Climate Change-Induced Decline in Succulent in Namibia's Arid Regions.

The global rise in temperatures due to climate change has made it difficult even for specialised desert-adapted plant species to survive on sandy desert soils. Two of Namibia's iconic desert-adapted plant species, and the quiver tree , have recently been shown to be under threat because of climate change. In the current study, three ecologically important Namibian milk bushes were evaluated for their climate change response.

Preoperative Anemia as a Prognostic Risk Factor for Inferior Oncological Survival Following Resection for Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma.

Objectives: A significant proportion of patients undergoing surgery for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) are anemic at the time of resection. In these patients, blood transfusions are omitted due to their potential negative impact on oncological outcomes. The aim of the present study was to determine the prognostic value of preoperative anemia in resected PDAC patients, irrespective of blood transfusion status.

The Complete Inpatient Record Using Comprehensive Electronic Data (CIRCE) project: A team-based approach to clinically validated, research-ready electronic health record data.

Introduction: The rapid adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems has resulted in extensive archives of data relevant to clinical research, hospital operations, and the development of learning health systems. However, EHR data are not frequently available, cleaned, standardized, validated, and ready for use by stakeholders. We describe an in-progress effort to overcome these challenges with cooperative, systematic data extraction and validation.

Focused Ultrasound Neuromodulation: Exploring a Novel Treatment for Severe Opioid Use Disorder.

Background: Opioid use disorder remains a critical healthcare challenge as current therapeutic strategies have limitations resulting in high recurrence and deaths. We evaluated safety and feasibility of focused ultrasound (FUS) neuromodulation to reduce substance cravings and use in severe opioid- and co-occurring substance use disorders.

Methods: This prospective, open-label, single-arm study enrolled 8 participants with severe, primary opioid use disorder with co-occurring substance use.

Neoadjuvant anti-PD-1 alone or in combination with anti-TIGIT or an oncolytic virus in resectable stage IIIB-D melanoma: a phase 1/2 trial.

Neoadjuvant immunotherapies have shown antitumor activity in melanoma. Substudy 02C of the global, rolling-arm, phase 1/2, adaptive-design KEYMAKER-U02 trial is evaluating neoadjuvant pembrolizumab (anti-PD-1) alone or in combination, followed by adjuvant pembrolizumab, for stage IIIB-D melanoma. Here we report results from the first three arms: pembrolizumab plus vibostolimab (anti-TIGIT), pembrolizumab plus gebasaxturev (coxsackievirus A21) and pembrolizumab monotherapy.