ACCUMULATION OF TRACE ELEMENTS IN SOIL AND FAUNA WITHIN A SITE HISTORICALLY CONTAMINATED WITH COAL COMBUSTION RESIDUES.

Legacy contaminants tied to energy production are a worldwide concern. Coal combustion residues (CCRs) contain high concentrations of potentially toxic trace elements such as arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), and selenium (Se), which can persist for decades after initial contamination. CCR disposal methods, including aquatic settling basins and landfills, can facilitate environmental exposure through intentional and accidental releases.

User-defined virtual sensors: A new solution to the problem of temporal plus epilepsy sources.

Objective: The most common medically resistant epilepsy (MRE) involves the temporal lobe (TLE), and children designated as temporal plus epilepsy (TLE+) have a five-times increased risk of postoperative surgical failure. This retrospective, blinded, cross-sectional study aimed to correlate visual and computational analyses of magnetoencephalography (MEG) virtual sensor waveforms with surgical outcome and epilepsy classification (TLE and TLE+).

Methods: Patients with MRE who underwent MEG and iEEG monitoring and had at least 1 year of postsurgical follow-up were included in this retrospective analysis.

Trends in Firearm Injuries Treated in Emergency Departments by Individual- and County-Level Characteristics, 2019 to 2023.

Study Objective: To understand trends in nonfatal firearm injuries by examining rates of firearm injury emergency department (ED) visits stratified by individual- and county-level characteristics.

Methods: Data from participating EDs within 10 jurisdictions in the United States funded through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Firearm Injury Surveillance Through Emergency Rooms program, including the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia, were analyzed. We examined trends in firearm injury ED visits by sex, age group, jurisdiction, county-level urbanicity, and county-level social vulnerability from January 2019 to August 2023.

Incorporation of Ceragenins into Medical Adhesives and Adhesive Scar Tape to Prevent Microbial Colonization Common in Healthcare-Associated Infections.

Healthcare-associated infections involving surgical sites, skin trauma, and devices penetrating the skin are a frequent source of increased expense, hospitalization periods, and adverse outcomes. Medical adhesives are often employed to help protect compromised skin from infection and to secure medical devices, but adhesives can become contaminated by pathogens, exposing wounds, surgical sites, and medical devices to colonization. We aimed to incorporate ceragenins, a class of antimicrobial agents, into silicone- and polyacrylate-based adhesives with the goal of reducing adhesive contamination and subsequent infections.

Bypassing Emergency Service: Decoding the Drivers of Self-Referral During Acute Myocardial Infarction on Rural Areas in Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany.

the timely and effective management of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is crucial to improve patient outcomes. 'Self-Referral' is defined as instances either where patients arrive at the hospital by their own means or are transported by someone else, rather than through professional emergency medical services. This approach can lead to treatment delays and potentially worsen outcomes.

"A Kind of Therapy": Wheelchair Sport Athletes and Health-Related Quality of Life.

The purpose of this study was to understand the meaning physically impaired wheelchair sport athletes attributed to wheelchair basketball participation as well as potential physical, psychological, and social health-related quality of life (HRQOL) benefits. Specifically, the experiences of wheelchair sport athletes from low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) affected by ongoing or recent conflict were examined. Focus group participants for this study included 108 wheelchair basketball athletes (77 men and 31 women) from seven men's and three women's national teams at an international wheelchair basketball tournament held in India.

Implementation of Male-Specific Motivational Interviewing in Malawi: An Assessment of Intervention Fidelity and Barriers to Scale-Up.

Introduction: Treatment interruption (TI), defined as >28 days late for ART appointment, is one of the greatest challenges in controlling southern African HIV epidemics. Negative client-provider interactions remain a major reason for TI and barrier for return to care, especially for men. Motivational interviewing (MI) facilitates client-driven counseling and improves client-provider interactions by facilitating equitable, interactive counseling that helps clients understand and develop solutions for their unique needs.

Improving Retention and HIV Viral Suppression: A Cluster Randomised Pilot Trial of a Lay Counsellor Motivational Interviewing Training in South Africa.

We piloted a Motivational Interviewing (MI) training program for lay counsellors in South Africa (SA) to assess its impact on retention and viral suppression among newly diagnosed individuals living with HIV (PLHIV) at 12 months post-diagnosis. We randomized eight primary healthcare clinics (PHC) in Johannesburg to either the intervention clinics (n=4) where all lay counsellors were supported for 12 months before the PLHIV enrolment or the standard of care (n=4 clinics). Overall, 548 adults (≥ 18 years) PLHIV were recruited after HIV diagnosis from March 2020 to August 2021 (n=291 intervention, n=257 control).

Phase-Transitions in Disgust During Self-Initiated Eating Among Adolescents With Anorexia Nervosa and Related Low-Weight Eating Disorders and Matched Controls.

Background: Understanding the emotional context of feeding behavior may help identify causal mechanisms of food avoidance among individuals with anorexia nervosa. Although predominant food avoidance models assume fear of fat drives feeding behavior, disgust may be more theoretically and proximally relevant to moment-to-moment experiences of feeding. This study, therefore, aimed to examine affect and food avoidance using automated affect analysis from facial response by measuring time-specific transitions in disgust during a laboratory eating paradigm.

Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Contaminates Snowpack across a Broad Region.

Mountaintop removal coal mining is a source of downstream pollution. Here, we show that mountaintop removal coal mining also pollutes ecosystems downwind. We sampled regional snowpack near the end of winter along a transect of sites located 3-60 km downwind of coal mining in the Elk River valley of British Columbia, Canada.

Unraveling the Concept of Childhood Adversity in Psychosis Research: A Systematic Review.

Background: During the last decades, an abundance of studies has investigated childhood adversity in relation to psychosis. This systematic review critically examines the methodologies employed to investigate childhood adversity in psychosis over the past decade, including operational definitions, measurement tools and characteristics, and psychometric properties of instruments used in these studies.

Study Design: This systematic review followed the PRISMA guidelines (registration number CRD42022307096), and the search used the following electronic databases: PsychINFO, SCOPUS, Web of Science, African Index Medicus (AIM), LILACS, CINAHL, EMBASE, and MEDLINE.

A series of spontaneously blinking dyes for super-resolution microscopy.

Spontaneously blinking fluorophores permit the detection and localization of individual molecules without reducing buffers or caging groups, thus simplifying single-molecule localization microscopy (SMLM). The intrinsic blinking properties of such dyes are dictated by molecular structure and modulated by environment, which can limit utility. We report a series of tuned spontaneously blinking dyes with duty cycles that span two orders of magnitude, allowing facile SMLM in cells and dense biomolecular structures.

Correlative single molecule lattice light sheet imaging reveals the dynamic relationship between nucleosomes and the local chromatin environment.

In the nucleus, biological processes are driven by proteins that diffuse through and bind to a meshwork of nucleic acid polymers. To better understand this interplay, we present an imaging platform to simultaneously visualize single protein dynamics together with the local chromatin environment in live cells. Together with super-resolution imaging, new fluorescent probes, and biophysical modeling, we demonstrate that nucleosomes display differential diffusion and packing arrangements as chromatin density increases whereas the viscoelastic properties and accessibility of the interchromatin space remain constant.

"Now We Can Speak": Wheelchair Sport Participation in Areas of Armed Conflict.

This study sought to understand the lived experiences of wheelchair basketball athletes from low- and middle-income countries of recent or current armed conflict and the meaning that they ascribed to their participation. Wheelchair basketball athletes (N = 108) from eight national teams participated in semistructured focus-group interviews. Study data were analyzed thematically using an interpretive descriptive approach.

Emotional facial expression and perioral motor functions of the human auditory cortex.

Objective: We investigated the role of transverse temporal gyrus and adjacent cortex (TTG+) in facial expressions and perioral movements.

Methods: In 31 patients undergoing stereo-electroencephalography monitoring, we describe behavioral responses elicited by electrical stimulation within the TTG+. Task-induced high-gamma modulation (HGM), auditory evoked responses, and resting-state connectivity were used to investigate the cortical sites having different types of responses on electrical stimulation.

Comparison between Invasive Intervention and Conservative Treatment in Patients with In-Hospital Myocardial Infarctions: Results from the Regional Myocardial Infarction Registry of Saxony-Anhalt (RHESA) Study.

: In-hospital myocardial infarctions (AMIs) are less often treated with invasive intervention, compared to out-of-hospital AMIs. We aimed to identify the determinants of invasive intervention in patients with in-hospital AMIs and assess its association with mortality, compared to conservative treatment. : This was a cross-sectional study of in-hospital AMIs in The Regional Myocardial Infarction Registry of Saxony-Anhalt.