Impact of a national dementia research consortium: The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA).

The Canadian Consortium on Neurodegeneration in Aging (CCNA) was created by the Canadian federal government through its health research funding agency, the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), in 2014, as a response to the G7 initiative to fight dementia. Two five-year funding cycles (2014-2019; 2019-2024) have occurred following peer review, and a third cycle (Phase 3) has just begun. A unique construct was mandated, consisting of 20 national teams in Phase I and 19 teams in Phase II (with research topics spanning from basic to clinical science to health resource systems) along with cross-cutting programs to support them.

Strain control of a bandwidth-driven spin reorientation in CaRuO.

The layered-ruthenate family of materials possess an intricate interplay of structural, electronic and magnetic degrees of freedom that yields a plethora of delicately balanced ground states. This is exemplified by CaRuO, which hosts a coupled transition in which the lattice parameters jump, the Fermi surface partially gaps and the spins undergo a 90 in-plane reorientation. Here, we show how the transition is driven by a lattice strain that tunes the electronic bandwidth.

Hand hygiene product use by food employees in casual dining and quick-service restaurants.

Hand hygiene product usage characteristics by food employees when hand sanitizers are made available are not well understood. To investigate hand hygiene product usage in casual dining and quick-service restaurants, we placed automated monitoring soap and sanitizer dispensers side-by-side at handwash sinks used by food employees in seven restaurants. Dispenses were monitored, and multiple dispenses that occurred within 60 s of each other were considered a single hand hygiene event.

Paradoxical sex-specific patterns of autoantibody response to SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Background: Pronounced sex differences in the susceptibility and response to SARS-CoV-2 infection remain poorly understood. Emerging evidence has highlighted the potential importance of autoimmune activation in modulating the acute response and recovery trajectories following SARS-CoV-2 exposure. Given that immune-inflammatory activity can be sex-biased in the setting of severe COVID-19 illness, the aim of the study was to examine sex-specific autoimmune reactivity to SARS-CoV-2 in the absence of extreme clinical disease.

The World Spider Trait database: a centralized global open repository for curated data on spider traits.

Spiders are a highly diversified group of arthropods and play an important role in terrestrial ecosystems as ubiquitous predators, which makes them a suitable group to test a variety of eco-evolutionary hypotheses. For this purpose, knowledge of a diverse range of species traits is required. Until now, data on spider traits have been scattered across thousands of publications produced for over two centuries and written in diverse languages.

Order-by-disorder from bond-dependent exchange and intensity signature of nodal quasiparticles in a honeycomb cobaltate.

Recent theoretical proposals have argued that cobaltates with edge-sharing octahedral coordination can have significant bond-dependent exchange couplings thus offering a platform in 3d ions for such physics beyond the much-explored realisations in 4d and 5d materials. Here we present high-resolution inelastic neutron scattering data within the magnetically ordered phase of the stacked honeycomb magnet CoTiO revealing the presence of a finite energy gap and demonstrate that this implies the presence of bond-dependent anisotropic couplings. We also show through an extensive theoretical analysis that the gap further implies the existence of a quantum order-by-disorder mechanism that, in this material, crucially involves virtual crystal field fluctuations.

Pan-ancestry exome-wide association analyses of COVID-19 outcomes in 586,157 individuals.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a respiratory illness that can result in hospitalization or death. We used exome sequence data to investigate associations between rare genetic variants and seven COVID-19 outcomes in 586,157 individuals, including 20,952 with COVID-19. After accounting for multiple testing, we did not identify any clear associations with rare variants either exome wide or when specifically focusing on (1) 13 interferon pathway genes in which rare deleterious variants have been reported in individuals with severe COVID-19, (2) 281 genes located in susceptibility loci identified by the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, or (3) 32 additional genes of immunologic relevance and/or therapeutic potential.

Places of death and places of care for Indigenous Peoples in Ontario: a retrospective cohort study.

Objectives: Most people, including Indigenous people in Ontario, wish to die in their communities. How often Indigenous people in Ontario die in their preferred settings is unknown. This study aims to describe the places of care and death for Indigenous people in Ontario who received provincially funded home care services.

The Importance of Quantifying the Composition of the Amorphous Intermixed Phase in Organic Solar Cells.

The relation of phase morphology and solid-state microstructure with organic photovoltaic (OPV) device performance has intensely been investigated over the last twenty years. While it has been established that a combination of donor:acceptor intermixing and presence of relatively phase-pure donor and acceptor domains is needed to get an optimum compromise between charge generation and charge transport/charge extraction, a quantitative picture of how much intermixing is needed is still lacking. This is mainly due to the difficulty in quantitatively analyzing the intermixed phase, which generally is amorphous.

MnCoReO: a robust multisublattice antiferromagnetic perovskite with small A-site cations.

Mn2CoReO6, the fourth known magnetic transition-metal-only double perovskite oxide (space group P21/n) was synthesized at high pressure and temperature (8 GPa, 1350 °C). Large structural distortions are induced by the small A-site Mn2+ cations. Mn2CoReO6 exhibits complex magnetic properties with a robust antiferromagnetic order (TN = 94 K) involving all cation sublattices.

Vesignieite: An S=1/2 Kagome Antiferromagnet with Dominant Third-Neighbor Exchange.

The spin-1/2 kagome antiferromagnet is an archetypal frustrated system predicted to host a variety of exotic magnetic states. We show using neutron scattering measurements that deuterated vesignieite BaCu_{3}V_{2}O_{8}(OD)_{2}, a fully stoichiometric S=1/2 kagome magnet with <1% lattice distortion, orders magnetically at T_{N}=9  K into a multi-k coplanar variant of the predicted triple-k octahedral structure. We find that this structure is stabilized by a dominant antiferromagnetic third-neighbor exchange J_{3} with minor first- or second-neighbor exchanges.

Magnetostriction-polarization coupling in multiferroic MnMnWO.

Double corundum-related polar magnets are promising materials for multiferroic and magnetoelectric applications in spintronics. However, their design and synthesis is a challenge, and magnetoelectric coupling has only been observed in NiTeO among the known double corundum compounds to date. Here we address the high-pressure synthesis of a new polar and antiferromagnetic corundum derivative MnMnWO, which adopts the NiTeO-type structure with low temperature first-order field-induced metamagnetic phase transitions (T  = 58 K) and high spontaneous polarization (~ 63.

Prediction of Breast and Prostate Cancer Risks in Male BRCA1 and BRCA2 Mutation Carriers Using Polygenic Risk Scores.

Purpose BRCA1/2 mutations increase the risk of breast and prostate cancer in men. Common genetic variants modify cancer risks for female carriers of BRCA1/2 mutations. We investigated-for the first time to our knowledge-associations of common genetic variants with breast and prostate cancer risks for male carriers of BRCA1/ 2 mutations and implications for cancer risk prediction.

Association of Universal Bilirubin Screening With Socioeconomic Disparities in Newborn Follow-up.

Objective: To determine whether implementation of universal bilirubin screening in Ontario, Canada is associated with improved rates of recommended follow-up care across socioeconomic status (SES).

Methods: We conducted a retrospective population-based cohort study of all babies born at ≥35 weeks' gestation and discharged to home within 72 hours from 97 hospitals between April, 2003 and February, 2011. We used linked administrative health data sets to measure recommended follow-up care (physician visit within 1 day of discharge for babies discharged ≤24 hours after birth, or physician visit within 2 days for babies discharged 24-72 hours after birth).

Hospitalization and Mortality Rates in Long-Term Care Facilities: Does For-Profit Status Matter?

Objectives: To establish if proprietary status (ie, for-profit or not-for-profit) is associated with mortality and hospitalizations among publicly funded long-term care (nursing) homes.

Methods: We conducted a retrospective cohort study of new admissions in 640 publicly funded long-term care facilities in Ontario, Canada (384 for-profit, 256 not-for-profit). A population-based cohort of 53,739 incident admissions into long-term care facilities between January 1, 2010, and March 1, 2012, was observed.

Clinical pattern, mutations and in vitro residual activity in 33 patients with severe 5, 10 methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) deficiency.

Background: Severe methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase (MTHFR) deficiency is a rare inborn defect disturbing the remethylation of homocysteine to methionine (<200 reported cases). This retrospective study evaluates clinical, biochemical genetic and in vitro enzymatic data in a cohort of 33 patients.

Methods: Clinical, biochemical and treatment data was obtained from physicians by using a questionnaire.

An original phylogenetic approach identified mitochondrial haplogroup T1a1 as inversely associated with breast cancer risk in BRCA2 mutation carriers.

Introduction: Individuals carrying pathogenic mutations in the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes have a high lifetime risk of breast cancer. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are involved in DNA double-strand break repair, DNA alterations that can be caused by exposure to reactive oxygen species, a main source of which are mitochondria. Mitochondrial genome variations affect electron transport chain efficiency and reactive oxygen species production.

The health care cost of dying: a population-based retrospective cohort study of the last year of life in Ontario, Canada.

Background: Coordinated and appropriate health care across sectors is an ongoing challenge, especially at the end-of-life. Population-level data on end-of-life health care use and cost, however, are seldom reported across a comprehensive array of sectors. Such data will identify the level of care being provided and areas where care can be optimized.

Quantitative trait loci for CD4:CD8 lymphocyte ratio are associated with risk of type 1 diabetes and HIV-1 immune control.

Abnormal expansion or depletion of particular lymphocyte subsets is associated with clinical manifestations such as HIV progression to AIDS and autoimmune disease. We sought to identify genetic predictors of lymphocyte levels and reasoned that these may play a role in immune-related diseases. We tested 2.