Exploiting venom toxins in paratransgenesis to prevent mosquito-borne disease.

Mosquitoes are responsible for the transmission of numerous pathogens, including Plasmodium parasites, arboviruses and filarial worms. They pose a significant risk to public health with over 200 million cases of malaria per annum and approximately 4 billion people at risk of arthropod-borne viruses (arboviruses). Mosquito populations are geographically expanding into temperate regions and their distribution is predicted to continue increasing.

Impact of commercial gut health interventions on caecal metagenome and broiler performance.

Background: Maintaining gut health is a persistent and unresolved challenge in the poultry industry. Given the critical role of gut health in chicken performance and welfare, there is a pressing need to identify effective gut health intervention (GHI) strategies to ensure optimal outcomes in poultry farming. In this study, across three broiler production cycles, we compared the metagenomes and performance of broilers provided with ionophores (as the control group) against birds subjected to five different GHI combinations involving vaccination, probiotics, prebiotics, essential oils, and reduction of ionophore use.

Perceived healthiness of sugary drinks and related social norms among adults in five countries: evidence from the International Food Policy Study.

Background: A better understanding of correlates of sugary drink consumption is essential to inform public health interventions. This study examined differences in perceived healthiness of sugary drinks and related social norms between countries, over time, and sociodemographic groups and associations with sugary drink intake.

Methods: This study used annual cross-sectional data from the International Food Policy Study from 2018 to 2021 in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Mexico.

Knights in shining armour and (M)others in life jackets: Women's experiences of advocating for care alone when suffering recurrent early pregnancy loss during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

Background: Recurrent early pregnancy loss [rEPL] is a traumatic experience, marked by feelings such as grief and depression, and often anxiety. Despite this, the psychological consequences of rEPL are often overlooked, particularly when considering future reproductive health or approaching subsequent pregnancies. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led to significant reconfiguration of maternity care and a negative impact on the perinatal experience, but the specific impact on women's experience of rEPL has yet to be explored.

Post COVID glaucoma service redesign utilising electronic patient triage and community optometry clinics (Fife, Scotland 2020-2022).

Background: COVID-19 caused a huge backlog of patients in glaucoma clinics. This study describes redesign of an entire glaucoma service with electronic patient triage to three levels and utilisation of the Scottish optometry infrastructure of upskilled optometrists.

Methods: 2276 patients in glaucoma clinics were identified and triaged to three levels in keeping with Glauc-strat-fast guidance with local amendments.

scATAC-seq generates more accurate and complete regulatory maps than bulk ATAC-seq.

Bulk ATAC-seq assays have been used to map and profile the chromatin accessibility of regulatory elements such as enhancers, promoters, and insulators. This has provided great insight into the regulation of gene expression in many cell types in a variety of organisms. To date, ATAC-seq has most often been used to provide an average evaluation of chromatin accessibility in populations of cells.

The effect of pregnancy vitamin D supplementation on maternal blood pressure: real-world data analysis within the MAVIDOS randomised placebo-controlled trial.

Purpose: Observational studies have suggested negative associations between maternal 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) status and risk of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy [pregnancy-induced hypertension (PIH) and preeclampsia (PET)]. Data from intervention studies are limited. We hypothesised that vitamin D supplementation would lower maternal blood pressure (BP) during pregnancy and reduce the incidence of hypertensive disorders of pregnancy.

Evaluation of the Digital Ventilated Cage® system for circadian phenotyping.

The study of circadian rhythms has been critically dependent upon analysing mouse home cage activity, typically employing wheel running activity under different lighting conditions. Here we assess a novel method, the Digital Ventilated Cage (DVC, Tecniplast SpA, Italy), for circadian phenotyping. Based upon capacitive sensors mounted under black individually ventilated cages with inbuilt LED lighting, each cage becomes an independent light-controlled chamber.

Transforming CCTV cameras into NO sensors at city scale for adaptive policymaking.

Air pollution in cities, especially NO, is linked to numerous health problems, ranging from mortality to mental health challenges and attention deficits in children. While cities globally have initiated policies to curtail emissions, real-time monitoring remains challenging due to limited environmental sensors and their inconsistent distribution. This gap hinders the creation of adaptive urban policies that respond to the sequence of events and daily activities affecting pollution in cities.

The genetics of neurodegenerative diseases is the genetics of age-related damage clearance failure.

In this perspective we draw together the data from the genome wide association studies for Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease and the tauopathies and reach the conclusion that in each case, most of the risk loci are involved in the clearance of the deposited proteins: in Alzheimer's disease, the microglial removal of Aβ, in the synucleinopathies, the lysosomal clearance of synuclein and in the tauopathies, the removal of tau protein by the ubiquitin proteasome. We make the point that most loci identified through genome wide association studies are not strictly pathogenic but rather relate to failures to remove age related damage. We discuss these issues in the context of copathologies in elderly individuals and the prediction of disease through polygenic risk score analysis at different ages.

Emergence of opposing arrows of time in open quantum systems.

Deriving an arrow of time from time-reversal symmetric microscopic dynamics is a fundamental open problem in many areas of physics, ranging from cosmology, to particle physics, to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Here we focus on the derivation of the arrow of time in open quantum systems and study precisely how time-reversal symmetry is broken. This derivation involves the Markov approximation applied to a system interacting with an infinite heat bath.

CODE-ACCORD: A Corpus of building regulatory data for rule generation towards automatic compliance checking.

Automatic Compliance Checking (ACC) within the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) sector necessitates automating the interpretation of building regulations to achieve its full potential. Converting textual rules into machine-readable formats is challenging due to the complexities of natural language and the scarcity of resources for advanced Machine Learning (ML). Addressing these challenges, we introduce CODE-ACCORD, a dataset of 862 sentences from the building regulations of England and Finland.

The representation of stimulus features during stable fixation and active vision.

Predictive updating of an object's spatial coordinates from pre-saccade to post-saccade contributes to stable visual perception. Whether object features are predictively remapped remains contested. We set out to characterise the spatiotemporal dynamics of feature processing during stable fixation and active vision.

How do GPs' new ways of working affect community nurses? A qualitative study.

Background A growing literature examines the way two changes in primary care - the shift towards remote working, and the diversification of practice teams to incorporate, for instance, physician associates and paramedics - affect patient care within the practice. However, little is known about these changes' effects on community nurses. Aim To explore community nurses' experiences of delivering palliative care in the context of GPs' new ways of working.

Qualitative evaluation of the Rehabilitation Exercise and psycholoGical support After COVID-19 InfectioN (REGAIN) randomised controlled trial (RCT): 'you are not alone'.

Background: This qualitative evaluation was embedded in the Rehabilitation Exercise and psycholoGical support After COVID-19 InfectioN (REGAIN) study, a randomised controlled trial (RCT) for those with post-COVID-19 condition ('long COVID') after hospital admission for COVID-19, comparing weekly home-based, live online supervised group exercise and psychological support sessions with 'best practice usual care' (a single session of advice).

Objective: To increase our understanding of how and why the REGAIN programme might have worked and what helped or hindered this intervention.

Design: A qualitative evaluation which utilised interviews with participants and practitioners delivering the intervention.

Developing a set of key principles for care planning within older adult care homes: study protocol for a modified Delphi survey.

Background: Older adult care homes in England are required to develop care plans on behalf of each of their residents and to make these documents available to those who provide care. However, there is a lack of formal agreement around the key principles that should inform the development of care plans in care homes for older adults. Using a modified Delphi survey, we intend to generate consensus on a set of key principles that should inform the care planning process.

Acceptability and feasibility of shared medical appointments to support self-management of anxiety and depression in primary care in England: a qualitative study of service user/patient perspectives.

Objective: Shared medical appointments (SMAs) are an innovative care delivery method that provides delivery of clinical care while also supporting self-management. Their usefulness for mental health conditions has only briefly been explored, though early evidence demonstrates their utility for supporting mental health management. Therefore, this study set out to better understand the views that adults with anxiety and depression have towards SMAs as a way of receiving care to support self-management in primary care.

Assessing the feasibility of measuring residents' quality of life in English care homes and the construct validity and internal consistency of measures completed by staff proxy: a cross-sectional study.

Objectives: To assess the feasibility of capturing older care home residents' quality of life (QoL) in digital social care records and the construct validity (hypothesis testing) and internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) of four QoL measures.

Design: Cross-sectional data collected in wave 1 of the DACHA (eveloping resources nd minimum dataset for are omes' doption) study, a mixed-methods pilot of a prototype minimum dataset (MDS).

Setting: Care homes (with or without nursing) registered to provide care for older adults (>65 years) and/or those living with dementia.

Differential attainment at national selection for higher surgical training: a retrospective cohort study.

Objectives: National selection for higher surgical specialty training (HST) in the UK is a high-stakes gatekeeping assessment. If barriers, such as differential attainment, exist at HST selection for some groups and not others, then this will have a significant and lasting impact on trainees' career progression and the diversity of the workforce, which should reflect the population it provides care for. The objective of this study was to characterise the relationship between candidate sociodemographic factors and performance at National Selection for HST in the UK.

Improving the diagnostic accuracy of referrals for papilloedema (DIPP) study: protocol for a mixed-methods study.

Introduction: Papilloedema can be the first sign of life-threatening disease, for example, brain tumours. Due to the potential seriousness of this clinical sign, the detection of papilloedema would normally prompt urgent hospital referral for further investigation. The problem is that many benign structural variations of optic nerve anatomy can be mistaken for papilloedema, so-called pseudopapilloedema.

Barriers and enablers encountered by bereaved informal motor neuron disease (MND) caregivers when trying to access bereavement support: a qualitative cross-sectional thematic analysis of semistructured interviews with 6-36 months postbereavement informal MND caregivers in the UK.

Background: Caregivers of people with motor neuron disease (MND) face more negative consequences of caregiving than other terminal illnesses. The impact of this caregiver burden can negatively influence bereavement outcomes.

Objectives: This study aims to explore the support needs of caregivers of people with MND, the types of bereavement services they use, or the reasons for not using bereavement services, and understanding the opportunities and barriers to accessing bereavement services.

TPepRet: a deep learning model for characterizing T cell receptors-antigen binding patterns.

Motivation: T-cell receptors (TCRs) elicit and mediate the adaptive immune response by recognizing antigenic peptides, a process pivotal for cancer immunotherapy, vaccine design, and autoimmune disease management. Understanding the intricate binding patterns between TCRs and peptides is critical for advancing these clinical applications. While several computational tools have been developed, they neglect the directional semantics inherent in sequence data, which are essential for accurately characterizing TCR-peptide interactions.

The Neuroendocrine Regulation of Reproductive Behavior and Emotional Control by Kisspeptin.

Reproductive success and ultimately species survival at a population level is contingent on a plethora of neuroendocrine signals working in concert to regulate gonadal function and reproductive behavior. Among these, the neuropeptide kisspeptin (encoded by the KISS1/Kiss1 gene) has emerged as the master regulator of the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis. Besides the hypothalamus, both kisspeptin and its cognate receptor are extensively expressed throughout cortico-limbic brain structures in rodents and humans, which are regions traditionally implicated in behavioral and emotional responses.