An Agenda on Productive Aging: Research, Policy, and Practice

The Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis is advancing an agenda on productive aging, focusing on three primary forms of productive engagement: employment, volunteerism/civic engagement, and caregiving. These are activities that produce goods and services, whether paid for or not, and that have effects beyond individuals to families, communities, and society. Older adults who engage in these activities make important economic and social contributions, though these contributions are often undervalued. This agenda on productive aging builds on the results of a CSD-sponsored symposium where leading gerontologists from many academic disciplines discussed older adults as a resource

Intra-dance variation among waggle runs and the design of efficient protocols for honey bee dance decoding

Noise is universal in information transfer. In animal communication, this presents a challenge not only for intended signal receivers, but also to biologists studying the system. In honey bees, a forager communicates to nestmates the location of an important resource via the waggle dance. This vibrational signal is composed of repeating units (waggle runs) that are then averaged by nestmates to derive a single vector. Manual dance decoding is a powerful tool for studying bee foraging ecology, although the process is time-consuming: a forager may repeat the waggle run 1- >100 times within a dance. It is impractical to decode all of these to obtain the vector; however, intra-dance waggle runs vary, so it is important to decode enough to obtain a good average. Here we examine the variation among waggle runs made by foraging bees to devise a method of dance decoding. The first and last waggle runs within a dance are significantly more variable than the middle run. There was no trend in variation for the middle waggle runs. We recommend that any four consecutive waggle runs, not including the first and last runs, may be decoded, and we show that this methodology is suitable by demonstrating the goodness-of-fit between the decoded vectors from our subsamples with the vectors from the entire dances

Metodologia educativa na atenção primária: a imunização como prevenção contra o papilomavírus humano / Educational methodology in primary care: immunization as a prevention against human papilomavirus

Introdução: O Papilomavírus humano, representa uma grande variedade de tipos virais associados à doença clínica significativa do epitélio cutâneo e mucoso, possuindo um grande grupo viral heterogêneo. Ele é considerado mundialmente como uma relevante Infecção Sexualmente Transmissível, pois cerca de 75% dos indivíduos sexualmente ativos são acometidos Objetivo: relatar a experiência de acadêmicos de enfermagem em uma ação educativa durante a campanha de vacinação contra o HPV, já os específicos basearam-se na análise de carteiras de vacina e esclarecimento de dúvidas sobre a temática abordada. Metodologia: Estudo pesquisa-ação do tipo relato de experiência, ocorrido no mês de agosto de 2018 em uma Estratégia de Saúde da Família no município de Ananindeua-Pa. Foi realizado uma ação educativa durante a semana de campanha de vacinação contra o HPV, por acadêmicos de enfermagem do 9º período da Universidade da Amazônia em estágio supervisionado em atenção primária da saúde. Resultados e Discussão: No desenvolvimento da prática educativa, procurou-se assumir uma postura comunicativa e explicativa a partir das necessidades reais e dúvidas apresentadas pelos participantes, adotando-se o diálogo, troca de conhecimentos e experiências. Conclusão: faz-se necessário dialogar sobre HPV, semeando o conhecimento para população para que estas se conscientizem quanto importância da vacinação. 

SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence among the general population and healthcare workers in India, December 2020–January 2021

Background: Earlier serosurveys in India revealed seroprevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) of 0.73% in May–June 2020 and 7.1% in August–September 2020. A third serosurvey was conducted between December 2020 and January 2021 to estimate the seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection among the general population and healthcare workers (HCWs) in India. Methods: The third serosurvey was conducted in the same 70 districts as the first and second serosurveys. For each district, at least 400 individuals aged ≥10 years from the general population and 100 HCWs from subdistrict-level health facilities were enrolled. Serum samples from the general population were tested for the presence of immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies against the nucleocapsid (N) and spike (S1-RBD) proteins of SARS-CoV-2, whereas serum samples from HCWs were tested for anti-S1-RBD. Weighted seroprevalence adjusted for assay characteristics was estimated. Results: Of the 28,598 serum samples from the general population, 4585 (16%) had IgG antibodies against the N protein, 6647 (23.2%) had IgG antibodies against the S1-RBD protein, and 7436 (26%) had IgG antibodies against either the N protein or the S1-RBD protein. Weighted and assay-characteristic-adjusted seroprevalence against either of the antibodies was 24.1% [95% confidence interval (CI) 23.0–25.3%]. Among 7385 HCWs, the seroprevalence of anti-S1-RBD IgG antibodies was 25.6% (95% CI 23.5–27.8%). Conclusions: Nearly one in four individuals aged ≥10 years from the general population as well as HCWs in India had been exposed to SARS-CoV-2 by December 2020