Washington — Fully operational Positive Train Control technology “would have intervened” to stop a fatal Amtrak passenger train derailment in which crew members were inadequately trained and tested on various aspects of a new route, the National Transportation Safety Board has concluded after its investigation into the December 2017 incident in DuPont, WA.

Bilbao, Spain — Excessive workloads, conflicting demands and a lack of support from management are some of the psychosocial factors that can contribute to the development of musculoskeletal disorders in the workplace, according to a literature review conducted by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.

Ljubljana, Slovenia — Work intensity is the most commonly identified risk factor for daily stress on the job, European researchers have concluded after conducting a research review.

Albuquerque, NM — Even moderate outdoor temperatures may put construction workers at increased risk of heat-related illness, a recent study led by a University of New Mexico researcher suggests.

Washington — Work organization, job stress and other non-physical risk factors “cannot be ignored” when assessing the likelihood of work-related musculoskeletal disorders, according to a new white paper from the National Safety Council.

Nanjing, China — A recent study highlighting the expected ties between exposure to cancer-causing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, and a risk factor for heart disease could impact workers.

Cincinnati — Various psychosocial, organizational and physical factors may increase workers’ risk of low back pain, according to a recent study led by NIOSH researchers.

The fitfactor Weight Management System™ includes protein shakes, bars, and weight management supplements, combined with online nutrition coaching and community.

Five new types of Tradición tortillas include Fajita, Soft Yellow Corn Tortillas, Soft White Corn Tortillas, Burrito Flour Tortillas and Soft Taco Flour Tortillas

Developments funded by the investment include upgrading existing production lines, revamping facilities for the factory’s 600 workers, and initiatives to improve energy efficiency and to help reduce carbon emissions.

Food and beverage manufacturers are focusing on reducing energy and materials by leveraging automation, capturing more data, sourcing modern processing equipment, and concentrating on quick “digital wins.”

FoodTech start-up, BioBetter, Ltd., has assigned a new role for the much-maligned Nicotiana tabacum plant upon discovering it can overcome the greatest hurdle in cultured meat—that of scaled production. 

The virtual experience is personalized, giving visitors the chance to become acquainted with products from their country of choice.

The construction industry in Nigeria plays a pivotal role in economic growth, yet it faces a critical challenge: a shortage of skilled labor. This study aims to identify the key factors influencing skilled labor availability in Nigerias construction sector and propose actionable solutions. Through an extensive literature review and distribution of questionnaires to construction professionals...

Children's Geographies; 10/01/2023
(AN 173035624); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

Children's Geographies; 04/01/2024
(AN 178088137); ISSN: 14733285
Academic Search Premier

Volume 20, Issue 3, July-September 2024, Page 292-310. Read the full article ›

The post Factors Influencing Palliative and End-of-Life Care for Adults with Intellectual Disabilities: A Scoping Review of Health and Care Workers’ Experiences was curated by information for practice.

Evaluation &the Health Professions, Ahead of Print. This systematic review provides an overview of the unique challenges allied health professions face in the translation and implementation of evidence into practice, which remain relatively under reported and uninformed by a theoretical basis of behaviour change. MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL and Scopus databases from 2010 to 2022 were […]

The post Factors Influencing the Translation of Evidence Into Clinical Practice for Hospital Allied Health Professionals in Terms of the Domains of Behaviour Change Theory: A Systematic Review was curated by information for practice.

Objectives: Methamphetamine use is associated with numerous negative health and social concerns in Canada. Sex and gender-related factors play a crucial role in the uptake, patterns of use, responses, and treatment outcomes. This scoping review examines academic evidence on methamphetamine interventions that incorporate sex, gender, trauma, and/or equity elements. Materials and Methods: Research question #1 […]

The post Considering Sex, Gender, and Equity Factors in Methamphetamine Interventions: Findings From a Scoping Review was curated by information for practice.

Sustained financing for Universal Health Coverage (UHC) has been a concern for the Cameroon government. Household contributions have been considered as a financing mechanism, but this raises concerns on the wi… Read the full article ›

The post Factors associated with household willingness to pay for Universal Health Coverage in Cameroon: a nationwide cross-sectional analysis was curated by information for practice.

We know…we’ve been remiss, and it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room. Something Wild, as you know, is a chance to take a closer look at the wildlife, ecosystems and marvelous phenomena you can find in and around New Hampshire. But over the years there is one species in New Hampshire that we haven’t spent much time examining. A species, I think that has been conspicuous in its absence. Humans. So we’re grabbing the bull by the horns and digging in to a complex species that is an important part of the ecosystem. And we thought we’d start with a particular trait that’s been with us almost since the beginning: olfaction.

A strike by 33,000 Boeing factory workers is coming to an end after more than seven weeks. The aerospace giant's unionized machinists voted on Monday to accept a company contract offer that includes a 38 percent wage increase over four years.

We know…we’ve been remiss, and it’s time to talk about the elephant in the room. Something Wild, as you know, is a chance to take a closer look at the wildlife, ecosystems and marvelous phenomena you can find in and around New Hampshire. But over the years there is one species in New Hampshire that we haven’t spent much time examining. A species, I think that has been conspicuous in its absence. Humans. So we’re grabbing the bull by the horns and digging in to a complex species that is an important part of the ecosystem. And we thought we’d start with a particular trait that’s been with us almost since the beginning: olfaction. The sense of smell among other sensory systems are relatively unchanged throughout mammalian history. As Nate Dominy, professor of anthropology and biological sciences at Dartmouth, says, “a lot of the traits we see in mammals are retention of those basic traits.” Dominy suggested our olfactory sense was really important to our proto-mammalian ancestors. Picture

By Georgia Leybourne, Chief Marketing Officer, Linnworks.

Success in ecommerce and retail today hinges on consumer convenience. It is fast becoming a powerful tool in the e-commerce industry, transforming the way businesses engage with their customers and increasing sales through social commerce.

A new study finds that seniors who tend to mirror other people's feelings are more likely to show signs of being anxious or depressed themselves.

People with conditions or habits such as high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation, or smoking, not only have a higher risk of stroke, they may also have more severe strokes than people without these risk factors, according to a study published in the November 13, 2024, online issue of Neurology(r), the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

A new study finds that seniors who tend to mirror other people's feelings are more likely to show signs of being anxious or depressed themselves.

People with conditions or habits such as high blood pressure, an irregular heartbeat called atrial fibrillation, or smoking, not only have a higher risk of stroke, they may also have more severe strokes than people without these risk factors, according to a study published in the November 13, 2024, online issue of Neurology(r), the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Parameters in analytical models for X-ray form factors of ions f0(s), based on the inverse Mott–Bethe formula involving a variable number of Gaussians, are determined for a wide range of published data sets {s, f0(s)}. The models reproduce the calculated form-factor values close to what is expected from a uniform statistical distribution with limits determined by their precision. For different ions associated with the same atom, the number of Gaussians in the models decreases with increasing net positive charge.

In electron diffraction, thermal atomic motion produces incoherent scattering over a relatively wide angular range, which appears as a diffuse background that is usually subtracted from measurements of Bragg spot intensities in structure solution methods. The transfer of electron flux from Bragg spots to diffuse scatter is modelled using complex scattering factors f + if' in the Bloch wave methodology. In a two-beam Einstein model the imaginary `absorptive' scattering factor f' can be obtained by the evaluation of an integral containing f over all possible scattering angles. While more sophisticated models of diffuse scatter are widely used in the electron microscopy community, it is argued in this paper that this simple model is appropriate for current structure solution and refinement methods. The two-beam model is a straightforward numerical calculation, but even this simplistic approach can become time consuming for simulations of materials with large numbers of atoms in the unit cell and/or many incident beam orientations. Here, a parameterized form of f' is provided for 103 elements as neutral, spherical atoms that reduces calculation time considerably.

The crystal structure of the intracellular domain of transforming growth factor β type I receptor (TβR1) in complex with the competitive inhibitor SB505124 is presented. The study provides insights into the structure and function of TβR1 in complex with SB505124, and as such offers molecular-level understanding of the inhibition of this critical signalling pathway. The potential of SB505124 as an avenue for therapy in cancer treatment is discussed on basis of the results.

N-terminally hexahistidine-tagged O. volvulus macrophage migration inhibitory factor-1 has a unique jellyfish-like structure with the prototypical macrophage migration inhibitory factor trimer as the `head' and a C-terminal extension as the `tail'.

The formation of a vitrified thin film embedded with randomly oriented macromolecules is an essential prerequisite for cryogenic sample electron microscopy. Most commonly, this is achieved using the plunge-freeze method first described nearly 40 years ago. Although this is a robust method, the behaviour of different macromolecules shows great variation upon freezing and often needs to be optimized to obtain an isotropic, high-resolution reconstruction. For a macromolecule in such a film, the probability of encountering the air–water interface in the time between blotting and freezing and adopting preferred orientations is very high. 3D reconstruction using preferentially oriented particles often leads to anisotropic and uninterpretable maps. Currently, there are no general solutions to this prevalent issue, but several approaches largely focusing on sample preparation with the use of additives and novel grid modifications have been attempted. In this study, the effect of physical and chemical factors on the orientations of macromolecules was investigated through an analysis of selected well studied macromolecules, and important parameters that determine the behaviour of proteins on cryo-EM grids were revealed. These insights highlight the nature of the interactions that cause preferred orientations and can be utilized to systematically address orientation bias for any given macromolecule and to provide a framework to design small-molecule additives to enhance sample stability and behaviour.

Form factors based on aspherical models of atomic electron density have brought great improvement in the accuracies of hydrogen atom parameters derived from X-ray crystal structure refinement. Today, two main groups of such models are available, the banks of transferable atomic densities parametrized using the Hansen–Coppens multipole model which allows for rapid evaluation of atomic form factors and Hirshfeld atom refinement (HAR)-related methods which are usually more accurate but also slower. In this work, a model that combines the ideas utilized in the two approaches is tested. It uses atomic electron densities based on Hirshfeld partitions of electron densities, which are precalculated and stored in a databank. This model was also applied during the refinement of the structures of five small molecules. A comparison of the resulting hydrogen atom parameters with those derived from neutron diffraction data indicates that they are more accurate than those obtained with the Hansen–Coppens based databank, and only slightly less accurate than those obtained with a version of HAR that neglects the crystal environment. The advantage of using HAR becomes more noticeable when the effects of the environment are included. To speed up calculations, atomic densities were represented by multipole expansion with spherical harmonics up to l = 7, which used numerical radial functions (a different approach to that applied in the Hansen–Coppens model). Calculations of atomic form factors for the small protein crambin (at 0.73 Å resolution) took only 68 s using 12 CPU cores.

Dynamical refinement is a well established method for refining crystal structures against 3D electron diffraction (ED) data and its benefits have been discussed in the literature [Palatinus, Petříček & Corrêa, (2015). Acta Cryst. A71, 235–244; Palatinus, Corrêa et al. (2015). Acta Cryst. B71, 740–751]. However, until now, dynamical refinements have only been conducted using the independent atom model (IAM). Recent research has shown that a more accurate description can be achieved by applying the transferable aspherical atom model (TAAM), but this has been limited only to kinematical refinements [Gruza et al. (2020). Acta Cryst. A76, 92–109; Jha et al. (2021). J. Appl. Cryst. 54, 1234–1243]. In this study, we combine dynamical refinement with TAAM for the crystal structure of 1-methyl­uracil, using data from precession ED. Our results show that this approach improves the residual Fourier electrostatic potential and refinement figures of merit. Furthermore, it leads to systematic changes in the atomic displacement parameters of all atoms and the positions of hydrogen atoms. We found that the refinement results are sensitive to the parameters used in the TAAM modelling process. Though our results show that TAAM offers superior performance compared with IAM in all cases, they also show that TAAM parameters obtained by periodic DFT calculations on the refined structure are superior to the TAAM parameters from the UBDB/MATTS database. It appears that multipolar parameters transferred from the database may not be sufficiently accurate to provide a satisfactory description of all details of the electrostatic potential probed by the 3D ED experiment.

This study examines various methods for modelling the electron density and, thus, the electrostatic potential of an organometallic complex for use in crystal structure refinement against 3D electron diffraction (ED) data. It focuses on modelling the scattering factors of iron(III), considering the electron density distribution specific for coordination with organic linkers. We refined the structural model of the metal–organic complex, iron(III) acetyl­acetonate (FeAcAc), using both the independent atom model (IAM) and the transferable aspherical atom model (TAAM). TAAM refinement initially employed multipolar parameters from the MATTS databank for acetyl­acetonate, while iron was modelled with a spherical and neutral approach (TAAM ligand). Later, custom-made TAAM scattering factors for Fe—O coordination were derived from DFT calculations [TAAM-ligand-Fe(III)]. Our findings show that, in this compound, the TAAM scattering factor corresponding to Fe3+ has a lower scattering amplitude than the Fe3+ charged scattering factor described by IAM. When using scattering factors corresponding to the oxidation state of iron, IAM inaccurately represents electrostatic potential maps and overestimates the scattering potential of the iron. In addition, TAAM significantly improved the fitting of the model to the data, shown by improved R1 values, goodness-of-fit (GooF) and reduced noise in the Fourier difference map (based on the residual distribution analysis). For 3D ED, R1 values improved from 19.36% (IAM) to 17.44% (TAAM-ligand) and 17.49% (TAAM-ligand-Fe3+), and for single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SCXRD) from 3.82 to 2.03% and 1.98%, respectively. For 3D ED, the most significant R1 reductions occurred in the low-resolution region (8.65–2.00 Å), dropping from 20.19% (IAM) to 14.67% and 14.89% for TAAM-ligand and TAAM-ligand-Fe(III), respectively, with less improvement in high-resolution ranges (2.00–0.85 Å). This indicates that the major enhancements are due to better scattering modelling in low-resolution zones. Furthermore, when using TAAM instead of IAM, there was a noticeable improvement in the shape of the thermal ellipsoids, which more closely resembled those of an SCXRD-refined model. This study demonstrates the applicability of more sophisticated scattering factors to improve the refinement of metal–organic complexes against 3D ED data, suggesting the need for more accurate modelling methods and highlighting the potential of TAAM in examining the charge distribution of large molecular structures using 3D ED.

Onchocerca volvulus causes blindness, onchocerciasis, skin infections and devastating neurological diseases such as nodding syndrome. New treatments are needed because the currently used drug, ivermectin, is contraindicated in pregnant women and those co-infected with Loa loa. The Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID) produced, crystallized and determined the apo structure of N-terminally hexahistidine-tagged O. volvulus macrophage migration inhibitory factor-1 (His-OvMIF-1). OvMIF-1 is a possible drug target. His-OvMIF-1 has a unique jellyfish-like structure with a prototypical macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) trimer as the `head' and a unique C-terminal `tail'. Deleting the N-terminal tag reveals an OvMIF-1 structure with a larger cavity than that observed in human MIF that can be targeted for drug repurposing and discovery. Removal of the tag will be necessary to determine the actual biological oligomer of OvMIF-1 because size-exclusion chomatographic analysis of His-OvMIF-1 suggests a monomer, while PISA analysis suggests a hexamer stabilized by the unique C-terminal tails.

A general formalism is presented for the isotropically averaged single-chain scattering function (form factor) of single, double, triple and higher-order helices, as well as twisted fibres consisting of concentric layers of strands. Form factors for double and triple helices with differently sized grooves have also been derived. The formulas include the longitudinal and transverse interference over the pitch and radius of the helices, respectively. The results may be useful for the analysis of small-angle scattering data of (bio)macromolecules or molecular assemblies exhibiting a helical arrangement.

Here, it is investigated how optical properties of single scatterers in interacting multi-particle systems influence measurable structure factors. Both particles with linear gradients of their scattering length density and core–shell structures evoke characteristic deviations between the weighted sum 〈S(Q)〉 of partial structure factors in a multi-component system and experimentally accessible measurable structure factors SM(Q). While 〈S(Q)〉 contains only the structural information of self-organizing systems, SM(Q) is additionally influenced by the optical properties of their constituents, resulting in features such as changing amplitudes, additional peaks in the low-wavevector region or splitting of higher-order maxima, which are not related to structural reasons. It is shown that these effects can be systematically categorized according to the qualitative behaviour of the form factor in the Guinier region, which enables assessing the suitability of experimentally obtained structure factors to genuinely represent the microstructure of complex systems free from any particular model assumption. Hence, a careful data analysis regarding size distribution and optical properties of single scatterers is mandatory to avoid a misinterpretation of measurable structure factors.

Our ability to observe and predict severe weather events and other disasters has improved markedly over recent decades, yet this progress does not always translate into similar advances in the systems used in such circumstances to protect lives.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine examines to what extent and in which ways health care utilization -- such as in-patient hospitalizations, emergency department use, and hospital readmission -- reflects disease severity, disability, and ability to perform gainful activity.

Even as it’s suffering from a heavy debt load, billionaire Anil Agarwal’s metals and mining conglomerate is expanding in electronics components to take advantage of India’s push to become a technology manufacturing hub. The display business is separate from Vedanta’s struggling chip venture and may find an easier path to success as it’s a less techically demanding undertaking.

The Ontario factory will produce sugar-free, high protein, and other specialty chocolate products.

To celebrate the holiday season, The Cheesecake Factory welcomes back its festive Peppermint Bark Cheesecake. 

Cookie Dough Lover’s Cheesecake with Pecans will debut on National Cheesecake Day, July 30.

Included in the limited-time offering is Pumpkin Cheesecake made by The Cheesecake Factory Bakery, an addition to the dessert menu just in time for fall.

Once constructed, the facility will produce The Cheesecake Factory’scheesecakes and signature bakery products for its restaurants and other foodservice wholesalers, retailers, and distributors.

New Peppermint Stick Chocolate Swirl Cheesecake debuts just in time for the holidays.