‘We need to know what’s going on’: views of family members toward the sexual expression of people with dementia in residential aged care

This paper reports on a study which explored the views and attitudes of family members towards the sexual expression of residents with dementia in residential aged care facilities in two states in Australia. Recruitment was challenging and only seven family members agreed to an interview on this topic. Data were analysed using a constant comparative method. Family were generally supportive of residents’ rights to sexual expression, but only some types of behaviours were approved of. There was an acknowledgement that responding to residents’ sexuality was difficult for staff and many families believed that they should be kept informed of their relative’s sexual behaviours and moreover be involved in decision making about it. Findings suggest the need for family education and a larger study to better understand the views and motivations of family carers and how these might impact on the sexual expression of the older person with dementia living in residential aged care.

French version of the Family Attitude Scale : psychometric properties and relation of attitudes to the respondent's psychiatric status

The Family Attitude Scale (FAS) is a self-report measure of critical or hostile attitudes and behaviors towards another family member, and demonstrates an ability to predict relapse in psychoses. Data are not currently available on a French version of the scale. The present study developed a French version of the FAS, using a large general population sample to test its internal structure, criterion validity and relationships with the respondents' symptoms and psychiatric diagnoses, and examined the reciprocity of FAS ratings by respondents and their partners. A total of 2072 adults from an urban population undertook a diagnostic interview and completed self-report measures, including an FAS about their partner. A subset of participants had partners who also completed the FAS. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed an excellent fit by a single-factor model, and the FAS demonstrated a strong association with dyadic adjustment. FAS scores of respondents were affected by their anxiety levels and mood, alcohol and anxiety diagnoses, and moderate reciprocity of attitudes and behaviors between the partners was seen. The French version of the FAS has similarly strong psychometric properties to the original English version. Future research should assess the ability of the French FAS to predict relapse of psychiatric disorders.

Self-efficacy partially mediates between social support and health-related quality of life in family caregivers for dementia patients in Shanghai

Background: There is a paucity of research assessing health-related quality of life (HRQoL) and self-efficacy in caregivers of relatives with dementia in mainland China. Aims: To compare the level of HRQoL between caregivers and the general population in mainland China and to assess the role of caregiver self-efficacy in the relationship between caregiver social support and HRQoL. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in Shanghai, China. The caregivers were recruited from the outpatient department of a teaching hospital. A total of 195 participants were interviewed, using a survey package including the Chinese version of the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), demographic data, the variables associated with the impairments of care recipients, perceived social support and caregiver self-efficacy. The caregivers' SF-36 scores were compared with those of the general population in China. Results: The results indicated that the HRQoL of the caregivers was poorer compared with that of the general population when matched for age and gender. Multiple regression analyses revealed that caregiver self-efficacy is a partial mediator between social support and HRQoL, and a partial mediator between behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) and caregiver mental health. Conclusion: Assisting with managing BPSD and enhancing caregiver self-efficacy can be considered integral parts of interventions to improve caregiver HRQoL.

Context-specific stressors, work-related social support and work-family conflict : a mediation study

Understanding the antecedents of work-family conflict is important as it allows organisations to effectively engage in work design for professional employees. This study examines the impact of sources of social support as antecedents of work-family conflict. The hypotheses were tests using Partial Least Squares modelling on a sample of 366 professional employees. The path model showed that context-specific stressors impacted positively on job demand, which led to higher levels of work-family conflict. Contrary to our expectation, non-work related social support did not have any statistical relationship with job demand and work-family conflict. In addition, individuals experiencing high job demands were found to obtain more social support from both work and non-work-related sources. Individuals with more work-related social support were less likely to have less work-family conflict. Surprisingly, non-work social support sources had no statistically significant relationship with work-family conflict.

Molecular characterization of "Candidatus Parilichlamydia carangidicola," a novel Chlamydia-like epitheliocystis agent in yellowtail kingfish, Seriola lalandi (Valenciennes), and the proposal of a new family, "Candidatus Parilichlamydiaceae" fam. nov. (order Chlamydiales).

Three cohorts of farmed yellowtail kingfish (Seriola lalandi) from South Australia were examined for Chlamydia-like organisms associated with epitheliocystis. To characterize the bacteria, 38 gill samples were processed for histopathology, electron microscopy, and 16S rRNA amplification, sequencing, and phylogenetic analysis. Microscopically, the presence of membrane-enclosed cysts was observed within the gill lamellae. Also observed was hyperplasia of the epithelial cells with cytoplasmic vacuolization and fusion of the gill lamellae. Transmission electron microscopy revealed morphological features of the reticulate and intermediate bodies typical of members of the order Chlamydiales. A novel 1,393-bp 16S chlamydial rRNA sequence was amplified from gill DNA extracted from fish in all cohorts over a 3-year period that corresponded to the 16S rRNA sequence amplified directly from laser-dissected cysts. This sequence was only 87% similar to the reported "Candidatus Piscichlamydia salmonis" (AY462244) from Atlantic salmon and Arctic charr. Phylogenetic analysis of this sequence against 35 Chlamydia and Chlamydia-like bacteria revealed that this novel bacterium belongs to an undescribed family lineage in the order Chlamydiales. Based on these observations, we propose this bacterium of yellowtail kingfish be known as "Candidatus Parilichlamydia carangidicola" and that the new family be known as "Candidatus Parilichlamydiaceae."

End-of-life care in the intensive care unit : a systematic review of qualitative studies investigating the experiences and perceptions of the patient's family

Review question/objective The review objective is to synthesise the best available evidence on experiences and perceptions of family members of intensive care unit patients on the adequacy of end-of-life care, where life-support modalities have been withheld or withdrawn. Inclusion criteria Types of participants This review will consider studies that report on the experiences and perceptions of patients’ families on EOLC in the ICU, where life-support modalities have been withheld or withdrawn. The family is defined as “those who are closest to the patient... the family may include the biological family, family by acquisition, and the family of choice and friends”. Phenomena of interest The phenomena of interest for this review are the patients’ families experiences, perceptions or views on the adequacy of EOLC delivered in the ICU, where life-support modalities were withheld or withdrawn. These experiences may refer to the following views on domains of care considered important at the end-of-life in the ICU, which have been described already in the existing literature: timely, consistent, and compassionate communication, clinician availability, clinical decision making based on patients’ preferences, goals and values, physical care implemented to maintain patient comfort, holistic interdisciplinary care and bereavement care for families of patients who died.

The uber-assumption family

We offer an exposition of Boneh, Boyen, and Goh’s “uber-assumption” family for analyzing the validity and strength of pairing assumptions in the generic-group model, and augment the original BBG framework with a few simple but useful extensions.

Partial mediation role of self-efficacy between positive social interaction and mental health in family caregivers for dementia patients in Shanghai

We explored the mediation effect of caregiver self-efficacy on the influences of behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSD) of dementia care recipients (CRs) or family caregivers’ (CGs) social supports (informational, tangible and affectionate support and positive social interaction) on CGs’ mental health. We interviewed 196 CGs, using a battery of measures including demographic data of the dyads, CRs’ dementia-related impairments, and CGs’ social support, self-efficacy and the Medical Outcome Study (MOS) Short-Form (SF-36) Health Survey. Multiple regression analyses showed that gathering information on self-efficacy and managing CG distress self-efficacy were the partial mediators of the relationship between positive social interaction and CG mental health. Managing caregiving distress self-efficacy also partial mediated the impact of BPSD on CG mental health. We discuss implications of the results for improving mental health of the target population in mainland China.

Cryptanalysis of the LAKE hash family

We analyse the security of the cryptographic hash function LAKE-256 proposed at FSE 2008 by Aumasson, Meier and Phan. By exploiting non-injectivity of some of the building primitives of LAKE, we show three different collision and near-collision attacks on the compression function. The first attack uses differences in the chaining values and the block counter and finds collisions with complexity 233. The second attack utilizes differences in the chaining values and salt and yields collisions with complexity 242. The final attack uses differences only in the chaining values to yield near-collisions with complexity 299. All our attacks are independent of the number of rounds in the compression function. We illustrate the first two attacks by showing examples of collisions and near-collisions.

Creating regional resilience in Australia

This paper explores the impact that extreme weather events can have on communities. Using the Brisbane floods of 2011 to examine the recovery operations, the paper highlights the effectiveness of recovery and rebuilding in already strong and resilient communities. Our research has shown that communities which have a strong sense of identity, as well as organized places to meet, develop resilient networks that come into play in times of crisis. The increasing trend of the fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) or drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) workforce to service regional areas has undermined the resilience of existing communities. The first hint of this occurs with community groups not knowing who their neighbours are. The paper is based on research examining the needs of groups in regional communities with the goal to better equip regional communities with the capacity to respond positively to change (and crisis) through in-novative, evidence-based policies, resilience strategies and tools. Part of this process was to build an evidence-base to address a range of challenges associated with the place-based environments and the sharing of information systems within communities and decision makers. The first part of the paper explores the context in which communities have been required to mobilize in response to crises; the issues that have galvanized a common purpose; and the methods by which these communities shared their knowledge. The second part of the paper examines how communities could plan for and mitigate natural disasters in the future by developing better decision making tools. The paper defines the requirements for information systems that will link data models of built infrastruc-ture with data from the disaster and response plans. These will then form the basis for the use of social media to coordinate activities between official crews and the public to improve response coordination and provide the technology that could reduce the time required to allow communities to resume some semblance of normality.

Symbiotic relationships : saviour siblings, family rights and biomedicine

It is now possible to combine the use of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) and tissue matching to select an IVF embryo that will, after birth, be a compatible tissue donor for an existing individual. This article analyses the ethical issues and the regulatory frameworks that intersect around the creation of tissue compatible children.