COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness (VE) studies are limited in low- and middle-income countries. A case-control study was conducted among COVID-19 and other pneumonia patients admitted to a hospital in the Philippines during the pre-Omicron and Omicron periods. To elucidate factors associated with in-hospital death, 1782 COVID-19 patients were assessed. To estimate absolute VE for various severe outcomes, 1059 patients were assessed (869 [82.1%] COVID-19 cases; 190 [17.9%] controls). Factors associated with in-hospital death included older age, tuberculosis (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.45 [95% confidence interval {95% CI} 1.69–3.57]), HIV (aOR 3.30 [95% CI 2.03–5.37]), and current smokers (aOR 2.65 [95% CI 1.72–4.10]). Pre-Omicron, the primary series provided high protection within a median of 2 months (hospitalization: 85.4% [95% CI 35.9–96.7%]; oxygen requirement: 91.0% [95% CI 49.4–98.4%]; invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV): 97.0% [95% CI 65.7–99.7%]; death: 96.5% [95% CI 67.1–99.6%]). During Omicron, the primary series provided moderate-high protection within a median of 6–9 months (hospitalization: 70.2% [95% CI 27.0–87.8%]; oxygen requirement: 71.4% [95% CI 29.3–88.4%]; IMV: 72.7% [95% CI −11.6–93.3%]; death: 58.9% [95% CI −82.8–90.8%]). Primary series VE against severe COVID-19 outcomes was consistently high for both pre-Omicron and Omicron in a setting where approximately half of the vaccinees received inactivated vaccines.

Rift propagation, rather than basal melt, drives the destabilization and disintegration of the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf. Since 2016, rifts have episodically advanced throughout the central ice-shelf area, with rapid propagation events occurring during austral spring. The ice shelf's speed has increased by ~70% during this period, transitioning from a rate of 1.65 m d−1 in 2019 to 2.85 m d−1 by early 2023 in the central area. The increase in longitudinal strain rates near the grounding zone has led to full-thickness rifts and melange-filled gaps since 2020. A recent sea-ice break out has accelerated retreat at the western calving front, effectively separating the ice shelf from what remained of its northwestern pinning point. Meanwhile, a distributed set of phase-sensitive radar measurements indicates that the basal melting rate is generally small, likely due to a widespread robust ocean stratification beneath the ice–ocean interface that suppresses basal melt despite the presence of substantial oceanic heat at depth. These observations in combination with damage modeling show that, while ocean forcing is responsible for triggering the current West Antarctic ice retreat, the Thwaites Eastern Ice Shelf is experiencing dynamic feedbacks over decadal timescales that are driving ice-shelf disintegration, now independent of basal melt.

Declining labor force participation of older men throughout the 20th century and recent increases in participation have generated substantial interest in understanding the effect of public pensions on retirement. The National Bureau of Economic Research's International Social Security (ISS) Project, a long-term collaboration among researchers in a dozen developed countries, has explored this and related questions. The project employs a harmonized approach to conduct within-country analyses that are combined for meaningful cross-country comparisons. The key lesson is that the choices of policy makers affect the incentive to work at older ages and these incentives have important effects on retirement behavior.

The 7th edition of the Canadian Stroke Best Practice Recommendations (CSBPR) is a comprehensive summary of current evidence-based recommendations, appropriate for use by healthcare providers and system planners, and intended to drive healthcare excellence, improved outcomes and more integrated health systems. This edition includes a new module on the management of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT). Cerebral venous thrombosis is defined as thrombosis of the veins of the brain, including the dural venous sinuses and/or cortical or deep veins. Cerebral venous thrombosis is a rare but potentially life-threatening type of stroke, representing 0.5–1.0% of all stroke admissions. The reported rates of CVT are approximately 10–20 per million and appear to be increasing over time. The risk of CVT is higher in women and often associated with oral contraceptive use and with pregnancy and the puerperium. This guideline addresses care for adult individuals who present to the healthcare system with current or recent symptoms of CVT. The recommendations cover the continuum of care from diagnosis and initial clinical assessment of symptomatic CVT, to acute treatment of symptomatic CVT, post-acute management, person-centered care, special considerations in the long-term management of CVT, including pregnancy and considerations related to CVT in special circumstances such as trauma and vaccination. This module also includes supporting materials such as implementation resources to facilitate the adoption of evidence into practice and performance measures to enable monitoring of uptake and effectiveness of recommendations.

The moderation of user-generated content on online platforms remains a key solution to protecting people online, but also remains a perpetual challenge as the appropriateness of content moderation guidelines depends on the online community that they aim to govern. This challenge affects marginalized groups in particular, as they more frequently experience online abuse but also end up falsely being the target of content-moderation guidelines. While there have been calls for democratic, community-moderation, there has so far been little research into how to implement such approaches. Here, we present the co-creation of content moderation strategies with the users of an online platform to address some of these challenges. Within the context of AutSPACEs—an online citizen science platform that aims to allow autistic people to share their own sensory processing experiences publicly—we used a community-based and participatory approach to co-design a content moderation solution that would fit the preferences, priorities, and needs of its autistic user community. We outline how this approach helped us discover context-specific moderation dilemmas around participant safety and well-being and how we addressed those. These trade-offs have resulted in a moderation design that differs from more general social networks in aspects such as how to contribute, when to moderate, and what to moderate. While these dilemmas, processes, and solutions are specific to the context of AutSPACEs, we highlight how the co-design approach itself could be applied and useful for other communities to uncover challenges and help other online spaces to embed safety and empowerment.

Although the practice of human sacrifice in the British Iron Age is mentioned by multiple authors, both ancient and modern, physical proof of such activity in the archaeological record is comparatively rare. At Winterborne Kingston, in Dorset, the skeletal remains of a young adult female found face down near the base of a cylindrical storage pit provides clear evidence of violent death in the later Iron Age. Analysis of the skeleton suggests an individual who led a hard-working life and who, having suffered an act of violence a few weeks before death, was killed, possibly with her hands tied, by a blade incision to the neck. Placement of the body further suggests that killing was enacted within the pit, execution as spectacle forming the final act in a larger ceremony involving the creation of an animal bone stack or platform.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) has been a leader in weed science research covering topics ranging from the development and use of integrated weed management (IWM) tactics to basic mechanistic studies, including biotic resistance of desirable plant communities and herbicide resistance. ARS weed scientists have worked in agricultural and natural ecosystems, including agronomic and horticultural crops, pastures, forests, wild lands, aquatic habitats, wetlands, and riparian areas. Through strong partnerships with academia, state agencies, private industry, and numerous federal programs, ARS weed scientists have made contributions to discoveries in the newest fields of robotics and genetics, as well as the traditional and fundamental subjects of weed–crop competition and physiology and integration of weed control tactics and practices. Weed science at ARS is often overshadowed by other research topics; thus, few are aware of the long history of ARS weed science and its important contributions. This review is the result of a symposium held at the Weed Science Society of America’s 62nd Annual Meeting in 2022 that included 10 separate presentations in a virtual Weed Science Webinar Series. The overarching themes of management tactics (IWM, biological control, and automation), basic mechanisms (competition, invasive plant genetics, and herbicide resistance), and ecosystem impacts (invasive plant spread, climate change, conservation, and restoration) represent core ARS weed science research that is dynamic and efficacious and has been a significant component of the agency’s national and international efforts. This review highlights current studies and future directions that exemplify the science and collaborative relationships both within and outside ARS. Given the constraints of weeds and invasive plants on all aspects of food, feed, and fiber systems, there is an acknowledged need to face new challenges, including agriculture and natural resources sustainability, economic resilience and reliability, and societal health and well-being.

Understanding the distribution and extent of suitable habitats is critical for the conservation of endangered and endemic taxa. Such knowledge is limited for many Central African species, including the rare and globally threatened Grey-necked Picathartes Picathartes oreas, one of only two species in the family Picathartidae endemic to the forests of Central Africa. Despite growing concerns about land-use change resulting in fragmentation and loss of forest cover in the region, neither the extent of suitable habitat nor the potential species’ distribution is well known. We combine 339 (new and historical) occurrence records of Grey-necked Picathartes with environmental variables to model the potential global distribution. We used a Maximum Entropy modelling approach that accounted for sampling bias. Our model suggests that Grey-necked Picathartes distribution is strongly associated with steeper slopes and high levels of forest cover, while bioclimatic, vegetation health, and habitat condition variables were all excluded from the final model. We predicted 17,327 km2 of suitable habitat for the species, of which only 2,490 km2 (14.4%) are within protected areas where conservation designations are strictly enforced. These findings show a smaller global distribution of predicted suitable habitat forthe Grey-necked Picathartes than previously thought. This work provides evidence to inform a revision of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List status, and may warrant upgrading the status of the species from “Near Threatened” to “Vulnerable”.

Ancylostoma caninum is the most common nematode parasite of dogs in the United States. The present study aimed to describe the molecular epidemiology of A. caninum isolates from the central and eastern states of the United States using the partial mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase (cox1) gene and to compare them with those reported globally. We isolated eggs from faecal samples of dogs and characterized each isolate based on cox1 sequences. A total of 60 samples originating from Kansas, Iowa, New York, Florida and Massachusetts were included. 25 haplotypes were identified in the United States dataset with high haplotype diversity (0.904). Sequence data were compared to sequences from other world regions available in GenBank. Global haplotype analysis demonstrated 35 haplotypes with a haplotype diversity of 0.931. Phylogenetic and network analysis provide evidence for the existence of moderate geographical structuring of A. caninum haplotypes. Our results provide an updated summary of A. caninum haplotypes and data for neutral genetic markers with utility for tracking hookworm populations. Sequences have been deposited in GenBank (ON980650–ON980674). Further studies of isolates from other regions are essential to understand the genetic diversity of this parasite.

Online, social media communication is often ambiguous, and it can encourage speed and inattentiveness. We investigated whether Actively Open Minded Thinking (AOT), a dispositional willingness to seek out new or potentially threatening information, may help users avoid these pitfalls. In Study 1, we determined that correctly assessing social media authors’ traits was positively predicted by raters’ AOT. In Study 2, we used data-driven methods to devise a three-dimensional picture of online behaviors of people high or low in AOT, finding that AOT is associated with thoughtful, nuanced, idiosyncratic actions and with resisting the typically fast pace of online interactions. AOT may be an important factor in accurate, socially responsible online behavior.