Higher than expected telemedicine use by racial and ethnic minority and cognitively impaired Medicare beneficiaries.

Although pandemic-era telemedicine flexibilities may have preserved access to care, concerns remain that telemedicine may have been inequitably distributed among older adults, especially those with mild cognitive impairment or dementia (MCID). As telemedicine flexibilities are set to fully expire on December 31, 2024, we aimed to examine pandemic-era and future-intended telemedicine use among older Americans to help inform post-pandemic telemedicine policy design. We hypothesized that telemedicine would be disproportionately underutilized among older adults with MCID or with racial and ethnic minority status.

State-level LGBTQ+ policies and health: the role of political determinants in shaping health equity.

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) individuals in the United States experience higher rates of discrimination and stressors that negatively impact health compared with their straight, cisgender counterparts. Using 2022 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Survey (BRFSS) data, estimating multilevel mixed-effects logistic regressions, we examined the relationship between state LGBTQ+ policies and health among LGBT people. Findings reveal a statistically significant inverse link between protective (high) state policy scores and poor self-rated health, poor mental health days, and poor physical health days.

Presenting Your Best Self: How Physician Appearance Influences Patient Perceptions and Impacts Women in Medicine.

Introduction: Trust and rapport between patients and physicians form the cornerstone of effective medical practice. A key factor influencing this trust is the patient's perception of the physician's appearance. Women physicians often face more rigorous expectations concerning their physical appearance compared to men physicians, creating a need to balance traditional professional attire with maintaining femininity and individuality.

Gaining stakeholder perspectives to shape a produce prescription program to improve maternal and birth outcomes: a qualitative study.

Introduction: Nutrition during pregnancy significantly impacts maternal and birth outcomes. A key factor contributing to the rise in adverse maternal and birth outcomes is poor nutrition. Produce prescription programs have the potential to address pregnancy-related adverse outcomes such as hypertensive disorders and gestational diabetes, but scientific evidence is limited.

Genomics costing tool: considerations for improving cost-efficiencies through cross scenario comparison.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) is crucial for monitoring and investigating infectious disease outbreaks, providing essential data for public health decisions. The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly expanded pathogen sequencing and bioinformatics capacities worldwide, creating an opportunity to leverage these advancements for other pathogens with pandemic and epidemic potential. In response to the need for a systematic cost estimation approach for sustainable genomic surveillance, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, five institutions collaborated to develop the genomics costing tool (GCT).

WHO public health laboratories webinar series - an online platform to disseminate testing recommendations and best practices during health emergencies.

Laboratories play a central role in managing public health emergencies. The COVID-19 pandemic imposed unique challenges on global laboratory systems, including testing protocol uncertainties, supply shortages, rapid need for information dissemination, and disruptions to traditional training methods. In response, the WHO established the Public Health Laboratories (PHL) knowledge sharing webinar series whose goals were to respond to the increased demand in up-to-date and reliable information, which WHO is in a unique position to provide.

Quick Oil Red O, Paint3D and Biopython as an economical tool to measure total lipid levels in .

Quick Oil Red O staining is a well established method to assay total lipid levels in , but the software to clean up and analyse the images is either laborious, expensive or both. We have developed a process that uses an existing protocol to stain the animals, followed by Magic Select in Paint3D to remove background and then a custom script in Biopython to quantify average pixel intensity animal. The software is free, accessible and relatively easy to use for undergraduate researchers.

The AWC neuron is important for attraction to 1-butanol in .

uses chemosensation to recognize a variety of odors, many of which are released by bacteria, the major food source of . Specific amphid sensory neurons are known to detect different odorants. Here we show that the AWC neuron detects the attractive odorant 1-butanol.

Caregiver perceptions of usual care home programs for persons with acquired brain injury: a qualitative descriptive study.

Objective: The study explores caregiver perceptions of home programs for clients with acquired brain injury based on current clinical care after transition to the community.

Design: A qualitative descriptive study.

Setting: Within the community, post inpatient rehabilitation.

Self-reported dyspnea and interest in a respiratory muscle training program among callers to the New York State Quitline.

Introduction: Cigarette smoking is an important risk factor in the development of dyspnea. Programs designed to strengthen the respiratory muscles can improve dyspnea in people with or without lung disease. As a first step in understanding the feasibility of offering a respiratory muscle training (RMT) program to people who are seeking help to try to quit smoking, we asked callers who contacted the New York State Quitline about their dyspnea and potential interest in a home-based RMT program.

Endophytic strategies decoded by genome and transcriptome analysis of strain NQ8GII4.

Introduction: strain NQ8GII4 is an endophytic fungus with significant potential for improving growth and disease resistance of alfalfa. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the symbiotic relationship between NQ8GII4 and alfalfa roots remain poorly understood.

Methods: In this study, we conducted (1) a comparative genomic analysis of selected saprophytic, pathogenic, and endophytic fungi, including molecular phylogeny analysis, whole-genome alignment, and divergence date estimation positioning, and (2) transcriptomic profiling of alfalfa roots infected with NQ8GII4.

Evaluation of machine learning techniques for real-time prediction of implanted lower limb mechanics.

Introduction: Accurate prediction of knee biomechanics during total knee replacement (TKR) surgery is crucial for optimal outcomes. This study investigates the application of machine learning (ML) techniques for real-time prediction of knee joint mechanics.

Methods: A validated finite element (FE) model of the lower limb was used to generate a dataset of knee joint kinematics, kinetics, and contact mechanics.

Clinical Use of Dostarlimab in Advanced Stage and Recurrent Endometrial Cancer: Patient Selection and Perspectives.

Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most common gynecologic cancer in developed nations with reported 420,368 new cases worldwide in 2022 and resulting in 97,723 deaths that year; it is also one of the few cancers with expected increases in incidence and mortality, which are expected to increase by 50% and 70%, respectively, by 2045. The mortality from EC can largely be attributed to the advanced stage and recurrent cases. Over the past decade, the standard of care for treatment of primary advanced stage and recurrent EC has been chemotherapy, resulting in a median overall survival (OS) of less than 3 years.

Enhanced porphyrin-based hypoxia imaging by temporal oversampling of delayed fluorescence signal.

Significance: Protoporphyrin IX (PpIX) delayed fluorescence (DF) is inversely related to the oxygen present in tissues and has potential as a novel biomarker for surgical guidance and real-time tissue metabolism assessment. Despite the unique promise of this technique, its successful clinical translation is limited by the low intensity emitted.

Aim: We developed a systematic study of ways to increase the PpIX DF signal through acquisition sampling changes, allowing optimized imaging at video rates.

Postoperative Surveillance Adherence in Colorectal Cancer Patients at Urban Medical Centers: Is It Adequate?

Introduction Colorectal cancer (CRC) is among the most frequent cancers in the United States. There are recognized guidelines for monitoring after curative CRC excision. This study looks into the rate of compliance with surveillance guidelines following CRC resection, as well as the impact of demographic characteristics.

SineKAN: Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks using sinusoidal activation functions.

Recent work has established an alternative to traditional multi-layer perceptron neural networks in the form of Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks (KAN). The general KAN framework uses learnable activation functions on the edges of the computational graph followed by summation on nodes. The learnable edge activation functions in the original implementation are basis spline functions (B-Spline).

Apelin/APJ system: a novel promising target for anti-oxidative stress in stroke.

The apelin/APJ system has garnered increasing attention in recent years. In this review, we comprehensively discuss the physiological and pathological mechanisms of the apelin/APJ system in stroke. The apelin/APJ system is widely expressed in the central nervous system (CNS).

Drug-induced heart failure: a real-world pharmacovigilance study using the FDA adverse event reporting system database.

Objective: Although there are certain drug categories associated with heart failure (HF), most of the associated risks are unclear. We investigated the top drugs associated with HF and acute HF (AHF) reported in the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System (FAERS).

Methods: We reviewed publicly available FAERS databases from 2004 to 2023.

Large variability in the alkaloid content of dietary supplements.

Introduction: Extracts from the rhizome of the traditional Chinese medicinal plant (CY) mediate a number of biologic effects that are associated with its content of isoquinoline alkaloids. CY alkaloids have shown analgesic, cardioprotective, and anti-addictive effects in animal models of disease. Since CY alkaloids are available to consumers as dietary supplements we analyzed the content of alkaloids in 14 products including open powders, capsules, and liquid formulations, capturing a majority of the products available online in the US.

Case Report: Targeted treatment by fluoxetine/norfluoxetine of a variant causing developmental and epileptic encephalopathy.

The Kv3.2 subfamily of voltage activated potassium channels encoded by the gene is abundantly expressed in neurons that fire trains of fast action potentials that are a major source of cortical inhibition. Gain-of-function (GOF) pathogenic variants in and , encoding Kv3.

Pharmacokinetics of 7,8-dihydroxyflavone in neonatal mice with hypoxia-ischemia related brain injury.

Introduction: 7,8-Dihydroxyflavone (7,8-DHF) is a promising translational therapy in several brain injury models, including the neonatal hypoxia-ischemia (HI) model in mice. However, the neuroprotective effect of 7,8-DHF was only observed in female, but not male, neonatal mice with HI brain injury. It is unknown whether HI-induced physiological changes affect brain distribution of 7,8-DHF differently for male versus female mice.

Association between self-reported eye conditions in patients at rural federally qualified health centers and vision-targeted health-related quality of life: the AL-SIGHT study.

Background: Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) are safety-net primary health care clinics in the US serving medically underserved areas and populations. We administered the National Eye Institute Visual Function Questionnaire - 9 (VFQ-9), a vision-targeted, health-related quality of life questionnaire, to patients in 3 FQHCs in rural Alabama at risk for glaucoma. We examined demographic factors and self-reported eye conditions associated with VFQ-9 scores.

: identification and characterization of plant-conserved microRNA in Rafflesiaceae.

Rafflesiaceae is a family of endangered plants whose members are solely parasitic to the tropical grape vine (Vitaceae). Currently, the genetics of their crosstalk with the host remains unexplored. In this study, we use homology-based approaches to characterize micro-RNAs (miRNAs) expressed by and from published omics data.

Using cortical organoids to understand the pathogenesis of malformations of cortical development.

Malformations of cortical development encompass a broad range of disorders associated with abnormalities in corticogenesis. Widespread abnormalities in neuronal formation or migration can lead to small head size or microcephaly with disorganized placement of cell types. Specific, localized malformations are termed focal cortical dysplasias (FCD).