A Modern Plague: U.S. Racial and Ethnic Vaccination Disparities During the 2009 H1N1 Influenza Pandemic

On June 11, 2009 the World Health Organization announced that a novel strain of H1N1 influenza was being classified a Phase 6 pandemic, the highest level of alarm indicating that the disease was present worldwide and its spread was inevitable. While seasonal influenza epidemics occur annually, the 2009 H1N1 strain was the first novel pandemic influenza since the 1968 Hong Kong flu. The 2009 H1N1 pandemic provides a case study of how the U.S. population responded to an emergent and potentially lethal infectious disease. The richness and variety of public health data presents an opportunity to examine predictors of vaccination among men and women from different racial/ethnic groups. Because vaccination is often the most effective way to prevent influenza, it is important to understand the predictors of low vaccination uptake during the H1N1 pandemic to better prepare for future novel outbreaks of influenza. Through a series of three research papers, my dissertation provides a comprehensive examination of the ways that race, ethnicity and gender affected H1N1 vaccination behavior. Paper 1 explores the diversity of the U.S. Hispanic population by estimating H1N1 vaccination uptake among U.S-born and foreign-born Hispanics. In Paper 2, I shift my focus to H1N1 vaccination disparities between non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks in the U.S. This paper further explores racial disparities in vaccination by examining intersections with gender and analyzing the influence of attitudes and beliefs about the H1N1 vaccine. In Paper 3, I provide a more detailed account of the socioeconomic and attitudinal mechanisms through which race, ethnicity and gender influence H1N1 vaccination. My research confirms large racial/ethnic disparities in H1N1 vaccination and identifies mechanisms amenable to policy change that could reduce the disease burden of a future influenza pandemic

Observations of Metallic Species in Mercury's Exosphere

From observations of the metallic species sodium (Na), potassium (K), and magnesium (Mg) in Mercury's exosphere, we derive implications for source and loss processes. All metallic species observed exhibit a distribution and/or line width characteristic of high to extreme temperature - tens of thousands of degrees K. The temperatures of refractory species, including magnesium and calcium, indicate that the source process for the atoms observed in the tail and near-planet exosphere are consistent with ion sputtering and/or impact vaporization of a molecule with subsequent dissociation into the atomic form. The extended Mg tail is consistent with a surface abundance of 5-8% Mg by number, if 30% of impact-vaporized Mg remains as MgO and half of the impact vapor condenses. Globally, ion sputtering is not a major source of Mg, but locally the sputtered source can be larger than the impact vapor source. We conclude that the Na and K in Mercury's exosphere can be derived from a regolith composition similar to that of Luna 16 soil (or Apollo 17 orange glass), in which the abundance by number is 0.0027 (0.0028) for Na and 0.0006 (0.0045) for K

The trpE Gene Negatively Regulates Differentiation of Heterocysts at the Level of Induction in Anabaena sp. Strain PCC 7120

Levels of 2-oxoglutarate (2-OG) reflect nitrogen status in many bacteria. In heterocystous cyanobacteria, a spike in the 2-OG level occurs shortly after the removal of combined nitrogen from cultures and is an integral part of the induction of heterocyst differentiation. In this work, deletion of one of the two annotated trpE genes in Anabaena sp. strain PCC 7120 resulted in a spike in the 2-OG level and subsequent differentiation of a wild-type pattern of heterocysts when filaments of the mutant were transferred from growth on ammonia to growth on nitrate. In contrast, 2-OG levels were unaffected in the wild type, which did not differentiate under the same conditions. An inverted-repeat sequence located upstream of trpE bound a central regulator of differentiation, HetR, in vitro and was necessary for HetR-dependent transcription of a reporter fusion and complementation of the mutant phenotype in vivo. Functional complementation of the mutant phenotype with the addition of tryptophan suggested that levels of tryptophan, rather than the demonstrated anthranilate synthase activity of TrpE, mediated the developmental response of the wild type to nitrate. A model is presented for the observed increase in 2-OG in the trpE mutant

Formation and Propagation of Matter Wave Soliton Trains

Attraction between atoms in a Bose-Einstein-Condensate renders the condensate unstable to collapse. Confinement in an atom trap, however, can stabilize the condensate for a limited number of atoms, as was observed with 7Li, but beyond this number, the condensate collapses. Attractive condensates constrained to one-dimensional motion are predicted to form stable solitons for which the attractive interactions exactly compensate for the wave packet dispersion. Here we report the formation or bright solitons of 7Li atoms created in a quasi-1D optical trap. The solitons are created from a stable Bose-Einstein condensate by magnetically tuning the interactions from repulsive to attractive. We observe a soliton train, containing many solitons. The solitons are set in motion by offsetting the optical potential and are observed to propagate in the potential for many oscillatory cycles without spreading. Repulsive interactions between neighboring solitons are inferred from their motion

Strong Bulk Photovoltaic Effect in Planar Barium Titanate Thin Films

The bulk photovoltaic effect (BPE) leads to the generation of a photocurrent from an asymmetric material. Despite drawing much attention due to its ability to generate photovoltages above the band gap ($E_g$), it is considered a weak effect due to the low generated photocurrents. Here, we show that a remarkably high photoresponse can be achieved by exploiting the BPE in simple planar BaTiO$_3$ (BTO) films, solely by tuning their fundamental ferroelectric properties via strain and growth orientation induced by epitaxial growth on different substrates. We find a non-monotonic dependence of the responsivity ($R_{\rm SC}$) on the ferroelectric polarization ($P$) and obtain a remarkably high BPE coefficient ($\beta$) of $\approx$10$^{-2}$ 1/V, which to the best of our knowledge is the highest reported to date for standard planar BTO thin films. We show that the standard first-principles-based descriptions of BPE in bulk materials cannot account for the photocurrent trends observed for our films and therefore propose a novel mechanism that elucidates the fundamental relationship between $P$ and responsivity in ferroelectric thin films. Our results suggest that practical applications of ferroelectric photovoltaics in standard planar film geometries can be achieved through careful joint optimization of the bulk structure, light absorption, and electrode-absorber interface properties.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

The Impact of Obesity on US Mortality Levels: The Importance of Age and Cohort Factors in Population Estimates

To estimate the percentage of excess death for US Black and White men and women associated with high body mass, we examined the combined effects of age variation in the obesity–mortality relationship and cohort variation in age-specific obesity prevalence

Systematic Analysis of Circulating Soluble Angiogenesis-Associated Proteins in ICON7 Identifies Tie2 as a Biomarker of Vascular Progression on Bevacizumab

background: There is a critical need for predictive/resistance biomarkers for VEGF inhibitors to optimise their use. methods: Blood samples were collected during and following treatment and, where appropriate, upon progression from ovarian cancer patients in ICON7, a randomised phase III trial of carboplatin and paclitaxel with or without bevacizumab. Plasma concentrations of 15 circulating angio-biomarkers were measured using a validated multiplex ELISA, analysed through a novel network analysis and their relevance to the PFS then determined. results: Samples (n=650) were analysed from 92 patients. Bevacizumab induced correlative relationships between Ang1 and Tie2 plasma concentrations, which reduced after initiation of treatment and remained decreased until progressive disease occurred. A 50% increase from the nadir in the concentration of circulating Tie2 (or the product of circulating Ang1 and Tie2) predicted tumour progression. Combining Tie2 with GCIG-defined Ca125 data yielded a significant improvement in the prediction of progressive disease in patients receiving bevacizumab in comparison with Ca125 alone (74.1% vs 47.3%, P<1 × 10−9). conclusions: Tie2 is a vascular progression marker for bevacizumab-treated ovarian cancer patients. Tie2 in combination with Ca125 provides superior information to clinicians on progressive disease in patients with VEGFi-treated ovarian cancers

Secondary antiprotons and propagation of cosmic rays in the Galaxy and heliosphere

High-energy collisions of cosmic-ray nuclei with interstellar gas are believed to be the mechanism producing the majority of cosmic ray antiprotons. Due to the kinematics of the process they are created with a nonzero momentum; the characteristic spectral shape with a maximum at ~2 GeV and a sharp decrease towards lower energies makes antiprotons a unique probe of models for particle propagation in the Galaxy and modulation in the heliosphere. On the other hand, accurate calculation of the secondary antiproton flux provides a ``background'' for searches for exotic signals from the annihilation of supersymmetric particles and primordial black hole evaporation. Recently new data with large statistics on both low and high energy antiproton fluxes have become available which allow such tests to be performed. We use our propagation code GALPROP to calculate interstellar cosmic-ray propagation for a variety of models. We show that there is no simple model capable of accurately describing the whole variety of data: boron/carbon and sub-iron/iron ratios, spectra of protons, helium, antiprotons, positrons, electrons, and diffuse gamma rays. We find that only a model with a break in the diffusion coefficient plus convection can reproduce measurements of cosmic-ray species, and the reproduction of primaries (p, He) can be further improved by introducing a break in the primary injection spectra. For our best-fit model we make predictions of proton and antiproton fluxes near the Earth for different modulation levels and magnetic polarity using a steady-state drift model of propagation in the heliosphere.Comment: Many Updates, 20 pages, 15 ps-figures, emulateapj5.sty. To be published in ApJ v.564 January 10, 2002 issue. More details can be found at http://www.gamma.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~aws/aws.htm

A multi-decade record of high quality fCO2 data in version 3 of the Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT)

The Surface Ocean CO2 Atlas (SOCAT) is a synthesis of quality-controlled fCO2 (fugacity of carbon dioxide) values for the global surface oceans and coastal seas with regular updates. Version 3 of SOCAT has 14.7 million fCO2 values from 3646 data sets covering the years 1957 to 2014. This latest version has an additional 4.6 million fCO2 values relative to version 2 and extends the record from 2011 to 2014. Version 3 also significantly increases the data availability for 2005 to 2013. SOCAT has an average of approximately 1.2 million surface water fCO2 values per year for the years 2006 to 2012. Quality and documentation of the data has improved. A new feature is the data set quality control (QC) flag of E for data from alternative sensors and platforms. The accuracy of surface water fCO2 has been defined for all data set QC flags. Automated range checking has been carried out for all data sets during their upload into SOCAT. The upgrade of the interactive Data Set Viewer (previously known as the Cruise Data Viewer) allows better interrogation of the SOCAT data collection and rapid creation of high-quality figures for scientific presentations. Automated data upload has been launched for version 4 and will enable more frequent SOCAT releases in the future. High-profile scientific applications of SOCAT include quantification of the ocean sink for atmospheric carbon dioxide and its long-term variation, detection of ocean acidification, as well as evaluation of coupled-climate and ocean-only biogeochemical models. Users of SOCAT data products are urged to acknowledge the contribution of data providers, as stated in the SOCAT Fair Data Use Statement. This ESSD (Earth System Science Data) “living data” publication documents the methods and data sets used for the assembly of this new version of the SOCAT data collection and compares these with those used for earlier versions of the data collection (Pfeil et al., 2013; Sabine et al., 2013; Bakker et al., 2014). Individual data set files, included in the synthesis product, can be downloaded here: doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.849770. The gridded products are available here: doi:10.3334/CDIAC/OTG.SOCAT_V3_GRID