Socializing One Health: an innovative strategy to investigate social and behavioral risks of emerging viral threats

In an effort to strengthen global capacity to prevent, detect, and control infectious diseases in animals and people, the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Emerging Pandemic Threats (EPT) PREDICT project funded development of regional, national, and local One Health capacities for early disease detection, rapid response, disease control, and risk reduction. From the outset, the EPT approach was inclusive of social science research methods designed to understand the contexts and behaviors of communities living and working at human-animal-environment interfaces considered high-risk for virus emergence. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches, PREDICT behavioral research aimed to identify and assess a range of socio-cultural behaviors that could be influential in zoonotic disease emergence, amplification, and transmission. This broad approach to behavioral risk characterization enabled us to identify and characterize human activities that could be linked to the transmission dynamics of new and emerging viruses. This paper provides a discussion of implementation of a social science approach within a zoonotic surveillance framework. We conducted in-depth ethnographic interviews and focus groups to better understand the individual- and community-level knowledge, attitudes, and practices that potentially put participants at risk for zoonotic disease transmission from the animals they live and work with, across 6 interface domains. When we asked highly-exposed individuals (ie. bushmeat hunters, wildlife or guano farmers) about the risk they perceived in their occupational activities, most did not perceive it to be risky, whether because it was normalized by years (or generations) of doing such an activity, or due to lack of information about potential risks. Integrating the social sciences allows investigations of the specific human activities that are hypothesized to drive disease emergence, amplification, and transmission, in order to better substantiate behavioral disease drivers, along with the social dimensions of infection and transmission dynamics. Understanding these dynamics is critical to achieving health security--the protection from threats to health-- which requires investments in both collective and individual health security. Involving behavioral sciences into zoonotic disease surveillance allowed us to push toward fuller community integration and engagement and toward dialogue and implementation of recommendations for disease prevention and improved health security

Standardizing minority languages: Competing ideologies of authority and authenticity in the global periphery

This book addresses a crucial, yet often overlooked dimension of minority language standardisation, namely, how social actors engage with, support, alter, resist and even reject standardisation processes. We look at standardisation processes as a political domain where social actors use standards as semiotic resources for articulating discourses on society. The chapters in this volume are therefore concerned first and foremost with social actors, their ideologies and practices, rather than with language per se. By considering the perspectives and actions of people who participate in or are affected by minority language politics, this volume aims to provide a comparative and nuanced analysis of the complexity and tensions inherent in minority language standardisation processes. Echoing Fasold (1984), this involves a shift in focus from a sociolinguistics of language to a sociolinguistics of people. How do social actors experience and negotiate these predicaments? Why are standards for minoritised languages sometimes sought after and praised and at other times vehemently contested and rejected? What are the consequences of standardisation projects for different people? It is these questions that this volume considers through case studies of minority language standardisation from around the world. The authors, who come from very different backgrounds with respect to involvement in standardisation processes, draw on ethnographic, historical and discourse data in order to examine standardisation projects in diverse settings. In bringing these case studies and analyses together, we aim to provide both empirical and conceptual insights into minority language standardisation. This volume highlights the role of social actors in the creation and negotiation of standards, and the diversity of marginalised or peripheral speech communities in which standardisation efforts occur. Focusing on ground-level processes and participants allows us to illuminate ways in which projects to standardise minoritised languages echo, reinvent, and at times subvert the characteristics of language standardisation established since the 18th century. Beginning with a reflection on language standardisation from a historical perspective (section 2), we then define our focus on minority/ minoritised language communities and discuss the nature of standardisation projects in these settings in particular (section 3). We conclude with an overview of the volume (section 4)

Estimating the Reduction in the Radiation Burden From Nuclear Cardiology Through Use of Stress-Only Imaging in the United States and Worldwide

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TGFβ drives immune evasion in genetically reconstituted colon cancer metastasis

Most patients with colorectal cancer die as a result of the disease spreading to other organs. However, no prevalent mutations have been associated with metastatic colorectal cancers1,2. Instead, particular features of the tumour microenvironment, such as lack of T-cell infiltration3, low type 1 T-helper cell (TH1) activity and reduced immune cytotoxicity2 or increased TGFβ levels4 predict adverse outcomes in patients with colorectal cancer. Here we analyse the interplay between genetic alterations and the tumour microenvironment by crossing mice bearing conditional alleles of four main colorectal cancer mutations in intestinal stem cells. Quadruple-mutant mice developed metastatic intestinal tumours that display key hallmarks of human microsatellite-stable colorectal cancers, including low mutational burden5, T-cell exclusion3 and TGFβ-activated stroma4,6,7. Inhibition of the PD-1–PD-L1 immune checkpoint provoked a limited response in this model system. By contrast, inhibition of TGFβ unleashed a potent and enduring cytotoxic T-cell response against tumour cells that prevented metastasis. In mice with progressive liver metastatic disease, blockade of TGFβ signalling rendered tumours susceptible to anti-PD-1–PD-L1 therapy. Our data show that increased TGFβ in the tumour microenvironment represents a primary mechanism of immune evasion that promotes T-cell exclusion and blocks acquisition of the TH1-effector phenotype. Immunotherapies directed against TGFβ signalling may therefore have broad applications in treating patients with advanced colorectal cancer