Publications by authors named "FARMER R"

This paper reports a theoretically-driven quantitative content analysis of news media discourse on climate change, its effects, and solutions to understand how US news discourse differs from widely supported scientific conclusions on global climate. Despite the dire warnings and calls to action, US public opinion on the causes and solutions to climate change remain divided. In the global context, the US's split views are anomalous and may be an artifact of the US media's coverage of the climate crisis.

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Background: The Plastic Surgery Common Application (PSCA) was introduced in the 2020-2021 integrated plastic surgery match cycle. We investigated the accuracy of medical student-reported quantitative metrics in the PSCA.

Methods: Quantifiable data from 1 year of PSCA applications were compared between matched and unmatched students.

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Background:  The treatment approach for soft tissue sarcomas (STS) of the lower extremity has shifted toward the use of neoadjuvant radiation combined with limb-sparing surgery (LSS). The resulting defects often require reconstruction with free tissue transfer for adequate outcomes. Data have demonstrated a potentially increased risk of microvascular complications for free flaps performed using irradiated recipient vessels.

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Objective: To determine whether performance on Step 2 CK can be used to predict adverse academic outcomes in surgical residency.

Methods: Surgical resident data from a single institution was used. Step 2 scores of each resident were normalized against the average Step 2 CK score for each cohort's application cycle (ie, resident who scored 246 on a year with a national average of 246 would have a normed score of 1; resident with a score >246 would have a normed score >1 etc).

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Objective: The USMLE Step 1 exam, an important metric in the integrated plastic surgery match, transitioned to pass/fail scoring in January 2022. No previous studies have investigated the impact of this new scoring system on the process of ranking applicants in the integrated plastic surgery match.

Design: 330 Plastic Surgery Common Applications (PSCAs) were submitted to a single academic center in the 2023-2024 match cycle.

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Article Synopsis
  • Food allergies and asthma pose significant challenges to both individual health and health care systems globally.
  • There are established management protocols for asthma and new oral immunotherapy options for food allergies, but patient adherence to these treatments is often low.
  • The review emphasizes the importance of collaboration among health care professionals to improve adherence and overall patient outcomes in managing these conditions.
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Article Synopsis
  • The study examines how the adjuvant AS03 affects vaccination responses in humans receiving the H5N1 influenza vaccine by analyzing data over 14 time points, including the immediate aftermath of the vaccination.
  • Researchers developed a computational method to identify complex immune response patterns, revealing differences in how the immune system responds to the vaccine with and without the adjuvant at different stages of vaccination (prime and boost).
  • Findings indicate that certain immune response signatures persist long after vaccination, and specific immune cell characteristics, particularly in monocytes and CD8 T cells, are associated with stronger antibody responses, suggesting that pre-existing immune states can influence vaccine effectiveness.
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Immunological health has been challenging to characterize but could be defined as the absence of immune pathology. While shared features of some immune diseases and the concept of immunologic resilience based on age-independent adaptation to antigenic stimulation have been developed, general metrics of immune health and its utility for assessing clinically healthy individuals remain ill defined. Here we integrated transcriptomics, serum protein, peripheral immune cell frequency and clinical data from 228 patients with 22 monogenic conditions impacting key immunological pathways together with 42 age- and sex-matched healthy controls.

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Article Synopsis
  • - Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) treatments have shown limited success in solid tumors like breast cancer, prompting the search for alternative immune-boosting strategies.
  • - A study highlights the role of the protein NR0B2 in myeloid immune cells, showing that it can help reduce immune-suppressive regulatory T cells and is linked to better survival outcomes in various cancers, including breast cancer.
  • - Researchers developed a new methyl ester derivative of a compound (DSHN-OMe), which outperforms its predecessor in cellular uptake and efficacy against tumors, marking NR0B2 as a promising target for improving anti-cancer therapies.
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Although survival from breast cancer has dramatically increased, many will develop recurrent, metastatic disease. Unfortunately, survival for this stage of disease remains very low. Activating the immune system has incredible promise since it has the potential to be curative.

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Multimodal single-cell profiling methods can capture immune cell variations unfolding over time at the molecular, cellular, and population levels. Transforming these data into biological insights remains challenging. Here, we introduce a framework to integrate variations at the human population and single-cell levels in vaccination responses.

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Background: Heart failure (HF) is associated with high levels of resource use and mortality, but prior UK studies have not compared outcomes by HF subtype (HF with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF) and HF with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF)) in large patient populations. This study investigated healthcare resource utilisation and mortality in patients with HF in England, overall and by HF subtype.

Methods: This non-interventional cohort study linked data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink database to Hospital Episode Statistics inpatient and UK Office for National Statistics mortality data.

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Developed more than 2 decades ago, the MEZURE (Assessment Technologies, 1995-2020; https://www.mezure.com/) has received increased attention as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Immune checkpoint inhibitors are becoming more commonly used for many forms of malignancy. With this class of medications being more heavily used, there has been an associated rise in medication-induced autoimmune hepatitis. This case involves a 35-year-old woman being treated with nivolumab/ipilimumab for renal cell carcinoma who developed a steroid-refractory autoimmune hepatitis.

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Software and data citation are emerging best practices in scholarly communication. This article provides structured guidance to the academic publishing community on how to implement software and data citation in publishing workflows. These best practices support the verifiability and reproducibility of academic and scientific results, sharing and reuse of valuable data and software tools, and attribution to the creators of the software and data.

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Immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) has revolutionized cancer therapy but has had limited utility in several solid tumors such as breast cancer, a major cause of cancer-related mortality in women. Therefore, there is considerable interest in alternate strategies to promote an anti-cancer immune response. We demonstrate that NR0B2, a protein involved in cholesterol homeostasis, functions within myeloid immune cells to modulate the NLRP3 inflammasome and reduce the expansion of immune-suppressive regulatory T cells (T).

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Background: Heart failure (HF) is associated with high morbidity and mortality, yet data on HF subtype (HF with reduced ejection fraction [HFrEF] and preserved ejection fraction [HFpEF]) in broad populations are lacking. Additionally, it is unknown whether current HF incidence and prevalence rates are consistent with historical data. Here, we estimate the incidence and prevalence of HF in England and describe the characteristics of patients with HF, both overall and by subtype.

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Measurement of adaptive skills is important in the diagnosis, intervention planning, and progress monitoring of children with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD). Thus, ensuring accurate measurement, including measurement invariance, across children with and without IDD is critical. In this study, we evaluate the measurement invariance using multigroup confirmatory factor analysis (MG-CFA) of the Vineland-3 Comprehensive Interview (CIF) across children ages 6-21 years with and without IDD (N = 1,192) using archival data.

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Advances in multimodal single cell analysis can empower high-resolution dissection of human vaccination responses. The resulting data capture multiple layers of biological variations, including molecular and cellular states, vaccine formulations, inter- and intra-subject differences, and responses unfolding over time. Transforming such data into biological insight remains a major challenge.

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Monogenic diseases are often studied in isolation due to their rarity. Here we utilize multiomics to assess 22 monogenic immune-mediated conditions with age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Despite clearly detectable disease-specific and "pan-disease" signatures, individuals possess stable personal immune states over time.

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FOXG1 Syndrome (FS) is a devastating neurodevelopmental disorder that is caused by a heterozygous loss-of-function (LOF) mutation of the FOXG1 gene, which encodes a transcriptional regulator important for telencephalic brain development. People with FS have marked developmental delays, impaired ambulation, movement disorders, seizures, and behavior abnormalities including autistic features. Current therapeutic approaches are entirely symptomatic, however the ability to rescue phenotypes in mouse models of other genetic neurodevelopmental disorders such as Rett syndrome, Angelman syndrome, and Phelan-McDermid syndrome by postnatal expression of gene products has led to hope that similar approaches could help modify the disease course in other neurodevelopmental disorders such as FS.

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Surgical removal is the treatment of choice for subcutaneous (SC), intermuscular (InterM), and intramuscular (IntraM) mast cell tumors (MCTs). Advanced imaging (CT or MRI) is frequently used for presurgical planning, but InterM and IntraM MCTs can be difficult to identify and delineate on CT. Aims of the current retrospective, diagnostic accuracy, observer agreement study were to describe the imaging features of SC, InterM, and IntraM MCTs on CT and to assess the limitation of CT to identify the full local extent of the MCT.

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Background: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is an etiologically and clinically heterogeneous condition. Accumulating evidence suggests that persons with lifetime histories of comorbid AUD and non-alcohol substance use disorder (DRUG) constitute an important subgroup of AUD. This study evaluated the distinctiveness of the comorbid AUD/DRUG behavioral phenotype in a community sample with respect to risk factors, AUD course features, and outcome variables assessed at age 30.

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