Modelling of the tsunami from the December 22, 2018 lateral collapse of Anak Krakatau volcano in the Sunda Straits, Indonesia.

On Dec. 22, 2018, at approximately 20:55-57 local time, Anak Krakatau volcano, located in the Sunda Straits of Indonesia, experienced a major lateral collapse during a period of eruptive activity that began in June. The collapse discharged volcaniclastic material into the 250 m deep caldera southwest of the volcano, which generated a tsunami with runups of up to 13 m on the adjacent coasts of Sumatra and Java.

Understanding the role of resilience resources, antiretroviral therapy initiation, and HIV-1 RNA suppression among people living with HIV in South Africa: a prospective cohort study.

Objective: Failure to initiate antiretroviral therapy (ART) and achieve virologic suppression are significant barriers to the United Nations 90-90-90 goals. Identifying resilience resources, or modifiable strength-based factors, among people living with HIV is critical for successful HIV treatment and prevention.

Design: Prospective cohort study.

Determination of Endocrine Disruption Potential of Bisphenol A Alternatives in Food Contact Materials Using Assays: State of the Art and Future Challenges.

Alternatives to bisphenol A (BPA) are developed for food contact materials as a result of increasing evidence of exposure-correlated harmful effects of BPA. assays provide the fast, affordable, and mechanism insightful ways to screen endocrine disruption (ED), which is a major concern of new BPA alternatives. In this review, we summarize the safety and regulation information on the alternatives to BPA, review the state of the art of assays for ED evaluation, highlight their advantages and limitations, and discuss the challenges and future research needs.

The Microbiome Mediates Environmental Effects on Aging.

Humans' indigenous microbes strongly influence organ functions in an age- and diet-dependent manner, adding an important dimension to aging biology that remains poorly understood. Although age-related differences in the gut microbiota composition correlate with age-related loss of organ function and diseases, including inflammation and frailty, variation exists among the elderly, especially centenarians and people living in areas of extreme longevity. Studies using short-lived as well as nonsenescent model organisms provide surprising functional insights into factors affecting aging and implicate attenuating effects of microbes as well as a crucial role for certain transcription factors like forkhead box O.

Effective learning is accompanied by high-dimensional and efficient representations of neural activity.

A fundamental cognitive process is to map value and identity onto the objects we learn about. However, what space best embeds this mapping is not completely understood. Here we develop tools to quantify the space and organization of such a mapping in neural responses as reflected in functional MRI, to show that quick learners have a higher dimensional representation than slow learners, and hence more easily distinguishable whole-brain responses to objects of different value.

Changes in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder Service Connection Among Veterans Under Age 55: An 18-Year Ecological Cohort Study.

Introduction: Mandatory, age-based re-evaluations for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) service connection contribute substantially to the Veterans Benefits Administration's work load, accounting for almost 43% of the 168,013 assessments for PTSD disability done in Fiscal Year 2017 alone. The impact of these re-evaluations on Veterans' disability benefits has not been described.

Materials And Methods: The study is an 18-year, ecological, ambispective cohort of 620 men and 970 women receiving Department of Veterans Affairs PTSD disability benefits.

Evolution of Brain Connections: Integrating Diffusion MR Tractography With Gene Expression Highlights Increased Corticocortical Projections in Primates.

Diffusion MR tractography permits investigating the 3D structure of cortical pathways as interwoven paths across the entire brain. We use high-resolution scans from diffusion spectrum imaging and high angular resolution diffusion imaging to investigate the evolution of cortical pathways within the euarchontoglire (i.e.

Optical clock comparison for Lorentz symmetry testing.

Questioning basic assumptions about the structure of space and time has greatly enhanced our understanding of nature. State-of-the-art atomic clocks make it possible to precisely test fundamental symmetry properties of spacetime and search for physics beyond the standard model at low energies of just a few electronvolts. Modern tests of Einstein's theory of relativity try to measure so-far-undetected violations of Lorentz symmetry; accurately comparing the frequencies of optical clocks is a promising route to further improving such tests.

Programming Effects of Pubertal Lipopolysaccharide Treatment in Male and Female CD-1 Mice.

Puberty is a critical period of development marked by sexual, immune, and neural maturation. Exposure to stress during this period can lead to enduring changes in brain functioning and in behavior; however, the underlying mechanisms and the programming effects of stress during puberty remain unknown. Therefore, the objective of this study was to investigate the programming effects of pubertal immune challenge in response to a homotypic stressor later in life in CD-1 mice.

Auditory event-related potentials and function of the medial olivocochlear efferent system in children with auditory processing disorders.

Objective: The objectives were to investigate the function of central auditory pathways and of the medial efferent olivocochlear system (MOCS).

Design: Event-related potentials (ERP) were recorded following the delivery of the stimulus /da/ in quiet and in ipsilateral, contralateral, and binaural noise conditions and correlated to the results of the auditory processing disorders (APD) diagnostic test battery. MOCS function was investigated by adding ipsilateral, contralateral, and binaural noise to transient evoked otoacoustic emission recordings.

Enhancement of Anatomical Education Using Augmented Reality: An Empirical Study of Body Painting.

Students in undergraduate premedical anatomy courses may experience suboptimal and superficial learning experiences due to large class sizes, passive lecture styles, and difficult-to-master concepts. This study introduces an innovative, hands-on activity for human musculoskeletal system education with the aim of improving students' level of engagement and knowledge retention. In this study, a collaborative learning intervention using the REFLECT (augmented reality for learning clinical anatomy) system is presented.

Evaluation of standard diagnostic rapid test kits for malaria diagnosis among HIV patients in Kano, Nigeria.

Background: Malaria diagnosis among HIV-positive patients is uncommon in Nigeria despite the high burden of both diseases.

Objectives: We evaluated the performance of a malaria rapid diagnostic test (MRDT) against blood smear microscopy (BSM) among HIV-positive patients in relation to anti-retroviral treatment (ART) status, CD4+ count, fever, cotrimoxazole prophylaxis and malaria density count.

Method: A cross-sectional study involving 1521 consenting randomly selected HIV-positive adults attending two ART clinics in Kano, Nigeria, between June 2015 and May 2016.

Realizing Collective Impact for Community Health: A Wilmington Case Study.

As our state and nation face increasingly tight program budgets and more limited funding sources, collaboration has come to the forefront as a critical mechanism to promote health and well-being. The Collective Impact framework is an emerging approach to guide larger scale changes at a community or regional level. Through the establishment of 5 core tenants including establishing a backbone organization/central infrastructure, shared agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities and continuous communication the CI framework advances the work of prior theorists and creates a foundation for health promotion.

Experimental and Computational Study of the Lithiation of BaAl Ge Based Type I Germanium Clathrates.

In this work, we investigate the electrochemical properties of BaAl Ge ( y = 0, 4, 8, 12, 16) clathrates prepared by arc-melting. These materials have cage-like structures with large cavity volumes and can also have vacancies on the Ge framework sites, features which may be used to accommodate Li. Herein, a structural, electrochemical, and theoretical investigation is performed to explore these materials as anodes in Li-ion batteries, including analysis of the effect of the Al content and framework vacancies on the observed electrochemical properties.

Knowledge gaps in the early growth of semantic feature networks.

Understanding language learning, and more general knowledge acquisition, requires characterization of inherently qualitative structures. Recent work has applied network science to this task by creating semantic feature networks, in which words correspond to nodes and connections to shared features, then characterizing the structure of strongly inter-related groups of words. However, the importance of sparse portions of the semantic network - knowledge gaps - remains unexplored.

The effect of glenohumeral plane of elevation on supraspinatus subacromial proximity.

Shoulder pain is a common clinical problem affecting most individuals in their lifetime. Despite the high prevalence of rotator cuff pathology in these individuals, the pathogenesis of rotator cuff disease remains unclear. Position and motion related mechanisms of rotator cuff disease are often proposed, but poorly understood.

Sex differences in the peripheral and central immune responses following lipopolysaccharide treatment in pubertal and adult CD-1 mice.

Puberty is a critical developmental period that is characterized by significant brain development. Exposure to stress during this time can alter brain functioning setting the stage for long-lasting behavioural outcomes. The objective of this study was to investigate age and sex differences in the peripheral and central immune responses, along with sickness behaviour, following immune stress.

Probing Sizes and Shapes of Nobelium Isotopes by Laser Spectroscopy.

Until recently, ground-state nuclear moments of the heaviest nuclei could only be inferred from nuclear spectroscopy, where model assumptions are required. Laser spectroscopy in combination with modern atomic structure calculations is now able to probe these moments directly, in a comprehensive and nuclear-model-independent way. Here we report on unique access to the differential mean-square charge radii of ^{252,253,254}No, and therefore to changes in nuclear size and shape.

A novel application of deep learning for single-lead ECG classification.

Detecting and classifying cardiac arrhythmias is critical to the diagnosis of patients with cardiac abnormalities. In this paper, a novel approach based on deep learning methodology is proposed for the classification of single-lead electrocardiogram (ECG) signals. We demonstrate the application of the Restricted Boltzmann Machine (RBM) and deep belief networks (DBN) for ECG classification following detection of ventricular and supraventricular heartbeats using single-lead ECG.

Auditory function in Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease.

Pelizaeus-Merzbacher disease (PMD; MIM 312080), an inherited defect of central nervous system myelin formation, affects individuals in many ways, including their hearing and language abilities. The aim of this study was to assess the auditory abilities in 18 patients with PMD by examining the functional processes along the central auditory pathways using auditory brainstem responses (ABR) and cortical auditory evoked potentials (CAEP) in response to speech sounds. The significant ABR anomalies confirm the existence of dyssynchrony previously described at the level of the brainstem in patients with PMD.

Appropriateness of Case Reports Citations.

Background: We determined types of peer-reviewed articles that cited case reports and whether citations were "appropriate" or "inappropriate."

Methods: The 20 most highly cited case reports published between January 2011 and April 2016 were identified. All articles referencing these 20 case reports were analyzed for appropriateness of the citation.

Clinical Trials of Blood Pressure Lowering and Antihypertensive Medication: Is Cognitive Measurement State-of-the-Art?

Randomized controlled trials of blood pressure (BP) lowering and antihypertensive medication use on cognitive outcomes have often been disappointing, reporting mixed findings and small effect sizes. We evaluate the extent to which cognitive assessment protocols used in these trials approach state-of-the-art. Overall, we find that a primary focus on cognition and the systematic selection of cognitive outcomes across trials take a backseat to other trial goals.

Stromule extension along microtubules coordinated with actin-mediated anchoring guides perinuclear chloroplast movement during innate immunity.

Dynamic tubular extensions from chloroplasts called stromules have recently been shown to connect with nuclei and function during innate immunity. We demonstrate that stromules extend along microtubules (MTs) and MT organization directly affects stromule dynamics since stabilization of MTs chemically or genetically increases stromule numbers and length. Although actin filaments (AFs) are not required for stromule extension, they provide anchor points for stromules.