Search Results (82)

Since its emergence in 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected a wide range of animal species, including wildlife. Although SARS-CoV-2 infection has been widely reported in wildlife, particularly in white-tailed deer (WTD; Odocoileus virginianus) across the United States, data on viral circulation in New England wildlife remain limited. Here, we investigated active SARS-CoV-2 infection and serological evidence of previous exposure in free-ranging wildlife from New England and Virginia. We examined samples from 1646 animals representing 29 wildlife species, collected through wildlife rehabilitation centers, clinics, and hunter harvests in New England and Virginia between 2022 and 2025. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in three WTD from Massachusetts and Vermont. Phylogeographic analysis showed that the Vermont WTD SARS-CoV-2 sequences were closely related to contemporaneous human SARS-CoV-2 sequences from the same region, consistent with a possible human-to-deer spillover event. Serological screening by ELISA detected SARS-CoV-2 reactive samples in nine individuals from three species, including Eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus), Eastern coyote (Canis latrans), and raccoon (Procyon lotor), providing putative evidence of prior SARS-CoV-2 exposure. However, neutralizing antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant were detected in only a single Eastern cottontail. Overall, these findings indicate sporadic SARS-CoV-2 detection and limited serological evidence of prior exposure among wildlife sampled in New England and Virginia, and highlight the importance of continued surveillance to detect spillover events, monitor viral evolution, and assess the potential risks associated with wildlife reservoirs. Full article

The transition toward transportation electrification has accelerated significantly in the United States through the implementation of the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. This study examines the evolution of NEVI implementation across the six New England states from 2022 to 2026 within a shared federal policy framework. Using a qualitative comparative longitudinal document analysis approach, the research analyzed state NEVI plans, annual implementation updates, transportation electrification strategies, and policy documents through thematic comparative analysis. The findings revealed that NEVI implementation evolved beyond compliance-oriented charging deployment toward broader adaptive governance and sustainability-oriented transportation processes. States demonstrated varying implementation trajectories shaped by institutional coordination, utility collaboration, operational adaptation, equity priorities, and infrastructure planning strategies. The results further indicated increasing emphasis on resilient infrastructure planning, interoperability, cybersecurity, operational continuity, and equitable charging accessibility throughout the implementation period. The study concludes that EV infrastructure implementation should be understood not only as a technical deployment initiative but also as an evolving socio-technical sustainability transition process influenced by adaptive governance and institutional maturation. This research contributes to the sustainability governance literature by providing a comparative regional analysis of the evolution of transportation electrification implementation across multiple jurisdictions under a shared federal policy framework. Full article

Background/Objectives: The family constitutes a primary ecological system shaping infant emotional and mental health. Parent responsiveness in particular shapes early regulatory capacities in the developing child. Added contextual stress such as that associated with natural disasters may strain caregiving relationships. Brief, universally accessible parenting interventions offer scalable support for strengthening early relational health and may be useful in contexts of natural disaster-related stress as well as in the general population. This qualitative study examined the perceived impact and contextual relevance of MERTIL (My Early Relational Trust-Informed Learning) for Parents, a brief digital psychoeducational parenting program targeting early relational health, among families raising young children in disaster-affected communities. Methods: Fourteen parents residing in the Hunter New England and Central Coast region of New South Wales, Australia, with young children aged 0–5 years, participated in semi-structured interviews conducted approximately 6 months after completing MERTIL for Parents. Interviews explored lived experiences of parenting in the context of natural disaster (analysed via applied phenomenological methods) and parents’ perceptions of program components that supported everyday caregiving (analysed via reflexive thematic analysis and content analysis). Results: Parents described interconnected personal, relational, and environmental stressors that influenced aspects of the parent–infant relationship. Key retained knowledge from the program included a normalisation of parenting challenges, a strengthened understanding of attachment, trust, safety and repair, and attuned, emotion-focused parenting practices. Conclusions: This pilot study illuminates the lived experience of parenting in disaster prone regions and highlights the potential for this brief, universal digital parenting program to provide support for early relational health in such contexts. Full article

Sentiment expressions related to child maltreatment (CM) in public discourse are influenced by demographic, economic, and cultural factors and individual characteristics. Using 188,429 geotagged CM-related tweets during 2018–2022, we explored public sentiment expression about CM across the contiguous U.S. We applied multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to examine how contextual factors relate to the percentage of CM-related tweets with negative sentiment at the county level, revealing the spatial heterogeneity and varying geographic scales of these associations. Counties with higher male-to-female ratios and lower education levels tended to express negative sentiment in CM-related tweets, with consistent patterns observed nationwide. Five factors exhibited spatially varying associations by U.S. region, with higher levels of negative sentiment in the following contexts: a lower percentage of residents living in group quarters or a higher percentage of same-sex couples (Eastern and Central); fewer households lacking broadband access (Central); a higher percentage of single-parent households (New England and Southern Mississippi River); and areas where professionals are mandated to report CM (Great Lakes and Southern Appalachian Mountains). This study provides critical insights for policymakers to adjust policies, educators to design focused interventions, and the public to raise CM awareness. The methodology also provides a valuable framework for investigating public discourse on other social issues. Full article

Foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) poses a significant threat to the United States dairy industry. This study evaluates the effectiveness of regional zoning, enhanced detection, and biosecurity in controlling FMD spread, focusing on the New England milkshed, using the InterSpread Plus (ISP+) model. We adapted a baseline ISP+ configuration incorporating United States dairy farm data, movement networks, cattle dealers, markets, and slaughterhouses, with milk processing plants as a model addition. Four hypotheses were tested to understand the impact of different biosecurity strategies: (H1) regional zoning limits the interregional spread of FMD post-detection; (H2) earlier detection in New England via increased passive surveillance reduces the overall outbreak impact; (H3) reduced indirect transmission through enhanced biosecurity measures improves FMD outbreak control; (H4) the combination of regional zoning and earlier detection provides synergistic reduction in FMD impact beyond either strategy alone. The four hypotheses were tested using three geographically distinct infection seed sets; 100 iterations of each scenario were simulated over 210 days and compared to the baseline. Key impact metrics included the daily number of infected premises, the outbreak duration, and the total number of infected premises across the outbreak scenarios. Results suggest shorter outbreak durations and reduced total infected premises under the hypothesized scenarios, compared to the baseline scenario. Kruskal–Wallis H tests confirmed significant differences across the baseline, regional zoning, early detection, enhanced biosecurity, and the combination of heightened passive surveillance with regional zoning scenarios in terms of total infected premises. Post hoc Dunn’s tests indicated that enhanced biosecurity outperformed other control strategies tested. These findings demonstrate that layered interventions may substantially curtail both the national amplification and local spread of FMD, and thus protect the consumer milk supply and reduce cascading economic shocks from an outbreak. Full article

Electricity forecasting is one of the most crucial aspects in maintaining stable, reliable, and autonomous power systems. While recently developed forecasting methods based on large language models can make accurate predictions, these models are still struggling due to their computational complexity, which requires more computing power, and their reliance on carefully designed prompts. This makes them complicated and harder to use in practice. To address this, we propose a Single-Attention Large Language Model (SA-LLM) that uses a unified attention mechanism to understand relationships between main and additional variables, without the need for manually created prompts. The proposed framework has been tested on real electricity supply and demand datasets, which are obtained from major U.S. electricity markets, including PJM, MISO, NYISO, ISO New England, ERCOT, SPP, and CAISO. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed SA-LLM method outperforms the existing counterpart methods in terms of accuracy and associated errors. More specifically, the SA-LLM has also achieved a 22.5% improvement in the mean absolute error compared with traditional LSTM-based models, while reducing memory usage by 52.1% and training time by 38.4% relative to recent LLM-based methods. Furthermore, the SA-LLM demonstrates strong zero-shot generalization, achieving an additional 18.2% improvement in the MAE on previously unseen regions. Full article

As the planet warms, not all regions are heating at the same rate. While North America is not one of the fastest warming continents, New England in Northeastern United States is warming faster than most other regions. This research evaluates how fast temperatures are rising and snow cover declining in New England. Three monthly mean air temperature data sets (minimum, average, maximum) from the United States Historical Climatological Network (USHCN) from 1900 to 2025 were used along with two MODIS/Terra satellite data sets: Land Surface Temperature and Emissivity Monthly L3 Global 0.05 Degree (MOD13C3) data and Snow Cover 8-Day L3 Global 0.05 Degree (MOD10C2) data (2000 to 2025). Univariate Differencing and the Mann–Kendall test were used on all three data sets to evaluate change over time at the seasonal and annual levels for New England and each of the six states. A time series regression analysis was undertaken to determine the relationship between snow cover and land surface temperature. Results show six major trends: (1) the existence of three distinct periods of temperature change, with most of the warming occurring since the late-1980s; (2) strong seasonal variations where winter is warming almost twice as fast as any other season; (3) minimum and nighttime temperatures are rising faster than maximum and daytime temperatures, especially since the 1980s; (4) snow cover is decreasing throughout New England, and rapidly in southern New England which has lost over 30–40% of snow cover days between 2000 and 2025; (5) there is a strong inverse relationship between snow cover change and land surface temperature change indicating that snow cover loss is a factor warming New England; and (6) most striking is the acceleration of temperature and snow cover decline in the past 5-year period. This research also discusses six major implications for these temperature and snow cover changes for New England. Full article

The real-time forecast estimates of total water levels (TWL) associated with coastal storms by the Boston Office of the National Weather Service (NWS), and the analysis, identification, and field mapping of storm tide pathways (STP) by the Center for Coastal Studies (CCS) within the forecast region, has led to improved model forecasts, enhanced allocation of resources prior to storm impact (e.g., placement of flood control measures, identification of evacuation routes, development of applications to visualize and communicate threats, etc.), and increased public awareness of the practical implications of sea level rise and storm-related coastal flooding. Both NWS modeling and STP mapping are discussed here. The coupling of these methods began in 2016–2017 in Provincetown, MA, and its utility was highlighted during the new storm of record for most of southern New England, a nor’easter in January 2018. The use of this information by managers, stakeholders, and the public has increased since combining the TWL modeling and STP mapping in an online portal in 2021, and it continues to be used by emergency managers and the public to plan for approaching coastal storms. Full article

Periprosthetic joint infection (PJI) is a complex complication of total joint arthroplasty, with microbiological profiles varying across centers worldwide. However, most studies are limited to single-center or intra-country multicenter analyses, often including mixed cohorts of primary and revision PJI cases, with limited data regarding global antibiotic resistance patterns. This study compared the microbiological characteristics, polymicrobial culture rates, prevalence of culture-negative infections, and antibiotic resistance patterns in PJI cases across five referral centers from five continents. A total of 717 patients with primary hip and knee PJI were included from centers in Argentina, Canada, Turkey, England, and New Zealand. Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis were the most common pathogens (48.5%, p < 0.01). Culture-negative infection rates varied significantly, ranging from 4.2% (England) to 24.6% (Turkey) (p < 0.01). Polymicrobial infections were the most frequent in Canada (8.9%) and the least frequent in England (1.1%) (p < 0.01). Gram-negative bacteria comprised 13.1% of culture-positive cases, with no significant intercountry difference. Multidrug resistance was observed in all centers, ranging from 23.7% (Argentina) to 43.1% (Turkey), with no statistical significance. Vancomycin resistance was detected in England (2.3%) and Canada (1.2%) but absent in Turkey, New Zealand, and Argentina. These findings underscore significant intercontinental variability, emphasizing the need for regional considerations in regards to empiric antibiotic selection and PJI management. Full article

Objectives: Survival from lung cancer is worse in the UK than in some other countries, with late stage at diagnosis implicated in poor prognosis. The route and referral urgency by which patients obtain a diagnosis influence outcomes. This study investigated whether socio-demographic factors are associated with lung cancer routes to diagnosis in England. Materials and Methods: A total of 181,763 primary invasive lung cancers (ICD-10 C34.0-C34.9) diagnosed from 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2016 were abstracted from the English National Cancer Registration Database. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine associations between patients’ socio-demographic characteristics and likelihood (adjusted odds ratios) of (i) emergency presentation versus all primary care-initiated routes and (ii) urgent (“two-week wait”/2WW) versus standard primary care-initiated referral. Models included the following factors: deprivation quintile of area of residence at diagnosis (IMD income domain); sex; age; ethnic group; rural/urban residence; and (in the emergency model) region. Results: Socio-demographic variations in diagnosis routes were observed. Patients presenting as emergencies (35.2%) were more likely to be 80 years of age or older, female, of non-White ethnicity, and resident in areas of greater deprivation or the London region. In contrast, 2WW patients (28.3%) were more likely to be aged between 50 and 69 years old, of White ethnicity, and resident in an area of greater deprivation or resident outside of an urban centre; diagnosis through 2WW did not vary by sex. Conclusions: Routes to diagnosis are subject to distinct socio-demographic patterning. Action is needed to ensure that new referral guidelines and lung cancer screening roll-out do not widen socio-demographic inequalities in diagnosis. Full article

Background: Tapentadol is an atypical opioid with a dual mechanism as a mu agonist and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor. This study characterized tapentadol use in the United States (US) using three databases. Methods: Drug distribution data from 2010 to 2020 were extracted from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)’s Automated Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS), including use per region (mg/person) and business activity (i.e., pharmacy). Tapentadol prescription claims from the Medicare and Medicaid programs for 2010–2020 were also examined. Results: The distributed amount of tapentadol was 3.5 tons in 2020. Distribution was over twice as high in southern (South Atlantic = 29.0 mg/person, East South Central = 28.8) relative to Pacific (12.9) or New England (12.8) states. Tapentadol use decreased nationally between 2012 and 2020 by −53.8%. Adult diabetes prevalence was significantly associated with tapentadol distribution in 2012 (r(50) = +0.44, p < 0.01) and 2020 (r(50) = +0.28, p < 0.05). Tapentadol prescribing to Medicaid patients declined −55.2% from the peak year, 2011, until 2020. Tapentadol prescribed by Nurse Practitioners accounted for over one-sixth (18.0%) of 2019 in Medicare. Conclusions: There has been a substantial decline over the past decade in tapentadol distribution and prescribing. However, the substantial regional differences may warrant further attention by opioid stewardship programs. Full article

Understanding the spatiotemporal distribution of air pollution is critical for improving urban air quality. Advances in wireless sensor networks have made it possible to monitor air pollution across cities at higher spatiotemporal resolutions. The new spatial coverage allows the novel implementation of advanced statistical methods to detect spatially important, coherent patterns in environmental flows. In this study, we apply proper orthogonal decomposition to a spatial distribution derived from 34 particulate matter sensors, which collected data over 250 days across the Liverpool City Region in England, to identify a set of spatially orthogonal modes. The dominant mode exhibits a daily periodicity in the increases of particulate matter, with higher increases in residential areas interpreted as changes driven by daily commutes. The second mode highlights seasonal changes, and the third mode alludes to pollution transportation with simultaneous increases and decreases. In contrast with traditional time series and spatial analyses, proper orthogonal decomposition enables the elucidation of patterns that otherwise might remain hidden. Our findings highlight the benefits of urban wireless sensor networks and demonstrate the applicability of proper orthogonal decomposition in studying the movements of polluted areas and their correlations with meteorological variables and anthropogenic factors. Full article

Space is one of the UK’s fastest-growing industry sectors of the last decade. Recognising this, in 2021 the UK Government’s first National Space Strategy established a new vision to make the nation one of the most innovative and attractive worldwide space economies. As part of the strategic funding programme, in 2023, the UK Space Agency (UKSA) funded a scoping study to assess the potential of satellite data to address issues that the three North East England Local Resilience Forums face at all stages of implementing the UK’s Integrated Emergency Management Framework (IEMF). Through dedicated workshops convened by two North East England universities, regional stakeholders from the emergency domain and related industries identified three case studies ripe for applying satellite data in support of multi-agency IEMF activities. Master’s students in the UK’s Centre for Doctoral Training in Geospatial Systems then undertook a month-long integrated group project to assess the potential for satellite imagery to be applied in the identified application areas. The research reported in this paper demonstrates how satellite imagery may be adopted to help address challenges posed during power outages, for mitigating illegal waste site fires, and during periods of snow and extreme cold. While the maturity levels of satellite applications vary in the three case studies due to data availability and image resolution, all three cases demonstrate that space data, particularly when augmented with additional geospatial information, help to enhance IEMF analysis. It is anticipated that the findings from the study will help stakeholders involved in IEMF management appreciate the added value of integrating satellite data into their current processes and analyses. By empowering key stakeholders to use satellite applications more effectively, it is predicted that better decisions will be achieved, thereby improving emergency risk management. A prototype dashboard, an output of the research to demonstrate the potential of space data for emergency management, is available online. Full article

This study investigates the operational cost competitiveness of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) in the United States, considering regional climates, energy prices, and driving patterns. By comparing BEVs with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), and the alternative use of BEVs and conventional vehicles (Convs), the analysis incorporates thermal dynamometer tests, real-world vehicle miles traveled (VMT), and state-specific energy prices. Using detailed simulations, the study evaluates energy consumption across varying temperatures and driving distances. The findings reveal that, while BEVs remain cost-effective for short trips in moderate climates, PHEVs are more economical for long-range trips and cold environments, due to the excessive cost of using external direct current fast chargers (DCFCs) and reduced BEV efficiency at low temperatures. HEVs are identified as the most cost-efficient option in regions like New England, characterized by high residential electricity prices. These insights are critical for shaping vehicle electrification strategies, particularly under diverse regional and seasonal conditions, and for advancing policies on alternative energy and fuels. Full article

Wild oyster reefs have been harvested for centuries and continue to face anthropogenic pressures, including climate change, pollution, and habitat reduction. Oyster aquaculture has grown to supplement depleted wild stocks and strengthen local economies, but development has not occurred at the same rate across all regions. Across the United States, states have a variety of political and cultural influences that impact oyster aquaculture policy, constraining the ability to make direct comparisons among locations that could enhance aquaculture expansion in slower-to-develop states and regions. This research developed a four-part index to compare regulatory, production, and economic attributes of oyster aquaculture among 23 coastal states. The final index score—a summation of the four individual index components—provides a broad integrated view of oyster aquaculture across the U.S. The results indicate that coastal states in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic and New England regions have the greatest number of resource and policy attributes in place to support oyster aquaculture, whereas coastal states in the Gulf of Mexico and Western Pacific region have relatively less in the way of aquaculture-supporting structures. As the oyster aquaculture industry continues to grow in the U.S., results from this study can help organizations involved in oyster aquaculture to make informed decisions to expand permitting, leasing, and production systems, following the model from states who have been active in oyster aquaculture for decades. Mindful and cautious improvements can facilitate sustainable sources of seafood and stable income generation for coastal communities while reducing pressures on wild stocks. Full article