SOS: Send My Location

The SOS Send My Location application is for anyone who goes somewhere that might pose danger so they can have a solution that, in case of emergency, generates their curated message and populates their messaging application with their specified contacts and sends their location. It helps a user feel safe in cases of emergency, since they can ask for help with the touch of a button and some initially provided information. There is also an option where the user chooses who they want as their emergency contacts, as well as the ability to enter a custom message to send. The application has user friendly features, which enable users to utilize the application with little to no instruction

Early cancer detection among rural and urban californians

BACKGROUND: Since the stage of cancer detection generally predicts future mortality rates, a key cancer control strategy is to increase the proportion of cancers found in the early stage. This study compared stage of detection for members of rural and urban communities to determine whether disparities were present. METHODS: The California Cancer Registry (CCR), a total population based cancer registry, was used to examine the proportion of early stage presentation for patients with breast, melanoma, and colon cancer from 1988 to 2003. Cancer stage at time of detection for these cancers was compared for rural and urban areas. RESULTS: In patients with breast cancer, there were significantly more patients presenting at early stage in 2003 compared to 1988, but no difference in the percentage of patients presenting with early stage disease between rural and urban dwellers. There were no differences in incidence in early stage cancer incidence between these groups for melanoma patients, as well. In colorectal cancer in 1988, significantly more patients presented with early stage disease in the urban areas (42% vs 34%, p < 0.02). However, over time the rural patients were diagnosed with early stage disease with the same frequency in 2003 as 1988. CONCLUSION: This analysis demonstrates that people in rural and urban areas have their breast, melanoma or colorectal cancers diagnosed at similar stages. Health care administrators may take this information into account in future strategic planning

Can Systemic Interventions Designed to Reduce Reoffending by Youth also Reduce their Victimization?

Previous research indicates considerable overlap between populations of boys who are victimized and boys who victimize others. This study was concerned with whether a systems-focused treatment program designed to address individual and systemic risk factors associated with the perpetration of sexual and violent crimes might also be successful in reducing boys’ victimization by others. Boys adjudicated for sexual offences who received ‘treatment as usual’ (TAU; n = 335) were compared with similarly adjudicated boys who completed the treatment program (n = 200) on their histories of contact with police either as offenders or victims. Despite their higher rates of pre-intervention victimization, the treatment group were victimized less frequently post-intervention than the TAU group. Continued offending was the strongest predictor of victimization post-intervention. These findings suggest that offending and victimization share common risk factors that may be addressed simultaneously within offence-focused treatment

Equine Cyathostominae can develop to infective third-stage larvae on straw bedding

Background Domesticated grazing animals including horses and donkeys are frequently housed using deep litter bedding systems, where it is commonly presumed that there is no risk of infection from the nematodes that are associated with grazing at pasture. We use two different approaches to test whether equids could become infected with cyathostomines from the ingestion of deep litter straw bedding. Methods Two herbage plot studies were performed in horticultural incubators set up to simulate three straw bedding scenarios and one grass turf positive control. Faeces were placed on 16 plots, and larval recoveries performed on samples of straw/grass substrate over 2- to 3-week periods. Within each incubator, a thermostat was set to maintain an environmental temperature of approximately 10 °C to 20 °C. To provide further validation, 24 samples of straw bedding were collected over an 8-week period from six barns in which a large number of donkeys were housed in a deep litter straw bedding system. These samples were collected from the superficial bedding at 16 sites along a “W” route through each barn. Results No infective larvae were recovered from any of the plots containing dry straw. However, infective cyathostomine larvae were first detected on day 8 from plots containing moist straw. In the straw bedding study, cyathostomine larvae were detected in 18 of the 24 samples. Additionally, in the two barns which were sampled serially, the level of larval infectivity generally increased from week to week, except when the straw bedding was removed and replaced. Conclusions We have demonstrated that equine cyathostomines can develop to infective larvae on moist straw bedding. It is therefore possible for a horse or donkey bedded in deep litter straw to become infected by ingesting the contaminated straw. This has implications for parasite control in stabled equids and potentially in housed ruminants, and further investigation is required in order to establish the relative infective pressure from pasture versus straw bedding

Two Group A Streptococcal Peptide Pheromones Act through Opposing Rgg Regulators to Control Biofilm Development

Streptococcus pyogenes (Group A Streptococcus, GAS) is an important human commensal that occasionally causes localized infections and less frequently causes severe invasive disease with high mortality rates. How GAS regulates expression of factors used to colonize the host and avoid immune responses remains poorly understood. Intercellular communication is an important means by which bacteria coordinate gene expression to defend against host assaults and competing bacteria, yet no conserved cell-to-cell signaling system has been elucidated in GAS. Encoded within the GAS genome are four rgg-like genes, two of which (rgg2 and rgg3) have no previously described function. We tested the hypothesis that rgg2 or rgg3 rely on extracellular peptides to control target-gene regulation. We found that Rgg2 and Rgg3 together tightly regulate two linked genes encoding new peptide pheromones. Rgg2 activates transcription of and is required for full induction of the pheromone genes, while Rgg3 plays an antagonistic role and represses pheromone expression. The active pheromone signals, termed SHP2 and SHP3, are short and hydrophobic (DI[I/L]IIVGG), and, though highly similar in sequence, their ability to disrupt Rgg3-DNA complexes were observed to be different, indicating that specificity and differential activation of promoters are characteristics of the Rgg2/3 regulatory circuit. SHP-pheromone signaling requires an intact oligopeptide permease (opp) and a metalloprotease (eep), supporting the model that pro-peptides are secreted, processed to the mature form, and subsequently imported to the cytoplasm to interact directly with the Rgg receptors. At least one consequence of pheromone stimulation of the Rgg2/3 pathway is increased biogenesis of biofilms, which counteracts negative regulation of biofilms by RopB (Rgg1). These data provide the first demonstration that Rgg-dependent quorum sensing functions in GAS and substantiate the role that Rggs play as peptide receptors across the Firmicute phylum

Right hemisphere has the last laugh: neural dynamics of joke appreciation

Understanding a joke relies on semantic, mnemonic, inferential, and emotional contributions from multiple brain areas. Anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography (aMEG) combining high-density whole-head MEG with anatomical magnetic resonance imaging allowed us to estimate where the humor-specific brain activations occur and to understand their temporal sequence. Punch lines provided either funny, not funny (semantically congruent), or nonsensical (incongruent) replies to joke questions. Healthy subjects rated them as being funny or not funny. As expected, incongruous endings evoke the largest N400m in left-dominant temporo-prefrontal areas, due to integration difficulty. In contrast, funny punch lines evoke the smallest N400m during this initial lexical–semantic stage, consistent with their primed “surface congruity” with the setup question. In line with its sensitivity to ambiguity, the anteromedial prefrontal cortex may contribute to the subsequent “second take” processing, which, for jokes, presumably reflects detection of a clever “twist” contained in the funny punch lines. Joke-selective activity simultaneously emerges in the right prefrontal cortex, which may lead an extended bilateral temporo-frontal network in establishing the distant unexpected creative coherence between the punch line and the setup. This progression from an initially promising but misleading integration from left frontotemporal associations, to medial prefrontal ambiguity evaluation and right prefrontal reprocessing, may reflect the essential tension and resolution underlying humor

Food for pollinators: quantifying the nectar and pollen resources of urban flower meadows

Planted meadows are increasingly used to improve the biodiversity and aesthetic amenity value of urban areas. Although many ‘pollinator-friendly’ seed mixes are available, the floral resources these provide to flower-visiting insects, and how these change through time, are largely unknown. Such data are necessary to compare the resources provided by alternative meadow seed mixes to each other and to other flowering habitats. We used quantitative surveys of over 2 million flowers to estimate the nectar and pollen resources offered by two exemplar commercial seed mixes (one annual, one perennial) and associated weeds grown as 300m2 meadows across four UK cities, sampled at six time points between May and September 2013. Nectar sugar and pollen rewards per flower varied widely across 65 species surveyed, with native British weed species (including dandelion, Taraxacum agg.) contributing the top five nectar producers and two of the top ten pollen producers. Seed mix species yielding the highest rewards per flower included Leontodon hispidus, Centaurea cyanus and C. nigra for nectar, and Papaver rhoeas, Eschscholzia californica and Malva moschata for pollen. Perennial meadows produced up to 20x more nectar and up to 6x more pollen than annual meadows, which in turn produced far more than amenity grassland controls. Perennial meadows produced resources earlier in the year than annual meadows, but both seed mixes delivered very low resource levels early in the year and these were provided almost entirely by native weeds. Pollen volume per flower is well predicted statistically by floral morphology, and nectar sugar mass and pollen volume per unit area are correlated with flower counts, raising the possibility that resource levels can be estimated for species or habitats where they cannot be measured directly. Our approach does not incorporate resource quality information (for example, pollen protein or essential amino acid content), but can easily do so when suitable data exist. Our approach should inform the design of new seed mixes to ensure continuity in floral resource availability throughout the year, and to identify suitable species to fill resource gaps in established mixes

Genetic determinants of telomere length from 109,122 ancestrally diverse whole-genome sequences in TOPMed

Genetic studies on telomere length are important for understanding age-related diseases. Prior GWAS for leukocyte TL have been limited to European and Asian populations. Here, we report the first sequencing-based association study for TL across ancestrally-diverse individuals (European, African, Asian and Hispanic/Latino) from the NHLBI Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. We used whole genome sequencing (WGS) of whole blood for variant genotype calling and the bioinformatic estimation of telomere length in n=109,122 individuals. We identified 59 sentinel variants (p-value OBFC1indicated the independent signals colocalized with cell-type specific eQTLs for OBFC1 (STN1). Using a multi-variant gene-based approach, we identified two genes newly implicated in telomere length, DCLRE1B (SNM1B) and PARN. In PheWAS, we demonstrated our TL polygenic trait scores (PTS) were associated with increased risk of cancer-related phenotypes

Significant benefits of AIP testing and clinical screening in familial isolated and young-onset pituitary tumors

Context Germline mutations in the aryl hydrocarbon receptor-interacting protein (AIP) gene are responsible for a subset of familial isolated pituitary adenoma (FIPA) cases and sporadic pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNETs). Objective To compare prospectively diagnosed AIP mutation-positive (AIPmut) PitNET patients with clinically presenting patients and to compare the clinical characteristics of AIPmut and AIPneg PitNET patients. Design 12-year prospective, observational study. Participants & Setting We studied probands and family members of FIPA kindreds and sporadic patients with disease onset ≤18 years or macroadenomas with onset ≤30 years (n = 1477). This was a collaborative study conducted at referral centers for pituitary diseases. Interventions & Outcome AIP testing and clinical screening for pituitary disease. Comparison of characteristics of prospectively diagnosed (n = 22) vs clinically presenting AIPmut PitNET patients (n = 145), and AIPmut (n = 167) vs AIPneg PitNET patients (n = 1310). Results Prospectively diagnosed AIPmut PitNET patients had smaller lesions with less suprasellar extension or cavernous sinus invasion and required fewer treatments with fewer operations and no radiotherapy compared with clinically presenting cases; there were fewer cases with active disease and hypopituitarism at last follow-up. When comparing AIPmut and AIPneg cases, AIPmut patients were more often males, younger, more often had GH excess, pituitary apoplexy, suprasellar extension, and more patients required multimodal therapy, including radiotherapy. AIPmut patients (n = 136) with GH excess were taller than AIPneg counterparts (n = 650). Conclusions Prospectively diagnosed AIPmut patients show better outcomes than clinically presenting cases, demonstrating the benefits of genetic and clinical screening. AIP-related pituitary disease has a wide spectrum ranging from aggressively growing lesions to stable or indolent disease course