Season 2, Episode 3: People and Places

Dr. Hugh Silk and Jesse Sardell (\u2724) are joined by Mina Botros (\u2724) to hear about his experience meeting people -- both similar and quite different from himself -- as he got involved with vaccination efforts early in the COVID-19 pandemic. Mina Botros\u27 piece People and Places and the transcript for this episode are available for download as additional files

Inhibition of colony stimulating factor 1 receptor corrects maternal inflammation-induced microglial and synaptic dysfunction and behavioral abnormalities

Abstract Maternal immune activation (MIA) disrupts the central innate immune system during a critical neurodevelopmental period. Microglia are primary innate immune cells in the brain although their direct influence on the MIA phenotype is largely unknown. Here we show that MIA alters microglial gene expression with upregulation of cellular protrusion/neuritogenic pathways, concurrently causing repetitive behavior, social deficits, and synaptic dysfunction to layer V intrinsically bursting pyramidal neurons in the prefrontal cortex of mice. MIA increases plastic dendritic spines of the intrinsically bursting neurons and their interaction with hyper-ramified microglia. Treating MIA offspring by colony stimulating factor 1 receptor inhibitors induces depletion and repopulation of microglia, and corrects protein expression of the newly identified MIA-associated neuritogenic molecules in microglia, which coalesces with correction of MIA-associated synaptic, neurophysiological, and behavioral abnormalities. Our study demonstrates that maternal immune insults perturb microglial phenotypes and influence neuronal functions throughout adulthood, and reveals a potent effect of colony stimulating factor 1 receptor inhibitors on the correction of MIA-associated microglial, synaptic, and neurobehavioral dysfunctions

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Human resource management in project portfolios : architecting an allocation process

Thesis: S.M. in Engineering and Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, System Design and Management Program, 2017.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 114-117).A review of project portfolio management (PPM) literature has shown that human resources allocation is rarely revisited beyond the initial planning cycle, and that it is often treated as a static problem. Therefore, this thesis sought to understand modern PPM practices further and to underscore variables that correlate with proficient portfolio planning, management, and execution. A survey of current practices has yielded several unexpected results. For example, the extent of employee involvement in resource allocation decisions, via active participation in the PMO, is positively correlated with highly effective PPM practices. Organizations experience schedule delays on the order of 10-20%, even though they classify their PPM practices as highly effective. Furthermore, 54% of survey participants indicated their firms do not evaluate nor model resource uncertainties, risks or interdependencies, of which 85% conceded these variables should be addressed. Given the survey results and given that PPM methods were borne of Markowitz's Modern Portfolio Theory, this thesis sought to frame the human resource allocation problem as a sociotechnical system instead. As such, nine critical system design decisions were identified and combined to yield distinct process architectures. Next, these architectures were scored and evaluated against performance metrics levied by the system stakeholders. An architectural tradespace of 11,664 feasible human resource allocation systems was generated; of which 42 architectures are nondominated. The systematic analysis in this thesis revealed that 100% of the architectures on the Pareto Front are analogous to a transparent, market-like resource allocation system as opposed to an anonymous, centralized system. Furthermore, 83% of these architectures appointed the employee as the sole decision-maker of its allocation to tasks. Roughly 70% of these architectures required agents to frequently updated task start and end times, hence reducing uncertainty and risk in planning. Future work shall re-assess the architecture scores and stakeholder requirements prior to application on a pilot portfolio.by Mina N.M. Botros.S.M. in Engineering and Managemen

Neuroimmune Crosstalk through Extracellular Vesicles in Health and Disease

International audienc