Public transport access to drug treatment before and during COVID-19: Implications for the opioid epidemic.

Public transport disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic had wide-ranging impacts on the ability of individuals to access health care. Individuals with opioid use disorder represent an especially vulnerable population due to the necessity of frequent, supervised doses of opioid agonists. Focused on Toronto, a major Canadian city suffering from the opioid epidemic, this analysis uses novel realistic routing methodologies to quantify how travel times to individuals\220 nearest clinics changed due to public transport disruptions from 2019 to 2020.

Zyxin contributes to coupling between cell junctions and contractile actomyosin networks during apical constriction.

One of the most common cell shape changes driving morphogenesis in diverse animals is the constriction of the apical cell surface. Apical constriction depends on contraction of an actomyosin network in the apical cell cortex, but such actomyosin networks have been shown to undergo continual, conveyor belt-like contractions before the shrinking of an apical surface begins. This finding suggests that apical constriction is not necessarily triggered by the contraction of actomyosin networks, but rather can be triggered by unidentified, temporally-regulated mechanical links between actomyosin and junctions.

Introducing spatial availability, a singly-constrained measure of competitive accessibility.

Accessibility indicators are widely used in transportation, urban and healthcare planning, among many other applications. These measures are weighted sums of reachable opportunities from a given origin, conditional on the cost of movement, and are estimates of the potential for spatial interaction. Over time, various proposals have been forwarded to improve their interpretability: one of those methodological additions have been the introduction of competition.

Changes in accessibility to emergency and community food services during COVID-19 and implications for low income populations in Hamilton, Ontario.

In this paper we analyze the changes in accessibility to emergency and community food services before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the City of Hamilton, Ontario. Many of these food services are the last line of support for households facing food insecurity; as such, their relevance cannot be ignored in the midst of the economic upheaval caused by the pandemic. Our analysis is based on the application of balanced floating catchment areas and concentrates on households with lower incomes ( View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Demand and level of service inflation in Floating Catchment Area (FCA) methods.

Floating Catchment Area (FCA) methods are a popular tool to investigate accessibility to public facilities, in particular health care services. FCA approaches are attractive because, unlike other accessibility measures, they take into account the potential for congestion of facilities. This is done by 1) considering the population within the catchment area of a facility to calculate a variable that measures level of service, and then 2) aggregating the level of service by population centers subject to catchment area constraints.

The health impacts of weekday traffic: A health risk assessment of PM emissions during congested periods.

Little work has accounted for congestion, using data that reflects driving patterns, traffic volume, and speed, to examine the association between traffic emissions and human health. In this study, we performed a health risk assessment of PM emissions during congestion periods in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), Canada. Specifically, we used a micro-level approach that combines the Stochastic User Equilibrium Traffic Assignment Algorithm with a MOVES emission model to estimate emissions considering congestion conditions.

Comparative assessment of fluorescent proteins for in vivo imaging in an animal model system.

Fluorescent protein tags are fundamental tools used to visualize gene products and analyze their dynamics in vivo. Recent advances in genome editing have expedited the precise insertion of fluorescent protein tags into the genomes of diverse organisms. These advances expand the potential of in vivo imaging experiments and facilitate experimentation with new, bright, photostable fluorescent proteins.

MRCK-1 Drives Apical Constriction in C. elegans by Linking Developmental Patterning to Force Generation.

Apical constriction is a change in cell shape that drives key morphogenetic events including gastrulation and neural tube formation. Apical force-producing actomyosin networks drive apical constriction by contracting while connected to cell-cell junctions. The mechanisms by which developmental patterning regulates these actomyosin networks and associated junctions with spatial precision are not fully understood.

Streamlined Genome Engineering with a Self-Excising Drug Selection Cassette.

A central goal in the development of genome engineering technology is to reduce the time and labor required to produce custom genome modifications. Here we describe a new selection strategy for producing fluorescent protein (FP) knock-ins using CRISPR/Cas9-triggered homologous recombination. We have tested our approach in Caenorhabditis elegans.

Noninvasive imaging beyond the diffraction limit of 3D dynamics in thickly fluorescent specimens.

Optical imaging of the dynamics of living specimens involves tradeoffs between spatial resolution, temporal resolution, and phototoxicity, made more difficult in three dimensions. Here, however, we report that rapid three-dimensional (3D) dynamics can be studied beyond the diffraction limit in thick or densely fluorescent living specimens over many time points by combining ultrathin planar illumination produced by scanned Bessel beams with super-resolution structured illumination microscopy. We demonstrate in vivo karyotyping of chromosomes during mitosis and identify different dynamics for the actin cytoskeleton at the dorsal and ventral surfaces of fibroblasts.

Triggering a cell shape change by exploiting preexisting actomyosin contractions.

Apical constriction changes cell shapes, driving critical morphogenetic events, including gastrulation in diverse organisms and neural tube closure in vertebrates. Apical constriction is thought to be triggered by contraction of apical actomyosin networks. We found that apical actomyosin contractions began before cell shape changes in both Caenorhabitis elegans and Drosophila.

Asymmetric cell division: a new way to divide unequally.

It has long been known that cells can divide unequally by shifting the mitotic spindle to one side. Two recent reports identify an alternative way to generate daughter cells of different sizes.