Introduction: The Australian Therapy Outcome Measure for Indigenous Clients (ATOMIC) is a goal-setting tool designed to measure therapy outcomes with First Australians. It was originally developed and validated for use with First Australian children as a culturally responsive alternative to traditional western outcome measures. This research explored the applicability, responsiveness and clinical utility of the ATOMIC when used with First Australian adults attending an urban health service.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the quest for effective solutions to address Environ. Pollut. and meet the escalating energy demands, heterojunction photocatalysts have emerged as a captivating and versatile technology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSide comments and conversations in focus groups can pose challenges for facilitators. Rather than seeing side comments as problematic behavior or "failed" data, we argue that they can add to and deepen analyses. Drawing on focus group data with grade nine students from a study on early work, in this methodological paper we discuss three patterns.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol
April 2024
Background: Statistical models of air pollution enable intra-urban characterization of pollutant concentrations, benefiting exposure assessment for environmental epidemiology. The new generation of low-cost sensors facilitate the deployment of dense monitoring networks and can potentially be used to improve intra-urban models of air pollution.
Objective: Develop and evaluate a spatiotemporal model for nitrogen dioxide (NO) in the Puget Sound region of WA, USA for the Adult Changes in Thought Air Pollution (ACT-AP) study and assess the contribution of low-cost sensor data to the model's performance through cross-validation.
Background: Manganese (Mn) is an essential micronutrient as well as a well-established neurotoxicant. Occupational and environmental exposures may bypass homeostatic regulation and lead to increased systemic Mn levels. Translocation of ultrafine ambient airborne particles via nasal neuronal pathway to olfactory bulb and tract may be an important pathway by which Mn enters the central nervous system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: In contrast to fine particles, less is known of the inflammatory and coagulation impacts of coarse particulate matter (, particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ). Toxicological research suggests that these pathways might be important processes by which impacts health, but there are relatively few epidemiological studies due to a lack of a national monitoring network.
Objectives: We used new spatiotemporal exposure models to examine associations of both 1-y and 1-month average concentrations with markers of inflammation and coagulation.
Background: Improving physical activity and reducing sedentary behavior represent important areas for intervention in childhood in order to reduce the burden of chronic disease related to obesity and physical inactivity in later life. This paper aims to determine the cost-effectiveness of a multi-arm primary school-based intervention to increase physical activity and/or reduce sedentary time in 8-9 year old children (Transform-Us!).
Methods: Modelled cost-utility analysis, using costs and effects from a cluster randomized controlled trial of a 30-month intervention that used pedagogical and environmental strategies to reduce and break up sedentary behaviour (SB-I), promote physical activity (PA-I), or a combined approach (PA + SB-I), compared to current practice.
Appl Health Econ Health Policy
May 2024
Purpose: To systematically summarise the recent literature on the cost and cost effectiveness of interventions implemented to reduce violence against women (VAW) and decision frameworks guiding resource allocation.
Method: A scoping review of scholarly and grey literature on the cost-effectiveness and/or resource allocation for interventions addressing intimate partner violence (IPV), dating violence and non-partner sexual violence perpetrated against women aged 15 years and over. All settings and contexts were eligible, with papers published in English between 2010 and March 2023 included.
Airway tree morphology varies in the general population and may modify the distribution and uptake of inhaled pollutants. We hypothesized that smaller airway caliber would be associated with emphysema progression and would increase susceptibility to air pollutant-associated emphysema progression. MESA (Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis) is a general population cohort of adults 45-84 years old from six U.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: While epidemiologic evidence links higher levels of exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) to decreased cognitive function, fewer studies have investigated links with traffic-related air pollution (TRAP), and none have examined ultrafine particles (UFP, ≤100 nm) and late-life dementia incidence.
Objective: To evaluate associations between TRAP exposures (UFP, black carbon [BC], and nitrogen dioxide [NO]) and late-life dementia incidence.
Methods: We ascertained dementia incidence in the Seattle-based Adult Changes in Thought (ACT) prospective cohort study (beginning in 1994) and assessed ten-year average TRAP exposures for each participant based on prediction models derived from an extensive mobile monitoring campaign.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A
January 2024
Cross-ecosystem subsidies are critical to ecosystem structure and function, especially in recipient ecosystems where they are the primary source of organic matter to the food web. Subsidies are indicative of processes connecting ecosystems and can couple ecological dynamics across system boundaries. However, the degree to which such flows can induce cross-ecosystem cascades of spatial synchrony, the tendency for system fluctuations to be correlated across locations, is not well understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDetermining the most feasible and cost-effective approaches to improving PM exposure assessment with low-cost monitors (LCMs) can considerably enhance the quality of its epidemiological inferences. We investigated features of fixed-site LCM designs that most impact PM exposure estimates to be used in long-term epidemiological inference for the Adult Changes in Thought Air Pollution (ACT-AP) study. We used ACT-AP collected and calibrated LCM PM measurements at the two-week level from April 2017 to September 2020 (N of monitors [measurements] = 82 [502]).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Glyphosate is one of the most heavily used pesticides in the world, but little is known about sources of glyphosate exposure in pregnant people living in agricultural regions.
Objective: Our objective was to evaluate glyphosate exposure during pregnancy in relation to residential proximity to agriculture as well as agricultural spray season.
Methods: We quantified glyphosate concentrations in 453 urine samples collected biweekly from a cohort of 40 pregnant people in southern Idaho from February through December 2021.
Adv Carbohydr Chem Biochem
November 2023
Lectins are predominantly oligomeric proteins with several binding sites per molecule. Glycoconjugates are their natural ligands, which often possess multiple binding epitopes. Thus, lectin-glycoconjugate interactions are mostly multivalent in nature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Phenytoin is an anti-epileptic drug that has a narrow therapeutic index, and therefore requires therapeutic drug monitoring. Only the free fraction is pharmacologically active, and in some cases, accurate determination of the free phenytoin concentration may be essential to prevent phenytoin toxicity. Although it is possible to measure free phenytoin concentration, often only the total concentration is measured, with equations used to estimate the free fraction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose Of Review: Surgical simulation has become a cornerstone for the training of surgical residents, especially for urology residents. Urology as a specialty bolsters a diverse range of procedures requiring a variety of technical skills ranging from open and robotic surgery to endoscopic procedures. While hands-on supervised training on patients still remains the foundation of residency training and education, it may not be sufficient to achieve proficiency for graduation even if case minimums are achieved.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Consumption of an organic diet reduces exposure to a range of agricultural pesticides. Only three studies have examined the effect of an organic diet intervention on exposure to the herbicide glyphosate, the most heavily used agricultural chemical in the world. Despite its widespread use, the primary sources of glyphosate exposure in humans are poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Growing evidence shows ultrafine particles (UFPs) are detrimental to cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory health. Historically, racialized and low-income communities are exposed to higher concentrations of air pollution.
Objectives: Our aim was to conduct a descriptive analysis of present-day air pollution exposure disparities in the greater Seattle, Washington, area by income, race, ethnicity, and historical redlining grade.
Mobile monitoring is increasingly used to assess exposure to traffic-related air pollutants (TRAPs), including ultrafine particles (UFPs). Due to the rapid spatial decrease in the concentration of UFPs and other TRAPs with distance from roadways, mobile measurements may be non-representative of residential exposures, which are commonly used for epidemiologic studies. Our goal was to develop, apply, and test one possible approach for using mobile measurements in exposure assessment for epidemiology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWildfires are increasing in prevalence in western North America due to changing climate conditions. A growing number of studies examine the impact of wildfire smoke on morbidity; however, few evaluate these impacts using syndromic surveillance data that cover many emergency departments (EDs). We used syndromic surveillance data to explore the effect of wildfire smoke exposure on all-cause respiratory and cardiovascular ED visits in Washington state.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFα-Catenin couples the cadherin-catenin complex to the actin cytoskeleton. The mechanosensitive α-Catenin M region undergoes conformational changes upon application of force to recruit interaction partners. Here, we took advantage of the tension landscape in the Drosophila embryo to define three different states of α-Catenin mechanosensing in support of cell adhesion.
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