Environmental and Health Disparities in Appalachian Ohio: Perceptions and Realities

Background. Appalachia is a region of the United States that faces significant environmental and health disparities. Understanding these disparities and the social determinants that contribute to them will help public health practitioners make better decisions. The purpose of this research is two-fold. First, through secondary data analysis, we document environmental and health disparities as well as demographic and economic conditions that may contribute to these disparities between Appalachian and non-Appalachian Ohio. Second, we examine perceptions of environmental health practitioners about the differences in environmental conditions between Appalachian and non-Appalachian Ohio. Methods. We gathered secondary data about economics, health, and the environment from the Ohio Department of Health, Healthy Ohio Community Profiles, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Census. In addition, we conducted an online survey of 76 environmental health professionals across Ohio. Results. The secondary data indicates that there are significant differences between Appalachian and non-Appalachian Ohio in terms of socioeconomic, health, and environmental indicators. In addition, environmental health professionals perceive worse environmental conditions in the Appalachian region and indicate that there are environmental and health disparities found in this part of the state that do not exist elsewhere. Conclusions. The results contribute to understanding environmental and health conditions that contribute to health disparities in the Appalachian region as well as suggest approaches for public health practitioners to reduce these disparities

Anti-Cancer Drugs: The mitochondrial paradox

A structural motif that is found in two cancer drugs may be responsible for their ability to tackle cancers and for the side-effects caused by the drugs

Acute Metabolic Switch Assay Using Glucose/Galactose Medium in HepaRG Cells to Detect Mitochondrial Toxicity.

Using galactose instead of glucose in the culture medium of hepatoma cell lines, such as HepG2 cells, has been utilized for a decade to unmask the mitochondrial liability of chemical compounds. A modified glucose-galactose assay on HepG2 cells, reducing the experimental period for screening of mitochondrial toxicity to 2 to 4 hr, has been previously reported. HepaRG cells are one of the few cell lines that retain some of the important characteristics of human hepatocytes, offering advantages of working with a cell line, therefore, are considered an alternative for HepG2 cells in drug toxicity screening. A method is described here using HepaRG cells in an acute metabolic switch assay utilizing specific glucose/galactose media, a combined ATP-protein-LDH assay measuring three endpoints from one 96-well plate, and a criteria to label a compound as a mitochondrial toxin. © 2019 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc

Roadkill scavenging behaviour in an urban environment

Roads can have negative impacts on wildlife through indirect effects such as fragmentation of habitat, or through direct effects such as fatal collisions with vehicles. Wildlife deaths on British roads number in the millions per year, so the resulting carcasses represent a substantial carrion biomass available as food for scavengers. By removing roadkill in urban areas, scavengers perform a valuable ecosystem service, but the rapid removal of these carcasses by scavengers could bias estimates of the impacts of roads on wildlife. In order to evaluate the scale and context of urban roadkill scavenging, we examined: (i) which species scavenge on roadkill in urban areas, (ii) the likelihood of roadkill being removed by scavengers, and (iii) whether spatial and temporal factors (habitat type and time of day) influenced the rate of removal. Camera traps baited with chicken heads as simulated ‘roadkill corpses’ were deployed in six residential and six parkland sites in the city of Cardiff, UK. Seven species were observed removing the roadkill, with corvids being the most common scavengers, responsible for 42% of removals. Of the 120 corpses, 90 (76%) were removed within 12 h. Time of day had a significant effect on the rate of removal, with the number of carcass removals peaking in the first few hours of daylight. Of roadkill placed at 9 am, 62% of carcasses had been removed after only 2 h. Removal of corpses by scavengers could mean that the actual number of road deaths is six times more than that observed during surveys

Comparison of model-predicted and measured moment arms for the rotator cuff muscles

The final publication is available at Elsevier via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.clinbiomech.2007.02.001. © 2007. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Background The ability of mathematical models of the shoulder to accurately replicate physiological muscle moment arms is unknown. The purpose of this study was to compare model-predicted and experimentally measured moment arms for the rotator cuff muscles during arm elevation. Methods Moment arms obtained from six mathematical models and seven experimental studies were compared for the supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis for elevation in the scapular plane. Results All of the included models generated moment arms that generally fell within the range of experimentally measured data. Interpretation The quantitative agreement between model-predicted and experimentally measured moment arms supports the use of the included models for biomechanical shoulder analyses.National Institute of Healt

Controls of nitrogen cycling evaluated along a well‐characterized climate gradient

The supply of nitrogen (N) constrains primary productivity in many ecosystems, raising the question "what controls the availability and cycling of N"? As a step toward answering this question, we evaluated N cycling processes and aspects of their regulation on a climate gradient on Kohala Volcano, Hawaii, USA. The gradient extends from sites receiving <300 mm/yr of rain to those receiving >3,000 mm/yr, and the pedology and dynamics of rock-derived nutrients in soils on the gradient are well understood. In particular, there is a soil process domain at intermediate rainfall within which ongoing weathering and biological uplift have enriched total and available pools of rock-derived nutrients substantially; sites at higher rainfall than this domain are acid and infertile as a consequence of depletion of rock-derived nutrients, while sites at lower rainfall are unproductive and subject to wind erosion. We found elevated rates of potential net N mineralization in the domain where rock-derived nutrients are enriched. Higher-rainfall sites have low rates of potential net N mineralization and high rates of microbial N immobilization, despite relatively high rates of gross N mineralization. Lower-rainfall sites have moderately low potential net N mineralization, relatively low rates of gross N mineralization, and rates of microbial N immobilization sufficient to sequester almost all the mineral N produced. Bulk soil δ15 N also varied along the gradient, from +4‰ at high rainfall sites to +14‰ at low rainfall sites, indicating differences in the sources and dynamics of soil N. Our analysis shows that there is a strong association between N cycling and soil process domains that are defined using soil characteristics independent of N along this gradient, and that short-term controls of N cycling can be understood in terms of the supply of and demand for N

A morphometric analysis of the infant calvarium and dura

Literature addressing the anatomic development of the dura and calvarium during childhood is limited. Nevertheless, histological features of a subdural neomembrane (NM), including its thickness and vascularity, developing in response to an acute subdural hematoma (SDH) have been compared to the dura of adults to estimate when an injury occurred. Therefore, we measured the morphometric growth of the calvarium and dura and the vascular density within the dura during infancy. The mean thicknesses of the calvarium and dura as a function of occipitofrontal circumference (OFC), as well as the mean number of vessels per 25× field, were determined from the right parasagittal midparietal bone lateral to the sagittal suture of 128 infants without a history of head trauma. Our results showed that as OFC increased, the mean thicknesses of the calvarium and dura increased while the vascular density within the dura decreased. Our morphometric data may assist in the interpretation of subdural NM occurring during infancy. We recommend future investigations to confirm and extend our present data, especially by evaluating cases during later infancy and beyond as well as by sampling other anatomic sites from the calvarium. We also recommend morphometric evaluation of subdural NM associated with SDH in infancy and childhood