PESTICIDE REGULATION AND THE RULE-MAKING PROCESS

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Real-Time Feedback of Air Quality in Children’s Bedrooms Reduces Exposure to Secondhand Smoke

Introduction:Secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure creates health risks for nonsmokers and is especially detrimental to children. This study evaluated whether immediate feedback in response to poor indoor air quality in children’s bedrooms can reduce the potential for SHS exposure, as measured by adherence to a World Health Organization (WHO) indoor air standard.Methods:Homes that contained children and an adult who regularly smoked inside (n=298) had an air particle monitor installed in the child’s bedroom. These devices measured the concentration of particulate matter (PM2.5) for approximately three months and, for half of the participants, immediately provided aversive feedback in response to elevated PM2.5. Hierarchical linear models were fit to the data to assess whether the intervention increased the probability that: 1) a given day was below the WHO guideline for daily exposure, and 2) a household established and maintained a smoke-free home (SFH), operationalized as achieving 30 consecutive days below the WHO guideline. The intervention’s impact was calculated as groupby- time effects.Results:The likelihood that a child’s bedroom met the WHO indoor air quality standard on a given day increased such that the baseline versus post-baseline odds ratio (OR) of maintaining indoor PM2.5 levels below the WHO guideline was 2.38 times larger for participants who received the intervention. Similarly, the baseline versus post-baseline OR associated with achieving an SFH was 3.49 times larger for participants in the intervention group.Conclusions:The real-time intervention successfully drove clinically meaningful changes in smoking behavior that mitigated indoor PM2.5 levels in children’s bedrooms and thereby reduced SHS exposure. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of targeting sensitive microenvironments by giving caregivers actionable information about children’s SHS risks. Future extensions should examine additional microenvironments and focus on identifying the potential for SHS exposure before it occurs

Effect of second timed appointments for non-attenders of breast cancer screening in England : a randomised controlled trial

BACKGROUND: In England, participation in breast cancer screening has been decreasing in the past 10 years, approaching the national minimum standard of 70%. Interventions aimed at improving participation need to be investigated and put into practice to stop this downward trend. We assessed the effect on participation of sending invitations for breast screening with a timed appointment to women who did not attend their first offered appointment within the NHS Breast Screening Programme (NHSBSP). METHODS: In this open, randomised controlled trial, women in six centres in the NHSBSP in England who were invited for routine breast cancer screening were randomly assigned (1:1) to receive an invitation to a second appointment with fixed date and time (intervention) or an invitation letter with a telephone number to call to book their new screening appointment (control) in the event of non-attendance at the first offered appointment. Randomisation was by SX number, a sequential unique identifier of each woman within the NHSBSP, and at the beginning of the study a coin toss decided whether women with odd or even SX numbers would be allocated to the intervention group. Women aged 50-70 years who did not attend their first offered appointment were eligible for the analysis. The primary endpoint was participation (ie, attendance at breast cancer screening) within 90 days of the date of the first offered appointment; we used Poisson regression to compare the proportion of women who participated in screening in the study groups. All analyses were by intention to treat. This trial is registered with Barts Health, number 009304QM. FINDINGS: We obtained 33 146 records of women invited for breast cancer screening at the six centres between June 2, 2014, and Sept 30, 2015, who did not attend their first offered appointment. 26 054 women were eligible for this analysis (12 807 in the intervention group and 13 247 in the control group). Participation within 90 days of the first offered appointment was significantly higher in the intervention group (2861 [22%] of 12 807) than in the control group (1632 [12%] of 13 247); relative risk of participation 1·81 (95% CI 1·70-1·93; p<0·0001). INTERPRETATION: These findings show that a policy of second appointments with fixed date and time for non-attenders of breast screening is effective in improving participation. This strategy can be easily implemented by the screening sites and, if combined with simple interventions, could further increase participation and ensure an upward shift in the participation trend nationally. Whether the policy should vary by time since last attended screen will have to be considered. FUNDING: National Health Service Cancer Screening Programmes and Department of Health Policy Research Programme

Globalization, educational targeting and stable inequalities : a comparative analysis of Argentina, Brazil and Chile

This article analyzes educational targeting in Argentina, Brazil and Chile from a sociological point of view. In essence, it presents the 'logic of induction' as an ideal type. This pedagogic discourse is the vehicle of an educational anti-poverty strategy that expects to induce clearly targeted groups to improve on their own. The analysis explores the influence of the global educational agenda, the empirical connection between this discourse and the mechanism of emulation as well as the territorialization of educational inequality. Emulation plays the main role inasmuch as the logic of induction eventually leads the target groups to compare their adverse situation with more privileged groups, what legitimizes the current structures of categorical inequality (Tilly 1998). Finally, a brief statistical summary reports that the trends of educational inequality have remained stable as far as urban- rural ratios (in Brazil and Chile) and regional disparities (in the three countries) are concerned

A Multi-Component Model of the Developing Retinocollicular Pathway Incorporating Axonal and Synaptic Growth

During development, neurons extend axons to different brain areas and produce stereotypical patterns of connections. The mechanisms underlying this process have been intensively studied in the visual system, where retinal neurons form retinotopic maps in the thalamus and superior colliculus. The mechanisms active in map formation include molecular guidance cues, trophic factor release, spontaneous neural activity, spike-timing dependent plasticity (STDP), synapse creation and retraction, and axon growth, branching and retraction. To investigate how these mechanisms interact, a multi-component model of the developing retinocollicular pathway was produced based on phenomenological approximations of each of these mechanisms. Core assumptions of the model were that the probabilities of axonal branching and synaptic growth are highest where the combined influences of chemoaffinity and trophic factor cues are highest, and that activity-dependent release of trophic factors acts to stabilize synapses. Based on these behaviors, model axons produced morphologically realistic growth patterns and projected to retinotopically correct locations in the colliculus. Findings of the model include that STDP, gradient detection by axonal growth cones and lateral connectivity among collicular neurons were not necessary for refinement, and that the instructive cues for axonal growth appear to be mediated first by molecular guidance and then by neural activity. Although complex, the model appears to be insensitive to variations in how the component developmental mechanisms are implemented. Activity, molecular guidance and the growth and retraction of axons and synapses are common features of neural development, and the findings of this study may have relevance beyond organization in the retinocollicular pathway

On the Track of the Books Scribes, Libraries and Textual Transmission

Aims and Scope This book offers the hint for a new reflection on ancient textual transmission and editorial practices in Antiquity.In the first section, it retraces the first steps of the process of ancient writing and editing. The reader will discover how the book is both a material object and a metaphorical personification, material or immaterial. The second section will focus on corpora of Greek texts, their formation, and their paratextual apparatus. Readers will explore various issues dealing with the mechanisms that are at the basis of the assembling of ancient Greek texts, but great attention will also be given to the role of ancient scholarly work. The third section shows how texts have two levels of authorship: the author of the text, and the scribe who copies the text. The scribe is not a medium, but plays a crucial role in changing the text. This section will focus on the protagonists of some interesting cases of textual transmission, but also on the books they manufactured or kept in the libraries, and on the words they engraved on stones. Therefore, the fresh voices of the contributors of this book, offer new perspectives on established research fields dealing with textual criticism