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Review of: Believability: Sexual Violence, Media and the Politics of Doubt, Sarah Banet-Weiser and Kathryn Claire Higgins (2023)Cambridge: Polity Books, 258 pp.,ISBN 978-1-50955-381-5, h/bk, AUD 103.95ISBN 978-1-50955-382-2, p/bk, AUD 32.95ISBN 978-1-50955-383-9, e-book, AUD 26.99

Objectives: Garcinia mangostanaLinn. (“mangosteen”) pericarp contains bioactive compounds that may target biological pathways implicated in schizophrenia. We conducted a double-blind randomized placebo-controlled trial evaluating the efficacy of adjunctive mangosteen pericarp, compared to placebo, in the treatment of schizophrenia.Methods: People diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition), recruited across 2 sites (Brisbane and Victoria, Australia), were randomized to receive 24 weeks of adjunctive mangosteen pericarp (1,000 mg/day) or matched placebo. The primary outcome measure was the Positive and Negative Symptom Scale total score. Secondary outcomes included positive and negative symptoms, general psychopathology, clinical global severity and improvement, participant reported overall improvement, depressive symptoms, functioning, quality of life, and safety data at 24 and 28 weeks (4 weeks postdiscontinuation). Data were collected from July 2016 to February 2019.Results: Baseline assessments were conducted on 148 people (mangosteen = 74, placebo = 74); data analyses were conducted on 136 (92%) participants with postbaseline data. The treatment group had significantly higher symptom severity compared to placebo, and both groups significantly improved on all symptom, functioning, and quality of life measures over time. No between-group differences were found for the rate of change between baseline and 24 or 28 weeks.Conclusion: Despite promising preclinical and clinical work, our results do not support mangosteen pericarp extract as an adjunctive treatment for schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder.

Allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, co-owner of US entertainment company Miramax Films, which led to the revitalized #MeToo movement of October 2017, gave global recognition to the sexual violence (sexism, misogyny, sexual harassment, assault and rape) that women experience in the creative industries. As a spin-off, the #MeNoMore campaign in December 2017 resulted in more than 400 women working in the Australian music industry speaking out against similar behavior. Despite having a reputation for sexual violence, the local music press played a minor role in this hashtag development, claiming that its practices are tied to radical, liberal and progressive values. In the post-Weinstein, #MeToo and #MeNoMore era, this contradiction signifies that the Australian music press is fertile ground for a feminist investigation. However, to date minimal local research has examined the link between sexual violence and music journalism. As a literature review to a larger empirical case study, this article draws on a critical discourse analysis from the post-feminist wave of media research into rockism, poptimism, punk, rap, hip hop, dubstep and electronic dance music genres, mainly conducted in the United States and United Kingdom. Derived from this analysis, the article argues that there are four framing techniques associated with music journalism practice in Australia: gendered music press, a masculine attitude towards music reporting, gendered musical tastes and gendered sexual harassment.

The Standardizing Care to improve Outcomes in Pediatric End stage renal disease (SCOPE) Collaborative aims to reduce peritonitis rates in pediatric chronic peritoneal dialysis patients by increasing implementation of standardized care practices. To assess this, monthly care bundle compliance and annualized monthly peritonitis rates were evaluated from 24 SCOPE centers that were participating at collaborative launch and that provided peritonitis rates for the 13 months prior to launch. Changes in bundle compliance were assessed using either a logistic regression model or a generalized linear mixed model. Changes in average annualized peritonitis rates over time were illustrated using the latter model. In the first 36 months of the collaborative, 644 patients with 7977 follow-up encounters were included. The likelihood of compliance with follow-up care practices increased significantly (odds ratio 1.15, 95% confidence interval 1.10, 1.19). Mean monthly peritonitis rates significantly decreased from 0.63 episodes per patient year (95% confidence interval 0.43, 0.92) prelaunch to 0.42 (95% confidence interval 0.31, 0.57) at 36 months postlaunch. A sensitivity analysis confirmed that as mean follow-up compliance increased, peritonitis rates decreased, reaching statistical significance at 80% at which point the prelaunch rate was 42% higher than the rate in the months following achievement of 80% compliance. In its first 3 years, the SCOPE Collaborative has increased the implementation of standardized follow-up care and demonstrated a significant reduction in average monthly peritonitis rates.

As with other emergent technologies, XML has the potential to help government agencies significantly improve the management and maintenance of their Web sites and other Web applications. However, the benefits and barriers of using XML for Web site content management cannot be adequately understood without a clear and systematic knowledge about the technology and the environment in which it will be embedded. Using structuration theory and Giddens concept of change episode, this paper argues that comprehensive prototyping can potentially produce the necessary knowledge and shared understandings among participants about both technology and organizational context. Throughout their active engagement in training, facilitated workshops, team assignments, and prototyping activities, the participants developed similar conceptions about the capabilities and limitations of XML for Web site management. In terms of Giddens, their facilities, norms, and interpretive schemes became more similar because of the intensive interaction among team members technical and program staff and between teams from multiple and diverse government agencies. Overall, participants reached a greater consensus about the importance of 50 of the potential benefits and 75 of the perceived barriers. The differences about benefits and barriers between technical and program staff that were statistically significant went from two benefits and six barriers to zero benefits and two barriers, suggesting more similar understandings.

Presents the poem "poems From the series gilda," by Andrea Baker.

Presents the poem "coming home poems," by Andrea Baker.

Background: There is limited evidence on interventions to minimise weight gain at clozapine commencement. We compared the effect of adjunctive metformin versusplacebo at clozapine initiation.Methods: People with schizophrenia commencing on clozapine were randomised to either metformin or placebo for 24 weeks. The primary outcome was difference in the change of body weight. Secondary outcomes included comparative rates of weight gain of more than 5%, overall weight gain/loss, and differences in metabolic and psychosis outcomes.Results: The study was closed prematurely in March 2020 due to COVID-19 restrictions. Ten participants were randomised to each of the metformin and placebo groups. Eight metformin group and five placebo group participants completed the trial and were included in the analysis. The study was insufficiently powered to detect difference between the metformin and placebo groups for the primary outcome of change in weight (0.09 kg vs 2.88 kg, p= 0.231). In terms of secondary outcomes, people in the metformin group were significantly less likely to gain >5% of their body weight (12.5% vs 80%, p= 0.015) and were more likely to lose weight (37.5% vs 0% p= 0.024) compared to placebo. There was no difference between the groups in terms of adverse drug reactions (ADRs).Conclusion: While limited by the forced premature closure of the trial due to COVID19, the findings from this randomised controlled trial are promising. Clozapine and metformin co-commencement may be a promising treatment to prevent clozapine-associated weight gain, especially given the low rates of ADRs associated with metformin. This supports the consideration of use of metformin to prevent weight gain in people initiated on clozapine; however, further studies are needed to confirm this finding.Trial registration: ACTRN12617001547336

• When cultured skin fibroblasts were exposed to culture conditions designed to favor the expression of neuronal antigens, cells from each of 19 patients with Alzheimer's disease reacted immunocytochemically with antibodies to paired helical filaments, Alz-50, or both compared with only a small fraction of cells from 19 identically treated age-matched control cultures. Immunoblots confirmed the presence of soluble material reacting with Alz-50 antibody in the Alzheimer fibroblasts. Ultrastructurally, fascicles of 10-nm filaments were seen that occasionally twisted around each other, but no structures were seen that were identical to paired helical filaments. Thus, cultured skin fibroblasts from patients with Alzheimer's disease developed greater immunocytochemical reactivity with antibodies raised to paired helical filaments than did fibroblasts from control subjects, when cultured under the specified conditions.

• Since previous studies have suggested that the coupling of oxidation to phosphorylation is impaired in Alzheimer brain and fibroblasts, the effects of carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone, a hydrazone known to uncouple mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, were tested on the development of immunoreactivity with antibodies to "Alzheimer antigens" in cultured fibroblasts from cognitively intact subjects. The fibroblasts were exposed for 10 to 14 days to a medium (DMd) modeled on media that favor neuronal differentiation in fetal brain cultures. The addition of a 10-μm concentration of carbonyl cyanide m-chlorophenylhydrazone to the DMd culture medium increased by more than 10-fold the proportion of cells reacting immunocytochemically with antibodies to paired helical filaments and by 157-fold the proportion of cells reacting with the Alz-50 monoclonal antibody. These observations suggest that the oxidative abnormalities previously described in tissues from patients with Alzheimer's disease may contribute to the accumulation of abnormal cytoskeletal materials in this disorder.

• A report of cell loss in the nucleus basalis of Meynert in patients with Wernicke-Korsakoff disease prompted the examination of thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP)-dependent enzymes in the brain and peripheral tissues of patients with Alzheimer's disease. In these brains, the activities of the 2-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex were reduced more than 75% and those of transketolase more than 45%. Decreases occurred in histologically damaged and in relatively undamaged areas. Small but statistically significant abnormalities of transketolase, but not of 2-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complex, were identified in red blood cells and cultured fibroblasts. Previous studies have shown deficiencies in the brain and variable effects in peripheral tissues on another TPP-dependent enzyme—the pyruvate dehydrogenase complex. Activities of TPP-dependent enzymes appear to be deficient in the brain and perhaps in some peripheral tissues in patients with Alzheimer's disease.

Abstract: Several lines of evidence indicate that tissues other than the brain are also affected in Alzheimer’s disease. The protein precursor of the characteristic brain amyloid is expressed at the level of mRNA in most tissues. A large number of studies have shown a variety of abnormalities in different Alzheimer tissues compared to those from matched cognitively intact controls. A group of studies suggest the existence of a generalized membrane abnormality in Alzheimer’s disease, identified in red cells and platelets using biophysical techniques as well as in studies of transport. Cellular calcium homeostasis appears to be abnormal in Alzheimer’s disease, in cultured cells from skin and in lymphocytes as well as in the affected neurons. Metabolic abnormalities in glucose oxidation are well documented in Alzheimer’s brain in vivo, and abnormalities in these processes have also been found in ex vivo studies of brain biopsies and in studies of cultured cells from skin. A recent observation that skin cells grown under special conditions express antigens normally associated with the brain — and that Alzheimer cells from skin can make antigens reacting with antibodies to paired helical filaments — strengthens the hypothesis that changes observed in the peripheral cells may be relevant to the brain. Mechanisms can be proposed to link the generalized cellular changes to damage of certain populations of neurones in Alzheimer brains. Future research on non-neural Alzheimer cells is likely to emphasize the search for abnormalities significant for cellular pathophysiology in Alzheimer’s disease and for means to ameliorate such abnormalities.

Background: People with schizophrenia have a 15–20-year reduction in life expectancy, driven in part by the metabolic effects of antipsychotics. Clozapine is associated with the highest rates of weight gain. As clozapine remains the most effective antipsychotic for treatment-resistant schizophrenia (TRS), identifying treatments to ameliorate clozapine-induced weight gain (CIWG) is urgently needed to reduce this morality gap.Methods: We retrospectively analysed digital health records of patients with TRS aged 18–65 newly initiated on clozapine at four tertiary hospitals in south-east Queensland from 1 March 2017 to 30 June 2019. Our primary outcome was the effect of metformin on change in percentage bodyweight at 12 months after clozapine initiation, with secondary outcome being proportion with >5% or >7% bodyweight change. We also explored impact on bodyweight change of other variables including sex, tobacco smoking, type 2 diabetes (T2DM), age, clozapine level and dose and clozapine/norclozapine ratio.Results: Among 90 patients initiated on clozapine, metformin use (n= 48) was associated with a smaller increase in percentage bodyweight (1.32% versus5.95%, p= 0.031), lower rates of >7% gain in bodyweight (37.8% versus63.0%, p= 0.025) but not >5% gain in bodyweight. Age below the median (32.0 years) was associated with greater bodyweight gain (5.55% versus1.22%, p= 0.046). Sex, tobacco smoking, T2DM, clozapine dose and level and clozapine/norclozapine ratio were not associated with differences in change in bodyweight.Conclusion: In this small retrospective cohort study, use of metformin within 12-months of clozapine initiation was associated with a statistically and clinically significant reduction in CIWG. Although there is increasing evidence for the role of metformin to ameliorate bodyweight gain at time of clozapine initiation, our findings need replication and testing in a randomised controlled trial before recommending metformin co-commencement with clozapine as standard clinical practice.

• Two easily measured abnormal properties of fibroblasts from patients with Alzheimer's disease have been utilized to develop an in vitro test system for screening novel therapeutic agents for Alzheimer's disease. The abnormal properties selected for study were increased isoproterenol-stimulated cyclic adenosine monophosphate production and decreased pH (measured by the weak-acid distribution method). L-Carnitine was tested as a potential therapeutic agent, since it has been used to treat a variety of experimental metabolic encephalopathies. The addition of L-carnitine normalized both of these properties in the Alzheimer cells. Tissue culture may aid as a preliminary screen for identifying novel approaches to the treatment of Alzheimer's disease.

To evaluate a business-centered assignment implemented in a pharmacy elective course at two different institutions and analyze student perceptions of the delivery platforms used and the value and utility of the assignment.

The poem "Like a Machine, Struggle for Mother," by Andrea Baker is presented. First Line: I speak and God licks the wine from me. Last Line: I'll never need another.

The poem "My Wedding," by Andrea Baker is presented. First Line: Mother had a path for cows to walk before their slaughter. Last Line: for my real name.

The poem "The Return," by Andrea Baker is presented. First Line: Once I was fire and I could lick it and it would burn; Last Line: Just keep me. I do.

The article presents quotes and blogs about on lurkers from GovLoop members including Andrea Baker on lurkers as the silent community, Adriel Hampton on hating the term "consumers," and Bob King on the negative connotation of lurkers.

Presents an obituary for musician Greg Solomon.