Which Australian secondary school students are at risk of illicit drug use?

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: [Freeman, T., White, V., & Roche, A.M. (2011) Which Australian secondary school students are at risk of illicit drug use? : A nationwide survey. Drug and Alcohol Review, 30, 589-596], which has been published in final form at [DOI: 10.1111/j.1465-3362.2010.00246.x]. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Introduction and aims: Over recent years, numerous school-based preventive strategies have been explored as possible options to address illicit drug use by young people. However, there is scope to extend current knowledge of which school students are most at risk of illicit drug-related harm. To investigate potential differential risk, the prevalence and patterns of illicit drug use of Australian secondary school students were examined according to demographic, school, economic, and licit drug use factors. Design and methods: Analyses were conducted on the 2005 Australian Secondary Students’ Alcohol and Drug (ASSAD) survey. A total of 21,805 secondary school students aged 12-17 from 376 schools completed the pencil and paper classroom questionnaire. Results: The greatest risk factors for students using illicit drugs were tobacco and alcohol use. Students with self-rated below average academic achievement, with more than $20 a week of disposable income, and who were Indigenous were more likely to report illicit drug use. Discussion and conclusions: While causal pathways could not be examined in the current data, and these relationships are likely to be complex and multi-directional, the findings indicate potentially at-risk populations who warrant extra support to address illicit drug-related harm

Effects of Emotional Support Animals on Adults with Depression and/or Anxiety

Through understanding the role of emotional support animals and the effect their utilization has on mental health outcomes, a review of the literature was used to explore the following evidence-based PICOT question: In adults diagnosed with anxiety and depression, what effects do emotional support animals have on symptoms compared to individuals without emotional support animals? Although mental health disorders and their clinical manifestations are largely controlled by medication, non-pharmacological therapies are often used in cohesion. Emotional support animals offer a more holistic approach to symptom management and provide companionship to those suffering from symptoms of anxiety and depression. We performed an in-depth search across research articles retrieved from CINAHL and EBSCO using the terms and phrases emotional support animal, mental health, anxiety, depression and symptoms. As the use of current evidence supports best practice, our search criteria was limited to research articles published between 2018 and 2023. Articles discussing other mental health disorders, those aged under 18, as well as service animals rather than emotional support animals were excluded from our search. Ultimately, twelve articles were selected to be reviewed. The literature suggests that utilization of an emotional support animal improves symptoms seen in anxiety and depression, as well as supports the patient through adjunct or combined therapies. In addition, our research suggests there is an underutilization of emotional support animals in therapy and may provide benefits for other mental health disorders

Adolescents’ use of purpose built shade in secondary schools: cluster randomised controlled trial

Objective To examine whether students use or avoid newly shaded areas created by shade sails installed at schools

Let the sun shine in: effects of ultraviolet radiation on invasive pneumococcal disease risk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

BACKGROUND: Streptococcus pneumoniae is a common cause of community acquired pneumonia and bacteremia. Excess wintertime mortality related to pneumonia has been noted for over a century, but the seasonality of invasive pneumococcal disease (IPD) has been described relatively recently and is poorly understood. Improved understanding of environmental influence on disease seasonality has taken on new urgency due to global climate change. METHODS: We evaluated 602 cases of IPD reported in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, from 2002 to 2007. Poisson regression models incorporating seasonal smoothers were used to identify associations between weekly weather patterns and case counts. Associations between acute (dayto- day) environmental fluctuations and IPD occurrence were evaluated using a case-crossover approach. Effect modification across age and sex strata was explored, and meta-regression models were created using stratum-specific estimates for effect. RESULTS: IPD incidence was greatest in the wintertime, and spectral decomposition revealed a peak at 51.0 weeks, consistent with annual periodicity. After adjustment for seasonality, yearly increases in reporting, and temperature, weekly incidence was found to be associated with clear-sky UV index (IRR per unit increase in index: 0.70 [95% CI 0.54-0.91]). The effect of UV index was highest among young strata and decreased with age. At shorter time scales, only an association with increases in ambient sulphur oxides was linked to disease risk (OR for highest tertile of exposure 0.75, 95% CI 0.60 to 0.93). CONCLUSION: We confirmed the wintertime predominance of IPD in a major urban center. The major predictor of IPD in Philadelphia is extended periods of low UV radiation, which may explain observed wintertime seasonality. The mechanism of action of diminished light exposure on disease occurrence may be due to direct effects on pathogen survival or host immune function via altered 1,25-(OH)2-vitamin-D metabolism. These findings may suggest less diminution in future IPD risk with climate change than would be expected if wintertime seasonality was driven by temperature

Fresh Activity in Old Systems: Radio AGN in Fossil Groups of Galaxies

We present the first systematic 1.4 GHz Very Large Array radio continuum survey of fossil galaxy group candidates. These are virialized systems believed to have assembled over a gigayear in the past through the merging of galaxy group members into a single, isolated, massive elliptical galaxy and featuring an extended hot X-ray halo. We use new photometric and spectroscopic data from SDSS Data Release 7 to determine that three of the candidates are clearly not fossil groups. Of the remaining 30 candidates, 67% contain a radio-loud (L_1.4GHz > 10^23 W Hz^-1) active galactic nucleus (AGN) at the center of their dominant elliptical galaxy. We find a weak correlation between the radio luminosity of the AGN and the X-ray luminosity of the halo suggesting that the AGN contributes to energy deposition into the intragroup medium. We only find a correlation between the radio and optical luminosity of the central elliptical galaxy when we include X-ray selected, elliptically dominated non-fossil groups, indicating a weak relationship between AGN strength and the mass assembly history of the groups. The dominant elliptical galaxy of fossil groups is on average roughly an order of magnitude more luminous than normal group elliptical galaxies in optical, X-ray, and radio luminosities and our findings are consistent with previous results that the radio-loud fraction in elliptical galaxies is linked to the stellar mass of a population. The current level of activity in fossil groups suggests that AGN fueling continues long after the last major merger. We discuss several possibilities for fueling the AGN at the present epoch.Comment: Accepted for publication in A

Examination of Fluconazole-Induced Alopecia in an Animal Model and Human Cohort.

Fluconazole-induced alopecia is a significant problem for patients receiving long-term therapy. We evaluated the hair cycle changes of fluconazole in a rat model and investigated potential molecular mechanisms. Plasma and tissue levels of retinoic acid were not found to be causal. Human patients with alopecia attributed to fluconazole also underwent detailed assessment and in both our murine model and human cohort fluconazole induced telogen effluvium. Future work further examining the mechanism of fluconazole-induced alopecia should be undertaken

What is the role of tobacco control advertising intensity and duration in reducing adolescent smoking prevalence? Findings from 16 years of tobacco control mass media advertising in Australia

ABSTRACTObjective: To examine how the intensity and duration of tobacco control advertising relate to adolescent smoking prevalence.Methods: Australian students (aged 12&ndash;17 years) participating in a national survey conducted triennially between 1993 and 2008 (sample size range 12 314&ndash;16 611). The outcome measure was students&rsquo; smoking in the previous 4 weeks collected through anonymous, self-completed surveys. For each student, monthly targeted rating points (TRPs, a measure of television advertising exposure) for tobacco control advertising was calculated for the 3 and 12 months prior to surveying. For each time period, cumulative TRPs exposure and exposure to three intensity levels (&ge;100 TRPs/month; &ge;400 TRPs/month; &ge;800 TRPs/month) over increasing durations (eg, 1 month, 2 months, etc) were calculated. Logistic regression examined associations between TRPs and adolescent smoking after controlling for demographic and policy variables.Results: Past 3-month cumulative TRPs were found to have an inverse relationship with smoking prevalence. Low TRPs exposure in the past 12 months was positively associated with adolescent smoking prevalence. However, smoking prevalence reduced with cumulative exposure levels above 5800 cumulative TRPs. Additionally, exposure to &ge;400 TRPs/month and &ge;800 TRPs/month were associated with reduced likelihood of smoking, although the duration needed for this effect differed for the two intensity levels. When intensity was &ge;400 TRPs/month, the odds of smoking only reduced with continuous exposure. When intensity was &ge;800 TRPs/month, exposure at levels less than monthly was associated with reductions in smoking prevalence.Conclusions: Both antismoking advertising intensity and duration are important for ensuring reductions in adolescent smoking prevalence.<br /

The Second-Generation Guide Star Catalog: Description and Properties

The GSC-II is an all-sky database of objects derived from the uncompressed DSS that the STScI has created from the Palomar and UK Schmidt survey plates and made available to the community. Like its predecessor (GSC-I), the GSC-II was primarily created to provide guide star information and observation planning support for HST. This version, however, is already employed at some of the ground-based new-technology telescopes such as GEMINI, VLT, and TNG, and will also be used to provide support for the JWST and Gaia space missions as well as LAMOST, one of the major ongoing scientific projects in China. Two catalogs have already been extracted from the GSC-II database and released to the astronomical community. A magnitude-limited (R=18.0) version, GSC2.2, was distributed soon after its production in 2001, while the GSC2.3 release has been available for general access since 2007. The GSC2.3 catalog described in this paper contains astrometry, photometry, and classification for 945,592,683 objects down to the magnitude limit of the plates. Positions are tied to the ICRS; for stellar sources, the all-sky average absolute error per coordinate ranges from 0.2" to 0.28" depending on magnitude. When dealing with extended objects, astrometric errors are 20% worse in the case of galaxies and approximately a factor of 2 worse for blended images. Stellar photometry is determined to 0.13-0.22 mag as a function of magnitude and photographic passbands (B,R,I). Outside of the galactic plane, stellar classification is reliable to at least 90% confidence for magnitudes brighter than R=19.5, and the catalog is complete to R=20.Comment: 52 pages, 33 figures, to be published in AJ August 200

The Kepler Smear Campaign: Light curves for 102 Very Bright Stars

We present the first data release of the Kepler Smear Campaign, using collateral 'smear' data obtained in the Kepler four-year mission to reconstruct light curves of 102 stars too bright to have been otherwise targeted. We describe the pipeline developed to extract and calibrate these light curves, and show that we attain photometric precision comparable to stars analyzed by the standard pipeline in the nominal Kepler mission. In this paper, aside from publishing the light curves of these stars, we focus on 66 red giants for which we detect solar-like oscillations, characterizing 33 of these in detail with spectroscopic chemical abundances and asteroseismic masses as benchmark stars. We also classify the whole sample, finding nearly all to be variable, with classical pulsations and binary effects. All source code, light curves, TRES spectra, and asteroseismic and stellar parameters are publicly available as a Kepler legacy sample.Comment: 35 pages, accepted ApJ

The E6E7 oncoproteins of cutaneous human papillomavirus type 38 interfere with the interferon pathway

Non-melanoma skin cancer is the most frequent malignancy in Caucasian populations. Evidence suggests the involvement of cutaneous Human Papillomavirus (HPV) of the genus beta () in this disease. The ability of E6 and E7 of mucosal HPV to promote cellular transformation and inhibit immune response-related pathways plays a key role in cervical carcinogenesis. HPV-38 E6 and E7 display transforming activities in in vitro and in vivo models, but their impact on immune surveillance is unknown. Here we show that HPV-38 E6 and E7 affect the IFN-induced up-regulation of MHC class I. Expression of the two viral proteins in HaCaT keratinocytes led to a decrease of MHC I levels. This down-regulation is associated with a reduction of expression of MHC I heavy chain, of the peptide chaperone TAP and of the STAT-1 downstream effector IRF-1. The down-regulation of these proteins is ultimately due to the inhibition of STAT-1 expression. Analysis of cells expressing either HPV-38 E6 or E7 suggests that these effects are primarily the result of E6 expression, although a contribution by E7 cannot be excluded. We conclude that HPV-38 encodes oncoproteins that potentially contribute to the evasion of host immune surveillance