Explore the vast range of titles available.

During the 2024 Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM24), The Oceanography Society’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee hosted a town hall on “Scientific Societies’ Roles in Building Inclusive Communities.” The town hall aimed to assess ongoing efforts to improve belonging, accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (BAJEDI) within ocean sciences, promote community building and discussions surrounding BAJEDI topics, and highlight the role of scientific societies in equity efforts. Here, we summarize the resultant communal discussions, which focused on effective models for increasing participation in ocean sciences, how to make ocean science careers more accessible, and strategies to build a more equitable community culture. Discussions highlighted several professional societies working to increase BAJEDI within the field and offered tangible action items to increase accessibility and equity at all career stages. An optional survey was distributed to OSM24 attendees to assess their lived experiences. Survey results highlighted that although knowledge of BAJEDI issues and training opportunities have increased, bullying and discrimination are still common. We recommend action items, including increased standardization and public accessibility of demographic data, to continue improving BAJEDI within ocean sciences.

During the 2024 Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM24), The Oceanography Society's Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee hosted a town hall on \"Scientific Societies' Roles in Building Inclusive Communities.\" The town hall aimed to assess ongoing efforts to improve belonging, accessibility, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (BAJEDI) within ocean sciences, promote community building and discussions surrounding BAJEDI topics, and highlight the role of scientific societies in equity efforts. Here, we summarize the resultant communal discussions, which focused on effective models for increasing participation in ocean sciences, how to make ocean science careers more accessible, and strategies to build a more equitable community culture. Discussions highlighted several professional societies working to increase BAJEDI within the field and offered tangible action items to increase accessibility and equity at all career stages. An optional survey was distributed to OSM24 attendees to assess their lived experiences. Survey results highlighted that although knowledge of BAJEDI issues and training opportunities have increased, bullying and discrimination are still common. We recommend action items, including increased standardization and public accessibility of demographic data, to continue improving BAJEDI within ocean sciences.

Prolonged wakefulness alters cortical excitability, which is essential for proper brain function and cognition. However, besides prior wakefulness, brain function and cognition are also affected by circadian rhythmicity. Whether the regulation of cognition involves a circadian impact on cortical excitability is unknown. Here, we assessed cortical excitability from scalp electroencephalography (EEG) responses to transcranial magnetic stimulation in 22 participants during 29 h of wakefulness under constant conditions. Data reveal robust circadian dynamics of cortical excitability that are strongest in those individuals with highest endocrine markers of circadian amplitude. In addition, the time course of cortical excitability correlates with changes in EEG synchronization and cognitive performance. These results demonstrate that the crucial factor for cortical excitability, and basic brain function in general, is the balance between circadian rhythmicity and sleep need, rather than sleep homoeostasis alone. These findings have implications for clinical applications such as non-invasive brain stimulation in neurorehabilitation. Cognitive performance is impaired after prolonged wakefulness, yet the contribution of circadian rhythms for proper brain function remains unclear. Here the authors show that cortical excitability measured using TMS exhibits robust circadian dynamics which is correlated with cognitive performance.

Several neuropsychiatric and neurological disorders have recently been characterized as dysfunctions arising from a ‘final common pathway’ of imbalanced excitation to inhibition within cortical networks. How the regulation of a cortical E/I ratio is affected by sleep and the circadian rhythm however, remains to be established. Here we addressed this issue through the analyses of TMS-evoked responses recorded over a 29 h sleep deprivation protocol conducted in young and healthy volunteers. Spectral analyses of TMS-evoked responses in frontal cortex revealed non-linear changes in gamma band evoked oscillations, compatible with an influence of circadian timing on inhibitory interneuron activity. In silico inferences of cell-to-cell excitatory and inhibitory connectivity and GABA/Glutamate receptor time constant based on neural mass modeling within the Dynamic causal modeling framework, further suggested excitation/inhibition balance was under a strong circadian influence. These results indicate that circadian changes in EEG spectral properties, in measure of excitatory/inhibitory connectivity and in GABA/glutamate receptor function could support the maintenance of cognitive performance during a normal waking day, but also during overnight wakefulness. More generally, these findings demonstrate a slow daily regulation of cortical excitation/inhibition balance, which depends on circadian-timing and prior sleep-wake history.

Lack of sleep has a considerable impact on vigilance: we perform worse, we make more errors, particularly at night, when we should be sleeping. Measures of brain functional connectivity suggest that decrease in vigilance during sleep loss is associated with an impaired cross-talk within the fronto-parietal cortex. However, fronto-parietal effective connectivity, which is more closely related to the causal cross-talk between brain regions, remains unexplored during prolonged wakefulness. In addition, no study has simultaneously investigated brain effective connectivity and wake-related changes in vigilance, preventing the concurrent incorporation of the two aspects. Here, we used electroencephalography (EEG) to record responses evoked by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) applied over the frontal lobe in 23 healthy young men (18–30 yr.), while they simultaneously performed a vigilance task, during 8 sessions spread over 29 h of sustained wakefulness. We assessed Response Scattering (ReSc), an estimate of effective connectivity, as the propagation of TMS-evoked EEG responses over the fronto-parietal cortex. Results disclose a significant change in fronto-parietal ReSc with time spent awake. When focusing on the night-time period, when one should be sleeping, participants with lower fronto-parietal ReSc performed worse on the vigilance task. Conversely, no association was detected during the well-rested, daytime period. Night-time fronto-parietal ReSc also correlated with objective EEG measures of sleepiness and alertness. These changes were not accompanied by variations in fronto-parietal response complexity. These results suggest that decreased brain response propagation within the fronto-parietal cortex is associated to increased vigilance failure during night-time prolonged wakefulness. This study reveals a novel facet of the detrimental effect on brain function of extended night-time waking hours, which is increasingly common in our societies. •Fronto-parietal Response Scattering (ReSc) varies during prolonged wakefulness.•Lower fronto-parietal ReSc is associated with lower vigilance performance at night.•Lower fronto-parietal ReSc is associated with higher sleepiness measures at night.•Fronto-parietal response complexity does not change with time spent awake.•These findings reveal a novel facet of night-time wakefulness detrimental effects.

Background Physical exercise, cognitive training, and vitamin D are low cost interventions that have the potential to enhance cognitive function and mobility in older adults, especially in pre-dementia states such as Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI). Aerobic and progressive resistance exercises have benefits to cognitive performance, though evidence is somewhat inconsistent. We postulate that combined aerobic exercise (AE) and progressive resistance training (RT) (combined exercise) will have a better effect on cognition than a balance and toning control (BAT) intervention in older adults with MCI. We also expect that adding cognitive training and vitamin D supplementation to the combined exercise, as a multimodal intervention, will have synergistic efficacy. Methods The SYNERGIC trial (SYNchronizing Exercises, Remedies in GaIt and Cognition) is a multi-site, double-blinded, five-arm, controlled trial that assesses the potential synergic effect of combined AE and RT on cognition and mobility, with and without cognitive training and vitamin D supplementation in older adults with MCI. Two-hundred participants with MCI aged 60 to 85 years old will be randomized to one of five arms, four of which include combined exercise plus combinations of dual-task cognitive training (real vs. sham) and vitamin D supplementation (3 × 10,000 IU/wk. vs. placebo) in a quasi-factorial design, and one arm which receives all control interventions. The primary outcome measure is the ADAS-Cog (13 and plus modalities) measured at baseline and at 6 months of follow-up. Secondary outcomes include neuroimaging, neuro-cognitive performance, gait and mobility performance, and serum biomarkers of inflammation (C reactive protein and interleukin 6), neuroplasticity (brain-derived neurotropic factor), endothelial markers (vascular endothelial growth factor 1), and vitamin D serum levels. Discussion The SYNERGIC Trial will establish the efficacy and feasibility of a multimodal intervention to improve cognitive performance and mobility outcomes in MCI. These interventions may contribute to new approaches to stabilize and reverse cognitive-mobility decline in older individuals with MCI. Trial Registration Identifier: NCT02808676. https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02808676 .

Many ungulates migrate between distinct summer and winter ranges, and identifying, mapping, and conserving these migration corridors have become a focus of local, regional, and global conservation efforts. Brownian bridge movement models (BBMMs) are commonly used to empirically identify these seasonal migration corridors; however, they require location data sampled at relatively frequent intervals to obtain a robust estimate of an animal's movement path. Fitting BBMMs to sparse location data violates the assumption of conditional random movement between successive locations, overestimating the area (and width) of a migration corridor when creating individual and population‐level occurrence distributions and precluding the use of low‐frequency, or sparse, data in mapping migration corridors. In an effort to expand the utility of BBMMs to include sparse GPS data, we propose an alternative approach to model migration corridors from sparse GPS data. We demonstrate this method using GPS data collected every 2 h from four mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) and four elk (Cervus canadensis) herds within Wyoming and Idaho. First, we used BBMMs to estimate a baseline corridor for the 2‐h data. We then subsampled the 2‐h data to one location every 12 h (a proxy for sparse data) and fitted BBMMs to the 12‐h data using a fixed motion variance (FMV) value, instead of estimating the Brownian motion variance empirically. A range of FMV values was tested to identify the value that best approximated the baseline migration corridor. FMV values within a species‐specific range (mule deer: 400–1200 m2; elk: 600–1600 m2) successfully delineated migration corridors similar to the 2‐h baseline corridors; overall, lower values delineated narrower corridors and higher values delineated wider corridors. Optimal FMV values of 800 m2 (mule deer) and 1000 m2 (elk) decreased the inflation of the 12‐h corridors relative to the 2‐h corridors from traditional BBMMs. This FMV approach thus enables using sparse movement data to approximate realistic migration corridor dimensions, providing an important alternative when movement data are collected infrequently. This approach greatly expands the number of datasets that can be used for migration corridor mapping—a useful tool for management and conservation across the globe.

This paper proposes and analyses a stochastic model for the spread of an infectious disease transmitted between clients and care workers in the UK domiciliary (home) care setting. Interactions between clients and care workers are modelled using specially generated networks, with network parameters reflecting realistic patterns of care needs and visit allocation. These networks are then used to simulate a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered/dead (SEIR/D)-type epidemic dynamics with different numbers of infectious and recovery stages. The results indicate that with the same overall capacity provided by care workers, the minimum peak proportion of infection and the smallest overall size of infection are achieved for the highest proportion of overlap between visit allocation, i.e. when care workers have the highest chances of being allocated a visit to the same client they have visited before. An intuitive explanation of this is that while providing the required care coverage, maximising overlap in visit allocation reduces the possibility of an infectious care worker inadvertently spreading the infection to other clients. The model is generic and can be adapted to any directly transmitted infectious disease, such as, more recently, corona virus disease 2019, provided accurate estimates of disease parameters can be obtained from real data.

Background Single-agent MEK1/2 inhibition has been disappointing in clinical trials targeting RAS mutant (MT) cancers, probably due to upstream receptor activation, resulting in resistance. We previously found that dual c-MET/MEK1/2 inhibition attenuated RAS MT colorectal cancer (CRC) xenograft growth. In this study, we assessed safety of MEK1/2 inhibitor PD-0325901 with c-MET inhibitor crizotinib and determined the optimal biological doses for subsequent clinical trials. Methods In this dose-escalation phase I trial, patients with advanced solid tumours received PD-0325901 with crizotinib, using a rolling-6 design to determine the maximum tolerable dose (MTD) and safety/tolerability. Blood samples for pharmacokinetics and skin biopsies were collected. Results Twenty-five patients were recruited in 4 cohorts up to doses of crizotinib 200 mg B.D continuously with PD-0325901 8 mg B.D, days 1–21 every 28 days. One in six patients exhibited a dose-limiting toxicity at this dose level. Drug-related adverse events were in keeping with single-agent toxicity profiles. The best clinical response was stable disease in seven patients (29%). Conclusions PD-0325901/crizotinib can be given together at pharmacologically-active doses. The MTD for PD-0325901/crizotinib was 8 mg B.D (days 1–21) and 200 mg B.D continuously in a 28-days cycle. The combination was further explored with an alternate MEK1/2 inhibitor in RAS MT CRC patients. EudraCT-Number 2014-000463-40

Background The ‘WHO-ASPHER Roadmap to Professionalizing the Public Health Workforce in the European Region’ provides recommendations for strategic and systematic workforce planning around professionalization levers including: (i) competencies, (ii) training and education, (iii) formal organization, (iv) professional credentialing and (v) code of ethics and professional conduct as well as taxonomy and enumeration. It was based on a literature review till 2016. This scoping review aims to explore how the professionalization was documented in the literature between 2016 and 2022. Methods Following the Joanna Briggs Institute guidelines, we searched Medline via PubMed, Web of Science, ERIC via EBSCO and Google Scholar and included studies on professionalization levers. Four critical appraisal tools were used to assess qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods studies and grey literature. The PRISMA Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) was used for reporting. Results Eleven articles included in this review spanned 61 countries, targeting undergraduate, master’s, doctoral degrees and continuing professional development. Most of these documents were reviews. About half provided a definition of the public health workforce; more than half covered the taxonomy and included information about competences, but the use of frameworks was sporadic and inconsistent. Formal organization and the necessity of a code of conduct for the public health workforce were acknowledged in only two studies. Conclusions In spite of some efforts to professionalize the public health workforce, this process is fragmented and not fully recognized and supported. There is an urgent need to engage policymakers and stakeholders to prioritize investments in strengthening the public health workforce worldwide.