Modeling highly pathogenic avian influenza transmission in wild birds and poultry in West Bengal, India.

Wild birds are suspected to have played a role in highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N1 outbreaks in West Bengal. Cluster analysis showed that H5N1 was introduced in West Bengal at least 3 times between 2008 and 2010. We simulated the introduction of H5N1 by wild birds and their contact with poultry through a stochastic continuous-time mathematical model. Results showed that reducing contact between wild birds and domestic poultry, and increasing the culling rate of infected domestic poultry communities will reduce the probability of outbreaks. Poultry communities that shared habitat with wild birds or those indistricts with previous outbreaks were more likely to suffer an outbreak. These results indicate that wild birds can introduce HPAI to domestic poultry and that limiting their contact at shared habitats together with swift culling of infected domestic poultry can greatly reduce the likelihood of HPAI outbreaks

Does Gener Impact the Immune Response of Chicks?

Sequencing technology allows us tosee how the gene expression of each genechanges under different treatment conditions. In this study, chicks of two inbred lines were challenged with Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV), a pathogen with devastating impacts on poultry throughout the world. At each of the three time points post-infection, one-third of the chicks were sacraficed and their lungs were harvested. When comparing males and females infected with NDV, differences in gene expression that were predicted to impact growth and apoptosis were identified. Differences between the response of males and females to viral challenges could be useful information for production operations. The interaction between production traits and immune related traits require further study

Transcriptome Analysis in Spleen Reveals Differential Regulation of Response to Newcastle Disease Virus in Two Chicken Lines.

Enhancing genetic resistance of chickens to Newcastle Disease Virus (NDV) provides a promising way to improve poultry health, and to alleviate poverty and food insecurity in developing countries. In this study, two inbred chicken lines with different responses to NDV, Fayoumi and Leghorn, were challenged with LaSota NDV strain at 21 days of age. Through transcriptome analysis, gene expression in spleen at 2 and 6 days post-inoculation was compared between NDV-infected and control groups, as well as between chicken lines. At a false discovery rate <0.05, Fayoumi chickens, which are relatively more resistant to NDV, showed fewer differentially expressed genes (DEGs) than Leghorn chickens. Several interferon-stimulated genes were identified as important DEGs regulating immune response to NDV in chicken. Pathways predicted by IPA analysis, such as "EIF-signaling", "actin cytoskeleton organization nitric oxide production" and "coagulation system" may contribute to resistance to NDV in Fayoumi chickens. The identified DEGs and predicted pathways may contribute to differential responses to NDV between the two chicken lines and provide potential targets for breeding chickens that are more resistant to NDV

POSTbrief 56: Men’s Health (contributor)

In the UK, several physical and mental health conditions disproportionately impact men. Men are more likely to experience poor health outcomes for a variety of conditions such as some cancers, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and are more likely to die by suicide, when compared with women. On average in the UK, women live almost 4 years longer than men. Although this gap has narrowed historically, it recently widened because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result of health and wider inequalities between different groups of men, there are also significant disparities in life expectancy between some groups of men. The underlying causes of poor men’s health outcomes broadly relate to many interconnected factors such as: socio-economic factors protected characteristics behavioural factors health-seeking behaviours psychological factors. There are several risk factors that are more common among men than women in the UK. Evidence suggests that there are certain health inequalities between distinct groups of men, as well as other populations, including transgender and non-binary communities. Sex and gender specific health policy in the UK is a current topic of discussion. Public health policies in England are predominantly condition- and outcome-focused. However, there are some specific health interventions targeted at men at a national, regional and community level. The Men’s Health Forum (a charity with the aim of improving the health of men and boys in the UK) has been leading a campaign for a national strategy on men’s health with support from several UK charities and the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on issues affecting men and boys. The APPG subsequently published a report on “The Case for a Men’s Health Strategy” in Feb 2022. In July 2023, the House of Commons Health and Social Care Committee launched an inquiry on men’s physical and mental health outcomes. Outside the UK, there have been several national men’s health strategies including in Ireland (first published 2008) and Australia (published in 2010 and updated in 2019). In November 2023, the UK Government announced that a Men’s Health Ambassador would be appointed along with the establishment of a men’s health task and finish group, focusing on increasing awareness of certain conditions and health needs faced by men and improving men’s engagement with health services

INTERDEPENDENT INFRASTRUCTURE RESILIENCE IN THE U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS: PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT

Prepared for: Federal Emergency Management AgencyThe U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) is a territory comprised of three main islands—Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas—and a number of smaller surrounding islands, located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles approximately 40 miles east of Puerto Rico and over 1,100 miles from Miami, Florida. In September 2017, two Category-5 hurricanes made landfall within a two-week period and collectively devastated the homes, businesses, and infrastructure throughout the Territory.This technical report (1) explains the structure, function, and tensions associated with energy, water, transportation, and communication infrastructure that were chronic problems prior to the hurricanes; (2) documents hurricane response, recovery, and mitigation activities for these infrastructure systems after the hurricanes; and (3) provides concrete approaches to overcome potential barriers to resilience (where they exist) and open questions for research (where they do not yet exist).Federal Emergency Management AgencyFederal Emergency Management AgencyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Observational constraints on the spectral index of the cosmological curvature perturbation

We evaluate the observational constraints on the spectral index $n$, in the context of the $\Lambda$CDM hypothesis which represents the simplest viable cosmology. We first take $n$ to be practically scale-independent. Ignoring reionization, we find at a nominal 2-$\sigma$ level $n\simeq 1.0 \pm 0.1$. If we make the more realisitic assumption that reionization occurs when a fraction $f\sim 10^{-5}$ to 1 of the matter has collapsed, the 2-$\sigma$ lower bound is unchanged while the 1-$\sigma$ bound rises slightly. These constraints are compared with the prediction of various inflation models. Then we investigate the two-parameter scale-dependent spectral index, predicted by running-mass inflation models, and find that present data allow significant scale-dependence of $n$, which occurs in a physically reasonable regime of parameter space.Comment: ReVTeX, 15 pages, 5 figures and 3 tables, uses epsf.sty Improved treatment of reionization and small bug fixed in the constant n case; more convenient parameterization and better treatment of the n dependence in the CMB anisotropy for the running mass case; conclusions basically unchanged; references adde

Testing a peer support intervention for people with type 2 diabetes: a pilot for a randomised controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: People with Type 2 diabetes face various psycho-social, self-management and clinical care issues and evidence is mixed whether support from others with diabetes, 'peer support', can help. We now describe a 2 month pilot study of different peer support interventions. METHODS: The intervention was informed by formative evaluation using semi-structured interviews with health professionals, community support groups and observation of diabetes education and support groups. Invitations to participate were mailed from 4 general practices and included a survey of barriers to care. Participants were randomized by practice to receive individual, group, combined (both individual and group) or no peer support. Evaluation included ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews and questionnaires at baseline and post-intervention. RESULTS: Of 1,101 invited, 15% expressed an interest in participating in the pilot. Sufficient numbers volunteered to become peer supporters, although 50% of these (8/16) withdrew. Those in the pilot were similar to other patients, but were less likely to feel they knew enough about diabetes (60.8% vs 44.6% p = 0.035) and less likely to be happy with the diabetes education/care to date (75.4% vs 55.4% p = 0.013). Key issues identified were the need to recruit peer supporters directly rather than through clinicians, to address participant diabetes educational needs early and the potential for group sessions to have lower participation rates than 1:1 sessions. CONCLUSIONS: Recruitment to a full trial of peer support within the existing study design is feasible with some amendments. Attendance emerged as a key issue needing close monitoring and additional intervention during the trial.RIGHTS : This article is licensed under the BioMed Central licence at http://www.biomedcentral.com/about/license which is similar to the 'Creative Commons Attribution Licence'. In brief you may : copy, distribute, and display the work; make derivative works; or make commercial use of the work - under the following conditions: the original author must be given credit; for any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are

Implementing poultry vaccination and biosecurity at the village level in Tanzania: a social strategy to promote health in free-range poultry populations

A social strategy was tested for implementing Newcastle disease (ND) vaccination and biosecurity improvements among free-ranging chicken at village level in Tanzania. In addition to training the local poultry vaccinators, data recorders and poultry-keepers, the strategy involved training and empowering leaders at the district, ward and village level. The trainings covered poultry health, management, and marketing of village chickens, with an emphasis on ND vaccination and improving biosecurity against avian influenza (AI), The study sites included villages in one ward in each of three each three districts (Iringa, Mtwara-Mikindani, and Mvomero) of mainland Tanzania. Ninety-six local leaders at district level and 101 leaders at ward levels were trained. In addition, 196 farmers (households) were trained, as well as 86 vaccinators and 26 data recorders. Data recorders were also trained as poultry first aid workers. ND vaccination was conducted by the vaccinators, supervised by their local leaders with technical assistance from veterinarians. A total of 158,343 village chickens were vaccinated in three rounds of vaccination three months apart. The training and empowerment of local leaders and local implementers was the key element for success as it fostered the feeling of local ownership of the program and prevented conflicts with other development activities within the villages. We conclude that most animal health programs will increase their odds of success by involving local leaders and by addressing the current challenges facing the farmers. Further assessment on the usefulness of this approach is needed

Acoustic Signatures in the Primary Microwave Background Bispectrum

If the primordial fluctuations are non-Gaussian, then this non-Gaussianity will be apparent in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky. With their sensitive all-sky observation, MAP and Planck satellites should be able to detect weak non-Gaussianity in the CMB sky. On large angular scale, there is a simple relationship between the CMB temperature and the primordial curvature perturbation. On smaller scales; however, the radiation transfer function becomes more complex. In this paper, we present the angular bispectrum of the primary CMB anisotropy that uses the full transfer function. We find that the bispectrum has a series of acoustic peaks that change a sign, and a period of acoustic oscillations is twice as long as that of the angular power spectrum. Using a single non-linear coupling parameter to characterize the amplitude of the bispectrum, we estimate the expected signal-to-noise ratio for COBE, MAP, and Planck experiments. We find that the detection of the primary bispectrum by any kind of experiments should be problematic for the simple slow-roll inflationary scenarios. We compare the sensitivity of the primary bispectrum to the primary skewness and conclude that when we can compute the predicted form of the bispectrum, it becomes a ``matched filter'' for detecting the non-Gaussianity in the data, and much more powerful tool than the skewness. We also show that MAP and Planck can separate the primary bispectrum from various secondary bispectra on the basis of the shape difference. The primary CMB bispectrum is a test of the inflationary scenario, and also a probe of the non-linear physics in the very early universe.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review D. (v1) letter version [4 pages, 3 figures]. (v2) full paper version including the primary skewness, secondary bispectra, and the foreground separation [17 pages, 5 figures