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Item type: Publication , Access status: Metadata only , [Prophylaxis of cytomegalovirus infections with ganciclovir in kidney transplant recipients](1992) Rondeau, E.; Bourgeon, B.; Peraldi, M. N.; Lang, P.; Buisson, C.; Schulte, K. M.; Weill, B.; Sraer, J. D.In an open-labeled randomized study, prophylactic treatment with ganciclovir (day 15 to day 29) was administered to 23 cytomegalovirus seronegative patients who received a kidney from a cytomegalovirus seropositive donor. Both groups (control = 11, ganciclovir = 12) were similar in age, immunosuppressive treatments, acute rejection episodes and number of steroid pulses. A seroconversion occurred in 10 control patients (91 percent) and in 10 patients of the ganciclovir group (84 percent). A cytomegalovirus disease was observed in 10 control patients (91 percent) and in 8 patients of the ganciclovir group (66 percent). The delay between grafting and cytomegalovirus disease was significantly longer in the ganciclovir than in the control group (78.5 +/- 7.7 vs 46.5 +/- 5.5 days, P < 0.05). In conclusion, in renal transplant recipients who are at high risk of cytomegalovirus disease, prophylactic treatment with ganciclovir delays the onset of the disease and seems to decrease slightly its frequency.Item type: Item , Access status: Open Access , Discursive animals : prop or participant? : a discussion of three contemporary Australian artworks(2013-01) Ormella, Raquel JoanThe series of works presented for my PhD explore human relationships with urban birds. I use this over-arching subject to reflect on representations of the urban environment as a human-constructed ecological system; and the systems of collecting and identifying that birdwatchers use to give form to intangible interactions. The works presented for examination use a variety of media and include: Varied, noisy, a group of interactive multiples; Feeders, a 6 channel video installation; List keeper, a single channel video; and Here we are, a 3 channel video installation. The multiples use the audiences' interaction and distribution outside the gallery to complete them as artworks. The video works use bird models constructed from paper, manipulated live and in post-production, to depict instances of human/bird encounters. These analogue and digital animation methods focus attention on the human hand, not only as a visual motif, but also as technical and creative agent. The 35,000-word dissertation explores 3 case studies from recent Australian art that use living animals to stage a confrontation with their audiences. My analysis questions whether the animal performers are participants in these works or props. The 3 case studies are Bianca Hester's Please leave these windows open overnight to enable the fans to draw in cool air during the early hours of the morning, Lucas Ihlein's Gruffling and Remnant Emergency Artlab's Bat/Human Research. These works use instruction, documentation and the participation of their audiences to create a discursive site. I examine the artists' construction of the autonomy of their animal performers, and how they use the discursive form to engage their audiences. Rather than suggest an ideal model for working with animals, my analysis concentrates on how the staged interactions, and the animals themselves, create an excess of meaning not containable by the roles that the artist have constructed for them. In contrast, my own artworks presented for examination do not use living animals. While only some of my works address the interaction of humans and birds from a conservation perspective, this ethical position has influenced my thinking. For this reason I chose not to interfere in animals' lives by asking them to perform in artworks. Instead I use a variety of artistic strategies to replace the animal performer and stage a confrontation with the art object. My exegesis addresses these choices and asks what artistic forms are best for engaging and sustaining audience attention and whether this can operate in similar ways to interaction in the discursive field of art.Item type: Publication , Access status: Metadata only , Short-term outcomes of infants of substance-using mothers admitted to neonatal intensive care units in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory(2007) Abdel-Latif, Mohamed E.; Bajuk, Barbara; Lui, Kei; Oei, JuleeAim: Illicit substance use during pregnancy is associated with an increased rate of perinatal complications. Our study examines if outcome of infants of substance-using mothers (ISMs) in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting is similar to unexposed infants (controls).Methods: A prospective state-wide NICU study comparing ISMs to control infants admitted to 10 NICUs during a 3-years period (2001-2003). An ISM was defined as an infant whose mother admitted to or was documented to have used substances of dependency (illicit or otherwise) during this pregnancy.Results: There was a preponderance towards prematurity with ISMs comprising 5.1% (n = 310) of 6120 high risk infants (6.2% (n = 165) < 32 weeks gestation and 6.8% (n = 39) of 22-26 weeks gestation). More ISMs were outborn and had significantly lower mortality rate, particularly in the < 32 week gestation subgroup (adjusted OR 0.517 95% CI 0.277-0.962, P < 0.037). ISMs also demonstrated a non-significant trend towards an increased risk of neonatal morbidities. The pattern of rural and urban substance use was different, with a higher incidence of opiate use (49.3% vs. 26.9%, P < 0.001) in urban areas. Most opiate using mothers (85.6%), irrespective of rural or urban residence, were enrolled in methadone programmes. ISMs had a higher incidence of antepartum haemorrhage and chorioamnionitis and fewer were given antenatal steroids.Conclusion: ISMs are common in the high-risk NICU population. Further studies are needed to confirm the lower mortality rate and long-term outcomes in these infants.Item type: Item , Access status: Restricted , Nutritional ecology of common brushtail possums in New Zealand(2015-02) Windley, Hannah RuthDisentangling the many bottom-up and top-down processes that regulate populations is fundamental, especially when investigating and predicting the impacts of invasive species. Plants form the basis of most terrestrial ecosystems as the primary source of energy and nutrients. However, the implications of changes in nutritional quality are difficult to predict due to complexity of most natural ecosystems. Common brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) are a primarily folivorous 2-3 Kg marsupial, native to Australia. It has long been suggested that introduced possums in New Zealand have experienced a release from both top-down and bottom-up regulatory processes. The dominance of nutritious, chemically undefended plant foliage has been touted as a factor in the notorious success of possums in New Zealand. In this thesis, I aimed to determine if the nutritional quality of foliage can explain the observed browsing damage inflicted by possums in New Zealand. To establish whether possums exhibit variation in their diet based upon nutritional quality, I performed two captive feeding experiments. Firstly, I examined the physiological capacity of possums in New Zealand to tolerate plant defence compounds that are common in foliage. Secondly, I assessed the response of New Zealand possums to the deactivation of tannins in their diets using polyethylene glycol (PEG). Thirdly, in order to facilitate landscape-scale assessments of nutritional quality in New Zealand forests, I developed calibrations using near infrared reflectance spectroscopy (NIRS) that could successfully predict nutritional parameters of New Zealand foliage, using a multi-species data set. Finally, I related the extent of browse damage inflicted upon trees in the Tararua Mountain Range to nutritional quality, to reveal if the browsing decisions of wild possums are being driven by the nutritional quality of the foliage. New Zealand possums demonstrated a greater tolerance to both jensenone (a PSM exclusively found in Eucalyptus) and salicin than Australian populations. In the second captive feeding experiment, possums fed foliage supplemented with polyethylene glycol (PEG) which increased the in vitro available nitrogen content of Weinmannia racemosa foliage resulted in possums consuming significantly more than when foliage was untreated, indicating that possums do respond to nutritional quality. However, the results of this experiment highlighted the need for further investigation in to the use of PEG as there was evidence that the intake response to PEG may not necessarily be completely due to an associated reduction in protein digestibility. There was significant spatiotemporal variation in nutritional quality across native New Zealand tree species in the Tararua Mountain Range. Most significantly, trees with higher available nitrogen concentrations (higher nutritional quality) were more severely browsed upon by possums. These findings indicate that nutritional quality is a key driver of the diet choice of possums in New Zealand, and may directly explain the observed impacts and patchy distributions of possums in New Zealand forests.Item type: Publication , Access status: Metadata only , Underlying beliefs linked to public opinion about gene drive and pest-specific toxin for pest control(2020) MacDonald, Edith A; Edwards, Eric; Balanovic, Jovana; Medvecky, Fabien