The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery (WCPCCS) will be held in Washington DC, USA, from Saturday, 26 August, 2023 to Friday, 1 September, 2023, inclusive. The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery will be the largest and most comprehensive scientific meeting dedicated to paediatric and congenital cardiac care ever held. At the time of the writing of this manuscript, The Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery has 5,037 registered attendees (and rising) from 117 countries, a truly diverse and international faculty of over 925 individuals from 89 countries, over 2,000 individual abstracts and poster presenters from 101 countries, and a Best Abstract Competition featuring 153 oral abstracts from 34 countries. For information about the Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery, please visit the following website: [www.WCPCCS2023.org]. The purpose of this manuscript is to review the activities related to global health and advocacy that will occur at the Eighth World Congress of Pediatric Cardiology and Cardiac Surgery.

Acknowledging the need for urgent change, we wanted to take the opportunity to bring a common voice to the global community and issue the Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action on Addressing the Global Burden of Pediatric and Congenital Heart Diseases. A copy of this Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action is provided in the Appendix of this manuscript. This Washington DC WCPCCS Call to Action is an initiative aimed at increasing awareness of the global burden, promoting the development of sustainable care systems, and improving access to high quality and equitable healthcare for children with heart disease as well as adults with congenital heart disease worldwide.

Children with congenital heart disease (CHD) can face neurodevelopmental, psychological, and behavioural difficulties beginning in infancy and continuing through adulthood. Despite overall improvements in medical care and a growing focus on neurodevelopmental screening and evaluation in recent years, neurodevelopmental disabilities, delays, and deficits remain a concern. The Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative was founded in 2016 with the goal of improving neurodevelopmental outcomes for individuals with CHD and pediatric heart disease. This paper describes the establishment of a centralised clinical data registry to standardize data collection across member institutions of the Cardiac Neurodevelopmental Outcome Collaborative. The goal of this registry is to foster collaboration for large, multi-centre research and quality improvement initiatives that will benefit individuals and families with CHD and improve their quality of life. We describe the components of the registry, initial research projects proposed using data from the registry, and lessons learned in the development of the registry.

Protoporphyrinogen oxidase (PPO)-inhibiting herbicides remain an important and useful chemistry 60 yr after their first introduction. In this review, based on topics introduced at the Weed Science Society of America 2021 symposium titled “A History, Overview, and Plan of Action on PPO Inhibiting Herbicides,” we discuss the current state of PPO-inhibiting herbicides. Renewed interest in the PPO-inhibiting herbicides in recent years, due to increased use and increased cases of resistance, has led to refinements in knowledge regarding the mechanism of action of PPO inhibitors. Herein we discuss the importance of the two isoforms of PPO in plants, compile a current knowledge of target-site resistance mechanisms, examine non–target site resistance cases, and review crop selectivity mechanisms. Consistent and reproducible greenhouse screening and target-site mutation assays are necessary to effectively study and compare PPO-inhibitor resistance cases. To this end, we cover best practices in screening to accurately identify resistance ratios and properly interpret common screens for point mutations. The future of effective and sustainable PPO-inhibitor use relies on development of new chemistries that maintain activity on resistant biotypes and the promotion of responsible stewardship of PPO inhibitors both new and old. We present the biorational design of the new PPO inhibitor trifludimoxazin to highlight the future of PPO-inhibitor development and discuss the elements of sustainable weed control programs using PPO inhibitors, as well as how responsible stewardship can be incentivized. The sustained use of PPO inhibitors in future agriculture relies on the effective and timely communication from mode of action and resistance research to agronomists, Extension workers, and farmers.

This paper summarizes an empirical comparison of the accuracy of forecasts included in analysis reports developed by professional intelligence analysts to comparable forecasts in a prediction market that has broad participation from across an intelligence community. To compare forecast accuracy, 99 event forecasts were extracted from qualitative descriptions found in 41 analysis reports and posted on the prediction market. Quantitative probabilities were imputed from the qualitative forecasts by asking seasoned professional analysts, who did not participate in the prediction market, to read the reports and to infer a quantitative probability based on what was written. These readers were also asked to provide their personal probabilities before and after reading the reports. There were two statistically significant results of particular interest. First, the primary result is that the prediction market forecasts were more accurate than the analysis reports. On average prediction market probabilities were 0.114 closer to ground truth than the analysis report probabilities. Second, in cases where analysts (readers) updated their personal probabilities in a direction opposite to what the reports implied, analysts tended to update their probabilities in the correct direction. This occurred even though, on average, reading the reports did not make readers more accurate.

We describe the association between job roles and coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among healthcare personnel. A wide range of hazard ratios were observed across job roles. Medical assistants had higher hazard ratios than nurses, while attending physicians, food service workers, laboratory technicians, pharmacists, residents and fellows, and temporary workers had lower hazard ratios.

People with lived experience of incarceration have higher rates of morbidity and mortality compared to people without history of incarceration. Research conducted unethically in prisons and jails led to increased scrutiny of research to ensure the needs of those studied are protected. One consequence of increased restrictions on research with criminal-legal involved populations is reluctance to engage in research evaluations of healthcare for people who are incarcerated and people who have lived experience of incarceration. Ethical research can be done in partnership with people with lived experience of incarceration and other key stakeholders and should be encouraged. In this article, we describe how stakeholder engagement can be accomplished in this setting, and further, how such engagement leads to impactful research that can be disseminated and implemented across disciplines and communities. The goal is to build trust across the spectrum of people who work, live in, or are impacted by the criminal-legal system, with the purpose of moving toward health equity.

We describe COVID-19 cases among nonphysician healthcare personnel (HCP) by work location. The proportion of HCP with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was highest in the emergency department and lowest among those working remotely. COVID-19 and non–COVID-19 units had similar proportions of HCP with COVID-19 (13%). Cases decreased across all work locations following COVID-19 vaccination.

OBJECTIVES/GOALS: We aimed to determine if GLP-1 receptor agonists exert beneficial effects on surrogate measures of cardiovascular function independently of weight loss. Our objective was to compare the outcomes between GLP-1 receptor agonist treatment versus a similar drug without cardiovascular benefit versus weight loss through diet alone. METHODS/STUDY POPULATION: We enrolled 88 individuals with obesity (BMI ≥ 30kg/m2) and pre-diabetes and randomized them in a 2:1:1 ratio to 14 weeks of the GLP-1 receptor agonist liraglutide, the dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitor sitagliptin, or hypocaloric diet. Sitagliptin blocks degradation of endogenous GLP-1 but does not cause weight loss or lower adverse cardiovascular outcomes. Treatment was double-blinded and placebo-controlled for drug, and unblinded for diet. Primary endpoints were flow-mediated dilation (FMD) to assess endothelial vasodilatory function, and plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) to assess endothelial fibrinolytic function. We used a general linear model for each outcome and included gender as a covariate for FMD. Baseline characteristics were similar. Mean age was 50, with 32% men and 13% black. RESULTS/ANTICIPATED RESULTS: At 14 weeks, diet and liraglutide caused weight loss (diet -4.3 ± 3.2 kg, P<0.01; liraglutide -2.7 ± 3.2, P<0.01), while sitagliptin did not (-0.7 ± 2.0, P=0.17). Diet did not improve FMD at 14 weeks compared to baseline (+0.9%, 95% CI [-1.5, 3.3], P=0.46). FMD tended to increase after liraglutide and sitagliptin but was not significant (liraglutide +1.2 [-0.3, 2.8], P=0.12; sitagliptin +1.6 [-0.6, 3.8], P=0.15). Given that liraglutide and sitagliptin work through the same GLP-1 pathway, we combined the liraglutide and sitagliptin groups for overall effect on FMD, which was significantly improved from baseline (+1.4 [0.1, 2.8], P=0.04). Diet and liraglutide improved PAI-1 at 14 weeks (diet -4.4U/mL, [-8.5, -0.2], P=0.04; liraglutide -3.4 [-6.0, -0.7], P=0.01), while sitagliptin did not (-1.4 [-5.1, 2.3], P=0.46). DISCUSSION/SIGNIFICANCE: Activation of the GLP-1 pathway by liraglutide or sitagliptin improves FMD independent of weight loss, while PAI-1 improvement is weight-loss dependent and is only seen after liraglutide or diet. Our study suggests the cardiovascular benefit of liraglutide may be due to combined improvements in endothelial vasodilatory and fibrinolytic function.

We analyzed blood-culture practices to characterize the utilization of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA) recommendations related to catheter-related bloodstream infection (CRBSI) blood cultures. Most patients with a central line had only peripheral blood cultures. Increasing the utilization of CRBSI guidelines may improve clinical care, but may also affect other quality metrics.

Seed retention, and ultimately seed shatter, are extremely important for the efficacy of harvest weed seed control (HWSC) and are likely influenced by various agroecological and environmental factors. Field studies investigated seed-shattering phenology of 22 weed species across three soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]-producing regions in the United States. We further evaluated the potential drivers of seed shatter in terms of weather conditions, growing degree days, and plant biomass. Based on the results, weather conditions had no consistent impact on weed seed shatter. However, there was a positive correlation between individual weed plant biomass and delayed weed seed–shattering rates during harvest. This work demonstrates that HWSC can potentially reduce weed seedbank inputs of plants that have escaped early-season management practices and retained seed through harvest. However, smaller individuals of plants within the same population that shatter seed before harvest pose a risk of escaping early-season management and HWSC.

The incidence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) exposure in shared patient rooms was low at our institution: 1.8 per 1,000 shared-room patient days. However, the secondary attack rate (21.6%) was comparable to that reported in household exposures. Lengthier exposures were associated with SARS-CoV-2 conversion. Hospitals should implement measures to decrease shared-room exposures.

In April 2019, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) released its recovery plan for the jaguar Panthera onca after several decades of discussion, litigation and controversy about the status of the species in the USA. The USFWS estimated that potential habitat, south of the Interstate-10 highway in Arizona and New Mexico, had a carrying capacity of c. six jaguars, and so focused its recovery programme on areas south of the USA–Mexico border. Here we present a systematic review of the modelling and assessment efforts over the last 25 years, with a focus on areas north of Interstate-10 in Arizona and New Mexico, outside the recovery unit considered by the USFWS. Despite differences in data inputs, methods, and analytical extent, the nine previous studies found support for potential suitable jaguar habitat in the central mountain ranges of Arizona and New Mexico. Applying slightly modified versions of the USFWS model and recalculating an Arizona-focused model over both states provided additional confirmation. Extending the area of consideration also substantially raised the carrying capacity of habitats in Arizona and New Mexico, from six to 90 or 151 adult jaguars, using the modified USFWS models. This review demonstrates the crucial ways in which choosing the extent of analysis influences the conclusions of a conservation plan. More importantly, it opens a new opportunity for jaguar conservation in North America that could help address threats from habitat losses, climate change and border infrastructure.