Socio-Cultural Risk? Reporting on a Qualitative Study with Female Street-Based Sex Workers

Risk narratives are of increasing importance in contemporary social life in that they help in understanding and anticipating the shifts that characterise our late modern landscape. Our qualitative research explores risk as it relates to violence toward street-based sex workers in a suburban Australian setting. Female street-based sex workers represent a highly stigmatised and marginalised group. International studies report that they experience high levels of sexual violence perpetrated by male clients and our empirical work with street-based sex workers in Adelaide, South Australia concurs with this finding. Despite many creative and specialized skills workers reported drawing upon to minimise the risk of violence to themselves, we argue that a socio-cultural lens is vital to viewing risk in this context. We argue that in order to effect change, risk must be disembedded from increasingly individualized discourses, since it is through the personalisation of risk that violence becomes legitimised as an occupational hazard in street-based sex work.Sex Work, Prostitution, Risk, Gender, Gendered Violence, Socio-Cultural Risk Theory, Disembedding Risk

Understanding Everyday Relationship Work: The Development of a Relationship Maintenance Scale

Relationship maintenance behaviors contribute to the longevity of intimate relationships, yet existing scales are limited. Available measurement tools are primarily constrained to the Relationship Maintenance Strategy Measure (RMSM) and its further revisions. Covering a number of domains, conceptual overlap with other aspects of an intimate relationship (e.g., household division of labor) may exist. Our cross-sectional exploratory study included participants from 60 countries (n=8,162) who completed an online survey. Participants were diverse in their relationship status, age, sexual orientation, and race/ethnicity. From their responses, we developed a parsimonious and brief measure of relationship maintenance (8 items) through exploratory and then confirmatory factor analyses. Results indicated that the Relationship Maintenance Scale (RMS) shows initial evidence of reliability and validity. The RMS may have utility in working with couples and families. Future research should seek to re-test its use with varied samples, such as couples seeking relationship support

Is it time for a new descriptor 'pressure injury': a bibliometric analysis

Prediction, prevention and management of pressure injuries are areas that require specific attention from nurses in clinical practice. Moreover, increased awareness that these injuries are preventable is an important precursor to changing nurses’ practice and reducing the incidence of pressure injuries. The language and terminology that we use in daily practice can impact on the understanding and approach that nurses take to care delivery. In this area of wound care practice commonly used terminology that emphasises the nature of the wound, rather than its causation, may be a significant factor that limits the level of concern about prevention and responsibility taken by clinicians. This paper argues that the term ‘pressure injury’ promotes a better understanding of the fact that these wounds are preventable and may refocus the attention of nurses providing care to at-risk patients

Age validation, growth, mortality, and additional population parameters of the goldband snapper (Pristipomoides multidens) off the Kimberley coast of northwestern Australia

Goldband snapper (Pristipomoides multidens) collected from commercial trap and line fishermen off the Kimberley coast of northwestern Australia were aged by examination of sectioned otoliths (sagittae).A total of 3833 P. multidens, 80–701 mm fork length (98–805 mm total length), were examined from commercial catches from 1995 to 1999. The oldest fish was estimated to be age 30+ years. Validation of age estimates was achieved with marginal increment analysis. The opaque and translucent zones were each formed once per year and are considered valid annual growth increments (the translucent zone was formed once per year between January and May). A strong link between water temperature and translucent zone formation was evident in P. multidens. The von Bertalanffy growth function was used to describe growth from length-at-age data derived from sectioned otoliths

How do we evaluate the cost of nosocomial infection? The ECONI protocol: an incidence study with nested case-control evaluating cost and quality of life

Introduction Healthcare-associated or nosocomial infection (HAI) is distressing to patients and costly for the National Health Service (NHS). With increasing pressure to demonstrate cost-effectiveness of interventions to control HAI and notwithstanding the risk from antimicrobial-resistant infections, there is a need to understand the incidence rates of HAI and costs incurred by the health system and for patients themselves. Methods and analysis The Evaluation of Cost of Nosocomial Infection study (ECONI) is an observational incidence survey with record linkage and a nested case-control study that will include postdischarge longitudinal follow-up and qualitative interviews. ECONI will be conducted in one large teaching hospital and one district general hospital in NHS Scotland. The case mix of these hospitals reflects the majority of overnight admissions within Scotland. An incidence survey will record all HAI cases using standard case definitions. Subsequent linkage to routine data sets will provide information on an admission cohort which will be grouped into HAI and non-HAI cases. The case-control study will recruit eligible patients who develop HAI and twice that number without HAI as controls. Patients will be asked to complete five questionnaires: the first during their stay, and four others during the year following discharge from their recruitment admission (1, 3, 6 and 12 months). Multiple data collection methods will include clinical case note review; patient-reported outcome; linkage to electronic health records and qualitative interviews. Outcomes collected encompass infection types; morbidity and mortality; length of stay; quality of life; healthcare utilisation; repeat admissions and postdischarge prescribing. Ethics and dissemination The study has received a favourable ethical opinion from the Scotland A Research Ethics Committee (reference 16/SS/0199). All publications arising from this study will be published in open-access peer-reviewed journal. Lay-person summaries will be published on the ECONI website. Trial registration number NCT03253640; Pre-results

Homeobox gene TGIF-1 is increased in placental endothelial cells of human fetal growth restriction.

Aberrant placental angiogenesis is associated with fetal growth restriction (FGR). In the mouse, targeted disruption of the homeobox gene, transforming growth β-induced factor (Tgif-1), which is also a transcription factor, causes defective placental vascularisation. Nevertheless, TGIF-1's role in human placental angiogenesis is unclear. We have previously reported increased TGIF-1 expression in human FGR placentae and demonstrated localisation of TGIF-1 protein in placental endothelial cells (ECs). However, its functional role remains to be investigated. In this study, we aimed to specifically compare TGIF-1 mRNA expression in placental ECs isolated from human FGR-affected pregnancies with gestation-matched control pregnancies in two independent cohorts from Australia and Canada, and to identify the functional role of TGIF-1 in placental angiogenesis using the human umbilical vein endothelial cell-derived cell line, SGHEC-7 and primary human umbilical vein ECs. Real-time PCR revealed that TGIF-1 mRNA expression was significantly increased in ECs isolated from FGR-affected placentae compared with that of controls. The functional roles of TGIF-1 were determined in ECs following TGIF-1 siRNA transfection. TGIF-1 inactivation in ECs significantly reduced TGIF-1 at both the mRNA and protein levels, as well as the proliferative and invasive potential, but significantly increased the angiogenic potential. Using angiogenesis PCR screening arrays, we identified ITGAV, NRP-1, ANPGT-1 and ANPGT-2 as novel downstream targets of TGIF-1, following TGIF-1 inactivation in ECs. Collectively, these results show that increased TGIF-1 in FGR may regulate EC function through mediating the expression of angiogenic molecules and contribute to aberrant placental angiogenesis in FGR pregnancies

Identifying as a Teacher of Reading: A Case Study of Pre-Service Teachers' Beliefs About Reading and the Teaching of Reading Over the Duration of a Required ELA Course

Teacher candidates (TCs) prior understandings and knowledge around reading instruction and reading acquisition emerge through various experiences and have the potential to contradict notions presented in the curriculum and pedagogy of English Language Arts courses. As TCs engage in coursework related to reading pedagogy, tensions and cognitive dissonance may be negotiated. This qualitative study, approached through a social constructivist framework, explored beliefs about the teaching and learning of reading held by elementary TCs. Using case study methodology, this inquiry surfaced initial and negotiated beliefs by reflecting on the following research questions: What patterns and themes in TC backgrounds appear alongside particular beliefs, held early in a required curriculum course in English Language Arts, about the nature of reading and the teaching of reading? What patterns and themes emerge in the post-course reflections of TCs regarding their ideas about reading development and reading instruction. Methods for data collection and analysis included content analysis, attribute and descriptive coding, and thematic analysis of a pre and post-survey and individual interviews. Results of this study demonstrated that early understandings held by TCs were narrow and often misaligned with current understandings of reading development and pedagogy. Post-course reflections, however, indicated negotiated beliefs, adding to previous studies that have suggested methods courses offer opportunities for revised understandings. Implications of this study relate to the importance of required reading pedagogy courses in teacher education programs as one avenue for TCs to surface, examine, and refine their understandings related to reading instruction and development

Urban surface water pollution problems arising from misconnections

The impacts of misconnections on the organic and nutrient loadings to surface waters are assessed using specific household appliance data for two urban sub-catchments located in the London metropolitan region and the city of Swansea. Potential loadings of biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), soluble reactive phosphorus (PO4-P) and ammoniacal nitrogen (NH4-N) due to misconnections are calculated for three different scenarios based on the measured daily flows from specific appliances and either measured daily pollutant concentrations or average pollutant concentrations for relevant greywater and black water sources obtained from an extensive review of the literature. Downstream receiving water concentrations, together with the associated uncertainties, are predicted from derived misconnection discharge concentrations and compared to existing freshwater standards for comparable river types. Consideration of dilution ratios indicates that these would need to be of the order of 50–100:1 to maintain high water quality with respect to BOD and NH4-N following typical misconnection discharges but only poor quality for PO4-P is likely to be achievable. The main pollutant loading contributions to misconnections arise from toilets (NH4-N and BOD), kitchen sinks (BOD and PO4-P) washing machines (PO4-P and BOD) and, to a lesser extent, dishwashers (PO4-P). By completely eliminating toilet misconnections and ensuring misconnections from all other appliances do not exceed 2%, the potential pollution problems due to BOD and NH4-N discharges would be alleviated but this would not be the case for PO4-P. In the event of a treatment option being preferred to solve the misconnection problem, it is shown that for an area the size of metropolitan Greater London, a sewage treatment plant with a Population Equivalent value approaching 900,000would be required to efficiently remove BOD and NH4-N to safely dischargeable levels but such a plant is unlikely to have the capacity to deal satisfactorily with incoming PO4-P loads from misconnections