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The challenges of recruiting cancer patient/caregiver dyads: informing randomized controlled trials
Get PDFThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Family members are increasingly involved in the care of cancer patients, however many are not prepared for this challenging role. Intervention-based studies are valuable to inform the most appropriate and effective support for caregivers. Barriers in the recruitment of patient/caregiver dyads exist but the reasons for non-participation are less well understood. This analysis determined the factors associated with participation in a randomized controlled trial involving patient/caregiver dyads, reasons for non-participation and factors associated with these reasons. Methods: Patients with any type of cancer (other than non-melanoma skin cancer), and their caregiver were recruited at four Australian health services. Eligible patients were invited to participate together with their caregiver (N=737). Non-participation data were collected from non-participants. Bivariate and binary logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine factors associated with participation. Results: Of the 737 eligible dyads, 521 (71%) declined participation. Dyad characteristics associated with participation were caregiver gender, patient treatment modality and hospital type. The odds for participating were almost two times greater for female than male caregivers (p=0.005); 13 times greater for patients receiving chemoradiotherapy compared to radiotherapy alone (p<0.001); and three times greater for dyads attending a private versus public hospital (p<0.001). Reasons for non-participation were lack of interest (33%), lack of time (29%), not requiring support (23%), too burdensome (15%); factors significantly associated with these reasons were treatment modality, patient age, cancer type, and hospital type. Patients diagnosed with prostate cancer and receiving chemotherapy alone were less likely to decline due to a lack of interest. Patients more likely to decline due to lack of time were those aged 40-59 years and receiving chemotherapy alone. Patients who were more likely to decline because they felt participation was too burdensome were those attending a private hospital for treatment. Conclusions: To optimize recruitment, it is recommended that special attention is given to different cancer types and treatment modalities, gender and age. Approaching dyads at varied time points when their need for support is high is recommended. This analysis provides important information for researchers undertaking randomized controlled trials involving people diagnosed with cancer and their caregivers
Optimisation of a propidium monoazide based method to determine the viability of microbes in faecal slurries for transplantation
Get PDF© 2018 Elsevier BV. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This author accepted manuscript is made available following 12 month embargo from date of publication (December 2018) in accordance with the publisher’s archiving policyThe efficacy of faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) as a therapeutic intervention may depend on the viability of the microorganisms in faecal slurries (FS) prepared from donor stool. However, determining the viability of these organisms is challenging. Most microorganisms in stool are refractory to culture using standard techniques, and culture-independent PCR-based methods derive signal from both viable and non-viable cells. Propidium monoazide (PMA) treatment has been shown to be effective in preventing PCR amplification of DNA from non-viable bacteria in a range of contexts. However, this methodology can be sensitive to factors such as bacterial load and sample turbidity. We describe the optimisation of a PMA treatment methodology for FS that restricts quantitative PCR-based bacterial enumeration to viable cells. When applied to concentrated FS (10–25% stool content), PMA treatment at 100 μM concentration was ineffective in preventing DNA amplification from heat-killed cells. Efficacy was not significantly improved by doubling the PMA concentration. However, PMA treatment efficacy was improved markedly following 10-fold sample dilution, and was found to be optimal at 100-fold dilution. Substantial reductions in viable bacterial load could be observed following both freeze-thaw and heat-treatment of FS. This method successfully prevented DNA amplification of heat-killed Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus spiked into stool and could reliably determine the proportion of live bacteria and viable E. coli counts present in fresh and heat-treated stool. With appropriate sample dilution, PMA treatment excluded >97% of non-viable cells from amplification in all assays, without significantly affecting the amplification of DNA from viable cells. This method can be applied to optimise sample processing of FMT donor material, and to characterise bacterial viability within faecal samples more widely
Detailed investigations into the Akabori–Momotani reaction for the synthesis of amphetamine type stimulants: Part 2
Get PDF© 2018 Elsevier BV. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/The Akabori–Momotani reaction can be used to synthesise pseudoephedrine in 50% yield from N-methylalanine and benzaldehyde. This paper investigates electronic effects of substituted benzaldehydes on the reaction to synthesise amphetamine type stimulants and identifies several new Akabori–Momotani by-products, 1-[(4-methoxybenzyl)(methyl)amino]ethanol (11c), 2-(4-methoxyphenyl)-3,4-dimethyl-1,3-oxazolidine (12c), 1,2,3,4-tetramethyl-5,6-di-(4-methoxyphenyl)piperazine (13c) and 1,2,4,5-tetramethyl-3,6-di-(4-methoxyphenyl)piperazine (14c). This paper also investigates pseudoephedrine and methamphetamine isomeric distribution from the Akabori–Momotani reaction with the aid of molecular modelling to understand why more pseudoephedrine than ephedrine is produced
Small business capital allowances
Get PDFCopyright © 2018 LexisNexis. This article is made available per the publisher's Content Sharing policy.On 1 July 2001 Australia introduced a new concessional small business entities (SBE) depreciation regime in Subdiv 328-D of the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 (Cth) (ITAA1997). Many changes have been made to the regime with the recent reforms to Subdiv 328-D providing a very generous $20,000 depreciating asset write-off as well as higher pool depreciation.1 This highlights the increasing politicalisation of Australia’s tax system and appears out of alignment with past Commonwealth governments’ calls for small business simplification2 and the current Liberal Coalition government’s focus on innovation. Turnbull sought for Australia “to be a culture, a national culture of innovation, of risk-taking, because as we do that, we grow the whole ecosystem of innovation right across the economy.”3 However, under the concessions, a relatively small number of larger small businesses obtain the vast majority of the tax benefits. In this context, this article examines the current depreciation regime provisions in Australia. This article first looks at how the current provisions relating to small business depreciation concessions have developed. This is followed by an analysis of Australia’s small business depreciation rules in Subdiv 328-D of the ITAA 1997 and the small restructure rollover relief in Subdiv 328-G. The article also analyses the costs and benefits of special small business depreciation and suggests a better way to
encourage innovation for small business formation
The Dirt on Clean Eating: A Cross Sectional Analysis of Dietary Intake, Restrained Eating and Opinions about Clean Eating among Women
Get PDF© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).= 762) ranging in age from 17–55 completed a self-report questionnaire on eating behaviour and beliefs about clean eating. Findings showed that 25.5% of the sample adhered to dietary advice from a clean eating site sometimes, often or very often. A significantly higher proportion of women who had adhered to dietary advice from clean eating sites met dietary guidelines for the consumption of fruit, meats and alternatives compared to women who had seldom or never adhered. Adherers also had significantly higher levels of restrained eating and were more positive about clean eating in general in comparison to those who seldom or never adhered. Results provide new information about exposure to clean eating sites and how they may influence women’s eating practices. These preliminary findings suggest additional studies are required to better understand the influence of clean eating sites, particularly with regard to whether the information on such sites are from reputable sources and to what degree their recommendations may be problematic for individuals with eating concerns. View Full-Tex
Urban Land Systems: An Ecosystems Perspective
Get PDF© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).We live in an urbanizing world. Since 2008, more than half of humanity lives in cities, both large and small, and old and new. We also live in a world that is becoming even more urbanized, it is expected that by 2050, 66 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities [1]. The process of urbanization, accompanied by the rapid expansion of cities and the sprawling growth of metropolitan regions over the world, is one of the most important transformations of a natural landscape. In the context of land systems science, contemporary urbanisation is a set of land-use change processes and the various contemporary cityscapes are the resulting land systems. Population growth increases urban footprints with consequences on biodiversity and climate. Much of the explosive urban growth has been unplanned and conflicting land-use demands often arise as land is a limited
resource. Increased requirements for living space and intensive landscape utilization constitute two of the principal reasons for the environmental change, with significant impacts on quality of life and ecosystems. This special issue of LAND explores urban land dynamics with particular regard to ecosystem structure, and discusses consequent environmental changes and their impacts. The studies cover a wide range of countries and contexts, and draw on a number of disciplinary methods and interdisciplinary approaches from the social and natural sciences. The papers have been authored by 41 researchers from
29 institutions in countries worldwide: from Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the USA
Distributed reading: Literary reading in diverse environments
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.Reading has always been a contentious and political practice, but this is heightened in the contemporary moment both because of the way the environments in which we read are changing so radically. For Katherine Hayles reading is “a powerful technology for reconfiguring activity patterns in the brain” [Hayles 2010, 193], a view representative of attempts to connect the new neuroscience of reading with age old practices of literary endeavour. For Sven Birkerts, however, “the Internet and the novel are opposites” [Birkerts 2010], a view that suggests that a hierarchy of reading that locks digital readers out of higher order thinking and literary experience. Meanwhile, Anne Mangen finds that electronic reading environments “negatively affect emotional aspects of reading” [Mangen 2016]. But these approaches tend to understand reading as something static that occurs in one space or another. However, in practice our reading is increasingly distributed. Reading can occur in multiple formats, across multiple platforms for the one text or reading experience. A novel begun in print can be read online in a born-digital format and concluded in a scanned digital format, for example. These journeys across platform require deeper investigation.
If we think of the printed book as an interface between two orders of thinking, we need to consider how the experience of reading a digitized version of a formerly printed and bound book alters literary reception and student experience. How does the experience of reading across different technological platforms change the reader’s relationship to the content? As more and more electronic reading platforms take on the physical attributes of material reading experiences either by retaining material traces or by emulating them, we might question what experience How do the material traces left on digitised works impact the reading process for reading in literary studies? The lively discourse surrounding Google Books and the human breaches of the material into the immaterial, as the work crosses the borders of formats and interfaces, raises valuable questions about the future of the book, reading in the twenty-first century, and the long and formidable shadow that centuries of material text production casts over Google Books’ electronic utopia. This paper uses both book history and new media interface theory to consider the multitude of diverse experiences that is literary reading across different platforms in and out of the classroom and to consider whether distracted reading can be better understood as distributed reading. It considers critical infrastructure studies as a useful framework through which to think about reading in the digital age
Health-related family quality of life when a child or young person has a disability
Get PDFCopyright (c) 2018 Margaret R. Kyrkou
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Parents of a child or young person with disability face not only the same challenges as parents of typically developing children and young people, but also the extra challenges of supporting the child or young person with disability in such a way as to maximise both their own quality of life (QOL) and family quality of life (FQOL) for all family members. Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) encompasses not only physical health but also mental and emotional health, equally important for FQOL. This article builds on information from previous publications, and illustrates relevant issues and the innovative methods parents, caregivers, and professionals have devised to enhance the HRQOL for children and young people with disability, and to improve FQOL. The author draws upon her personal lived experiences of having two daughters, the eldest an adult with disability, as well as being the medical consultant and manager of a newly created health unit tasked with supporting students with disability, who often have high health needs, in educational settings. The health conditions selected are those that have a major impact, not only on the young person with disability but also on family members. Vignettes, all deidentified true stories, will be included to illustrate the multiple issues faced by children and young people with disability, their families and extended families, and treating clinicians. These stories will hopefully resonate with families in particular
A systematic review of measures of adherence to physical exercise recommendations in people with stroke
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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)Objective:
To review methods for measuring adherence to exercise or physical activity practice recommendations in the stroke population and evaluate measurement properties of identified tools.
Data sources:
Two systematic searches were conducted in eight databases (MEDLINE, CINAHL, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews, Sports Discus, PEDro, PubMed and EMBASE). Phase 1 was conducted to identify measures. Phase 2 was conducted to identify studies investigating properties of these measures.
Review methods:
Phase 1 articles were selected if they were published in English, included participants with stroke, quantified adherence to exercise or physical activity recommendations, were patient or clinician reported, were defined and reproducible measures and included patients >18 years old. In phase 2, articles were included if they explored psychometric properties of the identified tools. Included articles were screened based on title/abstract and full-text review by two independent reviewers.
Results:
In phase 1, seven methods of adherence measurement were identified, including logbooks (n = 16), diaries (n = 18), ‘record of practice’ (n = 3), journals (n = 1), surveys (n = 2) and questionnaires (n = 4). One measurement tool was identified, the Physical Activity Scale for Individuals with Physical Disabilities (n = 4). In phase 2, no eligible studies were identified.
Conclusion:
There is not a consistent measure of adherence that is currently utilized. Diaries and logbooks are the most frequently utilized tools
A conceptual study of offshore fresh groundwater behaviour in the Perth Basin (Australia): Modern salinity trends in a prehistoric context
Get PDF© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/)Fresh groundwater is thought to occur off the coast of Perth, Western Australia, in the confined Leederville and Yarragadee aquifers. Onshore hydraulic heads suggest that offshore groundwater may be augmenting onshore groundwater extraction, which is a critical component of Perth’s water supply