Synthesis and characterization of stable lead (II) orthophosphate nanoparticle suspensions.

There is great interest in producing nanoparticles for various applications. The objective of this work was to develop a procedure for reproducibly creating stable lead (Pb) phosphate nanoparticle aqueous suspensions. A stable 5 mg/L Pb-phosphate nanoparticle "stock" suspension was synthesized via chemical precipitation of Pb and orthophosphate in water at pH 7.

Fall-related emergency department visits involving alcohol among older adults.

Problem: Falls are the leading cause of injury deaths among adults aged 65 years and older. Characteristics of these falls may vary with alcohol use.

Objective: Describe and compare characteristics of older adult fall-related emergency department (ED) visits with indication of alcohol to visits with no indication.

New insights into diabetes burnout and its distinction from diabetes distress and depressive symptoms: A qualitative study.

Aims: This study aimed to corroborate the main hypotetized dimensions of diabetes burnout, and its distinction from diabetes distress and depressive symptoms among adults with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was employed to collect data from 31 eligible participants using semi-structured individual phone interviews. Participants were recruited through purposive sampling among a larger sample of adults with T1D in a previous study.

Intercomparison of In Situ Sensors for Ground-Based Land Surface Temperature Measurements.

Land surface temperature (LST) is a key variable in the determination of land surface energy exchange processes from local to global scales. Accurate ground measurements of LST are necessary for a number of applications including validation of satellite LST products or improvement of both climate and numerical weather prediction models. With the objective of assessing the quality of in situ measurements of LST and to evaluate the quantitative uncertainties in the ground-based LST measurements, intensive field experiments were conducted at NOAA's Air Resources Laboratory (ARL)'s Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division (ATDD) in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, from October 2015 to January 2016.

Comparison of Approaches for Determining Bioactivity Hits from High-Dimensional Profiling Data.

Phenotypic profiling assays are untargeted screening assays that measure a large number (hundreds to thousands) of cellular features in response to a stimulus and often yield diverse and unanticipated profiles of phenotypic effects, leading to challenges in distinguishing active from inactive treatments. Here, we compare a variety of different strategies for hit identification in imaging-based phenotypic profiling assays using a previously published Cell Painting data set. Hit identification strategies based on multiconcentration analysis involve curve fitting at several levels of data aggregation (e.

US EPA EnviroAtlas Meter-Scale Urban Land Cover (MULC): 1-m Pixel Land Cover Class Definitions and Guidance.

This article defines the land cover classes used in Meter-scale Urban Land Cover (MULC), a unique, high resolution (one meter per pixel) land cover dataset developed for 30 US communities for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) EnviroAtlas. MULC data categorize the landscape into these land cover classes: impervious surface, tree, grass-herbaceous, shrub, soil-barren, water, wetland and agriculture. MULC data are used to calculate approximately 100 EnviroAtlas metrics that serve as indicators of nature's benefits (ecosystem goods and services).

The Importance of Males to Bumble Bee ( Species) Nest Development and Colony Viability.

Bumble bee population declines over the last decade have stimulated strong interest in determining causative factors and necessary conservation measures. Research attention has largely been directed toward bumble bee worker and queen health and their contributions to population stability, while male bees (i.e.

Inactivation of Bacillus anthracis and Bacillus atrophaeus spores on different surfaces with ultraviolet light produced with a low-pressure mercury vapor lamp or light emitting diodes.

Aims: To obtain quantitative efficacy data of two ultraviolet light (UVC) technologies for surface inactivation of Bacillus anthracis Ames and Bacillus atrophaeus spores.

Methods And Results: Spores were deposited onto test coupons and controls of four different materials, via liquid suspension or aerosol deposition. The test coupons were then exposed to UVC light from either a low-pressure mercury vapor lamp or a system comprised of light emitting diodes, with a range of dosages.

School Climate Among Transgender High School Students: An Exploration of School Connectedness, Perceived Safety, Bullying, and Absenteeism.

This study used self-administered survey data from seven high schools in Florida with a majority Black and/or Hispanic sample to examine transgender students' perceptions and experiences related to school climate in comparison to cisgender students. Using propensity score matching, a matched analytic sample was created of transgender and cisgender students ( = 542, including 186 transgender youth). Adjusted weighted logistic regression models indicated that transgender students were significantly more likely to report ever being bullied at school, being bullied in the past 3 months, and not going to school ≥3 days during the past 30 days.

I don't have the choice to burnout; experiences of parents of children with type 1 diabetes.

Aim: The purpose of the study was to explore the description of diabetes burnout in parents of children with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

Background: Parents of children with T1D struggle to balance diabetes management and typical parenting challenges, which may lead to diabetes burnout. Although diabetes burnout is a familiar concept in public forum and diabetes literature, science on diabetes burnout in parents is lacking.

Mortality among U.S. military participants at eight aboveground nuclear weapons test series.

Background: Approximately 235,000 military personnel participated at one of 230 U.S. atmospheric nuclear weapons tests from 1945 through 1962.

Phenotypic Profiling of Reference Chemicals across Biologically Diverse Cell Types Using the Cell Painting Assay.

Cell Painting is a high-throughput phenotypic profiling assay that uses fluorescent cytochemistry to visualize a variety of organelles and high-content imaging to derive a large number of morphological features at the single-cell level. Most Cell Painting studies have used the U-2 OS cell line for chemical or functional genomics screening. The Cell Painting assay can be used with many other human-derived cell types, given that the assay is based on the use of fluoroprobes that label organelles that are present in most (if not all) human cells.

Evaluation of Exclusion Netting for Coffee Berry Borer () Management.

Exclusion nets are increasingly being used to protect a variety of agricultural crops from insect pests as a sustainable alternative to chemical controls. We examined the efficacy of exclusion nets in controlling the world's most damaging insect pest of coffee, (coffee berry borer), on two small-scale coffee farms on Hawai'i Island. We recorded microclimate data, fruit infestation, population per fruit, sex ratio, mortality by , coffee yield and quality in four paired exclusion and control (un-netted) plots on both farms.

Machine learning-based analyses support the existence of species complexes for and .

Human strongyloidiasis is a serious disease mostly attributable to Strongyloides stercoralis and to a lesser extent Strongyloides fuelleborni, a parasite mainly of non-human primates. The role of animals as reservoirs of human-infecting Strongyloides is ill-defined, and whether dogs are a source of human infection is debated. Published multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) studies attempt to elucidate relationships between Strongyloides genotypes, hosts, and distributions, but typically examine relatively few worms, making it difficult to identify population-level trends.

What makes an effective grants peer reviewer? An exploratory study of the necessary skills.

This exploratory mixed methods study describes skills required to be an effective peer reviewer as a member of review panels conducted for federal agencies that fund research, and examines how reviewer experience and the use of technology within such panels impacts reviewer skill development. Two specific review panel formats are considered: in-person face-to-face and virtual video conference. Data were collected through interviews with seven program officers and five expert peer review panelists, and surveys from 51 respondents.

Burnout, distress, and depressive symptoms in adults with type 1 diabetes.

Introduction: We identified established scales and subscales related to the hypostatized dimensions of diabetes burnout (exhaustion, detachment, powerlessness) emerging from our preliminary qualitative studies, and examined the relationship of diabetes burnout with diabetes distress, depressive symptoms, and diabetes outcomes.

Methods: In this cross-sectional study, adults with type 1 diabetes (n = 111) completed an online survey including measures of diabetes distress, depressive symptoms, and proposed measures of diabetes burnout. Participants also answered questions related to diabetes outcomes (i.

Respirometric Screening and Characterization of Mitochondrial Toxicants Within the ToxCast Phase I and II Chemical Libraries.

Mitochondrial toxicity drives several adverse health outcomes. Current high-throughput screening assays for chemically induced mitochondrial toxicity typically measure changes to mitochondrial structure and may not detect known mitochondrial toxicants. We adapted a respirometric screening assay (RSA) measuring mitochondrial function to screen ToxCast chemicals in HepG2 cells using a tiered testing strategy.

Sexual Behaviors, Referral to Sexual Health Services, and Use of Sexual Health Services Among Transgender High School Students.

Background: Transgender adolescents are at increased risk for negative sexual health outcomes compared to their cisgender peers.

Methods: Using data from 10,231 students from 7 high schools in a large, urban school district, our analysis compared sexual behaviors, referral to sexual health services by school staff, and use of sexual health services between transgender and cisgender students. We used propensity score matching to create a comparable sample of transgender and cisgender students and logistic regression models to examine how gender identity was associated with aforementioned outcomes.

A systematic review of the health effects associated with the inhalation of particle-filtered and whole diesel exhaust.

Diesel exhaust is a complex mixture comprised of gases and particulate matter and is a contributor to ambient air pollution. To reduce health risks, recent changes in diesel engine technology have significantly altered the composition of diesel exhaust, primarily by lowering emissions of particulate matter. However, animal toxicological studies continue to report health effects following exposure to diesel exhaust from engines employing particulate filters.

Dynamic nuclear polarization enhanced neutron crystallography: Amplifying hydrogen in biological crystals.

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) can provide a powerful means to amplify neutron diffraction from biological crystals by 10-100-fold, while simultaneously enhancing the visibility of hydrogen by an order of magnitude. Polarizing the neutron beam and aligning the proton spins in a polarized sample modulates the coherent and incoherent neutron scattering cross-sections of hydrogen, in ideal cases amplifying the coherent scattering by almost an order of magnitude and suppressing the incoherent background to zero. This chapter describes current efforts to develop and apply DNP techniques for spin polarized neutron protein crystallography, highlighting concepts, experimental design, labeling strategies and recent results, as well as considering new strategies for data collection and analysis that these techniques could enable.

Demonstration of an online web services tool incorporating automatic retrieval and comparison of precipitation data.

Input data acquisition and preprocessing is time-consuming and difficult to handle and can have major implications on environmental modeling results. US EPA's Hydrological Micro Services Precipitation Comparison and Analysis Tool (HMS-PCAT) provides a publicly available tool to accomplish this critical task. We present HMS-PCAT's software design and its use in gathering, preprocessing, and evaluating precipitation data through web services.

Sexual and Reproductive Health Web Sites: An Analysis of Content for Sexual and Gender Minority Youth.

Purpose: Sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth face risks for negative sexual and reproductive health (SRH) outcomes; it is critical to provide these populations with health education that is both inclusive of and specific to their needs. We sought to characterize the strengths and weaknesses of SGM-related messages from web sites that address SRH for young people. We considered who is included, what topics are discussed, and how messages are framed.

Bioactivity screening of environmental chemicals using imaging-based high-throughput phenotypic profiling.

The present study adapted an existing high content imaging-based high-throughput phenotypic profiling (HTPP) assay known as "Cell Painting" for bioactivity screening of environmental chemicals. This assay uses a combination of fluorescent probes to label a variety of organelles and measures a large number of phenotypic features at the single cell level in order to detect chemical-induced changes in cell morphology. First, a small set of candidate phenotypic reference chemicals (n = 14) known to produce changes in the cellular morphology of U-2 OS cells were identified and screened at multiple time points in concentration-response format.

MicroRNA profiles of dry secretions through the first three weeks of the dry period from Holstein cows.

In dairy cows, the period from the end of lactation through the dry period and into the transition period, requires vast physiological and immunological changes critical to mammary health. The dry period is important to the success of the next lactation and intramammary infections during the dry period will adversely alter mammary function, health and milk production for the subsequent lactation. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that can post transcriptionally regulate gene expression.