Behaviour change interventions to influence antimicrobial prescribing: a cross-sectional analysis of reports from UK state-of-the-art scientific conferences

Background To improve the quality of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) interventions the application of behavioural sciences supported by multidisciplinary collaboration has been recommended. We analysed major UK scientific research conferences to investigate AMS behaviour change intervention reporting. Methods Leading UK 2015 scientific conference abstracts for 30 clinical specialties were identified and interrogated. All AMS and/or antimicrobial resistance(AMR) abstracts were identified using validated search criteria. Abstracts were independently reviewed by four researchers with reported behavioural interventions classified using a behaviour change taxonomy. Results Conferences ran for 110 days with >57,000 delegates. 311/12,313(2.5%) AMS-AMR abstracts (oral and poster) were identified. 118/311(40%) were presented at the UK’s infectious diseases/microbiology conference. 56/311(18%) AMS-AMR abstracts described behaviour change interventions. These were identified across 12/30(40%) conferences. The commonest abstract reporting behaviour change interventions were quality improvement projects [44/56 (79%)]. In total 71 unique behaviour change functions were identified. Policy categories; “guidelines” (16/71) and “service provision” (11/71) were the most frequently reported. Intervention functions; “education” (6/71), “persuasion” (7/71), and “enablement” (9/71) were also common. Only infection and primary care conferences reported studies that contained multiple behaviour change interventions. The remaining 10 specialties tended to report a narrow range of interventions focusing on “guidelines” and “enablement”. Conclusion Despite the benefits of behaviour change interventions on antimicrobial prescribing, very few AMS-AMR studies reported implementing them in 2015. AMS interventions must focus on promoting behaviour change towards antimicrobial prescribing. Greater focus must be placed on non-infection specialties to engage with the issue of behaviour change towards antimicrobial use

A Cortical Region Consisting Entirely of Face-Selective Cells

Face perception is a skill crucial to primates. In both humans and macaque monkeys, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) reveals a system of cortical regions that show increased blood flow when the subject views images of faces, compared with images of objects. However, the stimulus selectivity of single neurons within these fMRI-identified regions has not been studied. We used fMRI to identify and target the largest face-selective region in two macaques for single-unit recording. Almost all (97%) of the visually responsive neurons in this region were strongly face selective, indicating that a dedicated cortical area exists to support face processing in the macaque

Polyhedral Painting with Group Averaging

The technique of group-averaging produces colorings of a sphere that have the symmetries of various polyhedra. The concepts are accessible at the undergraduate level, without being well-known in typical courses on algebra or geometry. The material makes an excellent discovery project, especially for students with some background in computer science; indeed, this is where the authors first worked through the material, as teacher and student, producing a previously unseen type of artistic image. The process uses a photograph as a palette, whose colors and textures appear in kaleidoscopic form on the surface of a sphere. We depict tetrahedral, octahedral, and icosahedral symmetries, with and without mirrors, along with the source photograph for comparison. We also describe a method to make images with color-reversing symmetry

Updated Semiempirical Cross Sections for Cosmic Rays Propagation

High precision cross sections estimates are crucial to help infer the source abundance of elements and isotopes that have large secondary components in the arriving cosmic-ray abundances, e.g., N, Na, Al and P. We propose here correction factors to further refine our recent semiempirical cross sections estimates. Factors for elements that are nearly purely secondary, e.g, B and F, are also proposed for improved propagation calculations. We also point to some inconsistencies in the measured cross sections. The nucleus-nucleus component, including scaling factors, as well as a non-nuclear contribution to the inelastic cross section therein are also discussed

A Comparison of Models of Cosmic-Ray Source Composition

Several models for the origin of cosmic rays have been proposed to explain the relative differences of cosmic-ray source abundances and the general abundances of elements and isotopes. One model, for example, assumes injection at normal stars like the sun, using FIP-modified coronal rather than photospheric abundances. Another with acceleration and breakup of grains by supernova shock waves has been popular with several authors. On the basis of the known abundances of few elements, we demonstrate how a critical evaluation of one model's merits against the others can be made

Understanding Three Hydration-Dependent Transitions of Zwitterionic Carboxybetaine Hydrogel by Molecular Dynamics Simulations

In this work, molecular dynamics simulations were performed to study a carboxybetaine methacrylate (CBMA) hydrogel under various swelling states. The water content in this study ranged from 28% to 91% of the total weight of the hydrogel. Three transitions of the CBMA hydrogel were observed as the water content increased. The first transition occurs when the water content increases from 33% to 37%. The observed kink in the self-diffusion coefficient of water indicates that the hydration of the polymer network of the hydrogel is saturated; the further added water is in a less confined state. The second transition was found to be related to the physical cross-links of the polymer network. As the water content rises to above 62%, the lifetime of the physical cross-links decreases significantly. This abrupt change in the lifetime indicates that the transition represents the equilibrium swelling state of the hydrogel. Finally, the third transition was observed when the water content goes above 81%. The significant increases in the bond and angle energies of the polymer network indicate that the hydrogel reaches its upper limit swelling state at this transition. These results are comparable to previously published experimental studies of similar zwitterionic hydrogels

No effect of a high-fat diet on promotion of sex hormone-induced prostate and mammary carcinogenesis in the Noble rat model

Department of Nursing and Health SciencesAuthor name used in this publication: I. F. F. BenzieAuthor name used in this publication: G. Leung2002-2003 > Academic research: refereed > Publication in refereed journalVersion of RecordPublishe

Functional Connectivity of the Macaque Brain across Stimulus and Arousal States

Cortical networks generate temporally correlated brain activity. To clarify the functional significance of this correlated activity, we asked whether and how its structure depends on stimulus and arousal state. Using independent components analysis of macaque functional magnetic resonance imaging data, we identified a large number of brain networks that were strikingly reproducible across different visual stimulus contexts. Fewer networks were reproducible across alert and anesthetized brain states. Network complexity ranged from bilateral single-node networks to networks comprising multiple discrete nodes distributed over 3 cm of cortex; one network identified in our survey included parts of the temporal parietal occipital junction, dorsal premotor cortex, insula, and posterior cingulate cortex bilaterally. Our results reveal the wealth of spatially structured correlated networks throughout the brain in both alert and anesthetized monkeys, and show that anesthesia significantly alters the spatial structure of these networks

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is associated with telomerase activation

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View-tolerant face recognition and Hebbian learning imply mirror-symmetric neural tuning to head orientation

The primate brain contains a hierarchy of visual areas, dubbed the ventral stream, which rapidly computes object representations that are both specific for object identity and relatively robust against identity-preserving transformations like depth-rotations. Current computational models of object recognition, including recent deep learning networks, generate these properties through a hierarchy of alternating selectivity-increasing filtering and tolerance-increasing pooling operations, similar to simple-complex cells operations. While simulations of these models recapitulate the ventral stream's progression from early view-specific to late view-tolerant representations, they fail to generate the most salient property of the intermediate representation for faces found in the brain: mirror-symmetric tuning of the neural population to head orientation. Here we prove that a class of hierarchical architectures and a broad set of biologically plausible learning rules can provide approximate invariance at the top level of the network. While most of the learning rules do not yield mirror-symmetry in the mid-level representations, we characterize a specific biologically-plausible Hebb-type learning rule that is guaranteed to generate mirror-symmetric tuning to faces tuning at intermediate levels of the architecture