Preparing for Baby Boomers as an Agri-tourism Market

The tsunami of baby boomers has led to an increase in people over the age of 60 traveling, and venturing to rural and agri-tourism environments or settings. Coupled with this new trend, is an increase in the number of travelers with disabilities or mobility impairments, who have comfortably traveled domestically through accommodations, afforded through the Americans’ with Disabilities Act. The advent of the agri-tourism industry now can utilize many of these accommodations expected by baby boomers. This paper addresses current issues and recommends strategies to intervene in order to meet the needs of the agri tourism market in the United States. Implications for curriculum development and continuing education are also discussed

Medical Tourism: An Emerging Terrain

Medical Tourism within the United States has become a growing industry, generally associated with people from second and third world areas coming to the United States for medical treatments. However, this trend is reversing, and there currently is a growing trend for North Americans to travel to areas associated with the developing world (Thailand, India, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Turkey) for medical treatments, and couple this with a restful scenario for family or loved ones to offer social support to the one convalescing. This paper presentation will address the upcoming trend toward medical tourism as a captive market for the tourism/hospitality industry. It will describe some approaches within the background, to help ascertain what medical tourism is and what it entails. It will also address what some of the myths and challenges are through reporting student perceptions on the topic and lastly provide some specific strategies for workforce development and curriculum design. This emerging trend will be of interest to faculty, instructors and practitioners working within the Hospitality and Tourism fields. It will offer a cutting edge view of an emerging trend within the industry and recommend strategies for workforce preparation toward what is to evolve within the field

Empowering Women in Underserved Communities: Using CBPR Approaches to Improve Health Literacy and Community Capacity

Moderator: Elena Carbone, DrPH RD, LDN, Associate Professor, Department of Nutrition, UMass Amherst Presenters: Jennifer Manganello, MPH, PhD Janine M. Jurkowski, MPH, PhD Elena T. Carbone, DrPH, RD, LDN Session Description Promoting health literacy empowers individuals and communities to better navigate the health care system and health information environment, and allows for informed decision making for choices and actions that affect health. Empowerment Theory and health literacy are inherent in Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) with low-income and disadvantaged populations. In order for representatives to be engaged as equal participants in the research process, research and health capacity building need to occur. This breakout session will be presented in three parts. The first presentation will provide an overview and introduce how Empowerment Theory and health literacy can be used to build the capacity of community representatives and patient stakeholders. The other two presentations will highlight CBPR research projects currently underway or planned. What is Health Literacy? Presenter: Jennifer Manganello Health literacy refers to a person’s ability to obtain and understand health information and navigate the health system, as well as the health care environment itself. Definitions of health literacy will be discussed, along with how health literacy is relevant at each of the levels of the socio-ecological model (i.e., individual vs. community). We will provide a brief overview about health literacy research conducted in community and clinical settings. This presentation will also discuss how health literacy is related to empowerment. Communities for Health Living (CHL): A CBPR Childhood Obesity Prevention Intervention Guided by Empowerment Theory Presenter: Janine M. Jurkowski CHL is an intervention research project that uses a parent-centered community-based participatory research (CBPR) in an RCT scale up of a childhood obesity prevention intervention guided by Empowerment Theory. CHL recognizes parents as family experts, engages them as co-researchers and embeds the resulting empowerment-focused intervention into Head Start, a national system of care reaching over one million low-income families. Building on a successful pilot assessment CHL researchers are collaborating with Boston/Somerville/Cambridge Head Start serving over 2000 children to expand the CBPR approach by engaging parents, community representatives and Head Start staff to adapt CHL to a new, more diverse setting. CHL is rigorously testing its efficacy to prevent obesity in children. To ensure the timely translation of this work this study is a practical behavioral trial that maintains a rigorous assessment of program efficacy. Primary innovations of this study are its explicit incorporation of Empowerment Theory into its participatory approach and intervention, which deviates from the traditional model of nutrition education to address broader family realities. Mpower: Empowering Mothers for Health Presenter: Elena T. Carbone This project responds to the WUN Shanghai Declaration and the United Nations General Assembly call to promote health literacy in parents and empower women as a global strategy to reduce non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Because many NCDs originate in early development and from health disparities, the maternal health literacy of women in poverty is especially vital. Maternal health literacy refers to the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of mothers to gain access to, understand, and use information in ways that promote and maintain their health and that of their children. Despite its importance, preliminary results of two scoping reviews indicate that few studies have examined maternal health literacy; fewer still have focused on skill development or empowerment of women in poverty. This project is designed to develop a long-term and sustainable research plan to fill these gaps and is part of a five-stage approach to develop a universal research strategy to promote health literacy in parents and empower women globally. Moreover, this project introduces an innovative community-based participatory method to the field of health literacy; and focuses on critical health literacy skills, empowerment, and health literacy for health protection and promotion -- all of which have been largely ignored

The Caulobacter crescentus DNA-(adenine-N6)-methyltransferase CcrM methylates DNA in a distributive manner

The specificity and processivity of DNA methyltransferases have important implications regarding their biological functions. We have investigated the sequence specificity of CcrM and show here that the enzyme has a high specificity for GANTC sites, with only minor preferences at the central position. It slightly prefers hemimethylated DNA, which represents the physiological substrate. In a previous work, CcrM was reported to be highly processive [Berdis et al. (1998) Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 95: 2874–2879]. However upon review of this work, we identified a technical error in the setup of a crucial experiment in this publication, which prohibits making any statement about the processivity of CcrM. In this study, we performed a series of in vitro experiments to study CcrM processivity. We show that it distributively methylates six target sites on the pUC19 plasmid as well as two target sites located on a 129-mer DNA fragment both in unmethylated and hemimethylated state. Reaction quenching experiments confirmed the lack of processivity. We conclude that the original statement that CcrM is processive is no longer valid

The lung microbiota in children with cystic fibrosis captured by induced sputum sampling

Background Spatial topography of the cystic fibrosis (CF) lung microbiota is poorly understood in childhood. How best to sample the respiratory tract in children for microbiota analysis, and the utility of microbiota profiling in clinical management of early infection remains unclear. By comparison with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL), we assessed the ability of induced sputum (IS) sampling to characterise the lower airway microbiota. Methods Sample sets from IS and two or three matched BAL compartments were obtained for microbiota analysis as part of the CF-Sputum Induction Trial (UKCRN_14615, ISRCTNR_12473810). Microbiota profiles and pathogen detection were compared between matched samples. Results Twenty-eight patients, aged 1.1–17.7 years, provided 30 sample sets. Within-patient BAL comparisons revealed spatial heterogeneity in 8/30 (27%) sample sets indicating that the lower airway microbiota from BAL is frequently compartmentalised in children with CF. IS samples closely resembled one or more matched BAL compartments in 15/30 (50%) sets, and were related in composition in a further 9/30 (30%). IS detected 86.2% of the Top 5 genera found across matched BAL samples. The sensitivity of IS to detect specific CF-pathogens identified in matched BAL samples at relative abundance ≥5% varied between 43 and 100%, with negative predictive values between 73 and 100%. Conclusions Spatial heterogeneity of the lower airway microbiota was observed in BAL samples and presents difficulties for consistent lung sampling. IS captured a microbiota signature representative of the lower airway in 80% of cases, and is a straightforward, non-invasive intervention that can be performed frequently to aid pathogen diagnosis and understand microbiota evolution in children with CF

High-resolution Transcriptomic and Epigenetic Profiling Identifies Novel Regulators of COPD

Patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are still waiting for curative treatments. Considering its environmental cause, we hypothesized that COPD will be associated with altered epigenetic signaling in lung cells. We generated genome-wide DNA methylation maps at single CpG resolution of primary human lung fibroblasts (HLFs) across COPD stages. We show that the epigenetic landscape is changed early in COPD, with DNA methylation changes occurring predominantly in regulatory regions. RNA sequencing of matched fibroblasts demonstrated dysregulation of genes involved in proliferation, DNA repair, and extracellular matrix organization. Data integration identified 110 candidate regulators of disease phenotypes that were linked to fibroblast repair processes using phenotypic screens. Our study provides high-resolution multi-omic maps of HLFs across COPD stages. We reveal novel transcriptomic and epigenetic signatures associated with COPD onset and progression and identify new candidate regulators involved in the pathogenesis of chronic lung diseases. The presence of various epigenetic factors among the candidates demonstrates that epigenetic regulation in COPD is an exciting research field that holds promise for novel therapeutic avenues for patients

Lazarus1, a DUF300 Protein, Contributes to Programmed Cell Death Associated with Arabidopsis acd11 and the Hypersensitive Response

Programmed cell death (PCD) is a necessary part of the life of multi-cellular organisms. A type of plant PCD is the defensive hypersensitive response (HR) elicited via recognition of a pathogen by host resistance (R) proteins. The lethal, recessive accelerated cell death 11 (acd11) mutant exhibits HR-like accelerated cell death, and cell death execution in acd11 shares genetic requirements for HR execution triggered by one subclass of R proteins

Rewriting DNA Methylation Signatures at Will:The Curable Genome Within Reach?

DNA methyltransferases are important enzymes in a broad range of organisms. Dysfunction of DNA methyltransferases in humans leads to many severe diseases, including cancer. This book focuses on the biochemical properties of these enzymes, describing their structures and mechanisms in bacteria, humans and other species, including plants, and also explains the biological processes of reading of DNA methylation and DNA demethylation. It covers many emerging aspects of the biological roles of DNA methylation functioning as an essential epigenetic mark and describes the role of DNA methylation in diseases. Moreover, the book explains modern technologies, like targeted rewriting of DNA methylation by designed DNA methyltransferases, as well as technological applications of DNA methyltransferases in DNA labelling. Finally, the book summarizes recent methods for the analysis of DNA methylation in human DNA. Overall, this book represents a comprehensive state-of-the-art- work and is a must-have for advanced researchers in the field of DNA methylation and epigenetics

VarLOCK - sequencing independent, rapid detection of SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern for point-of-care testing, qPCR pipelines and national wastewater surveillance

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to pose a threat to the general population. The ongoing vaccination programs provide protection to individuals and facilitate the opening of society and a return to normality. However, emergent and existing SARS-CoV-2 variants capable of evading the immune system endanger the efficacy of the vaccination strategy. To preserve the efficacy of SARS-CoV-2 vaccination globally, aggressive and effective surveillance for known and emerging SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern (VOC) is required. Rapid and specific molecular diagnostics can provide speed and coverage advantages compared to genomic sequencing alone, benefitting the public health response and facilitating VOC containment. In this work, we expand the recently developed SARS-CoV-2 CRISPR-Cas detection technology (SHERLOCK) to allow rapid and sensitive discrimination of VOCs, that can be used at point of care and/or implemented in the pipelines of small or large testing facilities, and even determine proportion of VOCs in pooled population-level wastewater samples. This technology aims to complement the ongoing sequencing efforts to allow facile and, crucially, rapid identification of individuals infected with VOCs to help break infection chains. Here, we show the optimisation of our VarLOCK assays (Variant-specific SHERLOCK) for multiple specific mutations in the S gene of SARS-CoV-2 and validation with samples from the Cardiff University Testing Service. We also show the applicability of VarLOCK to national wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants. In addition, we show the rapid adaptability of the technique for new and emerging VOCs such as Omicron