The economic and man-made resources that sustain human wellbeing are not distributed evenly across the world, but are instead heavily concentrated in cities. Poor access to opportunities and services ...offered by urban centres (a function of distance, transport infrastructure, and the spatial distribution of cities) is a major barrier to improved livelihoods and overall development. Advancing accessibility worldwide underpins the equity agenda of 'leaving no one behind' established by the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. This has renewed international efforts to accurately measure accessibility and generate a metric that can inform the design and implementation of development policies. The only previous attempt to reliably map accessibility worldwide, which was published nearly a decade ago, predated the baseline for the Sustainable Development Goals and excluded the recent expansion in infrastructure networks, particularly in lower-resource settings. In parallel, new data sources provided by Open Street Map and Google now capture transportation networks with unprecedented detail and precision. Here we develop and validate a map that quantifies travel time to cities for 2015 at a spatial resolution of approximately one by one kilometre by integrating ten global-scale surfaces that characterize factors affecting human movement rates and 13,840 high-density urban centres within an established geospatial-modelling framework. Our results highlight disparities in accessibility relative to wealth as 50.9% of individuals living in low-income settings (concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa) reside within an hour of a city compared to 90.7% of individuals in high-income settings. By further triangulating this map against socioeconomic datasets, we demonstrate how access to urban centres stratifies the economic, educational, and health status of humanity.
The dance between microbes and the immune system takes place in all biological systems, including the human body, but this interaction is especially complex in the primary gateway to the body: the ...oral cavity. Recent advances in technology have enabled deep sequencing and analysis of members and signals of these communities. In a healthy state, the oral microbiome is composed of commensals, and their genes and phenotypes may be selected by the immune system to survive in symbiosis. These highly regulated signals are modulated by a network of microbial and host metabolites. However, in a diseased state, host-microbial networks lead to dysbiosis and considerable burden to the host prior to systemic impact that extends beyond the oral compartment. Interestingly, we presented data demonstrating similarities between human and mice immune dysbiosis and discussed how this affects the host response to similar pathobionts. The host and microbial signatures of a number of disease states are currently being examined to identify potential correlations. How the oral microbiome interacts with inflammation and the immune system to cause disease remains an area of active research. In this review, we summarize recent advancements in understanding the role of oral microbiota in mediating inflammation and altering systemic health and disease. In line with these findings, it is possible that existing conditions may be resolved by targeting specific immune-microbial markers in a positive way.
An increasing number of studies reveal that host–microbial interactome networks are coordinated, impacting human health and disease. Recently, several lines of evidence have revealed associations ...between the acquisition of a complex microbiota and adaptive immunity, supporting that host–microbiota symbiotic relationships have evolved as a means to maintain homeostasis where the role of the microbiota is to promote and educate the immune system. Here, we hypothesize an oral host–microbial interactome that could serve as an ecological chronometer of health and disease, with specific focus on caries, periodontal diseases, and cancer. We also review the current state of the art on the human oral microbiome and its correlations with host innate immunity, and host cytokine control, with the goal of using this information for disease prediction and designing novel treatments for local and systemic dysbiosis. In addition, we discuss new insights into the role of novel host–microbial signals as potential biomarkers, and their relevance for the future of precision dentistry and medicine.
Dynamic interactions between the human microbiome and the host immunity shape health and disease.Global human populations are major carriers of streptococci and Prevotella bacteria.Lifestyle habits such as a high-sugar diet, alcohol consumption, and smoking can impact oral microbial diversity, and interactions between the microbiota and the host.Members belonging to the Haemophilus genus are associated with oral health in populations of hunter-gatherers.Oral host–microbial interactome provides signals able to impact both local and systemic dysbiosis.Monitoring oral, dental, and craniofacial systems can reveal novel biomarkers for diagnostics and targeted therapies.
We make publicly available a catalog of calibrated environmental measures for galaxies in the five 3D-Hubble Space Telescope (HST)/CANDELS deep fields. Leveraging the spectroscopic and grism ...redshifts from the 3D-HST survey, multiwavelength photometry from CANDELS, and wider field public data for edge corrections, we derive densities in fixed apertures to characterize the environment of galaxies brighter than mag in the redshift range . By linking observed galaxies to a mock sample, selected to reproduce the 3D-HST sample selection and redshift accuracy, each 3D-HST galaxy is assigned a probability density function of the host halo mass, and a probability that it is a central or a satellite galaxy. The same procedure is applied to a z = 0 sample selected from Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We compute the fraction of passive central and satellite galaxies as a function of stellar and halo mass, and redshift, and then derive the fraction of galaxies that were quenched by environment specific processes. Using the mock sample, we estimate that the timescale for satellite quenching is it is longer at lower stellar mass or lower redshift, but remarkably independent of halo mass. This indicates that, in the range of environments commonly found within the 3D-HST sample ( ), satellites are quenched by exhaustion of their gas reservoir in the absence of cosmological accretion. We find that the quenching times can be separated into a delay phase, during which satellite galaxies behave similarly to centrals at fixed stellar mass, and a phase where the star formation rate drops rapidly ( Gyr), as shown previously at z = 0. We conclude that this scenario requires satellite galaxies to retain a large reservoir of multi-phase gas upon accretion, even at high redshift, and that this gas sustains star formation for the long quenching times observed.
Objective
Characterise the vaginal metabolome of cervical HPV‐infected and uninfected women.
Design
Cross‐sectional.
Setting
The Center for Health Behavior Research at the University of Maryland ...School of Public Health.
Sample
Thirty‐nine participants, 13 categorised as HPV‐negative and 26 as HPV‐positive (any genotype; HPV+), 14 of whom were positive with at least one high‐risk HPV strain (hrHPV).
Method
Self‐collected mid‐vaginal swabs were profiled for bacterial composition by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, metabolites by both gas and liquid chromatography mass spectrometry, and 37 types of HPV DNA.
Main outcome measures
Metabolite abundances.
Results
Vaginal microbiota clustered into Community State Type (CST) I (Lactobacillus crispatus‐dominated), CST III (Lactobacillus iners‐dominated), and CST IV (low‐Lactobacillus, ‘molecular‐BV’). HPV+ women had higher biogenic amine and phospholipid concentrations compared with HPV– women after adjustment for CST and cigarette smoking. Metabolomic profiles of HPV+ and HPV− women differed in strata of CST. In CST III, there were higher concentrations of biogenic amines and glycogen‐related metabolites in HPV+ women than in HPV– women. In CST IV, there were lower concentrations of glutathione, glycogen, and phospholipid‐related metabolites in HPV+ participants than in HPV– participants. Across all CSTs, women with hrHPV strains had lower concentrations of amino acids, lipids, and peptides compared with women who had only low‐risk HPV (lrHPV).
Conclusions
The vaginal metabolome of HPV+ women differed from HPV− women in terms of several metabolites, including biogenic amines, glutathione, and lipid‐related metabolites. If the temporal relation between increased levels of reduced glutathione and oxidised glutathione and HPV incidence/persistence is confirmed in future studies, anti‐oxidant therapies may be considered as a non‐surgical HPV control intervention.
Tweetable
Metabolomics study: Vaginal microenvironment of HPV+ women may be informative for non‐surgical interventions.
Tweetable
Metabolomics study: Vaginal microenvironment of HPV+ women may be informative for non‐surgical interventions.
Access to healthcare is a requirement for human well-being that is constrained, in part, by the allocation of healthcare resources relative to the geographically dispersed human population
. ...Quantifying access to care globally is challenging due to the absence of a comprehensive database of healthcare facilities. We harness major data collection efforts underway by OpenStreetMap, Google Maps and academic researchers to compile the most complete collection of facility locations to date. Leveraging the geographically variable strengths of our facility datasets, we use an established methodology
to characterize travel time to healthcare facilities in unprecedented detail. We produce maps of travel time with and without access to motorized transport, thus characterizing travel time to healthcare for populations distributed across the wealth spectrum. We find that just 8.9% of the global population (646 million people) cannot reach healthcare within one hour if they have access to motorized transport, and that 43.3% (3.16 billion people) cannot reach a healthcare facility by foot within one hour. Our maps highlight an additional vulnerability faced by poorer individuals in remote areas and can help to estimate whether individuals will seek healthcare when it is needed, as well as providing an evidence base for efficiently distributing limited healthcare and transportation resources to underserved populations both now and in the future.
The first standardized, global assessment of these fishes, using Red List criteria, reveals threatened species needing protection.
There is growing concern that in spite of the healthy status of ...several epipelagic (living near the surface) fish stocks (
1
), some scombrid (tunas, bonitos, mackerels, and Spanish mackerels) and billfish (swordfish and marlins) species are heavily overfished and that there is a lack of resolve to protect against overexploitation driven by high prices (
2
–
5
). Many populations are exploited by multinational fisheries whose regulation, from a political perspective, is exceedingly difficult. Thus, assessment and management is complicated and sometimes ineffective (
4
). Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) were created to manage and conserve scombrids and billfishes because of their transnational distributions and widespread economic importance (
6
). However, species-specific catch data for many scombrids and billfishes are not collected or are aggregated with other species. Even for the larger tunas, for which relatively rich data exist, population assessments and data are complex (
1
) and are difficult to combine across RFMOs, which prompts a need for alternative means of assessment.
Speleothem CaCO
δ
O is a commonly employed paleomonsoon proxy. However, inferring local rainfall amount from speleothem δ
O can be complicated due to changing source water δ
O, temperature effects, ...and rainout over the moisture transport path. These complications are addressed using δ
O of planktonic foraminiferal CaCO
, offshore from the Yangtze River Valley (YRV). The advantage is that the effects of global seawater δ
O and local temperature changes can be quantitatively removed, yielding a record of local seawater δ
O, a proxy that responds primarily to dilution by local precipitation and runoff. Whereas YRV speleothem δ
O is dominated by precession-band (23 ky) cyclicity, local seawater δ
O is dominated by eccentricity (100 ky) and obliquity (41 ky) cycles, with almost no precession-scale variance. These results, consistent with records outside the YRV, suggest that East Asian monsoon rainfall is more sensitive to greenhouse gas and high-latitude ice sheet forcing than to direct insolation forcing.
The complete genome sequence of the radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans R1 is composed of two chromosomes (2,648,638 and 412,348 base pairs), a megaplasmid (177,466 base pairs), and ...a small plasmid (45,704 base pairs), yielding a total genome of 3,284,156 base pairs. Multiple components distributed on the chromosomes and megaplasmid that contribute to the ability of D. radiodurans to survive under conditions of starvation, oxidative stress, and high amounts of DNA damage were identified. Deinococcus radiodurans represents an organism in which all systems for DNA repair, DNA damage export, desiccation and starvation recovery, and genetic redundancy are present in one cell.
The 1,860,725-base-pair genome of Thermotoga maritima MSB8 contains 1,877 predicted coding regions, 1,014 (54%) of which have functional assignments and 863 (46%) of which are of unknown function. ...Genome analysis reveals numerous pathways involved in degradation of sugars and plant polysaccharides, and 108 genes that have orthologues only in the genomes of other thermophilic Eubacteria and Archaea. Of the Eubacteria sequenced to date, T. maritima has the highest percentage (24%) of genes that are most similar to archaeal genes. Eighty-one archaeal-like genes are clustered in 15 regions of the T. maritima genome that range in size from 4 to 20 kilobases. Conservation of gene order between T. maritima and Archaea in many of the clustered regions suggests that lateral gene transfer may have occurred between thermophilic Eubacteria and Archaea.
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