Fireflies at RPA Natural Area Final Report

Our group worked alongside community partners Shaunna Barnhart and Jim Dunn during the Spring 2024 semester to assist with their annual event Fireflies at RPA Natural Area. RPA Natural Area is a local park in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania that was recently acquired by Southside Recreational Authority. Since taking over the park, the organization has begun hosting an event each July to educate the general public about firefly biology and conservation by showing a film and guiding attendees through a firefly tour through the park. Our goals for this project included creating physical educational materials to be used at the park year-round, creating a promotional campaign to bring awareness to the public about both the park and Fireflies at RPA Natural Area, and preparing the event to be scaled up from 50 to roughly 100 attendees. Over the semester, we have created, distributed, and analyzed results from a community survey aiming to better understand current public knowledge on fireflies, produced trail signage and brochures to be printed and used at the park, and designed social media posts and event invitations

Evaluating the baseline hemoglobin, albumin, lymphocyte, and platelet (HALP) score in the United States adult population and comorbidities: an analysis of the NHANES

Introduction: As a composite immunonutritional biomarker, the Hemoglobin, Albumin, Lymphocyte, Platelet (HALP) score has shown promise in assessing a patient\u27s overall health status by integrating several routinely collected laboratory indicators. This biomarker has been examined in many different populations of patients and disease states (i.e., cancer), but an integrated, universal rubric using standardized thresholds has not thus far been developed. Pre-existing large population-based databases represent an ideal source to examine the distribution of HALP and the influence of diverse health statuses on this score. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) between 2017–2020, evaluating 8,245 participants across numerous demographic, socioeconomic, and health-related variables. Univariate and multivariate linear regression analyses assessed the associations between HALP scores and these factors. Results: Our findings revealed significant associations between HALP scores and various demographic, socioeconomic, and health conditions. The median HALP score among the representative population was 49.0, with varying median scores across different groups and normal reference ranges for males and females. Multivariate regression analysis showed that anemia treatment, age over 65 years, weak/failing kidneys, and cancer were independent risk factors associated with lower HALP scores. Male participants demonstrated higher HALP scores than female participants, and age was inversely related to HALP. Moreover, HALP scores were negatively associated with the number of comorbidities. Conclusion/discussion: This study set out to explore the HALP score from a population-based perspective, uncovering notable associations that offer vital insights into the score\u27s clinical relevance and future applications. By determining a median HALP score of 49.0 and normal reference ranges within our diverse, representative sample, we establish a robust foundation for researchers to refine optimal HALP applications and thresholds. Considering the growing focus on personalized medicine, HALP holds promise as a prognostic tool, enabling clinicians to comprehend their patients\u27 immunonutritional status better and deliver customized care

The Impact and Successes of a Paediatric Endocrinology Fellowship Program in Africa

Background: The prevalence and distribution of endocrine disorders in children in Africa are not well known because most cases are often undiagnosed or diagnosed too late. The awareness of this led to the launch of the Paediatric Endocrinology Training Center for Africa (PETCA) designed to improve quality and access to health care by training paediatricians from Africa in paediatric endocrinology. Methods: The fellowship is undertaken over an 18-month period: six months of clinical and theoretical training in Kenya, nine months of project research at the fellow’s home country, and three months of consolidation in Kenya. Upon completion, certified paediatricians are expected to set up centers of excellence. Results: There have been two phases, phase I from January 2008 to October 2012 and phase II from January 2012 to April 2015. Fifty-four fellows from 12 African countries have been certified, 34 (phase I) and 20 (phase II). Over 1,000 patients with wide ranging diabetes and endocrine disorders have been diagnosed and treated and are being followed up at the centers of excellence. Conclusion: The successes of the PETCA initiative demonstrate the impact a capacity building and knowledge transfer model can have on people in resource-poor settings using limited resources

The impact of obsessive compulsive personality disorder on cognitive behaviour therapy for obsessive compulsive disorder

Background: It is often suggested that, in general, co-morbid personality disorders are likely to interfere with CBT based treatment of Axis I disorders, given that personality disorders are regarded as dispositional and are therefore considered less amenable to change than axis I psychiatric disorders. Aims: The present study aimed to investigate the impact of co-occurring obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD) on cognitive-behavioural treatment for OCD. Method: 92 individuals with a diagnosis of OCD participated in this study. Data were drawn from measures taken at initial assessment and following cognitive-behavioural treatment at a specialist treatment centre for anxiety disorders. Results: At assessment, participants with OCD and OCPD had greater overall OCD symptom severity, as well as doubting, ordering and hoarding symptoms relative to those without OCPD; however, participants with co-morbid OCD and OCPD demonstrated greater treatment gains in terms of OCD severity, checking and ordering than those without OCPD. Individuals with OCD and OCPD had higher levels of checking, ordering and overall OCD severity at initial assessment; however, at post-treatment they had similar scores to those without OCPD. Conclusion: The implications of these findings are discussed in the light of research on axis I and II co-morbidity and the impact of axis II disorders on treatment for axis I disorders.</jats:p

sRNAnalyzer-a flexible and customizable small RNA sequencing data analysis pipeline.

Although many tools have been developed to analyze small RNA sequencing (sRNA-Seq) data, it remains challenging to accurately analyze the small RNA population, mainly due to multiple sequence ID assignment caused by short read length. Additional issues in small RNA analysis include low consistency of microRNA (miRNA) measurement results across different platforms, miRNA mapping associated with miRNA sequence variation (isomiR) and RNA editing, and the origin of those unmapped reads after screening against all endogenous reference sequence databases. To address these issues, we built a comprehensive and customizable sRNA-Seq data analysis pipeline-sRNAnalyzer, which enables: (i) comprehensive miRNA profiling strategies to better handle isomiRs and summarization based on each nucleotide position to detect potential SNPs in miRNAs, (ii) different sequence mapping result assignment approaches to simulate results from microarray/qRT-PCR platforms and a local probabilistic model to assign mapping results to the most-likely IDs, (iii) comprehensive ribosomal RNA filtering for accurate mapping of exogenous RNAs and summarization based on taxonomy annotation. We evaluated our pipeline on both artificial samples (including synthetic miRNA and Escherichia coli cultures) and biological samples (human tissue and plasma). sRNAnalyzer is implemented in Perl and available at: http://srnanalyzer.systemsbiology.net/

Addressing behavior and policy around meat: associating factory farming with animal cruelty “works” better than zoonotic disease

Research on shifting attitudes or behaviors surrounding the use of animal products traditionally focuses on animal cruelty. How this approach may differ from exposure on the zoonotic disease transmission risk factory farms pose is unclear. The present study sought to examine how information regarding zoonotic disease may stimulate concern for animals/concern for human health, respectively, and thus predict lower willingness to consume meat, when compared with animal cruelty and a control condition. The extent to which such information could shift support for changing conditions on factory farms was also examined. In a preregistered experiment (n = 454), participants were exposed to an informative paragraph on either (a) zoonotic disease transmission risk from factory farming, (b) animal cruelty on factory farms, or (c) a control paragraph. Those in the animal-cruelty condition were significantly more likely to indicate lower meat consumption willingness and higher support for changing conditions on factory farms, when compared with the two other conditions. Concern for animal health and welfare mediated the relationship between the combined experimental conditions and both dependent variables, when compared with the control condition. Upon examining the moderating role of human supremacy beliefs (HSB), a conditional effect was found across all conditions, with higher HSB predicting higher meat consumption willingness and lower support for changing conditions on factory farms. This study offers evidence for the intervention potential of informative excerpts. These findings also emphasize animal cruelty as a more effective way to mobilize support for behaviors and policies aimed at reducing animal-product consumption

Plasma levels of coagulation factors VIII and IX and risk of venous thromboembolism: systematic review and meta-analysis

Introduction: The associations of plasma factor VIII (FVIII) and factor IX (FIX) levels with risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE) are not well defined. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of these associations. Methods: Random effects inverse-variance weighted meta-analysis was used to estimate pooled odds ratios for comparisons across equal quartiles of the distributions and 90 % thresholds (higher versus lower), and for testing linear trends. Results: Among 15 studies (5327 cases) the pooled odds ratio of VTE for the fourth versus first quarter was 3.92 (95 % confidence interval 1.61, 5.29) for FVIII level; and among 7 studies (3498 cases) 1.57 (1.32, 1.87) for FIX level. Comparing factor levels above, versus below, the 90th percentile, the estimated pooled odds ratios were 3.00 (2.10, 4.30) for FVIII; 1.77 (1.22, 2.56) for FIX; and 4.56 (2.73, 7.63) for both FVIII and FIX considered jointly. Conclusions: We confirm increases in risk of VTE across population distributions of FVIII and FIX levels. Levels above the 90th percentile have almost twice the risk for FIX level compared to levels below; three-fold risk for FVIII level; and almost five-fold risk for both FVIII and FIX levels elevated