Healthy Outside-Healthy Inside: The Human Health & Well-being Benefits of Alberta\u27s Protected Areas - towards a benefits-based management agenda

This report details the results of an empirical study that examined perceived health and well-being motives and benefits among visitors to a sample of Alberta’s parks and protected areas. The study revealed several major findings with important policy and management implications. First, the human health and well-being benefits that the visitors expected to receive from visits were perceived to be a major personal motivation in the choice to visit Alberta protected areas. The most important motivation factors identified by respondents were psychological and emotional well-being (89.1% of visitors ranked this important), social well-being (88.3%), physical well-being (80.3%), and environmental well-being (79.4%). Second, the perceived benefits that visitors received from their protected areas experiences were substantial. The most frequently reported improvements were related to psychological and emotional (90.5%), social (85%), and physical well-being (77.6%). Interestingly, women perceived greater benefits than men associated with their visit, especially with respect to spiritual, social, and psychological and emotional well-being. Research findings substantiate the need for park agencies to better understand the motivations of visitors representing different social and population subgroups (e.g., youth, elderly, couples, etc.) in order to inform and develop policies and visitor experience programs in support of health and well-being related pursuits. Important policy and management implications for both park managers and health care professionals are highlighted

Effect of a Community Popular Opinion Leader HIV/STI Intervention on Stigma in Urban, Coastal Peru

Evaluating interventions that reduce HIV stigma may help to craft effective stigma-reduction programs. This study evaluates the effects of a community popular opinion leader HIV/STI intervention on stigma in urban, coastal Peru. Mixed effects modeling was used to analyze data on 3,049 participants from the Peru site of the NIHM collaborative trial. Analyses looked at differences between the comparison and intervention groups on a stigma index from baseline to 12- and 24-month follow-up. Sub-analyses were conducted on heterosexual-identified men (esquineros), homosexual-identified men (homosexuales), and socially marginalized women (movidas). Compared to participants in the comparison group, intervention participants reported lower levels of stigma at 12- and 24-month follow-up. Similar results were found within esquineros and homosexuales. No significant differences were found within movidas. Findings suggest that interventions designed to normalize HIV prevention behaviors and HIV communication can reduce HIV-related stigma and change community norms

LSST: from Science Drivers to Reference Design and Anticipated Data Products

(Abridged) We describe here the most ambitious survey currently planned in the optical, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). A vast array of science will be enabled by a single wide-deep-fast sky survey, and LSST will have unique survey capability in the faint time domain. The LSST design is driven by four main science themes: probing dark energy and dark matter, taking an inventory of the Solar System, exploring the transient optical sky, and mapping the Milky Way. LSST will be a wide-field ground-based system sited at Cerro Pach\'{o}n in northern Chile. The telescope will have an 8.4 m (6.5 m effective) primary mirror, a 9.6 deg$^2$ field of view, and a 3.2 Gigapixel camera. The standard observing sequence will consist of pairs of 15-second exposures in a given field, with two such visits in each pointing in a given night. With these repeats, the LSST system is capable of imaging about 10,000 square degrees of sky in a single filter in three nights. The typical 5$\sigma$ point-source depth in a single visit in $r$ will be $\sim 24.5$ (AB). The project is in the construction phase and will begin regular survey operations by 2022. The survey area will be contained within 30,000 deg$^2$ with $\delta<+34.5^\circ$, and will be imaged multiple times in six bands, $ugrizy$, covering the wavelength range 320--1050 nm. About 90\% of the observing time will be devoted to a deep-wide-fast survey mode which will uniformly observe a 18,000 deg$^2$ region about 800 times (summed over all six bands) during the anticipated 10 years of operations, and yield a coadded map to $r\sim27.5$. The remaining 10\% of the observing time will be allocated to projects such as a Very Deep and Fast time domain survey. The goal is to make LSST data products, including a relational database of about 32 trillion observations of 40 billion objects, available to the public and scientists around the world.Comment: 57 pages, 32 color figures, version with high-resolution figures available from https://www.lsst.org/overvie

Phase Ia Clinical Evaluation of the Safety and Immunogenicity of the Plasmodium falciparum Blood-Stage Antigen AMA1 in ChAd63 and MVA Vaccine Vectors

Traditionally, vaccine development against the blood-stage of Plasmodium falciparum infection has focused on recombinant protein-adjuvant formulations in order to induce high-titer growth-inhibitory antibody responses. However, to date no such vaccine encoding a blood-stage antigen(s) alone has induced significant protective efficacy against erythrocytic-stage infection in a pre-specified primary endpoint of a Phase IIa/b clinical trial designed to assess vaccine efficacy. Cell-mediated responses, acting in conjunction with functional antibodies, may be necessary for immunity against blood-stage P. falciparum. The development of a vaccine that could induce both cell-mediated and humoral immune responses would enable important proof-of-concept efficacy studies to be undertaken to address this question

Multidisciplinary investigations of the diets of two post-medieval populations from London using stable isotopes and microdebris analysis

This paper presents the first multi-tissue study of diet in post-medieval London using both the stable light isotope analysis of carbon and nitrogen and analysis of microdebris in dental calculus. Dietary intake was explored over short and long timescales. Bulk bone collagen was analysed from humans from the Queen’s Chapel of the Savoy (QCS) (n = 66) and the St Barnabas/St Mary Abbots (SB) (n = 25). Incremental dentine analysis was performed on the second molar of individual QCS1123 to explore childhood dietary intake. Bulk hair samples (n = 4) were sampled from adults from QCS, and dental calculus was analysed from four other individuals using microscopy. In addition, bone collagen from a total of 46 animals from QCS (n = 11) and the additional site of Prescot Street (n = 35) was analysed, providing the first animal dietary baseline for post-medieval London. Overall, isotopic results suggest a largely C3-based terrestrial diet for both populations, with the exception of QCS1123 who exhibited values consistent with the consumption of C4 food sources throughout childhood and adulthood. The differences exhibited in δ15Ncoll across both populations likely reflect variations in diet due to social class and occupation, with individuals from SB likely representing wealthier individuals consuming larger quantities of animal and marine fish protein. Microdebris analysis results were limited but indicate the consumption of domestic cereals. This paper demonstrates the utility of a multidisciplinary approach to investigate diet across long and short timescales to further our understanding of variations in social status and mobility

Pasteurellaceae ComE1 Proteins Combine the Properties of Fibronectin Adhesins and DNA Binding Competence Proteins

A novel fibronectin-binding protein from Pasteurella multocida (PM1665) that binds to the fibronectin type III9-10 modules via two helix-hairpin-helix motifs has recently been described [1]. This protein shares homology with competence-related DNA-binding and uptake proteins (ComEA and ComE) from Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Here, we show that recombinant PM1665 (now designated ComE1) also binds to DNA through the same helix-hairpin-helix motifs required for fibronectin-binding. This binding to DNA is non sequence-specific and is confined to double-stranded DNA. We have cloned and expressed ComE1 proteins from five members of the Pasteurellaceae in order to further investigate the function(s) of these proteins. When expressed as recombinant GST-fusion proteins, all of the homologues bound both to fibronectin and to double-stranded DNA. Inactivation of the gene encoding the ComE1 homologue in Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae indicates major roles for these proteins in at least two processes: natural transformation, and binding of bacteria to fibronectin

HLA-DQA1*05 carriage associated with development of anti-drug antibodies to infliximab and adalimumab in patients with Crohn's Disease

Anti-tumor necrosis factor (anti-TNF) therapies are the most widely used biologic drugs for treating immune-mediated diseases, but repeated administration can induce the formation of anti-drug antibodies. The ability to identify patients at increased risk for development of anti-drug antibodies would facilitate selection of therapy and use of preventative strategies.This article is freely available via Open Access. Click on Publisher URL to access the full-text

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection