Understanding the Behavioral Health Risk Factors that African American and Latinx Women Experience within a National Context.

In an effort to address social determinants of health and to reduce barriers to care, there have been increased attempts to understand and mitigate public health concerns in ethnic minority communities. As knowledge increases regarding the impact of health disparities on ethnic minority communities, social workers practice knowledge must expand to include intersectional approaches and methods that are inclusive of mechanisms that address inconsistencies in access to health care. Using the 2018 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), this study examined behavioral health and psychosocial risk factors that African American and Latinx women (n = 7008) experienced and identified how these factors are associated with self-reported overall health. Results indicated that overall health and wellbeing is linked to psychosocial risk factors, such as depression, substance use, and even age for African American and Latinx women.

Mothers and Their Children: An Exploration of the Relationship Between Maternal Mental Health and Child Well-Being.

INTRODUCTION: Psychosocial factors and life stressors have an impact on long-term health effects on mothers and their children. Recent studies examining maternal mental health have predominantly focused on identifying maternal experiences with depression; however, there has been minimal research investigating maternal experiences with psychosocial risk factors and its relationship with child well-being. METHODS: Secondary analysis was conducted using data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-Being Study. The study sample includes 2396 adolescents and their biological mothers. Adolescents were between the ages of 14 and 19. We examined primary outcomes regarding mental health (depression and anxiety), life-satisfaction, and substance usage (alcohol and drugs). RESULTS: The association between maternal psychosocial factors an adolescent depression was significant, F(26) = 5.29, p < .01. Mothers educational attainment and poverty level significantly predicted adolescent depression; with completion of some college (B = -0.411, p 0.025), a college degree (B = -0.540, p = 0.018), and living at the 300% poverty level (B = -0.725, p = 0.002) predicting lower levels of adolescent depression. CONCLUSION: Our study demonstrates that there was a positive relationship between maternal mental health and adolescent mental health. Further, this study demonstrated that maternal mental health and social determinants of health are predictors of adolescent mental health and social functioning, thus indicating an inextricable connection to child well-being.

The energy yield potential of a large tidal stream turbine array in the Alderney Race.

This research provides an updated energy yield assessment for a large tidal stream turbine array in the Alderney Race. The original array energy yield estimate was presented in 2004. Enhancements to this original work are made through the use of a validated two-dimensional hydrodynamic model, enabling the resolution of flow modelling to be improved and the impacts of array blockage to be quantified. Results show that a range of turbine designs (i.e. rotor diameter and power capacity) are needed for large-scale development, given the spatial variation in bathymetry and flow across the Alderney Race. Array blockage causes a reduction in flow speeds in the array of up to 2.5 m s-1, increased flow speeds around the array of up to 1 m s-1 and a reduction in the mean volume flux through the Alderney Race of 8%. The annual energy yield estimate of the array is 3.18 TWh, equivalent to the electricity demand of around 1 million homes. The capacity factor of the array is 18%, implying sub-optimal array design. This result demonstrates the need for turbine rated speed to be selected based on the altered flow regime, not the ambient flow. Further enhancement to array performance is explored through increases to rotor diameter and changes to device micro-siting, demonstrating the significant potential for array performance improvement. This article is part of the theme issue 'New insights on tidal dynamics and tidal energy harvesting in the Alderney Race'.

Numerical modelling of hydrodynamics and tidal energy extraction in the Alderney Race: a review.

The tides are a predictable, renewable, source of energy that, if harnessed, can provide significant levels of electricity generation. The Alderney Race (AR), with current speeds that exceed 5 m s-1 during spring tides, is one of the most concentrated regions of tidal energy in the world, with the upper-bound resource estimated at 5.1 GW. Owing to its significance, the AR is frequently used for model case studies of tidal energy conversion, and here we review these model applications and outcomes. We examine a range of temporal and spatial modelling scales, from regional models applied to resource assessment and characterization, to more detailed models that include energy extraction and array optimization. We also examine a range of physical processes that influence the tidal energy resource, including the role of waves and turbulence in tidal energy resource assessment and loadings on turbines. The review discusses model validation, and covers a range of numerical modelling approaches, from two-dimensional to three-dimensional tidal models, two-way coupled wave-tide models, Large Eddy Simulation (LES) models, and the application of optimization techniques. The review contains guidance on model approaches and sources of data that can be used for future studies of the AR, or translated to other tidal energy regions. This article is part of the theme issue 'New insights on tidal dynamics and tidal energy harvesting in the Alderney Race'.

Identifying economically viable tidal sites within the Alderney Race through optimization of levelized cost of energy.

Costs of tidal stream energy generation are anticipated to fall considerably with array expansion and time. This is due to both economies of volume, where arrays comprising of large numbers of turbines can split fixed costs over a greater number of devices, and learning rates, where the industry matures and so arrays of the same size become cheaper due to lessons learned from previous installations. This paper investigates how tidal energy arrays can be designed to minimize the levelized cost of energy (LCOE), by optimizing not only the location but also the number of devices, to find a suitable balance between decreased costs due to economies of volume and diminishing returns due to global blockage effects. It focuses on the Alderney Race as a case study site due to the high velocities found there, making it a highly suitable site for large-scale arrays. It is demonstrated that between 1 and 2 GW could be feasibly extracted as costs in the tidal industry fall, with the LCOE depending greatly on the assumed costs. A Monte-Carlo analysis is undertaken to account for variability in capital and operational cost data used as inputs to the array optimization. Once optimized, the estimated P50 LCOE of an 80 MW array is £110/MWh. This estimate aligns closely with the level of subsidy considered for tidal stream projects in the Alderney Race in the past. This article is part of the theme issue 'New insights on tidal dynamics and tidal energy harvesting in the Alderney Race'.

Clusters of Behavioral Health and Psychosocial Risk for Childbearing Women in Four Virginia Communities.

Introduction Four Virginia communities participated in a community services enhancement pilot to centralize intake and referral for childbearing women eligible for home visiting support through the Maternal, Infant and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program. Methods As an aspect of the study, project-trained intake workers administered behavioral health and psychosocial risk screening (including emotional health, substance use, interpersonal violence, and smoking) during intake eligibility assessment. Participants identified as at-risk were referred for community intervention concurrently with referral to MIECHV services. Results In the study sample (N = 1515), emotional health was identified as the most common single risk factor (n = 326, 21.5%) and clusters of 2 or more behavioral health risks were identified for 223 (14.7%) of women. Among those with two or more behavioral health risks, smoking was significantly related to all other areas of behavioral health risk. Conclusion Findings from this multi-site pilot emphasize concomitant behavioral health and psychosocial risks in childbearing women and reinforce the importance of embedding comprehensive public health interventions in community systems of care.

Author Correction: Hybrid organic-inorganic polariton laser.

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper.

Critical review of methods for risk ranking of food-related hazards, based on risks for human health.

This study aimed to critically review methods for ranking risks related to food safety and dietary hazards on the basis of their anticipated human health impacts. A literature review was performed to identify and characterize methods for risk ranking from the fields of food, environmental science and socio-economic sciences. The review used a predefined search protocol, and covered the bibliographic databases Scopus, CAB Abstracts, Web of Sciences, and PubMed over the period 1993-2013. All references deemed relevant, on the basis of predefined evaluation criteria, were included in the review, and the risk ranking method characterized. The methods were then clustered-based on their characteristics-into eleven method categories. These categories included: risk assessment, comparative risk assessment, risk ratio method, scoring method, cost of illness, health adjusted life years (HALY), multi-criteria decision analysis, risk matrix, flow charts/decision trees, stated preference techniques and expert synthesis. Method categories were described by their characteristics, weaknesses and strengths, data resources, and fields of applications. It was concluded there is no single best method for risk ranking. The method to be used should be selected on the basis of risk manager/assessor requirements, data availability, and the characteristics of the method. Recommendations for future use and application are provided.

TRABECULAR BONE SCORE (TBS) HAS A POOR DISCRIMINATIVE POWER FOR VERTEBRAL FRACTURES IN 153 ROMANIAN PATIENTS WITH PRIMARY HYPERPARATHYROIDISM.

CONTEXT: Trabecular Bone Score (TBS) has been recently proposed as a good tool to investigate secondary osteoporosis. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to assess TBS from spine DXA images in patients with primary hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) and look at its correlates. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: 153 patients, mean age 59.1 ± 12.1 yrs, females and males (10%), mean BMI 26.2 ± 4.8 kg/m2, mean serum calcium and PTH of 11.3 ± 1.2 mg/dL and 232 ± 329 pg/mL, respectively; 89% had osteoporosis/osteopenia by LS DXA and 46% had renal involvement. There were 7.6% patients with vertebral fractures, 13.2% patients with nonvertebral fractures. TBS indices were derived from LS-DXA images and cutoff points used were those previously reported. RESULTS: Mean TBS was in the partially degraded range (1.258 ± 0.115); 32% of patients had degraded microarchitecture (TBS ≤ 1.20), 51% had partially degraded microarchitecture (TBS > 1.20 and < 1.35) and 17% had normal TBS. TBS was significantly correlated with areal BMD both at the LS (r=0.544; p<0.001) and FN (r = 0.315; p < 0.001), and negatively with age (r= - 0.354; p < 0.001) and years since menopause - YSM (r = - 0.257, p = 0.005). Patients with vertebral fractures had mean values of TBS in the degraded range, significantly lower than those without vertebral fractures (1.173 ± 0.076 vs. 1.263 ± 0.115; p = 0.006). The presence of vertebral fracture was independently associated only with YSM (OR = 1.131, 95% CI = 0.032 - 0.214, p = 0.008) but not with TBS. CONCLUSIONS: In a cohort of symptomatic PHPT patients, including postmenopausal, premenopausal and male patients, we have shown that TBS was in the partially degraded range, but it was not independently associated with fractures.

Integrating Behavioral Health Risk Assessment into Centralized Intake for Maternal and Child Health Services.

Effectively promoting women's health during and around the time of pregnancy requires early, nonstigmatizing identification and assessment of behavioral health risks (such as depression, substance use, smoking, and interpersonal violence) combined with timely linkage to community support and specialized interventions. This article describes an integrated approach to behavioral health risk screening woven into a point of first contact with the health care delivery system: centralized intake for maternal and child health home visiting programs. Behavioral Health Integrated Centralized Intake is a social work-informed, community-designed approach to screening, brief intervention, and service linkage targeting communities at high risk for fetal and infant mortality. Women enrolled in this study were receptive to holistic risk screening as well as guided referral for both home visiting support and specialized mental health interventions. Results from this multi-community study form the foundation for strengths-based, social work-informed enhancements to community health promotion programs.

Hybrid organic-inorganic polariton laser.

Organic materials exhibit exceptional room temperature light emitting characteristics and enormous exciton oscillator strength, however, their low charge carrier mobility prevent their use in high-performance applications such as electrically pumped lasers. In this context, ultralow threshold polariton lasers, whose operation relies on Bose-Einstein condensation of polaritons - part-light part-matter quasiparticles, are highly advantageous since the requirement for high carrier injection no longer holds. Polariton lasers have been successfully implemented using inorganic materials owing to their excellent electrical properties, however, in most cases their relatively small exciton binding energies limit their operation temperature. It has been suggested that combining organic and inorganic semiconductors in a hybrid microcavity, exploiting resonant interactions between these materials would permit to dramatically enhance optical nonlinearities and operation temperature. Here, we obtain cavity mediated hybridization of GaAs and J-aggregate excitons in the strong coupling regime under electrical injection of carriers as well as polariton lasing up to 200 K under non-resonant optical pumping. Our demonstration paves the way towards realization of hybrid organic-inorganic microcavities which utilise the organic component for sustaining high temperature polariton condensation and efficient electrical injection through inorganic structure.

Room-temperature exciton-polaritons with two-dimensional WS2.

Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides exhibit strong optical transitions with significant potential for optoelectronic devices. In particular they are suited for cavity quantum electrodynamics in which strong coupling leads to polariton formation as a root to realisation of inversionless lasing, polariton condensation and superfluidity. Demonstrations of such strongly correlated phenomena to date have often relied on cryogenic temperatures, high excitation densities and were frequently impaired by strong material disorder. At room-temperature, experiments approaching the strong coupling regime with transition metal dichalcogenides have been reported, but well resolved exciton-polaritons have yet to be achieved. Here we report a study of monolayer WS2 coupled to an open Fabry-Perot cavity at room-temperature, in which polariton eigenstates are unambiguously displayed. In-situ tunability of the cavity length results in a maximal Rabi splitting of hΩRabi = 70 meV, exceeding the exciton linewidth. Our data are well described by a transfer matrix model appropriate for the large linewidth regime. This work provides a platform towards observing strongly correlated polariton phenomena in compact photonic devices for ambient temperature applications.

Comparative accessory gene fingerprinting of surface water Escherichia coli reveals genetically diverse naturalized population.

AIMS: To utilize comparative accessory gene fingerprinting to discriminate between naturalized and faecal Escherichia coli, with particular emphasis on strains from phylogroup B1. METHODS AND RESULTS: Fourteen accessory genes that were potentially ecotype-specific were selected on the basis of comparative genomic DNA sequence analysis between faecal and environmental strains and also using a literature-based strategy. PCR assays were designed for each gene, and used to screen 107 faecal strains from various hosts and 106 environmental strains from surface water and sediment. While none of the 14 accessory genes were ecotype-specific, six of the genes were ecotype-enriched. Specifically, toxin-antitoxin system genes were more abundant among faecal strains, whereas genes involved in iron acquisition, complement resistance/surface exclusion, and biofilm formation were more abundant among environmental strains. These six genes were used to form composite fingerprints which revealed the presence of several ecotype-specific and -enriched fingerprints. Notably, some of the environmental strain-specific or -enriched fingerprints consisted of strains putatively belonging to clade ET-1, which has been previously recognized as a naturalized subpopulation. CONCLUSIONS: Unlike single genes which did not reliably distinguish between faecal and naturalized phylogroup B1 E. coli strains, composite fingerprints of ecotype-enriched accessory genes may offer a novel method for distinguishing between these two populations. SIGNIFICANCE AND IMPACT OF THE STUDY: Accessory gene fingerprinting may have important practical implications for improving the specificity of methods that are widely used for quantifying and identifying the sources of faecal contamination in surface water.

Genetically modified animals from life-science, socio-economic and ethical perspectives: examining issues in an EU policy context.

The interdisciplinary EC consortium (the PEGASUS project) aimed to examine the issues raised by the development, implementation and commercialisation of genetically modified (GM) animals, and derivative foods and pharmaceutical products. The results integrated existing social (including existing public perception) environmental and economic knowledge regarding GM animals to formulate policy recommendations relevant to new developments and applications. The use of GM in farmed animals (aquatic, terrestrial and pharmaceutical) was mapped and reviewed. A foresight exercise was conducted to identity future developments. Three case studies (aquatic, terrestrial and pharmaceutical) were applied to identify the issues raised, including the potential risks and benefits of GM animals from the perspectives of the production chain (economics and agri-food sector) and the life sciences (human and animal health, environmental impact, animal welfare and sustainable production). Ethical and policy concerns were examined through application of combined ethical matrix method and policy workshops. The case studies were also used to demonstrate the utility of public engagement in the policy process. The results suggest that public perceptions, ethical issues, the competitiveness of EU animal production and risk-benefit assessments that consider human and animal health, environmental impact and sustainable production need to be considered in EU policy development. Few issues were raised with application in the pharmaceutical sector, assuming ethical and economic issues were addressed in policy, but the introduction of agricultural GM animal applications should be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Impact of the European clinical trials directive on prospective academic clinical trials associated with BMT.

The European Clinical Trials Directive (EU 2001; 2001/20/EC) was introduced to improve the efficiency of commercial and academic clinical trials. Concerns have been raised by interested organizations and institutions regarding the potential for negative impact of the Directive on non-commercial European clinical research. Interested researchers within the European Group for Blood and Marrow Transplantation (EBMT) were surveyed to determine whether researcher experiences confirmed this view. Following a pilot study, an internet-based questionnaire was distributed to individuals in key research positions in the European haemopoietic SCT community. Seventy-one usable questionnaires were returned from participants in different EU member states. The results indicate that the perceived impact of the European Clinical Trials Directive has been negative, at least in the research areas of interest to the EBMT.

Using molecular genetics as a tool in understanding crawling cell locomotion in myoblasts.

We have used digitally recorded interference microscopy with automatic phase shifting (DRIMAPS) to investigate the crawling locomotion of normal and mutant mouse myoblasts. Contraction forces that give rise to cell body movement, tail retraction and cell adhesion to the substrate in myoblasts and other locomoting tissue cells arise from the interactions of actin and non-muscle myosin II. The activity of non-muscle myosin II is regulated differently from that of skeletal myosin. Using DRIMAPS, we found that crawling locomotion was altered in myoblasts that heterologously expressed human beta-cardiac myosin heavy chain (MHC); the cells moved more slowly and had reduced rates of protrusion and retraction. Immunolocalization demonstrated that MHC and non-muscle myosin II were not co-localized, suggesting that MHC does not compete directly with myosin II, but interferes with cell locomotion by binding inappropriately to actin filaments and possibly cross-linking them. Myosin I may be involved in protrusion of the lamellipodia. However, using DRIMAPS, we found that crawling locomotion was unaltered in myoblasts that heterologously expressed a truncated myosin I which lacked the membrane-binding tail domain. This suggests that, if endogenous myosin I is important for cell locomotion, this mutant was unable to interfere with its action. We conclude that the effects on locomotion of expressing foreign or mutant proteins of the cytoskeleton in vertebrate cells can be subtle and can be swamped by the intrinsic variability of the cells. Their characterization requires automated methods of acquiring data, such as DRIMAPS, and careful statistical analysis in order to take account of other sources of variation.

Myogenic cells express multiple myosin isoforms.

In vivo and in vitro, proliferating motile myoblasts form aligned groups of cells, with a characteristic bipolar morphology, subsequently become post-mitotic, begin to express skeletal myosin and fuse. We were interested in whether members of the myosin superfamily were involved in myogenesis. We found that the myoblasts expressed multiple myosin isoforms, from at least five different classes of the myosin superfamily (classes I, II, V, VII and IX), using RT-PCR and degenerate primers to conserved regions of myosin. All of these myosin isoforms were expressed most highly in myoblasts and their expression decreased as they differentiated into mature myotubes, by RNAse protection assays, and Western analysis. However, only myosin I alpha, non-muscle myosin IIA and IIB together with actin relocalize in response to the differentiative state of the cell. In single cells, myosin I alpha was found at the leading edge, in rear microspikes and had a punctate cytoplasmic staining, and non-muscle myosin was associated with actin bundles as previously described for fibroblasts. In aligned groups of cells, all these proteins were found at the plasma membrane. Co-staining for skeletal myosin II, and myosin I alpha showed that myosin I alpha also appeared to be expressed at higher levels in post-mitotic myoblasts that had begun to express skeletal myosin prior to fusion. In early myotubes, actin and non-muscle myosin IIA and IIB remained localized at the membrane. All of the other myosin isoforms we looked at, myosin V, myosin IX and a second isoform of myosin I (mouse homologue to myr2) showed a punctate cytoplasmic staining which did not change as the myoblasts differentiated. In conclusion, although we found that myoblasts express many different isoforms of the myosin superfamily, only myosin I alpha, non-muscle myosin IIA and IIB appear to play any direct role in myogenesis.