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Background/objectivesHigh salt intake has been linked to several diseases including obesity and an increased risk of death; however, fecal salinity and the ability of salt to alter the gut microbiota, which was recently identified as an instrumental factor for health and disease, remains poorly explored.Methods/subjectsWe analyzed the fecal samples of 1326 human individuals for salinity by refractometry, 572 for gut microbiota by culturomics, and 164 by 16S rRNA-targeted metagenomics. Geographical origin, age, gender, and obesity were tested as predictors of fecal salinity and halophilic diversity. All halophilic isolates were characterized by taxonogenomics and their genome sequenced.ResultsFecal salinity was associated with obesity independently of geographical origin, gender, and age. The first 2 human-associated halophilic archaeal members were isolated along with 64 distinct halophilic species, including 21 new species and 41 known in the environment but not in humans. No halophiles grow in less than 1.5% salinity. Above this threshold, the richness of the halophilic microbiota was correlated with fecal salinity (r = 0.58, p < 0.0001). 16S metagenomics linked high fecal salinity to decreased diversity (linear regression, p < .035) and a depletion in anti-obesity Akkermansia muciniphila and Bifidobacterium, specifically B. longum and B. adolescentis. Genomics analysis suggested that halophilic microbes are not only transient passengers but may be residents of the human gut.ConclusionsHigh salt levels are associated with alteration of the gut microbial ecosystem and halophilic microbiota, as discovered during this study. Further studies should clarify if the gut microbiota alterations associated with high salt levels and the human halophilic microbiota could be causally related to human disease, such as obesity.

VITT Recurrence after Covid-19 or VaccineIn 69 patients with vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia caused by anti–PF4 antibodies, subsequent Covid-19 infection or receipt of an mRNA-based vaccine did not induce VITT recurrence.

Background/objectivesHigh salt intake has been linked to several diseases including obesity and an increased risk of death; however, fecal salinity and the ability of salt to alter the gut microbiota, which was recently identified as an instrumental factor for health and disease, remains poorly explored.Methods/subjectsWe analyzed the fecal samples of 1326 human individuals for salinity by refractometry, 572 for gut microbiota by culturomics, and 164 by 16S rRNA-targeted metagenomics. Geographical origin, age, gender, and obesity were tested as predictors of fecal salinity and halophilic diversity. All halophilic isolates were characterized by taxonogenomics and their genome sequenced.ResultsFecal salinity was associated with obesity independently of geographical origin, gender, and age. The first 2 human-associated halophilic archaeal members were isolated along with 64 distinct halophilic species, including 21 new species and 41 known in the environment but not in humans. No halophiles grow in less than 1.5% salinity. Above this threshold, the richness of the halophilic microbiota was correlated with fecal salinity (r = 0.58, p < 0.0001). 16S metagenomics linked high fecal salinity to decreased diversity (linear regression, p < .035) and a depletion in anti-obesity Akkermansia muciniphila and Bifidobacterium, specifically B. longum and B. adolescentis. Genomics analysis suggested that halophilic microbes are not only transient passengers but may be residents of the human gut.ConclusionsHigh salt levels are associated with alteration of the gut microbial ecosystem and halophilic microbiota, as discovered during this study. Further studies should clarify if the gut microbiota alterations associated with high salt levels and the human halophilic microbiota could be causally related to human disease, such as obesity.

This work proposes to reduce visibility data volume using a baseline-dependent lossy compression technique that preserves smearing at the edges of the field-of-view. We exploit the relation of the rank of a matrix and the fact that a low-rank approximation can describe the raw visibility data as a sum of basic components where each basic component corresponds to a specific Fourier component of the sky distribution. As such, the entire visibility data is represented as a collection of data matrices from baselines, instead of a single tensor. The proposed methods are formulated as follows: provided a large dataset of the entire visibility data; the first algorithm, named \\(simple~SVD\\) projects the data into a regular sampling space of rank\\(-r\\) data matrices. In this space, the data for all the baselines has the same rank, which makes the compression factor equal across all baselines. The second algorithm, named \\(BDSVD\\) projects the data into an irregular sampling space of rank\\(-r_{pq}\\) data matrices. The subscript \\(pq\\) indicates that the rank of the data matrix varies across baselines \\(pq\\), which makes the compression factor baseline-dependent. MeerKAT and the European Very Long Baseline Interferometry Network are used as reference telescopes to evaluate and compare the performance of the proposed methods against traditional methods, such as traditional averaging and baseline-dependent averaging (BDA). For the same spatial resolution threshold, both \\(simple~SVD\\) and \\(BDSVD\\) show effective compression by two-orders of magnitude higher than traditional averaging and BDA. At the same space-saving rate, there is no decrease in spatial resolution and there is a reduction in the noise variance in the data which improves the S/N to over \\(1.5\\) dB at the edges of the field-of-view.

Questionnaires completed by chapter directors, presidents, or coordinators, or by legislative advocates, are used to explore the political activities of 52 state chapters of the National Assoc of Social Workers (NASW). Special consideration is given to political activities perceived to have influenced the political process. Findings reveal: 50+% of the respondents reported being very active in 3 types of political activities -- writing letters, phoning officials, & lobbying legislators; 40% reported no involvement in soliciting funds or attending hearings; & chapter presidents were least likely to participate in a protest rally or voter registration activities. Suggestions for promoting political activity among social work chapters are offered. 1 Table, 5 References. W. Howard

Rotavirus is a major cause of death and complications in infants, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. In this randomized clinical trial in Niger, a low-cost, heat-stable rotavirus vaccine was shown to have nearly 70% efficacy against severe rotavirus gastroenteritis. Rotavirus is a leading cause of severe gastroenteritis among young children and is responsible for approximately 37% of deaths from diarrhea among children younger than 5 years of age worldwide. 1 , 2 Two live, oral, attenuated rotavirus vaccines (Rotarix, GlaxoSmithKline, and RotaTeq, Merck) have met the prequalification requirements of the World Health Organization (WHO), stipulations that allow for purchase by United Nations agencies. 3 The efficacy of these vaccines has been shown, with an important effect on hospital admissions and mortality. 4 – 14 Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of death associated with rotavirus disease, 1 but vaccination on a large scale presents challenges. . . .

Social issues in the workplace are of increasing concern to social services agencies, Corporate America, and organized labor. Increasing numbers of social workers are practicing in occupational and industrial settings, but the profession is still struggling with conceptualizing and implementing a curriculum that will prepare students for these careers and, at the same time, will be consistent with social work values and ethics. Few U.S. schools of social work, however, offer courses in the area, and even fewer offer a concentration or a specialization in occupational social work. The University of Southern California School of Social Work was one of the pioneers; it has offered a concentration in industrial/ occupational social work since 1982. During the decade of its existence, the faculty teaching in the concentration have developed a comprehensive model for teaching social work in work-related settings. The authors present a model curriculum for teaching occupational social work in a master's program from an ecosystems perspective with an integrated and coordinated approach. They provide a detailed description of the rationale for the program, its themes and objectives, and its application across six courses and the field practicum in occupational/industrial social work and then explore the program's utility for second-year master's students.