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This study assessed the hand hygiene performance in French nursing homes using the consumption of alcohol-based hand rubs (AHRs) as a surrogate. Nursing homes from the 17 French regions were contacted to collect their AHR consumption and occupancy in 2018 and 2019. A total of 1290 nursing homes from 15 French regions participated in the survey. The estimated median number of hand hygiene actions per resident-day was 1.48 (interquartile range: 1.04-2.03) in 2018 and 1.60 (1.10-2.26) in 2019. A significantly higher AHR consumption was observed in public nursing homes with an infection control team or link nurse.

Altered dopamine (DA) transporter densities have been implicated in mechanisms of vulnerability and relapse in human alcoholics. The regional distribution and density of the DA transporter was studied in alcohol-preferring vervet monkeys to investigate baseline status and regulation of the DA transporter at different stages of chronic alcohol drinking. Combined ligand binding and in vitro autoradiography of the cocaine congener [125I]RTI-55 (beta-CIT) demonstrated a significant increase in DA transporter densities in abstinent alcohol-preferring monkeys over those in alcohol-avoiding monkeys. Chronic alcohol consumption down-regulated DA transporter densities, and this effect was reversed by acute withdrawal. These results demonstrate that the DA transporter is regulated by alcohol exposure and suggest that increased DA transporter densities may be a phenotypic marker of alcohol preference in vulnerable monkeys.

Building, bridge or wind turbine maintenance requires manual dexterity tasks by a specialist rope-access trained workforce via two principal means: harness suspension of individual workers from above, or deployment of a suspended platform or cradle from which workers access the structure to be maintained. Currently no published research compares accuracy and efficiency of simulated maintenance tasks between these modalities. This study investigated manual dexterity task performance of peg placement and shape delineation in seated, standing and suspended environments in 16 healthy controls and 26 professional rope-access trained individuals. Both seated and standing assessments were superior to those suspended, and height of suspension, total mass and years of experience had no influence on the task outcome. These findings suggest that, where feasible, cradle suspension mechanisms which permit standing maintenance are favourable in terms of task efficacy and where feasible, should be considered for deployment in wind energy and other engineering applications.

Breathing and oxygenation were monitored in 78 asymptomatic volunteers on two successive nights of sleep. Four groups of subjects were recruited: 20 young men, 20 young women, 20 men older than 40 years, and 18 postmenopausal women. In random order, subjects ingested either 2 ml/kg (body weight) of 100-proof vodka in orange juice or a similar amount of water in orange juice before bedtime. Alcohol ingestion shortened sleep in the older men and in the postmenopausal women. No effect of alcohol ingestion on breathing or oxygenation during sleep was seen in any group of women. In men, alcohol ingestion increased the numbers of desaturation episodes and caused more severe oxygen desaturation during sleep. The effect of alcohol ingestion on breathing and oxygenation during the sleep of asymptomatic volunteers appears to be limited to men.

Previous studies reveal that the primary distribution of the current density is sharply enhanced at the edge of a disk electrode submerged into a semi-infinite space of conductive solution. The current enhancement will cause the double layer capacitance at the periphery of the electrode to be charged much faster compared to the center, and can also lead to severe corrosion at the edge. While several studies focused on the geometric design of the electrode to reduce this enhancement, we explore the feasibility of achieving similar effect by shaping the edges of the current input. The simulation uses finite element analysis software to solve the system of partial differential equations and results show that the edge enhancement could be greatly reduced without significantly changing the input efficacy of current and/or charge.

Abstract Background In the near future, the incidence of mosquito-borne diseases may expand to new sites due to changes in temperature and rainfall patterns caused by climate change. Therefore, there is a need to use recent technological advances to improve vector surveillance methodologies. Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), often called drones, have been used to collect high-resolution imagery to map detailed information on mosquito habitats and direct control measures to specific areas. Supervised classification approaches have been largely used to automatically detect vector habitats. However, manual data labelling for model training limits their use for rapid responses. Open-source foundation models such as the Meta AI Segment Anything Model (SAM) can facilitate the manual digitalization of high-resolution images. This pre-trained model can assist in extracting features of interest in a diverse range of images. Here, we evaluated the performance of SAM through the Samgeo package, a Python-based wrapper for geospatial data, as it has not been applied to analyse remote sensing images for epidemiological studies. Results We tested the identification of two land cover classes of interest: water bodies and human settlements, using different UAV acquired imagery across five malaria-endemic areas in Africa, South America, and Southeast Asia. We employed manually placed point prompts and text prompts associated with specific classes of interest to guide the image segmentation and assessed the performance in the different geographic contexts. An average Dice coefficient value of 0.67 was obtained for buildings segmentation and 0.73 for water bodies using point prompts. Regarding the use of text prompts, the highest Dice coefficient value reached 0.72 for buildings and 0.70 for water bodies. Nevertheless, the performance was closely dependent on each object, landscape characteristics and selected words, resulting in varying performance. Conclusions Recent models such as SAM can potentially assist manual digitalization of imagery by vector control programs, quickly identifying key features when surveying an area of interest. However, accurate segmentation still requires user-provided manual prompts and corrections to obtain precise segmentation. Further evaluations are necessary, especially for applications in rural areas.

Background:  We previously found that activation of the glial cell line‐derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) pathway in the ventral tegmental area (VTA) reduces ethanol‐drinking behaviors. In this study, we set out to assess the contribution of endogenous GDNF or its receptor GFRα1 to the regulation of ethanol‐related behaviors.Methods:  GDNF and GFRα1 heterozygote mice (HET) and their wild‐type littermate controls (WT) were used for the studies. Ethanol‐induced hyperlocomotion, sensitization, and conditioned place preference (CPP), as well as ethanol consumption before and after a period of abstinence were evaluated. Blood ethanol concentration (BEC) was also measured.Results:  We observed no differences between the GDNF HET and WT mice in the level of locomotor activity or in sensitization to ethanol‐induced hyperlocomotion after systemic injection of a nonhypnotic dose of ethanol and in BEC. However, GDNF and GFRα1 mice exhibited increased place preference to ethanol as compared with their WT littermates. The levels of voluntary ethanol or quinine consumption were similar in the GDNF HET and WT mice, however, a small but significant increase in saccharin intake was observed in the GDNF HET mice. No changes were detected in voluntary ethanol, saccharin or quinine consumption of GFRα1 HET mice as compared with their WT littermates. Interestingly, however, both the GDNF and GFRα1 HET mice consumed much larger quantities of ethanol after a period of abstinence from ethanol as compared with their WT littermates. Furthermore, the increase in ethanol consumption after abstinence was found to be specific for ethanol as similar levels of saccharin intake were measured in the GDNF and GFRα1 HET and WT mice after abstinence.Conclusions:  Our results suggest that endogenous GDNF negatively regulates the rewarding effect of ethanol and ethanol‐drinking behaviors after a period of abstinence.