Compositions and methods for detecting mycobacterium

The present disclosure provides methods of detecting mycobacterium in an individual, generally involving detecting antibody to a mycobacterial lipid in a biological sample obtained from the individual. The present disclosure further provides compositions and kits for carrying out the methodsThe present disclosure provides methods of detecting mycobacterium in an individual, generally involving detecting antibody to a mycobacterial lipid in a biological sample obtained from the individual. The present disclosure further provides compositions and kits for carrying out the method

Functional Multipotency of Stem Cells: A Conceptual Review of Neurotrophic Factor-Based Evidence and Its Role in Translational Research

We here propose an updated concept of stem cells (SCs), with an emphasis on neural stem cells (NSCs). The conventional view, which has touched principally on the essential property of lineage multipotency (e.g., the ability of NSCs to differentiate into all neural cells), should be broadened to include the emerging recognition of biofunctional multipotency of SCs to mediate systemic homeostasis, evidenced in NSCs in particular by the secretion of neurotrophic factors. Under this new conceptual context and taking the NSC as a leading example, one may begin to appreciate and seek the “logic” behind the wide range of molecular tactics the NSC appears to serve at successive developmental stages as it integrates into and prepares, modifies, and guides the surrounding CNS micro- and macro-environment towards the formation and self-maintenance of a functioning adult nervous system. We suggest that embracing this view of the “multipotency” of the SCs is pivotal for correctly, efficiently, and optimally exploiting stem cell biology for therapeutic applications, including reconstitution of a dysfunctional CNS

A national survey of managed honey bee 2010-11 winter colony losses in the USA: results from the Bee Informed Partnership

This study records the fifth consecutive year that winter losses of managed honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies in the USA have been around 30%. In April 2011, a total of 5,441 US beekeepers (an estimated 11% of total US beekeepers) responded to a survey conducted by the Bee Informed Partnership. Survey respondents reported that they had lost an average of 38.4% of their colonies, for a total US colony loss of 29.9% over the winter of 2010-11. One-third of respondents (all classified as backyard beekeepers, i.e. keeping fewer than 50 colonies) reported no winter loss. There was considerable variation in both the average and total loss by state. On average, beekeepers consider acceptable losses to be 13.2%, but 68% of all responding beekeepers suffered actual losses in excess of what they considered acceptable. Of beekeepers who reported losing at least one colony, manageable conditions, such as starvation and a weak condition in the fall, were the leading self-identified causes of mortality. Respondents who indicated that varroa mites (Varroa destructor), small hive beetles (Aethina tumida), poor wintering conditions, and/or Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) conditions were a leading cause of mortality in their operations suffered a higher average loss than beekeepers who did not list any of these as potential causes. In a separate question, beekeepers who reported the symptom "no dead bees in hive or apiary" had significantly higher losses than those who did not report this symptom. In addition, commercial beekeepers were significantly more likely to indicate that colonies died with this symptom than either backyard or sideliner beekeepers.Keywords: 2010-11, USA, Mortality, Honey bee, OverwinterKeywords: 2010-11, USA, Mortality, Honey bee, Overwinte

A national survey of managed honey bee 2011-12 winter colony losses in the United States: results from the Bee Informed Partnership

Estimates of winter loss for managed honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies are an important measure of honey bee health and productivity. We used data from 5,500 US beekeepers (5,244 backyard, 189 sideline and 67 commercial beekeepers) who responded to the April 2012 Bee Informed Partnership Winter Colony Loss Survey and calculated loss as the difference in the number of colonies between October 1, 2011 and April 1, 2012, adjusting for increases and decreases over that period. In the US, the total colony loss was 22.5% for the 2011-12 winter; 45.1% (n = 2,482) of respondents reported no colony loss. Total loss during 2011-12 was substantially lower than loss during 2010-11 (29.9%). Of the 4,484 respondents who kept bees in 2010-11 and 2011-12, 72.0% reported that the loss during 2011-12 was smaller or similar to the loss during 2010-11. There was substantial variation in total loss by state (range 6.2% to 47.7%). The average loss per beekeeping operation was 25.4%, but the average loss was not significantly different by operation type (backyard, sideline, commercial). The average self-reported acceptable loss per respondent was 13.7%; 46.8% (n = 2,259) of respondents experienced winter colony losses in excess of the average acceptable loss. Of beekeepers who reported losing at least one colony during 2011-12, the leading self-identified causes of mortality were weak condition in the fall and queen failure. Respondents who indicated poor wintering conditions, CCD, or pesticides as a leading cause of mortality suffered a higher average loss when compared to beekeepers who did not list these as potential causes.Keywords: Mortality, Colony losses, USA, Honey bee, Overwinter, 2011-1

Agricultural Research Service Weed Science Research: Past, Present, and Future

The U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has been a leader in weed science research covering topics ranging from the development and use of integrated weed management (IWM) tactics to basic mechanistic studies, including biotic resistance of desirable plant communities and herbicide resistance. ARS weed scientists have worked in agricultural and natural ecosystems, including agronomic and horticultural crops, pastures, forests, wild lands, aquatic habitats, wetlands, and riparian areas. Through strong partnerships with academia, state agencies, private industry, and numerous federal programs, ARS weed scientists have made contributions to discoveries in the newest fields of robotics and genetics, as well as the traditional and fundamental subjects of weed-crop competition and physiology and integration of weed control tactics and practices. Weed science at ARS is often overshadowed by other research topics; thus, few are aware of the long history of ARS weed science and its important contributions. This review is the result of a symposium held at the Weed Science Society of America\u27s 62nd Annual Meeting in 2022 that included 10 separate presentations in a virtual Weed Science Webinar Series. The overarching themes of management tactics (IWM, biological control, and automation), basic mechanisms (competition, invasive plant genetics, and herbicide resistance), and ecosystem impacts (invasive plant spread, climate change, conservation, and restoration) represent core ARS weed science research that is dynamic and efficacious and has been a significant component of the agency\u27s national and international efforts. This review highlights current studies and future directions that exemplify the science and collaborative relationships both within and outside ARS. Given the constraints of weeds and invasive plants on all aspects of food, feed, and fiber systems, there is an acknowledged need to face new challenges, including agriculture and natural resources sustainability, economic resilience and reliability, and societal health and well-being

Spectrum of Disease Burden in Urban Informal Settlements of Brazil

AbstractSpectrum of Disease Burden in Urban Informal Settlements of BrazilbyRobert Eugene SnyderDoctor of Philosophy in EpidemiologyUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Lee W. Riley, ChairThere are more than one billion urban informal slum residents worldwide, comprising almost one-third of the global urban population. Slums are characterized by their abundance of risk factors for communicable and non-communicable diseases. Some of these include poor water and sanitation infrastructure, in addition to poor structural housing quality, overcrowding and insecure residential status (i.e. lack of land tenure). Residents of these communities shoulder a greater burden of biologic, spatial and social health determinants of disease and their corresponding disease outcomes than residents of the same city who do not live in slums. Due to systematic disenfranchisement and the complicated logistics involved in studying these populations, our knowledge about their health conditions and determinants of disease occurrence is sparse. This dissertation describes three approaches to begin to address this gap in knowledge.Chapter 1 sets the tone for this dissertation by describing the concept of slums and lays out the evidence for the disproportionate burden of disease borne by slum residents. While not being representative of all slums worldwide - Brazil is now considered an upper-middle-income country by the World Bank– the country’s slums serve as an important case study. Brazil has a relatively robust healthcare system, a functional democracy, and an active research sector, all of which facilitate the collection and comparison of data inside and outside of the country’s slums. Estimates of Brazil’s slum population range from 11,425,644 (6% of the total population) in the 2010 Brazilian Census (the official government estimate) to 45.7 million (28%) estimated by the United Nations Human Settlements Program. In 2010, the Brazilian government carried out a census with the goal of systematically enumerating and describing the physical and demographic characteristics of the country’s slums, coining the technical term aglomerados subnormais (AGSN) to describe slums.Perhaps the most recognizable of all slums in Brazil are the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; these architecturally colorful and culturally vibrant communities accentuate the city’s magnificent physical geography and beauty. Unfortunately, due to their precarious physical location, the quasi-legal land tenure of slum residents, the blatant political corruption, and the persistently poor implementation of the national healthcare system (in 2010 approximately 50% of Rio de Janeiro’s population had access to the Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS), these communities’ residents suffer from stark health inequalities. Chapter 2 uses the 2010 Census to describe the spatial distribution of social determinants of health in Rio de Janeiro. The findings from this analysis highlight differences in age, income, and access to electricity, sanitation, water, and solid waste disposal throughout the city, and point to the possibility that differences in these characteristics contribute to an inequitable distribution of disease between the city’s slum and non-slum areas.Chapter 3 delves more deeply into these inequalities. Given our group’s previously published evidence suggesting that the burden of tuberculosis is greater among residents of Rio de Janeiro’s slums than among residents of non-slum areas, we seek to fulfill a principle public health axiom: that we must seek and apply solutions to improve the health of populations. Chapter 3 evaluates the effectiveness of the directly observed treatment (DOT) program for tuberculosis treatment outcomes among TB cases inside and outside of Rio de Janeiro’s slums. Using the Brazilian Notifiable Disease System, Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação (SINAN), we compare treatment outcomes between TB cases on DOT in AGSN and non-AGSN census tracts. While we found that DOT coverage was low inside and outside of AGSNs, we report that DOT had a greater impact on the cure rate for TB cases in AGSN areas compared to TB cases in non-AGSN areas.Chapter 4 shifts the lens to non-communicable diseases (NCD) and to a different city, Salvador, where thirty-three percent of the population lives in slums. We compare the burden of several NCD (i.e. diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidemia) and the prevalence of risk factors (i.e. overweight, obesity and smoking) in a convenience sample of residents of Pau da Lima, an urban slum, with residents of the entire city as captured in a telephone survey. This telephone survey is an annual landline-based survey undertaken by the Brazilian Ministry of Health with the express purpose of monitoring the prevalences of NCD and NCD risk factors in Brazil’s capital cities. We age- and sex- standardized the prevalences of these conditions and risk factors and compared them between these two populations. We found that the age- and sex-adjusted prevalences of diabetes mellitus, smoking, being overweight/obese, and being obese, were higher among residents of Pau da Lima than in residents of the entire city of Salvador. A striking finding was that women living in slums suffered a disproportionate burden of being overweight or obese, and men in slums smoked at almost twice the frequency as men in the city as a whole.While these observational studies and analyses do not provide causal evidence for a link between slum residence and adverse health outcomes, they provide preliminary data in support of the hypothesis that residents of slums in several major Brazilian cities have unique social and spatial determinants of health, and subsequently distinct disease profiles, compared to residents of non-slum neighborhoods in the same city.Because of poor access to healthcare and a host of other slum-specific obstacles, slum residents rarely appear in official disease or mortality estimates. Consequently, slum-specific analyses such as those presented in this dissertation that describe the burden of disease among slum residents can be used to design policies aimed at mitigating the inequitable distribution of disease in these communities, also serving as a baseline to evaluate the impact of these policies on the health of this population. The findings from this dissertation should be used to encourage further epidemiologic analyses of slum populations, not only in Brazil, but also among slum populations of megacities elsewhere in the world

Spectrum of Disease Burden in Urban Informal Settlements of Brazil

AbstractSpectrum of Disease Burden in Urban Informal Settlements of BrazilbyRobert Eugene SnyderDoctor of Philosophy in EpidemiologyUniversity of California, BerkeleyProfessor Lee W. Riley, ChairThere are more than one billion urban informal slum residents worldwide, comprising almost one-third of the global urban population. Slums are characterized by their abundance of risk factors for communicable and non-communicable diseases. Some of these include poor water and sanitation infrastructure, in addition to poor structural housing quality, overcrowding and insecure residential status (i.e. lack of land tenure). Residents of these communities shoulder a greater burden of biologic, spatial and social health determinants of disease and their corresponding disease outcomes than residents of the same city who do not live in slums. Due to systematic disenfranchisement and the complicated logistics involved in studying these populations, our knowledge about their health conditions and determinants of disease occurrence is sparse. This dissertation describes three approaches to begin to address this gap in knowledge.Chapter 1 sets the tone for this dissertation by describing the concept of slums and lays out the evidence for the disproportionate burden of disease borne by slum residents. While not being representative of all slums worldwide - Brazil is now considered an upper-middle-income country by the World Bank– the country’s slums serve as an important case study. Brazil has a relatively robust healthcare system, a functional democracy, and an active research sector, all of which facilitate the collection and comparison of data inside and outside of the country’s slums. Estimates of Brazil’s slum population range from 11,425,644 (6% of the total population) in the 2010 Brazilian Census (the official government estimate) to 45.7 million (28%) estimated by the United Nations Human Settlements Program. In 2010, the Brazilian government carried out a census with the goal of systematically enumerating and describing the physical and demographic characteristics of the country’s slums, coining the technical term aglomerados subnormais (AGSN) to describe slums.Perhaps the most recognizable of all slums in Brazil are the favelas of Rio de Janeiro; these architecturally colorful and culturally vibrant communities accentuate the city’s magnificent physical geography and beauty. Unfortunately, due to their precarious physical location, the quasi-legal land tenure of slum residents, the blatant political corruption, and the persistently poor implementation of the national healthcare system (in 2010 approximately 50% of Rio de Janeiro’s population had access to the Sistema Único de Saúde – SUS), these communities’ residents suffer from stark health inequalities. Chapter 2 uses the 2010 Census to describe the spatial distribution of social determinants of health in Rio de Janeiro. The findings from this analysis highlight differences in age, income, and access to electricity, sanitation, water, and solid waste disposal throughout the city, and point to the possibility that differences in these characteristics contribute to an inequitable distribution of disease between the city’s slum and non-slum areas.Chapter 3 delves more deeply into these inequalities. Given our group’s previously published evidence suggesting that the burden of tuberculosis is greater among residents of Rio de Janeiro’s slums than among residents of non-slum areas, we seek to fulfill a principle public health axiom: that we must seek and apply solutions to improve the health of populations. Chapter 3 evaluates the effectiveness of the directly observed treatment (DOT) program for tuberculosis treatment outcomes among TB cases inside and outside of Rio de Janeiro’s slums. Using the Brazilian Notifiable Disease System, Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação (SINAN), we compare treatment outcomes between TB cases on DOT in AGSN and non-AGSN census tracts. While we found that DOT coverage was low inside and outside of AGSNs, we report that DOT had a greater impact on the cure rate for TB cases in AGSN areas compared to TB cases in non-AGSN areas.Chapter 4 shifts the lens to non-communicable diseases (NCD) and to a different city, Salvador, where thirty-three percent of the population lives in slums. We compare the burden of several NCD (i.e. diabetes mellitus, hypertension, dyslipidemia) and the prevalence of risk factors (i.e. overweight, obesity and smoking) in a convenience sample of residents of Pau da Lima, an urban slum, with residents of the entire city as captured in a telephone survey. This telephone survey is an annual landline-based survey undertaken by the Brazilian Ministry of Health with the express purpose of monitoring the prevalences of NCD and NCD risk factors in Brazil’s capital cities. We age- and sex- standardized the prevalences of these conditions and risk factors and compared them between these two populations. We found that the age- and sex-adjusted prevalences of diabetes mellitus, smoking, being overweight/obese, and being obese, were higher among residents of Pau da Lima than in residents of the entire city of Salvador. A striking finding was that women living in slums suffered a disproportionate burden of being overweight or obese, and men in slums smoked at almost twice the frequency as men in the city as a whole.While these observational studies and analyses do not provide causal evidence for a link between slum residence and adverse health outcomes, they provide preliminary data in support of the hypothesis that residents of slums in several major Brazilian cities have unique social and spatial determinants of health, and subsequently distinct disease profiles, compared to residents of non-slum neighborhoods in the same city.Because of poor access to healthcare and a host of other slum-specific obstacles, slum residents rarely appear in official disease or mortality estimates. Consequently, slum-specific analyses such as those presented in this dissertation that describe the burden of disease among slum residents can be used to design policies aimed at mitigating the inequitable distribution of disease in these communities, also serving as a baseline to evaluate the impact of these policies on the health of this population. The findings from this dissertation should be used to encourage further epidemiologic analyses of slum populations, not only in Brazil, but also among slum populations of megacities elsewhere in the world