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The aim of this study was to describe the type of risk-reducing gynaecologic surgery (RRGS) and the extent of pathological evaluation being undertaken for Australasian women at high familial risk of pelvic serous cancer. Surgical and pathology reports were reviewed for women with BRCA1/BRCA2 mutations, or a family history of breast and ovarian cancer, who underwent RRGS between 1998 and 2008. "Adequate" surgery was defined as complete removal of all ovarian and extra-uterine fallopian tube tissue. "Adequate" pathology was defined as paraffin embedding of all removed ovarian and tubal tissue. Predictors of adequacy were assessed using logistic regression. There were 201 women, including 173 mutation carriers, who underwent RRGS. Of these, 91% had adequate surgery and 23% had adequate pathology. Independent predictors of adequate surgery were surgeon type (OR = 20; 95% CI 2-167; P = 0.005 for gynaecologic oncologists versus general gynaecologists), more recent surgery (OR = 1.33/year; 95% CI 1.07-1.67; P = 0.012) and younger patient age (OR = 0.93/year of age; 95% CI 0.87-0.99; P = 0.028). Independent predictors of adequate pathology were more recent surgery (OR = 1.26/year; 95% CI 1.06-1.49; P = 0.008) and surgeon type (OR = 3.1; 95% CI 1.4-6.7; P = 0.004 for gynaecologic oncologists versus general gynaecologists). Four serous ovarian cancers and one endometrioid endometrial cancer were detected during surgery or pathological examination. In conclusion Australasian women attending a specialist gynaecologic oncologist for RRGS are most likely to have adequate surgery and pathological examination. Additional education of clinicians and consumers is needed to ensure optimal surgery and pathology in these women.

In order to reduce the high infection rate of COVID-19, individuals began to engage in self-isolation amid a time of uncertainty and worry. Given that social support can be protective against the negative effects of distress on mental and physical health, the lack of support may negatively impact individuals during their self-isolation. Thus, the current study examined the role of self-isolation on feelings of stress, the perception and reception of social support, and mental health problems during the COVID-19 pandemic. A sample of 405 college students were asked to report on the amount of self-isolation in which they were engaging, worry about COVID-19, psychological health, and received and perceived social support. Results indicated that when the length of time in self-isolation was taken into account, perceived social support buffered the connection between worry about COVID-19 and psychological health. These results indicate that social support, worry about COVID-19, and self-isolation may influence individuals' psychological health during times of stress., (© 2020 Family Process Institute.)

Multiple reports highlight the increasingly quantitative nature of biological research and the need to innovate means to ensure that students acquire quantitative skills. We present a tool to support such innovation. The Biological Science Quantitative Reasoning Exam (BioSQuaRE) is an assessment instrument designed to measure the quantitative skills of undergraduate students within a biological context. The instrument was developed by an interdisciplinary team of educators and aligns with skills included in national reports such as BIO2010 , Scientific Foundations for Future Physicians , and Vision and Change Undergraduate biology educators also confirmed the importance of items included in the instrument. The current version of the BioSQuaRE was developed through an iterative process using data from students at 12 postsecondary institutions. A psychometric analysis of these data provides multiple lines of evidence for the validity of inferences made using the instrument. Our results suggest that the BioSQuaRE will prove useful to faculty and departments interested in helping students acquire the quantitative competencies they need to successfully pursue biology, and useful to biology students by communicating the importance of quantitative skills. We invite educators to use the BioSQuaRE at their own institutions., (© 2017 L. Stanhope et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2017 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).)

Home observations were done on sibling interactions in 31 families with a child having Down's syndrome and a non-handicapped sibling. The siblings with Down's syndrome initiated less prosocial and agonistic behaviour, but imitated more frequently than their non-handicapped siblings. These effects were found regardless of birth order. There were no effects of gender. Higher levels of prosocial behaviours among large interval dyads and in dyads with a second-born Down's syndrome child were primarily due to the age of the non-handicapped sibling. Results were similar to those in previous "normative" studies of sibling interactions.