Prioritizing persons deprived of liberty in global guidelines for tuberculosis preventive treatment

Persons deprived of liberty (PDLs) are disproportionately impacted by tuberculosis, with high incidence rates and often limited access to diagnostics, treatment, and preventive measures. The World Health Organization (WHO) expanded its recommendations for tuberculosis preventive treatment (TPT) to many high-risk populations, but their guidance does not include PDL, and most low- and middle-income countries do not routinely provide edforthoseusedthroughoutthetext TPT in prisons. :Pleaseverifythatallentriesarecorrectlyabbreviated: Recent studies demonstrate high acceptability and completion rates of short-course TPT regimens in jails and prisons; costs of these regimens have been markedly reduced through international agreements, making this an opportune for further expanding their use. We argue that PDL should be a priority group for TPT in national guidelines and discuss implementation considerations and resource needs for TPT programs in carceral facilities. Scaling access to TPT for PDL is important for reducing disease and transmission in this population; it is also critical to advancing an equitable response to tuberculosis

Co-limitation towards lower latitudes shapes global forest diversity gradients

The latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG) is one of the most recognized global patterns of species richness exhibited across a wide range of taxa. Numerous hypotheses have been proposed in the past two centuries to explain LDG, but rigorous tests of the drivers of LDGs have been limited by a lack of high-quality global species richness data. Here we produce a high-resolution (0.025° × 0.025°) map of local tree species richness using a global forest inventory database with individual tree information and local biophysical characteristics from ~1.3 million sample plots. We then quantify drivers of local tree species richness patterns across latitudes. Generally, annual mean temperature was a dominant predictor of tree species richness, which is most consistent with the metabolic theory of biodiversity (MTB). However, MTB underestimated LDG in the tropics, where high species richness was also moderated by topographic, soil and anthropogenic factors operating at local scales. Given that local landscape variables operate synergistically with bioclimatic factors in shaping the global LDG pattern, we suggest that MTB be extended to account for co-limitation by subordinate drivers

Scintillator ageing of the T2K near detectors from 2010 to 2021

The T2K experiment widely uses plastic scintillator as a target for neutrino interactions and an active medium for the measurement of charged particles produced in neutrino interactions at its near detector complex. Over 10 years of operation the measured light yield recorded by the scintillator based subsystems has been observed to degrade by 0.9–2.2% per year. Extrapolation of the degradation rate through to 2040 indicates the recorded light yield should remain above the lower threshold used by the current reconstruction algorithms for all subsystems. This will allow the near detectors to continue contributing to important physics measurements during the T2K-II and Hyper-Kamiokande eras. Additionally, work to disentangle the degradation of the plastic scintillator and wavelength shifting fibres shows that the reduction in light yield can be attributed to the ageing of the plastic scintillator. The long component of the attenuation length of the wavelength shifting fibres was observed to degrade by 1.3–5.4% per year, while the short component of the attenuation length did not show any conclusive degradation

Genetic heterogeneity of day blindness in Alaskan Malamutes

Day blindness is a progressive and specific degeneration of cone photoreceptors in the retina of young dogs. This disorder has been associated with a breed-specific non-synonymous substitution in exon 6 of the cyclic nucleotide gated channel beta 3 (CNGB3) gene in German Shorthaired Pointer dogs and a genomic deletion removing the entire gene in Alaskan Malamute dogs from the USA. To further investigate this disorder, we characterized CNGB3 in a three-generation pedigree of Alaskan Malamute dogs from Australia segregating for day blindness. Fifteen of the dogs showed clinical signs of day blindness. Four of these were definitively diagnosed by standardized electroretinography. Polymerase chain reaction amplification of exon 6 of CNGB3 was attempted, and as expected, amplification was successful in the 18 unaffected or carrier dogs. However, a non-mutated exon 6 was also amplified and sequenced in six of the 15 affected dogs. On sequencing each exon and exon/intron boundary in two such affected individuals and two unaffected individuals, three exonic substitutions and 12 intronic changes were noted. These sequence variations in affected individuals were also present in one or both unaffected dogs and so appear to have no obvious effect on the protein's function. Hence, day blindness shows genetic heterogeneity within the Alaskan Malamute population of Australia, a result that is somewhat unexpected given the relatively small effective population size of this breed