Spirituality in Aotearoa,New Zealand: Personal Reflections From a Spirituality in Health Care Researcher

Spirituality is about what is of utmost value; it is a values lens that asks “what really matters most to me, my family, our community, our country, and our world.” This personal reflection comes from a New Zealand academic who works in the spirituality and health care research field. Although largely biographical, this reflection offers some insight into the New Zealand context and this emergent field.     

Containing SARS-CoV-2 in hospitals facing finite PPE,limited testing,and physical space variability: Navigating resource constrained enhanced traffic control bundling

The COVID-19 outbreak has led to a focus by public health practitioners and scholars on ways to limit spread while facing unprecedented challenges and resource constraints. Recent COVID-19-specific enhanced Traffic Control Bundling (eTCB) recommendations provide a cogent framework for managing patient care pathways and reducing health care worker (HCW) and patient exposure to SARS-CoV-2. eTCB has been applied broadly and has proven to be effective in limiting fomite and droplet transmissions in hospitals and between hospitals and the surrounding community. At the same time, resource constrained conditions involving limited personal protective equipment (PPE), low testing availability, and variability in physical space can require modifications in the way hospitals implement eTCB. While eTCB has come to be viewed as a standard of practice, COVID-19 related resource constraints often require hospital implementation teams to customize eTCB solutions. We provide and describe a cross-functional, collaborative on-the-ground adaptive application of eTCB initially piloted at two hospitals and subsequently reproduced at 16 additional hospitals and health systems in the US to date. By effectively facilitating eTCB deployment, hospital leaders and practitioners can establish clearer ‘zones of risk’ and related protective practices that prevent transmission to HCWs and patients. We outline key insights and recommendations gained from recent implementation under the aforementioned constraints and a cross-functional team process that can be utilized by hospitals to most effectively adapt eTCB under resource constraints.     

African swine fever risk and plant-based feed ingredients: Canada's approach to risk management of imported feed products

As a result of unprecedented spread of African swine fever (ASF) since 2018, Canada has taken additional steps to prevent introduction of the virus. While the role of plant-based feed in the transmission of ASF is not completely understood, it was identified that no mitigation measures were in place to address this uncertain risk. A risk analysis process was conducted with collaboration between government and industry, including an assessment of the costs and benefits of various risk mitigation options. Using existing legislative tools, requirements must now be met before the importation of plant-based feed ingredients of concern is permitted. Even with an uncertain risk, countries such as Canada that would suffer severe consequences should ASF be introduced, need to consider appropriate, risk-based mitigation measures.     

Sequential divergence and the multiplicative origin of community diversity

Phenotypic and genetic variation in one species can influence the composition of interacting organisms within communities and across ecosystems. As a result, the divergence of one species may not be an isolated process, as the origin of one taxon could create new niche opportunities for other species to exploit, leading to the genesis of many new taxa in a process termed “sequential divergence.” Here, we test for such a multiplicative effect of sequential divergence in a community of host-specific parasitoid wasps, Diachasma alloeum, Utetes canaliculatus, and Diachasmimorpha mellea (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), that attack Rhagoletis pomonella fruit flies (Diptera: Tephritidae). Flies in the R. pomonella species complex radiated by sympatrically shifting and ecologically adapting to new host plants, the most recent example being the apple-infesting host race of R. pomonella formed via a host plant shift from hawthorn-infesting flies within the last 160 y. Using population genetics, field-based behavioral observations, host fruit odor discrimination assays, and analyses of life history timing, we show that the same host-related ecological selection pressures that differentially adapt and reproductively isolate Rhagoletis to their respective host plants (host-associated differences in the timing of adult eclosion, host fruit odor preference and avoidance behaviors, and mating site fidelity) cascade through the ecosystem and induce host-associated genetic divergence for each of the three members of the parasitoid community. Thus, divergent selection at lower trophic levels can potentially multiplicatively and rapidly amplify biodiversity at higher levels on an ecological time scale, which may sequentially contribute to the rich diversity of life.Population divergence is a fundamental evolutionary process contributing to the diversity of life (1). Studies of how new life forms originate typically focus on how barriers to gene flow evolve in specific lineages, resulting in their divergence into descendent daughter taxa. As a result, evolutionary biologists now have a good understanding of how variation within a population is transformed by selection into differences between taxa (1–3). What is less well understood is whether the divergence of one population has consequences that ripple through the trophic levels of an ecosystem and affect entire communities of interacting organisms. Studies in paleontology (4–6), community ecology (7, 8), systematics (8, 9), and ecosystem genetics (10, 11) suggest that evolutionary change in one lineage can influence entire communities of organisms. For example, when the genotype/phenotype of a “foundation” species influences the relative fitness of other species, evolutionary change(s) in this genotype/phenotype may affect organisms in adjacent trophic levels (10, 11). If these evolutionary changes are linked to ecological adaptation and reproductive isolation (RI), associated organisms may diverge in parallel, potentially creating entire coevolved communities distinct from one another (12–15). Therefore, population divergence may not always be an isolated process, as the differentiation of one taxon could beget the divergence of many others.Such “sequential” or “cascading” divergence events may be particularly relevant to understanding why some groups of organisms, like plants, the insects that feed on them, and the parasitoids that attack the insects, are more diverse and species-rich than other groups (8, 9, 12–15). Specifically, when phytophagous insects diversify by adapting to new host plants, they create a new habitat for their parasitoids to exploit (Fig. 1). If a parasitoid shifts to the new habitat, it can encounter the same divergent ecological selection pressures as its insect host, which could result in the parallel divergence of insect host and parasitoid (12–15) (Fig. 1A). Moreover, sequential divergence may have multiplicative effects in generating biodiversity, as the shift of an insect to a new plant may open a new niche opportunity for not just one but the entire community of parasitoids attacking the insect host (12, 13) (Fig. 1B). However, few convincing examples of sequential divergence exist (12–15), and in no study is there both genetic and ecological evidence for sequential divergence multiplicatively amplifying biodiversity.Open in a separate windowFig. 1.Three scenarios of codivergence in a host−parasitoid system. (A) A single sequential divergence event, (B) sequential divergence with multiplicative amplification of biodiversity, and (C) cospeciation in allopatry. In A, codivergence is driven by the cascade of divergent ecological selection pressures across trophic levels in sympatry. Here, a degree of divergent ecological adaptation must accompany the host shift such that parasitoids are not merely moving between geographically separated hosts. In B, the multiplicative effects of sequential divergence can be seen as several members of the parasitoid community diverge in parallel with their host. In C, codivergence (cospeciation) occurs after host plant, fly, and parasitoid populations become jointly geographically isolated (black bar), resulting in parallel allopatric speciation. Here, little differentiation need accompany the initial host shift of fly or parasitoid. Cospeciation is not necessarily driven by the creation and adaptation to new niches but by the concordant geographic and reproductive separation of hosts and parasitoids.Here, we test for the multiplicative effects of sequential divergence in the community of parasitoid wasps (Hymenoptera: Braconidae) that attack fruit flies in the Rhagoletis pomonella sibling species complex (Diptera: Tephritidae) (Fig. 2). Several features of the biology and biogeography of the Rhagoletis−parasitoid system make it ideal for investigating the multiplicative divergence hypothesis and allow us to directly test multiple criteria supporting sympatric host race formation (16) and sequential divergence (12, 13), summarized in 1–3, 17–19), the hypothesized initial stage of ecological speciation (16, 17). The short time frame and sympatric spatial context of R. pomonella’s shift to apple exclude passive codivergence or speciation (Fig. 1C) as an explanation for differentiation. Specifically, fly and wasp populations could not have diverged in concert, because they became jointly geographically separated in the past (Fig. 1C). Rather, if flies and wasps display concordant adaptations, it is likely due to the direct effects of divergent ecological selection resulting from host shifts cascading from host plants to flies to parasitoids (Fig. 1 A and B).Open in a separate windowFig. 2.The community of host-specific parasitoids that attack members of the (A) Rhagoletis pomonella sibling species complex: (B) D. alloeum, (C) D. mellea, and (D) U. canaliculatus that (E) emerge from the fly pupal case as adults following overwintering. (Scale bar, 1 mm.)

Table 1.

Summary of conditions (criteria) conducive to and supporting hypotheses of sympatric host race formation (modified from ref. 16) and sequential divergence (modified from refs. 12 and 13)

Screening of a Library of FDA-Approved Drugs Identifies Several Enterovirus Replication Inhibitors That Target Viral Protein 2C

Enteroviruses (EVs) represent many important pathogens of humans. Unfortunately, no antiviral compounds currently exist to treat infections with these viruses. We screened the Prestwick Chemical Library, a library of approved drugs, for inhibitors of coxsackievirus B3, identified pirlindole as a potent novel inhibitor, and confirmed the inhibitory action of dibucaine, zuclopenthixol, fluoxetine, and formoterol. Upon testing of viruses of several EV species, we found that dibucaine and pirlindole inhibited EV-B and EV-D and that dibucaine also inhibited EV-A, but none of them inhibited EV-C or rhinoviruses (RVs). In contrast, formoterol inhibited all enteroviruses and rhinoviruses tested. All compounds acted through the inhibition of genome replication. Mutations in the coding sequence of the coxsackievirus B3 (CV-B3) 2C protein conferred resistance to dibucaine, pirlindole, and zuclopenthixol but not formoterol, suggesting that 2C is the target for this set of compounds. Importantly, dibucaine bound to CV-B3 protein 2C in vitro, whereas binding to a 2C protein carrying the resistance mutations was reduced, providing an explanation for how resistance is acquired.