Cancer screening barriers and facilitators for under and never screened populations: A mixed methods study

BackgroundCancer screening is below targets in Ontario, Canada. Our objective was to identify and quantify the barriers and facilitators for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening for under and never screened (UNS) residents living in Ontario between 2011 and 2013.MethodsWe used a multi-phased mixed methods study design. Results from thematic analysis of focus group discussions with health care providers and UNS community members were used to develop an on-line, province-wide, cross-sectional survey to estimate the prevalence of barriers and facilitators for the provincial population. Adjusted prevalence odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were estimated for UNS compared to regularly screened participants using logistic regression.ResultsFour focus groups were held with health service providers and sixteen with UNS community members. Top barriers and facilitators themed around provider-patient communication, fear and embarrassment, history of physical or sexual abuse, social determinants of health (including low literacy, lack of awareness, and health insurance), symptoms appearing, and family and friends. 3075 participants completed the online survey. Compared to regularly screened participants, UNS had significantly higher odds of reporting: no regular health care provider; not feeling comfortable talking about screening; or the Doctor or Nurse Practitioner not suggesting screening. UNS also had significantly higher odds of reporting the facilitators: the test being less scary/painful or uncomfortable; friend/family insisting on getting screened; starting to have symptoms; or an easier test that could be done at home.ConclusionsInterventions addressing fear through individual, interpersonal and structural facilitators may increase cancer screening.     

Characterization of human-dog social interaction using owner report

Dog owners were surveyed for observations of social behaviors in their dogs, using questions adapted from the human Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) pre-verbal module. Using 939 responses for purebred and mixed-breed dogs, three factors were identified: initiation of reciprocal social behaviors (INIT), response to social interactions (RSPNS), and communication (COMM). There were small or no effects of sex, age, breed group or training. For six breeds with more than 35 responses (Border Collie, Rough Collie, German Shepherd, Golden Retriever, Labrador Retriever, Standard Poodle), the behaviors eye contact with humans, enjoyment in interactions with human interaction, and name recognition demonstrated little variability across breeds, while asking for objects, giving/showing objects to humans, and attempts to direct humans’ attention showed higher variability across these breeds. Breeds with genetically similar backgrounds had similar response distributions for owner reports of dog response to pointing. When considering these breeds according to the broad categories of “herders” and “retrievers,” owners reported that the “herders” used more eye contact and vocalization, while the “retrievers” used more body contact. Information regarding social cognitive abilities in dogs provided by owner report suggest that there is variability across many social cognitive abilities in dogs and offers direction for further experimental investigations.     

The ecology and evolution of induced responses to herbivory and how plants perceive risk

1. Plants perceive herbivore damage or increased risk and respond. These changes may increase plant fitness, although effects on fitness have often been assumed without supporting evidence. 2. Three models have been proposed to explain induced rather than constitutive defence. The optimal defence model posits that induction allow plants to reduce allocation costs; it predicts demonstrably lower costs when defences are not needed. The moving target model posits that induction increases spatial and temporal variability; it predicts that variability will be difficult for herbivores and will provide defence. The information transfer model posits that induced responses provide cues to other tissues on that individual plant and to other organisms in the community; it predicts that induced cues will provide systemic resistance, deter herbivores, and/or attract enemies of herbivores, thereby benefiting the induced plant. 3. All three models predict that cues must be reliable to be useful. In some cases, cues provide specific information about the damaged plant tissue and the herbivore and this specific information may allow plants to fine-tune responses. Recent theory posits that selection should favour plants that minimise recognition errors and reduce fitness costs associated with errors. 4. Future research should focus on exploring different modalities used by plants to perceive herbivore risk, the benefits and costs of perceiving cues and inducing resistance, and the basic natural history of these phenomena. Induced responses have great unrealised potential in agriculture, and research should focus on host plant resistance rather than attempting to involve other trophic levels.     

Temperature coupling in cricket acoustic communication

Acoustic communication in Gryllus firmus is temperature-coupled: temperature induces parallel changes in male calling song temporal pattern, and in female preference for song. Temperature effects on song production and recognition networks were localized by selectively warming head or thorax or both head and thorax of intact crickets, then eliciting aggression song production (males) or phonotaxis to synthetic calling song (females). Because male song is produced by a thoracic central pattern generator (CPG), and because head ganglia are necessary for female song recognition, measurements of female phonotaxis under such conditions may be used to test the following competing hypotheses about organization of the song recognition network: 1. A set of neurons homologous to the male song CPG exist in the female, and are used as a template that determines preferred values of song temporal parameters for song pattern recognition (the common neural elements hypothesis), and 2. temporal pattern preference is determined entirely within the head ganglia. Neither selective warming of the head nor of the thorax was effective in changing female song preference, but simultaneous warming of head and thorax shifted preference toward a faster song in most preparations, as did warming the whole animal by raising ambient temperature. These results suggest that phonotactic preference for song temporal pattern is plurisegmentally determined in field crickets. Selective warming experiments during aggression song production in males revealed that syllable period is influenced but not completely determined by thoracic temperature; head temperature is irrelevant. The song CPG appears to receive some rate-setting information from outside the thoracic central nervous system.     

转基因传播障碍中的文化因素辨析

近年来,转基因技术与产品在中国的传播遭遇了一定障碍.科学界和相关政府部门往往从科学知识的普及角度克服这些障碍.但实际上,转基因传播障碍的背后有着更为隐蔽的反智的社会态度及对传统农业的迷恋心理,三个因素都与中国传统直观外推思维方式有关.转基因传播所面临的实际是构造自然观与有机自然观之间的冲突.对有机自然观的误读与当前弥漫的反智主义关系密切,转基因带有“高科技”的突出特征,恰恰容易成为反智主义攻击的对象.在有机自然观和“反智”传统的影响下,社会上对传统农业的迷恋有着相当的市场.在此情况下,转基因技术要克服传播障碍,必须重构环境,除了以经济动力继续推动传播工作外,也要让技术发展与人们普遍接受的自然观相结合.     

Defining criteria and indicators for a sustainability label of local public services

The assessment of sustainability of public services is an important issue, especially at local level, taken into account the central role of local governments as a major public employer and provider of a diversity of services. Local governments are close to citizens and are moving faster than other public sector levels with regard to the integration of sustainability principles in their operations and strategies. A sustainability label to communicate public service performance enables to disclose information directly to service users. However, there is a dearth of research about labels addressing specific sustainability criteria for local services. The main aim of this research was the development of a conceptual framework to define a sustainability label, as a tool to assess and communicate sustainability of local public services. The approach was developed taking into account criteria of the European Union Ecolabel and indicators of the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines. The ecolabel is a relatively well-known voluntary instrument in Europe and has the potential for application in public service activities and operations, but only assess the environmental component of sustainability. The Global Reporting Initiative, in particular the Sector Supplement for Public Agencies, was then used to integrate the other sustainability components. Thirty-six (36) criteria and respective indicators were adapted for the proposed sustainability label conceptual framework. A Portuguese local public service was used as an exploratory case study to test the proposed conceptual model into practice. The overall results demonstrate that few criteria were accomplished in this local public service, stressing that new practices and public policies need to be adopted to invert the current trend, especially through the application of assessment systems. This exploratory case study research has shown how useful can be a sustainability label to support local governments in evaluating and communicating the sustainability performance of their public services. This case could drive and support other government levels, including central and regional public administration, in adopting and exploring public service labels and their associated performance approaches.     

Natural roles of nonribosomal peptide metabolites in fungi

Over 90 years have passed since Alexander Fleming's discovery of penicillin, the first recognized, naturally occurring antibiotic. Penicillin is a representative of a group of metabolites produced by large multienzyme complexes [nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs)] in a ribosome-independent fashion. Nonribosomal peptides (NRPs) are structurally diverse metabolites produced almost exclusively by bacteria and fungi. NRPs include bioactive compounds useful for pharmaceutical applications (e.g., antibiotics, antitumor compounds, and immunosuppressants) and therefore much progress has been made in our understanding of medically relevant characteristics of NRPs in the past decades. Natural roles of NRP metabolites, on the other hand, have been largely ignored, and much less is known about the biological/physiological significance of NRPs under natural settings. In the present review, we summarize past and current work on natural functions of NRPs in their fungal producers, with a focus on virulence, development, and stress tolerance, and highlight the diverse roles these small peptide metabolites play. Some NRPs are involved in interactions with host organisms, others work in fungus-environment interfaces, and still others are crucial for vegetative and reproductive development of the producing fungi.     

Annonce des résultats en médecine nucléaire : enjeux et réflexions. «: Informer le patient,ce n’est pas l’obliger à entendre,mais le préparer à comprendre » - Article 7 de la charte du GT Ethique de la SFMN

Announcing ant delivering results to patients from nuclear medicine tests, and particularly with PET imaging, can vary profoundly from a department to another, even from a physician to another. French regulation regarding patients’ information and access to their health data as well as the National Cancer Institute's (Institut national du cancer–INCa) most recent recommendations concerning cancer announcement ask all medical imaging specialists (nuclear medicine physicians and radiologists) to be more implicated in the announcement process. Moreover, and above all legal considerations, it is ethically difficult to refuse any kind of medical communication to a demanding patient and let that patient, sometimes alone, discover the results without any kind of medical comments from the specialist who wrote the report. Such heterogeneity is real and must therefore be understood and explored. The arguments given by physicians who do not give results or who are not implicated in cancer announcement are analyzed in a non-dogmatic fashion to find concrete answers to patients’ legitimate expectancies.