Identifying a sufficient core group for trachoma transmission.

BackgroundIn many infectious diseases, a core group of individuals plays a disproportionate role in transmission. If these individuals were effectively prevented from transmitting infection, for example with a perfect vaccine, then the disease would disappear in the remainder of the community. No vaccine has yet proven effective against the ocular strains of chlamydia that cause trachoma. However, repeated treatment with oral azithromycin may be able to prevent individuals from effectively transmitting trachoma.Methodology/principal findingsHere we assess several methods for identifying a core group for trachoma, assuming varying degrees of knowledge about the transmission process. We determine the minimal core group from a completely specified model, fitted to results from a large Ethiopian trial. We compare this benchmark to a core group that could actually be identified from information available to trachoma programs. For example, determined from the rate of return of infection in a community after mass treatments, or from the equilibrium prevalence of infection.Conclusions/significanceSufficient groups are relatively easy for programs to identify, but will likely be larger than the theoretical minimum

Use of a Standardized Tracheostomy Patient Simulation to Evaluate Student Clinical Communication Skills

Simulation is a valid pedagogical tool used to teach students, observe student clinical skills, and to assess clinical competencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a lack of medical speech-language pathology placements required graduate programs to re-examine clinical training. Simulation has proven useful in providing an alternative and safe learning modality. Standardized patients, which are one simulation modality, provide increased standardization and higher fidelity than medical manikins. This is particularly true in the context of both student learning and demonstration of clinical communication skills (CCS) within a simulated learning environment where the simulated patient can interact authentically with the student clinician. CCS are important because they can lead to better treatment outcomes and strengthen the therapeutic alliance. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the evidence for a CCS training in the context of a speaking valve trial with a standardized tracheostomy patient. Results showed that students are demonstrating emerging skills or have already developed CCS in this context. Student questionnaire ratings suggest that this simulation was helpful to their learning as it provided a safe environment for them to practice valuable clinical skills. Simulation appears to be a viable modality to use when training CSD students to improve their CCS

Short-term leprosy forecasting from an expert opinion survey.

We conducted an expert survey of leprosy (Hansen's Disease) and neglected tropical disease experts in February 2016. Experts were asked to forecast the next year of reported cases for the world, for the top three countries, and for selected states and territories of India. A total of 103 respondents answered at least one forecasting question. We elicited lower and upper confidence bounds. Comparing these results to regression and exponential smoothing, we found no evidence that any forecasting method outperformed the others. We found evidence that experts who believed it was more likely to achieve global interruption of transmission goals and disability reduction goals had higher error scores for India and Indonesia, but lower for Brazil. Even for a disease whose epidemiology changes on a slow time scale, forecasting exercises such as we conducted are simple and practical. We believe they can be used on a routine basis in public health

The effect of milling additives on powder properties and sintered body microstructure of NiO

The evolution of powder particle size, crystal structure, and surface chemistry was evaluated for micron scale NiO powders subjected to impact milling with commonly employed milling additives: methanol, Vertrel XF, and amorphous carbon. The effect of the different comminution protocols on sintered body microstructure was evaluated for high temperature sintering in inert atmosphere (N2). X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy showed that NiO powder surface chemistry is surprisingly sensitive to milling additive choice. In particular, the proportion of powder surface defect sites varied with additive, and methanol left an alcohol or alkoxy residue even after drying. Upon sintering to intermediate temperatures (1100 ℃), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) showed that slurry milled NiO powders exhibit hindered sintering behaviors. This effect was amplified for NiO milled with methanol, in which sub-500 nm grain sizes dominated even after sintering to 1100 ℃. Upon heating to high temperatures (1500 ℃), simultaneous differential scanning calorimetry/thermogravimetric analysis (DSC/TGA) showed that the powders containing carbon residues undergo carbothermal reduction, resulting in a melting transition between 1425 and 1454 ℃. Taken together, the results demonstrated that when processing metal oxide powders for advanced ceramics, the choice of milling additive is crucial as it exerts significant control over sintered body microstructure

Correction: Short-term leprosy forecasting from an expert opinion survey.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0182245.]

Environmental DNA metabarcoding:Transforming how we survey animal and plant communities

The genomic revolution has fundamentally changed how we survey biodiversity on earth. High-throughput sequencing (?HTS?) platforms now enable the rapid sequencing of DNA from diverse kinds of environmental samples (termed ?environmental DNA? or ?eDNA?). Coupling HTS with our ability to associate sequences from eDNA with a taxonomic name is called ?eDNA metabarcoding? and offers a powerful molecular tool capable of noninvasively surveying species richness from many ecosystems. Here, we review the use of eDNA metabarcoding for surveying animal and plant richness, and the challenges in using eDNA approaches to estimate relative abundance. We highlight eDNA applications in freshwater, marine and terrestrial environments, and in this broad context, we distill what is known about the ability of different eDNA sample types to approximate richness in space and across time. We provide guiding questions for study design and discuss the eDNA metabarcoding workflow with a focus on primers and library preparation methods. We additionally discuss important criteria for consideration of bioinformatic filtering of data sets, with recommendations for increasing transparency. Finally, looking to the future, we discuss emerging applications of eDNA metabarcoding in ecology, conservation, invasion biology, biomonitoring, and how eDNA metabarcoding can empower citizen science and biodiversity educationpublishersversionPeer reviewe

肥満糖尿病ラットにおける胃バイパス後の選択的腸管刺激による糖代謝への影響

研究科: 医学薬学府学位:千大院医薬博甲第医1000号要約博士(医学)千葉大

Trade-Offs Between Reducing Complex Terminology and Producing Accurate Interpretations from Environmental DNA: Comment on “Environmental DNA: What\u27s behind the term?” by Pawlowski et al., (2020)

In a recent paper, “Environmental DNA: What\u27s behind the term? Clarifying the terminology and recommendations for its future use in biomonitoring,” Pawlowski et al. argue that the term eDNA should be used to refer to the pool of DNA isolated from environmental samples, as opposed to only extra-organismal DNA from macro-organisms. We agree with this view. However, we are concerned that their proposed two-level terminology specifying sampling environment and targeted taxa is overly simplistic and might hinder rather than improve clear communication about environmental DNA and its use in biomonitoring. This terminology is based on categories that are often difficult to assign and uninformative, and it overlooks a fundamental distinction within eDNA: the type of DNA (organismal or extra-organismal) from which ecological interpretations are derived

Erratum to: Trachoma Prevalence After Discontinuation of Mass Azithromycin Distribution.

In "Trachoma Prevalence After Discontinuation of Mass Azithromycin Distribution [J Infect Dis. 2020 Feb 13, jiz691, https://doi.org/10.1093/infdis/jiz691]" by Godwin et al., the first sentence of the Results section includes a reference to "ITI database" that is incorrect and should read as "GET2020 Database". In addition, the authors note that major contributors to the GET2020 database include numerous Ministries of Health worldwide as well as the Global Trachoma Mapping Project (Solomon AW, Pavluck AL, Courtright P, et al. The Global Trachoma Mapping Project: Methodology of a 34-Country Population-Based Study. Ophthalmic Epidemiol 2015; 22(3):214 25). The authors regret the error