Barriers and facilitators of implementation of a community cardiovascular disease prevention programme in Mukono and Buikwe districts in Uganda using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research

There is a need to unpack the empirical, practical, and personal challenges within participatory approaches advocated to optimize implementation. The unpredictable, chaotic nature of participatory approaches complicates application of implementation theories, methods, and strategies which do not address researchers’ situatedness within participatory processes. As an implementation scientist, addressing one’s own situatedness through critical reflection is important to unearth how conscious and unconscious approaches, including ontological and epistemological underpinnings, influence the participatory context, process, and outcomes. Therefore, the aim of this exploratory work is to investigate the heretofore blind spot toward the lived experience of implementation researchers within the participatory process. We developed an integrated research-practice partnership (IRPP) to inform the implementation of a gestational weight gain (GWG) control program. Within this IRPP, one investigator conducted a 12-month autoethnography. Data collection and triangulation included field notes, cultural artifacts, and systematic timeline tracking. Data analysis included ethnographic-theoretical dialogue and restorying to synthesize key events and epiphanies into a narrative. Analysis revealed the unpredicted evolution of the GWG program into a maternal health fair and three themes within the researchers’ lived experience: (1) permeable work boundaries, (2) individual and collective blind spots toward the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of implementation paradigms, and (3) maladaptive behaviors seemingly reinforced by the research culture. These themes contributed to the chaos of implementation and to researchers’ experience of inadequate recovery from cognitive, emotional, and practical demands. These themes also demonstrated the importance of contextual factors, subjectivity, and value-based judgments within implementation research. Building on extant qualitative research guidelines, we suggest that researchers anchor their approach to implementation in reflexivity, intentionally and iteratively reflecting on their own situatedness. Through this autoethnography, we have elucidated several strategies based on critical reflection including examining philosophical underpinnings of research, adopting restorative practices that align with one’s values, and embracing personal presence as a foundation of scientific productivity. Within the predominant (post-) positivism paradigms, autoethnography may be criticized as unscientifically subjective or self-indulgent. However, this work demonstrates that autoethnography is a vehicle for third-person observation and first-person critical reflection that is transformative in understanding and optimizing implementation contexts, processes, and outcomes.     

Helicobacter equorum: prevalence and significance for horses and humans

Helicobacter equorum colonizes the caecum, colon and rectum of horses. The agent is highly prevalent in <6-month-old foals. In adult horses, the prevalence of H. equorum seems to be rather low, but these animals may harbour low, subdetectable numbers of this microorganism in their intestines. So far, no association could be made between the presence of H. equorum and clinical disease or intestinal lesions in adult horses. Further research is necessary to elucidate the pathogenic potential of this bacterial species towards young foals. Helicobacter equorum DNA was not detected in human faeces, indicating that this microorganism does not commonly spread from horses towards humans.     

A classification of European skulls from three time periods

We analyze the taxonomic structure of European populations at three time periods, the Early Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages and the Recent Period. The data consist of sample means for 10 cranial variables based on 137, 108, and 183 samples for the three periods. Clustering by standard numerical taxonomic procedures reveals that the data are represented only poorly as hierarchic classifications. The clusters form significant and moderately strong associations with an arrangement of the samples by regions (geography) and by language family. Whereas during the early period, language family showed a stronger association with clusters based on cranial morphology, in the recent populations these clusters correspond better with geography than with language. Ordinations of these populations by means of nonmetric multidimensional scaling shows the continuity of the taxonomic structure at all three periods. Only a few populations are outliers. The relations between phenetic distances (cranial morphology), geography, and language are examined by means of multiple Mantel tests. At all three periods geography is correlated somewhat more strongly with phenetics than is language affiliation, but the correlation with the latter increases with time. When the data are pooled over the three periods, the populations tend to group by language affiliation more than they do by period. Ordination of the pooled data reveals language patterns rather than patterns due to period, showing strong shifts in cranial measurements through time. These analyses show that while there is no clear-cut taxonomic structure in European populations that would justify the traditional classifications based on the crania, there are significant and important associations with both language affiliation, geography, and time period, in this order. These patterns are likely to have become established through the migration and subsequent expansion of populations into their areas of occupation during the time interval studied rather than by geographic differentiation in situ.     

Molt staging in artemia adapted to drach's system

The molting cycle of Artemia is described and subdivided in stages A-D3 according to the system of Drach. Determination of the stages is done in living animals by light microscopic observation of changes in the texture of the setal matrix of the exopodites. A parallel ultrastructural investigation of the integument was carried out to control the proposed staging scheme. The duration of each stage was calculated.     

Effect of pollen,natural prey and factitious prey on the development of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Iphiseius degenerans</Emphasis>

The predatory mite Iphiseius degenerans (Berlese) is commercially available as a biological control agent of thrips and spider mites in greenhouse crops. Developmental duration and immature survival of I. degeneransreared on nine types of food (almond pollen, apple pollen, castor bean pollen, plum pollen, sweet pepper pollen, Tetranychus urticaeKoch, Frankliniella occidentalis(Pergande), Ephestia kuehniella Zeller eggs and Artemia franciscana Kellogg cysts) and on three substrates (Multicel, sweet pepper leaf, and bean leaf) were determined in the laboratory. All experiments were carried out at 25 °C. On Multicel, mean developmental times on pollen ranged from 6.0 to 7.1 days, with the lowest value recorded on almond pollen and the highest on sweet pepper pollen. When reared on castor bean pollen significantly longer developmental times were obtained on a sweet pepper leaf compared to a bean leaf or Multicel. Developmental duration when offered T. urticaeon Multicel ranged between 6.1 and 6.9 days, on a bean leaf development was completed in 8.0 days. The longest developmental times on Multicel were recorded on Ephestia eggs (7.0 days) and on decapsulated Artemia cysts (7.5 days). No development beyond the protonymphal stage occurred in the absence of food or when encapsulated Artemia cysts or thrips larvae were offered on Multicel. On a sweet pepper leaf and a bean leaf, respectively 6.7 and 10.0% of the eggs reached adulthood when thrips larvae were provided as food; developmental times recorded here, were 9.0 and 8.3 days. Overall, immature mortality occurred mainly in the protonymphal stage and ranged from 0.0 to 36.7%. In conclusion, I. degenerans is able to feed on a variety of natural and unnatural foods, but thrips larvae and sweet pepper pollen are unfavourable food for immature development. This could compromise the establishment of this biological control agent when used against thrips in sweet pepper crops.