Preventing human immunodeficiency virus infection among sexual assault survivors in Cape Town, South Africa: an observational study.

We describe 131 South African sexual assault survivors offered HIV post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP). While the median days completed was 27 (IQR 27, 28), 34% stopped PEP or missed doses. Controlling for baseline symptoms, PEP was not associated with symptoms (OR = 1.30, 95% CI = 0.66, 2.64). Factors associated with unprotected sex included prior unprotected sex (OR = 6.46, 95% CI = 3.04, 13.74), time since the assault (OR = 1.33, 95% CI = 1.12, 1.57) and age (OR = 1.30, 95% CI = 1.08, 1.57). Trauma counseling was protective (OR = 0.18, 95% CI = 0.05, 0.58). Four instances of seroconversion were observed by 6 months (risk = 3.7%, 95% CI = 1.0, 9.1). Proactive follow-up is necessary to increase the likelihood of PEP completion and address the mental health and HIV risk needs of survivors. Adherence interventions and targeted risk reduction counseling should be provided to minimize HIV acquisition

Interprofessional Scenario-Based Learning for New Graduates in a Regional Setting: A Pilot Study

Introduction: Globally there is an increased emphasis on the provision of high quality healthcare and improved productivity under mounting financial constraints. Interprofessional collaboration and practice are considered crucial in promoting teamwork and optimising patient outcomes. However, there is a lack of structured, evaluated interprofessional learning opportunities for graduates in regional and rural health services in Australia. This pilot study reports on a novel interprofessional new graduate learning program that was developed and implemented to address the lack of structured post-qualification interprofessional learning opportunities in the Central Queensland Hospital and Health Service. Methods: Twenty-one participants enrolled in the six-month program, which consisted of six ninety-minute sessions. A mixed method exploratory design was used to collect data using the Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale before and after the program, and a reflective summary at program completion. Results: Results indicated that participation in the program had a positive effect on participants’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviours regarding interprofessional practice as measured on the Interprofessional Socialization and Valuing Scale. Various themes about the usefulness of the program to participants were elicited from the reflective summary data. These included enhanced understanding of interprofessional practice, increased confidence in own professional role, improved understanding of the roles of other professions, increased collaboration with others, improved patient outcomes and improved networking with colleagues. Conclusions: It was concluded that the new graduate interprofessional learning program was a feasible and effective way to facilitate interprofessional learning among health graduates in a regional health service

Pleiotropic and Epistatic Network-Based Discovery: Integrated Networks for Target Gene Discovery

Biological organisms are complex systems that are composed of functional networks of interacting molecules and macro-molecules. Complex phenotypes are the result of orchestrated, hierarchical, heterogeneous collections of expressed genomic variants. However, the effects of these variants are the result of historic selective pressure and current environmental and epigenetic signals, and, as such, their co-occurrence can be seen as genome-wide correlations in a number of different manners. Biomass recalcitrance (i.e., the resistance of plants to degradation or deconstruction, which ultimately enables access to a plant’s sugars) is a complex polygenic phenotype of high importance to biofuels initiatives. This study makes use of data derived from the re-sequenced genomes from over 800 different Populus trichocarpa genotypes in combination with metabolomic and pyMBMS data across this population, as well as co-expression and co-methylation networks in order to better understand the molecular interactions involved in recalcitrance, and identify target genes involved in lignin biosynthesis/degradation. A Lines Of Evidence (LOE) scoring system is developed to integrate the information in the different layers and quantify the number of lines of evidence linking genes to target functions. This new scoring system was applied to quantify the lines of evidence linking genes to lignin-related genes and phenotypes across the network layers, and allowed for the generation of new hypotheses surrounding potential new candidate genes involved in lignin biosynthesis in P. trichocarpa, including various AGAMOUS-LIKE genes. The resulting Genome Wide Association Study networks, integrated with Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) correlation, co-methylation, and co-expression networks through the LOE scores are proving to be a powerful approach to determine the pleiotropic and epistatic relationships underlying cellular functions and, as such, the molecular basis for complex phenotypes, such as recalcitrance

Finding New Cell Wall Regulatory Genes in Populus trichocarpa Using Multiple Lines of Evidence.

Understanding the regulatory network controlling cell wall biosynthesis is of great interest in Populus trichocarpa, both because of its status as a model woody perennial and its importance for lignocellulosic products. We searched for genes with putatively unknown roles in regulating cell wall biosynthesis using an extended network-based Lines of Evidence (LOE) pipeline to combine multiple omics data sets in P. trichocarpa, including gene coexpression, gene comethylation, population level pairwise SNP correlations, and two distinct SNP-metabolite Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) layers. By incorporating validation, ranking, and filtering approaches we produced a list of nine high priority gene candidates for involvement in the regulation of cell wall biosynthesis. We subsequently performed a detailed investigation of candidate gene GROWTH-REGULATING FACTOR 9 (PtGRF9). To investigate the role of PtGRF9 in regulating cell wall biosynthesis, we assessed the genome-wide connections of PtGRF9 and a paralog across data layers with functional enrichment analyses, predictive transcription factor binding site analysis, and an independent comparison to eQTN data. Our findings indicate that PtGRF9 likely affects the cell wall by directly repressing genes involved in cell wall biosynthesis, such as PtCCoAOMT and PtMYB.41, and indirectly by regulating homeobox genes. Furthermore, evidence suggests that PtGRF9 paralogs may act as transcriptional co-regulators that direct the global energy usage of the plant. Using our extended pipeline, we show multiple lines of evidence implicating the involvement of these genes in cell wall regulatory functions and demonstrate the value of this method for prioritizing candidate genes for experimental validation

Genome resequencing reveals multiscale geographic structure and extensive linkage disequilibrium in the forest tree Populus trichocarpa

This is the publisher’s final pdf. The article is copyrighted by the New Phytologist Trust and published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. It can be found at: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/%28ISSN%291469-8137. To the best of our knowledge, one or more authors of this paper were federal employees when contributing to this work.•Plant population genomics informs evolutionary biology, breeding, conservation and bioenergy feedstock development. For example, the detection of reliable phenotype–genotype associations and molecular signatures of selection requires a detailed knowledge about genome-wide patterns of allele frequency variation, linkage disequilibrium and recombination.\ud •We resequenced 16 genomes of the model tree Populus trichocarpa and genotyped 120 trees from 10 subpopulations using 29 213 single-nucleotide polymorphisms.\ud •Significant geographic differentiation was present at multiple spatial scales, and range-wide latitudinal allele frequency gradients were strikingly common across the genome. The decay of linkage disequilibrium with physical distance was slower than expected from previous studies in Populus, with r² dropping below 0.2 within 3–6 kb. Consistent with this, estimates of recent effective population size from linkage disequilibrium (N[subscript e] ≈ 4000–6000) were remarkably low relative to the large census sizes of P. trichocarpa stands. Fine-scale rates of recombination varied widely across the genome, but were largely predictable on the basis of DNA sequence and methylation features.\ud •Our results suggest that genetic drift has played a significant role in the recent evolutionary history of P. trichocarpa. Most importantly, the extensive linkage disequilibrium detected suggests that genome-wide association studies and genomic selection in undomesticated populations may be more feasible in Populus than previously assumed

Bringing organisations together during a pandemic: the case of an intersectoral community support group

In early 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, posing multiple challenges to healthcare organisations and communities. The Darling Downs region in Queensland, Australia had its first positive case of COVID-19 confirmed in March 2020, which created understandable anxiety in the community. The Vulnerable Communities Group (VCG) was established to address this anxiety through open lines of communication to strengthen community resilience. This case study reports the evaluation of the VCG, plus lessons learned while establishing and running an intersectoral group, with stakeholders from more than 40 organisations, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. An anonymous online survey with closed and open-ended questions was administered to participants. Data were subject to descriptive statistical tests and content analysis. Four categories were developed from the free text data for reporting: ‘Knowledge is power’, ‘Beating isolation through partnerships and linkages’, ‘Sharing is caring’, and ‘Ripple effects’. Whilst open communication and collaboration are always essential, they can be critically important during times of crisis. The VCG initiative is one example of tackling the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic through bringing the community together

It Loves Me... It Loves Me Not: Towards Implementing Artificial Love in Companion Robots

We describe our prototype implementation of Chapman’s theory about the five love languages into a humanoid robot. This implementation has the objective of fostering a relationship that nurtures love, and that could lead to the human feeling loved by the robot. This special bond could potentially serve as a non-pharmacological intervention to aid in patients’ treatment or wellbeing during prolonged hospitalizations. At the same time, the robot could monitor the patient in case abnormal behaviour is detected such as anxiety or depression

Decision Making on Teachers’ adaptation to Cybergogy in Saturated Interval- valued Refined Neutrosophic overset /underset /offset Environment

Neutrosophic overset, neutrosophic underset and neutrosophic offset introduced by Smarandache are the special kinds of neutrosophic sets with values beyond the range [0,1] and these sets are pragmatic in nature as it represents the real life situations. This paper introduces the concept of saturated refined neutrosophic sets and extends the same to the special kinds of neutrosophic sets. The proposed concept is applied in decision making on Teacher’s adaptation to cybergogy. The decision making environment is characterized by different types of teachers, online teaching skills and various training methods. Fuzzy relation is used to match the most suitable method to the different kinds of teachers with the intervention of saturated interval valued neutrosophic refined oversets, offsets and undersets. The results obtained by applying the notion of saturated refined sets using various distance measures represent the effect of training methods on teacher’s adaptation to learner-centred teaching methods, which certainly give space to gain many insights on the relationship between quality of training and teacher’s adaptation rate. The proposed concept has wide scope and few limitations