Communicative and Methodological Challenges Related to Collecting Data with Older Adults with Dementia in Senior Living Communities During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented significant challenges to researchers collecting data with older adults, particularly older adults with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD). The goal of this article is to articulate the communicative and methodological challenges and lessons learned from collecting data with older adults in senior living communities with mild cognitive impairment and ADRD and their adult children (who were geographically separated) during the pandemic. Communication was much more than what we were studying; it was essential to the success and ethical implementation of our research.

Toll-like receptor 7 protects against intestinal inflammation and restricts the development of colonic tissue-resident memory CD8 T cells.

Introduction: The maintenance of intestinal homeostasis depends on a complex interaction between the immune system, intestinal epithelial barrier, and microbiota. Alteration in one of these components could lead to the development of inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD). Variants within the autophagy gene have been implicated in susceptibility and severity of Crohn's disease (CD).

Centering PrEP: utilizing ADAPT-ITT to inform group PrEP care for sex workers in Chicago.

Background: Sex workers, those who trade sex for monetary or nonmonetary items, experience high rates of HIV transmission but have not been adequately included in HIV prevention and Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) adherence program development research. Community-empowered (C.E.

Time-specific convergence and divergence in individual differences in behavior: Theory, protocols and analyzes.

Over the years, theoreticians and empiricists working in a wide range of disciplines, including physiology, ethology, psychology, and behavioral ecology, have suggested a variety of reasons why individual differences in behavior might change over time, such that different individuals become more similar (convergence) or less similar (divergence) to one another. Virtually none of these investigators have suggested that convergence or divergence will continue forever, instead proposing that these patterns will be restricted to particular periods over the course of a longer study. However, to date, few empiricists have documented time-specific convergence or divergence, in part because the experimental designs and statistical methods suitable for describing these patterns are not widely known.

When Stigma, Disclosure, and Access to Care Collide: An Ethical Reflection of mpox Vaccination Outreach.

Experiences of stigma in health care encounters among LGBTQ+ populations (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and questioning) have long been a barrier to care. Marginalization and historically grounded fears of stigmatization have contributed to a reluctance to disclose sexual behavior and/or gender identity to health care providers. We reflect on how student nurses grappled with the ethics of patient disclosure while providing mobile outreach in Chicago for mpox (formerly monkeypox) from fall 2022 to spring 2023.

Experiences of Sex Workers in Chicago during COVID-19: A Qualitative Study.

COVID-19 exacerbated health disparities, financial insecurity, and occupational safety for many within marginalized populations. This study, which took place between 2019 and 2022, aimed to explore the way in which sex workers ( = 36) in Chicago were impacted by COVID-19. We analyzed the transcripts of 36 individual interviews with a diverse group of sex workers using thematic analysis.

Community-Academic Partnerships: Addressing Health Inequities Through Community-Engaged Service Learning.

In Chicago, Black men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) individuals experience higher rates of HIV diagnoses. The Southside of Chicago has a thriving house ball culture powered by MSM and TGNC individuals who are disproportionately impacted by HIV. While this community has a history of facilitating health promotion at their events, gaps exist in community-empowered education specific to this community.

BATF3 Protects Against Metabolic Syndrome and Maintains Intestinal Epithelial Homeostasis.

The intestinal immune system and microbiota are emerging as important contributors to the development of metabolic syndrome, but the role of intestinal dendritic cells (DCs) in this context is incompletely understood. BATF3 is a transcription factor essential in the development of mucosal conventional DCs type 1 (cDC1). We show that mice developed metabolic syndrome and have altered localization of tight junction proteins in intestinal epithelial cells leading to increased intestinal permeability.

Culturally Safe Nursing Care for Black Sex Workers in the Greater Chicago Area, 2020‒2021.

Complex structural and social factors have created health inequities for Black sex workers. Black people, including those engaged in transactional sex, report leaning on spiritual beliefs to guide health-related decision-making, including whether to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Public health nurses can improve the health of Black sex workers through culturally safe care, which may include a community-stated vision of spiritual support.

Combining information from parental and personal experiences: Simple processes generate diverse outcomes.

Experiences of parents and/or offspring are often assumed to affect the development of trait values in offspring because they provide information about the external environment. However, it is currently unclear how information from parental and offspring experiences might jointly affect the information-states that provide the foundation for the offspring phenotypes observed in empirical studies of developmental plasticity in response to environmental cues. We analyze Bayesian models designed to mimic fully-factorial experimental studies of trans and within- generational plasticity (TWP), in which parents, offspring, both or neither are exposed to cues from predators, to determine how different durations of cue exposure for parents and offspring, the devaluation of information from parents or the degradation of information from parents would affect offspring estimates of environmental states related to risk of predation at the end of such experiments.

The information provided by the absence of cues: insights from Bayesian models of within and transgenerational plasticity.

Empirical studies of phenotypic plasticity often use an experimental design in which the subjects in experimental treatments are exposed to cues, while the subjects in control treatments are maintained in the absence of those cues. However, researchers have virtually ignored the question of what, if any, information might be provided to subjects by the absence of the cues in control treatments. We apply basic principles of information-updating to several experimental protocols used to study phenotypic plasticity in response to cues from predators to show why the reliability of the information provided by the absence of those cues in a control treatment might vary as a function of the subjects' experiences in the experimental treatment.

A role for BATF3 in T9 differentiation and T-cell-driven mucosal pathologies.

T helper 9 (T9) cells are important for the development of inflammatory and allergic diseases. The T9 transcriptional network converges signals from cytokines and antigen presentation but is incompletely understood. Here, we identified TL1A, a member of the TNF superfamily, as a strong inducer of mouse and human T9 differentiation.

Flavor Alterations Associated with Miracle Fruit and Gymnema sylvestre.

Taste and flavor (retronasal olfaction) interact in the brain. The rules of that interaction are not well understood. This study uses 2 taste modifiers that alter sweet to examine the effects on flavors.

Bayesian Models of Development.

Until recently, biology lacked a framework for studying how information from genes, parental effects, and different personal experiences is combined across the lifetime to affect phenotypic development. Over the past few years, researchers have begun to build such a framework, using models that incorporate Bayesian updating to study the evolution of developmental plasticity and developmental trajectories. Here, we describe the merits of a Bayesian approach to development, review the main findings and implications of the current set of models, and describe predictions that can be tested using protocols already used by empiricists.

Individual differences in behavioural plasticities.

Interest in individual differences in animal behavioural plasticities has surged in recent years, but research in this area has been hampered by semantic confusion as different investigators use the same terms (e.g. plasticity, flexibility, responsiveness) to refer to different phenomena.

Combining information from ancestors and personal experiences to predict individual differences in developmental trajectories.

A persistent question in biology is how information from ancestors combines with personal experiences over the lifetime to affect the developmental trajectories of phenotypic traits. We address this question by modeling individual differences in behavioral developmental trajectories on the basis of two assumptions: (1) differences among individuals in the behavior expressed at birth or hatching are based on information from their ancestors (via genes, epigenes, and prenatal maternal effects), and (2) information from ancestors is combined with information from personal experiences over ontogeny via Bayesian updating. The model predicts relationships between the means and the variability of the behavior expressed by neonates and the subsequent developmental trajectories of their behavior when every individual is reared under the same environmental conditions.

Impaired initial vowel versus consonant letter-word fluency in dementia of the Alzheimer type.

Objectives: Early detection of Alzheimer disease (AD) is important. With AD, the loss of connectivity should first induce dysfunction in those representational networks with the weakest connectivity. Less frequently used networks have weaker connectivity.

Genotypic differences in behavioural entropy: unpredictable genotypes are composed of unpredictable individuals.

Intra-genotypic variability (IGV) occurs when individuals with the same genotype, raised in the same environment and then tested under the same conditions, express different trait values. Game theoretical and bet-hedging models have suggested two ways that a single genotype might generate variable behaviour when behavioural variation is discrete rather than continuous: behavioural polyphenism (a genotype produces different types of individuals, each of which consistently expresses a different type of behaviour) or stochastic variability (a genotype produces one type of individual who randomly expresses different types of behaviour over time). We first demonstrated significant differences across 14 natural genotypes of male in the variability (as measured by entropy) of their microhabitat choice, in an experiment in which each fly was allowed free access to four different types of habitat.

A brief olfactory test for Alzheimer's disease.

Background: The early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease (AD) may help reduce disability, enhance quality of life, and aid clinical trials. Portions of olfactory cortex are the initial sites of AD pathology and patients with AD often have more degeneration of their left than right hemisphere. Since the olfactory epithelium projects mainly to the ipsilateral olfactory cortex, patients with AD may demonstrate an asymmetrical (left greater than right) decrement of odor detection sensitivity.

Drosophila regulate yeast density and increase yeast community similarity in a natural substrate.

Drosophila melanogaster adults and larvae, but especially larvae, had profound effects on the densities and community structure of yeasts that developed in banana fruits. Pieces of fruit exposed to adult female flies previously fed fly-conditioned bananas developed higher yeast densities than pieces of the same fruits that were not exposed to flies, supporting previous suggestions that adult Drosophila vector yeasts to new substrates. However, larvae alone had dramatic effects on yeast density and species composition.

Cardiac myxolipoma in a child: diagnosis and surgical management.

We present a case of a rare tumor, a myxolipoma, appearing in a 5-year-old child, along with the imaging evaluation and surgical management. The natural history is expected to be that of a benign lesion, but the rarity precludes large studies.

Behavior as a key component of integrative biology in a human-altered world.

A major grand challenge in biology is to understand the interactions between an organism and its environment. Behavior resides in the central core of this association as it affects and is affected by development, physiology, ecological dynamics, environmental choice, and evolution. We present this central role of behavior in a diagram illustrating the multifaceted program emphasizing the necessity for understanding this nexus and to fully appreciate the organism in its environment given the ongoing changes affected by contemporary human induced, rapid environmental change (HIREC).