Longitudinal prevalence and co-carriage of pathogens associated with nursing home acquired pneumonia in three long-term care facilities.

Nursing home acquired pneumonia (NHAP), and its subset - aspiration-associated pneumonia, is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among residents in long-term care facilities (LTCFs). Understanding colonization dynamics of respiratory pathogens in LTCF residents is essential for effective infection control. This study examines the longitudinal trends in prevalence, persistence, bacterial load, and co-colonization patterns of five respiratory pathogens in three LTCFs in Phoenix, Arizona.

Viral Polymerase Chain Reaction Testing of the Cerebrospinal Fluid: Comprehensive Care for Neonates With a Fever.

Neonates who develop fever have a high risk for serious infection, and while the standard of care involves performing a full sepsis evaluation, current guidelines do not include viral polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing of the cerebrospinal fluid as a standard of care, which means that cases of viral meningitis can be missed. This case presentation discusses a neonate who had a fever at four days of life who then underwent a full sepsis evaluation. A respiratory viral panel demonstrated rhino/enterovirus positivity.

Age assessment in unaccompanied minors: assessing uniformity of protocols across Europe.

Age assessment of migrants is crucial, particularly for unaccompanied foreign minors, a population facing legal, social, and humanitarian challenges. Despite existing guidelines, there is no unified protocol in Europe for age assessment.The Forensic Anthropology Society of Europe (FASE) conducted a comprehensive questionnaire to understand age estimation practices in Europe.

Predictors of successful treatment of respiratory distress with aerosolized calfactant.

Introduction: Predictors for successful aerosolized surfactant treatment are not well defined.

Objective: To identify predictors for successful treatment in the AERO-02 trial and the AERO-03 expanded access program.

Methods: Neonates receiving nasal continuous positive airway pressure (NCPAP) at the time of first aerosolized calfactant administration were included in this analysis.

Investigating the Timing and Extent of Juvenile and Fetal Bone Diagenesis in a Temperate Environment.

It is well understood that intrinsic factors of bone contribute to bone diagenesis, including bone porosity, crystallinity, and the ratio of organic to mineral components. However, histological analyses have largely been limited to adult bones, although with some exceptions. Considering that many of these properties are different between juvenile and adult bone, the purpose of this study is to investigate if these differences may result in increased degradation observed histologically in fetal and juvenile bone.

Midfacial Morphology and Neandertal-Modern Human Interbreeding.

Ancient DNA from, Neandertal and modern human fossils, and comparative morphological analyses of them, reveal a complex history of interbreeding between these lineages and the introgression of Neandertal genes into modern human genomes. Despite substantial increases in our knowledge of these events, the timing and geographic location of hybridization events remain unclear. Six measures of facial size and shape, from regional samples of Neandertals and early modern humans, were used in a multivariate exploratory analysis to try to identify regions in which early modern human facial morphology was more similar to that of Neandertals, which might thus represent regions of greater introgression of Neandertal genes.

Recent Advances in Forensic Anthropological Methods and Research.

This Special Issue, "Recent Advances in Forensic Anthropological Methods and Research", with thirteen articles covers a wide range of highly diverse topics within forensic anthropology [...

Identifying Blunt Force Traumatic Injury on Thermally Altered Remains: A Pilot Study Using .

In forensic scenarios involving homicide, human remains are often exposed to fire as a means of disposal and/or obscuring identity. Burning human remains can result in the concealment of traumatic injury, the creation of artifacts resembling injury, or the destruction of preexisting trauma. Since fire exposure can greatly influence trauma preservation, methods to differentiate trauma signatures from burning artifacts are necessary to conduct forensic analyses.

Ethical dilemmas in skeletal collection utilization: Implications of the Black Lives Matter movement on the anatomical and anthropological sciences.

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has brought to the public eye longstanding issues of social and racial injustice which have permeated the experiences of individuals of African ancestry in the United States and abroad for centuries. Motivated by a desire to disassemble a framework of systemic racism, the BLM movement has infiltrated numerous social and political arenas including the sciences, demanding change. The impact of the BLM movement is evident in the attention recently garnered by protests of museum skeletal collections' acquisition and handling of African/African American human remains.

The need to incorporate human variation and evolutionary theory in forensic anthropology: A call for reform.

In 1992, Norm Sauer called for a language shift in which practitioners would move away from the socially loaded term "race" and replace it with the less provocative term "ancestry." While many heeded the call and moved towards ancestry in their research and reports, the actual approach to research and analysis did not change. In response to this change, there was a large growth in ancestry estimation method development in the early decade of the 2000s.

Ancestry Studies in Forensic Anthropology: Back on the Frontier of Racism.

One of the parameters forensic anthropologists have traditionally estimated is ancestry, which is used in the United States as a proxy for social race. Its use is controversial because the biological race concept was debunked by scientists decades ago. However, many forensic anthropologists contend, in part, that because social race categories used by law enforcement can be predicted by cranial variation, ancestry remains a necessary parameter for estimation.

Faces Divulge the Origins of Caribbean Prehistoric Inhabitants.

The origins of the first peoples to colonize the Caribbean Islands have been the subject of intense debate for over 30 years. Competing hypotheses have identified five separate migrations from the mainland with a separate debate concerning the colonization of The Bahamas. Significant differences in the facial morphology of the pre-Columbian inhabitants of Hispaniola and Cuba led to the present study of Lucayan skulls from The Bahamas.

Patterns of ovarian cancer and uterine cancer mortality and incidence in the contiguous USA.

The main objective is to investigate the geographical variation in ovarian cancer and uterine cancer mortality, and to test associations between some risk factors and these cancer types in the contiguous US for mortality and for incidence. The modern disease surveillance software SaTScan™ was used for a spatial cluster analysis to assess any observable geographical variation in ovarian and uterine cancer mortality rates and to identify and test for spatial clusters with elevated relative risk. The analyses were first completed using age adjusted cancer rates for ovarian cancer and for uterine cancer.

Complex Nature of Hominin Dispersals: Ecogeographical and Climatic Evidence for Pre-Contact Craniofacial Variation.

Coordinate data analysis of ancient crania from the New World reveals complexity in interpretation when addressing ancient population dispersals. The results of this study generally support a geographic patterning for the New World; however, it also revealed a much more complex and multifactorial mechanism shaping craniofacial morphology that should be considered when investigating ecogeographic models for hominin dispersals. We show that craniofacial variation is not the result of a single mechanism but is a much more complex interaction of environmental and microevolutionary forces.

Morphology of the Homo naledi femora from Lesedi.

Objectives: The femoral remains recovered from the Lesedi Chamber are among the most complete South African fossil hominin femora discovered to date and offer new and valuable insights into the anatomy and variation of the bone in Homo naledi. While the femur is one of the best represented postcranial elements in the H. naledi assemblage from the Dinaledi Chamber, the fragmentary and commingled nature of the Dinaledi femoral remains has impeded the assessment of this element in its complete state.

Decomposition of juvenile-sized remains: a macro- and microscopic perspective.

There is currently a dearth of research investigating the progression and rate of decomposition for juvenile remains. It is thought that juveniles and infants decompose at an increased rate relative to adults due simply to body mass and that skeletal preservation is commonly dependent on intrinsic levels of bone mineral density (BMD). This study investigates the environmental variables important in driving juvenile decomposition as well as examining if currently accepted methodology for quantifying adult decomposition can be applied to juvenile remains.

Bone Mineral Density Adult Age Estimation in Forensic Anthropology: A Test of the DXAGE Application.

Estimating age-at-death of individuals represented only by skeletonized human remains is a fundamental aspect of forensic anthropological casework. Recently, several researchers have proposed that bone mineral density (BMD) is a useful predictor of age-at-death in forensic contexts. Navega et al.

Biological sex variation in bone mineral density in the cranium and femur.

Objectives: Sex and age trends in bone mineral density (BMD) play an important role in the estimation of age-at-death (AAD) of unidentified human remains. Current methodologies lack the ability to precisely estimate age in older individuals. In this study, BMD of the cranium and femur measured by DXA were examined to establish their applicability for age estimation in older adults.