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Benchmarks 2015, February 20, The Rockefeller University

BenchMarks 2015

BenchMarks. Friday, February 20, 2015

The community newsletter of The Rockefeller University

BenchMarks is published monthly and is distributed on the campus of The Rockefeller University. It produced by the Office of Communications and Public Affairs

Sex And Hibernaculum Temperature Predict Survivorship In White-Nose Syndrome Affected Little Brown Myotis (Myotis Lucifugus), Laura E. Grieneisen, Sarah A. Brownlee-Bouboulis, Joseph S. Johnson, Deeann M. Reeder

KIP Articles

White-nose syndrome (WNS), an emerging infectious disease caused by the novel fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans , has devastated North American bat populations since its discovery in 2006. The little brown myotis, Myotis lucifugus , has been especially affected. The goal of this 2-year captive study was to determine the impact of hibernacula temperature and sex on WNS survivorship in little brown myotis that displayed visible fungal infection when collected from affected hibernacula. In study 1, we found that WNS-affected male bats had increased survival over females and that bats housed at a colder temperature survived longer than those housed at warmer …

A Moonlighting Function Of Mycobacterium Smegmatis Ku In Zinc Homeostasis?, Ambuj K. Kushwaha, Dinesh K. Deochand, Anne Grove

Faculty Publications

© 2014 The Protein Society. Ku protein participates in DNA double-strand break repair via the nonhomologous end-joining pathway. The three-dimensional structure of eukaryotic Ku reveals a central core consisting of a β-barrel domain and pillar and bridge regions that combine to form a ring-like structure that encircles DNA. Homologs of Ku are encoded by a subset of bacterial species, and they are predicted to conserve this core domain. In addition, the bridge region of Ku from some bacteria is predicted from homology modeling and sequence analyses to contain a conventional HxxC and CxxC (where x is any residue) zinc-binding motif. …

Genomic Variation In A Widespread Neotropical Bird (Xenops Minutus) Reveals Divergence, Population Expansion, And Gene Flow, Michael G. Harvey, Robb T. Brumfield

Faculty Publications

© 2014 Elsevier Inc. The demographic and phylogeographic histories of species provide insight into the processes responsible for generating biological diversity, and genomic datasets are now permitting the estimation of species histories with unprecedented accuracy. We used a genomic single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) dataset generated using a RAD-Seq method to investigate the historical demography and phylogeography of a widespread lowland Neotropical bird (Xenops minutus). As expected, we found that prominent landscape features that act as dispersal barriers, such as Amazonian rivers and the Andes Mountains, are associated with the deepest phylogeographic breaks, and also that isolation by distance is limited …

Social Affiliation And Contact Patterns Among White-Tailed Deer In Disparate Landscapes: Implications For Disease Transmission, Eric M. Schauber, Clayton K. Nielsen, Lene Jung Kjaer, Charles W. Anderson, Daniel J. Storm

Publications

In social species, individuals contact members of the same group much more often than those of other groups, particularly for contacts that could directly transmit disease agents. This disparity in contact rates violates the assumptions of simple disease models, hinders disease spread between groups, and could decouple disease transmission from population density. Social behavior of white-tailed deer has important implications for the long-term dynamics and impact of diseases such as bovine tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease (CWD), so expanding our understanding of their social system is important. White-tailed deer form matrilineal groups, which inhabit stable home ranges that overlap somewhat …

Transmission Of Infection To Liver Transplant Recipients From Donors With Infective Endocarditis: Lessons Learned, M. H. Miceli, M. Gonulalan, Mary Perri, Linoj Samuel, M. A. Al Fares, Kimberly Brown, D. A. Bruno, Marcus J. Zervos, Mayur Ramesh, George Alangaden

Infectious Diseases Articles

Donors not meeting standard criteria, such as those with bacteremia, are now being used in response to the increasing need for organs for transplantation. Recommended strategies to prevent the occurrence of donor-derived bacteremia include the use of directed antibiotic prophylaxis. However, this approach does not eliminate the risk of infection transmission. Similarly, the management of organ recipients from donors with infective endocarditis (IE) remains uncharacterized. We report 2 cases of donor-derived bacterial infections in liver transplant recipients despite pathogen-specific antibiotic prophylaxis. In both instances, the donors had documented IE treated with appropriate antimicrobial therapy and clearance of bacteremia. Recipients had …

Oncolog, Volume 60, Number 02, February 2015, Sarah Bronson, Bryan Tutt, N. Danckers

OncoLog MD Anderson's Report to Physicians (All issues) Archives

• Natural Killer Cell Therapy May Augment Treatment of Hematological Cancers: Tough cancer treatments can severely weaken the body's natural ability to attack cancer cells. To improve immune recovery and function in patients who have undergone these treatments, especially those who may later receive a stem cell transplant, researchers are turning to natural killer cells that have been expanded in the laboratory.
• Concurrent Treatment of HIV and Cancer Improves Survival Outcomes: Concurrent HIV and cancer present special challenges in the clinic, regardless of which disease is diagnosed first. The simultaneous treatment of HIV and cancer is complicated by patients' weakened immune …

Consuming Poverty: The Unexpected Politics Of Food Aid In An Era Of Austerity, Maggie Dickinson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation tracks the remarkable growth of food assistance in the U.S. over the past fifteen years and asks what this expansion of food aid means for poor people living in New York City. Much of the scholarly literature on welfare policy in the U.S argues that social programs have become more stingy and punitive, particularly since the passage of welfare reform in 1996. On the surface, this does not seem to be the case for the food stamp program or for emergency food providers like soup kitchens and food pantries. Since 2001 food stamp rolls have risen 120% in …

Psci 191.01: Global Public Health - Insights From Experience, Peter Koehn

University of Montana Course Syllabi

No abstract provided.

The Ipe Insight. Volume 2015, No. 1. February-March, 2015., The Unm Hsc Inter-Professional Education Team

The IPE Newsletters

The Road to Cambra. New Interprofessional Frontiers: Putting the Mouth Back into the Body

Full Page Ads

Against the Grain

No abstract provided.

Alternative Income Generation For Kenyan Women: Preventing Prostitution And The Spread Of Hiv, Megan Elizabeth Lundy

CwiC-PH

HIV/AIDS in Mlolongo, Kenya

Mombasa Highway and Weigh Station

• Truckers spend 3+ days waiting to be processed, providing a costumer base for prostitution
• In Kenya, 27.6% of female sex workers are HIV positive and only 26.8% use condoms with all of their partners (Morris, Morris, and Ferguson, 2009).
• The rampant spread of HIV and lack of contraception has led to rapid growth in the population in an area that has little ability to support any residents
• Development of Slums that now line the highway

Business Model Options For Antibiotics: Learning From Other Industries, Ella Jaczynska, Kevin Outterson, Jorge Mestre-Ferrandiz

Faculty Scholarship

As resistance to antibiotics continues to grow, there is a well-recognized misalignment between the clinical need for new antibiotics and the incentives for their development. The returns from investment in antibiotics research and development (R&D) are perceived as too small. Partly as a result, the number of large multinational companies researching antibiotics has fallen drastically in the past 20 years and few high-quality antibiotics have been developed.

In looking at the antimicrobial resistance (AMR) situation, we were aware that other industries have faced conceptually similar challenges and that they might offer helpful lessons and possible solutions that could be adapted …

Lipid-Based Nanoparticles For Altering Immune Response: A Step Towards Targeted Cancer Immunotherapy, Noha Samir Ismail

Theses and Dissertations

Since cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease of origin, scientists are always trying to define novel approaches that can eliminate this disease. Over decades now, surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy have been the conventional methods to eradicate cancer. Unfortunately, cancer resistance has developed, in which tumor cells became resistant to the majority of chemotherapeutics. Consequently, people started to use combination therapy as a more intensified protocol to counteract the aggressiveness of cancer. However, the results are not satisfactory till now and lots of optimizations are needed in order to make sure that synergistic not antagonistic effects are happening. That is why …

Estimating Economic And Epidemiological Burden Of Hepatitis C In Egypt, 2015-2025, Wessam Mankoula

Theses and Dissertations

Hepatitis C is the most pressing public health challenge in Egypt where Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) prevalence is the highest in the world. In 2015, Egypt Health Issues Survey showed that 10% of Egyptians between 15 – 59 years of age had been infected with HCV infection, while 7% are chronic active hepatitis C patients. This paper aims to estimate the current and future economic and epidemiological burden of HCV between 2015 and 2025. In addition, it compares the impact of different scenarios for management of this huge public health problem to identify the most cost effective strategy capable of …

Bridging The Vocabulary Gap Between Health Seekers And Healthcare Knowledge, Liqiang Nie, Yiliang Zhao, Akbari Mohammad, Jialie Shen, Tat-Seng Chua

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

The vocabulary gap between health seekers and providers has hindered the cross-system operability and the interuser reusability. To bridge this gap, this paper presents a novel scheme to code the medical records by jointly utilizing local mining and global learning approaches, which are tightly linked and mutually reinforced. Local mining attempts to code the individual medical record by independently extracting the medical concepts from the medical record itself and then mapping them to authenticated terminologies. A corpus-aware terminology vocabulary is naturally constructed as a byproduct, which is used as the terminology space for global learning. Local mining approach, however, may …

Repairing The Broken Market For Antibiotic Innovation, Kevin Outterson, John H. Powers, Gregory W. Daniel, Mark B. Mcclellan

Faculty Scholarship

Multidrug-resistant bacterial diseases pose serious and growing threats to human health. While innovation is important to all areas of health research, it is uniquely important in antibiotics. Resistance destroys the fruit of prior research, making it necessary to constantly innovate to avoid falling back into a pre-antibiotic era. But investment is declining in antibiotics, driven by competition from older antibiotics, the cost and uncertainty of the development process, and limited reimbursement incentives. Good public health practices curb inappropriate antibiotic use, making return on investment challenging in payment systems based on sales volume. We assess the impact of recent initiatives to …

Research & Strategic Partnerships: Quarterly Review, Volume 2, Issue 2, Portland State University. Research & Strategic Partnerships

Portland State Research Magazine

The eleven stories in this Winter 2015 edition of the Research and Strategic Partnerships Quarterly Review explore an assortment of faculty and staff accomplishments, revealing common themes of technological innovation, public policy, strategic partnership, and improving human health.

Price Subsidies, Diagnostic Tests, And Targeting Of Malaria Treatment: Evidence From A Randomized Controlled Trial, Jessica Cohen, Pascaline Dupas, Simone Schaner

Dartmouth Scholarship

Both under- and over-treatment of communicable diseases are public bads. But efforts to decrease one run the risk of increasing the other. Using rich experimental data on household treatment- seeking behavior in Kenya, we study the implications of this trade-off for subsidizing life-saving antimalarials sold over-the-counter at retail drug outlets. We show that a very high subsidy (such as the one under consideration by the international community) dramatically increases access, but nearly one-half of subsidized pills go to patients without malaria. We study two ways to better target subsidized drugs: reducing the subsidy level, and introducing rapid malaria tests over-the-counter. …

Target Zero: Why States Choose To Eradicate Infectious Diseases And How They Succeed, Gifty Abraham

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Realism has remained the dominant paradigm within international relations for most of the modern era, emphasizing the competitive nature of the international arena and the unlikeliness of states to within it to cooperate. The attempts and further still, successes, by states to eradicate infectious diseases--which remain among the most cooperative enterprises--present a number of challenges to realism's assumptions, particularly with respect to the unlikely world historical-times during which the eradication campaigns took place. As such, a two-part puzzle arises. First, why would states, which are natural competitors, cooperate to eradicate infectious diseases given structural and situational incentives not to do …

Tcr Alpha Lcr And Non-Lcr Cis-Elements Contributing To Tissue Specific Expression Of The Tcr Alpha Gene In Thymic And Peripheral T Cells, Martina Kucerova-Levisohn

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Orchestrated expression of multiple genes residing in the complex TCRα/δ/Dad1 locus requires tight control from multiple cis-acting elements. The TCRα locus control region (LCR), is positioned between TCRα and Dad1 gene, and has been implicated in the differential expression of both genes. In this study, we focus our work on the hypersensitive site (HS)1 prime (HS1'), located 3' of the classical Eα enhancer, within the TCRα LCR. We investigated its non- redundant role in TCRα expression in thymic and peripheral T cells as assayed by in vivo and in vitro studies. Furthermore, formation of HS1' in both lymphoid and …

Evolution Of Bat-Trypanosome Associations And The Origins Of Chagas Disease, Christian Miguel Pinto

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Trypanosoma cruzi is a genetically diverse parasite that causes Chagas disease, one of the most important zoonoses in the Americas. This generalist parasite of mammals belongs to a clade mostly comprised of bat parasites, the T. cruzi clade. The origins (i.e., biogeographic history and evolution of hosts associations) of this parasite are far from being understood, and the main areas that need further study are: species limits within T. cruzi sensu lato, further studies on the diversity of T. cruzi clade members and their hosts, and research on adaptations of the hosts to trypanosome infections. In this dissertation I explore …

Risk Factors And Costs Influencing Hospitalizations Due To Heat-Related Illnesses: Patterns Of Hospitalization, Michael T. Schmeltz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The objective of this dissertation was to identify individual and environmental risk factors, investigate outcomes and hospital resource use, including costs, and document the pattern of heat-related illness hospitalizations in the United States. The main data source for the study population was the 2001-2010 Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS). The study population for heat-related illnesses (HRIs) consists of patients in the NIS with at least one diagnosis of a heat-related illness (ICD-9 codes 992.0 - 992.9) from 2001 to 2010. Outcome analysis included a study population of patients who had primary or secondary diagnoses of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, respiratory illnesses, nephritic …

Support For The First Line Of Defense In Public Health Emergencies, Christina Y. Chan

Northwestern University Law Review

No abstract provided.

Today - January 30, 2015, Loma Linda University Health

TODAY

Inside this issue:

-- Annual Women's Conference empowers 1,000 in attendance with vital health information
-- School of Public Health receives $1.15 million to improve health in San Bernardino County
-- Laura Ling delivers keynote at Annual Women's Conference
-- Loma Linda University accepts what may be the world's largest IUD collection
-- 'Baby Moses' visits Loma Linda University Health
-- Potential students plan their dreams at Loma Linda University open house
-- Anaheim Ducks donate $20,000 to support cancer services
-- School of Medicine develops pathologist's assistant program
-- Adventist Hospital and GHI site in Malaysia receives 'Gold' from …

Education Is Key, José M. Torres

Keynotes, Speeches, and Lectures

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends herself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in …

Clinical Guidelines: Where Environment Meets Medicine, Dennis J. Baumgardner

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

N/A

Pulmonary Blastomycosis In Vilas County, Wisconsin: Weather, Exposures And Symptoms, Dennis J. Baumgardner, Kiley A. Bernhard, Gina Egan

Journal of Patient-Centered Research and Reviews

Purpose

Blastomycosis is a serious fungal infection contracted by inhalation of Blastomyces spores from the environment. Case occurrence in dogs in Vilas County, Wisconsin, has been associated with antecedent weather. We aimed to explore the effects of weather on the occurrence of human pulmonary blastomycosis in this area, and update exposure factors and symptoms since last published reports.

Methods

Mandatory case reports were reviewed. Chi-square test was used for categorical data of exposures, comparing 1979–1996 (n=101) versus 1997–June 2013 (n=95). Linear regression was used to model local weather data (available 1990–2013; n=126); Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), North Atlantic Oscillation Index …

Minutes Of 01/30/2015 Hsc Board Of Directors Mtg, Patrice Martin

HSC Committee (A subcommittee of the UNM Board of Regents)

No abstract provided.

The End Of Tomorrow: Have We Lost Control? Do We Still Have Time To Stop The Inevitable? Soon We Will Know It's All About Leadership, Emilio F. Iodice

The Journal of Values-Based Leadership

There are many varying aspects of desired leadership in business and in government: managerial competencies, policy-making aligned with the needs of all affected stakeholders, effective communication skills, and the infusion of ethics in all forms of decision-making. However, none command attention more than the ability to lead in a world where every eco-system is in decline and the health of the planet is dangerously threatened. It will be those leaders who understand the magnitude, science, and extreme importance of this issue who are in the highest demand and to whom we look to protect the progress made in human rights …