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AimTo develop a non-invasive prenatal test for beta-hemoglobinopathies based on analyzing maternal plasma by using next generation sequencing.MethodsWe applied next generation sequencing (NGS) of maternal plasma to the non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) of autosomal recessive diseases, sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. Using the Illumina MiSeq, we sequenced plasma libraries obtained via a Twist Bioscience probe capture panel covering 4 Kb of chromosome 11, including the beta-globin (HBB) gene and >450 genomic single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) used to estimate the fetal fraction (FF). The FF is estimated by counting paternally transmitted allelic sequence reads present in the plasma but absent in the mother. We inferred fetal beta-globin genotypes by comparing the observed mutation (Mut) and reference (Ref) read ratios to those expected for the three possible fetal genotypes (Mut/Mut; Mut/Ref; Ref/Ref), based on the FF.ResultsWe bioinformatically enriched the FF by excluding reads over a specified length via in-silico size selection (ISS), favoring the shorter fetal reads, which increased fetal genotype prediction accuracy. Finally, we determined the parental HBB haplotypes, which allowed us to use the read ratios observed at linked SNPs to help predict the fetal genotype at the mutation site(s). We determined HBB haplotypes via Oxford Nanopore MinION sequencing of a 2.2 kb amplicon and aligned these sequences using Soft Genetics' NextGENe LR software.ConclusionThe combined use of ISS and HBB haplotypes enabled us to correctly predict fetal genotypes in cases where the prediction based on variant read ratios alone was incorrect.

Human ehrlichiosis is a potentially fatal tickborne disease caused by 3 species: Ehrlichia chaffeensis, E. ewingii, and E. muris eauclairensis. In the United States, 234 confirmed cases of E. ewingii ehrlichiosis were reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System during 2013–2021; average annual incidence was 0.08 cases/1 million population. E. ewingii ehrlichiosis was reported more commonly among older, White, non-Hispanic, and male patients. Incidence and case counts generally increased yearly, except for 2020 and 2021. The highest number of cases were reported from Missouri and Arkansas. We report the geographic expansion of E. ewingii ehrlichiosis and the continued public health challenge of clarifying clinical manifestations of this infection. Clinician education will be essential to implement molecular assays to properly diagnose E. ewingii infection in patients and gain a better understanding of the epidemiology of this emerging disease.

Many phytopathogenic bacteria require a type III secretion system (TTSS) to activate effector-triggered immunity (ETI). We identified a calcium-binding protein, EfhXXfa, in the citrus pathogen Xanthomonas citri subsp. aurantifolii that does not require a TTSS to activate reactive oxygen species (ROS) and elicit a hypersensitive reaction (HR) in tomato leaves following infection. Purified, recombinant EfhXXfa was shown to bind two moles of calcium per mole of protein, whereas mutation of the first of two EF-hands did not bind calcium. EfhXXfa expression was determined to be inducible in hrp-inducing medium. Additionally, growth of X. perforans transconjugants with and without the efhXXfa gene in hrp-inducing medium differed in intracellular calcium concentration; the transconjugant without efhXXfa yielded higher cell pellet masses and higher increased intracellular calcium concentrations relative to cells expressing EfhXXfa. An EfhXXfa homolog, EfhXXe, present in the pepper pathogen X. euvesicatoria, triggered ROS production and an HR in tomato leaves when expressed in the tomato pathogen X. perforans and is a host-limiting factor. Interestingly, all tested X. perforans and X. euvesicatoria strains pathogenic on tomato contain a stop codon immediately upstream of the first EF-hand domain in the efhXXe gene, whereas most X. euvesicatoria strains pathogenic on pepper do not. [Figure: see text] Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.

This essay calls for a pedagogy of consilience and renewal as a dynamic fusion of research and practices in order to provide a more coherent way of examining some of the keen, interlaced variables that trouble the academy and society. The project challenges scholars to study five key scholarship of learning variables that should help transform the way we look at pedagogy for the betterment of North American society and beyond. The variables--a quintile--are knowledge, geography, critical thinking, civic engagement, and empathy.

Psychological capital (PsyCap) is a term coined in organizational psychology and refers to a person's development of states that motivate behavior. Also known in the literature as PsyCap, this construct typically refers to positive states of hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism that are amenable to intervention and that are related to subjective well-being and life satisfaction. The aims of this systematic scoping review were to explore how PsyCap is described in youth mental health literature and how PsyCap and mental health are related. Results from four databases were reported following PRISMA guidelines. A total of 772 studies were identified and 16 studies were fully reviewed, including an overall sample of 6,772 youth from six countries. PsyCap has a positive relationship with mental health in youth. Future studies should involve school nurses to validate the constructs that characterize PsyCap and validate an instrument for measuring PsyCap in youth mental health in English.

Much effort has been spent on the conservation of rare, threatened, and endangered plants in the biodiversity hotspot of the California Floristic Province, however little is known about the identity of their pollinators. In this study we provide the first formal study on the identity of the invertebrate pollinators of five rare endemic island plant species from San Clemente Island, the southernmost of the California Channel Islands: Delphinium variegatum ssp kinkiense, Lithophragma maximum, Malacothamnus clementinus, Malva assurgentiflora ssp glabra, and Sibara filifolia. We surveyed plant-pollinator interactions at populations of each focal plant species using timed sweep-netting. We used pollinator capture data to compile bipartite interaction networks for each plant population, and calculated centrality indices (degree, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality) of pollinators to identify species important to network stability. We found a significant effect of pollinator taxonomic group (fly, bee, wasp, or Lepidopteran) on some indices of pollinator centrality in interaction networks, and variation in pollinator centrality between different locations. Hoverflies, moths, and butterflies were important generalists with higher network centrality across all plant populations, while bees tended to be more specialists within their networks, except for the Malva assurgentiflora ssp glabra network, where bees were on average of higher centrality than flies. We recommend targeted restoration practices for future study that could support pollination both directly and indirectly to focal rare plant species of conservation interest across plant populations. These practices could augment general pollinator conservation best practices such as reducing pesticide use and planting native plant species to provide increased pollination to endangered plants.

There is a national need to recruit more science teachers. Enhancing pathways to teaching for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors could help to address this need. The Learn By Doing Lab is a course in which STEM undergraduates teach hands-on life science and physical science to local third- through eighth-grade schoolchildren visiting the campus. To measure the impacts of this teaching experience on the undergraduate participants, we administered a version of the Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument-Preservice survey at the start and end of the course. Significant gains were observed in the students' belief in their personal ability to effectively teach science (self-efficacy). Furthermore, qualitative and quantitative analysis of student reflections revealed that they perceived the Learn By Doing Lab experience to have helped them develop 21st-century competencies, particularly in the areas of collaboration, communication, and adaptability. Finally, the students' overall awareness and positive perception of science teaching careers increased. This indicates that providing a low-barrier course-based teaching experience for STEM undergraduates is a promising strategy to help recruit pre-service teachers, and a step toward alleviating the national STEM teacher shortage.

The concept of cultural community has been firstly or more obviously embodied in the works of the minority/minoritized literature or writers from marginalized countries and approached from different perspectives, such as small and enduring spiritual bonds, aspiration and an ideal, or self-deconstruction due to heterogeneity, conflict, and difference. However, most researchers explore the cultural community in the works of merely one racial group, such as American Indian, Chinese, Korean, or African. There has been comparatively little research on the construction of a cultural community across races. Focusing on Molefi Kete Asante’s Afrocentricity and Tu Wei-ming’s embodied Confucianism, two cultural movements that fully embody a “new cosmopolitanism” and have the potential to dialog and complement each other, this study compares the views of transcendence of these two philosophies in terms of sense, the ultimate goal, orientation of time, vehicle for realization, and thinking pattern in the hope of the construction of a Sino-African cultural community, which reflects mutual understanding, coexistence, harmony without uniformity, and the contact, conflict, and intermingling of heterogeneous cultures.