Sisonke Ntwana: Describing the mechanisms of change of an arts-based intervention for pregnant and parenting adolescents experiencing violence and poor mental health in South Africa.

Background: In South Africa, one in five adolescents experience pregnancy and face heightened rates of interpersonal violence and mental health challenges. Yet, few interventions are tailored to them.

Methods: 28 pregnant adolescents reporting past year intimate partner violence and/or non-partner rape were purposively recruited in antenatal clinics in Johannesburg to attend a 6-session arts-based intervention, delivered by 4 graduate art therapy students alongside clinical supervision.

Germination under the dark as an efficient method to enrich barley hordatine aglycones and to prepare a hordatine-rich fraction.

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.; Poaceae), the second most important grain after wheat, contains phenolamides, specifically hordatines and their agmatinated precursors. Hordatines are the unique compounds found in barley, consumption of which is associated with beneficial effects for human health.

Building Surgical Character: A Dynamic Simulation Curriculum for Nontechnical Skills.

Objective: Previous simulation curricula of nontechnical skills have focused on communication skills or empathy in isolation from technical skills, using feedback from one rater. We aimed to develop and pilot an expanded simulation curriculum focused on situational performance of select character attributes with the goal of determining curricular feasibility, use of a novel psychometric rating tool, and receptivity of curriculum by participants.

Design: The simulation consisted of 2 contiguous parts requiring demonstration of both technical and nontechnical skills.

Disposition of enrofloxacin in plasma, pulmonary epithelial lining fluid, peritoneal fluid, and cerebrospinal fluid of healthy mares.

Objective: To investigate the disposition of enrofloxacin and its active metabolite, ciprofloxacin, in plasma, pulmonary epithelial lining fluid (PELF), peritoneal fluid, and CSF in horses following IV administration of enrofloxacin at doses of 5 mg/kg and 7.5 mg/kg of body weight.

Methods: 6 healthy, mature mares were randomly assigned to receive a single dose of enrofloxacin at either 5 mg/kg or 7.

Additive Value of Polygenic Risk Score to Family History for Type 2 Diabetes Prediction: Results From the All of Us Research Database.

Objective: The goal of this study was to assess the additive value of considering type 2 diabetes (T2D) polygenic risk score (PRS) in addition to family history for T2D prediction.

Research Design And Methods: Data were obtained from the All of Us (AoU) research database. First-degree T2D family history was self-reported on the personal family history health questionnaire.

Updating US Public Health For Healthier Communities.

The United States faces urgent public health challenges, including high preventable death rates, pervasive health disparities, and emerging health risks, despite unprecedented medical progress. This article, part of the National Academy of Medicine's Vital Directions for Health and Health Care: Priorities for 2025 initiative, presents a vision for modernizing the US public health system to address these twenty-first-century challenges through federally supported partnerships with health care, social services, and community organizations. We identify actions to address persistent public health challenges that stem from insufficient and fragmented funding models, inadequate data infrastructure, workforce vulnerabilities, and limited public trust.

Understanding the Lymphatic System: Tissue-on-Chip Modeling.

The lymphatic vasculature plays critical roles in maintaining fluid homeostasis, transporting lipid, and facilitating immune surveillance. A growing body of work has identified lymphatic dysfunction as contributing to the severity of myriad diseases and to systemic inflammation, as well as modulating drug responses. Here, we review efforts to reconstruct lymphatic vessels in vitro toward establishing humanized, functional models to advance understanding of lymphatic biology and pathophysiology.

Defects vibrations engineering for enhancing interfacial thermal transport in polymer composites.

To push upper boundaries of thermal conductivity in polymer composites, understanding of thermal transport mechanisms is crucial. Despite extensive simulations, systematic experimental investigation on thermal transport in polymer composites is limited. To better understand thermal transport processes, we design polymer composites with perfect fillers (graphite) and defective fillers (graphite oxide), using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a matrix model.

Awakening the Disengaged: Can Driving-Related Prompts Engage Drivers in Partial Automation?

Objective: This study explores the effectiveness of conversational prompts on enhancing driver monitoring behavior and takeover performance in partially automated driving under two non-driving-related task (NDRT) scenarios with varying workloads.

Background: Driver disengagement in partially automated driving is a serious safety concern. Intermittent conversational prompts that require responses may be a solution.

Female Brain and Endocrinological Research-Veteran (FemBER-Vet) study: A study protocol for identifying endocrinological, lifestyle and psychosocial determinants of brain health outcomes in female veterans for future intervention success.

Background: Recent studies have demonstrated a greater risk of dementia in female veterans compared to civilians; with the highest prevalence noted for former service women with a diagnosis of psychiatric (trauma, alcoholism, depression), and/or a physical health condition (brain injury, insomnia, diabetes). Such findings highlight the need for increased and early screening of medical and psychiatric conditions, and indeed dementia, in the female veteran population. Further, they call for a better understanding of the underlying biopsychosocial mechanisms that might confer heightened risk for female veterans, to tailor preventative and interventional strategies that support brain health across the lifespan.

Administration of antigenically distinct influenza viral particle combinations as an influenza vaccine strategy.

One approach for developing a more universal influenza vaccine is to elicit strong immune responses against canonically immunosubdominant epitopes in the surface exposed viral glycoproteins. While standard vaccines typically induce responses directed primarily against mutable epitopes in the hemagglutinin (HA) head domain, there are generally limited or variable responses directed against epitopes in the relatively more conserved HA stalk domain and neuraminidase (NA) proteins. Here we describe a vaccine approach that utilizes a combination of wildtype (WT) influenza virus particles along with virus particles engineered to display a trimerized HA stalk in place of the full-length HA protein to elicit both responses simultaneously.

Life satisfaction around the world: Measurement invariance of the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups.

The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS) is a widely used self-report measure of subjective well-being, but studies of its measurement invariance across a large number of nations remain limited. Here, we utilised the Body Image in Nature (BINS) dataset-with data collected between 2020 and 2022 -to assess measurement invariance of the SWLS across 65 nations, 40 languages, gender identities, and age groups (N = 56,968). All participants completed the SWLS under largely uniform conditions.

A Single-Site Approach: Identifying the Micro-Level Influences on Nurse Retention.

Background: Persistently high turnover rates reflect nurses' discontent. Although personal reasons, career advancement, and relocation are cited as the top reasons for departures, macro-level data overlook the organizational and unit-level factors that erode nurses' desire to stay.

Methods: Survey methods were used for data collection.

Building an Exemplary Team of Master's-Prepared Nurses to Support Magnet® Designation.

Although hospitals successfully achieving Magnet® designation demonstrate a multitude of positive outcomes, initial certification and maintenance require support from a highly engaged team. Two healthcare facilities used a team of master's-prepared nurses including the clinical nurse specialist, clinical nurse leader, and nursing professional development practitioner to strengthen a culture of nursing excellence, resulting in a successful redesignation cycle and the need for nurse executives to evaluate supportive nursing roles in acute care settings.

Demographic Characteristics and Relational Coordination in ICU Teams: Implications for Building Diverse and Effective Healthcare Collaboration.

Objective: To determine if professional roles and demographic characteristics predict relational coordination (RC) among healthcare professionals in the ICU.

Background: Race, age, and sex diversity are increasing in the medical and nursing workforce, raising questions regarding how well healthcare professionals are collaborating. RC is a validated model for coordinating interdependent work among healthcare professionals.

AI Can Be a Powerful Social Innovation for Public Health if Community Engagement Is at the Core.

There is a critical need for community engagement in the process of adopting artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in public health. Public health practitioners and researchers have historically innovated in areas like vaccination and sanitation but have been slower in adopting emerging technologies such as generative AI. However, with increasingly complex funding, programming, and research requirements, the field now faces a pivotal moment to enhance its agility and responsiveness to evolving health challenges.

Top Ten Tips Palliative Care Clinicians Should Know About Rheumatology.

Systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARDs) consist of a broad range of immune-mediated multisystem diseases. They are chronic, incurable illnesses that often present in early to mid-life and can be associated with a high symptom burden, disability, and early mortality. Treatment guidelines for similar chronic, life-limiting conditions with uncertain disease courses now recommend palliative care (PC) assessment at the time of diagnosis.

Medicaid Spending in Coordination-Only Dual-Eligible Special Needs Plans.

Importance: More than 4 million Medicare beneficiaries have enrolled in dual-eligible Special Needs Plans (D-SNPs), and coordination-only D-SNPs are common. Little is known about the impact of coordination-only D-SNPs on Medicaid-covered services and spending, including long-term services and supports, which are financed primarily by Medicaid.

Objective: To evaluate changes in Medicaid fee-for-service (FFS) spending before and after new enrollment in coordination-only D-SNPs vs new enrollment in non-D-SNP Medicare Advantage (MA) plans among community-living beneficiaries enrolled in both Medicare and North Carolina Medicaid.

Supine Blood Pressure and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease and Mortality.

Importance: Nocturnal hypertension while asleep is associated with substantial increases in risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and death. Whether hypertension while supine is a risk factor associated with CVD independent of seated hypertension remains unknown.

Objective: To investigate the association between supine hypertension and CVD outcomes and by hypertension treatment status.

Oral vs Intravenous Antibiotics for Fracture-Related Infections: The POvIV Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: Fracture-related infection (FRI) is a serious complication following fracture fixation surgery. Current treatment of FRIs entails debridement and 6 weeks of intravenous (IV) antibiotics. Lab data and retrospective clinical studies support use of oral antibiotics, which are less expensive and may have fewer complications than IV antibiotics.

Evidence of Rapid Infection of Four Sweetpotato Potyviruses in a Commercial Field in California.

Sweetpotato ( Lam.) is grown worldwide and is a staple food in many countries. One of the main constraints for sweetpotato production is cultivar decline, caused by the accumulation of viruses and subsequent losses of storage root yield and quality over years of vegetative propagation.

Bottlebrush Pastes as a Platform for Solvent-Free, Injectable, and Shape-Persistent Materials with Tissue-Mimetic Viscoelasticity.

Architecturally hindered crystallization of bottlebrush graft copolymers offers a reaction- and solvent-free pathway for creating injectable elastomers with tissue-mimetic softness. Currently, injectable materials involve solvents and chemical reactions, leading to uncontrolled swelling, leaching of unreacted moieties, and side reactions with tissue. To address this issue, bottlebrush copolymers with a poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) amorphous block and crystallizable poly(lactic acid) (PLA) grafted chains (A--B) were synthesized, with grafted chains of controlled length arranged along the backbone at controlled spacing.

Healthy Aging and the Gut Microbiome in People With and Without HIV.

Background: Aging-related comorbidities are more common in people with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) compared to people without HIV. The gut microbiome may play a role in healthy aging; however, this relationship remains unexplored in the context of HIV.

Methods: 16S rRNA gene sequencing was conducted on stool from 1409 women (69% with HIV; 2304 samples) and 990 men (54% with HIV; 1008 samples) in the MACS/WIHS Combined Cohort Study.