Traveller

Equine Gastric Ulcers Syndrome (EGUS) is a worldwide disease present in equids of different breeds, activity levels, and age groups. It is divided into two different illnesses: Equine Squamous Gastric Disease (ESGD) affecting the squamous mucosa and Equine Glandular Gastric Disease (EGGD) affecting the glandular mucosa. The historical horserace is a traditional competition that is common in Italy. They can be divided into two different types: speed races and jousting tournaments. Anglo-Arabians and Thoroughbreds are used for the two competitions with training and management systems similar to those used in races performed on a racetrack...

BACKGROUND: Studies on equine air transport practices and consequences are scarce. This prospective study aimed to describe horse and air journey details and practices, document how horse behavior and health changed during the air transport phases, quantify the occurrence of welfare issues, and identify possible associations between horse and journey details, air transport practices, and welfare issues. RESULTS: Data were collected from before departure to five days after arrival on 118/597 horses traveling on 32 commercial air journeys on different routes, varying in duration and conditions...

BACKGROUND: Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the predominant etiological agent of seafood-associated foodborne illnesses on a global scale. It is essential to elucidate the mechanisms by which this pathogen disseminates. Given the existing research predominantly concentrates on localized outbreaks, there is a pressing necessity for a comprehensive investigation to capture strains of V. parahaemolyticus cross borders. RESULTS: This study examined the frequency and genetic attributes of imported V...

Traveling waves and neural oscillation frequency gradients are pervasive in the human cortex. While the direction of traveling waves has been linked to brain function and dysfunction, the factors that determine this direction remain elusive. We hypothesized that structural connectivity instrength gradients - defined as the gradually varying sum of incoming connection strengths across the cortex - could shape both traveling wave direction and frequency gradients. We confirm the presence of instrength gradients in the human connectome across diverse cohorts and parcellations...

Future NASA missions will require astronauts to travel farther and spend longer durations in space than ever before. This will also expose astronauts to longer periods of several physical and psychological challenges, including exposure to space radiation (SR) and periods of social isolation (SI), which could have unknown negative effects on physical and mental health. Each also has the potential to negatively impact sleep which can reduce the ability to cope with stressful experiences and lead to sensorimotor, neurocognitive, and physical deficits...

In this paper we recommend an appropriate compensation approach should be established for fatality and disabilities that may occur due to space radiation exposures of government or industry workers. A brief review of compensation approaches for nuclear energy and nuclear weapons development workers in the United States and other countries is described. We then summarize issues in the application of probability of causation calculation and provide examples of probability of causation (PC) calculations for missions to the International Space Station and Earth's moon or for Mars exploration...

Understanding how skeletal tissues respond to microgravity is ever more important with the increased interest in human space travel. Here, we exposed larval Danio rerio at 3.5 dpf to simulated microgravity (SMG) using a 3D mode of rotation in a ground-based experiment and then studied different cellular, molecular, and morphological bone responses both immediately after exposure and one week later. Our results indicate an overall decrease in ossification in several developing skeletal elements immediately after SMG exposure with the exception of the otoliths, however ossification returns to normal levels seven days after exposure...

Research using zebrafish (Danio rerio) has begun to provide novel information in many fields, including the behavioral pharmacology of drug use and misuse. There have been limited studies on the effects of methamphetamine in adult zebrafish and the parameters of exposure (dose, test session length) have not been well-documented. Behavior following drug exposure is generally measured during relatively short sessions (6-10 min is common) in a novel tank environment. Many procedural variables (isolation, netting, novel tank) elicit anxiety-like behavior that is most apparent during the initial portion of a test session...

Functional network connectivity (FNC) has previously been shown to distinguish patient groups from healthy controls (HC). However, the overlap across psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia (SZ), bipolar (BP), and schizoaffective disorder (SAD) is not evident yet. This study focuses on studying the overlap across these three psychotic disorders in both dynamic and static FNC (dFNC/sFNC). We used resting-state fMRI, demographics, and clinical information from the Bipolar-Schizophrenia Network on Intermediate Phenotypes cohort (BSNIP)...

INTRODUCTION: Aboriginal Australians face significant health disparities, with hospitalisation rates 2.3 times greater, and longer hospital length of stay, than non-Indigenous Australians. This additional burden impacts families further through out-of-pocket healthcare expenditure (OOPHE), which includes additional healthcare expenses not covered by universal taxpayer insurance. Aboriginal patients traveling from remote locations are likely to be impacted further by OOPHE. The objective of this study was to examine the impacts and burden of OOPHE for rurally based Aboriginal individuals...

BACKGROUND: Recent modifications to low-dose CT (LDCT)-based lung cancer screening guidelines increase the number of eligible individuals, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities. Because these populations disproportionately live in metropolitan areas, we analyzed the association between travel time and initial LDCT completion within an integrated, urban safety-net health care system. METHODS: Using Esri's StreetMap Premium, OpenStreetMap, and the r5r package in R, we determined projected private vehicle and public transportation travel times between patient residence and the screening facility for LDCT ordered in March 2017 through December 2022 at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas...

Vision Zero postulates that no one should be killed or seriously injured in road traffic; therefore, it is necessary to define evidence-based speed limits to mitigate impact severity. The overall aims to guide the definition of safe speeds limits by establishing relations between impact speed and the risk of at-least-moderate (MAIS2+) and at-least-severe (MAIS3+) injuries for car occupants in frontal and side crashes in Sweden. As Swedish in-depth data are unavailable, the first objective was to assess the applicability of German In-depth Accident Study (GIDAS) data to Sweden...

BACKGROUND: The Liver Simulated Allocation Model (LSAM) is used to evaluate proposed organ allocation policies. Although LSAM has been shown to predict the directionality of changes in transplants and non-used organs, the magnitude is often overestimated. One reason is that policymakers and researchers using LSAM assume static levels of organ donation and center behavior because of challenges with predicting future behavior. METHODS: We sought to assess the ability of LSAM to account for changes in organ donation and organ acceptance behavior using LSAM 2019...

As financial risk protection is one of the goals towards universal health coverage, detailed information on costs, catastrophic costs and other economic consequences related to any disease are required for designing social protection measures. End Tuberculosis (TB) Strategy set a milestone of achieving zero catastrophic cost by 2020. However, a recent literature review noted that 7%-32% TB affected households in India faced catastrophic cost. Studies included in the review were small scale cross-sectional. We followed a cohort of 1482 notified drug-susceptible TB patients from four states in India: Assam, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal to provide a comprehensive picture of economic burden associated with TB treatment...

BACKGROUND: Melioidosis is a bacterial infection associated with high mortality. The diagnostic approach to this rare disease in Europe is challenging, especially because pulmonary manifestation of melioidosis can mimic pulmonary tuberculosis (TB). Antibiotic therapy of melioidosis consists of an initial intensive phase of 2-8 weeks followed by an eradication therapy of 3-6 months. CASE PRESENTATION: We present the case of a 46-year-old female patient with pulmonary melioidosis in Germany...

Vaccination is one of the main advancements in public health in the prophylaxis of infectious diseases. We intend to describe the general knowledge about vaccines/vaccination among Brazilian immigrants in Portugal, characterize their attitudes toward vaccination, and describe their knowledge of the yellow fever (YF) vaccine. A cross-sectional study was conducted using a self-completion questionnaire (face-to-face or remote). A total of 542 people participated in the study; the mean age was 36.81 years; 40.1% were male; 44...

Quantum annealers are suited to solve several logistic optimization problems expressed in the QUBO formulation. However, the solutions proposed by the quantum annealers are generally not optimal, as thermal noise and other disturbing effects arise when the number of qubits involved in the calculation is too large. In order to deal with this issue, we propose the use of the classical branch-and-bound algorithm, that divides the problem into sub-problems which are described by a lower number of qubits. We analyze the performance of this method on two problems, the knapsack problem and the traveling salesman problem...

Hearing impairment is a global issue, affecting billions of people; however, there is a gap between the population affected by hearing loss and those able to access hearing healthcare. Tele-audiology, the application of telemedicine in audiology, serves as a new form of technology which aims to provide synchronous or asynchronous hearing healthcare. In this article, we reviewed some recent studies of tele-audiology-related topics to have a glimpse of the current development, associated challenges, and future advancement...

During the development of the nervous system, neuronal cells extend axons and dendrites that form complex neuronal networks, which are essential for transmitting and processing information. Understanding the physical processes that underlie the formation of neuronal networks is essential for gaining a deeper insight into higher-order brain functions such as sensory processing, learning, and memory. In the process of creating networks, axons travel towards other recipient neurons, directed by a combination of internal and external cues that include genetic instructions, biochemical signals, as well as external mechanical and geometrical stimuli...

UNLABELLED: The signs of climate change are undeniable, and the impact of these changes on ecosystem function heavily depends on the response of microbes that underpin the food web. Antarctic ice shelf is a massive mass of floating ice that extends from the continent into the ocean, exerting a profound influence on global carbon cycles. Beneath Antarctic ice shelves, marine ice stores valuable genetic information, where marine microbial communities before the industrial revolution are archived...