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The COVID-19 pandemic presented a challenge to established seed grant funding mechanisms aimed at fostering collaboration in child health research between investigators at the University of Minnesota (UMN) and Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota (Children’s MN). We created a “rapid response,” small grant program to catalyze collaborations in child health COVID-19 research. In this paper, we describe the projects funded by this mechanism and metrics of their success.
Methods:
Using seed funds from the UMN Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the UMN Medical School Department of Pediatrics, and the Children’s Minnesota Research Institute, a rapid response request for applications (RFAs) was issued based on the stipulations that the proposal had to: 1) consist of a clear, synergistic partnership between co-PIs from the academic and community settings; and 2) that the proposal addressed an area of knowledge deficit relevant to child health engendered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Results:
Grant applications submitted in response to this RFA segregated into three categories: family fragility and disruption exacerbated by COVID-19; knowledge gaps about COVID-19 disease in children; and optimizing pediatric care in the setting of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. A series of virtual workshops presented research results to the pediatric community. Several manuscripts and extramural funding awards underscored the success of the program.
Conclusions:
A “rapid response” seed funding mechanism enabled nascent academic-community research partnerships during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of the rapidly evolving landscape of COVID-19, flexible seed grant programs can be useful in addressing unmet needs in pediatric health.
In this paper, we describe the system design and capabilities of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope at the conclusion of its construction project and commencement of science operations. ASKAP is one of the first radio telescopes to deploy phased array feed (PAF) technology on a large scale, giving it an instantaneous field of view that covers $31\,\textrm{deg}^{2}$ at $800\,\textrm{MHz}$. As a two-dimensional array of 36$\times$12 m antennas, with baselines ranging from 22 m to 6 km, ASKAP also has excellent snapshot imaging capability and 10 arcsec resolution. This, combined with 288 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth and a unique third axis of rotation on each antenna, gives ASKAP the capability to create high dynamic range images of large sky areas very quickly. It is an excellent telescope for surveys between 700 and $1800\,\textrm{MHz}$ and is expected to facilitate great advances in our understanding of galaxy formation, cosmology, and radio transients while opening new parameter space for discovery of the unknown.
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is a devastating rare disease that affects individuals regardless of ethnicity, gender, and age. The first-approved disease-modifying therapy for SMA, nusinursen, was approved by Health Canada, as well as by American and European regulatory agencies following positive clinical trial outcomes. The trials were conducted in a narrow pediatric population defined by age, severity, and genotype. Broad approval of therapy necessitates close follow-up of potential rare adverse events and effectiveness in the larger real-world population.
Methods:
The Canadian Neuromuscular Disease Registry (CNDR) undertook an iterative multi-stakeholder process to expand the existing SMA dataset to capture items relevant to patient outcomes in a post-marketing environment. The CNDR SMA expanded registry is a longitudinal, prospective, observational study of patients with SMA in Canada designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of novel therapies and provide practical information unattainable in trials.
Results:
The consensus expanded dataset includes items that address therapy effectiveness and safety and is collected in a multicenter, prospective, observational study, including SMA patients regardless of therapeutic status. The expanded dataset is aligned with global datasets to facilitate collaboration. Additionally, consensus dataset development aimed to standardize appropriate outcome measures across the network and broader Canadian community. Prospective outcome studies, data use, and analyses are independent of the funding partner.
Conclusion:
Prospective outcome data collected will provide results on safety and effectiveness in a post-therapy approval era. These data are essential to inform improvements in care and access to therapy for all SMA patients.
Nerve transfer surgery for patients with nerve and spinal cord injuries can result in dramatic functional improvements. As a result, interdisciplinary complex nerve injury programs (CNIPs) have been established in many Canadian centers, providing electrodiagnostic and surgical consultations in a single encounter. We sought to determine which allied health care services are included in Canadian CNIPs, at the 3rd Annual Canadian Peripheral Nerve Symposium. Twenty CNIPs responded to a brief survey and reported access as follows: occupational therapy = 60%, physiotherapy = 40%, social work = 20%, and mental health = 10%. Access to allied health services is variable in CNIPs across Canada, possibly resulting in heterogeneity in patient care.
We present a detailed overview of the cosmological surveys that we aim to carry out with Phase 1 of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA1) and the science that they will enable. We highlight three main surveys: a medium-deep continuum weak lensing and low-redshift spectroscopic HI galaxy survey over 5 000 deg2; a wide and deep continuum galaxy and HI intensity mapping (IM) survey over 20 000 deg2 from
$z = 0.35$
to 3; and a deep, high-redshift HI IM survey over 100 deg2 from
$z = 3$
to 6. Taken together, these surveys will achieve an array of important scientific goals: measuring the equation of state of dark energy out to
$z \sim 3$
with percent-level precision measurements of the cosmic expansion rate; constraining possible deviations from General Relativity on cosmological scales by measuring the growth rate of structure through multiple independent methods; mapping the structure of the Universe on the largest accessible scales, thus constraining fundamental properties such as isotropy, homogeneity, and non-Gaussianity; and measuring the HI density and bias out to
$z = 6$
. These surveys will also provide highly complementary clustering and weak lensing measurements that have independent systematic uncertainties to those of optical and near-infrared (NIR) surveys like Euclid, LSST, and WFIRST leading to a multitude of synergies that can improve constraints significantly beyond what optical or radio surveys can achieve on their own. This document, the 2018 Red Book, provides reference technical specifications, cosmological parameter forecasts, and an overview of relevant systematic effects for the three key surveys and will be regularly updated by the Cosmology Science Working Group in the run up to start of operations and the Key Science Programme of SKA1.
The rocky shores of New Zealand (NZ) and Australia provide many interesting comparisons in their intertidal species and structuring processes. Both countries are in the biogeographic realm of temperate Australasia and share many common species and closely related taxa. Here we review similarities and contrasts in communities and structuring processes, especially involving grazing invertebrates and macroalgae. We consider the similarity of the structure of intertidal shores of NZ and south-eastern Australia, a suite of important trophic interactions within and between regions, the utility of local-scale experiments in understanding large-scale processes and how we might better plan for and manage our coasts. The major comparisons are between warm-temperate areas of northern NZ and New South Wales, and the cooler areas of southern NZ and south-eastern Australia. In the quest for ‘ecosystem’-level understanding, which perforce involves large-scale events, there is an increasing tendency to minimise or ignore the hard-won insights gained from well-structured experiments across multiple sites. Because all large-scale effects must be manifested at local sites, it is incumbent on us to determine what scales up or down, and the caveats that make comparisons across biogeographic regions challenging. Here, we discuss these issues using austral shores as models.
OBJECTIVES/SPECIFIC AIMS: Our primary objective was to understand the relationship between incident or recent stressful events and adherence to HIV care in the context of other person, environment, and HIV-specific stressors in a sample of Black women living with HIV (WLWH). METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: Thirty in-depth interviews were conducted with Black women living with HIV who receive care at an academic HIV primary care clinic in the Southern region of the United States to elicit stressful events influencing adherence to HIV care. Semi-structured interview guides were used to facilitate discussion regarding stressful events and adherence to HIV care. Interviews were audiotaped and transcribed verbatim. Transcripts were independently coded using a theme-based approach by two experienced coders, findings were compared, and discrepancies were resolved by discussion. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: Participants described frequently experiencing incident stressful events including death or serious illness of a close friend or family member, and relationship, financial, and employment difficulties. Furthermore, participants reported experiencing traumatic events such as sexual and physical abuse during childhood and adolescents. While experiencing traumatic events such as sexual and physical abuse during childhood and adolescence may be distressing, these events did not influence adherence to HIV care. However, incident stressful events as defined above did influence adherence to HIV care for some participants, but not for others. For participants who reported that stressful events did not influence adherence to HIV care, factors such as personal motivation, access to social support, and adaptive coping strategies facilitated their engagement in care. DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE OF IMPACT: Experiencing stressful events, incident or traumatic, is common among Black WLWH and have the potential to negatively influence adherence to HIV care. Thus, Interventions aimed at identifying and addressing stress, social support, and coping are essential to improve adherence to HIV care behaviors.
Impact craters are the dominant landform on Mercury and range from the largest basins to the smallest young craters. Peak-ring basins are especially prevalent on Mercury, although basins of all forms are far undersaturated, probably the result of the extensive volcanic emplacement of intercrater plains and younger smooth plains between about 4.1 and 3.5 Ga. This chapter describes the geology of the two largest well-preserved basins, Caloris and Rembrandt, and the three smaller Raditladi, Rachmaninoff, and Mozart basins. We describe analyses of crater size–frequency distributions and relate them to populations of asteroid impactors (Late Heavy Bombardment in early epochs and the near-Earth asteroid population observable today during most of Mercury’s history), to secondary cratering, and to exogenic and endogenic processes that degrade and erase craters. Secondary cratering is more important on Mercury than on other solar system bodies and shaped much of the surface on kilometer and smaller scales, compromising our ability to use craters for relative and absolute age-dating of smaller geological units. Failure to find “vulcanoids” and satellites of Mercury suggests that such bodies played a negligible role in cratering Mercury. We describe an absolute cratering chronology for Mercury’s geological evolution as well as its uncertainties.
Numerous experimental studies have documented that injecting low-salinity water into an oil reservoir can increase the amount of oil recovered. However, owing to the complexity of the chemical interactions involved in this process, there has been much debate over the dominant mechanism causing this effect. In order to further understand one proposed mechanism, multicomponent ionic exchange, we study the motion of an oil slug through a clay pore throat filled with saline water. The pore throat is modelled as a capillary tube connecting two bulk regions of water. We assume that the surfaces of the oil and the capillary are negatively charged and that, due to repulsion between these surfaces, the oil slug is separated from the capillary surface by a thin film of water. Ion interactions at the oil–water and clay–water interfaces are modelled using the law of mass action. By using lubrication theory to describe the thin-film flow in the water layer separating the oil from the clay surface, and the macroscopic flow through the capillary, we derive expressions for the thickness of the wetting film, and the velocity of the oil slug, given a pressure difference across the ends of the capillary. Numerical results show that the thickness of the water layer and the velocity of the oil slug increase as the salinity of the water is reduced, suggesting that this mechanism contributes to the low-salinity effect. An analytical solution is presented in the limit in which the applied pressure is small.
III Zw 35 is a pair of galaxies characterised by intense OH maser emission, and powerful far-infrared and radio continuum. We have made a detailed study of the galaxy pair based on optical, infrared and radio observations. The brighter northern component is identified as a LINER or Seyfert galaxy and contains an active nuclear region from which radio continuum, OH maser and thermal dust emission are detected. We propose that the northern component has a compact active nucleus deeply embedded in an obscured region of diameter ~ 210 pc within which enhanced star-formation occurs. The lower luminosity, southern component is of low mass and is undergoing starburst activity over an extended region of diameter ~ 5.5 kpc. The origin of the starburst and non-thermal activity appears to be an interaction between the two components.
JET experiments have compared the efficacy of low- and high-field side ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) as an actuator to deliberately minimise the sawtooth period. It is found that low-field side ICRH with low minority concentration is optimal for sawtooth control for two main reasons. Firstly, low-field side heating means that any toroidal phasing of the ICRH ($-90^{\circ }$, $+90^{\circ }$ or dipole) has a destabilising effect on the sawteeth, meaning that dipole phasing can be employed, since this is preferable due to less plasma wall interaction from Resonant Frequency (RF) sheaths. Secondly, the resonance position of the low-field side ICRH does not have to be very accurately placed to achieve sawtooth control, relaxing the requirement for real-time control of the RF frequency. These empirical observations have been confirmed by hybrid kinetic–magnetohydrodynamic modelling, and suggest that the ICRH antenna design for ITER is well positioned to provide a control actuator capable of having a significant effect on the sawtooth behaviour.
Background: For adolescents with epilepsy, there is often a poor system in place to meet their individualized transition needs. Our objectives were 1) to develop epilepsy-specific transition care management plans (TCMPs) to ensure access, and attachment to adult healthcare providers, and 2) to identify strategies for providing support during the transition period, including through the development of physician and patient (or caregiver) navigated web-based tools, resources and recommendations for health system improvements. Methods: Physicians and nurses with expertise in areas including adult and pediatric epilepsy, family medicine, psychiatry, and varied allied health professionals were engaged to generate epilepsy-related TCMPs. Results: Through an iterative process spanning the course of over a year, TCMPs were developed to cover areas including: treatment responsive and resistant epilepsy, ketogenic diet, epilepsy surgery, women’s issues, mental health, and psychosocial aspects of epilepsy. The TCMPs referenced established guidelines and best practices in the literature wherever possible. Caregiver roles and responsibilities were outlined, remaining cognoscent of available provincial resources. Conclusions: Epilepsy specific TCMPs can be developed through a collaborative approach between pediatric and adult healthcare providers, easing the patient experience, creating educated accountability, and providing a forum to identify and address gaps of care in adolescents with epilepsy.
To determine the effectiveness of an Acute Stroke Triage Pathway in reducing door to needle times in acute stroke treatment with IV t-PA.
Background:
A previous study at our tertiary referral centre, examining IV t-PA door to needle times, was completed in 2000. The median door to needle time was beyond the recommended National Institute for Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS) standard of 60 minutes. In November 2001, an Acute Stroke Triage Pathway was introduced in the emergency room (ER) to address this issue. The goal of this pathway was to rapidly identify patients eligible for treatment for IV t-PA, so that CT scans and lab studies could be arranged immediately upon ER arrival. Our hypothesis was that the Triage Pathway would shorten door to CT and door to needle times.
Design/Methods:
Using retrospective data, pre (n=87) and post (n=47) triage pathway times were compared. The door to CT time was reduced by 11 minutes (p=0.015) and door to needle time was reduced by 18 minutes (p=0.0036) in a subgroup of patients that presented directly to our hospital.
Conclusions:
These results indicate that the Acute Stroke Triage Pathway is effective in reducing Door to CT and Door to Needle Times in patients presenting directly to our ER. However, a majority of treatment times were still beyond NINDS recommendations. Stroke Centers require periodic review of their efficiency to ensure that target times are being obtained and may benefit from the use of an Acute Stroke Triage Pathway.
This paper describes the system architecture of a newly constructed radio telescope – the Boolardy engineering test array, which is a prototype of the Australian square kilometre array pathfinder telescope. Phased array feed technology is used to form multiple simultaneous beams per antenna, providing astronomers with unprecedented survey speed. The test array described here is a six-antenna interferometer, fitted with prototype signal processing hardware capable of forming at least nine dual-polarisation beams simultaneously, allowing several square degrees to be imaged in a single pointed observation. The main purpose of the test array is to develop beamforming and wide-field calibration methods for use with the full telescope, but it will also be capable of limited early science demonstrations.
Spectacular celestine geodes occur in a Jurassic peri-evaporitic sequence (Ardon Formation) exposed in Makhtesh Ramon, southern Israel. The geodes are found only in one specific location: adjacent to an intrusive contact with a Lower Cretaceous basaltic dyke. Celestine, well known in sedimentary associations worldwide and considered as a low temperature mineral, may therefore be associated with magmatic-induced hydrothermal activity. Abundant fluid inclusions in celestine provide valuable information on its origin: gas-rich inclusions in celestine interiors homogenized at T≥200°C whereas smaller liquid-rich inclusions record the growth of celestine rims at T≤200°C. Near 0°C melting temperatures of some fluid inclusions and the occurrence of hydrous Ca-sulphate solid crystals in other inclusions indicate that celestine precipitated from variably concentrated Ca-sulphate aqueous solutions of meteoric origin. Celestine crystallized from meteoric water heated by the cooling basaltic dyke at shallow levels (c. 160 m) during a Lower Cretaceous thermal perturbation recorded by regional uplift and magmatism. The 87Sr/86Sr ratio of geode celestine, 0.7074, is similar to that measured in the dolostones of the host Jurassic sequence, but differs markedly from the non-radiogenic ratio of the dyke. Strontium in celestine was derived from dolostones preserving the 87Sr/86Sr of Lower Jurassic seawater, while sulphur (δ34S = 19.9‰) was provided by in situ dissolution of precursor marine gypsum (δ34S = 16.8‰) indicated by relict anhydrite inclusions in celestine. Low-temperature meteoric fluid flow during the Campanian caused alteration of the dyke into secondary clays and alteration of geodal celestine into quartz, calcite and iron oxides.