Visual Analytics for Data-Driven Understanding of the Substance Use Disorder Epidemic.

The substance use disorder epidemic has emerged as a serious public health crisis, presenting complex challenges. Visual analytics offers a unique approach to address this complexity and facilitate effective interventions. This paper details the development of an innovative visual analytics dashboard, aimed at enhancing our understanding of the substance use disorder epidemic. By employing record linkage techniques, we integrate diverse data sources to provide a comprehensive view of the epidemic. Adherence to responsive, open, and user-centered design principles ensures the dashboard's usefulness and usability. Our approach to data and design encourages collaboration among various stakeholders, including researchers, politicians, and healthcare practitioners. Through illustrative outputs, we demonstrate how the dashboard can deepen our understanding of the epidemic, support intervention strategies, and evaluate the effectiveness of implemented measures. The paper concludes with a discussion of the dashboard's use cases and limitations.

Eye symptoms in patients with benign thyroid diseases.

Thyroid diseases may cause a variety of functional and structural body changes, including eye and vision abnormalities, which can have a negative impact on a patient's well-being. However, only a few studies on the impact of other benign thyroid diseases on the visual process are available in the literature. In this study, using the Polish version of the thyroid-specific quality of life (ThyPROpl) questionnaire, we aimed to determine the self-reported influence of benign thyroid diseases (e.g., nodular goiter, toxic nodular goiter, Graves' disease, thyroid orbitopathy, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, and surgical hypothyroidism) on patients' eyes and vision. This was a prospective study. In total, 374 randomly selected euthyroid patients and 255 control subjects responded to the ThyPROpl questionnaire and the results were evaluated. Nearly 69% of the respondents reported that the most frequent condition was "reduced sight." Men most often reported wet/tearing eyes (66%). The occurrence of eyelid sacks or swollen eyelids (64%), ophthalmalgia (62%), and eye dryness (61%) was marked almost as often. In total, 29% of the patients reported diplopia, and it was found to be most prevalent among those with thyroid orbitopathy. Other complaints were similarly prevalent among all the subgroups. A positive correlation was also observed between the scores of the "eye symptoms" and other ailments. Except for swelling around the lower eyelids, patients with thyroid diseases more frequently experienced all of the ocular complaints analyzed in this study compared with controls. This study showed that eye complaints are common in patients with benign thyroid diseases and ocular disturbances have a negative impact on the overall quality of life of patients.

Prevalence of Lower Limb Defects in Children in Chosen Kindergartens of the Lódz Agglomeration.

BACKGROUND: Posture disorders not treated in early childhood may lead to serious diseases and dysfunctions later. The aim of the study was to assess the incidence of lower limb defects in pre-school children. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The study covered 513 children (252 girls and 261 boys) aged 4-6, in chosen kinder-gartens of the Lódz agglomeration . The child's body posture was assessed using a visual method based on the Kasperczyk scoring scale in own modification. RESULTS: Foot defects occurred in the examined group with a frequency of 85.58% (439/513): in 4-year-olds: 82.59%, in 5- and 6-year-olds: 87.5%. Foot defects were more common in girls in the entire study group (86.9 vs. 84.29%), in 4-year-olds (87.88 vs. 77.45%) and 6-year-olds (88.89 vs. 86.25%), and in boys in the 5-year-olds group (91.14 vs. 83.95%). Defects of the knee joints, including varus and valgus knee, occurred in the study group with a frequency of 52.83% (271/513): in 4-year-olds: 56.72%, in 5-year-olds: 45.63% and in 6-year-olds: 55.26%. Defects were more frequent in girls in the entire study group (54.37 vs. 51.34) and in 4-year-olds (58.59 vs. 54.90%), and in boys in the 5-year-old group (50.63 vs. 40.74%). In the 6-year-olds group, the defects were statistically significantly more common in girls than boys (63.89 vs. 47.5%, p = 0.0442). CONCLUSION: A high percentage of lower limb defects rate at more than half of the examined pre-school children population is disturbing and requires effective systemic action.

The complete nucleotide sequence and genomic characterization of grapevine asteroid mosaic associated virus.

In analyzing grapevine clones infected with grapevine red blotch associated virus, we identified a small number of isometric particles of approximately 30nm in diameter from an enriched fraction of leaf extract. A dominant protein of 25kDa was isolated from this fraction using SDS-PAGE and was identified by mass spectrometry as belonging to grapevine asteroid mosaic associated virus (GAMaV). Using a combination of three methods RNA-Seq, sRNA-Seq, and Sanger sequencing of RT- and RACE-PCR products, we obtained a full-length genome sequence consisting of 6719 nucleotides without the poly(A) tail. The virus possesses all of the typical conserved functional domains concordant with the genus Marafivirus and lies evolutionarily between citrus sudden death associated virus and oat blue dwarf virus. A large shift in RNA-Seq coverage coincided with the predicted location of the subgenomic RNA involved in coat protein (CP) expression. Genus wide sequence alignments confirmed the cleavage motif LxG(G/A) to be dominant between the helicase and RNA dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp), and the RdRp and CP domains. A putative overlapping protein (OP) ORF lacking a canonical translational start codon was identified with a reading frame context more consistent with the putative OPs of tymoviruses and fig fleck associated virus than with those of marafiviruses. BLAST analysis of the predicted GAMaV OP showed a unique relatedness to the OPs of members of the genus Tymovirus.