Exploration of telemedicine for the delivery of Substance Use Disorder treatment during the COVID-19 Pandemic

https://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/lambrew-retreat-2021/1015/thumbnail.jp

Evaluation of Strawberry Sap Beetle (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae) Use of Habitats Surrounding Strawberry Plantings as Food Resources and Overwintering Sites

The matrix of strawberry and alternate host crops, wooded areas, and uncultivated sections that comprises a farm landscape provides not only food resources but also habitat in both a spatial and temporal context. Reports of the strawberry sap beetle as a pest in strawberry in the northeastern United States have increased along with a trend to produce a wider diversity of fruit crops on individual farms. The three objectives of this study focused on determining which, if any, habitats outside strawberry plantings are important to consider when developing control strategies for strawberry sap beetles. First, sampling of wooded areas and multiple crops showed that strawberry sap beetles overwinter not only in wooded areas but also in blueberry and raspberry. No overwintering beetles were found in strawberry. Second, up to a 70-fold increase in mean number of strawberry sap beetles in a no-choice food source experiment indicated that considerable reproduction can occur on blueberry, cherry, raspberry, and strawberry. Third, sampling summer-bearing raspberry, peach, blueberry, and cherry in 2004 and 2005 confirmed that beetles were present, often in high densities (0.1-108.5 strawberry sap beetles/m2), in commercial fields with fruit or vegetable material on the ground. In summary, the beetles are able to feed, complete development, and overwinter in habitats other than strawberry. An effective integrated pest management program to control strawberry sap beetles will need to consider the type of habitat surrounding strawberry field

Evaluation of Cultural Practices for Potential to Control Strawberry Sap Beetle (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae)

Strawberry sap beetle, Stelidota geminata (Say) (Coleoptera: Nitidulidae), adults and larvae feed on and contaminate marketable strawberry (Fragaria L.) fruit. The beetle is a serious pest in the northeastern United States, with growers in multiple states reporting closing fields for picking prematurely due to fruit damage. Three options were evaluated for potential to reduce strawberry sap beetle populations. First, the influence of plant structure on accessibility of fruit in different strawberry cultivars to strawberry sap beetle was assessed by modifying plant structure and exposing caged plants to strawberry sap beetle adults. Severity of damage to berries staked up off the ground was similar to damage to those fruit contacting the soil, showing that adults will damage fruit held off the ground. Second, baited traps were placed at three distances into strawberry fields to determine whether overwintered beetles enter strawberry fields gradually. Adult beetles were first caught in the strawberries ≈19 d after occurring in traps placed along edges of adjacent wooded areas. The beetles arrived during the same sampling interval in traps at all distances into the fields, indicating that a border spray is unlikely to adequately control strawberry sap beetle. Third, the number of strawberry sap beetle emerging from strawberry for 5 wk after tilling and narrowing of plant rows was compared in plots renovated immediately at the end of harvest and in plots where renovation was delayed by 1 wk. In the 2-yr study, year and not treatment was the primary factor affecting the total number of emerging strawberry sap beetle. Overall, limited potential exists to reduce strawberry sap beetle populations by choosing cultivars with a particular plant structure, applying insecticide as a border spray, or modifying time of field renovatio

Facilitators and Barriers to Accessing Harm Reduction Services in a Rural State

INTRODUCTION • The impact of social distancing policies during the COVID-19 pandemic on people who inject drugs (PWID) is not known. • We aimed to describe the impact of the pandemic on PWID access to harm reduction services in Mainehttps://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/lambrew-retreat-2021/1017/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of COVID-19 Vaccination on Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression before and after COVID-19 Vaccines Were Universally Available for Adults in the United States

Our objective was to examine the influence of COVID-19 vaccination on recent (i.e., past month) moderate or severe symptoms of anxiety (GAD‐7 ≥ 10) or depression (PHQ‐8 ≥10) before and after the COVID-19 vaccine became universally available for adults in the U.S. Participants belonged to the Communities, Households, and SARS-CoV-2 Epidemiology Cohort (CHASING COVID), a national longitudinal study. Our analytic population included 4,832 participants who reported vaccination status from December 2020 to December 2021 with follow-up outcomes assessed through March 2022. We emulated a hypothetical randomized experiment, a target trial, to estimate the effect of COVID-19 vaccination on symptoms of anxiety or depression. Before vaccines were universally available, participants who were vaccinated versus not had significantly lower adjusted odds of symptoms of moderate or severe anxiety (aOR: 0.79; 95% CI: 0.70-0.89). In the universal vaccine era, vaccination was associated with marginally higher adjusted odds of symptoms of moderate or severe anxiety (aOR: 1.23; 95% CI: 1.00-1.50). Vaccination did not influence subsequent moderate or severe depressive symptoms in the preuniversal vaccine era (aOR: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.82-1.03) or universal vaccine era (aOR: 1.11; 95% CI: 0.91-1.36). Research into the longitudinal relationship between COVID-19 vaccination and symptoms of depression and anxiety is warranted, with a focus on advancing understanding of potential mediators on the pathway between vaccination and mental health as well as modifiable factors, such as vaccine hesitancy or vaccine beliefs, that may help identify populations for whom vaccination may be particularly beneficial to their mental health

A New Era in Extragalactic Background Light Measurements: The Cosmic History of Accretion, Nucleosynthesis and Reionization

(Brief Summary) What is the total radiative content of the Universe since the epoch of recombination? The extragalactic background light (EBL) spectrum captures the redshifted energy released from the first stellar objects, protogalaxies, and galaxies throughout cosmic history. Yet, we have not determined the brightness of the extragalactic sky from UV/optical to far-infrared wavelengths with sufficient accuracy to establish the radiative content of the Universe to better than an order of magnitude. Among many science topics, an accurate measurement of the EBL spectrum from optical to far-IR wavelengths, will address: What is the total energy released by stellar nucleosynthesis over cosmic history? Was significant energy released by non-stellar processes? Is there a diffuse component to the EBL anywhere from optical to sub-millimeter? When did first stars appear and how luminous was the reionization epoch? Absolute optical to mid-IR EBL spectrum to an astrophysically interesting accuracy can be established by wide field imagingat a distance of 5 AU or above the ecliptic plane where the zodiacal foreground is reduced by more than two orders of magnitude.Comment: 7 pages; Science White Paper for the US Astro 2010-2020 Decadal Survey. If interested in further community-wide efforts on this topic please contact the first autho

Overview of FEED, the Feeding Experiments End-user Database

The Feeding Experiments End-user Database (FEED) is a research tool developed by the Mammalian Feeding Working Group at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center that permits synthetic, evolutionary analyses of the physiology of mammalian feeding. The tasks of the Working Group are to compile physiologic data sets into a uniform digital format stored at a central source, develop a standardized terminology for describing and organizing the data, and carry out a set of novel analyses using FEED. FEED contains raw physiologic data linked to extensive metadata. It serves as an archive for a large number of existing data sets and a repository for future data sets. The metadata are stored as text and images that describe experimental protocols, research subjects, and anatomical information. The metadata incorporate controlled vocabularies to allow consistent use of the terms used to describe and organize the physiologic data. The planned analyses address long-standing questions concerning the phylogenetic distribution of phenotypes involving muscle anatomy and feeding physiology among mammals, the presence and nature of motor pattern conservation in the mammalian feeding muscles, and the extent to which suckling constrains the evolution of feeding behavior in adult mammals. We expect FEED to be a growing digital archive that will facilitate new research into understanding the evolution of feeding anatomy

Short Interspersed Element (SINE) Depletion and Long Interspersed Element (LINE) Abundance Are Not Features Universally Required for Imprinting

Genomic imprinting is a form of gene dosage regulation in which a gene is expressed from only one of the alleles, in a manner dependent on the parent of origin. The mechanisms governing imprinted gene expression have been investigated in detail and have greatly contributed to our understanding of genome regulation in general. Both DNA sequence features, such as CpG islands, and epigenetic features, such as DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs, play important roles in achieving imprinted expression. However, the relative importance of these factors varies depending on the locus in question. Defining the minimal features that are absolutely required for imprinting would help us to understand how imprinting has evolved mechanistically. Imprinted retrogenes are a subset of imprinted loci that are relatively simple in their genomic organisation, being distinct from large imprinting clusters, and have the potential to be used as tools to address this question. Here, we compare the repeat element content of imprinted retrogene loci with non-imprinted controls that have a similar locus organisation. We observe no significant differences that are conserved between mouse and human, suggesting that the paucity of SINEs and relative abundance of LINEs at imprinted loci reported by others is not a sequence feature universally required for imprinting

Recent developments in multiple sclerosis therapeutics

Multiple sclerosis, the most common neurologic disorder of young adults, is traditionally considered to be an inflammatory, autoimmune, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. Based on this understanding, the initial therapeutic strategies were directed at immune modulation and inflammation control. These approaches, including high-dose corticosteroids for acute relapses and long-term use of parenteral interferon-β, glatiramer acetate or natalizumab for disease modification, are at best moderately effective. Growing evidence supports that, while an inflammatory pathology characterizes the early relapsing stage of multiple sclerosis, neurodegenerative pathology dominates the later progressive stage of the disease. Multiple sclerosis disease-modifying therapies currently in development attempt to specifically target the underlying pathology at each stage of the disease, while avoiding frequent self-injection. These include a variety of oral medications and monoclonal antibodies to reduce inflammation in relapsing multiple sclerosis and agents intended to promote neuroprotection and neurorepair in progressive multiple sclerosis. Although newer therapies for relapsing MS have the potential to be more effective and easier to administer than current therapies, they also carry greater risks. Effective treatments for progressive multiple sclerosis are still being sought