Smoking as an early risk factor for problematic parenting practices

Parenting among those who use non-illicit and more common drugs such as cigarettes remains an understudied area for investigation. Secondary data analyses were performed in 2015 on a prospective study with parent and twin data available on n=3,009 individual members of female twin pairs born between July 1975 and June 1985 identified from Missouri-state birth records. Maternal smoking when the twins were 3+ years of age remained a significant predictor of offspring report of childhood sexual abuse (OR, 1.40; 95% CI, 1.02-1.92) after controlling for key covariates. Given limited public health resources, mothers who smoke during child's preschool years may be targeted for tailored parenting intervention

Enabling Future Sustainability Transitions: An Urban Metabolism Approach to Los Angeles Pincetl et al. Enabling Future Sustainability Transitions

Summary: This synthesis article presents an overview of an urban metabolism (UM) approach using mixed methods and multiple sources of data for Los Angeles, California. We examine electric energy use in buildings and greenhouse gas emissions from electricity, and calculate embedded infrastructure life cycle effects, water use and solid waste streams in an attempt to better understand the urban flows and sinks in the Los Angeles region (city and county). This quantification is being conducted to help policy-makers better target energy conservation and efficiency programs, pinpoint best locations for distributed solar generation, and support the development of policies for greater environmental sustainability. It provides a framework to which many more UM flows can be added to create greater understanding of the study area's resource dependencies. Going forward, together with policy analysis, UM can help untangle the complex intertwined resource dependencies that cities must address as they attempt to increase their environmental sustainability

Forced conversion: civil-military relations and national security policy in the Carter administration, 1977-1981

President Jimmy Carter took the helm as commander-in-chief at an important juncture in American civil-military relations. Civil-military conflict prevailed throughout most of Carter's term primarily because of the president's attempt to exclude Congress from any role in defense policy and budget formulation. Although differing with Carter on many issues, the Joint Chiefs of Staff still proved willing to compromise with their commander-in-chief as well as most of their civilian superiors in the Pentagon. Unanimous support from the Joint Chiefs for the SALT II treaty provided one of the best examples of this willingness to support their civilian superiors. Despite such instances of cooperation between Carter and his military advisors, a military-congressional alliance formed over his four-year term in which key members of the legislature sought to overturn the president on many issues relevant to national defense. Encouraged by frank testimony from the Joint Chiefs expressing their views of weaknesses in Carter's policies and budgets, this military-congressional alliance largely blocked the administration's plans to limit global commitments and economize in national defense. In defeating Carter's plans through a series of end-runs, this military-congressional alliance set the stage for one of the largest peacetime military buildups in the nation's history. Jimmy Carter's bold plans to change national defense policy were defeated and only the most modest of reforms took place. This dissertation details the course of this relationship between the Pentagon, White House, and Congress in a topical chronology that examines three interrelated themes: the civil-military dialogue surrounding the annual defense budget process, how civil-military relations affected and were influenced by the making of national security policy, and finally how specific events requiring close civil-military contact influenced the relationship

Conflict, Cooperation, and Congressional End-Runs: The Defense Budget and Civil-Military Relations in the Carter Administration, 1977-1978

President Jimmy Carter became commander-in-chief at an important juncture in American civil-military relations. This study adds to the largely neglected historiography of civil-military relations during the Carter years by examining the administration’s first two years, using the civil-military dialogue surrounding the fiscal year 1978 and fiscal year 1979 defense budgets as its primary category of analysis. The study demonstrates that growing cooperation within the Pentagon, increasing conflict between the Pentagon and the White House, and a strengthening military-congressional alliance best characterized civil-military relations in the first two years of the Carter administration. This pattern of civil-military relations prevailed primarily due to early and intense presidential involvement in the defense budgetary process and because of the administration’s attempts to re-prioritize defense spending. The culmination of this pattern of civil-military relations in the administration’s first two years was the presidential veto of the fiscal year 1979 defense appropriations bill

Cooling season full and part load performance evaluation of Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) system using an occupancy simulated research building

VRF systems are touted for their superior part-load performance compared to conventional systems. This study compares both the full and part-load performance of a VRF system with a conventional RTU VAV system in a multi-zone office building with emulated occupancy. To accomplish this, full and part-load conditions (i.e., 100%, 75% and 50% loads) in the building are maintained alternately by conditioning either the entire building or selected zones, and emulating the occupancy, accordingly. During the study period, each system is operated alternately under each of the three load conditions for 2-3 days, and the system parameters, indoor and outdoor conditions, loads, and energy use are monitored.  The cooling season performance and energy use of both systems was monitored during the summer of 2015. System performance is compared in terms of weather-normalized HVAC energy consumption and seasonal average COP. In addition, the ability of each system to maintain the indoor temperature in the conditioned zones is also evaluated. Based on the analysis, the energy savings for the VRF system compared with the RTU system for the cooling season are estimated to be 29%, 36%, and 46% under the 100%, 75%, and 50% load conditions, respectively. The average cooling COP was ~4.0-4.5, 3.9, and 3.7 for the VRF system and 3.1, 2.9, 2.5 for the RTU system under the 100%, 75% and 50% load conditions. Both systems maintained the indoor temperature very well. However, the VRF system maintained the indoor temperature in a slightly tighter range compared to the RTU system

Pathogenicity locus, core genome, and accessory gene contributions to Clostridium difficile virulence

Clostridium difficile is a spore-forming anaerobic bacterium that causes colitis in patients with disrupted colonic microbiota. While some individuals are asymptomatic C. difficile carriers, symptomatic disease ranges from mild diarrhea to potentially lethal toxic megacolon. The wide disease spectrum has been attributed to the infected host’s age, underlying diseases, immune status, and microbiome composition. However, strain-specific differences in C. difficile virulence have also been implicated in determining colitis severity. Because patients infected with C. difficile are unique in terms of medical history, microbiome composition, and immune competence, determining the relative contribution of C. difficile virulence to disease severity has been challenging, and conclusions regarding the virulence of specific strains have been inconsistent. To address this, we used a mouse model to test 33 clinical C. difficile strains isolated from patients with disease severities ranging from asymptomatic carriage to severe colitis, and we determined their relative in vivo virulence in genetically identical, antibiotic-pretreated mice. We found that murine infections with C. difficile clade 2 strains (including multilocus sequence type 1/ribotype 027) were associated with higher lethality and that C. difficile strains associated with greater human disease severity caused more severe disease in mice. While toxin production was not strongly correlated with in vivo colonic pathology, the ability of C. difficile strains to grow in the presence of secondary bile acids was associated with greater disease severity. Whole-genome sequencing and identification of core and accessory genes identified a subset of accessory genes that distinguish high-virulence from lower-virulence C. difficile strains

Immune checkpoint inhibitors in pre-treated gastric cancer patients: Results from a literature-based meta-analysis

Immunotherapy has recently changed the treatment of several cancers. We performed a literature-based meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials to assess the efficacy of the novel immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in metastatic gastric cancer. The main outcome was overall survival. Based on age (cut-off agreed at 65 years), tumour location (gastric vs. gastro-oesophageal junction), programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) status, sex and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) status (1 vs. 0), we scheduled a subgroup analysis for the overall survival. Three studies were included in the analysis for a total of 1456 cases (811 cases were in the experimental group and 645 cases in the control group). The pooled analysis showed improved overall survival in the experimental arm in the absence of statistical significance (hazard ratio (HR) = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.64\u20131.18; p = 0.37). The subgroup of patients with PD-L1-positive tumours (HR = 0.82 vs. 1.04) and gastro-oesophageal junction cancer (HR = 0.82 vs. 1.04) showed a statistically significant advantage of overall survival. This study supports the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors in the subgroup of patients with metastatic gastric cancer with PD-L1-positive and gastro-oesophageal junction tumour location. Future studies are needed with the aim of identifying reliable predictive biomarkers of ICI efficacy

Marine fish landings in Andhra Pradesh during 2016 - An overview

Andhra Pradesh with a coastline of 974 km, and nine coastal districts has 1.63 lakh marine fishermen families residing in the 555 marine fishing villages (Marine Fisheries Census 2010) who depend on fishing either directly or through allied activities for their livelihood. The state is cyclone prone and during the past decade, cyclones have severely affected the state’s fisheries sector. The marine fish landings was 1.92 lakh tonnes (t) in the year 2016, which was 35% less than that of the previous year. The drastic reduction in the landings of the state may be attributed to reduction in fishing operations during the months of September, October and November due to cyclone warnings. Among the coastal districts, East Godavari contributed the highest (33%) to total marine fish landings of the state, followed by Visakhapatnam (22%) and Srikakulam (11%). In spite of decline in the catch contributions from a few landing centres like Bhairavpalem