covering the full range of physical impacts and their associated market and non-market costs, considering the greater vulnerability of poor people and the challenges of adaptation. Available estimates still fall significantly short of this goal, but alternative approaches that have been proposed attempt to address these gaps. This review seeks to provide a common basis for natural scientists, social scientists, and modellers to understand the research challenges involved in evaluating the economic risks of climate change. Focusing on the estimation processes embedded in economic integrated assessment models and the concerns raised in the literature, we summarise the frontiers of research relevant to improving quantitative damage estimates, representing the full complexity of the associated systems, and evaluating the impact of the various economic assumptions used to manage this complexity

Imaging the Developing Heart: Synchronized Timelapse Microscopy During Developmental Changes

How do you use imaging to analyse the development of the heart, which not only changes shape but also undergoes constant, high-speed, quasi-periodic changes? We have integrated ideas from prospective and retrospective optical gating to capture long-term, phase-locked developmental time-lapse videos. In this paper we demonstrate the success of this approach over a key developmental time period: heart looping, where large changes in heart shape prevent previous prospective gating approaches from capturing phase-locked videos. We use the comparison with other approaches to in vivo heart imaging to highlight the importance of collecting the most appropriate data for the biological question.Comment: Carl J. Nelson and Charlotte Buckley and John J. Mullins and Martin A. Denvir and Jonathan Taylor, "Imaging the Developing Heart: Synchronized Timelapse Microscopy During Developmental Changes", Proc. SPIE (10499), 10499-41 (2018). Copyright 2018 Society of Photo Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE

Live imaging of the immune response to heart injury in larval zebrafish reveals a multi-stage model of neutrophil and macrophage migration

Neutrophils and macrophages are crucial effectors and modulators of repair and regeneration following myocardial infarction, but they cannot be easily observed in vivo in mammalian models. Hence many studies have utilized larval zebrafish injury models to examine neutrophils and macrophages in their tissue of interest. However, to date the migratory patterns and ontogeny of these recruited cells is unknown. In this study, we address this need by comparing our larval zebrafish model of cardiac injury to the archetypal tail fin injury model. Our in vivo imaging allowed comprehensive mapping of neutrophil and macrophage migration from primary hematopoietic sites, to the wound. Early following injury there is an acute phase of neutrophil recruitment that is followed by sustained macrophage recruitment. Both cell types are initially recruited locally and subsequently from distal sites, primarily the caudal hematopoietic tissue (CHT). Once liberated from the CHT, some neutrophils and macrophages enter circulation, but most use abluminal vascular endothelium to crawl through the larva. In both injury models the innate immune response resolves by reverse migration, with very little apoptosis or efferocytosis of neutrophils. Furthermore, our in vivo imaging led to the finding of a novel wound responsive mpeg1+ neutrophil subset, highlighting previously unrecognized heterogeneity in neutrophils. Our study provides a detailed analysis of the modes of immune cell migration in larval zebrafish, paving the way for future studies examining tissue injury and inflammation

Clinical, biochemical, and genetic spectrum of seven patients with NFU1 deficiency

Disorders of the mitochondrial energy metabolism are clinically and genetically heterogeneous. An increasingly recognized subgroup is caused by defective mitochondrial iron-sulfur (Fe-S) cluster biosynthesis, with defects in 13 genes being linked to human disease to date. Mutations in three of them, NFU1, BOLA3, and IBA57, affect the assembly of mitochondrial [4Fe-4S] proteins leading to an impairment of diverse mitochondrial metabolic pathways and ATP production. Patients with defects in these three genes present with lactic acidosis, hyperglycinemia, and reduced activities of respiratory chain complexes I and II, the four lipoic acid-dependent 2-oxoacid dehydrogenases and the glycine cleavage system (GCS). To date, five different NFU1 pathogenic variants have been reported in 15 patients from 12 families. We report on seven new patients from five families carrying compound heterozygous or homozygous pathogenic NFU1 mutations identified by candidate gene screening and exome sequencing. Six out of eight different disease alleles were novel and functional studies were performed to support the pathogenicity of five of them. Characteristic clinical features included fatal infantile encephalopathy and pulmonary hypertension leading to death within the first 6 months of life in six out of seven patients. Laboratory investigations revealed combined defects of pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (five out of five) and respiratory chain complexes I and II+III (four out of five) in skeletal muscle and/or cultured skin fibroblasts as well as increased lactate (five out of six) and glycine concentration (seven out of seven). Our study contributes to a better definition of the phenotypic spectrum associated with NFU1 mutations and to the diagnostic workup of future patients

Evaluation of the Performance of a Point-of-Care Test for Chlamydia and Gonorrhea

Importance: Rates of chlamydial and gonococcal infection continue to increase in the United States, as do the associated costs of untreated infections. Improved diagnostic technologies that support testing and treating in 1 clinical visit are critical to advancing efforts to control the rates of chlamydial and gonococcal infection. Objective: To evaluate the clinical performance of a point-of-care (POC) molecular diagnostic assay for the detection of chlamydia and gonorrhea. Design, setting, and participants: A noninterventional, cross-sectional clinical study was conducted from September 18, 2018, through March 13, 2019, at sexually transmitted infection (STI), HIV, family planning, and obstetrics and gynecology clinics where STI screening is routine, using a convenience sample and comparing commercially available assays with a new 30-minute POC assay. Patients included were those eligible for STI screening or diagnostic testing who had not taken antibiotics effective against chlamydia or gonorrhea within the previous 28 days. Four vaginal swab samples were collected from women and a first-catch urine sample was obtained from men. Main outcomes and measures: A composite infection status was used to classify participants as infected if 2 or more comparator results were positive, as not infected if 2 or more comparator samples were negative, and as unevaluable if 1 result was invalid and the other 2 results did not agree with each other. Results: Swab samples from 1523 women (median age, 27 years [interquartile range, 17-37 years]), 817 (53.6%) of whom presented with symptoms, and 922 men (median age, 29 years [interquartile range, 17-41 years]), 308 (33.4%) of whom were symptomatic, were tested. For chlamydia, sensitivity of the new POC assay was 96.1% (95% CI, 91.2%-98.3%) for women and 92.5% (95% CI, 86.4%-96.0%) for men. For gonorrhea, sensitivity estimates were 100.0% (95% CI, 92.1%-100.0%) for women and 97.3% (95% CI, 90.7%-99.3%) for men. For chlamydia, specificity of the new POC assay was 99.1% (95% CI, 98.4%-99.5%) for women and 99.3% (95% CI, 98.4%-99.7%) for men. For gonorrhea, specificity estimates were 99.9% (95% CI, 99.5%-100%) for women and 100% (95% CI, 95.5%-100%) for men. Non-laboratory-trained personnel performed 94.8% of all tests (2318 of 2445) during the study. Conclusions and relevance: This study suggests that self-obtained vaginal swab samples were associated with performance equivalent to laboratory-based molecular diagnostics, which can support use of this POC assay in many settings. The availability of an easy-to-use, rapid (30-minute) molecular test for accurate detection of chlamydia and gonorrhea has the power to facilitate testing and treatment in a single patient visit for these STIs

Acute phenylalanine/tyrosine depletion of phasic dopamine in the rat brain

Dopamine plays a critical role in striatal and cortical function, and depletion of the dopamine precursors phenylalanine and tyrosine is used in humans to temporarily reduce dopamine and probe the role of dopamine in behavior. This method has been shown to alter addiction-related behaviors and cognitive functioning presumably by reducing dopamine transmission, but it is unclear what specific aspects of dopamine transmission are altered

Representing the Windrush generation: metaphor in discourses then and now

This paper examines the ways in which the group of people now known as the Windrush generation, who moved to the UK in the period 1948–1971, have been represented in public discourse. This group has been adversely affected by the current ‘hostile environment’ policy in the UK regarding immigration. As I show, in the ensuing and highly critical debate, the government repeatedly positioned them as ‘good’ migrants and placed them in a binary opposition with ‘undesirable’ migrants, who they cite as the intended target of their policy. Using diachronic corpora of parliamentary debates and national media, I compare this contemporary rhetoric with (a) Windrush representations in the 1940s and 1950s, and (b) contemporary representation of those the government constructs as unwanted migrants. Taking metaphor as a key for the comparison I show that there is very little continuity or overlap in how the Windrush migrants were discussed at the time of their arrival and in the current period. Instead, there is a much greater proximity in the past representations of the Windrush migrants and the current representations of ‘undesirable’ migrants. This mismatch in actual and perceived representation at the time of arrival indicates how nostalgia functions in migration discourses, even facilitating anti-immigration arguments