CASTNet: Community-Attentive Spatio-Temporal Networks for Opioid Overdose Forecasting

Opioid overdose is a growing public health crisis in the United States. This crisis, recognized as "opioid epidemic," has widespread societal consequences including the degradation of health, and the increase in crime rates and family problems. To improve the overdose surveillance and to identify the areas in need of prevention effort, in this work, we focus on forecasting opioid overdose using real-time crime dynamics. Previous work identified various types of links between opioid use and criminal activities, such as financial motives and common causes. Motivated by these observations, we propose a novel spatio-temporal predictive model for opioid overdose forecasting by leveraging the spatio-temporal patterns of crime incidents. Our proposed model incorporates multi-head attentional networks to learn different representation subspaces of features. Such deep learning architecture, called "community-attentive" networks, allows the prediction of a given location to be optimized by a mixture of groups (i.e., communities) of regions. In addition, our proposed model allows for interpreting what features, from what communities, have more contributions to predicting local incidents as well as how these communities are captured through forecasting. Our results on two real-world overdose datasets indicate that our model achieves superior forecasting performance and provides meaningful interpretations in terms of spatio-temporal relationships between the dynamics of crime and that of opioid overdose.Comment: Accepted as conference paper at ECML-PKDD 201

Amino Acid Substitutions That Affect Receptor Binding and Stability of the Hemagglutinin of Influenza A/H7N9 Virus.

Receptor-binding preference and stability of hemagglutinin have been implicated as crucial determinants of airborne transmission of influenza viruses. Here, amino acid substitutions previously identified to affect these traits were tested in the context of an A/H7N9 virus. Some combinations of substitutions, most notably G219S and K58I, resulted in relatively high affinity for α2,6-linked sialic acid receptor and acid and temperature stability. Thus, the hemagglutinin of the A/H7N9 virus may adopt traits associated with airborne transmission.HHS | NIH | National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) provided funding to Eefje J. A. Schrauwen, Mathilde Richard, David Burke, Sander Herfst, and Ron A. M. Fouchier under grant number HHSN272201400008C. EU FP7 provided funding to Eefje J. A. Schrauwen, Mathilde Richard, Guus F Rimmelzwaan, Sander Herfst, and Ron A. M. Fouchier under grant number 278976 (7th Framework Programme ANTIGONE).This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the American Society for Microbiology via http://dx.doi.org/10.1128/JVI.03052-1

Reversible silencing of lumbar spinal interneurons unmasks a task-specific network for securing hindlimb alternation

Neural circuitry in the lumbar spinal cord governs two principal features of locomotion, rhythm and pattern, which reflect intra- and interlimb movement. These features are functionally organized into a hierarchy that precisely controls stepping in a stereotypic, speed-dependent fashion. Here, we show that a specific component of the locomotor pattern can be independently manipulated. Silencing spinal L2 interneurons that project to L5 selectively disrupts hindlimb alternation allowing a continuum of walking to hopping to emerge from the otherwise intact network. This perturbation, which is independent of speed and occurs spontaneously with each step, does not disrupt multi-joint movements or forelimb alternation, nor does it translate to a non-weight-bearing locomotor activity. Both the underlying rhythm and the usual relationship between speed and spatiotemporal characteristics of stepping persist. These data illustrate that hindlimb alternation can be manipulated independently from other core features of stepping, revealing a striking freedom in an otherwise precisely controlled system

Two in one: cryptic species discovered in biological control agent populations using molecular data and crossbreeding experiments

There are many examples of cryptic species that have been identified through DNA-barcoding or other genetic techniques. There are, however, very few confirmations of cryptic species being reproductively isolated. This study presents one of the few cases of cryptic species that has been confirmed to be reproductively isolated and therefore true species according to the biological species concept. The cryptic species are of special interest because they were discovered within biological control agent populations. Two geographically isolated populations of Eccritotarsus catarinensis (Carvalho) [Hemiptera: Miridae], a biological control agent for the invasive aquatic macrophyte, water hyacinth, Eichhornia crassipes (Mart.) Solms [Pontederiaceae], in South Africa, were sampled from the native range of the species in South America. Morphological characteristics indicated that both populations were the same species according to the current taxonomy, but subsequent DNA analysis and breeding experiments revealed that the two populations are reproductively isolated. Crossbreeding experiments resulted in very few hybrid offspring when individuals were forced to interbreed with individuals of the other population, and no hybrid offspring were recorded when a choice of mate from either population was offered. The data indicate that the two populations are cryptic species that are reproductively incompatible. Subtle but reliable diagnostic characteristics were then identified to distinguish between the two species which would have been considered intraspecific variation without the data from the genetics and interbreeding experiments. These findings suggest that all consignments of biological control agents from allopatric populations should be screened for cryptic species using genetic techniques and that the importation of multiple consignments of the same species for biological control should be conducted with caution

Self as a Teaching Tool: Exploring Power and Anti-oppressive Practice with Counselling/Psychotherapy Students

Counselling and psychotherapy training often incorporates experiential learning to help students understand and explore different aspects of self. Lecturers and tutors, facilitating such courses, can also share aspects of their lived experience, as a form of experiential learning. This paper describes a workshop on power and anti-oppressive practice that was delivered to counseling students on an MA in Counselling and Psychotherapy Practice. Two lecturers (Beverley and Peter) used their lived experiences of racism and homophobia to stimulate student discussion and debate – effectively, they were using self as a teaching tool. This paper details their experiences and reflections whilst in discussion with two students (Ann-Marie and Ben), who attended the workshop

Virtual consultations: delivering outpatient clinics in paediatric surgery during the COVID-19 pandemic

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in many changes to clinical practice, including the introduction of remote clinics. Those familiar with remote clinics have reported benefits to their use, such as patient satisfaction and cost benefits; however, ongoing challenges exist, including delivering optimal patient-centred care. As a tertiary paediatric surgery unit in the UK, completing remote clinics was a new experience for most of our surgical team. We completed a service evaluation early into the COVID-19 pandemic aiming to define and address issues when delivering remote clinics in paediatric surgery. Remote clinics were observed (telephone and video), with follow-up calls to families following the consultations. Results Eight paediatric surgeons were observed during their remote clinics (telephone n = 6, video n = 2). Surgeons new to remote clinics felt their consultations took longer and were reluctant to discharge patients. The calls did not always occur at the appointed time, causing some upset by parents. Prescription provision and outpatient investigations led to some uncertainty within the surgical team. Families (n = 11) were called following their child’s appointment to determine how our remote clinics could be optimised. The parents all liked remote clinics, either as an intermediate until a face-to-face consultation or for continued care if appropriate. Our findings, combined by discussions with relevant managers and departments, led to the introduction of recommendations for the surgical team. An information sheet was introduced for the families attending remote clinics, which encouraged them to take notes before and during their consultations. Conclusions There must be strong support from management and appropriate departments for successful integration of remote clinics. Surgical trainees and their training should be considered when implementing remote clinics. Our learning from the pandemic may support those considering integrating remote clinics in the future

Epistatic interactions can moderate the antigenic effect of substitutions in haemagglutinin of influenza H3N2 virus.

We previously showed that single amino acid substitutions at seven positions in haemagglutinin determined major antigenic change of influenza H3N2 virus. Here, the impact of two such substitutions was tested in 11 representative H3 haemagglutinins to investigate context-dependence effects. The antigenic effect of substitutions introduced at haemagglutinin position 145 was fully independent of the amino acid context of the representative haemagglutinins. Antigenic change caused by substitutions introduced at haemagglutinin position 155 was variable and context-dependent. Our results suggest that epistatic interactions with contextual amino acids in the haemagglutinin can moderate the magnitude of antigenic change

Regulation of caspase-3 processing by cIAP2 controls the switch between pro-inflammatory activation and cell death in microglia.

Cell Death and Disease is an open-access journal published by Nature Publishing Group. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons licence, users will need to obtain permission from the licence holder to reproduce the material.The activation of microglia, resident immune cells of the central nervous system, and inflammation-mediated neurotoxicity are typical features of neurodegenerative diseases, for example, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. An unexpected role of caspase-3, commonly known to have executioner role for apoptosis, was uncovered in the microglia activation process. A central question emerging from this finding is what prevents caspase-3 during the microglia activation from killing those cells? Caspase-3 activation occurs as a two-step process, where the zymogen is first cleaved by upstream caspases, such as caspase-8, to form intermediate, yet still active, p19/p12 complex; thereafter, autocatalytic processing generates the fully mature p17/p12 form of the enzyme. Here, we show that the induction of cellular inhibitor of apoptosis protein 2 (cIAP2) expression upon microglia activation prevents the conversion of caspase-3 p19 subunit to p17 subunit and is responsible for restraining caspase-3 in terms of activity and subcellular localization. We demonstrate that counteracting the repressive effect of cIAP2 on caspase-3 activation, using small interfering RNA targeting cIAP2 or a SMAC mimetic such as the BV6 compound, reduced the pro-inflammatory activation of microglia cells and promoted their death. We propose that the different caspase-3 functions in microglia, and potentially other cell types, reside in the active caspase-3 complexes formed. These results also could indicate cIAP2 as a possible therapeutic target to modulate microglia pro-inflammatory activation and associated neurotoxicity observed in neurodegenerative disorders

Non-L\'evy mobility patterns of Mexican Me'Phaa peasants searching for fuelwood

We measured mobility patterns that describe walking trajectories of individual Me'Phaa peasants searching and collecting fuelwood in the forests of "La Monta\~na de Guerrero" in Mexico. These one-day excursions typically follow a mixed pattern of nearly-constant steps when individuals displace from their homes towards potential collecting sites and a mixed pattern of steps of different lengths when actually searching for fallen wood in the forest. Displacements in the searching phase seem not to be compatible with L\'evy flights described by power-laws with optimal scaling exponents. These findings however can be interpreted in the light of deterministic searching on heavily degraded landscapes where the interaction of the individuals with their scarce environment produces alternative searching strategies than the expected L\'evy flights. These results have important implications for future management and restoration of degraded forests and the improvement of the ecological services they may provide to their inhabitants.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures. First version submitted to Human Ecology. The final publication will be available at http://www.springerlink.co