Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies

The revised and updated groundswell is a must-read for anyone who wants to take advantage of the opportunities of a newly emerging environment in which customers have a say in your business. Expanded with uo to the minute statistic and new chapters on Twitter and the organizational challenges as they emege, understand how customer participation can strengthen your business and create a process for building this vital marketing channel into your future stratefy

Innovative Research Framework for Strengthening Health Care and Public Health Engagement in Neighborhood Change as a Social Determinant of Health

Background Neighborhood change is a social determinant of health (SDOH) that has been associated with adverse health and increased health care utilization. The number of cities and neighborhoods undergoing intense gentrification, defined as an influx of wealthy populations into a working-class neighborhood, is not highly numerous. Public health and health systems are increasingly engaged with SDOH in community-level interventions. Pathways to study and affect NC-related health impacts are limited. This unfunded study provides a research framework to address concerns about financial investment, identifying population health needs, and community stakeholder engagement. Methods The authors conducted a cross-sectional pilot study in a highly gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, DC. They employed adapted and novel measures to gain insight into perspectives about NC and factors associated with poor health and high social vulnerability. The use of community and academic boards supported all phases of the research project. The methodological approaches of this study are discussed at length to benefit ease of adoption. Discussion Several features of this NC study, including lack of funding, use of random household sampling, tailoring of measures to neighborhood, and extensive engagement with a community advisory board distinguish it from other NC studies. This study is beneficial to public health and health systems interested in SDOH, while providing a pathway for compliance with federal requirements on community health need assessments

The β\beta-transformation with a hole at 0

For $\beta\in(1,2]$ the $\beta$-transformation $T_\beta: [0,1) \to [0,1)$ is defined by $T_\beta ( x) = \beta x \pmod 1$. For $t\in[0, 1)$ let $K_\beta(t)$ be the survivor set of $T_\beta$ with hole $(0,t)$ given by $$K_\beta(t):=\{x\in[0, 1): T_\beta^n(x)\not \in (0, t) \textrm{ for all }n\ge 0\}.$$ In this paper we characterise the bifurcation set $E_\beta$ of all parameters $t\in[0,1)$ for which the set valued function $t\mapsto K_\beta(t)$ is not locally constant. We show that $E_\beta$ is a Lebesgue null set of full Hausdorff dimension for all $\beta\in(1,2)$. We prove that for Lebesgue almost every $\beta\in(1,2)$ the bifurcation set $E_\beta$ contains both infinitely many isolated and accumulation points arbitrarily close to zero. On the other hand, we show that the set of $\beta\in(1,2)$ for which $E_\beta$ contains no isolated points has zero Hausdorff dimension. These results contrast with the situation for $E_2$, the bifurcation set of the doubling map. Finally, we give for each $\beta \in (1,2)$ a lower and upper bound for the value $\tau_\beta$, such that the Hausdorff dimension of $K_\beta(t)$ is positive if and only if $t< \tau_\beta$. We show that $\tau_\beta \le 1-\frac1{\beta}$ for all $\beta \in (1,2)$.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figure

Reliability, Validity, and Exploratory Factor Analyses of Gentrification Health Research Measures

Background Gentrification is a type of neighborhood change (NC) that causes demographic shifts and improvement in the built environment. Adverse health outcomes associated with NC have not been consistently established in the literature. Yet, major methodological barriers define this field of study including lack of tailored and culturally relevant measures. This aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of novel and adapted NC measures that sought to improve appropriateness for all literacy levels, to enhance survey efficiency, and to assess features of the built environment. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study in a highly gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, DC using 17 scales and indexes on neighborhood attachment, effects on family/friends, perceived impact on certain population, and assessment of intensity of NC. We assessed reliability and validity to include tests of internal consistency, split-half reliability testing, and correlation analyses. We sought dimension reduction through factor analysis to understand areas of NC. Results The analytic sample included 146 respondents. The multiitem scales — Neighborhood Attachment (NA), Ability to Influence Neighborhood Change (AINC), and Heightened Perceptions of Neighborhood Change (HPNC) — performed well based on reliability and validity analyses. The factors analysis resulted in three components on NC: positive perceptions of NC, social dimension of NC, and NC change intensity and decline. Discussion Given the promising psychometric quality of measures, this study opens new pathways for conducting gentrification health research by providing new tools and methods for tailoring

Review of Online Food Delivery Platforms and their Impacts on Sustainability

During the global 2020 COVID-19 outbreak, the advantages of online food delivery (FD) were obvious, as it facilitated consumer access to prepared meals and enabled food providers to keep operating. However, online FD is not without its critics, with reports of consumer and restaurant boycotts. It is, therefore, time to take stock and consider the broader impacts of online FD, and what they mean for the stakeholders involved. Using the three pillars of sustainability as a lens through which to consider the impacts, this review presents the most up-to-date research in this field, revealing a raft of positive and negative impacts. From an economic standpoint, while online FD provides job and sale opportunities, it has been criticized for the high commission it charges restaurants and questionable working conditions for delivery people. From a social perspective, online FD affects the relationship between consumers and their food, as well as influencing public health outcomes and traffic systems. Environmental impacts include the significant generation of waste and its high carbon footprints. Moving forward, stakeholders must consider how best to mitigate the negative and promote the positive impacts of online FD to ensure that it is sustainable in every sense

Oriented Cell Growth on Self-Assembled Bacteriophage M13 Thin Films

Fibrillar M13 bacteriophages were used as basic building blocks to generate thin films with aligned nanogrooves, which, upon chemical grafting with RGD peptides, guide cell alignment and orient the cell outgrowth along defined directions

Guide to antimicrobial therapy 2017

Sepsis still remains the leading cause of admissions and deaths in the ICU. The administration of antibiotics is imperative in its treatment. Like many areas of medicine the knowledge of sepsis and antibiotic use has markedly increased especially the later in areas of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. It becomes urgent to continually evaluate and apply this knowledge, hence the need to revise this antimicrobial guide after 5 years. The threat that one day antibiotics may be obsolete is not a fallacy. Often we are oblivious to the fact that we, the prescribers play a significant role in the propagation of resistant organisms through poor prescribing habits. Antibiotic stewardship calls for a multidisciplinary approach to the handling of antibiotics. A chapter has been dedicated to this. The book remains true to its aims as a convenient up-to-date pocket guide for local doctors caring for the critically ill septic patient. However it must be emphasised that the recommendations do not over ride sound clinical judgement and local antibiotic-susceptibility data. We would like to thank our reviewers for their expertise and invaluable recommendations. This book has been a culmination of many hours of evidence review and exchange of opinions. We hope it will be a useful compendium for daily practice

Rhodopsin Phosphorylation Sites and Their Role in Arrestin Binding

Rhodopsin, the rod cell photoreceptor, undergoes rapid desensitization upon exposure to light, resulting in uncoupling of the receptor from its G protein, transducin (Gt). Phosphorylation of serine and threonine residues located in the COOH terminus of rhodopsin is the first step in this process, followed by the binding of arrestin. In this study, a series of mutants was generated in which these COOH-terminal phosphorylation substrate sites were substituted with alanines. These mutants were expressed in HEK-293 cells and analyzed for their ability to be phosphorylated by rhodopsin kinase and to bind arrestin. The results demonstrate that rhodopsin kinase can efficiently phosphorylate other serine and threonine residues in the absence of the sites reported to be the preferred substrates for rhodopsin kinase. A correlation was observed between the level of rhodopsin phosphorylation and the amount of arrestin binding to these mutants. However, mutants T340A and S343A demonstrated a significant reduction in arrestin binding even though the level of phosphorylation was similar to that of wild-type rhodopsin. Substitution of Thr-340 and Ser-343 with glutamic acid residues (T340E and S343E, respectively) was not sufficient to promote the binding of arrestin in the absence of phosphorylation by rhodopsin kinase. When S343E was phosphorylated, its ability to bind arrestin was similar to that of wild-type rhodopsin. Surprisingly, arrestin binding to phosphorylated T340E did not increase to the level observed for wild-type rhodopsin. These results suggest that 2 amino acids, Thr-340 and Ser-343, play important but distinct roles in promoting the binding of arrestin to rhodopsin

A randomized controlled trial testing the effects of a social needs navigation intervention on health outcomes and healthcare utilization among Medicaid members with type 2 diabetes

Health systems are increasingly assessing and addressing social needs with referrals to community resources. The objective of this randomized controlled trial was to randomize adult Medicaid members with type 2 diabetes to receive usual care