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This study examines a child's personal experiences with peer relationship building in the classroom and is guided by Vygotsky's cultural historical concepts of the social situation of development and cultural tools and Hedegaard's (2012) model for learning and development. Hedegaard's (2012) dialectical-interactive approach was adopted to analyse the data for this study which was gathered using digital video observations of a grade one classroom within the western suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia over a five week period. This paper explores the strategies used by children that enables them to balance their desire for peer relationships while remaining within what is considered acceptable behaviours by their teachers within the classroom. It is argued that it is important for schools to continue to strive to find the balance between institutional demands while creating social situations that foster peer relationships.

There has been a major international focus on the education and care of toddlers. To date, empirical studies on adults' interactions in play with toddlers have focussed on the proximity of teachers, teachers' affective responses, and joint attention between adults and children in play. However, less attention has been given to the role of two teachers working together in supporting children's exploration of concepts in joint play. This paper takes a cultural-historical perspective and draws upon the concepts of play and subjective positioning to investigate how co-teaching promotes toddlers' joint play and exploration of mathematical concepts. Visual data of a group of toddlers playing with two teachers is analysed to explore how the teachers applied co-teaching pedagogy to support children's exploration of mathematical concept. The study argues that co-teaching provides potential to support collective play as two teachers can work collaboratively to address the toddlers' challenges and needs and support their exploration of the rules and mathematical concepts in play. Co-teaching by paired teachers enables toddlers' joint play to become more complex, helping the children to explore mathematical concepts and, in turn, further enhancing their play.

Q fever is caused by the obligate intracellular bacterium, Coxiella burnetii , a designated potential agent of bioterrorism because of its route of transmission, resistance to disinfectants, and low infectious dose. The only vaccine licensed for human use is Q-VAX® (Seqirus, licensed in Australia), a formalin-inactivated whole-cell vaccine, which produces severe local and systemic reactogenic responses in previously sensitized individuals. Accordingly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory bodies around the world, have been reluctant to approve Q-VAX for widespread use. To obviate these adverse reactions, we prepared recombinant protein subunit vaccine candidates containing purified CBU1910, CBU0307, CBU0545, CBU0612, CBU0891, and CBU1398 proteins and TLR triagonist adjuvants. TLR triagonist adjuvants combine different TLR agonists to enhance immune responses to vaccine antigens. We tested both the protective efficacy and reactogenicity of our vaccine candidates in Hartley guinea pigs using intratracheal infection with live C. burnetii. While all of our candidates showed varying degrees of protection during challenge, local reactogenic responses were significantly reduced for one of our vaccine candidates when compared with a formalin-inactivated whole-cell vaccine. Our findings show that subunit vaccines combined with novel TLR triagonist adjuvants can generate protective immunity to C. burnetii infection while reducing reactogenic responses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The marine toad Rhinella marina (Linnaeus) (Anura, Bufonidae) is a notorious, exotic amphibian species in Australia. However, our present knowledge of the composition of the nematode fauna of R. marina is still not complete. In the present study, a new cosmocercid nematode, Cosmocerca multipapillata sp. nov., was described using both light and scanning electron microscopy, based on specimens collected from R. marina in Australia. Cosmocerca multipapillata sp. nov. can be easily distinguished from its congeners by the body size, the presence of lateral alae and well sclerotized gubernaculum, the number and arrangement of plectanes and rosettes and the length of spicules, oesophagus and tail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

THE RESEARCH REPORTED HERE is part of an overall study drawing upon a Vygotskian cultural-historical approach to explore Chinese-Australian families' pedagogy in supporting children's bilingual heritage language development. Imagination is a psychological process for the child, where the development of speech is linked to the development of imagination as a higher cultural function (Vygotsky, 1987a). This study gives insight to the links between imagination in play and language development through play pedagogy at home. In the larger study, from which this paper draws its data, the methods of data generation included video interviews and observations with three families. The focus was on interactions that contributed towards language development in the home context. Drawing on Vygotsky's (1987a, 2004b) theory of imagination in children's play, Fleer's (2010) dialectical model of play, and Kravtsova's (2009) subject positioning theory, this paper specifically investigates parents' interactive support of children's bilingual heritage language development in role-play. The paper analyses the play experience of a four-year-old girl, Lin, and her father in a park, in order to discuss the importance of imagination in adults' instructions within the child's zone of proximal language development through play. This provides the foreground for approaching language development within a dialectical process of collective and individual imagining in play. It is argued that Lin's father uses play as a pedagogical tool to support Lin's bilingual heritage language development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aim: Although treatment with direct-acting antivirals has dramatically improved morbidity and mortality attributable to chronic hepatitis C virus infection, universal access to these medicines has been slow in the Asia-Pacific region and Russia. This study evaluated efficacy and safety of elbasvir/grazoprevir in participants with hepatitis C virus infection from Asia-Pacific countries and Russia (C-CORAL)., Methods: C-CORAL was a phase 3, randomized, placebo-controlled study (NCT02251990). Treatment-naive, HIV-negative, cirrhotic and non-cirrhotic participants with chronic hepatitis C genotype 1, 4, or 6 infection were randomized to elbasvir 50 mg/grazoprevir 100 mg once daily for 12 weeks (immediate-treatment group) or placebo followed by deferred treatment with elbasvir/grazoprevir (deferred-treatment group). The primary efficacy outcome was sustained virologic response at 12 weeks, and the primary safety outcome was a comparison between the immediate-treatment group and placebo phase of the deferred-treatment group., Results: A total of 489 participants were randomized (immediate-treatment group, n = 366; deferred-treatment group, n = 123). Sustained virologic response at 12 weeks in the combined immediate/deferred-treatment groups was 94.4% (459/486; 95% confidence interval = 92.4-96.5%). Sustained virologic response at 12 weeks was 98.2% in participants with genotype 1b, 91.9% with genotype 1a, and 66.7% with genotype 6 infection. Similar rates of adverse events and drug-related adverse events were seen in the immediate-treatment group versus placebo phase of the deferred-treatment group (51.0% vs 50.4% and 21.4% vs 21.1%)., Conclusions: Elbasvir/grazoprevir for 12 weeks represents an effective and well-tolerated treatment option for treatment-naive people with genotype 1 infection from Asia-Pacific countries and Russia., (© 2018 Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology Foundation and John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.)

Background: Heart failure (HF) is a leading cause of hospitalization. Although a number of multicenter international HF hospital registries have been published, there are limited data for the Asia Pacific region., Methods: ADHERE (ie, Acute Decompensated Heart Failure Registry) International-Asia Pacific is an electronic web-based observational database of 10,171 patients hospitalized with a principal diagnosis of HF from 8 Asia-Pacific countries between January 2006 and December 2008., Results: The median age (67 years) varied by more than 2 decades across the region. Fifty-seven percent of patients were male. Ninety percent of patients were Asian and 8.4% were white. Dyspnea was the presenting symptom in 95%, with 80% having documented rales. During the index hospitalization, left ventricular function was assessed in 50%, and intravenous therapies included diuretics (85%), vasodilators (14%), and positive inotropes (15%). In-hospital mortality was 4.8%. Discharge medications included angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors and/or angiotensin receptor blockers (63%), β-blockers (41%), and aldosterone antagonists (31%)., Conclusions: Compared with other multicenter registries, patients hospitalized with acute HF in the Asia Pacific region tend to present with more severe clinical symptoms and signs and are younger, especially in countries at an earlier stage in their epidemiological transition. Echocardiography and disease-modifying medications are used less often, highlighting potential opportunities to improve outcomes., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Aims: To characterize geographic differences in clinical characteristics and care of patients hospitalized with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction (HF-PEF)., Methods and Results: Using data on 61 182 admissions in 307 US hospitals from March 2004 to March 2006 from the Acute Decompensated Heart Failure National Registry (ADHERE)-United States (US) database and 10 904 admissions in 70 hospitals from 10 countries from March 2005 to January 2009 from the ADHERE-International (I) database composed of countries in Asia-Pacific and Latin-American regions, we compared characteristics, treatments, length of stay, and in-hospital mortality between patients with PEF (left ventricular EF ≥ 40%). There were 26 258 (49.6%) admissions with HF-PEF in the ADHERE-US and 4206 (45.7%) in ADHERE-I. The USA cohort was older [median 77.2 years (25th, 75th, 66.5, and 84.4) vs. 71.0 (59.0, 79.0), P< 0.001] and more likely to be female (61.8 vs. 54.7%, P< 0.001). The international cohort had a longer length of stay [median 6.0 days (4.0, 10.0)] vs. 4.0 days [3.0, 7.0], P< 0.001) and higher use of inotropes (12.5 vs. 4.8%, P< 0.001). At discharge, angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors/angiotensin receptor blockers, beta-blockers, and diuretics were prescribed more in the USA (57.6 vs. 54.4%, P< 0.001; 63.0 vs. 35.5%, P< 0.001; 78.2 vs. 76.2%, P< 0.001); digoxin was prescribed more outside the USA (26.0 vs. 17.7%, P< 0.001). After adjusting for baseline characteristics, 7-day inpatient mortality was similar between the international and the USA cohorts [hazard ratio 0.80, 95% CI (0.61-1.05); P= 0.11]., Conclusions: Clinical characteristics, inpatient interventions, discharge therapies, and length of stay vary significantly for HF-PEF patients across geographic regions. This has important implications for global clinical trials and outcome studies in HF.