Occurrence of the Red-bellied Snake (Storeria occipitomaculata) on the margins of a disjunct range

The Red-bellied Snake (Storeria occipitomaculata) can be found throughout much of eastern North America, though two notable disjunct populations exist in the Black Hills of southwestern South Dakota and the Central Platte River Valley in southcentral Nebraska, west of the species’ core range. While literature continues to be added on the Red-bellied Snake and its natural history, it remains largely understudied in Nebraska. Throughout much of this species’ range, it is considered associated with woodland and wetland habitat features. On 28 September 2021, we detected one Red-bellied Snake near a treeless playa wetland in the Rainwater Basins ecoregion of southcentral Nebraska. Using a Grubbs Test to determine significant outliers, we found that this record was further from the Platte River than other previous accounts of this species in the state. This observation suggests this species may be found in other portions of the Rainwater Basins and considerably further from the Platte River than previously believed. Our observation along with other recent work indicates that Red-bellied Snakes may persist in herbaceous habitats lacking established woodland that include sufficient wetland features to support their primary food sources, including gastropods and other soft-bodied invertebrates. Due to the fragmentation of suitable habitats in the Rainwater Basins, coupled with the low dispersal of Red-bellied Snakes, populations persisting in the region are likely to be isolated

AdaFocal: Calibration-aware Adaptive Focal Loss

Much recent work has been devoted to the problem of ensuring that a neural network's confidence scores match the true probability of being correct, i.e. the calibration problem. Of note, it was found that training with focal loss leads to better calibration than cross-entropy while achieving similar level of accuracy \cite{mukhoti2020}. This success stems from focal loss regularizing the entropy of the model's prediction (controlled by the parameter $\gamma$), thereby reining in the model's overconfidence. Further improvement is expected if $\gamma$ is selected independently for each training sample (Sample-Dependent Focal Loss (FLSD-53) \cite{mukhoti2020}). However, FLSD-53 is based on heuristics and does not generalize well. In this paper, we propose a calibration-aware adaptive focal loss called AdaFocal that utilizes the calibration properties of focal (and inverse-focal) loss and adaptively modifies $\gamma_t$ for different groups of samples based on $\gamma_{t-1}$ from the previous step and the knowledge of model's under/over-confidence on the validation set. We evaluate AdaFocal on various image recognition and one NLP task, covering a wide variety of network architectures, to confirm the improvement in calibration while achieving similar levels of accuracy. Additionally, we show that models trained with AdaFocal achieve a significant boost in out-of-distribution detection.Comment: Accepted to NeurIPS 202

Psychological wellbeing in survivors of cardiac arrest, and its relationship to neurocognitive function

© 2016 Objective To characterise psychological wellbeing in survivors of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), and examine its relationship to cognitive function. Patients Forty-one highly functioning cardiac arrest survivors were drawn from the follow-up cohort of a randomised controlled trial of initial airway management in OHCA (ISRCTN:18528625). Design Psychological wellbeing was assessed with a self-report questionnaire (the Depression Anxiety and Stress Scale; DASS) and cognitive function was examined using the Delayed Matching to Samples (DMS) test from the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery (CANTAB). Results Mean anxiety levels were significantly higher in this patient group than normative data drawn from the general population (p=0.046). Multiple regression analyses showed that cognitive function, measured by the DMS, did not predict any of the DASS scales. Conclusions Anxiety plays an important role in determining perceived QoL in high functioning survivors, but psychological wellbeing is unrelated to cognitive function in this group. To achieve a comprehensive assessment of wellbeing, resuscitation research should consider outcomes beyond neurological function alone

Multidrug resistant pulmonary tuberculosis treatment regimens and patient outcomes: an individual patient data meta-analysis of 9,153 patients.

Treatment of multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is lengthy, toxic, expensive, and has generally poor outcomes. We undertook an individual patient data meta-analysis to assess the impact on outcomes of the type, number, and duration of drugs used to treat MDR-TB

Report of an ad-hoc international task force to develop an expert-based opinion on early and short-term rehabilitative interventions (after the acute hospital setting) in covid-19 survivors

No abstract available.publishe

Chemoorganotrophic Bacteria From Lake Fryxell, Antarctica, Including Pseudomonas Strain LFY10, a Cold-Adapted, Halotolerant Bacterium Useful in Teaching Labs

Lake Fryxell, situated in the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica, is an intriguing aquatic ecosystem because of its perennial ice cover, highly stratified water column, and extreme physicochemical conditions, which collectively restrict lake biodiversity to solely microbial forms. To expand our current understanding of the cultivable biodiversity of Lake Fryxell, water samples were collected from depths of 10 and 17 m, and pure cultures of eight diverse strains of aerobic, chemoorganotrophic bacteria were obtained. Despite having high 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to mesophilic bacteria inhabiting various temperate environments, all Lake Fryxell isolates were psychrotolerant, with growth occurring at 0°C and optimal growth from 18–24°C for all isolates. Phylogenetic analyses showed the isolates to be members of six taxonomic groups, including the genera Brevundimonas, Arthrobacter, Sphingobium, Leifsonia, and Pseudomonas, as well as the family Microbacteriaceae (one strain could not reliably be assigned to a specific genus based on our analysis). Pseudomonas strain LFY10 stood out as a useful tool for teaching laboratory activities because of its substantial cold adaptation (visible growth is evident in 1–2 days at 4°C), beta-hemolytic activity, and halotolerance to 8.5% (w/v) NaCl. These cold-adapted bacteria likely play a role in carbon mineralization and other nutrient cycling in Lake Fryxell, and their characterization broadens our understanding of microbial biodiversity in aquatic polar ecosystems

Sensory Adaptive Environment to Enhance Participation in Healthcare for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: An Interdisciplinary Design Thinking Approach

Introduction/Background Participation in healthcare for children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) can be overwhelming resulting in stressful responses safety concerns.¹ Sensory features impact healthcare participation. Up to 84% of individuals with ASD experience atypical sensory features of : - Hyper or hypo reactivity to sensation.² - Unusual sensory interests in the environment.² - Poor sensory integration.² Families may refrain from participation in medical care to prevent negative experiences, contributing to occupational deprivation.¹ Sensory Adaptive Environments (SAE) may improve participation for autistic persons.1,3,

De Novo ZMYND8 variants result in an autosomal dominant neurodevelopmental disorder with cardiac malformations

Purpose: ZMYND8 encodes a multidomain protein that serves as a central interactive hub for coordinating critical roles in transcription regulation, chromatin remodeling, regulation of superenhancers, DNA damage response and tumor suppression. We delineate a novel neurocognitive disorder caused by variants in the ZMYND8 gene. Methods: An international collaboration, exome sequencing, molecular modeling, yeast twohybrid assays, analysis of available transcriptomic data and a knockdown Drosophila model were used to characterize the ZMYND8 variants. Results: ZMYND8 variants were identified in 11 unrelated individuals; 10 occurred de novo and one suspected de novo; 2 were truncating, 9 were missense, of which one was recurrent. The disorder is characterized by intellectual disability with variable cardiovascular, ophthalmologic and minor skeletal anomalies. Missense variants in the PWWP domain of ZMYND8 abolish the interaction with Drebrin and missense variants in the MYND domain disrupt the interaction with GATAD2A. ZMYND8 is broadly expressed across cell types in all brain regions and shows highest expression in the early stages of brain development. Neuronal knockdown of the Drosophila ZMYND8 ortholog results in decreased habituation learning, consistent with a role in cognitive function. Conclusion: We present genomic and functional evidence for disruption of ZMYND8 as a novel etiology of syndromic intellectual disability