Work-related musculoskeletal disorders – also referred to as repetitive motion or repetitive strain injuries – are a group of painful conditions that affect the muscles, tendons and nerves. According to the Canadian Center for Occupational Health and Safety, workers can develop an MSD from bending, gripping, straightening, holding, twisting, or reaching with their arms and hands.

San Francisco — Slightly more than 70% of employers expect their workers to want a hybrid model when their physical workplace reopens, but only 55% plan to offer that option, according to the results of a recent survey.

Occupational asthma can develop when a worker breathes in gases, chemical fumes, dust or other work-related substances. According to Mayo Clinic, it also can result from exposure to a substance a worker is sensitive to, triggering an allergic or immunological response.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus – more commonly known as MRSA – is a potentially dangerous type of staph bacteria that can lead to difficult-to-treat infections. MRSA is resistant to certain antibiotics and, although an infection may begin as a skin sore, it can become serious and potentially deadly, NIOSH warns.

More than 300. That’s how many known triggers can be found in the workplace that cause or worsen asthma, according to NIOSH. 

London — People who are aware that their co-workers are using employer-provided mental health benefits may be more likely to use them too, researchers say.

In response to a petition submitted by food and beverage leader Danone North America, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the first-ever qualified health claim for yogurt, recognizing a potential link between its regular consumption and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, and giving consumers another compelling reason to shop the yogurt aisle.

Although there may be a pandemic-related slowdown, there’s no stopping new product development targeted at the commercial and non-commercial foodservice sectors. To better help its readers with new product development strategy, Prepared Foods asked Jeff Miller, founder and CEO of Cutting Edge Innovation, to create a thought leadership series connecting R&D strategy to foodservice sales. Cutting Edge Innovation advises on foodservice strategy, sales, business development, and innovation and Miller also created an online course, “Turbocharge Your Foodservice Sales.” 

In the rush to eliminate these sugars, developers often overlook the variety, richness, and culinary versatility that natural caloric sweeteners provide. Such sugars—also termed “nutritive sweeteners”—not only offer sweetness but can add layers of flavor, color, and even nutritional benefits, all in a clean-label format. 

Everyone in the tile industry needs to push the quality bar to the next level and beyond.

For the month of October, the talented crew of installers with Ballin Knows Best, the first-ever AI-driven flooring installation chatbot, contribute content written by installers for installers in this editorial takeover. 

Almost 30 years ago, Janice Clifton was working as a public accountant and helping a local cash-and-carry flooring retailer exit the business. 

Hallo, My flight 4Y11 from Cancun to Frankfurt on 1/Nov was cancelled on short notice, and Lufthansa did not provide any kind of support a part from reissuing the ticket for the next day. Now they reject to even refund the hotel and taxi costs...

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The post There are fragments of Romani Gypsy history all over the UK – if one knows where to look was curated by information for practice.

The post Adult Children with Mental Illness: What Social Workers Should Know was curated by information for practice.

The post Co-knowledge production linking science, communities and public policy under deep uncertainty in a modern risk society in Japan was curated by information for practice.

The post Social Work England | Knowledge, skills and behaviours Our plan to bring new curriculum guidance into regulation for qualifying social work courses was curated by information for practice.

The post Enhancing the science–policy linkages using traditional and Indigenous knowledge was curated by information for practice.

Methodological Innovations, Ahead of Print. Land use change impacts on Sámi reindeer husbandry are well-documented, but existing maps often fail to capture socio-ecological relationships between herders, reindeer and nature. Conventional Geographic Information Systems (GIS) simplify these relationships, lacking local context and excluding valuable knowledge due to their rigid structure. This paper introduces participatory topological mapping, […]

The post Participatory topological mapping: A novel approach for exploring and communicating situated knowledge of complex socio-ecological systems was curated by information for practice.

Volume 29, Issue 7, October 2024. Read the full article ›

The post Using Legitimation Code Theory to explore knowledge building in English medium higher education teaching: methodological challenges and innovations was curated by information for practice.

The history of school desegregation in America has long been centered around the southern United States.

Homan was the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement from January 2017 to June 2018, where he was a key architect of the Trump administration's controversial family separation policy.

Donald Trump has selected South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to head the Department of Homeland Security. It's one of the biggest government agencies that will be integral to his vow to secure the border and carry out a massive deportation operation.

As former President Donald Trump heads back to the White House to serve a second, non-consecutive term, his wife, former first lady Melania Trump, is returning to the national spotlight. Here are four things to know about her background, political views and marriage. 

Ohio State has rolled through most of its Big Ten games in recent years, but has taken tough criticism for a weak non-conference schedule. That changes this year, as the Buckeyes head to Norman, Oklahoma in the season's third week to take on the University of Oklahoma, a team that made the four-team postseason playoff last year.

Scam artists often follow a large storm or disaster. The Texas Department of Insurance (TDI) has tips to help recognize and avoid common contracting scams.

Bones of unknown animals millions of years of age were found in Yakutia.  In the Churapcha region of Yakutia, archeologists found a Paleolithic human site that is believed to be at least 30,000 years old. Bones of unknown animals were found during excavation works.  The radiocarbon research of the finds revealed that the found remains were from the Neogene era - a period that began 23 million years ago and ended 2.58 million years ago.

Experts at the Mayo Clinic have identified certain eating habits that can shorten one's lifespan, revealing that even foods that are considered healthy can have a negative impact. According to their research, it's best to avoid consuming too many diet drinks as they often contain sugar substitutes that can be harmful. Furthermore, inadequate water intake can also speed up the aging process and lead to poor health. Juices with high sugar content should also be consumed in moderation, with natural alternatives being the preferable option. Frequent consumption of soda can lead to rapid weight gain and excessive cholesterol production.

The expression "the cherry on top" refers to a very good thing. You may think differently once you learn how maraschino cherries are actually made.

You're not alone if you've ever found yourself wondering, "What is boba?" This food trend has taken the drink market by storm, enchanting tea enthusiasts and curious foodies alike.

Macromolecular crystallography generally requires the recovery of missing phase information from diffraction data to reconstruct an electron-density map of the crystallized molecule. Most recent structures have been solved using molecular replacement as a phasing method, requiring an a priori structure that is closely related to the target protein to serve as a search model; when no such search model exists, molecular replacement is not possible. New advances in computational machine-learning methods, however, have resulted in major advances in protein structure predictions from sequence information. Methods that generate predicted structural models of sufficient accuracy provide a powerful approach to molecular replacement. Taking advantage of these advances, AlphaFold predictions were applied to enable structure determination of a bacterial protein of unknown function (UniProtKB Q63NT7, NCBI locus BPSS0212) based on diffraction data that had evaded phasing attempts using MIR and anomalous scattering methods. Using both X-ray and micro-electron (microED) diffraction data, it was possible to solve the structure of the main fragment of the protein using a predicted model of that domain as a starting point. The use of predicted structural models importantly expands the promise of electron diffraction, where structure determination relies critically on molecular replacement.

Type VII secretion (T7S) systems, also referred to as ESAT-6 secretion (ESX) systems, are molecular machines that have gained great attention due to their implications in cell homeostasis and in host–pathogen interactions in mycobacteria. The latter include important human pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), the etiological cause of human tuberculosis, which constitutes a pandemic accounting for more than one million deaths every year. The ESX-5 system is exclusively found in slow-growing pathogenic mycobacteria, where it mediates the secretion of a large family of virulence factors: the PE and PPE proteins. The secretion driving force is provided by EccC5, a multidomain ATPase that operates using four globular cytosolic domains: an N-terminal domain of unknown function (EccC5DUF) and three FtsK/SpoIIIE ATPase domains. Recent structural and functional studies of ESX-3 and ESX-5 systems have revealed EccCDUF to be an ATPase-like fold domain with potential ATPase activity, the functionality of which is essential for secretion. Here, the crystal structure of the MtbEccC5DUF domain is reported at 2.05 Å resolution, which reveals a nucleotide-free structure with degenerated cis-acting and trans-acting elements involved in ATP binding and hydrolysis. This crystallographic study, together with a biophysical assessment of the interaction of MtbEccC5DUF with ATP/Mg2+, supports the absence of ATPase activity proposed for this domain. It is shown that this degeneration is also present in DUF domains from other ESX and ESX-like systems, which are likely to exhibit poor or null ATPase activity. Moreover, based on an in silico model of the N-terminal region of MtbEccC5DUF, it is hypothesized that MtbEccC5DUF is a degenerated ATPase domain that may have retained the ability to hexamerize. These observations draw attention to DUF domains as structural elements with potential implications in the opening and closure of the membrane pore during the secretion process via their involvement in inter-protomer interactions.

The title mol­ecule, C18H26O4, consists of two symmetrical halves related by the inversion centre at the mid-point of the central –C—C– bond. The hexene ring adopts an envelope conformation. In the crystal, the mol­ecules are connected into dimers by C—H⋯O hydrogen bonds with R22(8) ring motifs, forming zigzag ribbons along the b-axis direction. According to a Hirshfeld surface analysis, H⋯H (68.2%) and O⋯H/H⋯O (25.9%) inter­actions are the most significant contributors to the crystal packing. The contribution of some disordered solvent to the scattering was removed using the SQUEEZE routine [Spek (2015). Acta Cryst. C71, 9–18] in PLATON. The solvent contribution was not included in the reported mol­ecular weight and density.

Due to the ambiguity related to the lack of phase information, determining the physical parameters of multilayer thin films from measured neutron and X-ray reflectivity curves is, on a fundamental level, an underdetermined inverse problem. This ambiguity poses limitations on standard neural networks, constraining the range and number of considered parameters in previous machine learning solutions. To overcome this challenge, a novel training procedure has been designed which incorporates dynamic prior boundaries for each physical parameter as additional inputs to the neural network. In this manner, the neural network can be trained simultaneously on all well-posed subintervals of a larger parameter space in which the inverse problem is underdetermined. During inference, users can flexibly input their own prior knowledge about the physical system to constrain the neural network prediction to distinct target subintervals in the parameter space. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated in various scenarios, including multilayer structures with a box model parameterization and a physics-inspired special parameterization of the scattering length density profile for a multilayer structure. In contrast to previous methods, this approach scales favourably when increasing the complexity of the inverse problem, working properly even for a five-layer multilayer model and a periodic multilayer model with up to 17 open parameters.

A teen gets a dose of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine at Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami on May 18. Nearly 7 million U.S. teens and pre-teens (ages 12 through 17) have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, so far, the CDC says.; Credit: Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

It's been a little more than a month since adolescents as young as 12 became eligible in the United States to receive the Pfizer vaccine against COVID-19, and nearly all reports have been positive: The vaccine is very effective in this age group, and the vast majority of kids experience mild side effects, if any — the same sore arm or mild flu-like symptoms seen among adults who get the shot.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has recommended that everyone 12-years-old and older get vaccinated against COVID-19, and the rollout is well underway: According to the CDC, nearly 7 million U.S. teens and pre-teens (ages 12 through 17) have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, so far.

Still, soon after the FDA authorized the use of Pfizer's vaccine in young people, federal agencies began receiving reports of mild chest pain or other signs of possible heart inflammation (known as myocarditis) in a very small percentage of recently vaccinated teens.

CDC director Rochelle Walensky said at a White House briefing Friday that there have been more than 300 cases of heart inflammation reported among more than 20 million teens and young adults who have received one of the vaccines made by Moderna or Pfizer. She said that in the "vast majority" of cases, the inflammation went away.

An expert advisory committee to the health agency is expected to review the cases in more depth at a meeting Friday.

So, in the meantime, should parents of teens hesitate to have their kids vaccinated against COVID-19? Vaccine experts and the American Academy of Pediatrics say no, don't hesitate. It's good for doctors and patients to be aware that there might be a connection between the mRNA vaccines and heart inflammation, and to report to their pediatrician anything they see in that first week after vaccination. But it is also important, the CDC notes, to recognize that even if this does turn out to be an extremely rare side effect of the vaccine, "most patients who received care responded well to medicine and rest and quickly felt better." And the serious risks of COVID -19 — even for young healthy people — outweigh the risks of any possible side effects from the vaccine. Here are some questions you may have, and what's known:

What exactly is myocarditis?

Myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, also being investigated, is an inflammation of the sac around the heart.

Long before the pandemic, thousands of cases of myocarditis were diagnosed in the U.S. and around the world each year, often triggered by the body's immune response to infections. SARS-CoV-2 can trigger it, and so can cold viruses, and staph and strep and HIV. Other causes include toxins and allergies.

Symptoms include chest pain and shortness of breath. It's often mild enough to go unnoticed, but a full-blown case in adults can cause arrhythmias and heart failure that require careful treatment with multiple medications, and several months of strict rest. In a case study of seven teenagers who got myocarditis following vaccination published last week in the journal Pediatrics, all seven got better after routine treatment with anti-inflammatory drugs.

Pediatric cardiologist Dr. Stuart Berger of the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, says vaccine-related myocarditis in teens is not all that worrisome. "Although they appear with some symptoms of chest pain, and maybe some findings on EKGs, all of the cases we've seen have been on the mild end of the spectrum," he says.

So, what's the concern?

Several hundred reports about the inflammation have been filed with the federal government's Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS); that's a repository of reports sent in by health professionals and patients about any health events they spot in the hours or days after vaccinations. Many of the events reported turn out to be coincidental — not caused by a vaccine. The database is just meant as a starting point for further investigation and not proof of cause and effect. But as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel noted this week, "when millions of people are vaccinated within a short period, the total number of these reported events can look big."

That said, anecdotes reported by doctors in medical journals and reports to VAERS suggest that both of the mRNA vaccines authorized for use in the U.S. — the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — might slightly increase the incidence of myocarditis in young people. In 2003, a report in the New England Journal of Medicine estimated the background incidence of myocarditis to be 1.13 cases in 100,000 children per year.

Paul Offit, professor of pediatrics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of a Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee says there likely is a causal link between the heart inflammation some doctors are seeing in these teens and the second dose of vaccine. "I think it's real," he says, but hastens to add that the effect is exceedingly small – based on the data collected so far, maybe one in 50,000 vaccinees between the ages of 16 and 39. "And the good news is at least so far it looks to be transient and self-resolving."

Still, maybe I should wait to get my teen vaccinated and see how this plays out?

Uhm, no, according to several vaccine experts contacted by NPR. And this is where a little math comes in handy.

"Take a stadium full of 100,000 people between the ages of 16 and 39, which is the subset that appears to be at greater risk," Offit says. "Vaccinate all of them, and two might get myocarditis." But if you don't vaccinate any of the 100,000, he estimates that about 1,300 would eventually get COVID-19. And those numbers are likely to increase this winter.

About one in 1,000 children who get COVID-19 have gone on to develop a condition called MIS-C (multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children), says Offit, and most of those kids have had some level of myocarditis. In addition, the new coronavirus has directly caused myocarditis in some children and adults. Which of the two stadiums in Offit's metaphor would have more cases of myocarditis — the vaccinated children or unvaccinated kids — is not known precisely. But Offit says he suspects it would be the unvaccinated group. And there's no doubt that 1,000 unvaccinated children would suffer more COVID-19-related illnesses. "A choice not to get a vaccine is not a choice to avoid myocarditis," he says. "It's a choice to take a different risk — and I would argue a more serious one" — of developing a bad case of COVID-19 or long-COVID or COVID-caused myocarditis.

Are the experts advising their own kids in this age group to get vaccinated?

Yes. "I understand people having concerns," says Dr. Judith Guzman-Cottrill. She's a parent and professor of pediatric infectious diseases at the Oregon Health and Science University, as well as the senior author on a small study that came out this month in the journal Pediatrics. In the report, Guzman-Cottrill and her colleagues analyzed the cases of seven boys around the country who developed myocarditis within four days of receiving the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

She and her family recently faced the vaccination decision for her own 13-year-old daughter — and said a whole-hearted yes to the shot.

Guzman-Cottrill suspects there may turn out to be a slightly increased risk of heart inflammation from vaccination in young people, but she and her co-authors note in the Pediatrics report that a direct cause-and-effect connection — even in these seven cases — has yet to be established. And she's impressed that despite the millions of doses that have so far been delivered to teens, no clear and serious post-vaccination problems have shown up. "The emergency departments and urgent care clinics are not filled with teenagers complaining of chest pain," she says.

She's treated unvaccinated teens who developed severe myocarditis from an infection with the COVID-19 virus, and others who developed COVID-19 pneumonia and respiratory failure. Seeing those teens struggle — teens who lacked the powerful immune protection the vaccine provides — was enough for her to suggest vaccination to her daughter, who got her second vaccination earlier this week.

"She saw it as a pathway back to a normal post pandemic life," Guzman-Cottrill says.

And that's where public health comes in. "We really need a highly vaccinated student body when kids return to the classroom this fall," says Guzman-Cottrill, "so we don't see surges in COVID-19 cases."

Joanne Silberner, a former health policy correspondent for NPR, is a freelance journalist living in Seattle.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

At the Cascades Volcano Observatory, staff use technical skills and creativity to solve complex problems and innovate for the future. Erin personifies the cleverness, craftsmanship and creativity that makes volcano science meaningful and FUN! 

At the Cascades Volcano Observatory, staff use technical skills and creativity to solve complex problems and innovate for the future. Maciej’s experiments are too large for the observatory, so he travels 3 hours southeast of CVO to the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest in Blue River, Oregon to study debris flows. 

Famed investor and commentator Jim Rogers talks his preference for tangible assets, why he's leaning toward silver over gold, and uranium's role in the energy transition.

#FreeBritney activists protest outside the Los Angeles Superior Court during one of Britney Spears' hearings this April.; Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images

Pop star Britney Spears hasn't been in charge of her personal life or her finances for 13 years — that's how long she has been in a court-dictated legal arrangement called a conservatorship.

But on Wednesday, the artist will be speaking directly, albeit from a remote location, to a Los Angeles Superior Court judge about her situation. What exactly she intends to say in her appearance and what her goals might be are anyone's guess.

Before then, here's a quick look at what conservatorships are and why they exist, the specifics of Spears' arrangements, the #FreeBritney movement and what Spears and others have said publicly — and privately — about her conservatorship.

What is a conservatorship, and why does one get put in place?

Typically, legal and financial conservatorships are arranged for people who are unable to make their own decisions in their own best self-interest, such as in the case of an elderly person or someone with some kind of cognitive impairment.

Why does Britney Spears have one?

The exact reasons that the 39-year-old Spears is under a conservatorship have not been publicly disclosed. She lost her autonomy 13 years ago, in 2008, after apparently suffering a mental health crisis.

During the time that Spears has lived under this arrangement, though, she has released four albums (two of which, 2008's Circus and 2011's Femme Fatale, achieved platinum sales); appeared as a judge on both The X Factor and American Idol; and had a four-year residency in Las Vegas that reportedly grossed close to $138 million. Those accomplishments don't exactly line up with the typical profile of someone unable to look after themselves.

What does Spears' conservatorship cover?

Essentially, it controls all the major aspects of Spears' life, including decisions regarding her financial, medical and personal well-being. The conservators also oversee visitation arrangements with her two teenage sons, who are under the full custody of her ex-husband, Kevin Federline.

According to Forbes, Spears' current net worth is around $60 million.

Who controls Spears' conservatorship?

Up until recently, both the financial and personal arms of the conservatorship were controlled by Spears' father, Jamie Spears.

In 2020, her lawyer, Samuel D. Ingham III, stated in a filing that Spears "strongly opposed" her father as conservator and that she refused to perform if he remained in charge of her career. Spears asked the court for her father to be suspended from his role as conservator. (He had temporarily stepped away in 2019 for health reasons.)

In February, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Brenda Penny overruled an objection from Jamie Spears to having a third party help look after his daughter's financial affairs. A wealth-management company, Bessemer Trust, is now a co-conservator for the financial side of Spears' situation. But Jamie Spears is still the main conservator for all other aspects of Spears' arrangement.

Why is Spears planning to talk to the court now?

Back in April, Spears' legal team asked Penny to allow her to speak to the court directly about the conservatorship, and they agreed that June 23 would be the date for this to happen. At the time, Ingham did not disclose why Spears wants to speak or what she intends to say.

Has Spears ever asked for the conservatorship to end?

Up until now, Spears has never voiced a desire for the conservatorship to be removed completely — at least not publicly. In a court filing, she has stated that the conservatorship "rescued her from a collapse, exploitation by predatory individuals and financial ruin" and allowed her to "regain her position as a world class entertainer."

But on Tuesday afternoon, The New York Times reported that it had obtained confidential court records that purport to show that Spears has opposed the conservatorship privately for years. The Times quoted a 2016 report from a court investigator assigned to Spears' case, in which the investigator wrote that Spears told her that the conservatorship had "become an oppressive and controlling tool against her" and that she wanted the arrangement to end quickly.

According to the Times, Spears told the court in 2019 that the conservatorship had forced her into a stay at a mental health facility, as well as into making public performances against her will. The article further reported that the conservatorship had dictated Spears' friendships, her dating life and her spending habits, even preventing her from refinishing kitchen cabinets according to her taste.

As early as 2014, the article states, Spears wanted to consider removing her father from his prime role in the conservatorship, citing his reportedly heavy drinking.

Does Spears herself support the #FreeBritney movement?

Certain Spears fans have organized themselves into a grassroots movement — #FreeBritney — to help Spears regain autonomy over her life. The dynamics between Spears and her dedicated #FreeBritney fans are murky, as are her various declarations on social media.

In a court filing last September, her lawyer, Ingham, wrote: "At this point in her life when she is trying to regain some measure of personal autonomy, Britney welcomes and appreciates the informed support of her many fans."

On the other hand, Spears to date has never publicly asked to be released from the conservatorship and regain her autonomy — which is the main goal of #FreeBritney.

A very sympathetic New York Times television documentary, Framing Britney Spears, debuted on FX in February. The project reckons with the way the media, comedians and the music industry itself characterized Spears during her ascent to global fame and during her later, very public struggles — and it also profiles some #FreeBritney activists.

After it aired, Spears wrote on Instagram: "My life has always been very speculated [sic] ... watched ... and judged really my whole life !!! ... I didn't watch the documentary but from what I did see of it I was embarrassed by the light they put me in ... I cried for two weeks and well .... I still cry sometimes !!!!"

Some #FreeBritney supporters don't believe Spears writes her own Instagram messages, leaving them to speculate about the pop star's true feelings. But Spears reportedly told TMZ in April that she writes her own captions.

What's next for Britney Spears?

Unclear. In an Instagram video posted last week, a visibly jittery Spears professed to be answering fans' most burning questions, including her shoe size and her favorite business trip (answer: "a trip to Italy [to] Donatella Versace. ... She fined [sic] and dined us").

The last question Spears put forward to herself was a crucial one: Would she ever return to the stage again?

"I have no idea," she said. "I'm having fun right now. I'm in transition in my life, and I'm enjoying myself."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.