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Background: Concussions are responsible for numerous emergency department visits and hospitalizations among children annually. However, there remains a great deal of confusion about how to prevent and manage concussions in youth. To teach children aged 6 to 8 years about concussion safety, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) created a mobile gaming application called HEADS UP Rocket Blades. This report introduces the game and presents findings on its evaluation., Methods: The aim of the game is to teach children what a concussion is, its commons signs and symptoms, how to prevent one, and what to do if one occurs. An early version of the game went through two rounds of usability testing with children and parents to obtain initial impressions and make improvements., Results: The first round of usability testing focused on the mechanics of the game. Based on feedback from this session, CDC and the developers simplified the messaging and adjusted the game's level of difficulty. The second round focused on the gaming experience. The children indicated that they enjoyed playing, and nearly all were able to relay at least one learning objective., Conclusions: Parents and children rated Rocket Blades as a good learning tool and indicated that they would download it for personal use.

The cotton fleahopper, Pseudatomoscelis seriatus (Reuter) (Hemiptera: Miridae) is an economically important insect pest of cotton in the United States. However, reports of cotton fleahopper infestation and its management in cotton fields are restricted primarily to Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. The objective of this study was to understand the genetic diversity of cotton fleahopper populations infesting cotton in the cotton-growing areas of the United States. Amplified fragment length polymorphism markers were used to detect genetic diversity and to characterize geographic genotypes across the distribution of the cotton fleahopper in the United States. We used 172 individuals and 559 amplified fragment length polymorphism loci in this study and found significant, but low, level of genetic differentiation among geographic populations (F(ST) = 0.02; P < 0.0001). Molecular fingerprints of cotton fleahopper populations were partitioned into three broad regional genetic populations with a western, central, and eastern distribution. The western (Arizona) and eastern (Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina) populations are genetically distinct, whereas the central (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama) population represents an admixed population, which include both western and eastern populations. These results suggest considerable gene flow among the populations within regions but restricted gene flow among populations from eastern and western region.