Antidepressants for treating depression among older adults with dementia: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Depression and dementia represent significant health challenges in older adults. Despite guidelines recommending antidepressants, their efficacy in depressed patients with dementia remains undetermined.

Objective: This review, in following a living systematic review approach, primarily aims to determine the effect of any-type antidepressant on the level of depressive symptoms in older adults with dementia and secondly if there is an effect of any-type antidepressants on cognitive state, quality of life, and functionality in the old-age population with dementia.

Psychophysiological effects of walking in forests and urban built environments with disparate road traffic noise exposure: study protocol of a randomized controlled trial.

Background: Stress is a widespread phenomenon and reality of everyday life, entailing negative consequences for physical and psychological wellbeing. Previous studies have indicated that exposure to greenspaces and nature-based interventions are promising approaches to reducing stress and promoting restoration. However, an increasing percentage of the population lives in urban regions with limited opportunities to spend time in greenspaces.

"And I still remember it to this day": A qualitative exploration of retrospective memories of school-based recess.

Objectives: Previous research has shown the most common memory of physical education (PE) was embarrassment, and that childhood memories of PE relate to physical activity (PA) attitude, intention, and sedentary behavior in adulthood [13]. Recess memories may have a similar effect on adult attitudes towards PA, given that recess is a physically active part of the school day, yet is more autonomous and less supervised than PE. Recent literature has supported this, as Massey and colleagues (2021b) reported memories of recess enjoyment were associated with PA enjoyment in adulthood, whereas negative recess memories were associated with social isolation.

High-resolution land use/cover forecasts for Switzerland in the 21st century.

We present forecasts of land-use/land-cover (LULC) change for Switzerland for three time-steps in the 21 century under the representative concentration pathways 4.5 and 8.5, and at 100-m spatial and 14-class thematic resolution.

Factors associated with obtaining prescribed safer supply among people accessing harm reduction services: findings from a cross-sectional survey.

Background: With growing rates of unregulated drug toxicity death and concerns regarding COVID-19 transmission among people who use drugs, in March 2020, prescribed safer supply guidance was released in British Columbia. This study describes demographic and substance use characteristics associated with obtaining prescribed safer supply and examines the association between last 6-month harm reduction service access and obtaining prescribed safer supply.

Methods: Data come from the 2021 Harm Reduction Client Survey administered at 17 harm reduction sites across British Columbia.

Motivators of and barriers to drug checking engagement in British Columbia, Canada: Findings from a cross-sectional study.

Objective: Responding to increasing rates of illicit drug toxicity mortality in British Columbia, regional health authorities introduced various types and models of drug checking services starting in 2016. Uptake has been gradual yet consistent, but motivators and barriers of service use have not been well-described.

Methods: The British Columbia Harm Reduction Client Survey is a cross-sectional survey conducted at harm reduction sites across British Columbia.

Associations with experience of non-fatal opioid overdose in British Columbia, Canada: a repeated cross sectional survey study.

Introduction: Lives lost in North America due to the unregulated drug poisoning emergency are preventable and those who survive an opioid overdose may suffer long-term disability. Rates of opioid overdose more than doubled following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in British Columbia, Canada.

Materials And Methods: Our analytical sample was comprised of 1447 participants from the 2018, 2019, and 2021 Harm Reduction Client Survey who responded yes or no to having experienced an opioid overdose in the past 6 months.

Fentanyl Concentration in Drug Checking Samples and Risk of Overdose Death in Vancouver, Canada.

Introduction: The proliferation of fentanyl and its analogs in illegal, unregulated drug markets remains a major driver of the overdose crisis in North America. Drug checking services have been implemented as a harm reduction strategy to address the crisis. However, little is known about their potential utility as a mechanism for monitoring population-level risk of overdose stemming from changing fentanyl concentration in unregulated drugs over time.

Responding to changes in the unregulated drug supply: the need for a dynamic approach to drug checking technologies.

Drug checking services provide individuals who use drugs with the ability to test samples of their drugs for the presence of highly potent substances. However, there has been recent concern about whether the existing repertoire of point-of-care drug checking technologies, such as immunoassay strips and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), are adequate in identifying substances in the unregulated drug supply. Carfentanil and nitazene opioids, substances that are even more potent than fentanyl , have been found in the unregulated supply in North America and pose a challenge to our existing drug checking strategy.

Development of a neural network model to predict the presence of fentanyl in community drug samples.

Introduction: Increasingly, Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy is being used as a harm reduction tool to provide people who use drugs real-time information about the contents of their substances. However, FTIR spectroscopy has been shown to have a high detection limit for fentanyl and interpretation of results by a technician can be subjective. This poses concern, given that some synthetic opioids can produce serious toxicity at sub-detectable levels.

How Do Road Traffic Noise and Residential Greenness Correlate with Noise Annoyance and Long-Term Stress? Protocol and Pilot Study for a Large Field Survey with a Cross-Sectional Design.

Urban areas are continuously growing, and densification is a frequent strategy to limit urban expansion. This generally entails a loss of green spaces (GSs) and an increase in noise pollution, which has negative effects on health. Within the research project RESTORE (Restorative potential of green spaces in noise-polluted environments), an extended cross-sectional field study in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, is conducted.

Training a neural network to predict dynamics it has never seen.

Neural networks have proven to be remarkably successful for a wide range of complicated tasks, from image recognition and object detection to speech recognition and machine translation. One of their successes lies in their ability to predict future dynamics given a suitable training data set. Previous studies have shown how echo state networks (ESNs), a type of recurrent neural networks, can successfully predict both short-term and long-term dynamics of even chaotic systems.

Transition to chaos and modal structure of magnetized Taylor-Couette flow.

Taylor-Couette flow (TCF) is often used as a simplified model for complex rotating flows in the interior of stars and accretion discs. The flow dynamics in these objects is influenced by magnetic fields. For example, quasi-Keplerian flows in Taylor-Couette geometry become unstable to a travelling or standing wave in an external magnetic field if the fluid is conducting; there is an instability even when the flow is hydrodynamically stable.

Waves in planetary dynamos.

This Special Topic focuses on magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) processes in the deep interiors of planets, in which their fluid dynamos are in operation. The dynamo-generated, global, magnetic fields provide a background for our solar-terrestrial environment. Probing the processes within the dynamos is a significant theoretical and computational challenge and any window into interior dynamics greatly increases our understanding.

Examining fentanyl and its analogues in the unregulated drug supply of British Columbia, Canada using drug checking technologies.

Introduction: The emergence of fentanyl and its analogues have contributed to a drastic rise in overdose-related mortality in recent years. The objective of this study was to determine the number of drug checking samples containing fentanyl and fentanyl analogues using both point of care and confirmatory drug checking technologies.

Methods: Point-of-care drug checking data, using a combination of fentanyl immunoassay strips and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), were collected at harm reduction sites in Vancouver and Surrey, British Columbia.

Changes in the unregulated opioid drug supply during income assistance payment weeks in Vancouver, Canada: An exploratory analysis.

Background: Increased drug-related harms, including overdoses (poisonings), have been reported in the days around income assistance payments, yet little is known about changes in the unregulated drug supply during this time. In this exploratory analysis, we investigated whether changes in the unregulated opioid drug supply are associated with income assistance payment weeks.

Methods: Using data from drug checking services in Vancouver, BC, we conducted modified Poisson and linear regression models to examine the association between income assistance payment weeks and three key outcomes: (1) proportion of fentanyl positivity among expected opioid samples, (2) fentanyl concentration among fentanyl-positive expected opioid samples, and (3) proportion of benzodiazepine positivity among expected opioid samples.

Direct statistical simulation of the Lorenz63 system.

We use direct statistical simulation to find the low-order statistics of the well-known dynamical system, the Lorenz63 model. Instead of accumulating statistics from numerical simulation of the dynamical system or solving the Fokker-Planck equation for the full probability distribution of the dynamical system, we directly solve the equations of motion for the low-order statistics after closing them by making several different choices for the truncation. Fixed points of the statistics are obtained either by time evolving or by iterative methods.

Skull base hemangiopericytomas.

Objective: To retrospectively evaluate the clinical outcome of six patients with skull base hemangiopericytomas (HPCs) and that of a cohort of 37 similar patients identified by a systematic review of the literature.

Methods: The series constitutes of three men and three women with newly diagnosed skull base HPC who underwent multimodal treatment including surgery, external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) and pre-operative embolization. Furthermore, a systematic review off the literature identified 37 reports of primarily intracranial skull base HPCs.

Results from a mobile drug checking pilot program using three technologies in Chicago, IL, USA.

Background: Opioid overdose deaths in the United States continue to rise, with the majority of deaths involving fentanyl. Drug checking has been used in Europe and Canada to assess adulteration of the illegal drug supply, but faces legal barriers in the United States. We are presenting information from a pilot mobile program offering drug checking services to participants of a harm reduction program in Chicago, Illinois, USA.

Measurements of transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) are affected by junctional length in immature epithelial monolayers.

The measurement of transepithelial electrical resistance (TEER) is a common technique to determine the barrier integrity of epithelial cell monolayers. However, it is remarkable that absolute TEER values of similar cell types cultured under comparable conditions show an immense heterogeneity. Based on previous observations, we hypothesized that the heterogeneity of absolute TEER measurements can not only be explained by maturation of junctional proteins but rather by dynamics in the absolute length of cell junctions within monolayers.

Is expected substance type associated with timing of drug checking service utilization?: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Drug checking is a harm reduction intervention aiming to reduce substance use-related risks by improving drug user knowledge of the composition of unregulated drugs. With increasing fears of fentanyl adulteration in unregulated drugs, this study sought to examine whether the expected type of drug checked (stimulant vs. opioid) was associated with timing of drug checking service utilization (pre-consumption vs.