Achieving urban climate adaptation in Europe and Central Asia

Many cities across Europe and Central Asia are experiencing the impacts of climate change, but most have not integrated climate adaptation into their agendas. This paper examines the threats faced and measures that can be taken by cities in the region to protect buildings, heritage sites, municipal functions, and vulnerable urban populations. In general, local governments must be proactive in ensuring that existing buildings are climate ready, paying particular attention to emerging technologies for retrofitting the prefabricated, panel style buildings that dominate the landscape while assessing the viability of homes situated in flood plains, coastal areas, and steep slopes. They also must ensure that new developments and buildings are designed in ways that account for climatic fluctuations. Although the resilience of all populations needs to be considered, historical patterns of discrimination require that special provisions are made for the poor and for ethnic minorities such as the Roma because these groups will be most at risk, but are least likely to have access to adequate resources. Urban climate adaptation requires national-level support and local commitment. However, centralized planning and expert-led decision-making under the former regimes may affect the ability of cities to pursue programmatic approaches to adaptation. Therefore, while national governments need to make adaptation a policy priority and ensure that municipalities have adequate resources, local government agencies and departments must be transparent in their actions and introduce participatory and community-based measures that demonstrate respect for diverse stakeholders and perspectives.Wetlands,Climate Change Mitigation and Green House Gases,Environmental Economics&Policies,Science of Climate Change,Climate Change Economics

Facebook for Health Promotion: Female College Students’ Perspectives on Sharing HPV Vaccine Information Through Facebook

Facebook, a social network site, has been widely used among young adults. However, its potential to be used as a health promotion medium has not been fully examined. This study explored Facebook\u27s potential for sharing human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine information among female college students in Hawai‘i. Culturally tailored flyers and handouts were developed and distributed at one large university in Hawai‘i to recruit female college students between the age of 18 and 26 having an active Facebook account. Three focus group meetings were conducted to gather student perspectives about how information about HPV vaccine may be best shared via Facebook. We found that students believed Facebook is a good awareness tool but they needed more knowledge about the HPV vaccine to feel comfortable sharing the information. Participants preferred forwarding information to chatting about HPV. Some participants expressed concern that their Facebook friends would think the HPV vaccine information they forwarded on Facebook is spam. Participants suggested prefacing the posted HPV vaccine information with a personal note in their own words to make the message more interesting and relevant to their Facebook friends. Future interventions using Facebook to promote HPV vaccine could provide students with HPV vaccine information from credible sources and ask students to attach personal testimonials or endorsements while forwarding the information on Facebook

Associations between Benign Cutaneous Nevi and Risk of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in Men and Women: Results from Two Prospective Cohort Studies

poster abstractABSTRACT Objective: Previous studies suggest that the number of cutaneous nevi and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) are both associated with endogenous sex hormone levels. However, no prospective studies have specifically examined the relationship between the number of benign cutaneous nevi and T2DM. Research Design and Methods: We prospectively examined the associations between the number of nevi and risk of T2DM among 23,748 men (1986-2010) from the Health Professionals Follow-up Study (HPFS) and 67,050 women (1989-2010) from the Nurses' Health Study (NHS). Information on the numbers of melanocytic nevi on arms and the incidence of T2DM was collected by validated questionnaires. Results: During 1,831,118 person-years of follow-up, we documented 8748 incident cases of T2DM. After adjustment for age, BMI, and other diabetes risk factors, the number of nevi was significantly associated with increased risk of T2DM. Multivariable-adjusted HRs (95% CIs) for <1, 1-5, 6-14, and ≥15 nevi were 1.00 (reference), 1.02 (0.92, 1.14), 1.10 (0.87, 1.38), and 1.70 (1.22, 2.36), respectively, for men (P trend = 0.03) and 1.00 (reference), 1.15 (1.09, 1.21), 1.25 (1.11, 1.40), and 1.70 (1.38, 2.09), respectively, for women (P trend = 0.019). This positive association remained consistent across subgroups of participants. Conclusions: Mole count may represent a novel marker for development of T2DM in men and women, indicating a unique nevus development-related mechanism, possibly due to altered levels or functions of endogenous steroid sex hormones, in the pathogenesis of T2DM. Further studies are warranted to clarify the relationship of nevogenesis and T2DM and underlying mechanisms

Continuous Release of Data Streams under both Centralized and Local Differential Privacy

In this paper, we study the problem of publishing a stream of real-valued data satisfying differential privacy (DP). One major challenge is that the maximal possible value can be quite large; thus it is necessary to estimate a threshold so that numbers above it are truncated to reduce the amount of noise that is required to all the data. The estimation must be done based on the data in a private fashion. We develop such a method that uses the Exponential Mechanism with a quality function that approximates well the utility goal while maintaining a low sensitivity. Given the threshold, we then propose a novel online hierarchical method and several post-processing techniques. Building on these ideas, we formalize the steps into a framework for private publishing of stream data. Our framework consists of three components: a threshold optimizer that privately estimates the threshold, a perturber that adds calibrated noises to the stream, and a smoother that improves the result using post-processing. Within our framework, we design an algorithm satisfying the more stringent setting of DP called local DP (LDP). To our knowledge, this is the first LDP algorithm for publishing streaming data. Using four real-world datasets, we demonstrate that our mechanism outperforms the state-of-the-art by a factor of 6-10 orders of magnitude in terms of utility (measured by the mean squared error of answering a random range query)

Estrogen and progesterone-related gene variants and colorectal cancer risk in women

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Observational studies and randomized trials have suggested that estrogens and/or progesterone may lower the risk for colorectal cancer. Inherited variation in the sex-hormone genes may be one mechanism by which sex hormones affect colorectal cancer, although data are limited.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>We conducted a comprehensive evaluation of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in genes encoding 3 hormone receptors (<it>ESR1, ESR2, PGR</it>) and 5 hormone synthesizers (<it>CYP19A1 and CYP17A1, HSD17B1, HSD17B2, HSD17B4</it>) among 427 women with incident colorectal cancer and 871 matched controls who were Caucasians of European ancestry from 93676 postmenopausal women enrolled in the Women's Health Initiative Observational cohort. A total of 242 haplotype-tagging and functional SNPs in the 8 genes were included for analysis. Unconditional logistic regression with adjustment for age and hysterectomy status was used to estimate odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We observed a weak association between the <it>CYP17A1 </it>rs17724534 SNP and colorectal cancer risk (OR per risk allele (A) = 1.39, 95% CI = 1.09-1.78, corrected p-value = 0.07). In addition, a suggestive interaction between rs17724534 and rs10883782 in 2 discrete LD blocks of <it>CYP17A1 </it>was observed in relation to colorectal cancer (empirical p value = 0.04). Moreover, one haplotype block of <it>CYP19A1 </it>was associated with colorectal cancer (corrected global p value = 0.02), which likely reflected the association with the tagging SNP, rs1902584, in the block.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our findings offer some support for a suggestive association of <it>CYP17A1 </it>and <it>CYP19A1 </it>variants with colorectal cancer risk.</p

Magnesium, vitamin D status and mortality: results from US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001 to 2006 and NHANES III

Background: Magnesium plays an essential role in the synthesis and metabolism of vitamin D and magnesium supplementation substantially reversed the resistance to vitamin D treatment in patients with magnesium-dependent vitamin-D-resistant rickets. We hypothesized that dietary magnesium alone, particularly its interaction with vitamin D intake, contributes to serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) levels, and the associations between serum 25(OH)D and risk of mortality may be modified by magnesium intake level. Methods: We tested these novel hypotheses utilizing data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2001 to 2006, a population-based cross-sectional study, and the NHANES III cohort, a population-based cohort study. Serum 25(OH)D was used to define vitamin D status. Mortality outcomes in the NHANES III cohort were determined by using probabilistic linkage with the National Death Index (NDI). Results: High intake of total, dietary or supplemental magnesium was independently associated with significantly reduced risks of vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency respectively. Intake of magnesium significantly interacted with intake of vitamin D in relation to risk of both vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency. Additionally, the inverse association between total magnesium intake and vitamin D insufficiency primarily appeared among populations at high risk of vitamin D insufficiency. Furthermore, the associations of serum 25(OH)D with mortality, particularly due to cardiovascular disease (CVD) and colorectal cancer, were modified by magnesium intake, and the inverse associations were primarily present among those with magnesium intake above the median. Conclusions: Our preliminary findings indicate it is possible that magnesium intake alone or its interaction with vitamin D intake may contribute to vitamin D status. The associations between serum 25(OH)D and risk of mortality may be modified by the intake level of magnesium. Future studies, including cohort studies and clinical trials, are necessary to confirm the findings

The Aromatase Gene (CYP19A1) Variants and Circulating Hepatocyte Growth Factor in Postmenopausal Women

Background: Estrogen and androgen have been linked to the regulation of circulating hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), an adipose tissue-derived cytokine. It is possible that the CYP19A1 gene which alters sex hormones production may influence HGF levels. We examined the association between the CYP19A1 gene variants and plasma HGF concentrations. Design We evaluated 45 common and putative functional variants of CYP19A1 and circulating levels of HGF among 260 postmenopausal women who later developed colorectal cancer from the Women's Health Initiative Observational Cohort. As the distribution of HGF levels was highly skewed, we transformed HGF concentrations for all women into a log-, ranked-, or normal score-scale value. Multiple linear regression with adjustment for age was used to evaluate the associations. Results: We observed an association between the rs7172156, rs1008805, rs6493494, rs749292, and rs11636639 variants and HGF levels in ranked and normal score scales (corrected p values ≤0.02), although the association of these 5 SNPs with log-scale HGF was not significant (corrected p values ≥0.16). The associations remained unchanged after additional adjustment for hormone therapy use and estradiol levels. These 5 SNPs, which were in linkage disequilibrium (pairwise D′≥97%, r2≥56%), constituted a block with 2 common haplotypes accounting for 82% frequency. The most common haplotype, TCCCA, was associated with lower ranked- or normal score-transformed HGF levels (corrected p values ≤0.001), whereas the second most common haplotype, CTTCA, was associated with higher ranked- or normal score-transformed HGF levels (corrected p values ≤0.02). Conclusion: Our findings of a potential association between the CYP19A1 variants and circulating HGF levels warrant confirmation in studies with larger sample size