The Relationship between Religiosity and Health-Promoting Behaviors in Pregnant Women at Pregnancy Resource Centers

Abstract available through the Annals of Behavioral Medicine

Initial Validation and Findings From the Willing/Ready Subscale of the Church Addiction Response Scale

Addiction has been a global health crisis over recent decades and worsened substantially during COVID-19 lockdowns. We report on the development, validation, and findings from an instrument developed to assess the readiness of churches in the Appalachian Highlands to address addiction. The Church Addiction Response Scale (CARS) is a 41-item, three section measure assessing “What are your views about addiction?” (14 items), “What are your views about interacting with people who are addicted to drugs?” (11 items), and “What do you think the church’s role is in addressing addiction?” (16 items). The CARS was found to be unidimensional with strong internal consistency and initial evidence of construct validity was positive. Most respondents reported willingness to assist people living with addiction, but many reported that they felt underprepared, thus were not ready. Areas of preparation were largely those that could be addressed through training, such as understanding the physiology and psychology of addiction, available treatment options, and how to avoid doing harm. Thus, with adequate training, the likelihood of equipping a church-based workforce to provide support for people living with addiction seems attainable

Low-Cost Air Quality Monitoring Tools: From Research to Practice (A Workshop Summary).

In May 2017, a two-day workshop was held in Los Angeles (California, U.S.A.) to gather practitioners who work with low-cost sensors used to make air quality measurements. The community of practice included individuals from academia, industry, non-profit groups, community-based organizations, and regulatory agencies. The group gathered to share knowledge developed from a variety of pilot projects in hopes of advancing the collective knowledge about how best to use low-cost air quality sensors. Panel discussion topics included: (1) best practices for deployment and calibration of low-cost sensor systems, (2) data standardization efforts and database design, (3) advances in sensor calibration, data management, and data analysis and visualization, and (4) lessons learned from research/community partnerships to encourage purposeful use of sensors and create change/action. Panel discussions summarized knowledge advances and project successes while also highlighting the questions, unresolved issues, and technological limitations that still remain within the low-cost air quality sensor arena

Stochastic models for the in silico simulation of synaptic processes

Background: Research in life sciences is benefiting from a large availability of formal description techniques and analysis methodologies. These allow both the phenomena investigated to be precisely modeled and virtual experiments to be performed in silico. Such experiments may result in easier, faster, and satisfying approximations of their in vitro/vivo counterparts. A promising approach is represented by the study of biological phenomena as a collection of interactive entities through process calculi equipped with stochastic semantics. These exploit formal grounds developed in the theory of concurrency in computer science, account for the not continuous, nor discrete, nature of many phenomena, enjoy nice compositional properties and allow for simulations that have been demonstrated to be coherent with data in literature. Results: Motivated by the need to address some aspects of the functioning of neural synapses, we have developed one such model for synaptic processes in the calyx of Held, which is a glutamatergic synapse in the auditory pathway of the mammalia. We have developed such a stochastic model starting from existing kinetic models based on ODEs of some sub-components of the synapse, integrating other data from literature and making some assumptions about non-fully understood processes. Experiments have confirmed the coherence of our model with known biological data, also validating the assumptions made. Our model overcomes some limitations of the kinetic ones and, to our knowledge, represents the first model of synaptic processes based on process calculi. The compositionality of the approach has permitted us to independently focus on tuning the models of the pre- and post- synaptic traits, and then to naturally connect them, by dealing with “interface” issues. Furthermore, we have improved the expressiveness of the model, e.g. by embedding easy control of element concentration time courses. Sensitivity analysis over several parameters of the model has provided results that may help clarify the dynamics of synaptic transmission, while experiments with the model of the complete synapse seem worth explaining short-term plasticity mechanisms. Conclusions: Specific presynaptic and postsynaptic mechanisms can be further analysed under various conditions, for instance by studying the presynaptic behaviour under repeated activations. The level of details of the description can be refined, for instance by further specifying the neurotransmitter generation and release steps. Taking advantage of the compositionality of the approach, an enhanced model could then be composed with other neural models, designed within the same framework, in order to obtain a more detailed and comprehensive model. In the long term, we are interested, in particular, in addressing models of synaptic plasticity, i.e. activity dependent mechanisms, which are the bases of memory and learning processes. More on the computer science side, we plan to follow some directions to improve the underlying computational model and the linguistic primitives it provides as suggested by the experiments carried out, e.g. by introducing a suitable notion of (spatial) locality

Planck intermediate results XXIV : Constraints on variations in fundamental constants

Any variation in the fundamental physical constants, more particularly in the fine structure constant, a, or in the mass of the electron, me, affects the recombination history of the Universe and cause an imprint on the cosmic microwave background angular power spectra. We show that the Planck data allow one to improve the constraint on the time variation of the fine structure constant at redshift z - 10(3) by about a factor of 5 compared to WMAP data, as well as to break the degeneracy with the Hubble constant, H-0. In addition to a, we can set a constraint on the variation in the mass of the electron, me, and in the simultaneous variation of the two constants. We examine in detail the degeneracies between fundamental constants and the cosmological parameters, in order to compare the limits obtained from Planck and WMAP and to determine the constraining power gained by including other cosmological probes. We conclude that independent time variations of the fine structure constant and of the mass of the electron are constrained by Planck to Delta alpha/alpha = (3.6 +/- 3.7) x 10(-3) and Delta m(e)/m(e) = (4 +/- 11) x 10(-3) at the 68% confidence level. We also investigate the possibility of a spatial variation of the fine structure constant. The relative amplitude of a dipolar spatial variation in a (corresponding to a gradient across our Hubble volume) is constrained to be delta alpha/alpha = (-2.4 +/- 3.7) x 10(-2).Peer reviewe

Planck Intermediate Results. XXXVI. Optical identification and redshifts of Planck SZ sources with telescopes at the Canary Islands Observatories

We present the results of approximately three years of observations of Planck Sunyaev-Zeldovich (SZ) sources with telescopes at the Canary Islands observatories as part of the general optical follow-up programme undertaken by the Planck collaboration. In total, 78 SZ sources are discussed. Deep-imaging observations were obtained for most of these sources; spectroscopic observations in either in long-slit or multi-object modes were obtained for many. We effectively used 37.5 clear nights. We found optical counterparts for 73 of the 78 candidates. This sample includes 53 spectroscopic redshift determinations, 20 of them obtained with a multi-object spectroscopic mode. The sample contains new redshifts for 27 Planck clusters that were not included in the first Planck SZ source catalogue (PSZ1).Comment: 15 pages, 14 figures, accepted for publication in A&

Planck intermediate results X. Physics of the hot gas in the Coma cluster

We present an analysis of Planck satellite data on the Coma cluster observed via the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. Thanks to its great sensitivity, Planck is able, for the first time, to detect SZ emission up to r ≈ 3 × R500. We test previously proposed spherically symmetric models for the pressure distribution in clusters against the azimuthally averaged data. In particular, we find that the Arnaud et al. (2010, A&A, 517, A92) "universal" pressure profile does not fit Coma, and that their pressure profile for merging systems provides a reasonable fit to the data only at r R500 than the mean pressure profile predicted by the simulations used to constrain the models. The Planck image shows significant local steepening of the y profile in two regions about half a degree to the west and to the south-east of the cluster centre. These features are consistent with the presence of shock fronts at these radii, and indeed the western feature was previously noticed in the ROSAT PSPC mosaic as well as in the radio. Using Plancky profiles extracted from corresponding sectors we find pressure jumps of 4.9-0.2+0.4 and 5.0-0.1+1.3 in the west and south-east, respectively. Assuming Rankine-Hugoniot pressure jump conditions, we deduce that the shock waves should propagate with Mach number Mw = 2.03-0.04+0.09 and Mse = 2.05-0.02+0.25 in the west and south-east, respectively. Finally, we find that the y and radio-synchrotron signals are quasi-linearly correlated on Mpc scales, with small intrinsic scatter. This implies either that the energy density of cosmic-ray electrons is relatively constant throughout the cluster, or that the magnetic fields fall off much more slowly with radius than previously thought. © 2013 ESO

Planck early results VII : The Early Release Compact Source Catalogue

Peer reviewe

A Research Agenda for Helminth Diseases of Humans: Towards Control and Elimination

Human helminthiases are of considerable public health importance in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The acknowledgement of the disease burden due to helminth infections, the availability of donated or affordable drugs that are mostly safe and moderately efficacious, and the implementation of viable mass drug administration (MDA) interventions have prompted the establishment of various large-scale control and elimination programmes. These programmes have benefited from improved epidemiological mapping of the infections, better understanding of the scope and limitations of currently available diagnostics and of the relationship between infection and morbidity, feasibility of community-directed or school-based interventions, and advances in the design of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) protocols. Considerable success has been achieved in reducing morbidity or suppressing transmission in a number of settings, whilst challenges remain in many others. Some of the obstacles include the lack of diagnostic tools appropriate to the changing requirements of ongoing interventions and elimination settings; the reliance on a handful of drugs about which not enough is known regarding modes of action, modes of resistance, and optimal dosage singly or in combination; the difficulties in sustaining adequate coverage and compliance in prolonged and/or integrated programmes; an incomplete understanding of the social, behavioural, and environmental determinants of infection; and last, but not least, very little investment in research and development (R&D). The Disease Reference Group on Helminth Infections (DRG4), established in 2009 by the Special Programme for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases (TDR), was given the mandate to undertake a comprehensive review of recent advances in helminthiases research, identify research gaps, and rank priorities for an R&D agenda for the control and elimination of these infections. This review presents the processes undertaken to identify and rank ten top research priorities; discusses the implications of realising these priorities in terms of their potential for improving global health and achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); outlines salient research funding needs; and introduces the series of reviews that follow in this PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases collection, “A Research Agenda for Helminth Diseases of Humans.

Genetic mechanisms of critical illness in COVID-19.

Host-mediated lung inflammation is present1, and drives mortality2, in the critical illness caused by coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Host genetic variants associated with critical illness may identify mechanistic targets for therapeutic development3. Here we report the results of the GenOMICC (Genetics Of Mortality In Critical Care) genome-wide association study in 2,244 critically ill patients with COVID-19 from 208 UK intensive care units. We have identified and replicated the following new genome-wide significant associations: on chromosome 12q24.13 (rs10735079, P = 1.65 × 10-8) in a gene cluster that encodes antiviral restriction enzyme activators (OAS1, OAS2 and OAS3); on chromosome 19p13.2 (rs74956615, P = 2.3 × 10-8) near the gene that encodes tyrosine kinase 2 (TYK2); on chromosome 19p13.3 (rs2109069, P = 3.98 ×  10-12) within the gene that encodes dipeptidyl peptidase 9 (DPP9); and on chromosome 21q22.1 (rs2236757, P = 4.99 × 10-8) in the interferon receptor gene IFNAR2. We identified potential targets for repurposing of licensed medications: using Mendelian randomization, we found evidence that low expression of IFNAR2, or high expression of TYK2, are associated with life-threatening disease; and transcriptome-wide association in lung tissue revealed that high expression of the monocyte-macrophage chemotactic receptor CCR2 is associated with severe COVID-19. Our results identify robust genetic signals relating to key host antiviral defence mechanisms and mediators of inflammatory organ damage in COVID-19. Both mechanisms may be amenable to targeted treatment with existing drugs. However, large-scale randomized clinical trials will be essential before any change to clinical practice