Healthcare costs of systemic lupus erythematosus in New Zealand.

Objectives: This study aims to estimate the annual medical costs of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in New Zealand (NZ).

Methods: SLE patients were linked to the Australia and New Zealand Dialysis and Transplant Registry, Pharmaceutical Collection, National Minimum Dataset, National Non-Admitted Patients Collection and Mortality Collection. National direct medical costs of SLE in 2006-2021 and annual costs per patient were estimated.

Impacts of climate-induced drought on lake and reservoir biodiversity and ecosystem services: A review.

Intensifying extreme droughts are altering lentic ecosystems and disrupting services provisioning. Unfortunately, drought research often lacks a holistic and intersectoral consideration of drought impacts, which can limit relevance of the insights for adaptive management. This literature review evaluated the current state of lake and reservoir extreme drought research in relation to biodiversity and three ecosystem services.

The effects of acute hot-water immersion on force steadiness and motor unit discharge rate variability in young, healthy adults.

This study examined the effects of core and muscle temperature on force steadiness and motor unit discharge rate (MUDR) variability after a hot-water immersion session. Fifteen participants (6 women; 25±6 years) completed neuromuscular assessments before and after either 42ºC (hot) or 36ºC (control) water immersion. Force steadiness was measured during knee extension, while HD-sEMG signals were recorded from vastus lateralis and medialis for MUDR variability analysis.

Coefficients in Taylor's law increase with the time scale of water clarity measurements in a global suite of lakes.

Identifying the scaling rules describing ecological patterns across time and space is a central challenge in ecology. Taylor's law of fluctuation scaling, which states that the variance of a population's size or density is proportional to a positive power of the mean size or density, has been widely observed in population dynamics and characterizes variability in multiple scientific domains. However, it is unclear if this phenomenon accurately describes ecological patterns across many orders of magnitude in time, and therefore links otherwise disparate observations.

Effective Spiral Laser Path for Minimizing Local Heating and Anisotropic Microstructures in Powder Bed Fusion Additive Manufacturing.

Heat accumulation due to repetitive simple laser processing paths during building up a three-dimensional structure is a well-known issue that needs to be settled to reduce the excessively high residual stress and thermal deformation in a powder bed fusion (PBF) additive manufacturing process. Because of the dependency of laser path on the thermal dispersion, it is essential to analyze the heat accumulation phenomenon during laser processing. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis based on the volume of fraction method is used to optimize the laser path for minimizing the local heating up in the PBF process.

Continuous Glucose Monitoring Underreports Blood Glucose During a Simulated Ultraendurance Run in Eumenorrheic Female Runners.

Purpose: Continuous-glucose-monitoring (CGM) sensors provide near-real-time glucose data and have been introduced commercially as a tool to inform nutrition decisions. The aim of this pilot study was to explore how factors such as the menstrual phase, extended running duration, and carbohydrates affect CGM outcomes among trained eumenorrheic females in an outdoor simulated ultraendurance running event.

Methods: Twelve experienced female ultrarunners (age 39 [6] y) participated in this crossover study.

Unique bibenzyl cannabinoids in the liverwort Radula marginata: parallels with Cannabis chemistry.

The potential of cannabinoids to address public health challenges has stimulated exploration into alternative sources and production technologies. Radula marginata, an endemic Aotearoa/New Zealand liverwort, produces the bibenzyl cannabinoid perrottetinene (PET), analogous to Cannabis psychoactive tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Structural differences between PET and THC could alter therapeutic interactions and mitigate adverse side effects.

The struggles and joys of being an Indigenous researcher in the academy.

In November I took part in two very different gatherings-one in Canada, the other in Aotearoa New Zealand-which highlight both the ongoing struggles and joys of being an Indigenous researcher in the academy.

Nutritional niches of potentially endemic, facultatively anaerobic heterotrophs from an isolated Antarctic terrestrial hydrothermal refugium elucidated through metagenomics.

Background: Tramway Ridge, a geothermal Antarctic Specially Protected Area (elevation 3340 m) located near the summit of Mount Erebus, is home to a unique community composed of cosmopolitan surface-associated micro-organisms and abundant, poorly understood subsurface-associated microorganisms. Here, we use shotgun metagenomics to compare the functional capabilities of this community to those found elsewhere on Earth and to infer in situ diversity and metabolic capabilities of abundant subsurface taxa.

Results: We found that the functional potential in this community is most similar to that found in terrestrial hydrothermal environments (hot springs, sediments) and that the two dominant organisms in the subsurface carry high rates of in situ diversity which was taken as evidence of potential endemicity.

Characteristics of Children, Youth, and Young Adults With Diabetes: A Cross-Sectional Study in New Zealand Aotearoa.

The prevalence of diabetes mellitus among children, youth, and young adults is increasing, yet limited information is known about the characteristics and management of these groups with Type 1 (T1D) and Type 2 (T2D) diabetes in primary care. The aim of the study is to explore the characteristics of people with T1D and T2D aged < 25 years across the Auckland and Waikato regions of New Zealand. : Sociodemographic and clinical data were collected from electronic primary care records (February 2021-July 2022) of four primary healthcare organisations, with medication data sourced from the National Pharmaceutical dataset.

Supercapacitor-based pulse generator with waveform adjustment capability for small animal transcranial magnetic stimulation.

In transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), pulsed magnetic fields are applied to the brain, typically requiring high-power stimulators with high voltages and low series impedance. TMS pulse generators for small animal coils, are underexplored, with limited dedicated circuits and simulation models. Here, we present a new design for a high-power TMS pulse generator for small animals, utilizing a pre-charged supercapacitor that is sufficient to produce repeated pulses for TMS applications without the need for recharging.

Hospitalizations in patients with systemic sclerosis: Differences between limited and diffuse cutaneous subtypes.

Aim: Systemic sclerosis is associated with significant morbidity and mortality. It remains unclear from the literature if there are differences between the subtypes of systemic sclerosis and the rate of hospitalization. Our study investigates the rates of all types of hospitalizations between limited and diffuse cutaneous systemic sclerosis.

Debiasing large language models: research opportunities.

Large language models (LLMs) are powerful decision-making tools widely adopted in healthcare, finance, and transportation. Embracing the opportunities and innovations of LLMs is inevitable. However, LLMs inherit stereotypes, misrepresentations, discrimination, and societies' biases from various sources-including training data, algorithm design, and user interactions-resulting in concerns about equality, diversity, and fairness.

Identifying climate refugia for vulnerable marine ecosystem indicator taxa under future climate change scenarios.

Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) are recognised as having high ecological significance and susceptibility to disturbances, including climate change. One approach to providing information on the location and biological composition of these ecosystems, especially in difficult-to-reach environments such as the deep sea, is to generate spatial predictions for VME indicator taxa. In this study, the Random Forest algorithm was used to model the spatial distribution of density for 14 deep-water VME indicator taxa under current environmental conditions and future climate change scenarios (SSP2-4.

Co-occurrence of cancer and diabetes in a high-income country: Age-period-cohort projections 2020-2044.

Background: Cancer and diabetes are increasingly prevalent, and it is not unusual for an individual to have both conditions at the same time. This occurrence has significant ramifications to the person, the clinical team providing care, and the broader health system.

Research Design And Methods: For the period 2006-2019, we used national-level diabetes (Virtual Diabetes Register) and cancer (New Zealand Cancer Registry) data on nearly five million individuals over 44 million person-years of follow-up.

The role of early temperament on oral language development of New Zealand children speaking Mandarin or Cantonese.

This study investigated the role of temperament in oral language development in over 200 Mandarin and Cantonese speakers in the pre-birth longitudinal cohort study. Mothers assessed infant temperament at nine months using a five-factor Infant Behaviour Questionnaire-Revised Very Short Form. They also reported on children's vocabulary and word combinations at age two using adapted MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory short forms.

Earth's Climate History Explains Life's Temperature Optima.

Why does the growth of most life forms exhibit a narrow range of optimal temperatures below 40°C? We hypothesize that the recently identified stable range of oceanic temperatures of ~5 to 37°C for more than two billion years of Earth history tightly constrained the evolution of prokaryotic thermal performance curves to optimal temperatures for growth to less than 40°C. We tested whether competitive mechanisms reproduced the observed upper limits of life's temperature optima using simple Lotka-Volterra models of interspecific competition between organisms with different temperature optima. Model results supported our proposition whereby organisms with temperature optima up to 37°C were most competitive.

Use of Freestyle Libre 2.0 in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus and elevated HbA: Extension phase results after a 12-week randomized controlled trial.

Aim: To investigate extension phase outcomes with intermittently scanned continuous glucose monitoring (isCGM 2.0) in children with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and elevated HbA (7.5-12.

Dynamics of infectious disease mathematical model through unsupervised stochastic neural network paradigm.

The viruses has spread globally and have been impacted lives of people socially and economically, which causes immense suffering throughout the world. Thousands of people died and millions of illnesses were brought, by the outbreak worldwide. In order to control the coronavirus pandemic, mathematical modeling proved to be an invaluable tool for analyzing and determining the potential and severity of the illness.

Seafloor sediment microtopography as a surrogate for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning.

Marine soft sediments play crucial roles in global biogeochemical cycles and biodiversity. Yet, with organisms often hidden in the sediment, they pose challenges for effective monitoring and management. This study introduces a novel approach utilizing sediment microtopography as a proxy for ecosystem functioning and biodiversity.

Ideal personhood through the ages: tracing the genealogy of the modern concepts of wellbeing.

This inquiry traces the recent history of modern conceptualizations of personhood and wellbeing. It explores a general transition from traditional frameworks emphasizing social embeddedness, external obligations, and cosmic meaning to modern views privileging self-determination, authenticity, and self-expression. The inquiry shows that contemporary conceptions of wellbeing have emerged in Western cultures through the gradual accumulation of influences, including the Enlightenment ethos, liberal ideals, romanticism, existentialism, countercultural movements, and modern psychology.

Mating Behaviour Influences the Direction and Geographic Extent of Introgression in New Zealand Fishing Spiders (Dolomedes).

Introgression is a highly influential process in evolution, where genes flow between species that are not fully reproductively isolated. Studies on introgression often focus on describing gene transfer and environmental changes that facilitate the meeting of species. However, the impact of mating systems and behaviour that facilitate gene transfer is less well-known.