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The US Department of Defense (DoD) is establishing its wastewater surveillance capacities to support national security objectives and promote the public health and medical readiness of US service members. Wastewater surveillance is an emerging technology that has traditionally been leveraged for detecting infectious diseases. However, its potential future applications could yield a vast and unpredictable amount of information that could be used for a wide variety of both health- and nonhealth-related purposes. The US military also serves an inimitable role for the country and its citizens, and exercises significant levels of control over its service members compared to civilian organizations. Further, its present and potential wastewater surveillance activities may reach far beyond just military installations. These factors raise unique ethical considerations that must be accounted for by leaders and policymakers to ensure the DoD implements a wastewater surveillance network in a manner that is both impactful in supporting public health and appropriate to the scope and population under surveillance. This paper explores important ethical features in conducting wastewater surveillance that are both specific to the DoD experience and applicable to wider public health initiatives.

Protein ionic liquids (PIL) are a new class of biologic stabilizers designed to protect the functionality and extend the shelf-life of biotechnological and therapeutic agents making them more readily available, and resistant to austere environments. Protein biorecognition elements such as monoclonal antibodies are commonly utilized therapeutics that require the robust stabilization offered by PILs, but biocompatibility remains an important issue. This study has focused on characterizing the biocompatibility of an antibody based PIL by exposing multiple cells types to a cationized immunoglobulin suspended in an anionic liquid (IgG-IL). The IgG-IL caused no significant alterations in cellular health for all three cell types with treatments < 12.5 µg/mL. Concentrations ≥ 12.5 µg/mL resulted in significant necrotic cell death in A549 and HaCaT cells, and caspase associated cell death in HepG2 cells. In addition, all cells displayed evidence of oxidative stress and IL-8 induction in response to IgG-IL exposures. Therapeutic Ig can be utilized with a wide dose range that extends into concentrations we have found to exhibit cytotoxicity raising a toxicity concern and a need for more extensive understanding of the biocompatibility of IgG-ILs.

The Tri-Service Microbiome Consortium (TSMC) was created to foster and enhance cooperation, collaboration, and communication of microbiome research among Department of Defense (DoD) researchers and their collaborators. The 8th Annual TSMC Symposium was held in Colorado Springs, CO on 25–26 September 2024 and featured oral and poster presentations and discussions centered on microbiome-related topics within four broad thematic areas: 1) Surveillance; 2) Health and Performance; 3) Enablers; and 4) Remediation. Collectively this meeting promoted sharing of methods, experiments, and findings across DoD affiliated microbiome research and promoted future and ongoing collaborations. This report summarizes the proceedings of the 8th Annual TSMC Symposium.

The Tri-Service Microbiome Consortium (TSMC) was founded to enhance collaboration, coordination, and communication of microbiome research among DoD organizations and to facilitate resource, material and information sharing among consortium members, which includes collaborators in academia and industry. The 2023 annual symposium was a hybrid meeting held in Washington DC on 26–27 September 2023 concurrent with the virtual attendance, with oral and poster presentations and discussions centered on microbiome-related topics within five broad thematic areas: 1) Environmental Microbiome Characterization; 2) Microbiome Analysis; 3) Human Microbiome Characterization; 4) Microbiome Engineering; and 5) In Vitro and In Vivo Microbiome Models. Collectively, the symposium provided an update on the scope of current DoD and DoD-affiliated microbiome research efforts and fostered collaborative opportunities. This report summarizes the presentations and outcomes of the 7th annual TSMC symposium.

Human intestinal microbiota has a number of important roles in human health and is also implicated in several gastrointestinal disorders. The goal of this study was to determine the gut microbiota in two groups of pre- and adolescent children: healthy volunteers and children diagnosed with diarrhea predominant irritable bowel syndrome (IBS-D). Phylogenetic Microbiota Array was used to obtain quantitative measurements of bacterial presence and abundance in subjects ’ fecal samples. We utilized high-throughput DNA sequencing, quantitative PCR, and fluorescent in situ hybridization to confirm microarray findings. Both sample groups were dominated by the phyla Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes, and Actinobacteria, which cumulatively constituted 91 % of overall sample composition on average. A core microbiome shared among analyzed samples encompassed 55 bacterial phylotypes dominated by genus Ruminococcus ; members of genera Clostridium , Faecalibacterium, Roseburia, Streptococcus , and Bacteroides were also present. Several genera were found to be differentially abundant in the gut of healthy and IBS groups: levels of Veillonella , Prevotella , Lactobacillus , and Parasporo bacterium were increased in children diagnosed with IBS, whereas members of Bifidobacterium and Verrucomicrobium were less abundant in those individuals. By calculating a nonparametric correlation matrix among abundances of different genera in all samples, we also examined potential associations among intestinal microbes. Strong positive correlations were found between abundances of Veillonella and both Haemophilus and Streptococcus , between Anaerovorax and Verrucomicrobium , and between Tannerella and Anaerophaga . Although at the higher taxonomical level gut microbiota was similar between healthy and IBS-D children, specific differences in the abundances of several bacterial genera were revealed. Core microbiome in children was dominated by Clostridia. Putative relationships identified among microbial genera provide testable hypotheses of cross-species associations among members of human gut microbiota

Nanotechnology is revolutionizing science and medicine by leveraging the unique properties of nanomaterials. Nanomaterials are commonly defined as materials having structural features with at least one dimension of 100 nm or less. Compared to their bulk counterparts, nanoscale materials can be synthesized in varied sizes, shapes, and elemental compositions. Moreover, nanoparticles (NPs)-specific quantum properties influence their physicochemical properties, conferring electrical, optical, and magnetic properties not present in corresponding bulk materials. These distinctive properties make NPs ideal for various military, industrial, and medical applications. Secondary to NPs’ infinitesimal size and unique properties, NPs can potentially affect mammalian physiology at the cellular level. NP exposure is primarily through inhalation and ingestion, with the tissues in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tract, respectively, at highest risk. Based upon the potential for NP exposure, this review highlights some of the known outcomes and underlying mechanisms of NP toxicity.

Prior research has demonstrated that participation in out-of-school time activities is associated with positive and healthy development among adolescents. However, fewer studies have examined how trajectories of participation across multiple activities can impact developmental outcomes. Using data from Wave 3 (approximately Grade 7) through Wave 8 (approximately Grade 12) of the 4-H Study of Positive Youth Development, this study examined patterns of breadth in out-of-school time participation in activities and associated outcomes in positive youth development (PYD), Contribution to self and community, risk behaviors, and depressive symptoms. We assessed 927 students (on average across waves, 65.4 % female) from a relatively racially and ethnically homogeneous sample (about 74 % European American, across waves) with a mean age in Wave 3 of 12.98 years ( SD  = 0.52). The results indicated that high likelihood of participation in activities was consistently associated with fewer negative outcomes and higher scores on PYD and Contribution, as compared to low likelihood of participation in activities. Changes in the breadth of participation (in particular, moving from a high to a low likelihood of participation) were associated with increased substance use, depressive symptoms, and risk behaviors. Limitations of the current study, implications for future research, and applications to youth programs are discussed.

As part of the non-clinical safety package characterizing bamlanivimab (SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing monoclonal antibody), the risk profile for antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (ADE) was evaluated in vitro and in an African green monkey (AGM) model of COVID-19. In vitro ADE assays in primary human macrophage, Raji, or THP-1 cells were used to evaluate enhancement of viral infection. Bamlanivimab binding to C1q, FcR, and cell-based effector activity was also assessed. In AGMs, the impact of bamlanivimab pretreatment on viral loads and clinical and histological pathology was assessed to evaluate enhanced SARS-CoV-2 replication or pathology. Bamlanivimab did not increase viral replication in vitro, despite a demonstrated effector function. In vivo, no significant differences were found among the AGM groups for weight, temperature, or food intake. Treatment with bamlanivimab reduced viral loads in nasal and oral swabs and BAL fluid relative to control groups. Viral antigen was not detected in lung tissue from animals treated with the highest dose of bamlanivimab. Bamlanivimab did not induce ADE of SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro or in an AGM model of infection at any dose evaluated. The findings suggest that high-affinity monoclonal antibodies pose a low risk of mediating ADE in patients and support their safety profile as a treatment of COVID-19 disease.

Entrepreneurship represents a form of adaptive developmental regulation through which both entrepreneurs and their ecologies benefit. We describe entrepreneurship from the perspective of relational developmental systems theory, and examine the joint role of personal attributes, contextual attributes, and characteristics of person-context relationships in predicting entrepreneurial intent in a sample 3,461 college students enrolled in colleges and universities in the United States (60 % female; 61 % European American). Specifically, we tested whether personal characteristics (i.e., gender, intentional self-regulation skills, innovation orientation) and contextual factors (i.e., entrepreneurial parents) predicted college students’ intentions to pursue an entrepreneurial career. Our findings suggest that self-regulation, innovation orientation, and having entrepreneurial role models (i.e., parents) predict entrepreneurial intent. Limitations and future directions for the study of youth entrepreneurship are discussed.

This chapter discusses the concept of resilience from a life span perspective informed by relational developmental systems theory. Resilience involves mutually beneficial (adaptive) relations between characteristics of individuals (e.g., their self-regulation behaviors) and features of the ecology (e.g., resources promoting healthy development); these links may be represented as individual ←→ context relations, and they involve adjustment in the context of challenges or maintenance of appropriate functioning in the face of variations in the resources needed to achieve health. Resilience, then, is an attribute of positive human development (PHD) achieved through adaptive individual ←→ context relations (termed adaptive \"developmental regulations\"). We review research across the life span that speaks to the use of this conception of resilience for understanding the contributions individuals make to their own positive development and to the maintenance or perpetuation of PHD-supportive assets of their ecologies. Directions for further research and for applications aimed at promoting PHD are discussed.