Temporal variability and methodological differences in data normalization, among other factors, complicate effective trend analysis of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) wastewater surveillance data and its alignment with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) clinical outcomes. As there is no consensus approach for these analyses yet, this study explored the use of piecewise linear trend analysis (joinpoint regression) to identify significant trends and trend turning points in SARS-CoV-2 RNA wastewater concentrations (normalized and non-normalized) and corresponding COVID-19 case rates in the greater Las Vegas metropolitan area (Nevada, USA) from mid-2020 to April 2023. The analysis period was stratified into three distinct phases based on temporal changes in testing protocols, vaccination availability, SARS-CoV-2 variant prevalence, and public health interventions. While other statistical methodologies may require fewer parameter specifications, joinpoint regression provided an interpretable framework for characterization and comparison of trends and trend turning points, revealing sewershed-specific variations in trend magnitude and timing that also aligned with known variant-driven waves. Week-level trend agreement corroborated previous findings demonstrating a close relationship between SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance data and COVID-19 outcomes. These findings guide future applications of advanced statistical methodologies and support the continued integration of wastewater-based epidemiology as a complementary approach to traditional COVID-19 surveillance systems.

In this retrospective study examining the treatment of low-risk AmpC-producing Enterobacterales bacteremia during two periods with different microbiology reporting strategies, reporting of ceftriaxone susceptibility was associated with a statistically significant decrease in carbapenem use as definitive therapy compared to when susceptibility was suppressed (21 vs 50%, p < 0.0001).

We conducted a retrospective cohort study to identify factors influencing intravenous (IV) versus oral antibiotic therapy in first-episode prosthetic joint infections. Of the 34/78 (44%) cases treated intravenously, negative cultures (26%), concomitant infections necessitating IV antibiotics (21%), and delays in susceptibility testing (15%) were the most common reasons for IV therapy.

One species-general life history (LH) principle posits that challenging childhood environments are coupled with a fast or faster LH strategy and associated behaviors, while secure and stable childhood environments foster behaviors conducive to a slow or slower LH strategy. This coupling between environments and LH strategies is based on the assumption that individuals’ internal traits and states are independent of their external surroundings. In reality, individuals respond to external environmental conditions in alignment with their intrinsic vitality, encompassing both physical and mental states. The present study investigated attachment as an internal mental state, examining its role in mediating and moderating the association between external environmental adversity and fast LH strategies. A sample of 1169 adolescents (51% girls) from 9 countries was tracked over 10 years, starting from age 8. The results confirm both mediation and moderation and, for moderation, secure attachment nullified and insecure attachment maintained the environment-LH coupling. These findings suggest that attachment could act as an internal regulator, disrupting the contingent coupling between environmental adversity and a faster pace of life, consequently decelerating human LH.

It is unclear how much adolescents’ lives were disrupted throughout the COVID-19 pandemic or what risk factors predicted such disruption. To answer these questions, 1,080 adolescents in 9 nations were surveyed 5 times from March 2020 to July 2022. Rates of adolescent COVID-19 life disruption were stable and high. Adolescents who, compared to their peers, lived in nations with higher national COVID-19 death rates, lived in nations with less stringent COVID-19 mitigation strategies, had less confidence in their government’s response to COVID-19, complied at higher rates with COVID-19 control measures, experienced the death of someone they knew due to COVID-19, or experienced more internalizing, externalizing, and smoking problems reported more life disruption due to COVID-19 during part or all of the pandemic. Additionally, when, compared to their typical levels of functioning, adolescents experienced spikes in national death rates, experienced less stringent COVID-19 mitigation measures, experienced less confidence in government response to the COVID-19 pandemic, complied at higher rates with COVID-19 control measures, experienced more internalizing problems, or smoked more at various periods during the pandemic, they also experienced more COVID-19 life disruption. Collectively, these findings provide new insights that policymakers can use to prevent the disruption of adolescents’ lives in future pandemics.

The target backsheath field acceleration mechanism is one of the main mechanisms of laser-driven proton acceleration (LDPA) and strongly depends on the comprehensive performance of the ultrashort ultra-intense lasers used as the driving sources. The successful use of the SG-II Peta-watt (SG-II PW) laser facility for LDPA and its applications in radiographic diagnoses have been manifested by the good performance of the SG-II PW facility. Recently, the SG-II PW laser facility has undergone extensive maintenance and a comprehensive technical upgrade in terms of the seed source, laser contrast and terminal focus. LDPA experiments were performed using the maintained SG-II PW laser beam, and the highest cutoff energy of the proton beam was obviously increased. Accordingly, a double-film target structure was used, and the maximum cutoff energy of the proton beam was up to 70 MeV. These results demonstrate that the comprehensive performance of the SG-II PW laser facility was improved significantly.

The great demographic pressure brings tremendous volume of beef demand. The key to solve this problem is the growth and development of Chinese cattle. In order to find molecular markers conducive to the growth and development of Chinese cattle, sequencing was used to determine the position of copy number variations (CNVs), bioinformatics analysis was used to predict the function of ZNF146 gene, real-time fluorescent quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used for CNV genotyping and one-way analysis of variance was used for association analysis. The results showed that there exists CNV in Chr 18: 47225201-47229600 (5.0.1 version) of ZNF146 gene through the early sequencing results in the laboratory and predicted ZNF146 gene was expressed in liver, skeletal muscle and breast cells, and was amplified or overexpressed in pancreatic cancer, which promoted the development of tumour through bioinformatics. Therefore, it is predicted that ZNF146 gene affects the proliferation of muscle cells, and then affects the growth and development of cattle. Furthermore, CNV genotyping of ZNF146 gene was three types (deletion type, normal type and duplication type) by Real-time fluorescent quantitative PCR (qPCR). The association analysis results showed that ZNF146-CNV was significantly correlated with rump length of Qinchuan cattle, hucklebone width of Jiaxian red cattle and heart girth of Yunling cattle. From the above results, ZNF146-CNV had a significant effect on growth traits, which provided an important candidate molecular marker for growth and development of Chinese cattle.

We report on the design and first results from experiments looking at the formation of radiative shocks on the Shenguang-II (SG-II) laser at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics in China. Laser-heating of a two-layer CH/CH–Br foil drives a $\sim 40$ km/s shock inside a gas cell filled with argon at an initial pressure of 1 bar. The use of gas-cell targets with large (several millimetres) lateral and axial extent allows the shock to propagate freely without any wall interactions, and permits a large field of view to image single and colliding counter-propagating shocks with time-resolved, point-projection X-ray backlighting ($\sim 20$ μm source size, 4.3 keV photon energy). Single shocks were imaged up to 100 ns after the onset of the laser drive, allowing to probe the growth of spatial nonuniformities in the shock apex. These results are compared with experiments looking at counter-propagating shocks, showing a symmetric drive that leads to a collision and stagnation from $\sim 40$ ns onward. We present a preliminary comparison with numerical simulations with the radiation hydrodynamics code ARWEN, which provides expected plasma parameters for the design of future experiments in this facility.

A 2-year fertilization experiment was conducted to study the effect of different ratios of organic (pig) manure on wheat yield and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). The four treatments were no nitrogen (N) (CK); 100% chemical fertilizer N (urea; T1); 70% chemical fertilizer N + 30% organic manure N (T2) and 50% chemical fertilizer N + 50% organic manure N (T3), with the same amount of applied nitrogen (120 kg/ha). The results showed the maximum grain yield (3049 kg/ha), crop nitrogen uptake (216 kg/ha), NUE (65.4%) and accumulated nitrate nitrogen (NO3−-N in 0–200 cm, 142 kg/ha) were observed in the T1 among all treatments in the first year. However, the largest grain yield (5074 kg/ha), crop nitrogen uptake (244 kg/ha) and NUE (82.5%) were under T2 treatment in the second year. Furthermore, T2 had the maximum NO3−-N content in 0–100 cm layer (116 kg/ha), especially 0–40 cm layer, and the lowest NO3−-N content in 100–200 cm (58.8 kg/ha). However, 50% organic manure N in T3 increased apparent nitrogen loss by 39.0% compared to that in T2. Therefore, 30% organic manure N application was more conducive for enhancing wheat yield and NUE and promoting environmental safety after 1-year fertilization time.

This study used data from 12 cultural groups in 9 countries (China, Colombia, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Philippines, Sweden, Thailand, and United States; N = 1,315) to investigate bidirectional associations between parental warmth and control, and child externalizing and internalizing behaviors. In addition, the extent to which these associations held across mothers and fathers and across cultures with differing normative levels of parent warmth and control were examined. Mothers, fathers, and children completed measures when children were ages 8 to 13. Multiple-group autoregressive cross-lagged structural equation models revealed that evocative child-driven effects of externalizing and internalizing behavior on warmth and control are ubiquitous across development, cultures, mothers, and fathers. Results also reveal that parenting effects on child externalizing and internalizing behaviors, though rarer than child effects, extend into adolescence when examined separately in mothers and fathers. Father-based parent effects were more frequent than mother effects. Most parent- and child-driven effects appear to emerge consistently across cultures. The rare culture-specific parenting effects suggested that occasionally the effects of parenting behaviors that run counter to cultural norms may be delayed in rendering their protective effect against deleterious child outcomes.

Seasonal influenza virus epidemics have a major impact on healthcare systems. Data on population susceptibility to emerging influenza virus strains during the interepidemic period can guide planning for resource allocation of an upcoming influenza season. This study sought to assess the population susceptibility to representative emerging influenza virus strains collected during the interepidemic period. The microneutralisation antibody titers (MN titers) of a human serum panel against representative emerging influenza strains collected during the interepidemic period before the 2018/2019 winter influenza season (H1N1-inter and H3N2-inter) were compared with those against influenza strains representative of previous epidemics (H1N1-pre and H3N2-pre). A multifaceted approach, incorporating both genetic and antigenic data, was used in selecting these representative influenza virus strains for the MN assay. A significantly higher proportion of individuals had a ⩾four-fold reduction in MN titers between H1N1-inter and H1N1-pre than that between H3N2-inter and H3N2-pre (28.5% (127/445) vs. 4.9% (22/445), P < 0.001). The geometric mean titer (GMT) of H1N1-inter was significantly lower than that of H1N1-pre (381 (95% CI 339–428) vs. 713 (95% CI 641–792), P < 0.001), while there was no significant difference in the GMT between H3N2-inter and H3N2-pre. Since A(H1N1) predominated the 2018–2019 winter influenza epidemic, our results corroborated the epidemic subtype.

Traditional accounts of the Eighteenth and Twenty-first Amendments to the U.S. Constitution largely ignore the role of the major political parties. We argue that partisan politics was an integral part of the constitutional politics of this period. The need to manage divisions within both parties’ electoral coalitions during the transition from the third to the fourth-party systems led to the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment without support from either national party. While most accounts trace prohibition’s demise to widespread noncompliance and the graft it generated, we argue that elite congressional support for prohibition gave way when civil service reforms removed federal prohibition agents as patronage resources. We also argue that by giving states control of designing state conventions, and thereby risking state malapportionment of conventions, Democrats succeeded in overcoming the traditional fissures that divided their southern and northern wings.