Which Austin-area ZIP codes have the most coronavirus cases and why

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Managing pertussis in adults

Pertussis or whooping cough is typically characterised by paroxysms of coughing with a whooping sound during inhalation. It is thought to be under-diagnosed generally. Whooping cough is caused by Bordetella pertussis and is highly contagious. Although childhood immunisation has been effective in preventing the disease, outbreaks in Australia have been associated with waning immunity in older children and adolescents. The peak incidence of infection now occurs in people aged 15 or older. When given early in the illness, antibiotics can decrease the infectious period, but have no effect on the duration or severity of disease. Symptomatic treatment of cough has shown no clear benefit. Antibiotic prophylaxis of contacts is recommended for certain high-risk groups, but there is limited evidence of its effectiveness. Although infants remain the most at risk for severe, life-threatening disease, it is adolescent and adult booster immunisation which remains critical for prevention programs

Our Parents, Ourselves: Health Care for an Aging Population; A Report of the Dartmouth Atlas Project

The new Dartmouth Atlas, funded by The John A. Hartford Foundation, is a report card that analyzes Medicare data to show us where the United States is making progress in patient-centered, evidence-based care for Medicare beneficiaries and where improvement is still needed. It also offers insight into regional variations in care.Filling in the gaps in our knowledge about the state of care across the country will help health care providers, health systems, and patients and families work together to improve care for all older adults.This Dartmouth Atlas report looks at a number of measures from Medicare data, including:The number of days older adults spend in contact with the health care system;Use of high-risk medications;Cancer screening rates (and how they compare with recommendations);30-day hospital readmission rates;Annual Wellness Visit (AWV) rates;Late hospice referral; andThe number of days spent in intensive care.The report also offers a historical look at key practices, comparing data from 2003-05 and 2012

Body Image from the Military Service Member\u27s Perspective: The Effects of Weight Concerns and Social Pressures, and Health-Related Attitudes

Military service members are required to meet service-specific weight and body fat standards, and both active duty and reserve military personnel are required to maintain weight and fitness standards. This requirement to be fit and healthy is often found as an additional stressor and as an influence on body image. Also, anxiety and changes in eating and exercise prior to the bi-annual fitness tests have been documented. Thus, it is important to understand the military service member\u27s weight and body image perceptions in order to adequately plan intervention programs for the service members. The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of body image of military service members to better understand social-psychological needs to improve body image. Specifically, this study investigates the effects of weight concerns, perceived social pressures, as well as exercise and eating attitudes on body image

Identifying a Transcription Factor’s Regulatory Targets from its Binding Targets

ChIP-chip data, which shows binding of transcription factors (TFs) to promoter regions in vivo, are widely used by biologists to identify the regulatory targets of TFs. However, the binding of a TF to a gene does not necessarily imply regulation. Thus, it is important to develop computational methods which can extract a TF’s regulatory targets from its binding targets. We developed a method, called REgulatory Targets Extraction Algorithm (RETEA), which uses partial correlation analysis on gene expression data to extract a TF’s regulatory targets from its binding targets inferred from ChIP-chip data. We applied RETEA to yeast cell cycle microarray data and identified the plausible regulatory targets of eleven known cell cycle TFs. We validated our predictions by checking the enrichments for cell cycle-regulated genes, common cellular processes and common molecular functions. Finally, we showed that RETEA performs better than three published methods (MA-Network, TRIA and Garten et al’s method)

Retail Therapy: What Makes You Feel Relieved and Happy?

Today the term retail therapy has been used frequently and the concept of retail therapy has received notable attention from both marketers and scholars. Shopping has always been a form of therapy for consumers because they experience a significant amount of pleasure from the act of browsing or buying. Researchers have identified some factors to explain retail therapy motivations, such as loneliness, boredom, mood alleviation, and others. (Atalay & Meloy, 2011; Kang & Johnson, 2011). However, little research has been done to understand or draw linkages between personal characteristics (as antecedents) and retail therapy. Therefore, understanding what factors influence retail therapy and how the factors motivate retail therapy is critical. Consequently, this study aims to 1) examine the antecedents of retail therapy and 2) explore the impact of personal characteristics on retail therapy

An Investigation of Self-Concept, Clothing Selection, and Life Satisfaction among Disabled Consumers

Because consumer behavior research has typically focused on the population of “haves” and assumed consumers’ normalcy (Miller, 1997), the population of “have nots” has been largely ignored by researchers. As a result, we have a limited understanding of disabled individuals as consumers, particularly their behaviors related to the selection of clothing to wear. Thus, this study is designed to better understand disabled consumers and to investigate the influence of disabled individuals’ multifaceted self-concept on their motivations for clothing selection