Evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder is widely unavailable and often discouraged by providers of residential substance use services in North Carolina.

Introduction: Opioid agonist treatment (OAT) is the only treatment for opioid use disorder (OUD) proven to reduce overdose mortality, yet access to this evidence-based treatment remains poor. The purpose of this cross-sectional audit study was to assess OAT availability at residential substance use services in North Carolina.

Methods: We conducted a state-wide inventory of residential substance use service providers in North Carolina and subsequently called all providers identified, posing as uninsured persons who use heroin, seeking treatment services.

Implementing patient-centred outcome measures in palliative care clinical practice for adults (IMPCOM): Protocol for an update systematic review of facilitators and barriers.

: Despite the development of patient-centred or patient-reported outcome measures (PCOMs or PROMs) in palliative and end-of-life care over recent years, their routine use in practice faces continuing challenges. : To update a highly cited literature review, identify and synthesise new evidence on facilitators, barriers, lessons learned, PCOMs used, models of implementation, implementation outcomes, costs, and consequences of implementing PCOMs in palliative care clinical practice. : We will search MEDLINE, PsycINFO, CINAHL, Embase, Emcare, SCI-Expanded, SSCI, ESCI, and BNI.

Introducing a secondary segmentation to construct a radiomics model for pulmonary tuberculosis cavities.

Purpose: Accurate segmentation (separating diseased portions of the lung from normal appearing lung) is a challenge in radiomic studies of non-neoplastic diseases, such as pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB). In this study, we developed a segmentation method, applicable to chest X-rays (CXR), that can eliminate the need for precise disease delineation, and that is effective for constructing radiomic models for automatic PTB cavity classification.

Methods: This retrospective study used a dataset of 266 posteroanterior CXR of patients diagnosed with laboratory confirmed PTB.

Folding of cohesin's coiled coil is important for Scc2/4-induced association with chromosomes.

Cohesin's association with and translocation along chromosomal DNAs depend on an ATP hydrolysis cycle driving the association and subsequent release of DNA. This involves DNA being 'clamped' by Scc2 and ATP-dependent engagement of cohesin's Smc1 and Smc3 head domains. Scc2's replacement by Pds5 abrogates cohesin's ATPase and has an important role in halting DNA loop extrusion.

Maternal omega-3 fatty acids maintained positive maternal lipids and cytokines profile, and improved pregnancy outcomes of C57BL/6 mice.

Omega (n)-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) are known to regulate lipid metabolism and inflammation; however, the regulation of maternal lipid metabolism and cytokines profile by n-3 PUFA during different gestation stages, and its impact on fetal sustainability is not known. We investigated the effects of maternal diet varying in n-3 PUFA prior to, and during gestation, on maternal metabolic profile, placental inflammatory cytokines, and fetal outcomes. Female C57BL/6 mice were fed either a high, low or very low (9, 3 or 1% w/w n-3 PUFA) diet, containing n-6:n-3 PUFA of 5:1, 20:1 and 40:1, respectively for two weeks before mating, and throughout pregnancy.

C57BL/6J mice upregulate catalase to maintain the hydrogen peroxide buffering capacity of liver mitochondria.

Here, we demonstrate that the upregulation of catalase is required to compensate for the loss of nicotinamide nucleotide transhydrogenase (NNT) to maintain hydrogen peroxide (HO) steady-state levels in C57BL/6J liver mitochondria. Our investigations using the closely related mouse strains C57BL/6NJ (6NJ; +NNT) and C57BL/6J (6J; -NNT) revealed that NNT is required for the provision of NADPH and that the upregulation of isocitrate dehydrogenase-2 (IDH2) activity is not enough to compensate for the absence of NNT, which is consistent with previous observations. Intriguingly, despite the absence of NNT, 6J mitochondria had rates of HO production (58.

Exercise treadmill tests in patients with low cardiovascular risk: are we wasting our time?

INTRODUCTION The efficacy and cost-effectiveness of exercise treadmill testing for patients with low cardiovascular risk is unclear. This is due to the low incidence of coronary artery disease in this population and the potential for false-positive results leading to additional invasive and expensive investigation. AIM To investigate the value of exercise treadmill testing (ETT) as a predictor of coronary artery disease in patients with different levels of cardiovascular risk.

Characterizing Key Components of a Medical Home Among Rural Adolescents.

Purpose: Adolescents in rural areas have higher unmet medical needs and receive fewer preventive health care visits than their urban counterparts. This community health assessment aimed to describe adolescent experiences of key components of a medical home in rural Washington.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey using questions from two validated measures was created with input from a community advisory group using community-based participatory research principles.

Predicting elite Scottish athletes' attitudes towards doping: examining the contribution of achievement goals and motivational climate.

Understanding athletes' attitudes to doping continues to be of interest for its potential to contribute to an international anti-doping system. However, little is known about the relationship between elite athletes' attitudes to drug use and potential explanatory factors, including achievement goals and the motivational climate. In addition, despite specific World Anti-Doping Agency Code relating to team sport athletes, little is known about whether sport type (team or individual) is a risk or protective factor in relation to doping.

Reducing the environmental impact of dietary choice: perspectives from a behavioural and social change approach.

Climate change is recognised as a significant public health issue that will impact on food security. One of the major contributors to global warming is the livestock industry, and, relative to plant-based agriculture, meat production has a much higher environmental impact in relation to freshwater use, amount of land required, and waste products generated. Promoting increased consumption of plant-based foods is a recommended strategy to reduce human impact on the environment and is also now recognised as a potential strategy to reduce the high rates of some chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease and certain cancers.

A positively charged channel within the Smc1/Smc3 hinge required for sister chromatid cohesion.

Cohesin's structural maintenance of chromosome 1 (Smc1) and Smc3 are rod-shaped proteins with 50-nm long intra-molecular coiled-coil arms with a heterodimerization domain at one end and an ABC-like nucleotide-binding domain (NBD) at the other. Heterodimerization creates V-shaped molecules with a hinge at their centre. Inter-connection of NBDs by Scc1 creates a tripartite ring within which, it is proposed, sister DNAs are entrapped.

Analysis of volatile organic compounds in human saliva by a static sorptive extraction method and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry.

Human saliva not only helps control oral health (with anti-microbial proteins), but it may also play a role in chemical communication. As is the case with other mammalian species, human saliva contains peptides, proteins, and numerous volatile organic compounds (VOCs). A high-throughput analytical method is described for profiling a large number of saliva samples to screen the profiles of VOCs.

Mouse urinary biomarkers provide signatures of maturation, diet, stress level, and diurnal rhythm.

Body fluids such as urine potentially contain a wealth of information pertaining to age, sex, social and reproductive status, physiologic state, and genotype of the donor. To explore whether urine could encode information regarding environment, physiology, and development, we compared the volatile compositions of mouse urine using solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (SPME-GC/MS). Specifically, we identified volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in individual urine samples taken from inbred C57BL/6J-H-2(b) mice under several experimental conditions-maturation state, diet, stress, and diurnal rhythms, designed to mimic natural variations.

Both interaction surfaces within cohesin's hinge domain are essential for its stable chromosomal association.

Background: The cohesin complex that mediates sister chromatid cohesion contains three core subunits: Smc1, Smc3, and Scc1. Heterotypic interactions between Smc1 and Smc3 dimerization domains create stable V-shaped Smc1/Smc3 heterodimers with a hinge at the center and nucleotide-binding domains (NBDs) at the ends of each arm. Interconnection of each NBD through their association with the N- and C-terminal domains of Scc1 creates a tripartite ring, within which sister DNAs are thought to be entrapped (the ring model).

Consensus multivariate methods in gas chromatography mass spectrometry and denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis: MHC-congenic and other strains of mice can be classified according to the profiles of volatiles and microflora in their scent-marks.

House mice (Mus domesticus) communicate using scent-marks, and the chemical and microbial composition of these 'extended phenotypes' are both influenced by genetics. This study examined how the genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and background genes influence the volatile compounds (analysed with Gas Chromatography Mass Spectrometry or GC/MS) and microbial communities (analysed using Denaturating Gradient Gel Electrophoresis or DGGE) in scent-marks produced by congenic strains of mice. The use of Consensus Principal Components Analysis is described and shows relationships between the two types of fingerprints (GC/MS and DGGE profiles).

The cow in the room: public knowledge of the links between dietary choices and health and environmental impacts.

Issue Addressed: This paper describes results of a survey comparing people's knowledge of health and environmental impacts of dietary choices. Dietary choice is one of the key ways in which individuals can reduce their environmental impact in relation to water use and greenhouse gas emissions but this may not be widely known amongst the public due to limited press coverage.

Methods: A street intercept survey was conducted asking open ended questions on how people can help the environment, maintain or improve health and basic demographics.

Application of dissimilarity indices, principal coordinates analysis, and rank tests to peak tables in metabolomics of the gas chromatography/mass spectrometry of human sweat.

The majority of works in metabolomics employ approaches based on principal components analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares, primarily to determine whether samples fall within large groups. However, analytical chemists rarely tackle the problem of individual fingerprinting, and in order to do this effectively, it is necessary to study a large number of small groups rather than a small number of large groups and different approaches are required, as described in this paper. Furthermore, many metabolomic studies on mammals and humans involve analyzing compounds (or peaks) that are present in only a certain portion of samples, and conventional approaches of PCA do not cope well with sparse matrices where there may be many 0s.

Individual and gender fingerprints in human body odour.

Individuals are thought to have their own distinctive scent, analogous to a signature or fingerprint. To test this idea, we collected axillary sweat, urine and saliva from 197 adults from a village in the Austrian Alps, taking five sweat samples per subject over 10 weeks using a novel skin sampling device. We analysed samples using stir bar sorptive extraction in connection with thermal desorption gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), and then we statistically analysed the chromatographic profiles using pattern recognition techniques.

Understanding adsorption phenomena: investigation of the dye-cellulose interaction.

To understand the structural factors that control the adsorption of acid dyes onto cotton (cellulose), the adsorption of 15 acid dyes from water has been studied. An equilibrium exists between dye adsorbed in the cotton and dye in solution, and by measurement of the temperature dependence (277-333K) of the equilibrium constant, the enthalpy and entropy of binding are obtained. For most dyes adsorption is driven by the binding enthalpy, which is ascribed to van der Waals forces.

Bone mineral acquisition in adolescents with type 1 diabetes.

Objective: To track bone mineral acquisition in adolescents with type 1 diabetes (DM).

Study Design: Subjects were adolescents, ages 12 to 18 years, with DM (n=42) and a healthy regional reference (n=199). Measurements of tibia bone characteristics by peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) and spine and whole body (WB) by dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA), anthropometrics, and lifestyle questionnaires were obtained during a 12-month period.

Topical formulation studies with DEET (N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide) and cyclodextrins.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the utility of cyclodextrins as a safer alternative to the commonly used cosolvent ethanol in topical N,N-diethyl-3-methylbenzamide (DEET) formulations. Ethanol is a known penetration enhancer and would ideally not be used in a formulation containing DEET, a compound known for its potential toxicity. DEET formulations were prepared containing up to 20% w/w gamma-cyclodextrin (GCD) or 30% w/w hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HPBCD).