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We evaluated the impact of language concordance-clinician or public health worker fluency in a patient's primary language-on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) contact tracing outcomes among 2668 Spanish-speaking adults in San Francisco. Language concordance was associated with 20% greater odds of COVID-19 testing and 53% greater odds of support service referrals.

BackgroundHeart failure (HF) is a leading cause of cardiac morbidity among women, whose risk factors differ from those in men. We used machine-learning approaches to develop risk- prediction models for incident HF in a cohort of postmenopausal women from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI).MethodsWe used 2 machine-learning methods-Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) and Classification and Regression Trees (CART)-to perform variable selection on 1227 baseline WHI variables for the primary outcome of incident HF. These variables were then used to construct separate Cox proportional hazard models, and we compared these results, using receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, against a comparator model built using variables from the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) HF prediction model. We analyzed 43,709 women who had 2222 incident HF events; median follow-up was 14.3 years.ResultsLASSO selected 10 predictors, and CART selected 11 predictors. The highest correlation between selected variables was 0.46. In addition to selecting well-established predictors such as age, myocardial infarction, and smoking, novel predictors included physical function, number of pregnancies, number of previous live births and age at menopause. In ROC analysis, the CART-derived model had the highest C-statistic of 0.83 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.81-0.85), followed by LASSO 0.82 (95% CI, 0.81-0.84) and ARIC 0.73 (95% CI, 0.70-0.76).ConclusionsMachine-learning approaches can be used to develop HF risk-prediction models that can have better discrimination compared with an established HF risk model and may provide a basis for investigating novel HF predictors.

mRNA vaccines were highly effective in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, making them an attractive platform to address cancers and other infectious diseases. Many new mRNA vaccines in development are multivalent, which represents a difficulty for the standard assays commonly used to characterize the critical quality attributes of monovalent formulations. Here, we present a multiplexed analytical tool with nucleic acid microarray technology using the VaxArray platform that measures the identity and quantity of mono- and multivalent mixtures of naked mRNA and mRNA encapsulated in lipid nanoparticle formulations in under 2 h without any additional preparation steps, such as extraction or RT-PCR. Using a quadrivalent mixture of encapsulated mRNA constructs that encode for four unique proteins in a vaccine formulation, the VaxArray mRNA assay was demonstrated to be highly specific for each mRNA with sensitivity < 1 µg/mL. The quantification of individual mRNAs within the lipid nanoparticle mixture resulted in a precision of ≤10% RSD and an accuracy of 100 ± 9%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Citrus production in Colombia is divided into six productive centers, with a total production of 1,450 thousand tons in 2021. The greater entrepreneurial activity stands out in the West and a lower level in the South, which generates 230 thousand tons per year of citrus waste, posing challenges in terms of pollution and wet/semi-solid waste management. This study evaluates the industrial potential of these waste products for strengthening the national citrus industry, considering three aspects: raw materials availability, technological opportunities, and market opportunities. The results indicate that Colombia has a robust citrus production, with an emphasis on oranges, mandarins, and lemons, and significant potential in the industrialization of the peel, which constitutes between 40% and 60% of the total fruit. To industrialization were identified six key research areas of citrus waste in terms of technological opportunities. Regarding market opportunities, there is observed growth both nationally and internationally in products derived from citrus waste, including essential oils, terpenes, dietary fiber, pectin, citric acid, and biofuels. Colombia is considered a country with great potential for the industrialization of citrus waste, supported by its abundant raw materials, promising technological opportunities, and a growing market. However, improvements in infrastructure, investment in research and development, and the promotion of entrepreneurial culture in the citrus sector are needed to fully capitalize on this opportunity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, two in-service English teachers and two preservice English teachers, who participated in a shared mentoring relationship during the student-teaching semester, share their experiences, conflicts, and how they were resolved. The authors provide first-person narratives of all four teachers and suggestions for improving mentoring experiences for both mentor teachers and student teachers. Important issues addressed include territoriality of classroom spaces, students, decision making, and time. The authors provide suggestions for improving communication, use of shared spaces, and planning.