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Objective: Electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) use on college campuses increased dramatically in recent years. Little is known about how ENDS use among college students relates to other substance use. Participants: Undergraduates (n = 3,917) at a mid-sized Midwestern public university in the United States. Methods: Cross-sectional survey data and latent class analysis of ENDS, cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and non-medical use of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) medication. Results: Over 95% of ENDS users fit into one of two classes comprising a minority of college students engaged in multiple and often problematic substance use behaviors. Only 4% of ENDS users were grouped into a class comprising 85% of the sample and characterized by either little/no substance use or moderate alcohol consumption. Conclusions: ENDS use in this sample was not indicative of general exploration with substances, nor was it indicative of isolated tobacco use, but rather more heavy and problematic substance use.

Introduction: In April 2021, the United States (US) Food and Drug Administration announced its intention to issue a product standard banning menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes. Given the potential relevance of national estimates of menthol use to pending legislation, this study estimated the prevalence of menthol use among US adults who smoke cigarettes in 2020 and investigated changes in menthol use from 2008-2019 by sociodemographics, mental health, and substance use.Methods: Nationally representative annual, cross-sectional data from individuals ages 18 and older residing in the US from the 2008-2019 and 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) were analyzed using logistic and linear regression models to estimate trends in menthol use among adults who smoke cigarettes by sociodemographic, mental health and substance use variables (total analytic sample 2008-2019 n=128,327).Results: In 2020, 43.4% of adults who smoked cigarettes in the past-month used menthol. Menthol use was most common among Black adults (80%) and over 50% of those Hispanic, female, young (ages 18-34), lesbian/gay, with serious psychological distress, and with cigar use used menthol. Menthol use increased among adults who used cigarettes from 2008 to 2019, overall, and grew more rapidly among adults ages 26-34, Hispanic, light cigarette use (1-5 per day) and those who smoked cigars.Conclusions: Menthol use has increased among US adults who smoke cigarettes over the past decade. Enacting menthol bans could have a widespread public health impact, especially among younger and minoritized groups.Implications: Menthol cigarette use increased among individuals who smoke cigarettes across from 2008 to 2019 in the US. In 2020, over 40% of smokers used menthol, and menthol use was considerably higher among adult smokers from racial/ethnic minoritized groups, who were younger and who reported mental health problems. The US Food and Drug Administration seeks to ban menthol as a characterizing flavor in cigarettes; our results suggest that such ban is likely to have a wide-ranging impact on public health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: To eliminate tobacco-related disparities, tobacco control research would benefit from a paradigm shift. Intersectionality, a framework pioneered by Kimberlé Crenshaw in late 1980s, has the potential to improve our understanding of why and how certain social groups are disproportionately harmed by commercial tobacco use, and improve our ability to address persistent tobacco-related health disparities.Aims and Methods: In this commentary, we outline the rationale and recommendations for incorporating intersectionality into equity-minded tobacco control research. These recommendations arose from intersectionality webinars organized by the Health Disparities (now Health Equity) Network of the Society for Research on Nicotine & Tobacco (SRNT) in 2019 and 2020.Results: Specifically, we propose that eliminating tobacco-related disparities through intersectionality-informed research requires a multilevel, multipronged approach. We summarize priority actions for the tobacco control research field to achieve health equity through the intersectionality framework including acknowledging that structural factors, racism and power dynamics shape lived experiences, integrating critical theoretical frameworks and intersectionality scholarship into research questions, and embracing collaborative community-based approaches at every level of the research process.Conclusions: Through these actions, our field can take concrete steps to fundamentally improve our approach to conducting research to achieve health equity.Implications: Intersectionality is a valuable tool to align our field with our pursuit of health equity. The recommendations aim to improve methods of equity-focused tobacco control, prompt ongoing dialogue on the utility of this tool, and shift paradigms in how the research process is conducted at every level among stakeholders, including researchers, journal editors and reviewers, funders, practitioners, and policy makers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Octopus cells are remarkable projection neurons of the mammalian cochlear nucleus, with extremely fast membranes and wide-frequency tuning. They are considered prime examples of coincidence detectors but are poorly characterized in vivo. We discover that octopus cells are selective to frequency sweep direction, a feature that is absent in their auditory nerve inputs. In vivo intracellular recordings reveal that direction selectivity does not derive from across-frequency coincidence detection but hinges on the amplitudes and activation sequence of auditory nerve inputs tuned to clusters of hot spot frequencies. A simple biophysical octopus cell model excited with real nerve spike trains recreates direction selectivity through interaction of intrinsic membrane conductances with the activation sequence of clustered excitatory inputs. We conclude that octopus cells are sequence detectors, sensitive to temporal patterns across cochlear frequency channels. The detection of sequences rather than coincidences is a much simpler but powerful operation to extract temporal information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]