From 2020 to 2022, a global pandemic caused schools to pivot from primarily in-person instruction to all-virtual or hybrid instruction, creating a shift in contextual learning environments that made ...it necessary for experienced music teachers to become more adaptable and flexible within their already established expertise or leave the profession. Those teachers who stayed in the profession during the pandemic had additional stress, which resulted in trauma. This article reassessed the perceptions of experienced stringed instrument teachers from a previous study (N = 3) through the lens of their music teacher identity expertise. Reassessing changes in experienced music teachers’ teaching identity expertise during the pandemic could help preservice teachers enhance their creativity, resilience, and flexibility to face future environmental shifts of any proportion. Experienced music teachers’ outcomes could result in more meaningful and relevant curricula as well as a framework for implementing professional self-care to heal from the trauma of this global pandemic and prevent burnout and attrition.
The Eastern Shore of Virginia (ESV) is a major agricultural region in Virginia and in the past has been linked to some tomato-associated outbreaks of salmonellosis. In this study, water samples were ...collected weekly from irrigation ponds and wells in four representative vegetable farms (Farms A-D, each farm paired with one pond and one well) and a creek as well. In addition, water samples from two sites in the Chesapeake Bay on the ESV were collected monthly. Poultry litter was sampled monthly from three commercial broiler farms. Soil samples were collected monthly after fertilization with poultry litter from 10 farms in 2014 and another 14 farms in 2015. A most probable number method was used to detect
presence and concentration in collected samples. Presumptive
colonies were confirmed by the cross-streaking method. Molecular serotyping was carried out to determine the
serovars. The average prevalence of
in pond, well, creek, and bay water samples was 19.3, 3.3, 24.2, and 29.2%, respectively. There were significant spatial and temporal differences for
incidence in various water sources. The prevalence of
in four tested ponds from farms A, B, C, and D were 16, 12, 22, and 27%, respectively. While the prevalence of
in irrigation wells was significantly lower, some well water samples tested positive during the study.
Newport was found to be the predominant serovar isolated from water samples. All poultry houses of the three tested broiler farms were
-positive at certain sampling points during the study with prevalence ranging from 14.3 to 35.4%.
was found to be able to survive up to 4 months in poultry litter amended soils from the tested farms in 2014, and up to 6 months in 2015. This research examined the dynamics of
in relationship to water source, poultry litter, and amended soil in a major agricultural area, and provides useful information for food safety risk assessments.
Emergency situations, including epidemics, increase incidence of violence against women, especially intimate partner violence (IPV). This paper describes specific scenarios of IPV reported by women ...during the COVID-19 pandemic in Nigeria to provide insight for policy and programmatic efforts.
This paper draws on seven de-identified case reports from organisations serving women experiencing IPV as well as media coverage of IPV cases in Nigeria, between April and May, 2020.
In most cases, reports identified IPV that was occurring prior to the lockdown, but increased in severity or involved new types of violence during the lockdown. The case scenarios included descriptions of many forms of IPV commonly reported, including physical, economic, psychological and sexual violence, often concurrently. Several women also reported threats of being thrown out of their homes by perpetrators, which threatens women's ability to protect themselves from exposure to COVID-19, but could also leave women stranded with no access to transportation, social services, or other resources during the lockdown. Several women also reported IPV that involved custody of children, as well as IPV that disrupted women's income generation. IPV was also reported in relation to economic stressors associated with the lockdown. Reports highlight how the lockdown disrupted women's social support, hindering accessibility of formal and informal sources of help.
The lockdowns in Nigeria may have inadvertently placed women already experiencing partner violence at risk for experiencing more severe violence, new challenges to cope with violent experiences, and other forms of violence, including violence that used the lockdown as a way to threaten women's security and ability to protect themselves from the virus. Hence, there is need for innovative approaches to support victims, with emphasis on ways in which perpetrators of IPV may be using the threat of COVID-19 to further gain power and control over partners.
Microbiota that co-enrich during efforts to recover pathogens from foodborne outbreaks interfere with efficient detection and recovery. Here, dynamics of co-enriching microbiota during recovery of ...Listeria monocytogenes from naturally contaminated ice cream samples linked to an outbreak are described for three different initial enrichment formulations used by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the International Organization of Standardization (ISO), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Enrichment cultures were analyzed using DNA extraction and sequencing from samples taken every 4 h throughout 48 h of enrichment. Resphera Insight and CosmosID analysis tools were employed for high-resolution profiling of 16S rRNA amplicons and whole genome shotgun data, respectively.
During enrichment, other bacterial taxa were identified, including Anoxybacillus, Geobacillus, Serratia, Pseudomonas, Erwinia, and Streptococcus spp. Surprisingly, incidence of L. monocytogenes was proportionally greater at hour 0 than when tested 4, 8, and 12 h later with all three enrichment schemes. The corresponding increase in Anoxybacillus and Geobacillus spp.indicated these taxa co-enriched in competition with L. monocytogenes during early enrichment hours. L. monocytogenes became dominant after 24 h in all three enrichments. DNA sequences obtained from shotgun metagenomic data of Listeria monocytogenes at 48 h were assembled to produce a consensus draft genome which appeared to have a similar tracking utility to pure culture isolates of L. monocytogenes.
All three methods performed equally well for enrichment of Listeria monocytogenes. The observation of potential competitive exclusion of L. mono by Anoxybacillus and Geobacillus in early enrichment hours provided novel information that may be used to further optimize enrichment formulations. Application of Resphera Insight for high-resolution analysis of 16S amplicon sequences accurately identified L. monocytogenes. Both shotgun and 16S rRNA data supported the presence of three slightly variable genomes of L. monocytogenes. Moreover, the draft assembly of a consensus genome of L. monocytogenes from shotgun metagenomic data demonstrated the potential utility of this approach to expedite trace-back of outbreak-associated strains, although further validation will be needed to confirm this utility.
Background
Online misogyny is a violation of women’s digital rights. Empirical studies on this topic are however lacking, particularly in low- and middle- income countries. The current study aimed to ...estimate whether prevalence of online misogyny on Twitter in India changed since the pandemic.
Methods
Based on prior theoretical work, we defined online misogyny as consisting of six overlapping forms: sexist abuses, sexual objectification, threatening to physically or sexually harm women, asserting women’s inferiority, justifying violence against women, and dismissing feminist efforts. Qualitative analysis of a small subset of tweets posted from India (40,672 tweets) substantiated this definition and taxonomy for online misogyny. Supervised machine learning models were used to predict the status of misogyny across a corpus of 30 million tweets posted from India between 2018 and 2021. Next, interrupted time series analysis examined changes in online misogyny prevalence, before and during COVID-19.
Results
Qualitative assessment showed that online misogyny in India existed most in the form of sexual objectification and sexist abusive content, which demeans women and shames them for their presumed sexual activity. Around 2% of overall tweets posted from India between 2018 and 2021 included some form of misogynistic content. The absolute volume as well as proportion of misogynistic tweets showed significant increasing trends after the onset of COVID-19, relative to trends prior to the pandemic.
Conclusion
Findings highlight increasing gender inequalities on Twitter since the pandemic. Aggressive and hateful tweets that target women attempt to reinforce traditional gender norms, especially those relating to idealized sexual behavior and framing of women as sexual beings. There is an urgent need for future research and development of interventions to make digital spaces gender equitable and welcoming to women.
Outbreaks of foodborne illnesses linked to fresh fruits and vegetables have been key drivers behind a wide breadth of research aiming to fill data gaps in our understanding of the total ecology of ...agricultural water sources such as ponds and wells and the relationship of this ecology to foodborne pathogens such as
and
. Both
and
can persist in irrigation water and have been linked to produce contamination events. Data describing the abundance of these organisms in specific agricultural water sources are valuable to guide water treatment measures. Here, we profiled the culture independent water microbiota of four farm ponds and wells correlated with microbiological recovery of
(prevalence: pond, 19.4%; well, 3.3%),
(pond, 27.1%; well, 4.2%) and fecal indicator testing. Correlation between abiotic factors, including water parameters (temperature, pH, conductivity, dissolved oxygen percentage, oxidation reduction potential, and turbidity) and weather (temperature and rainfall), and foodborne pathogens were also evaluated. Although abiotic factors did not correlate with recovery of
or
(
> 0.05), fecal indicators were positively correlated with incidence of
in well water. Bacterial taxa such as
and
were positively correlated with the prevalence and population of
, and recovery of
was positively correlated with the abundance of
and
(
< 0.03). These data will support evolving mitigation strategies to reduce the risk of produce contamination by foodborne pathogens through irrigation.
The more quickly bacterial pathogens responsible for foodborne illness outbreaks can be linked to a vehicle of transmission or a source, the more illnesses can be prevented. Whole genome sequencing ...(WGS) based approaches to source tracking have greatly increased the speed and resolution with which public health response can pinpoint the vehicle and source of outbreaks. Traditionally, WGS approaches have focused on the culture of an individual isolate before proceeding to DNA extraction and sequencing. For Listeria monocytogenes (Lm), generation of an individual isolate for sequencing typically takes about 6 days. Here we demonstrate that a hybrid, "quasimetagenomic" approach ie; direct sequencing of microbiological enrichments (first step in pathogen detection and recovery) can provide high resolution source tracking sequence data, 5 days earlier than response that focuses on culture and sequencing of an individual isolate. This expedited approach could save lives, prevent illnesses and potentially minimize unnecessary destruction of food.
Naturally contaminated ice cream (from a 2015 outbreak) was enriched to recover Listeria monocytogenes following protocols outlined in the Bacteriological Analytic Manual (BAM). DNA from enriching microbiota was extracted and sequenced at incremental time-points during the first 48 h of pre-enrichment using the Illumina MiSeq platform (2 by 250), to evaluate genomic coverage of target pathogen, Listeria monocytogenes.
Quasimetagenomic sequence data acquired from hour 20 were sufficient to discern whether or not Lm strain/s were part of the ongoing outbreak or not. Genomic data from hours 24, 28, 32, 36, 40, 44, and 48 of pre-enrichments all provided identical phylogenetic source tracking utility to the WGS of individual isolates (which require an additional 5 days to culture).
The speed of this approach (more than twice as fast as current methods) has the potential to reduce the number of illnesses associated with any given outbreak by as many as 75% percent of total cases and potentially with continued optimization of the entire chain of response, contribute to minimized food waste.
The microbiome of cheese is diverse, even within a variety. The metagenomics of cheese is dependent on a vast array of biotic and abiotic factors. Biotic factors include the population of microbiota ...and their resulting cellular metabolism. Abiotic factors, including the pH, water activity, fat, salt, and moisture content of the cheese matrix, as well as environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, and location of aging), influence the biotic factors. This study assessed the metagenomics of commercial Gouda cheese prepared using pasteurized or unpasteurized cow milk or pasteurized goat milk via 16S rDNA sequencing.
Results were analyzed and compared based on milk pasteurization and source, spatial variability (core, outer, and under the rind), and length of aging (2-4 up to 12-18 months). The dominant organisms in the Gouda cheeses, based on percentage of sequence reads identified at the family or genus levels, were Bacillaceae, Lactococcus, Lactobacillus, Streptococcus, and Staphylococcus. More genus- or family-level (e.g. Bacillaceae) identifications were observed in the Gouda cheeses prepared with unpasteurized cow milk (120) compared with those prepared with pasteurized cow milk (92). When assessing influence of spatial variability on the metagenomics of the cheese, more pronounced differences in bacterial genera were observed in the samples taken under the rind; Brachybacterium, Pseudoalteromonas, Yersinia, Klebsiella, and Weissella were only detected in these samples. Lastly, the aging length of the cheese greatly influenced the number of organisms observed. Twenty-seven additional genus-level identifications were observed in Gouda cheese aged for 12-18 months compared with cheese only aged 2-4 months.
Collectively, the results of this study are important in determining the typical microbiota associated with Gouda cheese and how the microbiome plays a role in safety and quality.
Fossil collections housed in museums are a rich source of data for palaeontologists; however, some early collections lack detailed contextual information. The Naracoorte Caves in South Australia ...contain World Heritage listed Quaternary vertebrate fossil accumulations, particularly those of large, extinct mammals. The first recorded collection of extinct Pleistocene large mammal fossils from Naracoorte was from Specimen Cave in 1908. Unfortunately, these fossils were collected without stratigraphic and contextual information and so lack the detail required to relate them and their provenance to new excavations in the cave. As a result, the scientific value of this fossil collection is greatly reduced. Here we report on our research into the history of fossil collecting in Specimen Cave and recover information on the stratigraphic provenance and age of the 1908 fossil collection. We analysed newspaper articles, reports, written correspondence and cave inscriptions. Our research confirmed that the 1908 collection originated from the same area as the modern excavation and revealed a history of exploration and excavation work within the cave. Our research also led to the discovery of a cave inscription that contains the name of William Reddan, an important historical figure of the Naracoorte Caves and the first person to report the Specimen Cave fossil material. These findings place the 1908 fossil collection within the current geochronological context for the site and greatly increase the scientific value of this important material.
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