Determining the factors that impact the risk for infection with SARS-CoV-2 is a priority as the virus continues to infect people worldwide. The objective was to determine the effectiveness of vaccines and other factors associated with infection among Canadian healthcare workers (HCWs) followed from 15 June 2020 to 1 December 2023. We also investigate the association between antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 and subsequent infections with SARS-CoV-2. Of the 2474 eligible participants, 2133 (86%) were female, 33% were nurses, the median age was 41 years, and 99.3% had received at least two doses of COVID-19 vaccine by 31 December 2021. The incidence of SARS-CoV-2 was 0.91 per 1000 person-days. Prior to the circulation of the Omicron variants, vaccine effectiveness (VE) was estimated at 85% (95% CI 1, 98) for participants who received the primary series of vaccine. During the Omicron period, relative adjusted VE was 43% (95% CI 29, 54), 56% (95% CI 42, 67), and 46% (95% CI 24, 62) for 3, 4, and ≥ 5 doses compared with those who received primary series after adjusting for previous infection and other covariates. Exposure to infected household members, coworkers, or friends in the previous 14 days were risk factor for infection, while contact with an infected patient was not statistically significant. Participants with higher levels of immunoglobulin G (IgG) anti-receptor binding domain (RBD) antibodies had lower rates of infection than those with the lowest levels. COVID-19 vaccines remained effective throughout the follow-up of this cohort of highly vaccinated HCWs. IgG anti-RBD antibody levels may be useful as correlates of protection for issues such as vaccine development and testing. There remains a need to increase the awareness among HCWs about the risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2 from contacts at a variety of venues.

Since Key and Allport, scholars have argued that racial context affects political behavior, with some finding out-group contact increases intergroup hostility and others showing the opposite. We argue that Americans exist in multiple racial contexts simultaneously that may overlap or conflict, helping to explain past discord. Using novel data, we document in-group embeddedness among the four largest U.S. ethnoracial groups for three kinds of racial context: geographic, social, and psychological. These three contexts are only weakly correlated, we find, with social ties exhibiting distinctly high rates of in-group segregation. We next examine the relationship between racial contexts and political attitudes, showing that individuals who are highly embedded across contexts express notably different views than those who experience cross-cutting pressures. Our results underscore a need for greater care and specificity when examining the relationship between “racial context” and political phenomena.

Hypertension and depression are increasingly common noncommunicable diseases in Ghana and worldwide, yet both are poorly controlled. We sought to understand how healthcare workers in rural Ghana conceptualize the interaction between hypertension and depression, and how care for these two conditions might best be integrated. We conducted a qualitative descriptive study involving in-depth interviews with 34 healthcare workers in the Kassena-Nankana districts of the Upper East Region of Ghana. We used conventional content analysis to systematically review interview transcripts, code the data content and analyze codes for salient themes. Respondents detailed three discrete conceptual models. Most emphasized depression as causing hypertension: through both emotional distress and unhealthy behavior. Others posited a bidirectional relationship, where cardiovascular morbidity worsened mood, or described a single set of underlying causes for both conditions. Nearly all proposed health interventions targeted their favored root cause of these disorders. In this representative rural Ghanaian community, healthcare workers widely agreed that cardiovascular disease and mental illness are physiologically linked and warrant an integrated care response, but held diverse views regarding precisely how and why. There was widespread support for a single primary care intervention to treat both conditions through counseling and medication.

Phenological studies for Cuban bulrush [Oxycaryum cubense (Poepp. & Kunth) Lye] have been limited to the monocephalous form in Lake Columbus (Mississippi). Accordingly, there is little available information on potential phenological differences among O. cubense forms (monocephalous vs. polycephalous) and populations in other geographic locations in the United States. Therefore, seasonal patterns of biomass and starch allocation in O. cubense were quantified from two populations in Lake Columbus on the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway in Mississippi (monocephalous), two populations from Lake Martin in Louisiana (polycephalous), and two populations from Orange Lake in Florida (polycephalous). Monthly samples of O. cubense inflorescence, emergent, and submersed tissue were harvested from two plots per state from October 2021 to September 2022. During monthly data collection, air temperature and photoperiod were recorded. Starch allocation patterns were similar among all sites, with starch storage being less than 1.5% dry weight for all plant tissues. Biomass was greatest in Lake Columbus (monocephalous; 600.7 g dry weight [DW] m−2) followed by Lake Martin (polycephalous; 392.3 g DW m−2) and Orange Lake (polycephalous; 233.85 g DW m−2). Peak inflorescence biomass occurred in the winter for the Lake Martin and Orange Lake populations and in the summer for the Lake Columbus population. Inflorescence biomass in Lake Columbus had a positive relationship (r2 = 0.53) with warmer air temperatures. Emergent and submersed biomass generally had negative relationships with both photoperiod and temperature (r2 = 0.02 to 0.77) in all sites. Peak biomass was also negatively related to temperature and photoperiod. Results from this study indicate that there are differences in biomass allocation between the two growth forms of O. cubense and that growth can occur at temperatures below freezing. Low temperature tolerance may allow this species to expand its range farther north than previously suspected.

Medical researchers are increasingly prioritizing the inclusion of underserved communities in clinical studies. However, mere inclusion is not enough. People from underserved communities frequently experience chronic stress that may lead to accelerated biological aging and early morbidity and mortality. It is our hope and intent that the medical community come together to engineer improved health outcomes for vulnerable populations. Here, we introduce Health Equity Engineering (HEE), a comprehensive scientific framework to guide research on the development of tools to identify individuals at risk of poor health outcomes due to chronic stress, the integration of these tools within existing healthcare system infrastructures, and a robust assessment of their effectiveness and sustainability. HEE is anchored in the premise that strategic intervention at the individual level, tailored to the needs of the most at-risk people, can pave the way for achieving equitable health standards at a broader population level. HEE provides a scientific framework guiding health equity research to equip the medical community with a robust set of tools to enhance health equity for current and future generations.

In the summer of 2022, Tulane University, in collaboration with archaeologists from other institutions, began excavations at the site of Pompeii. The archaeological work was focused on Insula 14 of Region 1, located in the southeastern sector of the site. To overcome the challenges of recording a complex urban excavation, and of working with a collaborative team, we designed and implemented a unique workflow that combines paperless and 3D data-capture methods through the use of GIS technologies. The final product of our documentation workflow was a robust and easy-to-use online geodatabase where archaeologists can revisit, explore, visualize, and analyze each excavated context using virtual tools. We present our workflow for digitally documenting observational and spatial data in the field, and how we made these data available to project archaeologists during and after the field season. First, we describe the development of digital forms in ESRI's Survey123. Then, we explain our procedures for 3D documentation through SfM photogrammetric methods and discuss how we integrated the data and transformed it into an accessible format by using interactive dashboards and online 3D web scenes. Finally, we discuss the components of our workflow that are broadly applicable and that can easily be adapted to other projects.

Classic political behavior studies assert that childhood socialization can contribute to later political orientations. But, as adults consider how to introduce children to politics, what shapes their decisions? We argue socialization is itself political with adults changing their socialization priorities in response to salient political events including social movements. Using Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests and race socialization as a case, we show the summer 2020 information environment coupled movement-consistent concepts of race with child-rearing guidance. A survey of white parents after the summer activism suggests that many—but especially Democrats and those near peaceful protest epicenters—prioritized new forms of race socialization. Further, nearly 2 years after the protests’ height, priming BLM changes support for race-related curricular materials among white Americans. Our work casts political socialization in a new light, reviving an old literature, and has implications for when today’s children become tomorrow’s voters.

The California Department of Public Health (CDPH) reviewed 109 cases of healthcare personnel (HCP) with laboratory-confirmed mpox to understand transmission risk in healthcare settings. Overall, 90% of HCP with mpox had nonoccupational exposure risk factors. One occupationally acquired case was associated with sharps injury while unroofing a patient’s lesion for diagnostic testing.

During the late 1930s, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) developed a series of area descriptions with color-coded maps of cities that summarized mortgage lending risk. We analyze the maps to explain the oft-noted fact that black neighborhoods overwhelmingly received the lowest rating. Our results suggest that racial bias in the construction of the HOLC maps can explain at most 4 to 20 percent of the observed concentration of black households in the lowest-rated zones. We also provide evidence that the Federal Housing Administration had its own mapping strategies when evaluating mortgages and relied relatively little on the HOLC maps.

How does racial diversity impact institutional outcomes and (in)equality? Discussions about diversity usually focus on how individuals’ identities shape their behavior, but diversity is a group-level characteristic. Scholars must, therefore, consider the relationship between group composition and the individual decisions that shape institutional outcomes. Using felony data from a large U.S. court system, I explore the relationship between racial diversity among the judges comprising a court and individual judges’ decisions. I find that as the percent of Black judges in a courthouse increases white judges are less likely to render incarceration sentences in cases with Black defendants. Increases in racial diversity decrease the Black–white gap in the probability of incarceration by up to 7 percentage points. However, I find no relationship between judge’s racial identities and disparities in their decisions. This study highlights the importance of conceptualizing diversity as a group characteristic and the relationship between institutional context and outcomes.

That black and white Americans disagree about the carceral state is well established; why this is the case is much less clear. Drawing on group hierarchy theory and the state's role in perpetuating group subordination/domination, we theorize that differences in socialization and contact during emergent adulthood produce divergent priors for racial groups and gender subgroups within race. These different starting points shape how people integrate new information from recent contact into their belief systems. Using a survey of over 11,000 respondents, we find that, instead of all groups integrating information the same way, recent direct contact contributes most to negative attitudes among groups whose contact with government agents is least negatively valenced. While interactions with the American carceral state divide opinions considerably among white Americans and women, adulthood contact for black Americans, especially black men, appears to be but ‘a drop in the ocean’ of political life.

Meltwater drainage beneath ice sheets is a fundamental consideration for understanding ice–bed conditions and bed-modulated ice flow, with potential impacts on terminus behavior and ice-shelf mass balance. While contemporary observations reveal the presence of basal water movement in the subglacial environment and inferred styles of drainage, the geological record of former ice sheets, including sediments and landforms on land and the seafloor, aids in understanding the spatiotemporal evolution of efficient and inefficient drainage systems and their impact on ice-sheet behavior. We highlight the past decade of advances in geological studies that focus on providing process-based information on subglacial hydrology of ice sheets, how these studies inform theory, numerical models and contemporary observations, and address the needs for future research.

Vitamin D deficiency is prevalent in patients with chronic spinal cord injury (SCI) and has been implicated as an aetiologic factor of osteoporosis and various skeletal and extra-skeletal issues in SCI patients. Few data were available regarding vitamin D status in patients with acute SCI or immediately assessed at hospital admission. This retrospective cross-sectional study evaluated vitamin D status in SCI patients at admission to a UK SCI centre in January–December 2017. A total of 196 eligible patients with serum 25(OH)D concentration records at admission were recruited. The results found that 24 % were vitamin D deficient (serum 25(OH)D < 25 nmol/l), 57 % of the patients had serum 25(OH)D < 50 nmol/l. The male patients, patients admitted in the winter–spring time (December–May), and patients with serum sodium < 135 mmol/l or with non-traumatic causes had a significant higher prevalence of vitamin D deficiency than their counterparts (28 % males v. 11⋅8 % females, P = 0⋅02; 30⋅2 % in winter–spring v. 12⋅9 % in summer–autumn, P = 0⋅007; 32⋅1 % non-traumatic v. 17⋅6 % traumatic SCI, P = 0⋅03; 38⋅9 % low serum sodium v. 18⋅8 % normal serum sodium, P = 0⋅010). There was a significant inverse association of serum 25(OH)D concentration with body mass index (BMI) (r = −0⋅311, P = 0⋅002), serum total cholesterol (r = −0⋅168, P = 0⋅04) and creatinine concentrations (r = −0⋅162, P = 0⋅02) that were also significant predictors of serum 25(OH)D concentration. Strategies for systematic screening and efficacy of vitamin D supplementation in SCI patients need to be implemented and further investigated to prevent the vitamin D deficiency-related chronic complications.