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Babesia microti is a tick-transmitted protozoan parasite of wildlife that can also cause serious disease in humans. It is now well established that B. microti represents an assemblage of different strains or species, only some of which are important zoonotic pathogens. Therefore, in order to assess the potential public health risk associated with B. microti in any given location, it is important to determine the strains that are present. This is the first study on the presence and identity of B. microti in Ireland. Overall, 314 wood mice (Apodemus sylvaticus), 243 bank voles (Myodes glareolus) and 634 questing Ixodes ricinus nymphs collected in various locations across Ireland were screened for the presence of B. microti by metabarcoding and nested PCR, respectively. Overall 8 rodent spleen samples (1.4%) were positive for B. microti, while all tick samples tested negative. Rodent isolates were identified as the ‘Munich’ strain which rarely causes human disease and is chiefly transmitted by the mouse tick, Ixodes trianguliceps. Together with reports from the UK these results suggest that B. microti does not represent a significant public health risk in Britain or Ireland.

Storytelling via digital media can effectively spotlight pressing societal and environmental concerns. In Hawai'i, these issues encompass addressing climate change impacts and amplifying Indigenous viewpoints within academic contexts. This report discusses "Communicating Creativity," a course offered by the School of Communication and Information at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. This four-week summer intensive course was part of Na Ko'oko'o, a Hawaiian leadership program for Native Hawaiian students and other students with strong commitments to Native Hawaiian communities. Students enrolled in the course spent one week at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB) on Moku o Lo'e, Kane'ohe Bay, O'ahu. The course aimed to guide students in creating media content (filmmaking) rooted in Hawaiian epistemologies and praxis, bridging Indigenous knowledge with Western scientific perspectives through art, creativity, and visual communication in order to promote interdisciplinary dialogue. Additionally, it featured "talk story" sessions with Native Hawaiian cultural practitioners and HIMB faculty and students, exploring the interface between traditional knowledge and conventional science. This report reflects on lessons learned during the course and underscores the potential of experiential learning to drive socio-ecological change.

Parent-teacher relationships are known to promote positive outcomes for young children in early childhood education; however, parents and teachers face barriers to forming quality relationships. To better understand how to support parents and teachers in forming quality relationships, the present systematic review sought to identify existing interventions designed to promote quality parent-teacher relationships in early childhood education. Systematic search and data extraction identified peer-reviewed manuscripts describing interventions that included components to increase parent-teacher relationships in early childhood education. Each included manuscript was evaluated to answer the following questions: (1) how is the social process between parents and teachers conceptualized?, (2) what strategies were used to improve this social process?, and (3) what outcomes are associated with improving this social process? Nine out of the 1,992 nonduplicate screened manuscripts met inclusion criteria. Results indicate a small body of research focused solely on interventions designed to improve parent-teacher relationships. Included interventions were limited in their conceptualization of the social process between parents and teachers, strategies to improve it, and associated outcomes assessed. Additional research is needed to understand low-cost and highly feasible interventions that promote quality parent-teacher relationships in early childhood education.

Individualized genetic therapies-medicines that precisely target a genetic variant that may only be found in a small number of individuals, as few as only one-offer promise for addressing unmet needs in genetic disease, but present unique challenges for trial design. By nature these new individualized medicines require testing in individualized N-of-1 trials. Here, we provide a framework for maintaining scientific rigor in N-of-1 trials. Building upon best practices from traditional clinical trial design, recent guidance from the United States Food and Drug Administration, and our own clinical research experience, we suggest key considerations including comprehensive baseline natural history, selection of appropriate clinical outcome assessments (COAs) individualized to the patient genotype-phenotype for safety and efficacy assessment over time, and specific statistical considerations. Standardization of N-of-1 trial designs in this fashion will maximize efficient learning from this next generation of targeted individualized therapeutics.

This manuscript details the development of an asymmetric variant for the Ni-photoredox α-arylation of tetrahydrofuran (THF), which was originally reported in a racemic fashion by Doyle and Molander. Leveraging the enantioselectivity data that we obtained, a complex mechanistic scenario different from those originally proposed is uncovered. Specifically, an unexpected dependence of the product enantiomeric ratio was observed on both the halide identity (aryl chloride vs bromide substrates) and the Ni source. Stoichiometric experiments and time course analyses of the evolution of product enantioselectivity with time revealed a different initial behavior for reactions carried out with Ni(II) and Ni(0) precatalysts that later converge into a common mechanism. For studying the predominant pathway, this paper describes a rare example of the syntheses of chiral bisoxazoline Ni(II) aryl halide complexes, which proved essential for probing enantioselectivity via stochiometric experiments. These experiments identify the Ni(II) aryl halide complex as the primary species involved in the key THF radical trapping event. A multivariate linear regression model is presented that further validates the dominant mechanism and delineates structure-selectivity relationships between ligand properties and enantioselectivity. EPR analysis of Ni(0)/aryl halide mixtures highlights the fast access to a variety of Ni complexes in 0, +1, and +2 oxidation states that are proposed to be responsible for the initial divergence in mechanism observed when using Ni(0) precatalysts. More broadly, beyond advancing the mechanistic understanding of this THF arylation protocol, this work underscores the potential of leveraging enantioselectivity data to unravel intricate mechanistic manifolds within Ni-photoredox catalysis.

Inflammation appears to be a critical mechanism in the development of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and a consequence of chronic alcohol use. The potential anti-inflammatory properties of cannabis may modulate the proinflammatory effects of alcohol. This study sought to extend previous work investigating the relationship between alcohol consumption, cannabis use and circulating interleukin (IL)-6 levels in a sample with AUD. One hundred and thirty-three individuals with an AUD provided blood samples to assess IL-6 and answered questions regarding alcohol and cannabis use. An ordinary least squares multiple regression analysis was conducted to assess the effect of alcohol and cannabis use on IL-6. A moderation analysis examined cannabis use as a potential moderator of the relationship between alcohol use and circulating IL-6 levels. Alcohol use was predictive of higher log IL-6 levels (standardized β = 0.16, p = 0.03), while cannabis use was not predictive of log IL-6 levels (p = 0.36). Days of cannabis use moderated the relationship between alcohol use and IL-6 levels, such that the relationship between alcohol use and IL-6 levels was only significant in individuals with AUD without recent cannabis use. This study extends previous work to a clinical sample with an AUD and underscores the importance of considering cannabis use in studies on alcohol use and inflammation. This study also indicates the need for in-depth analyses on cannabinoids and inflammation and the interaction between cannabinoids and alcohol use on inflammation.

Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a debilitating disorder, yet currently approved pharmacotherapies to treat AUD are under-utilized. The three medications approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the indication of AUD are disulfiram, acamprosate, and naltrexone. The current landscape of pharmacotherapies for AUD suggests opportunities for improvement. Clinical trials investigating novel pharmacotherapies for AUD traditionally use abstinence-based drinking outcomes or no heavy drinking days as trial endpoints to determine the efficacy of pharmacotherapies. These outcomes are typically measured through patient self-report endorsements of their drinking. Apart from these traditional outcomes, there have been recent developments in novel endpoints for AUD pharmacotherapies. These novel endpoints include utilizing the World Health Organization (WHO) risk drinking level reductions to promote a harm-reduction endpoint rather than an abstinence-based endpoint. Additionally, in contrast to patient self-report measurements, biological markers of alcohol use may serve as objective endpoints in AUD pharmacotherapy trials. Lastly, the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) definition of recovery from AUD and patient-oriented outcomes offer new frameworks to consider endpoints associated with more than alcohol consumption itself, such as the provider-patient experiences with novel pharmacotherapies. These recent developments in new endpoints for AUD pharmacotherapies offer promising future opportunities for pharmacotherapy development, so long as validity and reliability measures are demonstrated for the endpoints. A greater breadth of endpoint utilization may better capture the complexity of AUD symptomatology.

Acquisitions rarely deliver on expectations, often because firms pay too much for their targets. This article suggests the framing of the acquisition decision as an opportunity or as a response to a threat as an explanation for these higher acquisition premiums. The present study examines the effect of framing on acquisition premiums paid by US firms which completed a firm-level acquisition. The study found that when managers framed an acquisition as an opportunity, their firms paid higher premiums, and when they framed them as addressing threats, their firms paid lower premiums. Recent organizational performance moderates this relationship such that organizations with higher recent performance paid lower acquisition premiums for acquisitions framed as opportunities and higher acquisition premiums for those framed as addressing threats. The article discusses the implications of these findings as well as some future research ideas. Keywords: acquisitions, framing, strategic decision making, prospect theory, threat rigidity hypothesis, Between 2012 and 2022, a total of 348,498 acquisition transactions worth approximately $42 trillion occurred globally (Clarke et al., 2023). Average returns to shareholders from acquisitions are, at best, only [...]

Introduction: Opioid use is an epidemic that plagues the United States. Patients frequently present to the emergency department (ED) after opioid toxicity, which can lead to respiratory failure, apnea, and death. Although there is an effective antidote, naloxone, the current guidelines surrounding post-naloxone administration monitoring are loosely defined.Case Report: We present a case in which an individual was administered naloxone after an intentional opioid overdose and was monitored for four hours, as is standard in our institution. He remained in the ED for additional workup following this observation period and subsequently experienced signs of severe respiratory depression, requiring bag-valve-mask ventilation, naloxone, and admission. Had he been discharged, as is typical after a four-hour observation period, the consequences could have been fatal. We present multiple theories as to why his opioid toxidrome may have presented in a delayed manner, including ingestion of fentanyl analogues and variability in metabolization of both opioids and naloxone. We also explore alternative overdose antidote products approved by the US Food and Drug Administration, which may impact post overdose care.Conclusion: This case suggests that the correct amount of time to monitor patients after naloxone administration may be longer than originally thought. Our aim in this article was to further the discussion regarding the most appropriate observation period in cases of opioid toxicity.

BACKGROUND: Exposures associated with mpox infection remain imperfectly understood. METHODS: We conducted a case-control study enrolling participants who received molecular tests for mpox/orthopoxvirus in California from November 2022 through June 2023. We collected data on behaviors during a 21-day risk period before symptom onset or testing among mpox case patients and test-negative controls. RESULTS: Thirteen of 54 case patients (24.1%) and 5 of 117 controls (4.3%) reported sexual exposure to individuals they identified as potential mpox case patients (index contacts; odds ratio [OR], 7.7 [95% confidence interval (CI), 2.5-19.3] relative to individuals who did not report exposure to potential mpox case patients). Among these participants, 10 of 13 case patients (76.9%) and 2 of 5 controls (40.0%) reported that their index contacts were not experiencing symptoms visible to participants during sex (OR, 14.9 [95% CI, 3.6-101.8]). Only 3 of 54 case patients (5.6%) reported exposure to symptomatic index contacts. Case patients reported more anal/vaginal sex partners than did controls (adjusted OR, 2.2 [95% CI, 1.0-4.8] for 2-3 partners and 3.8 [1.7-8.8] for ≥4 partners). Male case patients with penile lesions more commonly reported insertive anal/vaginal sex than those without penile lesions (adjusted OR, 9.3 [95% CI, 1.6-54.8]). Case patients with anorectal lesions more commonly reported receptive anal sex than those without anorectal lesions (adjusted OR, 14.4 [95% CI, 1.0-207.3]). CONCLUSIONS: Sexual exposure to contacts known or suspected to have experienced mpox was associated with increased risk of infection, often when index contacts lacked apparent symptoms. Exposure to more sex partners, including those whom participants did not identify as index contacts, was associated with increased risk of infection in a site-specific manner. While participants assessment of symptoms in partners may be imperfect, these findings suggest that individuals without visibly prominent mpox symptoms transmit infection.