Alignment of Air Pollution Exposure Inequality Metrics with Environmental Justice and Equity Goals in the United States.

A growing literature within the field of air pollution exposure assessment addresses the issue of environmental justice. Leveraging the increasing availability of exposure datasets with broad spatial coverage and high spatial resolution, a number of works have assessed inequalities in exposure across racial/ethnic and other socioeconomic groupings. However, environmental justice research presents the additional need to evaluate exposure inequity-inequality that is systematic, unfair, and avoidable-which may be framed in several ways.

Anesthesia Management of the Patient With Pulmonary Alveolar Proteinosis Undergoing Lung Lavage.

Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) is a rare pulmonary disorder characterized by the accumulation of surfactant/lipoprotein material in the alveoli and subsequent hypoxemic respiratory failure. Whole lung lavage (WLL), a procedure used to physically remove the lipoprotein material from the alveoli, is the first-line treatment for this disease process. Anesthesia providers may infrequently encounter the management of the WLL procedure due to the rarity of the underlying disease process.

Neurodevelopment in the First 2 Years of Life Following Prenatal Exposure to Maternal SARS-CoV-2 Infection.

Importance: The effects of prenatal exposure to SARS-CoV-2 infection on child development throughout the first 2 years of life are unknown.

Objective: To evaluate whether prenatal exposure to SARS-CoV-2 infection was associated with child neurodevelopmental outcomes during the first 2 years of life.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This cohort study used data from the longitudinal, population-based pan-Canadian Pregnancy During the COVID-19 Pandemic cohort, which recruited participants from April 2020 to July 2022.

Impact of Inpatient Patient-Provider Language Concordance on Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates Postpartum.

Objective:  Studies outside of obstetrics suggest that patient-provider language concordance may impact the efficacy of educational interventions and overall patient satisfaction. Many pregnant patients who present to the hospital for delivery with initial plans to exclusively breastfeed ultimately leave the hospital supplementing with formula. We aim to examine the impact of language concordance between patients and their primary bedside nurse during the delivery hospitalization period on the relationship between intended and actual feeding practices for term newborns of primiparous patients at a single institution.

Who Counts? Care, Disability, and the Questionnaire in Jesse Ball's Census.

In the Biopolitics of Disability, David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder (2015) assert that disabled people are subjected to endless health and government questionnaires that harvest their data in exchange for better care. As disability advocates such as the National Disability Rights Network (2021) have demonstrated, these questionnaires-like the 2020 census-are highly flawed because disabled populations are not asked to shape the questions that will determine government funding and access to medical care. Although data collection is a source of contemporary literary and scholarly interest, few works explore this in the context of disability.

Neighborhood-level variability in asthma-related emergency department visits in Central Texas.

Background: The extent to which incidence rates of asthma-related emergency department (ED) visits vary from neighborhood to neighborhood and predictors of neighborhood-level asthma ED visit burden are not well understood.

Objective: We aimed to describe the census tract-level spatial distribution of asthma-related ED visits in Central Texas and identify neighborhood-level characteristics that explain variability in neighborhood-level asthma ED visit rates.

Methods: Conditional autoregressive models were used to examine the spatial distribution of asthma-related ED visit incidence rates across census tracts in Travis County, Texas, and assess the contribution of census tract characteristics to their distribution.

Associations between HIV stigma and health-related quality-of-life among people living with HIV: cross-sectional analysis of data from HPTN 071 (PopART).

People living with HIV (PLHIV) report lower health-related quality-of-life (HRQoL) than HIV-negative people. HIV stigma may contribute to this. We explored the association between HIV stigma and HRQoL among PLHIV.

Epidemiology of heat-related illness in dogs under UK emergency veterinary care in 2022.

Background: Dogs are exposed to increasing environmental risk for developing heat-related illness (HRI), with 2022 recorded as the hottest year to date in the UK and most of Europe.

Methods: This study used VetCompass data to report the incidence risk, event fatality rate and canine risk factors for HRI in dogs presenting to Vets Now emergency care practices in the UK during 2022.

Results: From the clinical records of 167,751 dogs under care at Vets Now emergency clinics in 2022, 384 HRI events were identified.

Mesocosm study of PAC-modified clay effects on Karenia brevis cells and toxins, chemical dynamics, and benthic invertebrate physiology.

Modified clay compounds are used globally as a method of controlling harmful algal blooms, and their use is currently under consideration to control Karenia brevis blooms in Florida, USA. In 1400 L mesocosm tanks, chemical dynamics and lethal and sublethal impacts of MC II, a polyaluminum chloride (PAC)-modified kaolinite clay, were evaluated over 72 h on a benthic community representative of Sarasota Bay, which included blue crab (Callinectes sapidus), sea urchin (Lytechinus variegatus), and hard clam (Mercenaria campechiensis). In this experiment, MC II was dosed at 0.

Synergistic response to climate stressors in coral is associated with genotypic variation in baseline expression.

As environments are rapidly reshaped due to climate change, phenotypic plasticity plays an important role in the ability of organisms to persist and is considered an especially important acclimatization mechanism for long-lived sessile organisms such as reef-building corals. Often, this ability of a single genotype to display multiple phenotypes depending on the environment is modulated by changes in gene expression, which can vary in response to environmental changes via two mechanisms: baseline expression and expression plasticity. We used transcriptome-wide expression profiling of eleven genotypes of common-gardened to explore genotypic variation in the expression response to thermal and acidification stress, both individually and in combination.

Telomere dynamics and oxidative stress in Arabidopsis grown in lunar regolith simulant.

NASA envisions a future where humans establish a thriving colony on the Moon by 2050. Plants will be essential for this endeavor, but little is known about their adaptation to extraterrestrial bodies. The capacity to grow plants in lunar regolith would represent a major step towards this goal by minimizing the reliance on resources transported from Earth.

Exposure of blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) to modified clay treatment of Karenia brevis as a bloom control strategy.

Harmful algal blooms (HABs) of the toxic marine dinoflagellate Karenia brevis, commonly called red tides, are an ongoing threat to human health and marine ecosystems in Florida. Clay flocculation is a standard control strategy for marine HABs in China and Korea and is currently being assessed for use in the United States. We evaluated the effects of a PAC-modified clay called Modified Clay II on mortality, eyestalk reflexes, and righting reflexes of 48 adult blue crabs (Callinectes sapidus).

Prenatal Exposure to Toxic Metals and Neural Tube Defects: A Systematic Review of the Epidemiologic Evidence.

Background: Neural tube defects (NTDs) affect pregnancies worldwide annually. Few nongenetic factors, other than folate deficiency, have been identified that may provide intervenable solutions to reduce the burden of NTDs. Prenatal exposure to toxic metals [arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg), manganese (Mn) and lead (Pb)] may increase the risk of NTDs.

Cooling Methods Used to Manage Heat-Related Illness in Dogs Presented to Primary Care Veterinary Practices during 2016-2018 in the UK.

The management of heat-related illness (HRI) in dogs has received limited attention in the veterinary literature, especially regarding effective cooling methods. Guidelines published in 2016 for prehospital management of dogs with HRI advised "cool first, transport second", and recommended using cold-water immersion and evaporative cooling (water application with air movement) as the optimal approaches to reduce the patient's temperature. The current retrospective cross-sectional observation study analysed electronic patient records from the VetCompass programme to describe the cooling methods used in dogs with HRI presented to primary care veterinary practices during 2016-2018.

Multiomics links global surfactant dysregulation with airflow obstruction and emphysema in COPD.

Rationale: Pulmonary surfactant is vital for lung homeostasis as it reduces surface tension to prevent alveolar collapse and provides essential immune-regulatory and antipathogenic functions. Previous studies demonstrated dysregulation of some individual surfactant components in COPD. We investigated relationships between COPD disease measures and dysregulation of surfactant components to gain new insights into potential disease mechanisms.

Creating Novel Surveillance Data Products for Briefing Health Department Leadership and Elected Officials During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Texas.

Beginning in March 2020, the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) developed several internal surveillance tools for briefing state health department leadership and elected officials on the status of the COVID-19 pandemic in Texas. This case study describes the initial conceptualization and daily production of 3 of these internal surveillance tools: (1) a COVID-19 data book displaying daily case, fatality, hospitalization, and testing data by county; (2) graphs and data files displaying new daily COVID-19 fatalities among residents of long-term care facilities in Texas; and (3) graphs and data files comparing COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations between the 4 COVID-19 waves in Texas. In addition, this case study uses qualitative interview data to describe how DSHS leadership used these surveillance products during the pandemic.

Inhibition of advanced glycation end product formation and serum protein infiltration in bioprosthetic heart valve leaflets: Investigations of anti-glycation agents and anticalcification interactions with ethanol pretreatment.

Bioprosthetic heart valves (BHV) fabricated from heterograft tissue, such as glutaraldehyde pretreated bovine pericardium (BP), are the most frequently used heart valve replacements. BHV durability is limited by structural valve degeneration (SVD), mechanistically associated with calcification, advanced glycation end products (AGE), and serum protein infiltration. We investigated the hypothesis that anti-AGE agents, Aminoguanidine, Pyridoxamine [PYR], and N-Acetylcysteine could mitigate AGE-serum protein SVD mechanisms in vitro and in vivo, and that these agents could mitigate calcification or demonstrate anti-calcification interactions with BP pretreatment with ethanol.

Risk Factors for Severe and Fatal Heat-Related Illness in UK Dogs-A VetCompass Study.

Heat-related illness (HRI) is predicted to increase in dogs due to rising global temperatures. This study evaluated retrospective VetCompass veterinary clinical records to explore geographical variability and ambient conditions associated with HRI events in UK dogs, and report the intrinsic (canine) and extrinsic (location, trigger, ambient weather) risk factors for severe disease and fatal outcome in dogs affected by HRI. Dogs living in London had the greatest odds for developing HRI compared with dogs living in the North West (OR 1.

Practical Tips for Setting Up and Running OSCEs.

Objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) are used to assess students' skills on a variety of tasks using live animals, models, cadaver tissue, and simulated clients. OSCEs can be used to provide formative feedback, or they can be summative, impacting progression decisions. OSCEs can also drive student motivation to engage with clinical skill development and mastery in preparation for clinical placements and rotations.

Quantification of 8- in Plant Telomeres.

Chemical modifications in DNA impact gene regulation and chromatin structure. DNA oxidation, for example, alters gene expression, DNA synthesis and cell cycle progression. Modification of telomeric DNA by oxidation is emerging as a marker of genotoxic damage and is associated with reduced genome integrity and changes in telomere length and telomerase activity.

Surveillance of heat-related illness in small animals presenting to veterinary practices in the UK between 2013 and 2018.

Background: Heat-related illness (HRI) can affect all companion animals and is likely to become more common as global temperatures rise. The misconception that HRI is primarily a result of dogs being trapped in hot cars, highlights a lack of awareness of HRI risk factors within the UK companion animal population.

Aim: This project aimed to review all species of small animal presentations of HRI to UK veterinary practices participating in the Small Animal Veterinary Surveillance Network (SAVSNET), describe the inciting triggers and seasonality of HRI events, and review the clinical grade of canine patients presenting with HRI.

Exploring Owner Perceptions of the Impacts of Seasonal Weather Variations on Canine Activity and Potential Consequences for Human-Canine Relationships.

Climate change is leading to more instances of seasonal weather variation. Studies have explored the impact of adverse winter weather on dog walking, but the impact on the dog's overall activity levels have not been previously considered. This study explored dog owner perceptions of the effects of both summer and winter weather on their dog's activity levels.

Heritable variation and lack of tradeoffs suggest adaptive capacity in despite negative synergism under climate change scenarios.

Knowledge of multi-stressor interactions and the potential for tradeoffs among tolerance traits is essential for developing intervention strategies for the conservation and restoration of reef ecosystems in a changing climate. Thermal extremes and acidification are two major co-occurring stresses predicted to limit the recovery of vital Caribbean reef-building corals. Here, we conducted an aquarium-based experiment to quantify the effects of increased water temperatures and CO individually and in concert on 12 genotypes of the endangered branching coral currently being reared and outplanted for large-scale coral restoration.