Slow carbon and nutrient accumulation in trees established following fire exclusion in the southwestern United States.

Increasing tree density that followed fire exclusion after the 1880s in the southwestern United States may have also altered nutrient cycles and led to a carbon (C) sink that constitutes a significant component of the U.S. C budget. Yet, empirical data quantifying century-scale changes in C or nutrients due to fire exclusion are rare. We used tree-ring reconstructions of stand structure from five ponderosa pine-dominated sites from across northern Arizona to compare live tree C, nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) storage between the 1880s and 1990s. Live tree biomass in the 1990s contained up to three times more C, N, and P than in 1880s. However, the increase in C storage was smaller than values used in recent U.S. C budgets. Furthermore, trees that had established prior to the 1880s accounted for a large fraction (28-66%) of the C, N, and P stored in contemporary stands. Overall, our century-scale analysis revealed that forests of the 1880s were on a trajectory to accumulate C and nutrients in trees even in the absence of fire exclusion, either because growing conditions became more favorable after the 1880s or because forests in the 1880s included age or size cohorts poised for accelerated growth. These results may lead to a reduction in the C sink attributed to fire exclusion, and they refine our understanding of reference conditions for restoration management of fire-prone forests

A Toolkit for Expanding Financial Capability at Tax Time

This work expands upon The Volunteer Income Tax Preparer’s Toolkit: Showing Clients Why Tax Time is the Right Time to Save, a 2015 Toolkit by the Center for Social Development. This new offering presents the current evidence underpinning various tax-time efforts to expand financial capability among low- and moderate-income households. It includes sections on creating a VITA program and on several financial-capability products and services that organizations can offer alongside free tax-preparation services. The evidence comes from a variety of sources, but we highlight findings from research conducted by CSD, particularly that conducted as part of the Refund to Savings (R2S) Initiative. We created this Toolkit for anyone who is interested in or is in the process of designing a tax-time financial capability program. Our hope is that this Toolkit will also serve as a useful guide for other supporters of tax-time financial capability efforts—funders, advocates, policymakers, and community members—who want to understand the evidence behind related initiatives

Postoperative Infection Rates with Instrumented Lumbar Fusion: A Retrospective Review of 129 Consecutive Cases

Introduction: The use of internal fixation devices in spinal surgery is common to achieve reduction, maintain alignment, and stabilize the spine while fusion occurs. Infection rates of less than 2% (0-2%) were reported in the late 1960\u27s without the use of instrumentation. Reported rates of infection following instrumented fusion are generally around 6% (range 0-11% ). The purpose of this study was to retrospectively review the incidence of postoperative infection following instrumented spinal fusion to determine if infection rates related to patient type and surgical procedure. Methods: A retrospective review was conducted of 129 consecutive cases of instrumented lumbar spinal fusion. Three patients were eliminated from the study: two due to preoperative spinal infections, and a third patient expired from unrelated disease. All instrumented fusion cases were eligible for this study regardless of level or technique used. Results: Of the 126 instrumented cases there were no superficial infections, and one (0.8%) deep infection. The infection was completely resolved and did not prevent solid fusion with good alignment. The patient was a smoker and received autograft bone. Discussion: The results of this review revealed substantially lower rates of postoperative infection following instrumented fusion than has been previously reported in the literature. No superficial and one (0.8%) deep infection was identified. Due to the low infection rates, no statistically significant conclusions could be made

Characterizing the role of haloperidol for analgesia in the Emergency Department

The purpose of this study was to characterize emergency department (ED) physicians' beliefs and current practices regarding the use of haloperidol for the management of acute and acute on chronic pain. METHODS: A survey regarding haloperidol use was distributed by email to attending physicians, resident physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants at emergency medicine departments in the Indiana University Health System and at St Joseph Mercy Ann Arbor. RESULTS: Of the 129 responses received, the majority (89.1%) of providers had used haloperidol for control of pain in the ED. The most common reason that respondents used haloperidol to treat pain was that they did not want to use an opioid or other agent (91.3%). The majority of providers (73.9%) believed that haloperidol was effective because there is a psychiatric component to pain, while over half of respondents (58.3%) chose haloperidol as they believed it to have analgesic properties. When haloperidol was used as a first line medication, providers felt that it was effective in controlling pain about 69.0% of the time without the need for further medication. The most common presentations for use were for unspecified abdominal pain, headache, and gastroparesis. CONCLUSION: ED providers reported using haloperidol most often as a second line treatment to manage both acute and acute on chronic pain. When haloperidol was used as a first line agent, providers claimed that additional medicines were not usually required. Haloperidol may provide an effective alternative to opioids in treatment of acute pain and acute exacerbations of chronic pain in the ED

Initial carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus fluxes following ponderosa pine restoration treatments

Southwestern ponderosa pine forests were dramatically altered by fire regime disruption that accompanied Euro-American settlement in the 1800s. Major changes include increased tree density, diminished herbaceous cover, and a shift from a frequent lowintensity fire regime to a stand-replacing fire regime. Ecological restoration via thinning and prescribed burning is being widely applied to return forests to the pre-settlement condition, but the effects of restoration on ecosystem function are unknown. We measured carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and phosphorus (P) fluxes during the first two years after the implementation of a replicated field experiment comparing thinning and composite (thinning, forest floor fuel reduction, and prescribed burning) restoration treatments to untreated controls in a ponderosa pine forest in northern Arizona, USA. Total net primary productivity (260 g Cm22yr21) was similar among treatments because a 3050(percent) decrease in pine foliage and fine-root production in restored ecosystems was balanced by greater wood, coarse root, and herbaceous production. Herbaceous plants accounted for ,20(percent) of total plant C, N, and P uptake in the controls but from 25(percent) to 70(percent) in restored plots. Total plant N uptake was ;3 g Nm22yr21 in all treatments, but net N mineralization was just one-half and twothirds of this value in the control and composite restoration, respectively. Element flux rates in controls generally declined more in a drought year than rates in restoration treatments. In this ponderosa pine forest, ecological restoration that emulated pre-settlement stand structure and fire characteristics had a small effect on plant C, N, and P fluxes at the whole ecosystem level because lower pine foliage and fine-root fluxes in treated plots (compared to controls) were approximately balanced by higher fluxes in wood and herbaceous plants

Breath-based non-invasive diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease:A pilot study

Early detection of Alzheimer's disease (AD) will help researchers to better understand the disease and develop improved treatments. Recent developments have thus focused on identifying biomarkers for mild cognitive impairment due to AD (MCI) and AD during the preclinical phase. The aim of this pilot study is to determine whether exhaled volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can be used as a non-invasive method to distinguish controls from MCI, controls from AD and to determine whether there are differences between MCI and AD. The study used gas chromatography – ion mobility spectrometry (GC-IMS) techniques. Confounding factors, such as age, smoking habits, gender and alcohol consumption are investigated to demonstrate the efficacy of results. One hundred subjects were recruited including 50 controls, 25 AD and 25 MCI patients. The subject cohort was age- and gender-matched to minimise bias. Breath samples were analysed using a commercial GC-IMS instrument (G.A.S. BreathSpec, Dortmund, Germany). Data analysis indicates that the GC-IMS signal was consistently able to separate between diagnostic groups [AUC±95%, sensitivity, specificity], controls vs MCI: [0.77 (0.64 – 0.90), 0.68, 0.80], controls vs AD: [0.83 (0.72 – 0.94), 0.60, 0.96], and MCI vs AD: [0.70 (0.55 – 0.85), 0.60, 0.84]. VOC analysis indicates that six compounds play a crucial role in distinguishing between diagnostic groups. Analysis of possible confounding factors indicate that gender, age, smoking habits and alcohol consumption have insignificant influence on breath content. This pilot study confirms the utility of exhaled breath analysis to distinguish between AD, MCI and control subjects. Thus, GC-IMS offers great potential as a non-invasive, high-throughput, diagnostic technique for diagnosing and potentially monitoring AD in a clinical setting

A simple breath test for tuberculosis using ion mobility : a pilot study

Tuberculosis (TB) remains one of the world's major health burdens with 9.6 million new infections globally. Though considerable progress has been made in reduction of TB incidence and mortality, there is a continuous need for lower cost, simpler and more robust means of diagnosis. One method that may fulfil these requirements is in the area of breath analysis. In this study we analysed the breath of 21 patients with pulmonary or extra-pulmonary TB, recruited from a UK teaching hospital (University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire) before or within 1 week of commencing treatment for TB. TB diagnosis was confirmed by reference tests (mycobacterial culture), histology or radiology. 19 controls were recruited to calculate specificity; these patients were all interferon-gamma release assay negative (T.SPOT®.TB, Oxford Immunotec Ltd.). Whole breath samples were collected with subsequent chemical analysis undertaken by Ion Mobility Spectrometry. Our results produced a sensitivity of 81% and a specificity of 79% for all cases of TB (pulmonary and extra-pulmonary). Though lower than other studies analysing pulmonary TB alone, we believe that this technique shows promise, and a higher sensitivity could be achieved by further improving our sample capture methodology

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN