Residential care as an alternative care option : a review of literature within a global context

While there is unequivocal agreement on the need to support families and to avoid all unnecessary separation, there are ongoing debates across policy and practitioner communities nationally and internationally, around the place of residential care within the range of alternative care services which should be available to children who need them. This paper presents the findings of a review of evidence looking at the function, quality, and outcomes of residential care based on 111 papers identified for inclusion using systematic searches. The review identifies definitional ambiguity in the use of the terms 'residentia' and 'institutional' care in the literature, which alongside the different cultural, social, and economic contexts, makes generalising challenging. However, we found insufficient evidence to substantiate claims that residential care is inherently unsuitable. We identify research gaps in the literature, including in relation to quality, children's perspectives, and factors that impact upon the suitability of residential care for different children, before discussing implications of the findings for research, policy, and practice

Living with an indwelling urethral catheter in a community setting: Exploring triggers for unscheduled community nurse “out-of-hours” visits

Aims and Objective: To explore the experiences of community patients living with a urethral catheter and those caring for them. Background: Living at home with an indwelling urethral catheter often results in consequences that create a double-edged burden; firstly, on patients and their relative carers, and secondly in terms of unscheduled community nurse service ‘out of hours’ provision. Design: One-to-one interviews, were conducted with patients living at home, their relative carers, qualified community nurses, augmented home carers, and health care assistant. Quantitative data in relation to frequency, duration and reason for visits were extracted from the community nurse ‘out of hours’ service database. Results: Quantitative data showed that 20% of all community nurses, unscheduled ‘out of hour’ visits were triggered by an indwelling urethral catheter consequence. Qualitative data revealed that health and social care staff felt knowledgeable and skilled in urethral catheter management. Conversely, patients and relative carers felt poorly equipped to manage the situation when something went wrong. The majority of patients described the catheter as being a debilitating source of anxiety and pain that reduced their quality of life.Conclusion: Urethral catheter complications are frequent and impact seriously on quality of life with informal carers also affected. Community nurses experienced frequent unscheduled visits. Patients often feel isolated as well as lacking in knowledge, skills and information on catheter management. Having better urethral catheter information resources could increase patient and relative carer confidence, encourage self-care and problem solving, as well as facilitate meaningful consistent dialogue between patients and those who provide them with help and support.Relevance to Clinical Practice: Better patient information resources regarding urethral catheter management have potential to improve patient and relative carer quality of life and reduce service provision burden

Stallion sperm transcriptome comprises functionally coherent coding and regulatory RNAs as revealed by microarray analysis and RNA-seq.

Mature mammalian sperm contain a complex population of RNAs some of which might regulate spermatogenesis while others probably play a role in fertilization and early development. Due to this limited knowledge, the biological functions of sperm RNAs remain enigmatic. Here we report the first characterization of the global transcriptome of the sperm of fertile stallions. The findings improved understanding of the biological significance of sperm RNAs which in turn will allow the discovery of sperm-based biomarkers for stallion fertility. The stallion sperm transcriptome was interrogated by analyzing sperm and testes RNA on a 21,000-element equine whole-genome oligoarray and by RNA-seq. Microarray analysis revealed 6,761 transcripts in the sperm, of which 165 were sperm-enriched, and 155 were differentially expressed between the sperm and testes. Next, 70 million raw reads were generated by RNA-seq of which 50% could be aligned with the horse reference genome. A total of 19,257 sequence tags were mapped to all horse chromosomes and the mitochondrial genome. The highest density of mapped transcripts was in gene-rich ECA11, 12 and 13, and the lowest in gene-poor ECA9 and X; 7 gene transcripts originated from ECAY. Structural annotation aligned sperm transcripts with 4,504 known horse and/or human genes, rRNAs and 82 miRNAs, whereas 13,354 sequence tags remained anonymous. The data were aligned with selected equine gene models to identify additional exons and splice variants. Gene Ontology annotations showed that sperm transcripts were associated with molecular processes (chemoattractant-activated signal transduction, ion transport) and cellular components (membranes and vesicles) related to known sperm functions at fertilization, while some messenger and micro RNAs might be critical for early development. The findings suggest that the rich repertoire of coding and non-coding RNAs in stallion sperm is not a random remnant from spermatogenesis in testes but a selectively retained and functionally coherent collection of RNAs

Search for intermediate-mass black hole binaries in the third observing run of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo

International audienceIntermediate-mass black holes (IMBHs) span the approximate mass range 100−105 M⊙, between black holes (BHs) that formed by stellar collapse and the supermassive BHs at the centers of galaxies. Mergers of IMBH binaries are the most energetic gravitational-wave sources accessible by the terrestrial detector network. Searches of the first two observing runs of Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo did not yield any significant IMBH binary signals. In the third observing run (O3), the increased network sensitivity enabled the detection of GW190521, a signal consistent with a binary merger of mass ∼150 M⊙ providing direct evidence of IMBH formation. Here, we report on a dedicated search of O3 data for further IMBH binary mergers, combining both modeled (matched filter) and model-independent search methods. We find some marginal candidates, but none are sufficiently significant to indicate detection of further IMBH mergers. We quantify the sensitivity of the individual search methods and of the combined search using a suite of IMBH binary signals obtained via numerical relativity, including the effects of spins misaligned with the binary orbital axis, and present the resulting upper limits on astrophysical merger rates. Our most stringent limit is for equal mass and aligned spin BH binary of total mass 200 M⊙ and effective aligned spin 0.8 at 0.056 Gpc−3 yr−1 (90% confidence), a factor of 3.5 more constraining than previous LIGO-Virgo limits. We also update the estimated rate of mergers similar to GW190521 to 0.08 Gpc−3 yr−1.Key words: gravitational waves / stars: black holes / black hole physicsCorresponding author: W. Del Pozzo, e-mail: [email protected]† Deceased, August 2020