Apparent Temperature and Air Pollution vs. Elderly Population Mortality in Metro Vancouver

Background: Meteorological conditions and air pollution in urban environments have been associated with general population and elderly mortality, showing seasonal variation. Objectives: This study is designed to evaluate the relationship between apparent temperature (AT) and air pollution (PM2.5) vs. mortality in elderly population of Metro Vancouver. Methods: Statistical analyses are performed on moving sum daily mortality rates vs. moving average AT and PM 2.5 in 1-, 2-, 3-, 5-, and 7-day models for all seasons, warm temperatures above 15uC, and cold temperatures below 10uC. Results: Approximately 37 % of the variation in all-season mortality from circulatory and respiratory causes can be explained by the variation in 7-day moving average apparent temperature (r 2 = 0.37, p,0.001). Although the analytical results from air pollution models show increasingly better prediction ability of longer time-intervals (r 2 = 0.012, p,0.001 in a 7-day model), a very weak negative association between elderly mortality and air pollution is observed. Conclusions: Apparent temperature is associated with mortality from respiratory and circulatory causes in elderly population of Metro Vancouver. In a changing climate, one may anticipate to observe potential health impacts from the projected high- and particularly from the low-temperature extremes

A qualitative analysis of environmental policy and children's health in Mexico

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Since Mexico's joining the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in 1994, it has witnessed rapid industrialization. A byproduct of this industrialization is increasing population exposure to environmental pollutants, of which some have been associated with childhood disease. We therefore identified and assessed the adequacy of existing international and Mexican governance instruments and policy tools to protect children from environmental hazards.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We first systematically reviewed PubMed, the Mexican legal code and the websites of the United Nations, World Health Organization, NAFTA and OECD as of July 2007 to identify the relevant governance instruments, and analyzed the approach these instruments took to preventing childhood diseases of environmental origin. Secondly, we interviewed a purposive sample of high-level government officials, researchers and non-governmental organization representatives, to identify their opinions and attitudes towards children's environmental health and potential barriers to child-specific protective legislation and implementation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We identified only one policy tool describing specific measures to reduce developmental neurotoxicity and other children's health effects from lead. Other governance instruments mention children's unique vulnerability to ozone, particulate matter and carbon monoxide, but do not provide further details. Most interviewees were aware of Mexican environmental policy tools addressing children's health needs, but agreed that, with few exceptions, environmental policies do not address the specific health needs of children and pregnant women. Interviewees also cited state centralization of power, communication barriers and political resistance as reasons for the absence of a strong regulatory platform.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The Mexican government has not sufficiently accounted for children's unique vulnerability to environmental contaminants. If regulation and legislation are not updated and implemented to protect children, increases in preventable exposures to toxic chemicals in the environment may ensue.</p

FCC-ee: The Lepton Collider: Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 2

In response to the 2013 Update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) study was launched, as an international collaboration hosted by CERN. This study covers a highest-luminosity high-energy lepton collider (FCC-ee) and an energy-frontier hadron collider (FCC-hh), which could, successively, be installed in the same 100 km tunnel. The scientific capabilities of the integrated FCC programme would serve the worldwide community throughout the 21st century. The FCC study also investigates an LHC energy upgrade, using FCC-hh technology. This document constitutes the second volume of the FCC Conceptual Design Report, devoted to the electron-positron collider FCC-ee. After summarizing the physics discovery opportunities, it presents the accelerator design, performance reach, a staged operation scenario, the underlying technologies, civil engineering, technical infrastructure, and an implementation plan. FCC-ee can be built with today’s technology. Most of the FCC-ee infrastructure could be reused for FCC-hh. Combining concepts from past and present lepton colliders and adding a few novel elements, the FCC-ee design promises outstandingly high luminosity. This will make the FCC-ee a unique precision instrument to study the heaviest known particles (Z, W and H bosons and the top quark), offering great direct and indirect sensitivity to new physics

FCC Physics Opportunities: Future Circular Collider Conceptual Design Report Volume 1

We review the physics opportunities of the Future Circular Collider, covering its e+e-, pp, ep and heavy ion programmes. We describe the measurement capabilities of each FCC component, addressing the study of electroweak, Higgs and strong interactions, the top quark and flavour, as well as phenomena beyond the Standard Model. We highlight the synergy and complementarity of the different colliders, which will contribute to a uniquely coherent and ambitious research programme, providing an unmatchable combination of precision and sensitivity to new physics

Sex differences in telomere length are not mediated by sex steroid hormones or body size in early adolescence

Telomere length is a biomarker of cell aging that is hypothesized to contribute to women’s greater longevity. Although most previous studies have found no sex difference in telomere length at birth, it is well established that females have longer average telomere length than males during adulthood. Proposed biological mechanisms underlying sex differences in adult telomere length include differences in sex steroid hormones and body size, which emerge during the pubertal transition. The purpose of this study was to examine the total effect of sex on telomere length during early adolescence and to examine estradiol, total testosterone, and body surface area (BSA; a measure of body size) as potential mediators of sex differences in telomere length. Data were from a population-based sample of 126 female and 109 male Hispanic adolescents aged 8 to 14 years from the Early Life Exposures in Mexico to ENvironmental Toxicants (ELEMENT) study. Relative telomere length (T/S ratio) was measured by the quantitative polymerase chain reaction method; sex steroid hormones were measured using an automated chemiluminescent immunoassay, and BSA was calculated using measured height and weight. Adjusting for age and pubertal status, we found that girls had significantly longer telomeres than boys (β = .13; P < .01), but there were no significant indirect effects of sex on telomere length through any of the proposed mediators. We conclude that sex differences in telomere length are evident during early adolescence but are not explained by cross-sectional differences in sex steroid hormones or body size

Antinuclear antibody prevalence in a general pediatric cohort from Mexico City: discordance between immunofluorescence and multiplex assays

Emily C Somers,1&ndash;3 Seetha U Monrad,1 Jeffrey S Warren,4 Maritsa Solano,5 Lourdes Schnaas,6 Mauricio Hernandez-Avila,5 Martha Maria Tellez-Rojo,5 Howard Hu7 1Divison of Rheumatology, Department of Internal Medicine, 2Department of Environmental Health Sciences, 3Department of Obstetrics &amp; Gynecology, 4Division of Clinical Pathology, Department of Pathology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA; 5Center for Nutrition and Health Research, National Institute of&nbsp;Public Health, Cuernavaca, Morelos,&nbsp;6Department of Developmental Neurobiology, National Institute of Perinatology, Mexico City, Mexico; 7Occupational and Environmental Health, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of&nbsp;Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada Objective: To characterize antinuclear antibody (ANA) prevalence according to distinct assay methodologies in a pediatric cohort from Mexico City, and to further examine associations with age and sex.Methods: Serum ANA were measured by indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) and multiplex immunoassay in 114 children aged 9&ndash;17 years. IFA was considered positive at a cutoff titer of &ge;1:80. Agreement between assay methods was assessed by kappa statistic. Sensitivity, specificity, and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) of the multiplex were computed with IFA as the reference standard.Results: Of the 114 children (mean age 14.7 [standard deviation 2.1] years; 54 [47%] female), 18 of 114 (15.8%) were ANA positive by IFA, and 11 of 114 (9.6%) by 11-antigen multiplex assay. ANA prevalence was higher in females compared with males by both of the methods (ratios 1.6&ndash;1.9 to 1). Agreement between tests was classified as slight by kappa (&kappa;=0.177 [95% CI &minus;0.051, 0.406]). The multiplex immunoassay had sensitivity of 22.2% (95% CI 6.4, 47.6) and specificity of 92.7% (95% CI 85.6, 97.0), and failed to capture 3 of 4 (75%) of the high-titer (&ge;1:1280) IFA-positives.Conclusion: Up to 15% of children in this general population cohort were ANA positive, with a higher rate of positivity among females according to both assay methods. Substantial discordance in ANA results was found between IFA and multiplex methods, even for high-titer IFA positives. These findings underscore the need to sufficiently account for assay characteristics when interpreting ANA test results, and support IFA as the more appropriate assay for studies of subclinical autoimmunity. Keywords: Autoreactivity, biomarker, immune dysfunction, preclinical, subclinical autoimmunity, autoantibodies, pediatric, epidemiolog

Antinuclear antibody prevalence in a general pediatric cohort from Mexico City: discordance between by immunofluorescence and multiplex assays

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/136906/1/26.AntinuclearantibodyprevalenceMexicoCity.pd

Modeling the health effects of time-varying complex environmental mixtures: Mean field variational Bayes for lagged kernel machine regression

Copyright © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. There is substantial interest in assessing how exposure to environmental mixtures, such as chemical mixtures, affects child health. Researchers are also interested in identifying critical time windows of susceptibility to these complex mixtures. A recently developed method, called lagged kernel machine regression (LKMR), simultaneously accounts for these research questions by estimating the effects of time-varying mixture exposures and by identifying their critical exposure windows. However, LKMR inference using Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods (MCMC-LKMR) is computationally burdensome and time intensive for large data sets, limiting its applicability. Therefore, we develop a mean field variational approximation method for Bayesian inference (MFVB) procedure for LKMR (MFVB-LKMR). The procedure achieves computational efficiency and reasonable accuracy as compared with the corresponding MCMC estimation method. Updating parameters using MFVB may only take minutes, whereas the equivalent MCMC method may take many hours or several days. We apply MFVB-LKMR to Programming Research in Obesity, Growth, Environment and Social Stressors (PROGRESS), a prospective cohort study in Mexico City. Results from a subset of PROGRESS using MFVB-LKMR provide evidence of significant and positive association between second trimester cobalt levels and z-scored birth weight. This positive association is heightened by cesium exposure. MFVB-LKMR is a promising approach for computationally efficient analysis of environmental health data sets, to identify critical windows of exposure to complex mixtures