Evidence for the existence of facilitatory interactions between the dopamine D2 receptor and the oxytocin receptor in the amygdala of the rat. Relevance for anxiolytic actions.

The amygdala is a limbic region of high value for understanding anxiety and its treatment. Dopamine D2 receptors (D2Rs) and oxytocin receptors (OXTRs) have both been shown to participate in modulating anxiety involving effects in the amygdala. The goal is to understand if D2R-OXTR heterocomplexes exist in the central amygdala and if, through enhancing allosteric receptor-receptor interactions, may enhance anxiolytic actions.

Machine learning accurately predicts food exchange list and the exchangeable portion.

Introduction: Food Exchange Lists (FELs) are a user-friendly tool developed to help individuals aid healthy eating habits and follow a specific diet plan. Given the rapidly increasing number of new products or access to new foods, one of the biggest challenges for FELs is being outdated. Supervised machine learning algorithms could be a tool that facilitates this process and allows for updated FELs-the present study aimed to generate an algorithm to predict food classification and calculate the equivalent portion.

Improved Combinatorial Assembly and Barcode Sequencing for Gene-Sized DNA Constructs.

Synergistic and supportive interactions among genes can be incorporated in engineering biology to enhance and stabilize the performance of biological systems, but combinatorial numerical explosion challenges the analysis of multigene interactions. The incorporation of DNA barcodes to mark genes coupled with next-generation sequencing offers a solution to this challenge. We describe improvements for a key method in this space, CombiGEM, to broaden its application to assembling typical gene-sized DNA fragments and to reduce the cost of sequencing for prevalent small-scale projects.

COVID-19 and human resources for health: analysis of planning, policy responses and actions in Latin American and Caribbean countries.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic led to worldwide health service disruptions, due mainly to insufficient staff availability. To gain insight into policy responses and engage with policy-makers, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed a global approach to assess and measure the impact of COVID-19 on the health workforce. As part of this, WHO, together with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), supported an impact analysis of COVID-19 on health workers and policy responses, through country case studies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).

Long-Term Functional Outcomes and Quality of Life after Male Transobturator-Retrourethral Sling Surgery.

Introduction: Post-prostatectomy urinary incontinence (PPUI) has an enormous impact in quality of life (QoL). Transobturator-rethrourethral sling (AdVanceTMXP sling) is a well-established treatment option although there is paucity of data on long-term outcomes. Our objective was to assess the long-term functional outcomes and QoL in a cohort of men undergoing AdVanceTMXP sling surgery.