The Human Disease Ontology (DO) (http://www.disease-ontology.org), database has undergone significant expansion in the past three years. The DO disease classification includes specific formal semantic rules to express meaningful disease models and has expanded from a single asserted classification to include multiple-inferred mechanistic disease classifications, thus providing novel perspectives on related diseases. Expansion of disease terms, alternative anatomy, cell type and genetic disease classifications and workflow automation highlight the updates for the DO since 2015. The enhanced breadth and depth of the DO’s knowledgebase has expanded the DO’s utility for exploring the multi-etiology of human disease, thus improving the capture and communication of health-related data across biomedical databases, bioinformatics tools, genomic and cancer resources and demonstrated by a 6.6× growth in DO’s user community since 2015. The DO’s continual integration of human disease knowledge, evidenced by the more than 200 SVN/GitHub releases/revisions, since previously reported in our DO 2015 NAR paper, includes the addition of 2650 new disease terms, a 30% increase of textual definitions, and an expanding suite of disease classification hierarchies constructed through defined logical axioms.

Supramolecular hydrogels derived from natural products have promising applications in diagnostics, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. We studied the formation of a long-lived hydrogel made by mixing guanosine (G, 1) with 0.5 equiv of KB(OH)4. This ratio of borate anion to ligand is crucial for gelation as it links two molecules of 1, which facilitates cation-templated assembly of G4·K(+) quartets. The guanosine-borate (GB) hydrogel, which was characterized by cryogenic transmission electron microscopy and circular dichroism and (11)B magic-angle-spinning NMR spectroscopy, is stable in water that contains physiologically relevant concentrations of K(+). Furthermore, non-covalent interactions, such as electrostatics, π-stacking, and hydrogen bonding, enable the incorporation of a cationic dye and nucleosides into the GB hydrogel.

While much attention has been paid to healthcare provider and trainee burnout, less is known about provider well-being (i.e., flourishing) or about the effects of well-being on immune function. This study examined the demographic and psycho-social correlates of well-being among healthcare trainees (resident physicians and physician assistant (PA) trainees) and evaluated the association of well-being with the “conserved transcriptional response to adversity” (CTRA) characterized by up-regulated expression of pro-inflammatory genes and down-regulated expression of innate antiviral genes. Participants (n = 58) completed self-reported assessments of sleep disturbance, loneliness, depressive symptoms, anxiety, stress, and well-being (flourishing). Blood sample RNA profiles were analyzed by RNA sequencing to assess the CTRA. Slightly over half (n = 32; 55.2%) of healthcare trainees were categorized as flourishing. Flourishing was less prevalent among primary caregivers, and more prevalent among trainees who exercised more frequently and those with fewest days sick. Loneliness (AOR = 0.75; 95% CI = 0.61, 0.91; p = 0.003) and stress (AOR = 0.65; 95% CI = 0.45, 0.94; p = 0.02) were associated with decreased odds of flourishing when controlling for other variables. Flourishing was associated with down-regulated CTRA gene expression, whereas loneliness was associated with up-regulated CTRA gene expression (both p < 0.05). Assessing these relationships in a larger, multi-site study is of critical importance to inform policy, curricula, and interventions to bolster sustainable trainee well-being.

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In 2015 the National Academy of Medicine and the Roundtable on Population Health Improvement of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (the National Academies) held the third annual District of Columbia (DC) Public Health Case Challenge, which had its inaugural year in 2013 and was both inspired by and modeled on the Emory University Global Health Case Competition. The DC Case Challenge aims to promote interdisciplinary, problem-based learning in public health and to foster engagement with local universities and the local community. The Case Challenge engages graduate and undergraduate students from multiple disciplines and universities to come together to promote awareness of and develop innovative solutions for 21st-century