QFASA: A Comprehensive R Package for Diet Estimation via Fatty Acid Signature Analysis.

Quantitative fatty acid signature analysis (QFASA) is a well-established diet estimation method that has been used extensively on a wide variety of marine mammal species. The method, along with its new refinements and extensions, requires the use of statistically intricate tools, many of which are computationally demanding. Recent developments in QFASA include a maximum likelihood framework for diet estimation, statistically valid inference procedures such as confidence intervals for the diet and hypothesis tests for comparing fatty acid signatures and/or diets, a measure of repeatability in the diet estimates, a prey species selection algorithm, as well as novel ways to estimate calibration coefficients, which are used to improve accuracy in the estimates.

The microbiome: what a neurologist needs to know.

The gastrointestinal tract is inhabited by trillions of micro-organisms that form the gut microbiome, which serves various functions that can influence neurological pathways. It can release metabolites that could affect the nervous system. The bidirectional communication between the intestine and the central nervous system is known as the gut-brain axis.

Maternal experience of intimate partner violence, maternal depression, and parental stress are not associated with child telomere length in Bangladesh.

Shorter telomere length (TL) is associated with an increased risk for developing chronic or age-related diseases in adults. The process of telomere shortening is accelerated in response to stress and is well characterized in adult populations from high-income countries. Prior studies suggest the relationship between stress, shorter TL, and disease risk initiates in early life.

Button Battery Ingestion: Exploring Socioeconomic Risk Factors.

Objective: Examine the demographic and social determinants of health linked to pediatric esophageal foreign body removals, with an emphasis on button battery ingestions.

Study Design: A retrospective chart review was performed on pediatric patients who underwent operative removal of a foreign body from the esophagus (Current Procedural Terminologies [CPTs] 43215, 43194).

Setting: The study was conducted across four hospitals from November 2010 to December 2023.