A State Policymakers' Guide to Federal Health Reform: Part I: Anticipating How Federal Health Reform Will Affect State Roles

Examines how federal healthcare reform will affect states' tools and roles in connecting people to services, promoting coordination and integration, improving care for those with complex needs, being results-oriented, and increasing efficiencies

NASAs Land, Atmosphere near Real-Time Capability for EOS ( LANCE) @10 Years: A Look Back at Its Origins in MODIS Terra

This poster looks back on how the first near real-time (NRT) images from MODIS Terra provided the impetus for the creation of the Land, Atmosphere Near Real-Time Capability for EOS (LANCE) a near real-time (NRT) capability that currently serves low latency products for monitoring air quality, floods, duststorms, snow cover and agriculture, as well as for public education and outreach to users in over 160 countries

www.dcj.state.co.us/ors

the DCSIP Advisory Board, for financially supporting this evaluation to allow us to meet our legislative mandate to evaluate the Youthful Offender System. We would like to thank all those who assisted us in this research effort. We are especially grateful for the assistance of the administrators and staff of the Youthful Offender System, who spent time talking with us about the program and answering our interview questions. We are particularly grateful to Pam Ploughe who arranged interviews, program observations, and access to other documentation about the program. We are grateful to the many, many other individuals who were interviewed for this project including current and former state legislators, Department of Corrections and Division of Youth Services Staff, and other individuals involved with the program, including those serving offenders in Phase III in the community. Also, we would like to thank the offenders we interviewed and the families of offenders who took the time to provide input through our focus group. These contributions were invaluable to the research. Finally, we would like to thank Heather Cameron, Nicole Hetz, Kerry Lowden, Diane Pasini-Hill, and Suzanne Gonzalez Woodburn from the Office of Research and Statistics for their contributions to the design, data collection and management of this study. Thanks to Linda Harrison for her work with the complicated electronic files. As always, we would like to thank our Divisio

The Continuing Use of Problematic Sexual Stereotypes in Judicial Decision-Making

This article examines the continuing use of problematic sexual stereotypes at appellate level in the English and Welsh legal system. Using five cases as illustrations, it argues that, notwithstanding professional training and guidance on sexual equality matters, certain senior judges in this jurisdiction still at least sometimes openly employ crude and problematic sexual stereotypes in their judgments or fail to deal appropriately with the use of these stereotypes by trial judges. The central point is that there is still a significant problem with the open use of crude sexual stereotypes in legal reasoning at a senior level in this jurisdiction, despite the pressure on all members of the legal system to appear to be ‘politically correct’

Discovery and fine-mapping of adiposity loci using high density imputation of genome-wide association studies in individuals of African ancestry: African Ancestry Anthropometry Genetics Consortium

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified >300 loci associated with measures of adiposity including body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (adjusted for BMI, WHRadjBMI), but few have been identified through screening of the African ancestry genomes. We performed large scale meta-analyses and replications in up to 52,895 individuals for BMI and up to 23,095 individuals for WHRadjBMI from the African Ancestry Anthropometry Genetics Consortium (AAAGC) using 1000 Genomes phase 1 imputed GWAS to improve coverage of both common and low frequency variants in the low linkage disequilibrium African ancestry genomes. In the sex-combined analyses, we identified one novel locus (TCF7L2/HABP2) for WHRadjBMI and eight previously established loci at P < 5×10−8: seven for BMI, and one for WHRadjBMI in African ancestry individuals. An additional novel locus (SPRYD7/DLEU2) was identified for WHRadjBMI when combined with European GWAS. In the sex-stratified analyses, we identified three novel loci for BMI (INTS10/LPL and MLC1 in men, IRX4/IRX2 in women) and four for WHRadjBMI (SSX2IP, CASC8, PDE3B and ZDHHC1/HSD11B2 in women) in individuals of African ancestry or both African and European ancestry. For four of the novel variants, the minor allele frequency was low (<5%). In the trans-ethnic fine mapping of 47 BMI loci and 27 WHRadjBMI loci that were locus-wide significant (P < 0.05 adjusted for effective number of variants per locus) from the African ancestry sex-combined and sex-stratified analyses, 26 BMI loci and 17 WHRadjBMI loci contained ≤ 20 variants in the credible sets that jointly account for 99% posterior probability of driving the associations. The lead variants in 13 of these loci had a high probability of being causal. As compared to our previous HapMap imputed GWAS for BMI and WHRadjBMI including up to 71,412 and 27,350 African ancestry individuals, respectively, our results suggest that 1000 Genomes imputation showed modest improvement in identifying GWAS loci including low frequency variants. Trans-ethnic meta-analyses further improved fine mapping of putative causal variants in loci shared between the African and European ancestry populations

Genetic diversity fuels gene discovery for tobacco and alcohol use

Tobacco and alcohol use are heritable behaviours associated with 15% and 5.3% of worldwide deaths, respectively, due largely to broad increased risk for disease and injury(1-4). These substances are used across the globe, yet genome-wide association studies have focused largely on individuals of European ancestries(5). Here we leveraged global genetic diversity across 3.4 million individuals from four major clines of global ancestry (approximately 21% non-European) to power the discovery and fine-mapping of genomic loci associated with tobacco and alcohol use, to inform function of these loci via ancestry-aware transcriptome-wide association studies, and to evaluate the genetic architecture and predictive power of polygenic risk within and across populations. We found that increases in sample size and genetic diversity improved locus identification and fine-mapping resolution, and that a large majority of the 3,823 associated variants (from 2,143 loci) showed consistent effect sizes across ancestry dimensions. However, polygenic risk scores developed in one ancestry performed poorly in others, highlighting the continued need to increase sample sizes of diverse ancestries to realize any potential benefit of polygenic prediction.Peer reviewe

Genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in a UK university identifies dynamics of transmission

AbstractUnderstanding SARS-CoV-2 transmission in higher education settings is important to limit spread between students, and into at-risk populations. In this study, we sequenced 482 SARS-CoV-2 isolates from the University of Cambridge from 5 October to 6 December 2020. We perform a detailed phylogenetic comparison with 972 isolates from the surrounding community, complemented with epidemiological and contact tracing data, to determine transmission dynamics. We observe limited viral introductions into the university; the majority of student cases were linked to a single genetic cluster, likely following social gatherings at a venue outside the university. We identify considerable onward transmission associated with student accommodation and courses; this was effectively contained using local infection control measures and following a national lockdown. Transmission clusters were largely segregated within the university or the community. Our study highlights key determinants of SARS-CoV-2 transmission and effective interventions in a higher education setting that will inform public health policy during pandemics.</jats:p

Effects of diet on amylase content and synthesis in cultured rat acinar cells

To study adaptation of pancreatic amylase to diet, an affinity adsorbent, alpha-GHI-AH-Sepharose 4B, was used to determine amylase synthesis in cultured pancreatic acinar cells. This adsorbent exhibited a consistent binding capacity and was specific for amylase. Acinar cells from rats fed high fat (HF) or carbohydrate (HC) diets for 7 d were cultured 1-48 h in serum-free medium. Amylase activity remained significantly higher in HC cells than in HF cells through 24 h in culture, despite its decrease with time in culture. The relative synthesis of amylase (3H-phe amylase/3H-phe total protein x 100) was significantly higher in HC than in HF cells at isolation and remained higher during culture. These results demonstrate that this affinity adsorbent can be used to determine amylase synthesis and suggest that the effect of diet on amylase activity and relative synthesis persists in cultured pancreatic acinar cells