Publications by authors named "Courtney M"

Covering: 1960s to 2024Harmful algal blooms pose a major threat to aquatic ecosystems and can impact human health. The frequency and intensity of these blooms has increased over recent decades, driven primarily by climate change and an increase in nutrient runoff. Algal blooms often produce toxins that contaminate water sources, disrupt fisheries, and harm human health.

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Anesthesiologists are perioperative leaders of patient and health care team safety. The anesthesiologist needs to remain vigilant in the perioperative setting and while caring for patients. The ability to navigate increased noise levels, distractions, and hazards is crucial for maintaining a safe environment.

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Imaging techniques, such as computed tomography (CT) and fluoroscopy, are essential for the diagnosis and treatment of urolithiasis. There is increasing concern regarding the cumulative radiation dose associated with medical imaging and its adverse effects. This study aimed to assess radiation exposure in patients undergoing endoscopic management of urolithiasis and to identify factors associated with increased exposure.

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De novo mutations in the synaptic GTPase activating protein (SynGAP) are associated with neurological disorders like intellectual disability, epilepsy, and autism. SynGAP is also implicated in Alzheimer's disease and cancer. Although pathogenic variants are highly penetrant in neurodevelopmental conditions, a substantial number of them are caused by missense mutations that are difficult to diagnose.

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Background: Placement stability is tied to well-being among children living in foster care, yet residential mobility remains largely unexplored for transition-age youth residing in extended foster care (EFC) between ages 18 and 21. During the time young adults in EFC can remain in foster homes, child welfare agencies offer living arrangements tailored to the transition into adulthood. In supervised independent living placements (SILPs), residents receive monthly stipends to cover their housing expenses and are responsible for covering food, utilities, and other basic needs-related costs.

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Background: Maternal immune activation (MIA) triggers neurobiological changes in offspring, potentially reshaping the molecular synaptic landscape, with the hippocampus being particularly vulnerable. However, critical details regarding developmental timing of these changes and whether they differ between males and females remain unclear.

Methods: We induced MIA in C57BL/6J mice on gestational day nine using the viral mimetic poly(I:C) and performed mass spectrometry-based proteomic analyses on hippocampal synaptoneurosomes of embryonic (E18) and adult (20 ± 1 weeks) MIA offspring.

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Unlabelled: Time-lapse microscopy offers a powerful approach for analyzing cellular activity. In particular, this technique is valuable for assessing the behavior of bacterial populations, which can exhibit growth and intercellular interactions in a monolayer. Such time-lapse imaging typically generates large quantities of data, limiting the options for manual investigation.

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Article Synopsis
  • The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the need for effective health information systems (HIS) to manage public health emergencies, prompting assessments of HIS in eight European countries to identify gaps and best practices.
  • The assessments revealed key themes related to organizational, technical, legal, and resource challenges in HIS, with varying approaches taken by different countries to enhance their systems.
  • To improve pandemic preparedness, countries need to strengthen their HIS through better data sharing laws, standardization, fostering public trust, and addressing workforce resource gaps.
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Accurate resection cavity segmentation on MRI is important for neuroimaging research involving epilepsy surgical outcomes. Manual segmentation, the gold standard, is highly labour intensive. Automated pipelines are an efficient potential solution; however, most have been developed for use following temporal epilepsy surgery.

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This paper reports the sixth in a series of meetings held under the auspices of COSPAR (with space agencies support) to identify, refine and prioritize the knowledge gaps that need to be addressed for planetary protection for crewed missions to Mars, as well as to describe where and how needed data can be obtained. This approach is consistent with current scientific understanding and COSPAR policy, that the presence of a biological hazard in Martian material cannot be ruled out, and appropriate mitigations need to be in place. The workshops in the series were intentionally organized to obtain a diverse set of inputs from subject matter experts across a range of expertise on conduct of a potential future crewed Mars exploration mission, identifying and leveraging precursor ground, cis-lunar crewed and Mars robotic activities that can be used to close knowledge gaps.

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Background And Objectives: Although commonly used in the evaluation of patients for epilepsy surgery, the association between the detection of localizing fluorine fluorodeoxyglucose PET (F-FDG-PET) hypometabolism and epilepsy surgery outcome is uncertain. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine whether localizing F-FDG-PET hypometabolism is associated with favorable outcome after epilepsy surgery.

Methods: A systematic literature search was undertaken.

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Background And Objectives: Although it is well established that psychological disorders and osteoporosis risk are linked, how the relationship manifests is not. This study examines depressive symptoms and a history of psychological problems as potential risk factors for osteoporosis diagnosis, adjudicating between 4 theoretical models rarely tested together. We analyze these models across multiple domains (i.

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Enhanced recovery after surgery (ERAS) protocols are shown to improve patient outcomes and reduce length of hospital stay. However, there is currently limited consensus on the perioperative management of patients undergoing bariatric and metabolic surgery (BMS) in the United Kingdom. This study aims to survey the level of consistency in patient care undergoing BMS.

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Objective: Epilepsy surgery is known to be underutilized. Machine learning-natural language processing (ML-NLP) may be able to assist with identifying patients suitable for referral for epilepsy surgery evaluation.

Methods: Data were collected from two tertiary hospitals for patients seen in neurology outpatients for whom the diagnosis of "epilepsy" was mentioned.

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Recombinant monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) have been spurring the rapid growth of commercial biotherapeutics. During production their charge heterogeneity must be assessed as a critical quality attribute to ensure safety, efficacy, and potency. Although imaged capillary isoelectric focusing (icIEF) is a powerful tool for this process, it could be improved further with tandem high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS).

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Background: During a program review, faculty identified that nurse practitioner (NP) students who received a C grade in Advanced Pathophysiology (Patho) and Advanced Pharmacology (Pharm) appeared to perform poorly in the later NP management courses and on other program outcomes.

Purpose: The research aimed to determine whether grades in graduate Patho and Pharm courses could predict performance in NP management courses, program progression and completion, and certification pass rates.

Methodology: This research included deidentified student data from 2016 to 2018 across seven NP specialty tracks ( n = 4,575).

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Maternal infections during pregnancy pose an increased risk for neurodevelopmental psychiatric disorders (NPDs) in the offspring. Here, we examined age- and sex-dependent dynamic changes of the hippocampal synaptic proteome after maternal immune activation (MIA) in embryonic and adult mice. Adult male and female MIA offspring exhibited social deficits and sex-specific depression-like behaviours, among others, validating the model.

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Introduction: Epilepsy surgery is an underutilised, efficacious management strategy for selected individuals with drug-resistant epilepsy. Natural language processing (NLP) may aid in the identification of patients who are suitable to undergo evaluation for epilepsy surgery. The feasibility of this approach is yet to be determined.

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A small but growing body of research suggests that adolescents and young adults involved with the child welfare system and those transitioning out of foster care are at heightened risk of experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). Understanding the factors that place youth at risk of IPV is central to prevention and treatment of this public health problem. However, questions remain about the prevalence and correlates of IPV among youth in foster care.

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Demographic and early-life socioeconomic and parental investment factors may influence later-life health and development of chronic and progressive diseases, including osteoporosis, a costly condition common among women. The "long arm of childhood" literature links negative early-life exposures to lower socioeconomic attainment and worse adult health. We build on a small literature linking childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and bone health, providing evidence of whether associations exist between lower childhood SES and maternal investment and higher risk of osteoporosis diagnosis.

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Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are short synthetic nucleic acids that recognize and bind to complementary RNA to modulate gene expression. It is well established that single-stranded, phosphorothioate-modified ASOs enter cells independent of carrier molecules, primarily via endocytic pathways, but that only a small portion of internalized ASO is released into the cytosol and/or nucleus, rendering the majority of ASO inaccessible to the targeted RNA. Identifying pathways that can increase the available ASO pool is valuable as a research tool and therapeutically.

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This study aims to be a contemporary review of mHealth apps in bariatric and metabolic surgery (BMS) to assess their quality using the Silberg scale as well as features, themes, usability, and medical/allied health professional involvement (MAPI). Apps were identified using search terms in the Android and Apple app stores. 52 apps were included.

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Article Synopsis
  • Sepsis is an infection response that often lacks rapid diagnostic tools in primary care, leading to delays in detection.
  • Lateral flow devices (LFDs) could improve point-of-care sepsis detection but need better sensitivity; researchers tested larger selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) against standard gold nanoparticles (AuNPs).
  • Results showed that 150-310 nm SeNPs achieved a lower limit of detection for interleukin-6 (IL-6) than the 40 nm AuNPs, indicating that larger SeNPs could offer a more sensitive alternative for sepsis diagnostics.
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