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Comments on the article 'Sound Science in the Implementation of Public Policy: A Case Report on California's Proposition 65,' by Kenneth W. Kizer and published in a 1988 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Scope of the risk prevention legislation; Required information that manufacturers must provide in their product labels and packaging.

This article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled "Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward," which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6-8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop's overall goal was to explore reasons why research proposals submitted by bioarchaeologists, both graduate students and established scholars, fared disproportionately poorly within recent NSF Anthropology Program competitions and to offer advice for increasing success. Therefore, this Workshop comprised 43 international scholars and four advanced graduate students with a history of successful grant acquisition, primarily from the United States. Ultimately, we focused on two related aims: (1) best practices for improving research designs and training and (2) evaluating topics of contemporary significance that reverberate through history and beyond as promising trajectories for bioarchaeological research. Among the former were contextual grounding, research question/hypothesis generation, statistical procedures appropriate for small samples and mixed qualitative/quantitative data, the salience of Bayesian methods, and training program content. Topical foci included ethics, social inequality, identity (including intersectionality), climate change, migration, violence, epidemic disease, adaptability/plasticity, the osteological paradox, and the developmental origins of health and disease. Given the profound changes required globally to address decolonization in the 21st century, this concern also entered many formal and informal discussions., (© 2022 American Association of Biological Anthropologists.)

This exploratory study aimed to identify the ways psychologists working in schools supported students' mental health during school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. An online survey was developed to determine (a) how psychologists working in schools across the United States, Canada, Germany, and Australia supported students' mental health during COVID-19, (b) how their services changed during COVID-19, and (c) potential differences between countries concerning difficulties supporting students' mental health during this time. The survey was based on previous research and was subsequently piloted. Using convenience and snowball sampling, 938 participants (U.S. n = 665; Canada n = 48; Germany n = 140; Australia n = 85) completed the online survey. Overall, school psychology services across these four countries pivoted from psychoeducational assessments to virtual counseling, consultation, and the development/posting of online support directly to children or parents to use with their children. There was some variation between countries; during the pandemic, significantly more psychologists in Germany and Australia provided telehealth/telecounseling than those in the United States and Canada, and psychologists in Germany provided significantly more hardcopy material to support children than psychologists in other countries. There is a need to ensure psychologists have the appropriate technological skills to support school communities during periods of school closure, including, but not limited to, virtual counseling and the administration of psychoeducational assessments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and the Environmental Protection Agency sponsored the completion of an interlaboratory study to compare two fitting protocols specified by ANSI S12.6-1997 (R2002) [(2002). American National Standard Methods for the Measuring Real-Ear Attenuation of Hearing Protectors, American National Standards Institute, New York]. Six hearing protection devices (two earmuffs, foam, premolded, custom-molded earplugs, and canal-caps) were tested in six laboratories using the experimenter-supervised, Method A, and (naive) subject-fit, Method B, protocols with 24 subjects per laboratory. Within-subject, between-subject, and between-laboratory standard deviations were determined for individual frequencies and A-weighted attenuations. The differences for the within-subject standard deviations were not statistically significant between Methods A and B. Using between-subject standard deviations from Method A, 3-12 subjects would be required to identify 6-dB differences between attenuation distributions. Whereas using between-subject standard deviations from Method B, 5-19 subjects would be required to identify 6-dB differences in attenuation distributions of a product tested within the same laboratory. However, the between-laboratory standard deviations for Method B were -0.1 to 3.0 dB less than the Method A results. These differences resulted in considerably more subjects being required to identify statistically significant differences between laboratories for Method A (12-132 subjects) than for Method B (9-28 subjects).

There are few studies on the long-term sequelae of radionuclides ingested or injected into the human body. Patients exposed to radioactive Thorotrast in the 1930s through the early 1950s provide a singular opportunity, since the administration of this radiographic contrast agent resulted in continuous exposure to alpha particles throughout life at a low dose rate. We evaluated cause-specific mortality among an international cohort of 3,143 patients injected during cerebral angiography with either Thorotrast (n = 1,736) or a similar but nonradioactive agent (n = 1,407) and who survived 2 or more years. Standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) for Thorotrast and comparison patients were calculated, and relative risks (RR), adjusted for population, age and sex, were obtained by multivariate statistical modeling. Most patients were followed until death, with only 94 (5.4%) of the Thorotrast patients known to be alive at the closure of the study. All-cause mortality (n = 1,599 deaths) was significantly elevated among Thorotrast subjects [RR 1.7; 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.5-1.8]. Significantly increased relative risks were found for several categories, including cancer (RR 2.8), benign and unspecified tumors (RR 1.5), benign blood diseases (RR 7.1), and benign liver disorders (RR 6.5). Nonsignificant increases were seen for respiratory disease (RR 1.4) and other types of digestive disease (RR 1.6). The relative risk due to all causes increased steadily after angiography to reach a threefold RR at 40 or more years (P < 0.001). Excess cancer deaths were observed for each decade after Thorotrast injection, even after 50 years (SMR 8.6; P < 0.05). Increasing cumulative dose of radiation was directly associated with death due to all causes combined, cancer, respiratory disease, benign liver disease, and other types of digestive disease. Our study confirms the relationship between Thorotrast and increased mortality due to cancer, benign liver disease, and benign hematological disease, and suggests a possible relationship with respiratory disorders and other types of digestive disease. The cumulative excess risk of cancer death remained high up to 50 years after injection with >20 ml Thorotrast and approached 50%.

In 1987, six Yale graduate students set out to study the concurrent review methods used in key hospitals across the US. They examined the advantages and disadvantages of concurrent review and the tie-in of medical record concurrent review coding with utilization review activities. The first part of their report is published this month, with the conclusion appearing next month.

Timolol ophthalmic solution effectively reduced mean intraocular pressure (IOP) in Negro and Caucasian patients with chronic open angle glaucoma and untreated IOP of 22 mm Hg or higher. No differences in pressure lowering response were observed among the races although the Negroes required somewhat higher timolol concentrations to produce similar reductions from baseline IOP. Negro patients also appeared to have a more severe disease as indicated by the number of prior antiglaucoma drugs required and the untreated (baseline) pressures. An unexpected finding was the significantly greater number of Caucasians with dark irides who were discontinued from therapy because of inadequate pressure reduction.