A comparison of methods to identify alcohol involvement in youth injury-related emergency department presentation data

Aims: To compare different methods for identifying alcohol involvement in injury-related emergency department presentation in Queensland youth, and to explore the alcohol terminology used in triage text. Methods: Emergency Department Information System data were provided for patients aged 12-24 years with an injury-related diagnosis code for a 5 year period 2006-2010 presenting to a Queensland emergency department (N=348895). Three approaches were used to estimate alcohol involvement: 1) analysis of coded data, 2) mining of triage text, and 3) estimation using an adaptation of alcohol attributable fractions (AAF). Cases were identified as ‘alcohol-involved’ by code and text, as well as AAF weighted. Results: Around 6.4% of these injury presentations overall had some documentation of alcohol involvement, with higher proportions of alcohol involvement documented for 18-24 year olds, females, indigenous youth, where presentations occurred on a Saturday or Sunday, and where presentations occurred between midnight and 5am. The most common alcohol terms identified for all subgroups were generic alcohol terms (eg. ETOH or alcohol) with almost half of the cases where alcohol involvement was documented having a generic alcohol term recorded in the triage text. Conclusions: Emergency department data is a useful source of information for identification of high risk sub-groups to target intervention opportunities, though it is not a reliable source of data for incidence or trend estimation in its current unstandardised form. Improving the accuracy and consistency of identification, documenting and coding of alcohol-involvement at the point of data capture in the emergency department is the most desirable long term approach to produce a more solid evidence base to support policy and practice in this field.

Functional significance of male attractants of Bactrocera tryoni (Diptera: Tephritidae) and underlying mechanisms

This project elucidated functional role of phytochemicals used in the management of pest fruit flies. Comparative behavioural, physiological and genomic approaches revealed that phytochemicals are mediating reproductive fitness by changing pheromonal compound males release and by making them physiologically more active. The possible mechanistic functions are that the phytochemicals act as a pheromone booster and as an energy supplement.

Applying quantile regression for modeling equivalent property damage only crashes to identify accident blackspots

Hot spot identification (HSID) aims to identify potential sites—roadway segments, intersections, crosswalks, interchanges, ramps, etc.—with disproportionately high crash risk relative to similar sites. An inefficient HSID methodology might result in either identifying a safe site as high risk (false positive) or a high risk site as safe (false negative), and consequently lead to the misuse the available public funds, to poor investment decisions, and to inefficient risk management practice. Current HSID methods suffer from issues like underreporting of minor injury and property damage only (PDO) crashes, challenges of accounting for crash severity into the methodology, and selection of a proper safety performance function to model crash data that is often heavily skewed by a preponderance of zeros. Addressing these challenges, this paper proposes a combination of a PDO equivalency calculation and quantile regression technique to identify hot spots in a transportation network. In particular, issues related to underreporting and crash severity are tackled by incorporating equivalent PDO crashes, whilst the concerns related to the non-count nature of equivalent PDO crashes and the skewness of crash data are addressed by the non-parametric quantile regression technique. The proposed method identifies covariate effects on various quantiles of a population, rather than the population mean like most methods in practice, which more closely corresponds with how black spots are identified in practice. The proposed methodology is illustrated using rural road segment data from Korea and compared against the traditional EB method with negative binomial regression. Application of a quantile regression model on equivalent PDO crashes enables identification of a set of high-risk sites that reflect the true safety costs to the society, simultaneously reduces the influence of under-reported PDO and minor injury crashes, and overcomes the limitation of traditional NB model in dealing with preponderance of zeros problem or right skewed dataset.

Controlling whole blood activation and resultant clot properties by carboxyl and alkyl functional groups on material surfaces : a possible therapeutic approach for enhancing bone healing

Most research virtually ignores the important role of a blood clot in supporting bone healing. In this study, we investigated the effects of surface functional groups carboxyl and alkyl on whole blood coagulation, complement activation and blood clot formation. We synthesised and tested a series of materials with different ratios of carboxyl (–COOH) and alkyl (–CH3, –CH2CH3 and –(CH2)3CH3) groups. We found that surfaces with –COOH/–(CH2)3CH3 induced a faster coagulation activation than those with –COOH/– CH3 and –CH2CH3, regardless of the –COOH ratios. An increase in –COOH ratios on –COOH/–CH3 and –CH2CH3 surfaces decreased the rate of coagulation activation. The pattern of complement activation was entirely similar to that of surface-induced coagulation. All material coated surfaces resulted in clots with thicker fibrin in a denser network at the clot/material interface and a significantly slower initial fibrinolysis when compared to uncoated glass surfaces. The amounts of platelet-derived growth factor-AB (PDGF-AB) and transforming growth factor-b (TGF-b1) released from an intact clot were higher than a lysed clot. The release of PDGF-AB was found to be correlated with the fibrin density. This study demonstrated that surface chemistry can significantly influence the activation of blood coagulation and complement system, resultant clot structure, susceptibility to fibrinolysis as well as release of growth factors, which are important factors determining the bone healing process.

Long non coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are dysregulated in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma (MPM)

Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma (MPM) is an aggressive cancer that is often diagnosed at an advanced stage and is characterized by a long latency period (20-40 years between initial exposure and diagnosis) and prior exposure to asbestos. Currently accurate diagnosis of MPM is difficult due to the lack of sensitive biomarkers and despite minor improvements in treatment, median survival rates do not exceed 12 months. Accumulating evidence suggests that aberrant expression of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play an important functional role in cancer biology. LncRNAs are a class of recently discovered non-protein coding RNAs >200 nucleotides in length with a role in regulating transcription. Here we used NCode long noncoding microarrays to identify differentially expressed lncRNAs potentially involved in MPM pathogenesis. High priority candidate lncRNAs were selected on the basis of statistical (P<0.05) and biological significance (>3-fold difference). Expression levels of 9 candidate lncRNAs were technically validated using RT-qPCR, and biologically validated in three independent test sets: (1) 57 archived MPM tissues obtained from extrapleural pneumonectomy patients, (2) 15 cryopreserved MPM and 3 benign pleura, and (3) an extended panel of 10 MPM cell lines. RT-qPCR analysis demonstrated consistent up-regulation of these lncRNAs in independent datasets. ROC curve analysis showed that two candidates were able to separate benign pleura and MPM with high sensitivity and specificity, and were associated with nodal metastases and survival following induction chemotherapy. These results suggest that lncRNAs have potential to serve as biomarkers in MPM.

An exploratory study of staff nurses' knowledge of delirium in the medical ICU: An Asian perspective

Aim The aim of this study was to establish intensive care unit nurses’ knowledge of delirium within an acute tertiary hospital within South East Asia. Background Delirium is a common, life threatening and often preventable cause of morbidity and mortality among older patients. Undetected and untreated delirium is a catalyst to increased mortality, morbidity, functional decline and results in increased requirement for nursing care, healthcare expense and hospital length of stay. However, despite effective assessment tools to identify delirium in the acute setting, there still remains an inability of ICU nurses’ to accurately identify delirium in the critically ill patient especially that of hypoactive delirium. Method A purposive sample of 53 staff nurses from a 13-bedded medical intensive care unit within an acute tertiary teaching hospital in South East Asia were asked to participate. A 40 item 5-point Likert scale questionnaire was employed to determine the participants’ knowledge of the signs and symptoms; the risk factors and negative outcomes of delirium. Results The overall positively answered mean score was 27 (67.3%) out of a possible 40 questions. Mean scores for knowledge of signs and symptoms, risk factors and negative outcomes were 9.52 (63.5%, n = 15), 11.43 (63.5%, n = 17) and 6.0 (75%, n = 8), respectively. Conclusion Whilst the results of this study are similar to others taken from a western perspective, it appeared that the ICU nurses in this study demonstrated limited knowledge of the signs and symptoms, risk factors and negative outcomes of delirium in the critically patient. The implications for practice of this are important given the outcomes of untreated delirium.

Functional encryption for threshold functions (or fuzzy IBE) from lattices

Cryptosystems based on the hardness of lattice problems have recently acquired much importance due to their average-case to worst-case equivalence, their conjectured resistance to quantum cryptanalysis, their ease of implementation and increasing practicality, and, lately, their promising potential as a platform for constructing advanced functionalities. In this work, we construct “Fuzzy” Identity Based Encryption from the hardness of the Learning With Errors (LWE) problem. We note that for our parameters, the underlying lattice problems (such as gapSVP or SIVP) are assumed to be hard to approximate within supexponential factors for adversaries running in subexponential time. We give CPA and CCA secure variants of our construction, for small and large universes of attributes. All our constructions are secure against selective-identity attacks in the standard model. Our construction is made possible by observing certain special properties that secret sharing schemes need to satisfy in order to be useful for Fuzzy IBE. We also discuss some obstacles towards realizing lattice-based attribute-based encryption (ABE).

Automatic classification of free-text radiology reports to identify limb fractures using machine learning and the SNOMED CT ontology

Objective To develop and evaluate machine learning techniques that identify limb fractures and other abnormalities (e.g. dislocations) from radiology reports. Materials and Methods 99 free-text reports of limb radiology examinations were acquired from an Australian public hospital. Two clinicians were employed to identify fractures and abnormalities from the reports; a third senior clinician resolved disagreements. These assessors found that, of the 99 reports, 48 referred to fractures or abnormalities of limb structures. Automated methods were then used to extract features from these reports that could be useful for their automatic classification. The Naive Bayes classification algorithm and two implementations of the support vector machine algorithm were formally evaluated using cross-fold validation over the 99 reports. Result Results show that the Naive Bayes classifier accurately identifies fractures and other abnormalities from the radiology reports. These results were achieved when extracting stemmed token bigram and negation features, as well as using these features in combination with SNOMED CT concepts related to abnormalities and disorders. The latter feature has not been used in previous works that attempted classifying free-text radiology reports. Discussion Automated classification methods have proven effective at identifying fractures and other abnormalities from radiology reports (F-Measure up to 92.31%). Key to the success of these techniques are features such as stemmed token bigrams, negations, and SNOMED CT concepts associated with morphologic abnormalities and disorders. Conclusion This investigation shows early promising results and future work will further validate and strengthen the proposed approaches.

Temporal and functional changes in glycosaminoglycan expression during osteogenesis

Heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs) are complex and labile macromolecular moieties on the surfaces of cells that control the activities of a range of extracellular proteins, particularly those driving growth and regeneration. Here, we examine the biosynthesis of heparan sulfate (HS) sugars produced by cultured MC3T3-E1 mouse calvarial pre-osteoblast cells in order to explore the idea that changes in HS activity in turn drive phenotypic development during osteogenesis. Cells grown for 5 days under proliferating conditions were compared to cells grown for 20 days under mineralizing conditions with respect to their phenotype, the forms of HS core protein produced, and their HS sulfotransferase biosynthetic enzyme levels. RQ-PCR data was supported by the results from the purification of day 5 and day 20 HS forms by anionic exchange chromatography. The data show that cells in active growth phases produce more complex forms of sugar than cells that have become relatively quiescent during active mineralization, and that these in turn can differentially influence rates of cell growth when added exogenously back to preosteoblasts.

The development of a simple multi-nodal tool to identify performance issues in existing commercial buildings

Australia’s building stock includes many older commercial buildings with numerous factors that impact energy performance and indoor environment quality. The built environment industry has generally focused heavily on improving physical building design elements for greater energy efficiency (such as retrofits and environmental upgrades), however there are noticeable ‘upper limits’ to performance improvements in these areas. To achieve a stepchange improvement in building performance, the authors propose that additional components need to be addressed in a whole of building approach, including the way building design elements are managed and the level of stakeholder engagement between owners, tenants and building managers. This paper focuses on the opportunities provided by this whole-of-building approach, presenting the findings of a research project undertaken through the Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) in Australia. Researchers worked with a number of industry partners over two years to investigate issues facing stakeholders at base building and tenancy levels, and the barriers to improving building performance. Through a mixed-method, industry-led research approach, five ‘nodes’ were identified in whole-of-building performance evaluation, each with interlinking and overlapping complexities that can influence performance. The nodes cover building management, occupant experience, indoor environment quality, agreements and culture, and design elements. This paper outlines the development and testing of these nodes and their interactions, and the resultant multi-nodal tool, called the ‘Performance Nexus’ tool. The tool is intended to be of most benefit in evaluating opportunities for performance improvement in the vast number of existing low-performing building stock.

Design Minds Tomorrow's Classroom Toolkit

The Design Minds Tomorrow’s Classroom Toolkit was one of six K7-12 secondary school design toolkits commissioned by the State Library of Queensland (SLQ) Asia Pacific Design Library (APDL), to facilitate the delivery of the Stage 1 launch of its Design Minds online platform (www.designminds.org.au) partnership initiative with Queensland Government Arts Queensland and the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, on June 29, 2012. Design Minds toolkits are practical guides, underpinned by a combination of one to three of the Design Minds model phases of ‘Inquire’, ‘Ideate’ and ‘Implement’ (supported by at each stage with structured reflection), to enhance existing school curriculum and empower students with real life design exercises, within the classroom environment. Toolkits directly identify links to Naplan, National Curriculum, C2C and Professional Standards benchmarks, as well as the student capabilities of successful and creative 21st century citizens they seek to engender through design thinking. This toolkit explores, through four distinct exercises, different design tools and ways to approach the future design of environments (classrooms/schools) to facilitate the Reggio Emilia philosophy of learning, while addressing diverse and changing social, cultural, technological and environmental challenges. The Design Minds Tomorrow’s Classroom Toolkit encourages students to explore architecture and interior design, and to think about their (life-long) learning as a product of inspiring interactions with people and the environments around them, and that their potential role in contributing to both delightful and functional design solutions requires a deep understanding of the user experience. More generally, it aims to facilitate awareness in young people, of the role of design in society and the value of design thinking skills in generating strategies to solve basic to complex systemic challenges, as well as to inspire post-secondary pathways and idea generation for education. The toolkit encourages students and teachers to develop sketching, making, communication, presentation and collaboration skills to improve their design process, as well as explore further inquiry (background research) to enhance the ideation exercises. Exercise 1 focuses on the ‘Inquire’ and ‘Ideate’ phases, Exercise 2 on the ‘Inquire’, Exercise 3 builds on ideation skills, and Exercise 4 concentrates on the ‘Implement’ phase. Depending on the intensity of the focus, the unit of work could be developed over a 2-5 week program (approximately 4-10 x 60 minute lessons/workshops) or as smaller workshops treated as discrete learning experiences. The toolkit is available for public download from http://designminds.org.au/tomorrows-classroom/ on the Design Minds website. This toolkit inspired the authorship and facilitation of a 2-day design workshop entitled Learning Environment 2050 at John Paul College, Daisy Hill, Brisbane on the 15-16 August 2013. 120 Grade 7 students and their teachers, under the mentorship of two design academics, 3 QUT design students and a professional architect, as part of a QUT School of Design Project Week community engagement activity, explored the formulation of a participatory design brief for the redesign of the school’s Wesley Precinct (including classrooms, a sustainable farm and recreation areas).

Identification, functional expression and kinetic analysis of two primary amine oxidases from Rhodococcus opacus

Two native copper-containing amine oxidases (EC 1.4.3.21) have been isolated from Rhodococcus opacus and reveal phenotypic plasticity and catalytic activity with respect to structurally diverse natural and synthetic amines. Altering the amine growth substrate has enabled tailored and targeted oxidase upreg-ulation, which with subsequent treatment by precipitation, ion exchange and gel filtration, achieved a 90–150 fold purification. MALDI-TOF mass spectrometric and genomic analysis has indicated multiple gene activation with complex biodegradation pathways and regulatory mechanisms. Additional post-purification characterisation has drawn on the use of carbonyl reagent and chelating agent inhibitors. Michaelis–Menten kinetics for common aliphatic and aromatic amine substrates and several structural analogues demonstrated a broad specificity and high affinity with Michaelis constants (K M) ranging from 0.1 to 0.9 mM for C 1 –C 5 aliphatic mono-amines and <0.2 mM for a range of aromatic amines. Potential exploitation of the enzymatic versatility of the two isolated oxidases in biosensing and bioprocessing is discussed.

N-terminal acetylome analyses and functional insights of the N-terminal acetyltransferase NatB

Protein N-terminal acetylation (Nt-acetylation) is an important mediator of protein function, stability, sorting, and localization. Although the responsible enzymes are thought to be fairly well characterized, the lack of identified in vivo substrates, the occurrence of Nt-acetylation substrates displaying yet uncharacterized N-terminal acetyltransferase (NAT) specificities, and emerging evidence of posttranslational Nt-acetylation, necessitate the use of genetic models and quantitative proteomics. NatB, which targets Met-Glu-, Met-Asp-, and Met-Asn-starting protein N termini, is presumed to Nt-acetylate 15% of all yeast and 18% of all human proteins. We here report on the evolutionary traits of NatB from yeast to human and demonstrate that ectopically expressed hNatB in a yNatB-Δ yeast strain partially complements the natB-Δ phenotypes and partially restores the yNatB Nt-acetylome. Overall, combining quantitative N-terminomics with yeast studies and knockdown of hNatB in human cell lines, led to the unambiguous identification of 180 human and 110 yeast NatB substrates. Interestingly, these substrates included Met-Gln- N-termini, which are thus now classified as in vivo NatB substrates. We also demonstrate the requirement of hNatB activity for maintaining the structure and function of actomyosin fibers and for proper cellular migration. In addition, expression of tropomyosin-1 restored the altered focal adhesions and cellular migration defects observed in hNatB-depleted HeLa cells, indicative for the conserved link between NatB, tropomyosin, and actin cable function from yeast to human.

A new plasmid display technology for the in vitro selection of functional phenotype–genotype linked proteins

Background: Display technologies which allow peptides or proteins to be physically associated with the encoding DNA are central to procedures which involve screening of protein libraries in vitro for new or altered function. Here we describe a new system designed specifically for the display of libraries of diverse, functional proteins which utilises the DNA binding protein nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) p50 to establish a phenotype–genotype link between the displayed protein and the encoding gene. Results: A range of model fusion proteins to either the amino- or carboxy-terminus of NF-κB p50 have been constructed and shown to retain the picomolar affinity and DNA specificity of wild-type NF-κB p50. Through use of an optimal combination of binding buffer and DNA target sequence, the half-life of p50–DNA complexes could be increased to over 47 h, enabling the competitive selection of a variety of protein–plasmid complexes with enrichment factors of up to 6000-fold per round. The p50-based plasmid display system was used to enrich a maltose binding protein complex to homogeneity in only three rounds from a binary mixture with a starting ratio of 1:108 and to enrich to near homogeneity a single functional protein from a phenotype–genotype linked Escherichia coli genomic library using in vitro functional selections. Conclusions: A new display technology is described which addresses the challenge of functional protein display. The results demonstrate that plasmid display is sufficiently sensitive to select a functional protein from large libraries and that it therefore represents a useful addition to the repertoire of display technologies.

Survival of rat functional dental pulp cells in vascularized tissue engineering chambers

Regenerative endodontics aims to preserve, repair or regenerate the dental pulp tissue. Dental pulp stem cells, have a potential use in dental tissue generation. However, specific requirements to drive the dental tissue generation are still obscured. We established an in vivo model for studying the survival of dental pulp cells (DPC) and their potential to generate dental pulp tissue. DPC were mixed with collagen scaffold with or without slow release bone morphogenic protein 4 (BMP-4) and fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2). The cell suspension was transplanted into a vascularized tissue engineering chamber in the rat groin. Tissue constructs were harvested after 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks and processed for histomorphological and immunohistochemical analysis. After 2 weeks newly formed tissue with new blood vessel formation were observed inside the chamber. DPC were found around dentin, particularly around the vascular pedicle and also close to the gelatin microspheres. Cell survival, was confirmed up to 8 weeks after transplantation. Dentin Sialophosphoprotein (DSPP) positive matrix production was detected in the chamber, indicating functionality of dental pulp progenitor cells. This study demonstrates the potential of our tissue engineering model to study rat dental pulp cells and their behavior in dental pulp regeneration, for future development of an alternative treatment using these techniques.