Patient-Centered mHealth Intervention to Improve Self-Care in Patients With Chronic Heart Failure: Phase 1 Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Heart failure (HF) is one of the most common causes of hospital readmission in the United States. These hospitalizations are often driven by insufficient self-care. Commercial mobile health (mHealth) technologies, such as consumer-grade apps and wearable devices, offer opportunities for improving HF self-care, but their efficacy remains largely underexplored.

From "isolation" to "me-time": linguistic shifts enhance solitary experiences.

Spending time alone is a virtually inevitable part of daily life that can promote or undermine well-being. Here, we explore how the language used to describe time alone - such as "me-time", "solitude", or "isolation" - influences how it is perceived and experienced. In Study 1 ( = 500 U.

Molecular Structures of Surfaces and Interfaces of Poly(dimethylsiloxane) Incorporated with Silicone Oils Containing Phenyl Functionality.

Poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) materials have been widely researched and applied as fouling-release coatings. Incorporation of silicone oils into PDMS has been shown to improve the antifouling properties of PDMS materials. In this research, we applied sum frequency generation (SFG) vibrational spectroscopy to study PDMS materials incorporated with various silicone oils containing phenyl groups in air, water, and protein solutions.

Migration is associated with increased HIV vulnerability among young transgender women in Lima, Peru.

Background: Latin America-amidst its largest mass migration-has seen minimal progress in curbing new HIV infections. Transgender women (TW) in the region are disproportionately affected, but scant data examines HIV vulnerabilities alongside migration.

Methods: Between February-July 2022, 211 young TW ages 16-24 in Lima participated in a cross-sectional quantitative study accompanied by serological testing (HIV, syphilis, chlamydia, gonorrhea, hepatitis B).

3D genomic features across >50 diverse cell types reveal insights into the genomic architecture of childhood obesity.

The prevalence of childhood obesity is increasing worldwide, along with the associated common comorbidities of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease in later life. Motivated by evidence for a strong genetic component, our prior genome-wide association study (GWAS) efforts for childhood obesity revealed 19 independent signals for the trait; however, the mechanism of action of these loci remains to be elucidated. To molecularly characterize these childhood obesity loci, we sought to determine the underlying causal variants and the corresponding effector genes within diverse cellular contexts.

Multicomponent Deimplementation Strategy to Reduce Low-Value Preoperative Testing.

Importance: Routine preoperative blood tests and electrocardiograms before low-risk surgery do not prevent adverse events or change management but waste resources and can cause patient harm. Given this, multispecialty organizations recommend against routine testing before low-risk surgery.

Objective: To determine whether a multicomponent deimplementation strategy (the intervention) would reduce low-value preoperative testing before low-risk general surgery operations.

Palliative Care Initiated in the Emergency Department: A Cluster Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: The emergency department (ED) offers an opportunity to initiate palliative care for older adults with serious, life-limiting illness.

Objective: To assess the effect of a multicomponent intervention to initiate palliative care in the ED on hospital admission, subsequent health care use, and survival in older adults with serious, life-limiting illness.

Design, Setting, And Participants: Cluster randomized, stepped-wedge, clinical trial including patients aged 66 years or older who visited 1 of 29 EDs across the US between May 1, 2018, and December 31, 2022, had 12 months of prior Medicare enrollment, and a Gagne comorbidity score greater than 6, representing a risk of short-term mortality greater than 30%.

Blood Culture Use in Medical and Surgical Intensive Care Units and Wards.

Importance: Blood culture (BC) use benchmarks in US hospitals have not been defined.

Objective: To characterize BC use in adult intensive care units (ICUs) and wards in US hospitals.

Design, Setting, And Participants: A retrospective cross-sectional study of BC use in adult medical ICUs, medical-surgical ICUs, medical wards, and medical-surgical wards from acute care hospitals from the 4 US geographic regions was conducted.

Guidance for Prescribing Oral Antihypertensive Medications in the Emergency Department.

Purpose Of Review: To review the most current recommendations regarding assessment and treatment of asymptomatic hypertension treatment in the emergency department (ED) and to provide guidance for prescribing oral antihypertensive therapy for ED providers.

Recent Findings: There are varying management strategies for the treatment of asymptomatic hypertension in the ED likely due to a lack of direct guidelines for treatment. There is an increasing body of evidence for the safety of initiating therapy to treat chronic asymptomatic hypertension in the ED.

Improving rupture status prediction for intracranial aneurysms using wall shear stress informatics.

Background: Wall shear stress (WSS) plays a crucial role in the natural history of intracranial aneurysms (IA). However, spatial variations among WSS have rarely been utilized to correlate with IAs' natural history. This study aims to establish the feasibility of using spatial patterns of WSS data to predict IAs' rupture status (i.

Testing the kinetic tradeoff between bicarbonate versus phosphoenolpyruvate affinity and glucose-6 phosphate response of phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase from two C grasses.

Phosphoenolpyruvate (PEP) carboxylase (PEPC) has an anaplerotic role in central plant metabolism but also initiates the carbon concentrating mechanism during C photosynthesis. The C PEPC has different binding affinities (K) for PEP (K) and HCO (K), and allosteric regulation by glucose-6-phosphate (G6-P) compared to non-photosynthetic isoforms. These differences are linked to specific changes in amino acids within PEPC.

Current Concepts and Clinical Applications in Cartilage Tissue Engineering.

Cartilage injuries are extremely common in the general population, and conventional interventions have failed to produce optimal results. Tissue engineering (TE) technology has been developed to produce neocartilage for use in a variety of cartilage-related conditions. However, progress in the field of cartilage TE has historically been difficult due to the high functional demand and avascular nature of the tissue.

mpactR: an R adaptation of the metabolomics peak analysis computational tool (MPACT) for use in reproducible data analysis pipelines.

mpactR automates pre-processing of liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) data from microbiological samples to correct mispicked peaks, resolve inter-sample variation in abundance across technical replicates, account for in-source ion fragmentation, and remove background noise to yield high-quality mass spectrometry features. The package is available through CRAN and GitHub.

General Kernel Machine Methods for Multi-Omics Integration and Genome-Wide Association Testing With Related Individuals.

Integrating multi-omics data may help researchers understand the genetic underpinnings of complex traits and diseases. However, the best ways to integrate multi-omics data and use them to address pressing scientific questions remain a challenge. One important and topical problem is how to assess the aggregate effect of multiple genomic data types (e.

Influence of rheumatoid arthritis on peri-implant diseases: A longitudinal retrospective clinical and radiographic evaluation.

Background: To investigate the effect of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) on the incidence of peri-implantitis (PI) and peri-implant mucositis (PIM).

Methods: Radiographic and clinical chart reviews were conducted to measure the probing depth (PD), bleeding on probing, and marginal bone loss (MBL) around the implants to diagnose peri-implant diseases based on the 2017 workshop classification. Values were recorded at the baseline (T0) to the last available chart and radiograph (T1).

Racial and ethnic discrimination and DSM-5 substance use disorders among U.S. adults.

Objective: Racial and ethnic discrimination is a risk factor for substance use among United States adults. However, whether discrimination is associated with substance use disorders (SUDs) overall and by race and ethnicity is less understood.

Methods: We used data from the 2012-2013 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions-III (n=35,355) and defined past-year discrimination as a summary scale (range: 0-4).

Double-vestibular incision subperiosteal tunnel access (double-VISTA) with connective tissue graft for treating multiple gingival recessions: 2-year follow-up.

Background: Gingival recession has a multifactorial etiology, involving various predisposing and precipitating factors. Non-carious cervical lesions (NCCLs) are often associated with gingival recession and pose challenges due to their complex pathodynamics. There is limited evidence regarding tunnel-based procedures combined with connective tissue grafts (CTGs) for treating recession-associated NCCLs.

Exploring itch in hidradenitis suppurativa with lessons from atopic dermatitis and psoriasis.

Itch is a prominent symptom in many cutaneous disorders, including atopic dermatitis (AD), prurigo nodularis, and psoriasis. Itch is also a common but overlooked concern in patients with hidradenitis suppurativa (HS). Currently, the mechanisms underlying itch in HS remain unclear.

Intracellular tenofovir-diphosphate concentrations in HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis users who underwent bariatric surgery.

Objective: To measure concentrations of tenofovir diphosphate (TFV-DP) in dried blood spots (DBS) among individuals taking tenofovir disoproxil fumarate plus emtricitabine (TDF/FTC) or tenofovir alafenamide plus emtricitabine (TAF/FTC) who were scheduled to undergo or had already undergone bariatric surgery.

Methods: We enrolled pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) users attending clinics in Toronto or Ottawa who were undergoing or had undergone bariatric surgery. After participants completed a minimum of 7 days of consecutive PrEP dosing, we collected DBS samples immediately before they administered their next daily dose of PrEP.

Serendipitous high-resolution structure of Escherichia coli carbonic anhydrase 2.

X-ray crystallography remains the dominant method of determining the three-dimensional structure of proteins. Nevertheless, this resource-intensive process may be hindered by the unintended crystallization of contaminant proteins from the expression source. Here, the serendipitous discovery of two novel crystal forms and one new, high-resolution structure of carbonic anhydrase 2 (CA2) from Escherichia coli that arose during a crystallization campaign for an unrelated target is reported.