Equitable infrastructure: Achieving resilient systems and restorative justice through policy and research innovation.

Recent major investments in infrastructure in the United States and globally present a crucial opportunity to embed equity within the heart of resilient infrastructure decision-making. Yet there is a notable absence of frameworks within the engineering and scientific fields for integrating equity into planning, design, and maintenance of infrastructure. Additionally, whole-of-government approaches to infrastructure, including the Justice40 Initiative, mimic elements of process management that support exploitative rather than exploratory innovation.

The choice of message and messenger to drive behavior change that averts the health impacts of wildfires: an online randomized controlled experiment.

Background: To reduce the negative health effects from wildfire smoke exposure, effective risk and health communication strategies are vital. We estimated the behavioral effects from changes in message framing and messenger in public health messages about wildfire smoke on Facebook.

Methods: During September and October 2021, we conducted a preregistered online randomized controlled experiment in Facebook.

Business recovery from disasters: Lessons from natural hazards and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper compares economic recovery in the COVID-19 pandemic with other types of disasters, at the scale of businesses. As countries around the world struggle to emerge from the pandemic, studies of business impact and recovery have proliferated; however, pandemic research is often undertaken without the benefit of insights from long-standing research on past large-scale disruptive events, such as floods, storms, and earthquakes. This paper builds synergies between established knowledge on business recovery in disasters and emerging insights from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Natural hazards compound COVID-19 impacts on small businesses disproportionately for historically underrepresented group operators.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic small businesses made headlines as hard hit by customer losses, revenue declines, and business closures. Yet, the impacts have been felt disproportionately by small businesses that suffered interruption due to pre-existing socioeconomic stressors and/or concurrent natural hazards experienced during the pandemic. To illuminate those compound impacts, we conducted a survey of over 1350 U S.

Resilience Dividends and Resilience Windfalls: Narratives That Tie Disaster Resilience Co-Benefits to Long-Term Sustainability.

The need for increased disaster resilience planning, especially at the community level, as well as the need to address sustainability are clear; these dual objectives have been deemed national priorities in a number of recent US Executive Orders. Major global climate agreements, (i.e.

COVID-19 Associated Thyroid Storm: A Case Report.

Introduction: The distinction between coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and thyroid storm can be extremely difficult to determine on clinical grounds alone as there is significant overlap between the signs and symptoms of each.

Case Report: We present a case of a patient with thyroid storm triggered by underlying COVID-19 infection.

Conclusion: Infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is linked to dysregulation of the thyroid gland through numerous mechanisms, although thyroid storm triggered by COVID-19 appears rare, with only a single case previously identified in the literature.

The Effect of Natural/Human-Made Hazards on Business Establishments and their Supply Chains.

This paper examines the impact of natural and human-made hazards on payroll, GDP, employment, and establishment survival/creation in the year of hazard occurrence in the U.S. economy and more specifically in the U.

Accuracy of an Artificial Intelligence System for Cancer Clinical Trial Eligibility Screening: Retrospective Pilot Study.

Background: Screening patients for eligibility for clinical trials is labor intensive. It requires abstraction of data elements from multiple components of the longitudinal health record and matching them to inclusion and exclusion criteria for each trial. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems have been developed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of this process.

Does resilience yield dividends? Co-benefits of investing in increased resilience in Cedar Rapids.

Cedar Rapids, IA, offers a unique case study in planning for increased resilience. In 2008, Cedar Rapids experienced severe flooding. Rather than simply rebuilding, the city of Cedar Rapids began to invest in a resilient flood control system and in the revitalization of its Downtown neighborhood.

Emergency readmission following acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding.

Objective: To assess the occurrence, clinical predictors, and associated mortality of all-cause emergency readmissions after acute upper gastrointestinal bleeding (AUGIB).

Patients And Methods: All patients with AUGIB from an area of 600 000 inhabitants in Sweden admitted in a single institution in 2009-2011 were retrospectively identified. All medical records were scrutinized and relevant data (such as comorbid illness and medications, endoscopy, rebleeding, inhospital mortality, and 30-day emergency readmission) were extracted.

Elevated Basal Insulin Secretion in Type 2 Diabetes Caused by Reduced Plasma Membrane Cholesterol.

Elevated basal insulin secretion under fasting conditions together with insufficient stimulated insulin release is an important hallmark of type 2 diabetes, but the mechanisms controlling basal insulin secretion remain unclear. Membrane rafts exist in pancreatic islet cells and spatially organize membrane ion channels and proteins controlling exocytosis, which may contribute to the regulation of insulin secretion. Membrane rafts (cholesterol and sphingolipid containing microdomains) were dramatically reduced in human type 2 diabetic and diabetic Goto-Kakizaki (GK) rat islets when compared with healthy islets.

Clinical outcome of subchromosomal events detected by whole-genome noninvasive prenatal testing.

Objective: A novel algorithm to identify fetal microdeletion events in maternal plasma has been developed and used in clinical laboratory-based noninvasive prenatal testing. We used this approach to identify the subchromosomal events 5pdel, 22q11del, 15qdel, 1p36del, 4pdel, 11qdel, and 8qdel in routine testing. We describe the clinical outcomes of those samples identified with these subchromosomal events.

Multidisciplinary life cycle metrics and tools for green buildings.

Building sector stakeholders need compelling metrics, tools, data, and case studies to support major investments in sustainable technologies. Proponents of green building widely claim that buildings integrating sustainable technologies are cost effective, but often these claims are based on incomplete, anecdotal evidence that is difficult to reproduce and defend. The claims suffer from 2 main weaknesses: 1) buildings on which claims are based are not necessarily "green" in a science-based, life cycle assessment (LCA) sense and 2) measures of cost effectiveness often are not based on standard methods for measuring economic worth.

The R1 resistance gene cluster contains three groups of independently evolving, type I R1 homologues and shows substantial structural variation among haplotypes of Solanum demissum.

Cultivated and wild potatoes contain a major disease-resistance cluster on the short arm of chromosome V, including the R1 resistance (R) gene against potato late blight. To explore the functional and evolutionary significance of clustering in the generation of novel disease-resistance genes, we constructed three approximately 1 Mb physical maps in the R1 gene region, one for each of the three genomes (haplotypes) of allohexaploid Solanum demissum, the wild potato progenitor of the R1 locus. Totals of 691, 919 and 559 kb were sequenced for each haplotype, and three distinct resistance-gene families were identified, one homologous to the potato R1 gene and two others homologous to either the Prf or the Bs4 R-gene of tomato.

Development and characterization of potato-Solanum brevidens chromosomal addition/substitution lines.

Solanum brevidens is a wild diploid potato species possessing high levels of resistances to several major potato diseases. We previously developed fertile somatic hybrids between S. brevidens and the cultivated potato (Solanum tuberosum) in order to introgress disease resistances from this wild species into potato.

Transfer of tuber soft rot and early blight resistances from Solanum brevidens into cultivated potato.

Tuber soft rot and early blight are serious potato diseases. Development of potato varieties resistant to these diseases has been hindered by the scarcity of resistant germplasm. A diploid wild species, Solanum brevidens, shows significant resistance to both diseases.

BIBAC and TAC clones containing potato genomic DNA fragments larger than 100 kb are not stable in Agrobacterium.

Development of efficient methods to transfer large DNA fragments into plants will greatly facilitate the map-based cloning of genes. The recently developed BIBAC and TAC vectors have shown potential to deliver large DNA fragments into plants via Agrobacterium-mediated transformation. Here we report that BIBAC and TAC clones containing potato genomic DNA fragments larger than 100 kb are not stable in Agrobacterium.

Gene RB cloned from Solanum bulbocastanum confers broad spectrum resistance to potato late blight.

Late blight, caused by the oomycete pathogen Phytophthora infestans, is the most devastating potato disease in the world. Control of late blight in the United States and other developed countries relies extensively on fungicide application. We previously demonstrated that the wild diploid potato species Solanum bulbocastanum is highly resistant to all known races of P.

Concomitant reiterative BAC walking and fine genetic mapping enable physical map development for the broad-spectrum late blight resistance region, RB.

The wild potato species Solanum bulbocastanum is a source of genes for potent late blight resistance. We previously mapped resistance to a single region of the S. bulbocastanum chromosome 8 and named the region RB (for "Resistance from S.

The genetic identity of alien chromosomes in potato breeding lines revealed by sequential GISH and FISH analyses using chromosome-specific cytogenetic DNA markers.

Genomic in situ hybridization (GISH) is one of the most popular and effective techniques for detecting alien chromatin introgressed into breeding lines; however, GISH analysis alone does not reveal the genetic identity of the alien chromosomes. We previously isolated a set of bacterial artificial chromosomes (BACs) specific to each of the 12 potato chromosomes. These BAC clones can be used as chromosome-specific cytogenetic DNA markers (CSCDMs) for potato chromosome identification.

Analysis of the introgression of Solanum bulbocastanum DNA into potato breeding lines.

Somatic hybrids have been obtained between potato and Solanum bulbocastanum PI 245310, a Mexican diploid (2n=2x=24) species. Through restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and randomly amplified polymorphic DNA (RAPD) analyses it was found that the somatic hybrids contain each chromosome of the diploid parent and that the synteny of RFLP markers noted with tomato, potato and S. brevidens is largely maintained in S.

Determination of homovanillic acid in urine by stable isotope dilution and electrospray tandem mass spectrometry.

We have developed a liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method for the analysis of homovanillic acid (HVA), a biochemical marker for catecholamine and neurotransmitter metabolism. Urine specimens are spiked with 5 microg of a stable-isotope labeled internal standard, 13C(6)18O-HVA, and prepared by automated solid phase extraction. Residues were dissolved in acetonitrile: 0.

Methylmalonic acid measured in plasma and urine by stable-isotope dilution and electrospray tandem mass spectrometry.

Background: Liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) with electrospray ionization is robust and allows accurate measurement of both low- and high-molecular weight components of complex mixtures. We developed a LC-MS/MS method for the analysis of methylmalonic acid (MMA), a biochemical marker for inherited disorders of propionate metabolism and acquired vitamin B(12) deficiency.

Methods: We added 1 nmol of the internal standard MMA-d(3) to 500 microL of plasma or 100 microL of urine before solid-phase extraction.