Winchester Hospital

Brown adipose tissue (BAT) plays a key role in energy metabolism and cardiometabolic health. Its detection typically relies on 18F-FDG PET, which is costly, radiation-intensive, and impractical for large-scale screening. We propose a deep learning model to estimate regional metabolic activity in adipose tissue from standard non-contrast CT, enabling PET-like insights without radiotracers. Using paired PET/CT data from two independent cohorts, we trained a conditional Generative Adversarial Network (cGAN) to predict standardized uptake values (SUV) within adipose regions identified on CT. The network included a fat-focused loss function to enhance metabolic signal estimation. Predicted activations showed strong agreement with PET-derived values and were reproducible across anatomical regions and datasets. This method provides a radiation-sparing alternative for assessing adipose metabolic activity in clinical and research settings and it could support population-based studies of BAT, metabolic health, and disease progression using routine chest CT scans without additional imaging burden.

The early life microbiome of an individual is a critical factor for long term health conditions, yet the influence of various feeding modes on microbial transmission patterns remains as a complex area for study. This study presents a secondary analysis of publicly available infant microbiome data, while proposing a novel quantitative ‘microbial seeding score’ to evaluate the direction and magnitude of earlylife microbiome colonization across feeding modes. Using genus-level microbiome data from a total of 67 infants obtained from HE_INFANTS_MFGM_2019 dataset, a microbial seeding score (S) was calculated to examine maternally associated taxa (Bacteroides, Bifidobacterium) with environmentally associated taxa (Enterococcus, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Klebsiella). Infants were grouped into breast milk (n=16), experimental infant formula (n=25), and standard infant formula (n=26) by feeding mode. Breast milk-fed infants indicated the highest mean seeding score (S = 0.391 ± 0.319), and experimental formulafed infants showed the intermediate mean seeding score (S = 0.352 ± 0.352). Standard formula-fed infants exhibited the lowest mean seeding score (S= 0.301 ± 0.309). Differences were not statistically significant (one-way ANOVA, p=0.676). However, there was a consistent decreasing trend in seeding scores observed across feeding modes. The main contribution of this work is methodological for introducing a simplified quantitative metric instead of reporting new empirical microbiome measurements. These findings suggest that the proposed seeding score in this study may capture exploratory patterns of variation in early microbial colonization, although differences were not statistically significant.

Abstract Engagement-focused, nonpharmacological interventions are essential for enhancing quality of life among persons with dementia (PWD) in long-term care (LTC). Making Connections Thru Music (MCTM), a group-based intervention designed to be delivered by trained older adult volunteers, is grounded in the Comprehensive Process of Group Engagement (Cohen-Mansfield et al., 2017). Two pilot studies demonstrated strong acceptability, feasibility, and high levels of engagement and positive affect, supporting further development. This presentation illustrates how the theoretical underpinnings of MCTM inform its expansion into a comprehensive, technology-supported program designed for scalability. The enhanced intervention consists of two novel components: (1) an online volunteer training course providing dementia education, communication strategies, and facilitation skills; and (2) a tablet-based software application delivering a structured, step-by-step session protocol. Intervention design explicitly considers external elements (e.g., noise, lighting), personal attributes (e.g., communication and cognitive strengths), and stimulus characteristics (e.g., music selection, utilization of props). Evidence-based engagement techniques (e.g., external aids, discussion prompts, tactile materials) are incorporated to increase reminiscence, affect, and social interaction. Implications of intervention design choices and training content for volunteer preparedness and resident outcomes will be discussed. Next steps include a randomized controlled trial (RCT) across 12 assisted living and nursing home communities in Ohio and Massachusetts. The RCT will evaluate feasibility, fidelity, and preliminary outcomes on resident engagement and affect. If successful, MCTM can be the first scalable, volunteer-delivered group music intervention available for PWD living in residential care settings.

To alleviate the teen vaping crisis, this study analyzed the "QuitVaping" subreddit. We identified posts sharing experience and/or advice using DistilBERT and investigated distinctive features in the data with topic modeling (BERTopic) and sentiment analysis (VADER) based on upvotes. We extracted 23 distinct vape-related symptoms and 17 suggested withdrawal methods, along with insightful topics. Highly upvoted posts often contained hopeful advice with positive sentiments. Our results help understand individual experiences, giving valuable insights to reduce teen vaping.

Training to improve high school sport coaches’ and athletic directors’ knowledge, skills, and competencies to address and respond to rising mental health concerns is more important than ever. High school student-athletes are at increased risk for mental health concerns, given the pressures of balancing sport, school, and other responsibilities. This paper describes a community-based participatory research (CBPR) study that guided two years of public impact and social change efforts to improve coach education and training in one large Midwestern state in the United States. Our collective goal was to empower coaches and athletic directors to coach “beyond the Xs and Os.” Using a CBPR framework, we describe the decision-making process that led to the co-development and implementation of a mental health training program piloted with 147 high school coaches and athletic directors. We also describe intermediate outcomes associated with our collective change efforts demonstrating the value of using a CBPR approach. Our “Coach Beyond” processes and outputs showcase how CBPR can lead to transformative action and social change to reorient sport as a context focused on the holistic health, wellness, and development of student-athletes.

BackgroundAlthough clinicians have traditionally used the Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence Scoring Tool to assess the severity of neonatal opioid withdrawal, a newer function-based approach — the Eat, Sleep, Console care approach — is increasing in use. Whether the new approach can safely reduce the time until infants are medically ready for discharge when it is applied broadly across diverse sites is unknown.MethodsIn this cluster-randomized, controlled trial at 26 U.S. hospitals, we enrolled infants with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome who had been born at 36 weeks’ gestation or more. At a randomly assigned time, hospitals transitioned from usual care that used the Finnegan tool to the Eat, Sleep, Console approach. During a 3-month transition period, staff members at each hospital were trained to use the new approach. The primary outcome was the time from birth until medical readiness for discharge as defined by the trial. Composite safety outcomes that were assessed during the first 3 months of postnatal age included in-hospital safety, unscheduled health care visits, and nonaccidental trauma or death.ResultsA total of 1305 infants were enrolled. In an intention-to-treat analysis that included 837 infants who met the trial definition for medical readiness for discharge, the number of days from birth until readiness for hospital discharge was 8.2 in the Eat, Sleep, Console group and 14.9 in the usual-care group (adjusted mean difference, 6.7 days; 95% confidence interval [CI], 4.7 to 8.8), for a rate ratio of 0.55 (95% CI, 0.46 to 0.65; P<0.001). The incidence of adverse outcomes was similar in the two groups.ConclusionsAs compared with usual care, use of the Eat, Sleep, Console care approach significantly decreased the number of days until infants with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome were medically ready for discharge, without increasing specified adverse outcomes. (Funded by the Helping End Addiction Long-term (HEAL) Initiative of the National Institutes of Health; ESC-NOW ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT04057820.)

The conference chairs

The aim of this paper is to establish exponential mixing of frame flows for convex cocompact hyperbolic manifolds of arbitrary dimension with respect to the Bowen–Margulis–Sullivan measure. Some immediate applications include an asymptotic formula for matrix coefficients with an exponential error term as well as the exponential equidistribution of holonomy of closed geodesics. The main technical result is a spectral bound on transfer operators twisted by holonomy, which we obtain by building on Dolgopyat's method.