Predictors of Food Insecurity and Food Assistance Program Usage Among Puerto Ricans Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Background/objectives: Puerto Rican households often face elevated rates of food insecurity. Frequently, households experiencing food insecurity turn to federal and emergency nutrition assistance for urgent or prolonged aid. This study analyzes factors influencing food insecurity and food assistance program involvement among Puerto Ricans in Holyoke, Massachusetts, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Applying athletic principles to medical rounds to improve teaching and patient care.

Problem: Teaching hospital multidisciplinary work rounds are often inefficient, delaying the completion of patient care tasks and detracting from teaching. Participants often act as working groups rather than interdependent teams. Athletic principles were used to train multidisciplinary rounding teams to adopt the systems used by manufacturing to improve the efficiency and quality of patient care, as well as teamwork and didactic teaching.

The Lin28b-let-7-Hmga2 axis determines the higher self-renewal potential of fetal haematopoietic stem cells.

Mouse haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) undergo a postnatal transition in several properties, including a marked reduction in their self-renewal activity. We now show that the developmentally timed change in this key function of HSCs is associated with their decreased expression of Lin28b and an accompanying increase in their let-7 microRNA levels. Lentivirus-mediated overexpression of Lin28 in adult HSCs elevates their self-renewal activity in transplanted irradiated hosts, as does overexpression of Hmga2, a well-established let-7 target that is upregulated in fetal HSCs.

Caught in the tapestry of tobacco: why I smoke.

Faced with the knowledge that smoking is dangerous, women continue to smoke cigarettes, and the number is growing. In contrast, breast cancer is being diagnosed earlier, and women are listening to the call for mammograms and examination screenings. Why then, are women not listening to the call to never start or stop smoking? In nursing today it has become necessary to put forth a greater effort to call attention to the toll of lung cancer and other smoking related diseases.

Hematopoietic stem cell subtypes expand differentially during development and display distinct lymphopoietic programs.

Adult hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) with serially transplantable activity comprise two subtypes. One shows a balanced output of mature lymphoid and myeloid cells; the other appears selectively lymphoid deficient. We now show that both of these HSC subtypes are present in the fetal liver (at a 1:10 ratio) with the rarer, lymphoid-deficient HSCs immediately gaining an increased representation in the fetal bone marrow, suggesting that the marrow niche plays a key role in regulating their ensuing preferential amplification.