Continuum: A Postdischarge Supportive Care Intervention for Hospitalized Patients With Advanced Cancer.

Context: Patients with advanced cancer are at increased risk for multiple hospitalizations and often have considerable needs postdischarge. Interventions to address patients' needs after transitioning home are lacking.

Objectives: We sought to demonstrate the feasibility and acceptability of a postdischarge intervention for this population.

Agent-Based Computational Epidemiological Modeling.

The study of epidemics is useful for not only understanding outbreaks and trying to limit their adverse effects, but also because epidemics are related to social phenomena such as government instability, crime, poverty, and inequality. One approach for studying epidemics is to simulate their spread through populations. In this work, we describe an integrated multi-dimensional approach to epidemic simulation, which encompasses: (1) a theoretical framework for simulation and analysis; (2) synthetic population (digital twin) generation; (3) (social contact) network construction methods from synthetic populations, (4) stylized network construction methods; and (5) simulation of the evolution of a virus or disease through a social network.

Water-soluble tocopherol derivatives inhibit SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase.

The recent emergence of a novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has led to the global pandemic of the severe disease COVID-19 in humans. While efforts to quickly identify effective antiviral therapies have focused largely on repurposing existing drugs , the current standard of care, remdesivir, remains the only authorized antiviral intervention of COVID-19 and provides only modest clinical benefits . Here we show that water-soluble derivatives of α-tocopherol have potent antiviral activity and synergize with remdesivir as inhibitors of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp).

Data analysis and modeling pipelines for controlled networked social science experiments.

There is large interest in networked social science experiments for understanding human behavior at-scale. Significant effort is required to perform data analytics on experimental outputs and for computational modeling of custom experiments. Moreover, experiments and modeling are often performed in a cycle, enabling iterative experimental refinement and data modeling to uncover interesting insights and to generate/refute hypotheses about social behaviors.

Including Vulnerable Populations in the Assessment of Data From Vulnerable Populations.

Data science has made great strides in harnessing the power of big data to improve human life across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Unfortunately this informational richesse is not equitably spread across human populations. Vulnerable populations remain both under-studied and under-consulted on the use of data derived from their communities.

Disparities in spread and control of influenza in slums of Delhi: findings from an agent-based modelling study.

Objectives: This research studies the role of slums in the spread and control of infectious diseases in the National Capital Territory of India, Delhi, using detailed social contact networks of its residents.

Methods: We use an agent-based model to study the spread of influenza in Delhi through person-to-person contact. Two different networks are used: one in which slum and non-slum regions are treated the same, and the other in which 298 slum zones are identified.

Effect of modelling slum populations on influenza spread in Delhi.

Objectives: This research studies the impact of influenza epidemic in the slum and non-slum areas of Delhi, the National Capital Territory of India, by taking proper account of slum demographics and residents' activities, using a highly resolved social contact network of the 13.8 million residents of Delhi.

Methods: An SEIR model is used to simulate the spread of influenza on two different synthetic social contact networks of Delhi, one where slums and non-slums are treated the same in terms of their demographics and daily sets of activities and the other, where slum and non-slum regions have different attributes.

Multi-Source Models for Civil Unrest Forecasting.

Civil unrest events (protests, strikes, and "occupy" events) range from small, nonviolent protests that address specific issues to events that turn into large-scale riots. Detecting and forecasting these events is of key interest to social scientists and policy makers because they can lead to significant societal and cultural changes. We forecast civil unrest events in six countries in Latin America on a daily basis, from November 2012 through August 2014, using multiple data sources that capture social, political and economic contexts within which civil unrest occurs.

GDSCalc: A Web-Based Application for Evaluating Discrete Graph Dynamical Systems.

Discrete dynamical systems are used to model various realistic systems in network science, from social unrest in human populations to regulation in biological networks. A common approach is to model the agents of a system as vertices of a graph, and the pairwise interactions between agents as edges. Agents are in one of a finite set of states at each discrete time step and are assigned functions that describe how their states change based on neighborhood relations.

Forecasting Social Unrest Using Activity Cascades.

Social unrest is endemic in many societies, and recent news has drawn attention to happenings in Latin America, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. Civilian populations mobilize, sometimes spontaneously and sometimes in an organized manner, to raise awareness of key issues or to demand changes in governing or other organizational structures. It is of key interest to social scientists and policy makers to forecast civil unrest using indicators observed on media such as Twitter, news, and blogs.

Inhibiting diffusion of complex contagions in social networks: theoretical and experimental results.

We consider the problem of inhibiting undesirable contagions (e.g. rumors, spread of mob behavior) in social networks.

S-adenosyl-l-methionine protection of acetaminophen mediated oxidative stress and identification of hepatic 4-hydroxynonenal protein adducts by mass spectrometry.

Acetaminophen (APAP) hepatotoxicity is protected by S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAMe) treatment 1hour (h) after APAP in C57/Bl6 mice. This study examined protein carbonylation as well as mitochondrial and cytosolic protein adduction by 4-hydroxynonenal (4-HNE) using mass spectrometry (MS) analysis. Additional studies investigated the leakage of mitochondrial proteins and 4-HNE adduction of these proteins.

Interdependent genotoxic mechanisms of monomethylarsonous acid: role of ROS-induced DNA damage and poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 inhibition in the malignant transformation of urothelial cells.

Exposure of human bladder urothelial cells (UROtsa) to 50 nM of the arsenic metabolite, monomethylarsonous acid (MMA(III)), for 12 weeks results in irreversible malignant transformation. The ability of continuous, low-level MMA(III) exposure to cause an increase in genotoxic potential by inhibiting repair processes necessary to maintain genomic stability is unknown. Following genomic insult within cellular systems poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase-1 (PARP-1), a zinc finger protein, is rapidly activated and recruited to sites of DNA strand breaks.

Detail in network models of epidemiology: are we there yet?

Network models of infectious disease epidemiology can potentially provide insight into how to tailor control strategies for specific regions, but only if the network adequately reflects the structure of the region's contact network. Typically, the network is produced by models that incorporate details about human interactions. Each detail added renders the models more complicated and more difficult to calibrate, but also more faithful to the actual contact network structure.

Role of hydroquinone-thiol conjugates in benzene-mediated toxicity.

Hydroquinone (HQ) is a metabolite of benzene, and in combination with phenol (PHE), reproduces benzene myelotoxicity. HQ readily oxidizes to 1,4-benzoquinone (1,4-BQ) followed by the reductive addition of glutathione (GSH). Subsequent cycles of oxidation and GSH addition give rise to a variety of mono-, and multi-GSH substituted conjugates.

Detection of a single nucleotide polymorphism in the human alpha-lactalbumin gene: implications for human milk proteins.

Variability in the protein composition of breast milk has been observed in many women and is believed to be due to natural variation of the human population. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are present throughout the entire human genome, but the impact of this variation on human milk composition and biological activity and infant nutrition and health is unclear. The goals of this study were to characterize a variant of human alpha-lactalbumin observed in milk from a Filipino population by determining the location of the polymorphism in the amino acid and genomic sequences of alpha-lactalbumin.

A multinational study of alpha-lactalbumin concentrations in human milk.

Alpha-lactalbumin, a 14-kD protein, plays a central biochemical role in the mammary gland as the regulatory subunit of lactose synthase, and also plays a nutritional role for the rapidly growing neonate as the protein in highest concentration in human milk. The current study was undertaken to better characterize alpha-lactalbumin concentrations in human milk from a variety of countries. Mature human milk (lactation duration > or =1 month) was collected from at least 50 women from nine different countries on five continents.

A phase II and pharmacokinetic study of ecteinascidin 743 in patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors.

Purpose: To assess the efficacy, tolerability, and pharmacokinetics of ecteinascidin 743 (ET-743) in patients with advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs).

Patients And Methods: The study was confined to adult patients with radiographically measurable GISTs. ET-743 was administered as a 24-hour continuous i.

Use of balloon-expandable stents in transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunts in cases of Wallstent endoprosthesis technical failure and revision of shunt stenosis.

Thirteen patients underwent placement of a balloon-expandable stent either at initial transjugular intrahepatic portosystemic shunt (TIPS) creation (n = 3) because of immediate technical failure of the Wallstent or at shunt revision because of failure of the Wallstent to reduce the portosystemic gradient View Article and Find Full Text PDF