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Leptospirosis is a serious public health problem in Brazil, which can be observed after flooding events. Using an exploratory mixed clustering method, this ecological study analyzes whether spatial-temporal clustering patterns of leptospirosis occur in Brazil. Data from the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS) were used to calculate the prevalence of leptospirosis between 2007 and 2017 in all counties of the country. Clustering techniques, including spatial association indicators, were used for analysis and evaluation of disease yearly spatial distribution. Based on Local Indicators of Spatial Association (LISA) with Empirical Bayesian rates detected spatial patterns of leptospirosis ranging from 0.137 (p = 0.001 in 2009) to 0.293 (p = 0.001 in 2008). Over the whole period, the rate was 0.388 (p = 0.001). The main pattern showed permanence of leptospirosis clusters in the South and emergence and permanence of such clusters in northern Brazil. The municipalities with leptospirosis cases and at least one flood occurrence registered in the Brazilian Integrated Disaster Information System were incorporated into the LISA cluster map with Empirical Bayesian rates. These counties were expected to exhibit clustering, not all did. The results of the cluster analysis suggest allocation of health resources in areas with leptospirosis clustering.

Abstract Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death among women worldwide. Blocking a single signaling pathway is often an ineffective therapy, especially in the case of aggressive or drug-resistant tumors. Since we have previously described the mechanism involved in the crosstalk between Retinoic Acid system and protein kinase C (PKC) pathway, the rationale of our study was to evaluate the effect of combining all-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) with a classical PCK inhibitor (Gö6976) in preclinical settings. Employing hormone-independent mammary cancer models, Gö6976 and ATRA combined treatment induced a synergistic reduction in proliferative potential that correlated with an increased apoptosis and RARs modulation towards an anti-oncogenic profile. Combined treatment also impairs growth, self-renewal and clonogenicity potential of cancer stem cells and reduced tumor growth, metastatic spread and cancer stem cells frequency in vivo. An in-silico analysis of “Kaplan–Meier plotter” database indicated that low PKCα together with high RARα mRNA expression is a favorable prognosis factor for hormone-independent breast cancer patients. Here we demonstrate that a classical PKC inhibitor potentiates ATRA antitumor effects also targeting cancer stem cells growth, self-renewal and frequency.

With a new campaign, Special Olympics wants to take back the word 'special' and other language that they say has been turned against people with disabilities. The international sports organization [...]

Facilitation of memory for target stimuli due to similar context in the learning and testing phases is known as "context effect" (CE). The present study aimed to investigate the interaction between CE as elicited by the consistency of the language of presentation (Hebrew vs. English) with the native language (Hebrew vs. English) in both auditory and visual modalities. Overall, 120 individuals participated in the experiment. As predicted, CE was evident when the language of presentation remained consistent between study and test. Contrary to our prediction, Hebrew speakers remembered more English words, and vice versa. A possible explanation is that this difference is due to the cognitive effort invested when processing a less dominant language, thus resulting in better recognition. This study has several practical implications, including a recommendation that academic institutions test students in the language in which the material was presented in order to measure the students' knowledge more accurately.

RESUMO A leptospirose é um problema de saúde pública mundial. No Brasil, ela é uma doença de notificação compulsória e está relacionada a áreas com precárias condições sanitárias. Foi realizado um estudo ecológico retrospectivo para observar a distribuição espacial e temporal de casos confirmados da leptospirose em escala nacional no período entre 2007 e 2017. A espacialização da leptospirose utilizou técnicas de geoprocessamento por análise de padrões pontuais e por mapas de densidade Kernel. Os resultados revelaram que, no período, foram registrados 42.310 casos confirmados de leptospirose no País, com média anual de 3.846 casos e prevalência de 1,9 a cada 100 mil habitantes. As localidades com mais casos prevalentes foram as regiões Sul e Norte. O Sudeste apresentou taxa de prevalência inferior à taxa nacional em virtude da alta densidade demográfica. O método Kernel se mostrou útil na análise global da situação epidemiológica da leptospirose nas regiões do Brasil.

Many core graduate-level seminars claim to expose students to their discipline's "canon." The contents of this canon, however, can and do differ across departments and instructors. This project employs a survey of core American politics PhD seminar syllabi at highly ranked universities to construct a systematic account of the American politics canon. Our results offer valuable insights into the topics and literature that political scientists consider important and on which future scholars base their work. Our article breaks down the literature into a comprehensive list of topics and subtopics, which allows us to identify both an overall field canon and one for each topic, to assess whether some topics receive more attention than others, and to identify which topics are most clearly defined. We explore the extent to which diverse perspectives and methods are (or are not) taught to young scholars, and, although we identify sets of frequently assigned readings and authors within each topic, we also find considerable variation between seminars.

Sponsors: School of Medicine Dean’s Office, Office of Educational Affairs, Office of AdmissionsThe PLEXUS staff wishes to recognize the hard work and support of the following: Ellena Peterson, PhD; Johanna Shapiro, PhD; Dale Fakuda from Printing Division Inc.Last Year’s Editors: Rod Mortazavi, Neera SodhiCo-editors in Chief: Charitha Reddy, Maheen HassanManaging Editor: Mohammad ShaikhSenior EditorsAudio: Joe TreisterHospital Beautification: Christina UmberCreative Writing: Jennifer Aloo, Mohammad ShaikhLayout & Design: Maheen HassanMarketing & Outreach: Madhukar PatelVisual Arts: Charitha ReddyAssociate EditorsAudio: Matthew FradkinCreative Writing: Nupoor NarulaLayout & Design: Chase WarrenMarketing & Outreach: Phillip NgaiVisual Arts: Phillip NgaiSelection Editor: Justin TilanStaff: Clifford Lau, Alexander Lin, Kirellos Zamary, Virginia LiuFaculty Advisor: Johanna Shapiro, PhDUCI School of Medicine (c) 2009 PLEXUSPublished works were contributed by UCI School of Medicine students, physicians, faculty, alumni, and patients.

A preeminent activist who was instrumental in securing civil rights protections and reimagining life for people with disabilities died on March 4, 2023. Judy Heumann, known as the 'mother of [...]

As a rule, algorithms of recognition of time series anomalies are based on time frequency or statistical analysis . This article is devoted to detailed formal description of new fuzzy set based algorithm FLARS (Fuzzy Logic Algorithm for Recognition of Signals). It recognizes time series anomalies by means "smooth" modelling (in fuzzy mathematics sense) of interpreter's logic, which searches for anomalies at the record.

Objective: The aim of the present study was to obtain information about deaths due to sepsis in São Paulo from 2004 to 2009 and their relationship with geographical distribution. Methods: Causes of death, both main and secondary, were defined according to the codes of the International Classification of Disease version 10 (ICD-10) contained in the database. Sepsis, septic shock, multiple organ failure, pneumonia, urinary tract infection, peritonitis and other intraabdominal infections, skin and soft tissue infections (including surgical wound infection) and meningitis were considered as immediate cause of death or as the condition leading to the immediate cause of death related or associated to sepsis. Results: In the analyzed period, there was a 15.3% increase in the absolute number of deaths from sepsis in São Paulo. The mean number of deaths during this period was 28,472 ± 1566. Most deaths due to sepsis and sepsis-related diseases over the studied period occurred in a hospital or health care facility, showing that most of the patients received medical care during the event that led to death. We observed a significant concentration of deaths in the most populous regions, tending more toward the center of the city. Conclusions: Georeferencing data from death certificates or other sources can be a powerful tool to uncover regional epidemiological differences between populations. Our study revealed an even distribution of sepsis all over the inhabited areas of São Paulo. Keywords: Sepsis, Mortality, Infection, Georeferencing

Introduction: Hip fracture remains the biggest single source of morbidity and mortality in the elderly trauma population, and any intervention focused on quality improvement and system efficiency is beneficial for both patients and clinicians. Two of the variables contributory to improving care and efficiency are time to theater and length of stay, with the overall goal being to improve care as reflected within the achievement of best practice tariff. One of the biggest barriers to optimizing these variables is preinjury anticoagulation. Method: Building on our previous work with warfarin in this population, we utilized a regional hip fracture collaborative network collecting prospective data through the National Hip Fracture Database with custom fields pertaining to all agents, including novel oral anticoagulants. Results: In all, 1965 hip fracture patients median age 83 years (1639 not anticoagulated) were admitted to the 5 centers over 12 months. Median length of stay was 20.71 days; time to theater 23.09 hours, and the populations (anticoagulated vs control) were evenly matched for injury. Anticoagulated patients were delayed to theater ( P ≤ .001), were inpatients for longer ( P ≤ .001) and gained less best practice tariff ( P ≤ .05). All variables per agent were noted and the impact of each assessed. Conclusions: Despite the widespread use of newer anticoagulants, popular due to unmonitored reversal and administration, patients stay longer in hospital and wait longer for surgery than nonanticoagulated patients of the same age and injury. Contemporary perioperative practices impact negatively on the ability to perform timely surgery on hip fracture patients. We propose a guideline specific to the management of anticoagulation in the hip fracture population to aid the optimum preparation of patients for theater, achievement of timely surgery, and potentially reduce length of stay.

Ribosome queuing is a fundamental phenomenon suggested to be related to topics such as genome evolution, synthetic biology, gene expression regulation, intracellular biophysics, and more. However, this phenomenon hasn't been quantified yet at a genomic level. Nevertheless, methodologies for studying translation (e.g. ribosome footprints) are usually calibrated to capture only single ribosome protected footprints (mRPFs) and thus limited in their ability to detect ribosome queuing. On the other hand, most of the models in the field assume and analyze a certain level of queuing. Here we present an experimental-computational approach for studying ribosome queuing based on sequencing of RNA footprints extracted from pairs of ribosomes (dRPFs) using a modified ribosome profiling protocol. We combine our approach with traditional ribosome profiling to generate a detailed profile of ribosome traffic. The data are analyzed using computational models of translation dynamics. The approach was implemented on the Saccharomyces cerevisiae transcriptome. Our data shows that ribosome queuing is more frequent than previously thought: the measured ratio of ribosomes within dRPFs to mRPFs is 0.2-0.35, suggesting that at least one to five translating ribosomes is in a traffic jam; these queued ribosomes cannot be captured by traditional methods. We found that specific regions are enriched with queued ribosomes, such as the 5'-end of ORFs, and regions upstream to mRPF peaks, among others. While queuing is related to higher density of ribosomes on the transcript (characteristic of highly translated genes), we report cases where traffic jams are relatively more severe in lowly expressed genes and possibly even selected for. In addition, our analysis demonstrates that higher adaptation of the coding region to the intracellular tRNA levels is associated with lower queuing levels. Our analysis also suggests that the Saccharomyces cerevisiae transcriptome undergoes selection for eliminating traffic jams. Thus, our proposed approach is an essential tool for high resolution analysis of ribosome traffic during mRNA translation and understanding its evolution.