The Medical Home and Care Coordination in Disaster Recovery: Hypothesis for Interventions and Research

In postdisaster settings, health care providers encounter secondary surges of unmet primary care and mental health needs that evolve throughout disaster recovery phases. Whatever a community’s predisaster adequacy of health care, postdisaster gaps are similar to those of any underserved region. We hypothesize that existing practice and evidence supporting medical homes and care coordination in primary care for the underserved provide a favorable model for improving health in disrupted communities. Elements of medical home services can be offered by local or temporary providers from outside the region, working out of mobile clinics early in disaster recovery. As repairs and reconstruction proceed, local services are restored over weeks or years. Throughout recovery, major tasks include identifying high-risk patients relative to the disaster and underlying health conditions, assisting displaced families as they transition through housing locations, and tracking their evolving access to health care and community services as they are restored. Postdisaster sources of financial assistance for the disaster-exposed population are often temporary and evolving, requiring up-to-date information to cover costs of care until stable services and insurance coverage are restored. Evidence to support disaster recovery health care improvement will require research funding and metrics on structures, processes, and outcomes of the disaster recovery medical home and care coordination, based on adaptation of standard validated methods to crisis environments

Quantifying imperfect detection in an invasive pest fish and the implications for conservation management

In managing non-native species, surveillance programmes aim to minimise the opportunity for invasions to develop from initial introductions through early detection. However, this is dependent on surveillance methods being able to detect species at low levels of abundance to avoid false-negative recordings through imperfect detection. We investigated through field experimentation the ability to detect Pseudorasbora parva, a highly invasive pest fish in Europe, in relation to their known density and sampling method. Secure pond mesocosms of area 100 m2 contained P. parva densities from 0.02 to 5.0 m"122; each density was in triplicate. These were searched using point sampling electric fishing and deployment of fish traps (non-baited and baited). No fish were captured at densities 0.5 m"122, whereas for electric fishing it only exceeded 0.95 at 5.0 m"122 using high searching effort. These data reveal that small pest fishes such as P. parva may be prone to imperfect detection when at low densities and this is consistent with a number of other invasive species. This indicates the importance of designing surveillance programmes using methods of known statistical power to optimise conservation resource expenditure and enhance management outcomes

Zeroing in on more photons and gluons

We discuss radiation zeros that are found in gauge tree amplitudes for processes involving multi-photon emission. Previous results are clarified by examples and by further elaboration. The conditions under which such amplitude zeros occur are identical in form to those for the single-photon zeros, and all radiated photons must travel parallel to each other. Any other neutral particle likewise must be massless (e.g. gluon) and travel in that common direction. The relevance to questions like gluon jet identification and computational checks is considered. We use examples to show how certain multi-photon amplitudes evade the zeros, and to demonstrate the connection to a more general result, the decoupling of an external electromagnetic plane wave in the ``null zone". Brief comments are made about zeros associated with other gauge-boson emission.Comment: 26 page

Comparison of sequencing-based methods to profile DNA methylation and identification of monoallelic epigenetic modifications.

Analysis of DNA methylation patterns relies increasingly on sequencing-based profiling methods. The four most frequently used sequencing-based technologies are the bisulfite-based methods MethylC-seq and reduced representation bisulfite sequencing (RRBS), and the enrichment-based techniques methylated DNA immunoprecipitation sequencing (MeDIP-seq) and methylated DNA binding domain sequencing (MBD-seq). We applied all four methods to biological replicates of human embryonic stem cells to assess their genome-wide CpG coverage, resolution, cost, concordance and the influence of CpG density and genomic context. The methylation levels assessed by the two bisulfite methods were concordant (their difference did not exceed a given threshold) for 82% for CpGs and 99% of the non-CpG cytosines. Using binary methylation calls, the two enrichment methods were 99% concordant and regions assessed by all four methods were 97% concordant. We combined MeDIP-seq with methylation-sensitive restriction enzyme (MRE-seq) sequencing for comprehensive methylome coverage at lower cost. This, along with RNA-seq and ChIP-seq of the ES cells enabled us to detect regions with allele-specific epigenetic states, identifying most known imprinted regions and new loci with monoallelic epigenetic marks and monoallelic expression

Evaluation of machine-learning methods for ligand-based virtual screening

Machine-learning methods can be used for virtual screening by analysing the structural characteristics of molecules of known (in)activity, and we here discuss the use of kernel discrimination and naive Bayesian classifier (NBC) methods for this purpose. We report a kernel method that allows the processing of molecules represented by binary, integer and real-valued descriptors, and show that it is little different in screening performance from a previously described kernel that had been developed specifically for the analysis of binary fingerprint representations of molecular structure. We then evaluate the performance of an NBC when the training-set contains only a very few active molecules. In such cases, a simpler approach based on group fusion would appear to provide superior screening performance, especially when structurally heterogeneous datasets are to be processed

Planning Framework Options for The Massachusetts Ocean Plan (DRAFT)

The Massachusetts Ocean Partnership (MOP) Planning Frameworks Team, in consultation with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EEA), and based on collective experience and a review of ocean, coastal and resource management programs from the US and other countries, suggests that nine elements are essential components of the framework for the Massachusetts Ocean Plan and its implementation. While management plans and programs generally have these elements in common, there are a range of options for carrying out each program component. These options were presented to structure and inform the development of the Massachusetts Ocean Plan. For the most part, the range of options represents those that were considered to be appropriate under the Commonwealth’s existing legal and administrative structure and responsive to the requirements of the Massachusetts Ocean Act. However, the general concepts these options represent are likely to be transferable to other jurisdictions (especially in the United States) and can inform future ocean management and planning in Massachusetts. Additionally, options or their core elements can be combined to create additional alternatives within one of the nine planning components

The State of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the United States and Pacific Freely Associated States: 2002

Called for by the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force’s (USCRTF) National Action Plan to Conserve Coral Reefs, this is the first biennial report on the condition of coral reefs. It is the scientific baseline for subsequent reports on the health of U.S. coral reef ecosystems that are to be used by NOAA and others to evaluate the efficacy of coral reef conservation and management practices. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Ocean Service led the development of this report. It was authored by 38 experts and supported by 79 contributors from government agencies and non-governmental organizations across the nation and internationally. Over 100 Task Force members and other notable scientists have reviewed this document

Fabrication and characterization of net-shaped iron nitride-amine-epoxy soft magnetic composites

Soft magnetic composites (SMCs) offer a promising alternative to electrical steels and soft ferrites in high performance motors and power electronics. They are ideal for incorporation into passive electronic components such as inductors and transformers, which require a non-permanent magnetic core to rapidly switch magnetization. As a result, there is a need for materials with the right combination of low coercivity, low magnetic remanence, high relative permeability, and high saturation magnetization to achieve these goals. Iron nitride is an attractive soft magnetic material for incorporation into an amine/epoxy resin matrix. This permits the synthesis of net-shaped SMCs using a “bottom-up” approach for overcoming the limitations of current state-of-the-art SMCs made via conventional powder metal processing techniques. In this work we present the fabrication of various net-shaped, iron nitride-based SMCs using two different amine/epoxy resin systems and their magnetic characterization. The maximum volume loading of iron nitride reached was ∼77% via hot pressing, which produced SMCs with a saturation magnetic polarization (Js) of ∼0.9 T, roughly 2–3 times the Js of soft ferrites

Observation of an Excited Bc+ State

Using pp collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 8.5 fb-1 recorded by the LHCb experiment at center-of-mass energies of s=7, 8, and 13 TeV, the observation of an excited Bc+ state in the Bc+π+π- invariant-mass spectrum is reported. The observed peak has a mass of 6841.2±0.6(stat)±0.1(syst)±0.8(Bc+) MeV/c2, where the last uncertainty is due to the limited knowledge of the Bc+ mass. It is consistent with expectations of the Bc∗(2S31)+ state reconstructed without the low-energy photon from the Bc∗(1S31)+→Bc+γ decay following Bc∗(2S31)+→Bc∗(1S31)+π+π-. A second state is seen with a global (local) statistical significance of 2.2σ (3.2σ) and a mass of 6872.1±1.3(stat)±0.1(syst)±0.8(Bc+) MeV/c2, and is consistent with the Bc(2S10)+ state. These mass measurements are the most precise to date