Modeling Nursing Home Harms From COVID-19 Staff Furlough Policies.

Importance: Current guidance to furlough health care staff with mild COVID-19 illness may prevent the spread of COVID-19 but may worsen nursing home staffing shortages as well as health outcomes that are unrelated to COVID-19.

Objective: To compare COVID-19-related with non-COVID-19-related harms associated with allowing staff who are mildly ill with COVID-19 to work while masked.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This modeling study, conducted from November 2023 to June 2024, used an agent-based model representing a 100-bed nursing home and its residents, staff, and their interactions; care tasks; and resident and staff health outcomes to simulate the impact of different COVID-19 furlough policies over 1 postpandemic year.

A Systems Map of the Challenges of Climate Communication.

Over the past sixty years, scientists have been warning about climate change and its impacts on human health, but evidence suggests that many may not be heeding these concerns. This raises the question of whether new communication approaches are needed to overcome the unique challenges of communicating what people can do to slow or reverse climate change. To better elucidate the challenges of communicating about the links between human activity, climate change and its effects, and identify potential solutions, we developed a systems map of the factors and processes involved based on systems mapping sessions with climate change and communication experts.

The Need to Focus More on Climate Change Communication and Incorporate More Systems Approaches.

Society is at an inflection point-both in terms of climate change and the amount of data and computational resources currently available. Climate change has been a catastrophe in slow motion with relationships between human activity, climate change, and the resulting effects forming a complex system. However, to date, there has been a general lack of urgent responses from leaders and the general public, despite urgent warnings from the scientific community about the consequences of climate change and what can be done to mitigate it.

The potential epidemiologic, clinical, and economic value of a universal coronavirus vaccine: a modelling study.

Background: With efforts underway to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine, otherwise known as a pan-coronavirus vaccine, this is the time to offer potential funders, researchers, and manufacturers guidance on the potential value of such a vaccine and how this value may change with differing vaccine and vaccination characteristics.

Methods: Using a computational model representing the United States (U.S.

How the Timing of Annual COVID-19 Vaccination of Nursing Home Residents and Staff Affects Its Value.

Objectives: To evaluate the epidemiologic, clinical, and economic value of an annual nursing home (NH) COVID-19 vaccine campaign and the impact of when vaccination starts.

Design: Agent-based model representing a typical NH.

Setting And Participants: NH residents and staff.

Overview of cocaine identification by vibrational spectroscopy and chemometrics.

The use of non-destructive forensic methods for cocaine identification is of outstanding importance, given the amount of samples seized. Techniques such as ATR-FTIR, Raman, and NIR spectroscopy have become alternatives to circumvent this problem, as they allow fast, cheap analysis, and enable the reanalysis of samples. When combined with chemometrics, these spectroscopic methods can be used to determine and quantify cocaine samples, meaning that the limitations of existing techniques can be overcome.

Wavenumber selection based on Singular Value Decomposition for sample classification.

The dissemination of falsified medicines is a public health risk. Techniques such as attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy are commonly adopted for fraudulent drug detection. However, the spectrum generated by the ATR-FTIR typically results in hundreds of wavenumbers, reducing the performance of classification methods aimed at discriminating between authentic and falsified medicines.

MicroRNA-101 Regulates Multiple Developmental Programs to Constrain Excitation in Adult Neural Networks.

A critical feature of neural networks is that they balance excitation and inhibition to prevent pathological dysfunction. How this is achieved is largely unknown, although deficits in the balance contribute to many neurological disorders. We show here that a microRNA (miR-101) is a key orchestrator of this essential feature, shaping the developing network to constrain excitation in the adult.

Long-lasting changes in neural networks to compensate for altered nicotinic input.

The nervous system must balance excitatory and inhibitory input to constrain network activity levels within a proper dynamic range. This is a demanding requirement during development, when networks form and throughout adulthood as networks respond to constantly changing environments. Defects in the ability to sustain a proper balance of excitatory and inhibitory activity are characteristic of numerous neurological disorders such as schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, and autism.

Functional alpha7 nicotinic receptors are expressed on immature granule cells of the postnatal dentate gyrus.

Neurogenesis occurs throughout life in the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus, and postnatal-born granule cells migrate into the granule cell layer and extend axons to their target areas. The α7*nicotinic receptor has been implicated in neuronal maturation during development of the brain and is abundant in interneurons of the hippocampal formation of the adult brain. Signalling through these same receptors is believed also to promote maturation and integration of adult-born granule cells in the hippocampal formation.

A novel mechanism for nicotinic potentiation of glutamatergic synapses.

Selective strengthening of specific glutamatergic synapses in the mammalian hippocampus is critical for encoding new memories. This is most commonly achieved by input-specific Hebbian-type plasticity involving glutamate-dependent coincident presynaptic and postsynaptic depolarization. Our results demonstrate a novel mechanism by which nicotinic signaling, independently of coincident fast glutamatergic transmission, increases synaptic strength in the hippocampus.

Nicotinic control of adult-born neuron fate.

The hippocampus is one of only two regions in the adult brain where neurons are generated in significant numbers throughout the lifetime of the animal. Numerous studies have demonstrated that these adult-born neurons are essential for optimal cognitive function with unimpaired memory formation and retrieval. The extent to which adult-born neurons survive through an early "critical period" and become integrated into functional networks has been shown to depend on the richness of stimulation they receive during these formative stages.

Membrane targeting, shedding and protein interactions of brain acetylcholinesterase.

The early stages of Alzheimer's disease are characterized by cholinergic deficits and the preservation of cholinergic function through the use of acetylcholinesterase inhibitors is the basis for current treatments of the disease. Understanding the causes for the loss of basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in neurodegeneration is therefore a key to developing new therapeutics. In this study, we review novel aspects of cholinesterase membrane localization in brain and propose mechanisms for its lipid domain targeting, secretion and protein-protein interactions.

Co-localization of PRiMA with acetylcholinesterase in cholinergic neurons of rat brain: an immunocytochemical study.

In the central nervous system, acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is present in a tetrameric form that is anchored to membranes via a proline-rich membrane anchor (PRiMA). Previously it has been found that principal cholinergic neurons in the brain express high concentrations of AChE enzymic activity at their neuronal membranes. The aim of this study was to use immunocytochemical methods to determine the distribution of PRiMA in these neurons in the rat brain.