The Scientific Communication Process in Homoeopathic Toxicology

The present chapter evaluates the growth of literature of Toxicology in Homoeopathy. The Scopus database is used as source for the study. Data pertaining to toxicology in homoeopathy for the period 1963 to 2017 is retrieved and analyzed. The study reveals that toxicology literature grows rapidly in the later stages than in the earlier period. The United States of America is the leading contributors at the global level and India is in second position. Among the contributors, E.J. Calabrese, Professor of Toxicology, University of Massachusetts is the most prolific author for Toxicology in Homoeopathy literature. University of Kalyani and University of Massachusetts are the leading institutions, majority of the records are published in the journal ‘Homoeopathy', which is published from the USA and major contributions are in the subject domain ‘medicine' (65.4 per cent). Most frequently repeated keywords in toxicology of homoeopathy literature are: homoeopathy, humans, non-human, unclassified drug and animals.

Creating an Age-Friendly Model System Through a Community and University Partnership

The University of Massachusetts 5-campus system was the first university system to receive the Age-Friendly University designation in the AFU Global Network (Business West, 2019). Simultaneously, the town of Dartmouth and city of New Bedford became Age-Friendly Communities. This allowed for dynamic collaboration between our university and communities. This presentation highlights several examples. The Ora M. DeJesus Gerontology Center faculty and student researchers developed the original age-friendly survey items for New Bedford’s initial community assessment; and the College of Nursing and Health Sciences faculty and student researchers compiled data for Dartmouth’s survey. Community service during the pandemic has flourished. The Community Companions program, which matches students with community members in social need, went virtual. Nursing students and faculty have been on the frontline in the vaccination efforts in the town of Dartmouth. These partnerships will be presented as examples of potential opportunities for other age-friendly communities. Community-university partnerships are encouraged.

Developing Synergistic Relationships between Age-Friendly Universities and Age-Friendly Communities

The Age-Friendly University (AFU) initiative was designed to support the Global Network for Age-Friendly Cities and Communities (WHO, 2018) and offers a range of opportunities for institutions of higher education to help communities adapt to their new age-diverse social structures as a result of shifting age demographics. In turn, age-friendly community partnerships are helping to fuel campus efforts to advance age-inclusivity through education, research, and community engagement. At present over 70 institutions have joined the AFU global network, as more campuses prepare to become age-friendly partners. In this collaborative symposium (Directors of Aging Centers and AFU Interest Groups), campus leaders will describe synergistic relationships between their age-friendly campus efforts and the age-friendly efforts of their neighboring communities. Montepare (Lasell University) will provide an overview of the AFU initiative and its set of 10 principles, and make the case that campuses and communities are necessary partners for creating and developing age-friendly efforts. Demonstrating this assertion, Pastor and Rogers (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) will describe linkages between their community and campus initiatives, including developing a Panel of Elders, television programming for older adults, and hosting joint events. Black and Andel (University of South Florida) will discuss the intersection between the AFU principles and the processes undertaken by age-friendly communities. Revell and Viveiros (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth) will show how campus collaborations with nearby communities are instrumental in sustaining age-friendly efforts, especially during a pandemic.

Implementation of International Environmental Law

International environmental law is a key governance instrument for the protection of the environment. Countries take on a range of obligations when they join multilateral environmental agreements. This chapter presents a comparative assessment of the implementation of international environmental law in 13 countries for four agreements dealing with pollution and conservation. It offers an empirical assessment based on the Environmental Conventions Index (ECI) developed at the Center for Governance and Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and compares performance across four key categories: regulation, management, information, and technical measures. The analysis establishes a baseline for assessing the implementation of international environmental law and explaining the impact of national characteristics, policies, and actions on the fulfillment and effectiveness of international environmental agreements.

The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident hospitalizations, incident cases, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at national, state, and county levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages.

877 PSGL-1 blocking antibodies repolarize tumor associated macrophages, reduce suppressive myeloid populations and induce inflammation in the tumor microenvironment, leading to suppression of tumor growth

BackgroundSuppressive myeloid cell populations in the tumor microenvironment (TME) are associated with worse survival of cancer patients and low effectiveness of T cell checkpoint inhibitors. Recently, several early clinical trials have produced positive data for therapies aimed at repolarizing immuno-suppressive myeloid populations in the TME. One new macrophage repolarizing target, PSGL-1 (P-selectin glycoprotein ligand-1), is expressed at high levels on suppressive tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and in vitro differentiated M2 macrophages. PSGL-1 has been shown to have an immune-modulatory activity, which includes its role in maintaining an immuno-suppressive macrophage state.MethodsTo assess the ability of PSGL-1 antibodies to convert macrophages and the tumor microenvironment from an immuno-suppressive toward a pro-inflammatory state, we employed in vitro primary macrophage and multi-cellular assays, ex vivo patient-derived tumor cultures, and a humanized mouse PDX model.ResultsWe have determined that our lead anti-PSGL-1 antibody repolarized M2-like macrophages to a more M1-like state both phenotypically and functionally as assessed in primary in vitro macrophage assays. Transcriptomics profiling of M2c macrophages showed that the anti-PSGL-1 antibody upregulated TNF-alpha/NF-kB and chemokine-mediated signaling, while downregulating oxidative phosphorylation, fatty acid metabolism and Myc signaling pathways, consistent with a broad M2-to-M1 shift of the macrophage state. Furthermore, these repolarized M1-like macrophages enhanced the inflammatory response in complex multi-cellular assays.Pre-clinical efficacy of the anti-PSGL-1 antibody was demonstrated using ex vivo cultures of fresh patient-derived tumors that preserve the cellular heterogeneity of the TME. Anti-PSGL-1 increased production of inflammatory cytokines and chemokines involved in immune activation of the TME and T cell recruitment.Lastly, our lead anti-PSGL-1 antibody also showed in vivo anti-tumor effect in a humanized mouse PDX model of melanoma. The antibody suppressed tumor growth to a significantly greater degree compared to anti-PD-1. At the cellular and molecular levels, the anti-PSGL-1 treatment led to a more enhanced inflammatory microenvironment, including a reduced M2:M1 macrophage ratio, and an increase in systemic pro-inflammatory mediators. Compared to anti-PD-1 monotherapy, anti-PSGL-1 alone and in combination with anti-PD-1 increased the fraction of effector CD8+ T cells among the infiltrating T cells. Significant combination effects of anti-PSGL-1 plus anti-PD-1 were seen at the cellular and molecular levels within the tumor tissue, the spleen, and peripheral blood.ConclusionsThe data presented here provide biological and mechanistic support for clinical testing of antibodies targeting PSGL-1 for the treatment of cancer.Ethics ApprovalAll legal and ethical requirements were met with regards to the humane treatment of animals described in the study. The animal study was conducted in compliance with IACUC PROTO202000042 and the institutional assurance certification of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The University of Massachusetts Medical School is fully accredited by AAALAC and has an Animal Welfare Assurance on file with the Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare (OLAW).

Preface

This volume of proceedings is a compilation of thirty-four accepted papers submitted to the 10th Global Conference on Materials Science and Engineering (CMSE 2021). This conference was held in the online mode on August 1-4, 2021, and attended by over a hundred researchers, scholars, academic and industry experts in materials science and engineering from 35 countries. During the four-day online conference, three keynote speeches with topics on biomaterials, semiconductor materials, and powder metallurgy were delivered by Prof. Seeram Ramakrishna (National University of Singapore, Singapore), Prof. Qixin Guo (Saga University, Japan), and Prof. José M. Torralba (The Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain). Sixty-four oral and invited presentations were presented and discussed in-depth in six technical sessions, followed by a poster session on the conference website, with interactive communication among the attendees. Despite the inhibiting factor of Covid19, the conference successfully promoted exchanging new ideas and perspective discourse among the participants in their respective fields. The conference was brilliantly chaired by the Conference Chairman, Prof. Sigitas Tamulevičius from the Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania, and a team of Session Chairs: Dr. Yanli Lu (Northwestern Polytechnical University, China), Prof. Yaovi Gagou (Université de Picardie Jules Verne, France), Dr. Stefan Siebert (Brockhaus Measurements, Germany), Dr. Marianna Marciszko-Wiąckowska (AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland), Dr. Hasan Koten (Istanbul Medeniyet University, Turkey), Dr. P.E. Markovsky (Kurdyumov Institute for Metal Physics NASU, Ukraine), and Assoc. Prof. Jun Yan (University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA). All participants highly appreciated the online support and facilitation of Conference Secretaries: Ms. Ling Li and Ms. Kelly Feng (Bosen, China). List of Conference Committee Members are available in this pdf.

FORMATION OF THE FUTURE TRANSLATORS INDIVIDUAL STYLE

The aim of this article is to study the peculiarities of the formation of the individual style of future translators in the context of the implementation of a systematic approach, based on the experience of higher education institutions that train translators in accordance with market needs. It is determined that the most spoken languages are English, Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, Spanish and French, which are spoken by more than 3.67 billion people in the world, and according to the largest number of native speakers – Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Installed that the leading institutions of higher education, which occupy the highest positions in the world in the field of education of students majoring in translation, are the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Book Review--A Guide to Course-Based Undergraduate Research: Developing and Implementing CUREs in the Natural Sciences

Reviewed by Gita Bangera. Erin L. Dolan (University of Georgia) and Gabriela C. Weaver (University of Massachusetts Amherst) have set out on an ambitious venture to create a comprehensive guide to course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) in the natural sciences. Their goal is to support faculty, and to some extent administrators, who would like to develop and implement CUREs as a pedagogical tool in higher education.

Validation of an Automatic Tagging System for Identifying Respiratory and Hemodynamic Deterioration Events in the Intensive Care Unit

Objectives: Predictive models for critical events in the intensive care unit (ICU) might help providers anticipate patient deterioration. At the heart of predictive model development lies the ability to accurately label significant events, thereby facilitating the use of machine learning and similar strategies. We conducted this study to establish the validity of an automated system for tagging respiratory and hemodynamic deterioration by comparing automatic tags to tagging by expert reviewers.Methods: This retrospective cohort study included 72,650 unique patient stays collected from Electronic Medical Records of the University of Massachusetts’ eICU. An enriched subgroup of stays was manually tagged by expert reviewers. The tags generated by the reviewers were compared to those generated by an automated system.Results: The automated system was able to rapidly and efficiently tag the complete database utilizing available clinical data. The overall agreement rate between the automated system and the clinicians for respiratory and hemodynamic deterioration tags was 89.4% and 87.1%, respectively. The automatic system did not add substantial variability beyond that seen among the reviewers.Conclusions: We demonstrated that a simple rule-based tagging system could provide a rapid and accurate tool for mass tagging of a compound database. These types of tagging systems may replace human reviewers and save considerable resources when trying to create a validated, labeled database used to train artificial intelligence algorithms. The ability to harness the power of artificial intelligence depends on efficient clinical validation of targeted conditions; hence, these systems and the methodology used to validate them are crucial.