Wilde House Paper Brand Update

For this project, I will be working with the team at Wilde House Paper to expand current brand assets and create an updated guide and collection of brand collateral. The goal of my project is to help the team at Wilde House Paper have a straightforward structure for their content and have these updated and organized design pieces at their fingertips. I am creating a comprehensive brand guide, organizing and updating a drive of assets, and expanding our collection of social media and email templates as my deliverables

HIV Infection and older adults: a retrospective single-site cohort study from Johannesburg South Africa

A research report submitted to the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in fulfilment of the degree of Master of Medicine 2017.Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) treatment in South Africa has had an inconsistent and controversial history. Presently South Africa is home to the largest number of HIV positive people and has the biggest antiretroviral program in the world. [No abstract provided. Information taken from Literature Review]LG201

Does national policy in England help deliver better and more consistent care for those at the end of life?

Objectives: To explore the extent to which national policy in end of life care in England influences and guides local practice, to ensure that care for patients over the age 75 years is of a consistently good quality. Method: This paper reports on phase one of a larger study and focuses its discussion on the high level (macro) determinants emerging from the analysis. Fifteen in-depth interviews were conducted with professionals involved in the development of English policy in end of life care. Results: Factors influencing the quality of end of life care were stratified into three system levels: meso, macro and micro. English national policy was reported to be an important macro-level determinant of effective outcomes and examples were provided to demonstrate how policy was influencing practice. Yet the complexity of the area and the range of interacting contributory factors mean the value of policy alone is hard to assess. At the macro-level concern was voiced around: whether policy was effective in tackling rising inequity; lack of mandatory leverage to exert change relating to end of life outcomes; the impact of ongoing infrastructural change on statutory services; workforce pressures; over-reliance on acute services; and continued abdication of responsibility for end of life care to medical professionals supported by the continued dominance of the medical model of care. Conclusions: The links between the existence of policy at the macro-level of the system, and the effective enactment of good practice remain unclear although strategies are suggested to help achieve greater national consistency in end of life care outcomes. Policymakers must pay attention to the following: controlling the rise in localism and its contribution to regional inequalities; the impact of continuous infrastructural change together with increasing workforce pressures; encouraging broader professional and public responsibility for recognition; and care of those at the end of life

A review of the cognitive effects observed in humans following acute supplementation with flavonoids, and their associated mechanisms of action

Flavonoids are polyphenolic compounds found in varying concentrations in many plant-based foods. Recent studies suggest that flavonoids can be beneficial to both cognitive and physiological health. Long term flavonoid supplementation over a period of weeks or months has been extensively investigated and reviewed, particularly with respect to cognitive ageing and neurodegenerative disease. Significantly less focus has been directed towards the short term effects of single doses of flavonoids on cognition. Here, we review 21 such studies with particular emphasis on the subclass and dose of flavonoids administered, the cognitive domains affected by flavonoid supplementation, and the effect size of the response. The emerging evidence suggests that flavonoids may be beneficial to attention, working memory, and psychomotor processing speed in a general population. Episodic memory effects are less well defined and may be restricted to child or older adult populations. The evidence also points towards a dose-dependent effect of flavonoids, but the physiological mechanisms of action remain unclear. Overall, there is encouraging evidence that flavonoid supplementation can benefit cognitive outcomes within an acute time frame of 0–6 h. But larger studies, combining cognitive and physiological measures, are needed to strengthen the evidence base

Young teenagers' experiences of domestic abuse

This article reports on the first findings from the Boys to Men Research Project. In total, 1143 pupils aged 1314 years completed a questionnaire to assess their experiences of domestic abuse as victims, witnesses and perpetrators. Overall, 45% of pupils who had been in a dating relationship reported having been victimised, 25% having perpetrated it, with the only difference in rates of victimisation and perpetration between boys and girls being in relation to sexual victimisation. Of the whole sample, 34% reported having witnessed it in their own family. There was a relationship between victimisation and perpetration with the vast majority of perpetrators (92%) also reporting experiencing abuse from a boyfriend/girlfriend. There was also a relationship between experiencing abuse and help seeking from adults, with those who have been victimised less likely to say they would seek help if they were hit by a partner than those who had yet to experience any abuse. The relationship between help seeking and experiences of abuse is further complicated by gender, with girls twice as likely to seek help than boys, but with girls who have previously hit a partner among the most reticent group. The paper concludes with highlighting the implications of these findings for those undertaking preventative work in schools

The role of mutualisms in the evolution of flower and fruit traits in the Haemanthinae (Amaryllidaceae)

Doctoral Degree. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg.Diversification of flower and fruit traits are distinctive features of angiosperm radiation. Evolutionary shifts between different animal pollinator groups are usually accompanied by modifications in flower traits. Similarly, shifts between different animal seed dispersers are usually accompanied by modifications of fruit traits. The aim of this study was to assess the functional importance of flower and fruit traits in the African sub-tribe Haemanthinae (Amaryllidaceae) which consists of the closely related genera Scadoxus and Haemanthus. These genera occur in multiple habitats and exhibit a diversity of floral and fruit traits that are potentially related to their pollination and seed dispersal systems which has not been previously studied. The species of Scadoxus can be categorized according to two types of inflorescence architecture – ‘paintbrush’, where the reproductive parts of the flowers are tightly packed together, or ‘open brush’, where the reproductive parts are widely spaced. All Haemanthus species have ‘paintbrush’ inflorescences. I investigated the functional significance for pollination of these two inflorescence types. The genus Scadoxus appears to have undergone several shifts from butterfly to bird pollination. I found that both subspecies of S. multiflorus with open brush inflorescences are pollinated by butterflies and that S. puniceus and S. membranaceus with paintbrush inflorescences are pollinated by sunbirds. The system of butterfly pollination involves pollen being transferred from plant to plant via the surface of the butterfly’s wings. This system, previously thought to be unusual, is apparently common in the South African Amaryllidaceae and I speculated that nine species are pollinated this way. I found that S. multiflorus subspecies katherinae displays a system of late-acting self-incompatibility, whereby the tubes of self pollen are stopped at the ovary, as shown previously for other Amaryllidaceae. Self-incompatibility was also found for the sunbird pollinated S. puniceus. Intriguingly, S. membranaceus, which is very similar in appearance to S. puniceus, but rarely visited by sunbirds in its coastal forest habitat, was found to be self-compatible and capable of autonomous seed production. The genus Haemanthus, a sister clade to Scadoxus, occurs only in South Africa and Namibia, and consists entirely of species with ‘paintbrush’ style inflorescences. Haemanthus deformis is geoflorous with a very short peduncle and is pollinated by sunbirds that stand on the ground next to the inflorescence and bend over to feed on the nectar in the flowers. In the closely related H. albiflos, the inflorescence stem is longer and used as a perch. Both species have white flowers which is unusual for sunbird-pollinated plants. Haemanthus coccineus is found in the Cape Floral Region and has red flowers and bracts. This species has a much longer peduncle and is pollinated by sunbirds which grip onto the peduncle or bracts when feeding. H. humilis subsp. hirsutis is also visited by sunbirds which use the long peduncle as a perch when feeding on the pink flowers. Selective exclusion experiments indicated that H. humilis subsp. hirsutis is pollinated by both birds and insects, while H. coccineus and H. deformis are reliant on sunbirds. The tribe Haemantheae is defined by having fleshy, brightly coloured baccate fruits with large, recalcitrant seeds. No other species in the family have such a fruit type and the closest related tribe, Amaryllideae, have fruits characteristic of abiotic dispersal. S. multiflorus subsp. katherinae and S. puniceus occur in similar habitat of coastal to inland forested vegetation. I found that seeds of both taxa are dispersed by monkeys, which eat the fruits, depulping the seeds, and then spitting them out. In the genus Haemanthus, fruits are softer, and many species occurs in habitats without monkeys. I found that seeds of H. deformis are dispersed by birds and rodents which either depulp the seeds right next to the plant or disperse the seeds further away by carrying the fruits elsewhere. The seedlings require a shady microhabitat in bushclumps for survival and the dispersal system appears to favour either short distance dispersal into the immediate bushclump habitat or longer distance dispersal to different bushclumps. In conclusion, inflorescence and flower structure in the subtribe Haemanthinae play key roles in different pollination systems, with flowers in the paintbrush style inflorescences of Scadoxus puniceus and several Haemanthus species being pollinated by sunbirds, and flowers in open brush style inflorescence of S. multiflorus being pollinated by butterflies. Furthermore, the fruits of Haeminthinae are shown to be specialised for frugivory by various animals which discard the recalcitrant seeds. Mutualisms between various animals in Haemanthinae have therefore had an important impact on the evolution of flowers and fruit traits in this amaryllid subtribe

The Spatial Context of “Winning” in MPA Network Design: Location Matters

(First paragraph) Chollett et al. (2017) make the case that a local network of marine protected areas (MPAs) enhances fisheries for Caribbean spiny lobster (Panulirus argus) off the coast of Honduras. However, their simulation focused on one ecoregion where self-recruitment is predicted to be among the highest in the Caribbean (Cowen, Paris, & Srinivasan, 2006). The shallow banks and scattered cays of the Honduran-Nicaraguan Rise, separating the Cayman and Colombian basins, create an obstacle to the powerful southern Caribbean jet (Richardson, 2005), fostering an ideal location for topographically steered eddies and larval retention. Local management,whether based on traditional techniques or MPAs, is indeed likely to be successful in sustaining the lobster population in that region. But the authors go too far in promoting local management based on a best-case scenario where the population is largely self recruiting, and they downplay the need for international cooperation in managing one of the most economically important species in the Caribbean (Kough, Paris, & Butler IV, 2013)