Search

In most of the United States, insurance companies may use gender to determine car insurance rates. In addition, several studies have shown that women over the age of 25 generally pay more than men for car insurance. Then, we investigate whether the distributions of claims for women and men differ in location, scale and shape by means of the GAMLSS regression framework, using microdata provided by U.S. and Australian insurance companies, to use this evidence to support policy makers' decisions. We also develop a parametric-bootstrap test to investigate the tail behavior of the distributions. When covariates are not considered, the distribution of claims does not appear to differ by gender. When covariates are included, the regressions provide mixed evidence for the location parameter. However, for female claimants, the spread of the distribution is lower. Our research suggests that, at least for the contexts analyzed, there is no clear statistical reason for charging higher rates to women. While providing evidence to support unisex insurance pricing policies, given the limitations represented by the use of country-specific data, this paper aims to promote further research on this topic with different datasets to corroborate our findings and draw more general conclusions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Breast cancer is one of the tumors with the highest prevalence rate among women in the world, and its BRCA1/2 gene is a common mutation site. Talazoparib, as a targeted PARP inhibitor, can effectively control the occurrence and development of breast cancer with BRCA1/2 gene mutation, and play a therapeutic role. Based on the findings from the Phase III EMBRACE trial (NCT01945775 clinical trial), our analysis reveals that the talazoparib group demonstrated a significant extension in progression-free survival, along with improved response markers and patient-reported outcomes when compared to conventional therapies. This study aims to assess the cost-effectiveness of talazoparib for treating advanced breast cancer with germline BRCA1/2 mutations and HER2 negativity, considering the perspectives of health services in China and the United States. The results obtained will serve as a valuable reference for promoting rational drug utilization and enhancing medical resource efficiency. To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of Talazoparib more scientifically and provide clinicians with chemotherapy options, this paper developed a Markov model based on the EMBRACA clinical trial (clinical Trails.gov No., NCT01945775) to simulate the survival events of breast cancer patients in the Talazoparib group and the standard treatment group. The state transition probability and clinical data of breast cancer patients during treatment were extracted from the phase III EMBRACA clinical trial. The cost data generated during the treatment process comes from local hospital pricing, other references, and expert consultation. This article uses US dollars to calculate the treatment cost and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio. Health outcomes are expressed in Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALYs). In addition, Outcomes were measured in quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio, which robustness was evaluated by deterministic and probabilistic sensitivity analyses. This article establishes a Markov model for single-item sensitivity analysis. The results show that the economic benefits of using Talazoparib as a new treatment strategy in both China and the United States are higher than other drugs, and it is cost-effective. Compared to the control group, the incremental cost incurred by the Talazoparib treatment group in China was $2484.48/QALY, with an incremental QALY of 1.5. However, Talazoparib in the United States holds a dominant position, saving costs of $10,223.43 and increasing QALYs by 1.5. The clinical treatment effect of Talazoparib group in BRCA1/2 mutant advanced breast cancer patients is better than that of the standard treatment group, and the progression free survival period is significantly prolonged. From the perspective of medical and health services in China and the United States, the Talazoparib group is more economical than the standard treatment group in treating patients with BRCA1/2 mutant advanced breast cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

COVID-19 has dramatically changed people's mobility geste patterns and affected the operations of different functional spots. In the environment of the successful reopening of countries around the world since 2022, it's pivotal to understand whether the reopening of different types of locales poses a threat of wide epidemic transmission. In this paper, by establishing an epidemiological model based on mobile network data, combining the data handed by the Safegraph website, and taking into account the crowd inflow characteristics and the changes of susceptible and latent populations, the trends of the number of crowd visits and the number of epidemic infections at different functional points of interest after the perpetration of continuing strategies were simulated. The model was also validated with daily new cases in ten metropolitan areas in the United States from March to May 2020, and the results showed that the model fitted the evolutionary trend of realistic data more accurately. Further, the points of interest were classified into risk levels, and the corresponding reopening minimum standard prevention and control measures were proposed to be implemented according to different risk levels. The results showed that restaurants and gyms became high-risk points of interest after the perpetration of the continuing strategy, especially the general dine-in restaurants were at higher risk levels. Religious exertion centers were the points of interest with the loftiest average infection rates after the perpetration of the continuing strategy. Points of interest such as convenience stores, large shopping malls, and pharmacies were at a lower risk for outbreak impact after the continuing strategy was enforced. Based on this, continuing forestallment and control strategies for different functional points of interest are proposed to provide decision support for the development of precise forestallment and control measures for different spots. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This present paper aims to examine various epidemiological aspects of the monkeypox viral infection using a fractional-order mathematical model. Initially, the model is formulated using integer-order nonlinear differential equations. The imperfect vaccination is considered for human population in the model formulation. The proposed model is then reformulated using a fractional order derivative with power law to gain a deeper understanding of disease dynamics. The values of the model parameters are determined from the cumulative reported monkeypox cases in the United States during the period from May 10th to October 10th, 2022. Besides this, some of the demographic parameters are evaluated from the population of the literature. We establish sufficient conditions to ensure the existence and uniqueness of the model's solution in the fractional case. Furthermore, the stability of the endemic equilibrium of the fractional monkeypox model is presented. The Lyapunov function approach is used to demonstrate the global stability of the model equilibria. Moreover, the fractional order model is numerically solved using an efficient numerical technique known as the fractional Adams-Bashforth-Moulton method. The numerical simulations are conducted using estimated parameters, considering various values of the fractional order of the Caputo derivative. The finding of this study reveals the impact of various model parameters and fractional order values on the dynamics and control of monkeypox. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An assessment of the likelihood of use and abuse potential for new tobacco products is an important part of tobacco product regulation in the United States and abroad. This paper reports the results of a randomized, open-label, crossover clinical study that assessed factors related to product adoption and abuse liability (AL), comparing two closed electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) products to combustible cigarettes and nicotine gum, high- and low-AL comparator products, respectively. During an 11-day confinement period that included multiple product familiarization sessions, healthy adult smokers participated in AL test sessions to evaluate the abuse liability of each product. During these test sessions, changes in subjective measures; speed and amount of nicotine uptake; and maximum changes in physiological effects before, during, and after use of each assigned product were assessed over 4 h. Positive subjective effects measures scores such as product-liking and overall intent to use again were highest for cigarettes, followed by the Vuse ENDS, with nicotine gum consistently having the lowest scores. The PK results (Cmax and Tmax) of the Vuse ENDS products are between UB cigarettes and nicotine gum, which correlates with the subjective effects. All nicotine uptake measures for the Vuse ENDS products were lower than that of usual brand (UB) cigarettes, including peak nicotine uptake and overall nicotine uptake, and were either similar to or lower than nicotine gum. The time course of nicotine uptake after use of the ENDS was more similar to that of combustible cigarettes than nicotine gum. The results indicate that the AL of each ENDS product is lower than that of UB cigarettes and similar to that of nicotine gum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prolonged COVID-19 pandemic has tied up significant medical resources, and its management poses a challenge for the public health care decision making. Accurate predictions of the hospitalizations are crucial for the decision makers to make informed decision for the medical resource allocation. This paper proposes a method named County Augmented Transformer (CAT). To generate accurate predictions of four-week-ahead COVID-19 related hospitalizations for every states in the United States. Inspired by the modern deep learning techniques, our method is based on a self-attention model (known as the transformer model) that is actively used in Natural Language Processing. Our transformer based model can capture both short-term and long-term dependencies within the time series while enjoying computational efficiency. Our model is a data based approach that utilizes the publicly available information including the COVID-19 related number of confirmed cases, deaths, hospitalizations data, and the household median income data. Our numerical experiments demonstrate the strength and the usability of our model as a potential tool for assisting the medical resources allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 global pandemic has significantly impacted every aspect of life all over the world. The United States is reported to have suffered more than 20% of the global casualties from this pandemic. It is imperative to investigate the growth dynamics of the disease in the US based on varying geographical and governmental factors that best manifest itself in each State of the Country. This paper utilizes a hybrid machine learning and continuum deformation-based approach for analyzing the stability and growth rate of the pandemic. To this end, principal stress values of the pandemic continuum body are obtained using Mohr's Circle method and overlapping, moving windows of data are analysed successively. This helps in finding the correlations between the growth rate and Governments' action/Public's reaction. Government actions include "state of emergency", "shelter at place", and "phase declarations". We also consider the vaccination rate milestones, which shows us the coordinated Governments' action/Public's reaction. Finally, a number of recommendations are made to the Governments and people for better management of future pandemics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health concern that has spread around the globe. Machine Learning is promising in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Machine learning and artificial intelligence have been employed by various healthcare providers, scientists, and clinicians in medical industries in the fight against COVID-19 disease. In this paper, we discuss the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on alcohol consumption habit changes among healthcare workers in the United States during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. We utilize multiple supervised and unsupervised machine learning methods and models such as decision trees, logistic regression, support vector machines, multilayer perceptron, XGBoost, CatBoost, LightGBM, AdaBoost, Chi-Squared Test, mutual information, KModes clustering and the synthetic minority oversampling technique on a mental health survey data obtained from the University of Michigan Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research to investigate the links between COVID-19-related deleterious effects and changes in alcohol consumption habits among healthcare workers. Through the interpretation of the supervised and unsupervised methods, we have concluded that healthcare workers whose children stayed home during the first wave in the US consumed more alcohol. We also found that the work schedule changes due to the Covid-19 pandemic led to a change in alcohol use habits. Changes in food consumption, age, gender, geographical characteristics, changes in sleep habits, the amount of news consumption, and screen time are also important predictors of an increase in alcohol use among healthcare workers in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Schools in the United States remain heavily segregated by race and income. Previous work demonstrates districts can promote group diversity within their schools with policies like redrawing attendance zones. Yet, the promise of such policies in many areas is limited by the fact that most school segregation occurs between school districts, and not between schools in the same district. I adapt Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms from legislative redistricting to redraw school district boundaries that decrease segregation while maintaining desirable criteria like distance to school and using only existing school facilities. Focusing on New Jersey, where the segregation of Black and Hispanic students from White and Asian students is among the worst in the country, I demonstrate that redrawing school districts could reduce more than 40% of existing segregation in the median New Jersey county, compared to less than 5% for redrawing attendance zones alone. Finally, I show how my proposed methodology can be applied to as few as two districts to reduce segregation in proposed consolidations, when small districts are merged into a larger district., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

As the COVID-19 spread over the globe and new variants of COVID-19 keep occurring, reliable real-time forecasts of COVID-19 hospitalizations are critical for public health decisions on medical resources allocations. This paper aims to forecast future 2 weeks national and state-level COVID-19 new hospital admissions in the United States. Our method is inspired by the strong association between public search behavior and hospitalization admissions and is extended from a previously-proposed influenza tracking model, AutoRegression with GOogle search data (ARGO). Our LASSO-penalized linear regression method efficiently combines Google search information and COVID-19 related time series information with dynamic training and rolling window prediction. Compared to other publicly available models collected from COVID-19 forecast hub, our method achieves substantial error reduction in a retrospective out-of-sample evaluation from Jan 4, 2021, to Dec 27, 2021. Overall, we showed that our method is flexible, self-correcting, robust, accurate, and interpretable, making it a potentially powerful tool to assist healthcare officials and decision making for the current and future infectious disease outbreaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thousands of people are reported lost in the wilderness in the United States every year and locating these missing individuals as rapidly as possible depends on coordinated search and rescue (SAR) operations. As time passes, the search area grows, survival rate decreases, and searchers are faced with an increasingly daunting task of searching large areas in a short amount of time. To optimize the search process, mathematical models of lost person behavior with respect to landscape can be used in conjunction with current SAR practices. In this paper, we introduce an agent-based model of lost person behavior which allows agents to move on known landscapes with behavior defined as independent realizations of a random variable. The behavior random variable selects from a distribution of six known lost person reorientation strategies to simulate the agent's trajectory. We systematically simulate a range of possible behavior distributions and find a best-fit behavioral profile for a hiker with the International Search and Rescue Incident Database. We validate these results with a leave-one-out analysis. This work represents the first time-discrete model of lost person dynamics validated with data from real SAR incidents and has the potential to improve current methods for wilderness SAR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our source code to process and combine these data sources, as well as the resulting combined dataset itself, is part of the Supplementary Information." now reads: "The raw data that support the findings in this paper are openly available at https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rn301137d (United States Department of Agriculture), https://nass.usda.gov/Research%5fand%5fScience/Cropland/Release/index.php (United States Department of Agriculture Cropland Data Layer), and https://www.prism.oregonstate.edu/ (Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model Climate Group). "The raw data that support the findings in this paper are openly available at https://usda.library.cornell.edu/concern/publications/rn301137d (United States Department of Agriculture), https://nass.usda.gov/Research%5fand%5fScience/Cropland/Release/index.php (United States Department of Agriculture Cropland Data Layer), and https://prism.oregonstate.edu (Parameter-elevation Regressions on Independent Slopes Model Climate Group). [Extracted from the article]

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions commute to work every day in cities and interact with colleagues, partners, friends, and strangers. Commuting facilitates the mixing of people from distant and diverse neighborhoods, but whether this has an imprint on social inclusion or instead, connections remain assortative is less explored. In this paper, we aim to better understand income sorting in social networks inside cities and investigate how commuting distance conditions the online social ties of Twitter users in the 50 largest metropolitan areas of the United States. An above-median commuting distance in cities is linked to more diverse individual networks, moreover, we find that longer commutes are associated with a nearly uniform, moderate reduction of overall social tie assortativity across all cities. This suggests a universal relation between long-distance commutes and the integration of social networks. Our results inform policy that facilitating access across distant neighborhoods can advance the social inclusion of low-income groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Containing the COVID-19 pandemic while balancing the economy has proven to be quite a challenge for the world. We still have limited understanding of which combination of policies have been most effective in flattening the curve; given the challenges of the dynamic and evolving nature of the pandemic, lack of quality data etc. This paper introduces a novel data mining-based approach to understand the effects of different non-pharmaceutical interventions in containing the COVID-19 infection rate. We used the association rule mining approach to perform descriptive data mining on publicly available data for 50 states in the United States to understand the similarity and differences among various policies and underlying conditions that led to transitions between different infection growth curve phases. We used a multi-peak logistic growth model to label the different phases of infection growth curve. The common trends in the data were analyzed with respect to lockdowns, face mask mandates, mobility, and infection growth. We observed that face mask mandates combined with mobility reduction through moderate stay-at-home orders were most effective in reducing the number of COVID-19 cases across various states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, lockdowns and movement restrictions were thought to negatively impact population mental health, since depression and anxiety symptoms were frequently reported. This study investigates the effect of COVID-19 mitigation measures on mental health across the United States, at county and state levels using difference-in-differences analysis. It examines the effect on mental health facility usage and the prevalence of mental illnesses, drawing on large-scale medical claims data for mental health patients joined with publicly available state- and county-specific COVID-19 cases and lockdown information. For consistency, the main focus is on two types of social distancing policies, stay-at-home and school closure orders. Results show that lockdown has significantly and causally increased the usage of mental health facilities in regions with lockdowns in comparison to regions without such lockdowns. Particularly, resource usage increased by 18% in regions with a lockdown compared to 1% decline in regions without a lockdown. Also, female populations have been exposed to a larger lockdown effect on their mental health. Diagnosis of panic disorders and reaction to severe stress significantly increased by the lockdown. Mental health was more sensitive to lockdowns than to the presence of the pandemic itself. The effects of the lockdown increased over an extended time to the end of December 2020., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

In this paper, we proposed a multi-method modeling approach to community-level spreading of COVID-19 disease. Our methodology was composed of interconnected age-stratified system dynamics models in an agent-based modeling framework that allowed for a granular examination of the scale and severity of disease spread, including metrics such as infection cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and ICU usage. Model parameters were calibrated using an optimization technique with an objective function to minimize error associated with the cumulative cases of COVID-19 during a training period between March 15 and October 31, 2020. We outlined several case studies to demonstrate the model's state- and local-level projection capabilities. We further demonstrated how model outcomes could be used to evaluate perceived levels of COVID-19 risk across different localities using a multi-criteria decision analysis framework. The model's two, three, and four week out-of-sample projection errors varied on a state-by-state basis, and generally increased as the out-of-sample projection period was extended. Additionally, the prediction error in the state-level projections was generally due to an underestimation of cases and an overestimation of deaths. The proposed modeling approach can be used as a virtual laboratory to investigate a wide range of what-if scenarios and easily adapted to future high-consequence public health threats. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the recently legalized US hemp industry (Cannabis sativa), cross-pollination between neighboring fields has become a significant challenge, leading to contaminated seeds, reduced oil yields, and in some cases, mandated crop destruction. As a step towards assessing hemp cross-pollination risk, this study characterizes the seasonal and spatial patterns in windborne hemp pollen dispersal spanning the conterminous United States (CONUS). By leveraging meteorological data obtained through mesoscale model simulations, we have driven Lagrangian Stochastic models to simulate wind-borne hemp pollen dispersion across CONUS on a county-by-county basis for five months from July to November, encompassing the potential flowering season for industrial hemp. Our findings reveal that pollen deposition rates escalate from summer to autumn due to the reduction in convective activity during daytime and the increase in wind shear at night as the season progresses. We find diurnal variations in pollen dispersion: nighttime conditions favor deposition in proximity to the source, while daytime conditions facilitate broader dispersal albeit with reduced deposition rates. These shifting weather patterns give rise to specific regions of CONUS more vulnerable to hemp cross-pollination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) is a rare malignancy affecting the lymphatic system. Our study examined the incidence rates of adult HL based on sex, race/ethnicity, age, and histological subgroups in the United States (US) from 2000 to 2020. Data for this study were extracted from the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results 22 database. HL patients were identified utilizing the International Classification of Diseases for Oncology version 3 and categorized as classical HL, lymphocyte-rich/mixed cell/lymphocyte depleted, nodular sclerosis, classical HL, not otherwise specified, and nodular lymphocyte-predominant HL. The study reported average annual percent change (AAPC). All estimates were presented as counts and age-standardized incidence rates (ASIRs) per 100,000 individuals. Between 2000 and 2019, a total of 70,924 cases of HL were reported in the US. Classical HL was the predominant subtype (94.27%), and most incident cases were among non-Hispanic Whites (66.92%) and those aged 20–29 years (24.86%). The ASIR per 100,000 population was 3.83 for men and 2.92 for women. Both sexes showed declines in the AAPCs between 2000 and 2019 (− 0.64% [− 0.99, − 0.28] and − 0.40% [− 0.77, − 0.03] for men and women, respectively). There was a significant decrease in ASIRs after COVID-19 among both sexes (percent change: − 7.49% [− 11.58, − 3.40]). Throughout all age groups, men had a higher incidence rate compared to women, except for those aged 20–29 years. Although the overall HL incidence rate was lowered in the study period from 2000 to 2019, a dramatic decrease in ASIRs of HL patients following COVID-19 pandemic was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study the problem of synthesizing lockdown policies—schedules of maximum capacities for different types of activity sites—to minimize the number of deceased individuals due to a pandemic within a given metropolitan statistical area (MSA) while controlling the severity of the imposed lockdown. To synthesize and evaluate lockdown policies, we develop a multiscale susceptible, infected, recovered, and deceased model that partitions a given MSA into geographic subregions, and that incorporates data on the behaviors of the populations of these subregions. This modeling approach allows for the analysis of heterogeneous lockdown policies that vary across the different types of activity sites within each subregion of the MSA. We formulate the synthesis of optimal lockdown policies as a nonconvex optimization problem and we develop an iterative algorithm that addresses this nonconvexity through sequential convex programming. We empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed approach by applying it to six of the largest MSAs in the United States. The developed heterogeneous lockdown policies not only reduce the number of deceased individuals by up to 45 percent over a 100 day period in comparison with three baseline lockdown policies that are less heterogeneous, but they also impose lockdowns that are less severe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies investigating the relationship between dietary vitamin B1 intake and risk of Hyperuricemia (HU) are scarce, the present study aimed to examine the association of dietary vitamin B1 intake and HU among adults. This cross-sectional study included 5750 adults whose data derived from National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from March 2017 to March 2020. The dietary intake of vitamin B1 was assessed using 24-h dietary recall interviews. The characteristics of study participants were grouped into five levels according to the levels of vitamin B1 quintile. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) of HU, according to the vitamin B1 intake quintile for male and female separately. The dose–response relationship was determined by the restricted cubic spline (RCS). Smoothed curve fitting was used to assess serum uric acid concentration versus dietary vitamin B1 intake in the study population. The prevalence of hyperuricemia was 18.90% (20.15% and 17.79% for males and females, respectively) in the United States from March 2017 to March 2020. Multiple logistic regression analyses showed that in the male population, the HU ratio (OR) of vitamin B1 intake in Q2 to Q5 compared with the lowest quintile (Q1) was 0.75 (95% CI 0.52, 1.09), 0.70 (95% CI 0.48, 1.02), 0.66 (95% CI 0.44, 0.99) and 0.55 (95% CI 0.34, 0.90). The P for trend was 0.028. In women, the ORs for vitamin B1 intake Q2 to Q5 were 0.87 (95% CI 0.64, 1.19), 0.97 (0.68–1.38), 1.05 (0.69–1.60) and 0.75 (0.42–1.34), respectively. The P for trend was 0.876. The RCS curve revealed a linear relationship between vitamin B1 intake and the risk of hyperuricemia in men (P nonlinear = 0.401). Smoothed curve fitting demonstrated a negative association between vitamin B1 intake and serum uric acid concentration in men, whereas there was no significant association between dietary vitamin B1 intake and the risk of hyperuricemia in women. In the US adult population, dietary vitamin B1 intake was negatively associated with hyperuricemia in males. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common cancer among men in the United States and the leading cause of cancer-related death. The Solute Carrier Family 14 Member 1 (SLC14A1) is a member of urea transporters which are important for the regulation of urine concentration. However, the physiological significance of SLC14A1 in PCa still remains unclear. In the present study, via bioinformatics analysis and experiments, we found that expression of SLC14A1 is significantly decreased in PCa progression, which could be attributed to hypermethylation on SLC14A1 promoter region. Moreover, its low expression and hypermethylation on SLC14A1 promoter are closely related to the poor prognosis of PCa patients. On the other hand, overexpression of SLC14A1 inhibited cell proliferation and metastasis while its overexpression also suppressed CDK1/CCNB1 pathway and mTOR/MMP-9 signaling pathway. Additionally, SLC14A1 expression is enriched in prostate basal-type cells. In summary, our study indicates that its low expression level and promoter hypermethylation of SLC14A1 may represent novel indicators for PCa progression and prognosis, and SLC14A1 could inhibit the progression of PCa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working forests comprise a large proportion of forested landscapes in the southeastern United States and are important to the conservation of bats, which rely on forests for roosting and foraging. While relationships between bat ecology and forest management are well studied during summer, winter bat ecology remains understudied. Hence, we aimed to identify the diet composition of overwintering bats, compare the composition of prey consumed by bat species, and determine the potential role of forest bats as pest controllers in working forest landscapes of the southeastern U.S. Coastal Plain. During January to March 2021–2022, we captured 264 bats of eight species. We used DNA metabarcoding to obtain diet composition from 126 individuals of seven bat species identifying 22 orders and 174 families of arthropod prey. Although Coleoptera, Diptera, and Lepidoptera were the most consumed orders, we found that bats had a generalist diet but with significant differences among some species. We also documented the consumption of multiple insect pests (e.g., Rhyacionia frustrana) and disease vectors (e.g., Culex spp). Our results provide important information regarding the winter diet of bats in the southeastern U.S. Coastal Plain and their potential role in controlling economically relevant pest species and disease vectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The invasive Asian longhorned tick Haemaphysalis longicornis that vectors and transmits several animal pathogens is significantly expanding in the United States. Recent studies report that these ticks also harbor human pathogens including Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato, Babesia microti, and Anaplasma phagocytophilum. Therefore, studies that address the interactions of these ticks with human pathogens are important. In this study, we report the characterization of H. longicornis organic anion-transporting polypeptides (OATPs) in interactions of these ticks with A. phagocytophilum. Using OATP-signature sequence, we identified six OATPs in the H. longicornis genome. Bioinformatic analysis revealed that H. longicornis OATPs are closer to other tick orthologs rather than to mammalian counterparts. Quantitative real-time PCR analysis revealed that OATPs are highly expressed in immature stages when compared to mature stages of these ticks. In addition, we noted that the presence of A. phagocytophilum upregulates a specific OATP in these ticks. We also noted that exogenous treatment of H. longicornis with xanthurenic acid, a tryptophan metabolite, influenced OATP expression in these ticks. Immunoblotting analysis revealed that antibody generated against Ixodes scapularis OATP cross-reacted with H. longicornis OATP. Furthermore, treatment of H. longicornis with OATP antibody impaired colonization of A. phagocytophilum in these ticks. These results not only provide evidence that the OATP-tryptophan pathway is important for A. phagocytophilum survival in H. longicornis ticks but also indicate OATP as a promising candidate for the development of a universal anti-tick vaccine to target this bacterium and perhaps other rickettsial pathogens of medical importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH) is an underdiagnosed and undertreated ultra-rare disease. We utilized claims data from the Komodo Healthcare Map database to develop a machine-learning model to identify potential HoFH patients. We tokenized patients enrolled in MyRARE (patient support program for those prescribed evinacumab-dgnb in the United States) and linked them with their Komodo claims. A true positive HoFH cohort (n = 331) was formed by including patients from MyRARE and patients with prescriptions for evinacumab-dgnb or lomitapide. The negative cohort (n = 1423) comprised patients with or at risk for cardiovascular disease. We divided the cohort into an 80% training and 20% testing set. Overall, 10,616 candidate features were investigated; 87 were selected due to clinical relevance and importance on prediction performance. Different machine-learning algorithms were explored, with fast interpretable greedy-tree sums selected as the final machine-learning tool. This selection was based on its satisfactory performance and its easily interpretable nature. The model identified four useful features and yielded precision (positive predicted value) of 0.98, recall (sensitivity) of 0.88, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.98, and accuracy of 0.97. The model performed well in identifying HoFH patients in the testing set, providing a useful tool to facilitate HoFH screening and diagnosis via healthcare claims data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Across two studies, we examined intergroup relations between Black-White multiracial and Black monoracial people in the U.S. Study 1 showed that Black-White multiracial participants reported more solidarity with Black than White people, but less solidarity with Black people than Black participants reported. Likewise, their race-relevant political attitudes were somewhat more aligned with Black than White participants, but not completely aligned with Black participants. Reflecting this pattern, Black participants perceived that Black-White multiracial people feel more solidarity with Black than White people, but less solidarity with Black people than they themselves feel. Solidarity perceptions were consequential. Both Study 1 (correlational) and Study 2 (experimental) showed that Black participants' perceptions of Black-White multiracial people's solidarity with Black people were related to their inclusion of multiracial people. Furthermore, contingent on high levels of solidarity with Black people, multiracial people's relationships with White people were less consequential for Black participants' inclusion of them., Competing Interests: Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

There is debate over whether Asian American students face additional barriers, relative to white students, when applying to selective colleges. Here we present the results from analyzing 685,709 applications submitted over five application cycles to 11 highly selective colleges (the "Ivy-11"). We estimate that Asian American applicants had 28% lower odds of ultimately attending an Ivy-11 school than white applicants with similar academic and extracurricular qualifications. The gap was particularly pronounced for students of South Asian descent (49% lower odds). Given the high yield rates and competitive financial aid policies of the schools we consider, the disparity in attendance rates is likely driven, at least in part, by admissions decisions. In particular, we offer evidence that this pattern stems from two factors. First, many selective colleges give preference to the children of alumni in admissions. We find that white applicants were substantially more likely to have such legacy status than Asian applicants. Second, we identify geographic disparities potentially reflective of admissions policies that disadvantage students from certain regions of the United States. We hope these results inform discussions on equity in higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Disparities in socio-economic status (SES) predict many immune system-related diseases, and previous research documents relationships between SES and the immune cell transcriptome. Drawing on a bioinformatically-informed network approach, we situate these findings in a broader molecular framework by examining the upstream regulators of SES-associated transcriptional alterations. Data come from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health), a nationally representative sample of 4543 adults in the United States. Results reveal a network—of differentially expressed genes, transcription factors, and protein neighbors of transcription factors—that shows widespread SES-related dysregulation of the immune system. Mediational models suggest that body mass index (BMI) plays a key role in accounting for many of these associations. Overall, the results reveal the central role of upstream regulators in socioeconomic differences in the molecular basis of immunity, which propagate to increase risk of chronic health conditions in later-life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep variability (e.g. intra-individual variabilities in sleep duration or sleep timing, social jetlag, and catch-up sleep) is an important factor impacting health and mortality. However, limited information is available on the distribution of these sleep parameters across the human life span. We aimed to provide distribution of sleep variability related parameters across lifespan by sex and race in a national representative sample from the U.S. population. The study included 9981 participants 6 years and older from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011–2014, who had 4–7 days of valid 24-h accelerometer recording with at least one day obtained during weekend (Friday or Saturday night). Of the study participants, 43% showed ≥ 60 min sleep duration standard deviation (SD), 51% experienced ≥ 60 min catch-up sleep, 20% showed ≥ 60 min sleep midpoint SD, and 43% experienced ≥ 60 min social jetlag. American youth and young adults averaged greater sleep variability compared to other age groups. Non-Hispanic Blacks showed greater sleep variability in all parameters compared to other racial groups. There was a main effect of sex on sleep midpoint SD and social jetlag with males averaging slightly more than females. Our study provides important observations on sleep variability parameters of residents of the United States by using objectively measured sleep patterns and will provide unique insights for personalized advice on sleep hygiene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal spontaneous combustion risk assessment is a global technical challenge for the sustainable development of deep mining technology, and C2H4 is a key indicator for early warning of coal spontaneous combustion. Tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy (TDLAS) has the advantages of high selectivity, high sensitivity, high accuracy and real-time on-line measurement, and it can detect multiple gases simultaneously, so it has significant advantages in the accurate detection of coal spontaneous combustion indicator gases. To address the problem of cross-interference between the near-infrared absorption lines of CH4 and C2H4, which are the indicator gases of spontaneous combustion in coal, a multi-line fitting method was proposed in this study to calibrate the concentration of C2H4. The high-precision Environics2000 automatic standard gas dispenser from the United States, which has a built-in CPU computer control and data control and processing system, was used. Its gas concentration accuracy: ± 1.0%, gas flow accuracy: ± 1.0%, gas repeatability accuracy: ± 1.0%, flow linearity accuracy: ± 0.5%, and inlet operating pressure: minimum 10 psig (0.67 bar) ~ 75 psig (5.04 bar). The measured and simulated WMS-2f/1f signals were multilinearly fitted using a multilinear fitting algorithm and wavelength modulation spectroscopy (WMS), and the measurement of C2H4 concentration was achieved based on the extracted spectral line information. The results show that the maximum relative error of C2H4 concentration measurement is 2.40%, which is 54% lower than that of the conventional 2f peak measurement method, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the multilinear fitting algorithm in the inversion of C2H4 concentration under the interference of absorption lines. In addition, this study has far-reaching implications for the application of TDLAS technology in the accurate detection of coal spontaneous combustion indicator gases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We estimate the US prevalence of uncorrectable visual impairment in 2050 accounting for the changing distribution of both age and myopia. Age projections of the US population (from an estimated total of 379 million in 2050), were taken from the US census website. The distribution of myopia, by severity, was calculated from literature-derived prevalence estimates of 58.4% (≤ − 0.50 D, 2050 projection) and 33.1% (≤ − 1.00 D, 1999–2004 estimate) to provide predicted and conservative estimates, respectively. Uncorrectable visual impairment as a function of age and refractive error was modelled by multiple linear regression. Finally, the likely number of individuals in the US with visual impairment in 2050 was calculated. For a projected myopia prevalence of 58.4%, 222 million are projected to be myopic and 48 million will have high myopia (− 5 D or worse). The projected total number with uncorrectable visual impairment is 11.4 million of which 4.9 million cases (43%) of visual impairment will be directly attributed to increased risk of eye disease associated with myopia. For a projected myopia prevalence of 33.1%, 8.9 million are projected to have uncorrectable visual impairment of which 2.4 million cases (27%) will be directly attributed to myopia. It is predicted that between 27 and 43% of uncorrectable visual impairment in the US population in 2050 will be directly attributable to myopia. Failure to account for the increasing prevalence of myopia among the aging population leads to a substantial underestimate of the prevalence of visual impairment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is without question that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken its toll on the U.S. economy. Stay-at-home orders led to reduced vehicular traffic and widespread declines in anthropogenic emissions (e.g., nitrogen oxides (NOx)). This study is the first to explore the potential consequences of O3 changes resulting from the economic shutdown in the United States on soybean crop yields for 2020. The pandemic's impact on surface O3 is quantified using the NOAA's National Air Quality Forecasting Capability (NAQFC), which is based on the Community Multi-Scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model for May–July 2020. The "would-be", 2020 level business-as-usual (BAU) emissions are compared to a simulation that uses representative COVID-19 (C19) emissions. For each emissions scenario, crop exposures are calculated using the AOT40 cumulative exposure index and then combined with county-level soybean production totals to determine regional yield losses. Exposure changes ranged between – 2 and 2 ppmVhr−1. It was further shown that increased exposures (0.5 to 1.10 ppmVhr−1) in the Southeast U.S. counteracted decreased exposures (0.8 to 0.5 ppmVhr−1) in the other soybean-producing regions. As a result, corresponding yield improvements counteracted yield losses around the Mississippi River Valley and allowed for minimal improvements in soybean production loss totaling $6.5 million over CONUS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent decade, we have seen major progress in quantifying the behaviors and the impact of scientists, resulting in a quantitative toolset capable of monitoring and predicting the career patterns of the profession. It is unclear, however, if this toolset applies to other creative domains beyond the sciences. In particular, while performance in the arts has long been difficult to quantify objectively, research suggests that professional networks and prestige of affiliations play a similar role to those observed in science, hence they can reveal patterns underlying successful careers. To test this hypothesis, here we focus on ballet, as it allows us to investigate in a quantitative fashion the interplay of individual performance, institutional prestige, and network effects. We analyze data on competition outcomes from 6363 ballet students affiliated with 1603 schools in the United States, who participated in the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) between 2000 and 2021. Through multiple logit models and matching experiments, we provide evidence that schools' strategic network position bridging between communities captures social prestige and predicts the placement of students into jobs in ballet companies. This work reveals the importance of institutional prestige on career success in ballet and showcases the potential of network science approaches to provide quantitative viewpoints for the professional development of careers beyond science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From heat waves to hurricanes, tangible weather experiences have been shown to strengthen personal belief in climate change. We ask whether a high temperature day that breaks local heat records—which is a mathematical construct not directly accessible to the senses—has additional impacts on perceptions of worsening heat, above and beyond that of the absolute temperatures. Matching historical heat records to survey data from the United States, we find that each record heat day in a county in 2022 increases perceptions that excessive heat is getting worse, even when controlling for average temperatures, the number of extreme heat days, and demographic factors. Our estimates suggest that exposure to sixteen record heat days predicts roughly the same difference in excessive heat perceptions as between the average Democrat respondent and a political independent. This effect is stronger for populations that are more skeptical of climate science, including Republicans, as well as respondents with weaker beliefs in climate change and more frequent consumption of conservative media. We close with recommendations for media framing of local record-breaking heat events and call for more research on how media outlets cover record-breaking heat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Species identification is necessary to prevent introductions of exotic plant pests through global trade. Many of these pests are understudied and lack publicly available DNA sequence data on which rapid molecular identification methods can be based. One such lineage is the genus Chrysodeixis, which includes three species of potential concern for United States trade initiatives: C. includens, C. chalcites, and C. eriosoma. Here we describe a method to generate robust 45S rDNA profiles using long read sequencing in order to clarify evolutionary relationships and develop a real-time PCR identification technique. Such an identification tool will be useful in rapidly differentiating between Chrysodeixis species of quarantine concern where traditional morphological identification methods are insufficient. Molecular methods such as this greatly reduce the time spent identifying each specimen, allow for detection of eDNA, vastly increase throughput, and increase the probability of detection. The methods presented here will be generally adaptable to any understudied lepidopteran taxa that necessitates a molecular diagnostic assay and, with adjustment or testing of the primers, could be applied to any group for which development of rDNA profiles in a benchtop setting would prove useful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human sociality is governed by two types of social norms: injunctive norms, which prescribe what people ought to do, and descriptive norms, which reflect what people actually do. The process by which these norms emerge and their causal influences on cooperative behavior over time are not well understood. Here, we study these questions through social norms influencing mask wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Leveraging 2 years of data from the United States (18 time points; n = 915), we tracked mask wearing and perceived injunctive and descriptive mask wearing norms as the pandemic unfolded. Longitudinal trends suggested that norms and behavior were tightly coupled, changing quickly in response to public health recommendations. In addition, longitudinal modeling revealed that descriptive norms caused future increases in mask wearing across multiple waves of data collection. These cross-lagged causal effects of descriptive norms were large, even after controlling for non-social beliefs and demographic variables. Injunctive norms, by contrast, had less frequent and generally weaker causal effects on future mask wearing. During uncertain times, cooperative behavior is more strongly driven by what others are actually doing, rather than what others think ought to be done. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a widespread belief that the tone of political debate in the US has become more negative recently, in particular when Donald Trump entered politics. At the same time, there is disagreement as to whether Trump changed or merely continued previous trends. To date, data-driven evidence regarding these questions is scarce, partly due to the difficulty of obtaining a comprehensive, longitudinal record of politicians' utterances. Here we apply psycholinguistic tools to a novel, comprehensive corpus of 24 million quotes from online news attributed to 18,627 US politicians in order to analyze how the tone of US politicians' language as reported in online media evolved between 2008 and 2020. We show that, whereas the frequency of negative emotion words had decreased continuously during Obama's tenure, it suddenly and lastingly increased with the 2016 primary campaigns, by 1.6 pre-campaign standard deviations, or 8% of the pre-campaign mean, in a pattern that emerges across parties. The effect size drops by 40% when omitting Trump's quotes, and by 50% when averaging over speakers rather than quotes, implying that prominent speakers, and Trump in particular, have disproportionately, though not exclusively, contributed to the rise in negative language. This work provides the first large-scale data-driven evidence of a drastic shift toward a more negative political tone following Trump's campaign start as a catalyst. The findings have important implications for the debate about the state of US politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cancer is among the top causes of death, accounting for an estimated 9.6 million deaths in 2018, it appeared that approximately 500,000 people die from cancer in the United States alone annually. The SHP2 plays a major role in regulation of cell growth, proliferation, and differentiation, and functional upregulation of this enzyme is linked to oncogenesis and developmental disorders. SHP2 activity has been linked to several cancer types for which no drugs are currently available. In our study, we aimed to design peptide inhibitors against the SHP2 mutant. The crystal structure of the human Src SH2-PQpYEEIPI peptide mutant was downloaded from the protein databank. We generated several peptides from the native wild peptide using an in silico mutagenesis method, which showed that changes (P302W, Y304F, E306Q, and Q303A) might boost the peptide's affinity for binding to SHP2. Furthermore, the dynamical stability and binding affinities of the mutated peptide were confirmed using Molecular dynamics simulation and Molecular Mechanics with Generalized Born and Surface Area Solvation free energy calculations. The proposed substitution greatly enhanced the binding affinity at the residue level, according to a study that decomposed energy into its component residues. Our proposed peptide may prevent the spread of cancer by inhibiting SHP2, according to our detailed analyses of binding affinities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Uropathogenic Escherichia coli account for the largest proportion of nosocomial infections in the United States. Nosocomial infections are a major source of increased costs and treatment complications. Many infections are biofilm associated, rendering antibiotic treatments ineffective or cause additional complications (e.g., microbiome depletion). This work presents a potentially complementary non-antibiotic strategy to fight nosocomial infections by inhibiting the formation of amyloid fibrils, a proteinaceous structural reinforcement known as curli in E. coli biofilms. Despite extensive characterization of the fibrils themselves and their associated secretion system, mechanistic details of curli assembly in vivo remain unclear. We hypothesized that, like other amyloid fibrils, curli polymerization involves a unique secondary structure termed "α-sheet". Biophysical studies herein confirmed the presence of α-sheet structure in prefibrillar species of CsgA, the major component of curli, as it aggregated. Binding of synthetic α-sheet peptides to the soluble α-sheet prefibrillar species inhibited CsgA aggregation in vitro and suppressed amyloid fibril formation in biofilms. Application of synthetic α-sheet peptides also enhanced antibiotic susceptibility and dispersed biofilm-resident bacteria for improved uptake by phagocytic cells. The ability of synthetic α-sheet peptides to reduce biofilm formation, improve antibiotic susceptibility, and enhance clearance by macrophages has broad implications for combating biofilm-associated infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opioid poisoning mortality is a substantial public health crisis in the United States, with opioids involved in approximately 75% of the nearly 1 million drug related deaths since 1999. Research suggests that the epidemic is driven by both over-prescribing and social and psychological determinants such as economic stability, hopelessness, and isolation. Hindering this research is a lack of measurements of these social and psychological constructs at fine-grained spatial and temporal resolutions. To address this issue, we use a multi-modal data set consisting of natural language from Twitter, psychometric self-reports of depression and well-being, and traditional area-based measures of socio-demographics and health-related risk factors. Unlike previous work using social media data, we do not rely on opioid or substance related keywords to track community poisonings. Instead, we leverage a large, open vocabulary of thousands of words in order to fully characterize communities suffering from opioid poisoning, using a sample of 1.5 billion tweets from 6 million U.S. county mapped Twitter users. Results show that Twitter language predicted opioid poisoning mortality better than factors relating to socio-demographics, access to healthcare, physical pain, and psychological well-being. Additionally, risk factors revealed by the Twitter language analysis included negative emotions, discussions of long work hours, and boredom, whereas protective factors included resilience, travel/leisure, and positive emotions, dovetailing with results from the psychometric self-report data. The results show that natural language from public social media can be used as a surveillance tool for both predicting community opioid poisonings and understanding the dynamic social and psychological nature of the epidemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electric vehicles (EVs) have been introduced as an alternative to gasoline and diesel cars to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, optimize fossil fuel use, and protect the environment. Predicting EV sales is momentous for stakeholders, including car manufacturers, policymakers, and fuel suppliers. The data used in the modeling process significantly affects the prediction model's quality. This research's primary dataset contains monthly sales and registrations of 357 new vehicles in the United States of America from 2014 to 2020. In addition to this data, several web crawlers were used to gather the required information. Vehicles sale were predicted using long short-term memory (LSTM) and Convolutional LSTM (ConvLSTM) models. To enhance LSTM performance, the hybrid model with a new structure called "Hybrid LSTM with two-dimensional Attention and Residual network" has been proposed. Also, all three models are built as Automated Machine Learning models to improve the modeling process. The proposed hybrid model performs better than the other models based on the same evaluation units, including Mean Absolute Percentage Error, Normalized Root Mean Square Error, R-square, slope, and intercept of fitted linear regressions. The proposed hybrid model has been able to predict the share of EVs with an acceptable Mean Absolute Error of 3.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of genital human papillomavirus (HPV) in women with endometriosis has never been reported in a national representative survey. We aimed to investigate the association of endometriosis with the prevalence of HPV. We analyzed the data on 1768 women (representing 43,824,157 women) in the United States aged 20–54 years from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey in the prevaccination era (2003–2006). The diagnosis of endometriosis was based on a self-report. The prevalence of any HPV in women with endometriosis did not differ from that in women without endometriosis after controlling for potential confounders such as age, ethnicity, family income, marital status, and the number of deliveries (adjusted prevalence ratio (aPR) 0.84, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.61–1.15). No significant association was found between the prevalence of high-risk HPV and the diagnosis of endometriosis (aPR 0.71, 95% CI 0.44–1.14). If the participants were not covered by health insurance, the prevalence of any HPV infection in women with endometriosis was higher than in those without endometriosis (aPR 1.44, 95% CI 0.94–2.20). In contrast, in a subgroup who had health insurance, a lower prevalence of any HPV infection was observed in women with endometriosis (aPR 0.71, 95% CI 0.50–1.03), and P for interaction was statistically significant (P = 0.01). There was no association between endometriosis and HPV infection in this study of HPV vaccine-naïve women of reproductive age. The association was not different by the type of HPV. However, access to healthcare may modify the association between endometriosis and HPV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated the complex relations of socioeconomic status (SES) and healthy lifestyles with cognitive functions among older adults in 1313 participants, aged 60 years and older, from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2011–2014. Cognitive function was measured using an average of the standardized z-scores of the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease Word Learning and delayed recall tests, the Animal Fluency Test, and the Digit Symbol Substitution Test. Latent class analysis of family income, education, occupation, health insurance, and food security was used to define composite SES (low, medium, high). A healthy lifestyle score was calculated based on smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and the Healthy-Eating-Index-2015. In survey-weighted multivariable linear regressions, participants with 3 or 4 healthy behaviors had 0.07 (95% CI 0.005, 0.14) standard deviation higher composite cognitive z-score, relative to those with one or no healthy behavior. Participants with high SES had 0.37 (95% CI 0.29, 0.46) standard deviation higher composite cognitive z-score than those with low SES. No statistically significant interaction was observed between healthy lifestyle score and SES. Our findings suggested that higher healthy lifestyle scores and higher SES were associated with better cognitive function among older adults in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biofuels made from biomass and waste residues will largely contribute to United States' 2050 decarbonization goal in the aviation sector. While cellulosic biofuels have the potential fuel performance equivalent to petroleum-based jet fuel, the biofuel industry needs to overcome the supply chain barrier caused by temporal and spatial variability of biomass yield and quality. This study highlights the importance of incorporating spatial and temporal variability during biomass supply chain planning via optimization modeling that incorporates 10 years of drought index data, a primary factor contributing to yield and quality variability. The results imply that the cost of delivering biomass to biorefinery may be significantly underestimated if the multi-year temporal and spatial variation in biomass yield and quality is not captured. For long term sustainable biorefinery operations, the industry should optimize supply chain strategy by studying the variability of yield and quality of biomass in their supply sheds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data on outcomes and interventions for children with sickle cell disease (SCD) admitted to a pediatric intensive care units (PICU) are unknown. We provide the first comprehensive multi-center report on PICU interventions associated with death, the need for invasive respiratory support or stroke among critically ill children with SCD. We collected retrospective multi-center cohort data from January 1, 2012 to December 31, 2019 utilizing the Virtual Pediatric Systems, LLC database. We identified 3388 unique children with SCD, accounting for a total of 5264 PICU admissions from 138 PICUs. The overall mortality rate for the PICU admissions cohort was 1.8% (95/5264 PICU admissions, 95/3388 [2.8%] of all unique patients), the rate of needing of needing Invasive Respiratory Support (IRS, a composite category of exposure) was 21.3% (872/4093 PICU admissions with complete data) and the overall rate of stroke (ischemic or hemorrhagic) was 12.5% (657/5264 PICU admissions). In multivariable analysis adjusting for admission age category, sex, race/ethnicity, PRISM-3 score at admission, exposure to IRS, quartile of unit volume of patients with SCD, and patient origin, admitted children who needed invasive respiratory support (IRS) had higher adjusted odds ratios for mortality (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 19.72; 95% confidence interval [CI] 8.98–43.29; p < 0.001), although admitted children > 2 years old had decreased aOR for needing IRS (aOR 0.25–0.62; 95% CI 0.16–0.94; p < 0.001–0.025). By contrast, admitted children > 2 years old had a strikingly increased aOR for stroke (aOR 7.57–16.32; 95% CI 2.25–52.15; p < 0.001). These groups may represent PICU-specific subsets of patients with SCD who are at higher risk for more serious illness and should deserve early consideration for referral to a pediatric institution providing comprehensive care for patients with SCD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Curbing the negative impact of misinformation is typically assumed to require correcting misconceptions. Conceivably, however, bypassing the misinformation through alternate beliefs of opposite implications may reduce the attitudinal impact of the misinformation. Three experiments, one preregistered with a sample representative of the United States population, examined the impact of (a) directly correcting prior misinformation offered in support of restricting Genetically Modified (GM) foods (i.e., the correction strategy) and (b) discussing information in support of GM foods (i.e., the bypassing strategy), compared to a misinformation-only control condition. Findings consistently revealed that bolstering beliefs with opposite implications is just as effective at reducing opposition to GM foods as is correcting misinformation about GM foods. Thus, bypassing should be added to our arsenal of methods to curb the impact of misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study biological aging of elderly U.S. Americans born 1904-1966. We use thirteen waves of the Health and Retirement Study and construct a frailty index as the number of health deficits present in a person measured relative to the number of potential deficits. We find that, on average, Americans develop 5% more health deficits per year, that men age slightly faster than women, and that, at any age above 50, Caucasians display significantly fewer health deficits than African Americans. We also document a steady time trend of health improvements. For each year of later birth, health deficits decline on average by about 1%. This health trend is about the same across regions and for men and women, but significantly lower for African Americans compared to Caucasians. In non-linear regressions, we find that regional differences in aging follow a particular regularity, akin to the compensation effect of mortality. Health deficits converge for men and women and across American regions and suggest a life span of the American population of about 97 years.

The associations between clinical phenotypes of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and the host inflammatory response during the transition from peak illness to convalescence are not yet well understood. Blood plasma samples were collected from 129 adult SARS-CoV-2 positive inpatient and outpatient participants between April 2020 and January 2021, in a multi-center prospective cohort study at 8 military hospitals across the United States. Plasma inflammatory protein biomarkers were measured in samples from 15 to 28 days post symptom onset. Topological Data Analysis (TDA) was used to identify patterns of inflammation, and associations with peak severity (outpatient, hospitalized, ICU admission or death), Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI), and body mass index (BMI) were evaluated using logistic regression. The study population (n = 129, 33.3% female, median 41.3 years of age) included 77 outpatient, 31 inpatient, 16 ICU-level, and 5 fatal cases. Three distinct inflammatory biomarker clusters were identified and were associated with significant differences in peak disease severity (p < 0.001), age (p < 0.001), BMI (p < 0.001), and CCI (p = 0.001). Host-biomarker profiles stratified a heterogeneous population of COVID-19 patients during the transition from peak illness to convalescence, and these distinct inflammatory patterns were associated with comorbid disease and severe illness due to COVID-19. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wearing masks reduces the spread of COVID-19, but compliance with mask mandates varies across individuals, time, and space. Accurate and continuous measures of mask wearing, as well as other health-related behaviors, are important for public health policies. This article presents a novel approach to estimate mask wearing using geotagged Twitter image data from March through September, 2020 in the United States. We validate our measure using public opinion survey data and extend the analysis to investigate county-level differences in mask wearing. We find a strong association between mask mandates and mask wearing—an average increase of 20%. Moreover, this association is greatest in Republican-leaning counties. The findings have important implications for understanding how governmental policies shape and monitor citizen responses to public health crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]