Breaking Down Barriers: Investigating Structural and Systemic Factors that Contribute to COVID-19 Disparities in African American Communities in New Jersey

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the lives of millions of Americans; however, minority communities have been hit the hardest as infection rates continue to sky rocket and new variants arise. As of October 5, 2021, the CDC reports that African Americans make up a similar share of cases relative to the overall population, at about 12%, but have a significantly higher rate of deaths compared to the population, at approximately14%. African American communities are being disproportionately affected because of higher incidence of chronic diseases, inadequate access to health care, and poorer living and working conditions, which increases their vulnerability to infection. Purpose: This aim of this research project is to understand the factors that play a role in increased COVID-19 related hospitalizations, positive tests, admission to ICUs, and death from COVID-19 in African American communities in NJ. The goal is to promote urgency on issues that influence health and move conversations towards the plight of African American communities. Methods: A comprehensive literature review was conducted using PubMed, JAMA, SCOPUS, NJ COVID-19 Data Dashboard, KFF, and Web of Science. Keywords used in searches included COVID-19, New Jersey, minority communities, health disparities, African American, chronic disease, poverty, malnutrition, housing insecurity, and obesity. Exclusion criteria included any studies where the population of focus was not African American or studies that did not show the race variable as a social determinant. Results: While work is ongoing, preliminary results suggest that there is significantly higher risk of mortality due to COVID-19 amongst African American communities. Established factors based on review of literature include chronic medical conditions posing as comorbidities, obesity, housing density, and uninsured rates. Circumstantial risk factors included detrimental behaviors such as smoking, alcohol consumption, and lack of physical activity. Nationwide COVID-19 data can be used to complement local or state data and allow those in positions of power to think about populations that are most at risk. This, in turn, can inform public health departments and their partners on how they should proceed in the future, by equitably distributing resources to all people, and improving health conditions for all, especially minority communities. Conclusions: The goal of this literature review was to identify the risk factors specific to minority communities, specifically African Americans in NJ. The historical context within which African American communities are disproportionately affected as well as the social and economic dimensions of the current pandemic were examined. Research is needed to find evidence of possible strategies that may be utilized to inform policies and practices in order to build a strong culture of health in minority communities, provide guidance, and share stories to uplift these communities that are affected so deeply. With this information, health care providers, community organizers, and elected officials can work collaboratively to mitigate health care inequities and improve health outcomes for underserved communities

Dancing through Parkinson’s: Investigating the Impact of Argentine Tango on Motor, Cognitive and Psychosocial Function

Background: People with Parkinson’s Disease (PD) undergo progressive motor, cognitive, and psychosocial symptoms, which decrease their quality of life (QOL). Adapted tango (AT) has recently emerged as a promising approach to ameliorating functional mobility, balance, and gait seen in people with PD. Methods: A comprehensive literature review is conducted using databases such as PubMed, SCOPUS, and Embase. A wide variety of search terms are used, including but not limited to Parkinson’s disease, exercise, dance, tango, motor, cognitive, psychosocial effects, freezing of gait, and balance. Results: People with PD who have undergone AT have improved in certain motor, cognitive and psychosocial domains. Balance, gait, physical endurance, forward and backward gait velocity, and gait stance improved from baseline in the AT group and improved either equally or more than the control exercise group. AT participants do not show any improvements in overall cognitive impairment but multiple studies show improvement in the Brooks Spatial test, indicating tango may play a role in enhancing visuospatial cognition. Lastly, AT shows improvements in QOL, ADL factors, low-demand leisure participation, the greater number of “New Social Activities” and increased recovery of activities lost since PD. Conclusion: Long-term participation in partnered AT benefits people with PD by improving motor, cognitive and psychosocial effects. AT’s social engagement factor and its enjoyable skill-based exercise can help encourage long-term participation

Time–Dependent Friction And Dynamics In Hydrogel Surface Contacts

Hydrogels are composed of a sparse, cross-linked polymer matrix infused with water. They can be found in a multitude of biological settings, from cell nuclei to cartilage, and are used in many industrial applications. However, their material properties are not well-understood due to their heterogeneous nature. Here we investigate the interfacial rheology of both polyacrylamide and agarose hydrogels using a custom, low-force pin-on-disc tribometer under a variety of environmental conditions. Under a constant normal load, these hydrogels exhibit a dynamic frictional transition characterized by a precipitous drop in the friction coefficient at a critical velocity. Within a range of speeds near this dynamic frictional transition, transient behavior can be observed. Upon increasing the speed, the coefficient of friction decreases exponentially, with a characteristic decay time of order 5-10 minutes. Surprisingly, a cessation of sliding results in a much more rapid recovery of the friction coefficient, suggesting that nonlinear processes control these timescales. We will show how this transition can be tuned by varying the liquid salt concentration, liquid viscosity, and sliding geometry. Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Incremental Evaluation of Complex Conditions

Evaluating a complex condition such as users who have visited a certain type of website in the last week requires a great deal of processing power. The present disclosure describes an incremental evaluation technique that makes use of shortcuts and intermediate results in order to reduce the amount of time and processing needed to produce a final result. The main component of a visitor condition as described is a unified segment which can contain any number of simple or sequence type segment filters. Each segment filter can be evaluated using shortcuts and intermediate results. The evaluation of the entire unified segment simply requires a cross-visit AND of all segment filters. Making use of simpler evaluations on much smaller sets of data can be an effective approach to data analytics at a large scale

ESTIMATION OF LIPID PROFILE AND ASSESSMENT OF CARDIOVASCULAR RISK IN SMOKERS BY USING NEW ATHEROGENIC INDICES

Objective: Smoking habit leads to elevated levels of lipid profile thus increasing the cardiovascular disease risk in coronary heart disease. The aim ofstudy is undertaken to evaluate plasma lipid profile, of the male smoker with non-smoker's healthy matched control and assessing the cardiovascularrisk by using new atherogenic indices.Methods: Fasting blood samples were collected form both cases and controls and estimation of lipid profile by using by using autoanalyzer. A detailedphysical and anthropometric parameters information was collected form each participant subjects.Results: Plasma total cholesterol (TC) (221.52±8.34), triglyceride (TG) (274.94±28.70) low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-c) (129.22±7.76),very LDL-c (VLDL-c) (54.98±5.74) and non-high-density lipoprotein cholesterol NonHDL-c (HDL-c) (183.26±7.58) in smokers subjects, which weresignificantly (p<0.0001) higher compared with non-smokers, while HDL-c significantly (38.25±1.34; p<0.001) decreased in smokers as comparedto non-smokers. Further, atherogenic ratios like, Castelli's risk index (CRI-I)=TC/HDL-c, CRI-II=LDL-c/HDL-c, atherogenic coefficient = (TC–HDL-c)/HDL-c TG/HDL-c ratio, and atherogenic index of plasma =log (TG/HDL-c) were calculated for individual subjects by using lipid profile. All these lipidratio are significantly (p<0.0001) in smoker group.Conclusion: Our conclusion, these ratio's could be used for identifying individual at higher risk of cardiovascular disease in the clinical practicesespecially, when the absolute values of lipid profile seem normal or higher and not markedly deranged or in centers with insufficient resources.Keywords: Cigarette smoking, Lipid profile, Cardiovascular risk, Atherogenic indices

Proteome-wide production of monoclonal antibodies and study of intracellular localisation for Varicella-zoster virus (VZV)

Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is a member of the alphaherpesvirus subfamily and with a genome encoding 70 proteins the smallest of all human herpesviruses. Upon primary infection it causes varicella also called chickenpox in children. As a consequence, it reaches sensory nerve ganglia where latency is established. Upon reactivation it causes a secondary disease called Herpes zoster mostly in adults. Todate, VZV is the least studied human herpesvirus due to the lack of cell-free virus in culture, of virus-specific tools and an effective animal model. Therefore, many aspects of the VZV infection cycle, of latency and reactivation are poorly characterized. Moreover, the function of many proteins specific to VZV has not been identified. The goal of this research was to generate hybridoma clones as a permanent source of VZV specific antibodies and to use the antibodies produced to study the localisation of VZV proteins in the viral context on a proteome-wide level. To this end, a VZV ORFeome entry library was constructed using the Gateway® recombinational cloning technology. For VZV protein expression in E. coli, the entry library was subcloned into four different pET derived expression vectors providing either an N-terminal His6, a C-terminal His6, an N-terminal MBP, or an N-terminal GST tag. Following purification of 64 VZV proteins, mice were immunised and subsequently used to generate antibody producing hybridoma clones. So far, our clone collection contains 218 mother clones producing antibodies to 61 (87%) VZV proteins. In this clone collection 190 clones were identified as positive in Western blotting covering 57 VZV ORFs while 123 antibodies were tested positive in immunofluorescence covering 52 VZV ORFs. Using this novel antibody collection, the localisation of 52 (74%) proteins could be determined in the context of VZV infection 22 of which were analysed for the first time. In total, 20 ORFs were localised in the nucleus, 16 ORFs were present in the cytoplasm and 16 ORFs were found in both the nucleus and cytoplasm. Comparison of 41 core proteins present in HSV-1, VZV, CMV, EBV as well as KSHV showed excellent agreement in localisation of conserved glycoproteins, capsid and tegument proteins. Several immunodominant regions on the viral glycoproteins gK, gB, gL, gI, gE and the membrane associated phosphoprotein ORF24 were identified using the pepscan technique. This precious antibody collection gives access to various experimental approaches and will allow to unveil biological secrets in the field of Herpesvirology

Stateful metadata for big data

Large volumes of data, characterized by large variety and high update velocities, pose challenges in terms of storage, application of concurrently occurring frequent updates, and serving processes that require the most accurate version of the data simultaneously. In most current schemes, it is not possible to guarantee all of these characteristics and a relaxing one or more requirements is necessary. The present disclosure describes a scalable, easy-to-maintain metadata mechanism that is fast and efficient to update, and can provide all the above guarantees on data. The metadata maintains lightweight validity markers, and simple algebra is performed thereof to surface the most up to date and accurate data while enabling constant updates to the data in a non-blocking fashion

Proteome-wide production of monoclonal antibodies and study of intracellular localisation for Varicella-zoster virus (VZV)

Varicella zoster virus (VZV) is a member of the alphaherpesvirus subfamily and with a genome encoding 70 proteins the smallest of all human herpesviruses. Upon primary infection it causes varicella also called chickenpox in children. As a consequence, it reaches sensory nerve ganglia where latency is established. Upon reactivation it causes a secondary disease called Herpes zoster mostly in adults. Todate, VZV is the least studied human herpesvirus due to the lack of cell-free virus in culture, of virus-specific tools and an effective animal model. Therefore, many aspects of the VZV infection cycle, of latency and reactivation are poorly characterized. Moreover, the function of many proteins specific to VZV has not been identified. The goal of this research was to generate hybridoma clones as a permanent source of VZV specific antibodies and to use the antibodies produced to study the localisation of VZV proteins in the viral context on a proteome-wide level. To this end, a VZV ORFeome entry library was constructed using the Gateway® recombinational cloning technology. For VZV protein expression in E. coli, the entry library was subcloned into four different pET derived expression vectors providing either an N-terminal His6, a C-terminal His6, an N-terminal MBP, or an N-terminal GST tag. Following purification of 64 VZV proteins, mice were immunised and subsequently used to generate antibody producing hybridoma clones. So far, our clone collection contains 218 mother clones producing antibodies to 61 (87%) VZV proteins. In this clone collection 190 clones were identified as positive in Western blotting covering 57 VZV ORFs while 123 antibodies were tested positive in immunofluorescence covering 52 VZV ORFs. Using this novel antibody collection, the localisation of 52 (74%) proteins could be determined in the context of VZV infection 22 of which were analysed for the first time. In total, 20 ORFs were localised in the nucleus, 16 ORFs were present in the cytoplasm and 16 ORFs were found in both the nucleus and cytoplasm. Comparison of 41 core proteins present in HSV-1, VZV, CMV, EBV as well as KSHV showed excellent agreement in localisation of conserved glycoproteins, capsid and tegument proteins. Several immunodominant regions on the viral glycoproteins gK, gB, gL, gI, gE and the membrane associated phosphoprotein ORF24 were identified using the pepscan technique. This precious antibody collection gives access to various experimental approaches and will allow to unveil biological secrets in the field of Herpesvirology

Azlocillin can be the potential drug candidate against drug-tolerant Borrelia burgdorferi sensu stricto JLB31.

Lyme disease is one of most common vector-borne diseases, reporting more than 300,000 cases annually in the United States. Treating Lyme disease during its initial stages with traditional tetracycline antibiotics is effective. However, 10-20% of patients treated with antibiotic therapy still shows prolonged symptoms of fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, and perceived cognitive impairment. When these symptoms persists for more than 6 months to years after completing conventional antibiotics treatment are called post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome (PTLDS). Though the exact reason for the prolongation of post treatment symptoms are not known, the growing evidence from recent studies suggests it might be due to the existence of drug-tolerant persisters. In order to identify effective drug molecules that kill drug-tolerant borrelia we have tested two antibiotics, azlocillin and cefotaxime that were identified by us earlier. The in vitro efficacy studies of azlocillin and cefotaxime on drug-tolerant persisters were done by semisolid plating method. The results obtained were compared with one of the currently prescribed antibiotic doxycycline. We found that azlocillin completely kills late log phase and 7-10 days old stationary phase B. burgdorferi. Our results also demonstrate that azlocillin and cefotaxime can effectively kill in vitro doxycycline-tolerant B. burgdorferi. Moreover, the combination drug treatment of azlocillin and cefotaxime effectively killed doxycycline-tolerant B. burgdorferi. Furthermore, when tested in vivo, azlocillin has shown good efficacy against B. burgdorferi in mice model. These seminal findings strongly suggests that azlocillin can be effective in treating B. burgdorferi sensu stricto JLB31 infection and furthermore in depth research is necessary to evaluate its potential use for Lyme disease therapy