Quantifying the premature mortality and economic loss from wildfire-induced PM2.5 in the contiguous U.S.

Emissions from wildfires worsen air quality and can adversely impact human health. This study utilized the fire inventory from NCAR (FINN) as wildfire emissions, and performed air quality modeling of April-October 2012, 2013, and 2014 using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency CMAQ model under two cases: with and without wildfire emissions. This study then assessed the health impacts and economic values attributable to PM2.5 from fires. Results indicated that wildfires could lead annually to 4000 cases of premature mortality in the U.S., corresponding to $36 billion losses. Regions with high concentrations of fire-induced PM2.5 were in the west (e.g., Idaho, Montana, and northern California) and Southeast (e.g., Alabama, Georgia). Metropolitan areas located near fire sources, exhibited large health burdens, such as Los Angeles (119 premature deaths, corresponding to $1.07 billion), Atlanta (76, $0.69 billion), and Houston (65, $0.58 billion). Regions in the downwind of western fires, although experiencing relatively low values of fire-induced PM2.5, showed notable health burdens due to their large population, such as metropolitan areas of New York (86, $0.78 billion), Chicago (60, $0.54 billion), and Pittsburgh (32, $0.29 billion). Results suggest that impacts from wildfires are substantial, and to mitigate these impacts, better forest management and more resilient infrastructure would be needed.

Characteristics of abnormal subjects in screening of tumor markers among middle-aged and elderly people in Weihai area.

OBJECTIVE: Based on the Huimin policy of Weihai Social Security Bureau, this project aims to investigate feasibility of screening through screening of serum tumor markers (TM) in the middle-aged and elderly population in Weihai area. According to the joint mode of examination institution and clinical department (oncology), we provide dynamic follow-up for subjects for early intervention of abnormal tumor screening and high-risk population, through which we can cut off pathogenic pathway of cancer and improve early diagnosis of cancer and enhance the cure rate. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We continued to track subjects whose TM was not reduced to normal until it was normal or diagnosed, collecting the blood samples of eligible patients that we removed high-risk factors from the subjects so that TM could be lowered to normal. RESULTS: A total of 83,049 blood samples were detected in our hospital, and 89 patients were diagnosed with newly diagnosed tumor. The positive expression rate of CEA in lung cancer patients was 91.4%. CONCLUSIONS: The diagnosis of tumor relies not only on TM, but also on observation of clinical symptoms, continuous observation of TM dynamic changes and individualized comprehensive analysis.  The main purpose of this policy is not only to find patients with "early tumor", but also to cut off the pathogenic pathway of cancer, achieve purpose of tertiary prevention and significantly save medical costs. The examination mechanism and the clinical-related departments are connected, and the pattern of screening, tracking and analysis of abnormal results in large samples is in line with the present situation of China and is worthy of clinical promotion.

Mobility in post-pandemic economic reopening under social distancing guidelines: Congestion, emissions, and contact exposure in public transit.

COVID-19 has raised new challenges for transportation in the post-pandemic era. The social distancing requirement, with the aim of reducing contact risk in public transit, could exacerbate traffic congestion and emissions. We propose a simulation tool to evaluate the trade-offs between traffic congestion, emissions, and policies impacting travel behavior to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 including social distancing and working from home. Open-source agent-based simulation models are used to evaluate the transportation system usage for the case study of New York City. A Post Processing Software for Air Quality (PPS-AQ) estimation is used to evaluate the air quality impacts. Finally, system-wide contact exposure on the subway is estimated from the traffic simulation output. The social distancing requirement in public transit is found to be effective in reducing contact exposure, but it has negative congestion and emission impacts on Manhattan and neighborhoods at transit and commercial hubs. While telework can reduce congestion and emissions citywide, in Manhattan the negative impacts are higher due to behavioral inertia and social distancing. The findings suggest that contact exposure to COVID-19 on subways is relatively low, especially if social distancing practices are followed. The proposed integrated traffic simulation models and air quality estimation model can help policymakers evaluate the impact of policies on traffic congestion and emissions as well as identifying hot spots, both temporally and spatially.

Infrastructure policy and public health: Evidence from OECD countries.

When making infrastructure policies, decision makers insufficiently consider negative consequences for the environment or health. This lack of multi-sectorial awareness in policymaking triggers poor public health outcomes. To illustrate this issue, this interdisciplinary work presents evidence for the association of road infrastructure investment (as infrastructure policy) with the incidences of deaths due to transport accidents, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pneumonia using nationally aggregated data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for 27 countries over an 18-year period (1995-2012). We conduct an explorative analysis using descriptive statistics and fixed-effects panel-data regression models that include the interaction of the policy variable with the Environmental Policy Stringency Index, which proxies the awareness of negative consequences of policies. We show that countries which never achieved a score of 3 or higher for the Environmental Policy Stringency Index had higher levels of standardized death rates. This is supported by Pearson's correlation coefficients and by the results of t-tests for deaths due to transport accidents. Following the fixed-effects analysis, we find that an increase in road infrastructure investment of 1% of gross domestic product is associated, on average, with about three additional deaths per 100,000 population due to transport accidents and about 18 fewer deaths per 100,000 population due to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease using standardized death rates. A one unit increase in the Environmental Policy Stringency Index is related to about 7 fewer deaths per 100,000 population due to chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Marginal effects of the interaction of road infrastructure investment and the Environmental Policy Stringency Index are significant for standardized death rates due to transport accidents and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Multi-sectorial awareness in infrastructure policy mediates health effects for deaths due to transport accidents and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Accuracies of genomic prediction for twenty economically important traits in Chinese Simmental beef cattle.

Genomic prediction has been widely utilized to estimate genomic breeding values (GEBVs) in farm animals. In this study, we conducted genomic prediction for 20 economically important traits including growth, carcass and meat quality traits in Chinese Simmental beef cattle. Five approaches (GBLUP, BayesA, BayesB, BayesCπ and BayesR) were used to estimate the genomic breeding values. The predictive accuracies ranged from 0.159 (lean meat percentage estimated by BayesCπ) to 0.518 (striploin weight estimated by BayesR). Moreover, we found that the average predictive accuracies across 20 traits were 0.361, 0.361, 0.367, 0.367 and 0.378, and the averaged regression coefficients were 0.89, 0.86, 0.89, 0.94 and 0.95 for GBLUP, BayesA, BayesB, BayesCπ and BayesR respectively. The genomic prediction accuracies were mostly moderate and high for growth and carcass traits, whereas meat quality traits showed relatively low accuracies. We concluded that Bayesian regression approaches, especially for BayesR and BayesCπ, were slightly superior to GBLUP for most traits. Increasing with the sizes of reference population, these two approaches are feasible for future application of genomic selection in Chinese beef cattle.

[Cumulative risk assessment of phthalates exposure in preschool children].

Objective: The urine concentrations of phthalate metabolites were used to estimate the cumulative risk assessment in preschool children in Ma'anshan of Anhui province. Methods: Based on the China-Anhui Birth Cohort, the demographic information and urine samples of 3 743 children were collected in Ma'anshan from April 2014 to April 2015. The concentrations of 7 metabolites' [monomethyl phthalate (MMP), monoethyl phthalate (MEP), monobutyl phthalate (MBP), monobenzyl phthalate (MBzP), mono (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (MEHP), mono (2-ethyl- 5-oxohexyl) phthalate (MEOHP) and mono (2-ethyl-5-hydroxyhexyl) phthalate (MEHHP)] of 5 phthalates [dimethyl phthalate (DMP), diethyl phthalate (DEP), dibutyl phthalate (DBP), butyl benzyl phthalate (BBzP), and di (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP)] in the urine samples of the children were measured by solid-phase extration-triple quadrupole high performance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry-isotope method. In addition, the estimated daily intakes (EDIs) of 5 phthalates were calculated according to the metabolites' concentrations. Cumulative risk assessment was performed using hazard quotient (HQ) and hazard index (HI) methods. Results: The M (Q(R)) of seven metabolite concentrations were 29.58 (18.69-48.26), 26.65 (13.44-56.09), 256.86 (150.99-438.51), 0.12 (0.04-0.32), 6.27 (3.71-11.13), 17.94 (11.94-28.42) and 24.80 (16.05-40.32) µg/g creatinine, respectively. For the EDIs of 5 phthalates, DBP ranked first, followed by DEHP, DMP, DEP and BBzP with the M (Q(R)) of 7.54 (4.41-12.85), 3.35 (2.20-5.42), 0.75 (0.47-1.24), 0.71 (0.36-1.52) and 0.003 (0.001-0.009) µg/(kg·d), respectively. The HQ and HI varied with age, gender and sampling season, the differences were significant (P<0.05). Conclusions: These results indicated that risk of cumulative exposure to phthalates was high in preschool children aged 3-6 years in Ma'anshan. Age, gender and sampling season were influencing factors.

Public health costs accounting of inorganic PM2.5 pollution in metropolitan areas of the United States using a risk-based source-receptor model.

In order to design effective strategies to reduce the public health burden of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) imposed in an area, it is necessary to identify the emissions sources affecting that location and quantify their contributions. However, it is challenging because PM2.5 travels long distances and most constituents are the result of complex chemical processes. We developed a reduced-form source-receptor model for estimating locations and magnitudes of downwind health costs from a source or, conversely, the upwind sources that contribute to health costs at a receptor location. Built upon outputs from a state-of-the-art air quality model, our model produces comprehensive risk-based source apportionment results with trivial computational costs. Using the model, we analyzed all the sources contributing to the inorganic PM2.5 health burden in 14 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the United States. Our analysis for 12 source categories shows that 80-90% of the burden borne by these areas originates from emissions sources outside of the area and that emissions sources up to 800 km away need to be included to account for 80% of the burden. Conversely, 60-80% of the impacts of an MSA's emissions occurs outside of that MSA. The results demonstrate the importance of regionally coordinated measures to improve air quality in metropolitan areas.

Public Health Costs of Primary PM2.5 and Inorganic PM2.5 Precursor Emissions in the United States.

Current methods of estimating the public health effects of emissions are computationally too expensive or do not fully address complex atmospheric processes, frequently limiting their applications to policy research. Using a reduced-form model derived from tagged chemical transport model (CTM) simulations, we present PM2.5 mortality costs per tonne of inorganic air pollutants with the 36 km × 36 km spatial resolution of source location in the United States, providing the most comprehensive set of such estimates comparable to CTM-based estimates. Our estimates vary by 2 orders of magnitude. Emission-weighted seasonal averages were estimated at $88,000-130,000/t PM2.5 (inert primary), $14,000-24,000/t SO2, $3,800-14,000/t NOx, and $23,000-66,000/t NH3. The aggregate social costs for year 2005 emissions were estimated at $1.0 trillion dollars. Compared to other studies, our estimates have similar magnitudes and spatial distributions for primary PM2.5 but substantially different spatial patterns for precursor species where secondary chemistry is important. For example, differences of more than a factor of 10 were found in many areas of Texas, New Mexico, and New England states for NOx and of California, Texas, and Maine for NH3. Our method allows for updates as emissions inventories and CTMs improve, enhancing the potential to link policy research to up-to-date atmospheric science.

Environmental and Economic Impacts of Localizing Food Systems: The Case of Dairy Supply Chains in the Northeastern United States.

We developed and evaluated an empirical model of the U.S. dairy supply chain with a high degree of spatial and product disaggregation to assess the impacts of increasing localization of the northeast region's fluid milk supply on food miles, supply chain costs, greenhouse gas and criteria pollutant emissions, economic activity, and employment. Evaluation included comparison to regional production values and sensitivity analysis of demand and unit cost assumptions. Our analysis compares a baseline to two localization scenarios based on state boundaries and multiple-state subregions. Localization scenarios increased total distances fluid milk traveled by 7-15%, overall supply chain costs by 1-2%, and emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) criteria pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen and particulate matter smaller than 2.5 µm associated with fluid milk transportation by 7-15% per month. The impacts of localization on employment and economic activity are positive, but changes are small on a percentage basis. Our analyses indicate that the definition used for localization has an impact on outcomes and that efforts to localize food systems may benefit from a more systems-oriented approach.

Survival in stage I-III breast cancer patients by surgical treatment in a publicly funded health care system.

BACKGROUND: Recent investigations of breast cancer survival in the United States suggest that patients who receive mastectomy have poorer survival than those who receive breast-conserving surgery (BCS) plus radiotherapy, despite clinically established equivalence. This study investigates breast cancer survival in the publicly funded health care system present in Alberta, Canada. PATIENTS AND METHODS: Surgically treated stage I-III breast cancer cases diagnosed in Alberta from 2002 to 2010 were included. Demographic, treatment and mortality information were collected from the Alberta Cancer Registry. Unadjusted overall and breast cancer-specific mortality was assessed using Kaplan-Meier and cumulative incidence curves, respectively. Cox proportional hazards models were used to calculate stage-specific mortality hazard estimates associated with surgical treatment received. RESULTS: A total of 14 939 cases of breast cancer (14 633 patients) were included in this study. The unadjusted 5-year all-cause survival probabilities for patients treated with BCS plus radiotherapy, mastectomy, and BCS alone were 94% (95% CI 93% to 95%), 83% (95% CI 82% to 84%) and 74% (95% CI 70% to 78%), respectively. Stage II and III patients who received mastectomy had a higher all-cause (stage II HR = 1.36, 95% CI 1.13-1.48; stage III HR = 1.74, 95% CI 1.24-2.45) and breast cancer-specific (stage II HR = 1.39, 95% CI 1.09-1.76; stage III HR = 1.79, 95% CI 1.21-2.65) mortality hazard compared with those who received BCS plus radiotherapy, adjusting for patient and clinical characteristics. BCS alone was consistently associated with poor survival. CONCLUSIONS: Stage II and III breast cancer patients diagnosed in Alberta, Canada, who received mastectomy had a significantly higher all-cause and breast cancer-specific mortality hazard compared with those who received BCS plus radiotherapy. We suggest greater efforts toward educating and encouraging patients to receive BCS plus radiotherapy rather than mastectomy when it is medically feasible and appropriate.

3D strain assessment in ultrasound (Straus): a synthetic comparison of five tracking methodologies.

This paper evaluates five 3D ultrasound tracking algorithms regarding their ability to quantify abnormal deformation in timing or amplitude. A synthetic database of B-mode image sequences modeling healthy, ischemic and dyssynchrony cases was generated for that purpose. This database is made publicly available to the community. It combines recent advances in electromechanical and ultrasound modeling. For modeling heart mechanics, the Bestel-Clement-Sorine electromechanical model was applied to a realistic geometry. For ultrasound modeling, we applied a fast simulation technique to produce realistic images on a set of scatterers moving according to the electromechanical simulation result. Tracking and strain accuracies were computed and compared for all evaluated algorithms. For tracking, all methods were estimating myocardial displacements with an error below 1 mm on the ischemic sequences. The introduction of a dilated geometry was found to have a significant impact on accuracy. Regarding strain, all methods were able to recover timing differences between segments, as well as low strain values. On all cases, radial strain was found to have a low accuracy in comparison to longitudinal and circumferential components.

Multiplex polymerase chain reaction with DNA pooling: a cost-effective strategy of genotyping rare blood types.

OBJECTIVES/AIMS: This work aims to develop a multiplex polymerase chain reaction combined with DNA pooling for mass screening for rare blood types. BACKGROUND: The differences in most blood group antigens are associated with single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which are used in detecting blood antigen expression at the molecular level. However, all existing sequence-specific primers polymerase chain reaction (PCR-SSP) assays for blood typing genotype one or several SNPs individually. DNA pooling is a way that reduces the amount of genotyping required. METHODS: A sensitive multiplex PCR-SSP assay testing pooled DNA was established to detect the rare Fy(b) and S alleles. It was applied to screen a total of 4490 donor samples via testing 898 DNA pools. The samples in the positive pools were further tested individually. Then the positive samples, including Fy(a-b+)/Fy(a+b+) and S+s-/S+s+ genotypes, were tested via two PCR-SSP assays for alleles Fy(a) and s. The rare genotypes Fy(a-b+) and S+s- were verified using serologic tests and sequencing analysis. RESULTS: Two hundred and fifty-four donors were tested positive for the Fy(b) allele, whereas 101 donors were positive for the S allele. Among the 254 Fy(b+) donors, 5 were Fy(a-b+) and 249 were Fy(a+b+). Among the 101 S+ donors, 3 were S+s- and 98 were S+s+. The rare Fy(b) and S alleles comprised 2·28 and 1·16%, respectively. The PCR-SSP assays were confirmed by sequencing analysis and serological test. CONCLUSION: A multiplex PCR assay was combined with DNA pooling to reduce the number of tests required, making large-scale screening feasible.

In vitro assessment of the Milwaukee Heart and right to left balance.

A new, electrically powered, total artificial heart, the Milwaukee Heart, has been developed. This device is undergoing testing in vitro. The unidirectional motion of the brushless DC motor (BDCM) affords easier motor control and reduces energy demand. Motors with a unidirectional motion have a longer life than those with bidirectional motion. This device requires less power due to the highly efficient mechanical design. It consumes 6.5 W of power at an average flow of 5 L/min into 100 mmHg of mean aortic pressure and 20 mmHg of mean pulmonary pressure. Pumping at 8 L/min it requires 9.6 W of power. The maximum pump flow is 10 L/min and overall efficiency is 20%. A slotted optocoupler is used to determine the position of the pusher plate at the start of left systole. The number of revolutions that the BDCM makes is counted from this position. There are 50 revolutions of the BDCM per stroke (using a 50:1 gear reducer connected to the motor). The position of the pusher plate is determined from the number of BDCM revolutions. Based on where the pusher plate encounters resistance from the bladder, the force on the left pump is increased or decreased. Left to right balance has been achieved by reducing the size of the right pusher plate in conjunction with varying right stroke volume. In vitro tests show that this new, electrically powered artificial heart provides reliable performance and satisfactory hemodynamic results.