Future Burden and Costs of Smoking-Related Disease in the Netherlands: A Dynamic Modeling Approach

AbstractObjectivesIn this article, we explore the future health gain of different policy measures to reduce smoking prevalence: health education campaigns specifically aimed at keeping (young) people from starting to smoke, campaigns aimed at persuading smokers to quit, and tax measures.MethodsWe drew up different policy scenarios based on evaluations of several health promotion campaigns. Implementing these into the dynamic multistate models, we simulated smoking prevalence, loss of life-years, and costs for several decades into the next century.ResultsIn the short run, campaigns aimed at potential “quitters” appear to be most effective in terms of health gain. However, their effect fades away after several decades, while campaigns aimed at young “starters” or tax measures in the end yield a larger and more lasting decrease in smoking attributable disease burden.ConclusionDynamic modeling is very useful tool in calculating costs and effects of preventive public health measures

Ecosystem services mapping and assessment for policy- and decision-making: Lessons learned from a comparative analysis of European case studies

This paper analyses and compares a set of case studies on ecosystem services (ES) mapping and assessment with the purpose of formulating lessons learned and recommendations. Fourteen case studies were selected during the EU Horizon 2020 “Coordination and Support Action” ESMERALDA to represent different policy- and decision-making processes throughout the European Union, across a wide range of themes, biomes and scales. The analysis is based on a framework that addresses the key steps of an ES mapping and assessment process, namely policy questions, stakeholder identification and involvement, application of mapping and assessment methods, dissemination and communication and implementation. The analysis revealed that most case studies were policy-orientated or gave explicit suggestions for policy implementation in different contexts, including urban, rural and natural areas. Amongst the findings, the importance of starting stakeholder engagement early in the process was confirmed in order to generate interest and confidence in the project and to increase their willingness to cooperate. Concerning mapping and assessment methods, it was found that the integration of methods and results is essential for providing a comprehensive overview from different perspectives (e.g. social, economic). Finally, lessons learned for effective implementation of ES mapping and assessment results are presented and discussed

Inhibition of cholesterol recycling impairs cellular PrPSc propagation

The infectious agent in prion diseases consists of an aberrantly folded isoform of the cellular prion protein (PrPc), termed PrPSc, which accumulates in brains of affected individuals. Studies on prion-infected cultured cells indicate that cellular cholesterol homeostasis influences PrPSc propagation. Here, we demonstrate that the cellular PrPSc content decreases upon accumulation of cholesterol in late endosomes, as induced by NPC-1 knock-down or treatment with U18666A. PrPc trafficking, lipid raft association, and membrane turnover are not significantly altered by such treatments. Cellular PrPSc formation is not impaired, suggesting that PrPSc degradation is increased by intracellular cholesterol accumulation. Interestingly, PrPSc propagation in U18666A-treated cells was partially restored by overexpression of rab 9, which causes redistribution of cholesterol and possibly of PrPSc to the trans-Golgi network. Surprisingly, rab 9 overexpression itself reduced cellular PrPSc content, indicating that PrPSc production is highly sensitive to alterations in dynamics of vesicle trafficking

Multidifferential study of identified charged hadron distributions in ZZ-tagged jets in proton-proton collisions at s=\sqrt{s}=13 TeV

Jet fragmentation functions are measured for the first time in proton-proton collisions for charged pions, kaons, and protons within jets recoiling against a $Z$ boson. The charged-hadron distributions are studied longitudinally and transversely to the jet direction for jets with transverse momentum 20 $< p_{\textrm{T}} < 100$ GeV and in the pseudorapidity range $2.5 < \eta < 4$. The data sample was collected with the LHCb experiment at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.64 fb$^{-1}$. Triple differential distributions as a function of the hadron longitudinal momentum fraction, hadron transverse momentum, and jet transverse momentum are also measured for the first time. This helps constrain transverse-momentum-dependent fragmentation functions. Differences in the shapes and magnitudes of the measured distributions for the different hadron species provide insights into the hadronization process for jets predominantly initiated by light quarks.Comment: All figures and tables, along with machine-readable versions and any supplementary material and additional information, are available at https://cern.ch/lhcbproject/Publications/p/LHCb-PAPER-2022-013.html (LHCb public pages

Secretory IgA adsorption and oral streptococcal adhesion to human enamel and artificial solid substrata with various surface free energies

In this paper, secretory IgA adsorption from a single component sIgA solution and from human whole saliva onto human enamel and artificial solid substrata with various surface free energies was studied as a function of time. ELISA indicated that screening or displacement of adsorbed sIgA by other salivary proteins occurred only on low surface free energy substrata, not on high surface free energy substrata such as enamel. In addition, the adhesion of three oral streptococcal strains (Streptococcus mitis BMS, S. sanguis 12, and S. mutans NS), also having widely different surface free energies, to sIgAcoated surfaces was studied. The adhesion of all three streptococcal strains was significantly reduced in the presence of a sIgA coating. However, ranking the adhesion data with respect to the various substrata revealed a similar order to that in the case of uncoated substrata, indicating that substratum properties were at least partly transferred by the adsorbed protein film to the interface with adhering micro-organisms. For S. sanguis 12 and S. mitis BMS, adhesion decreased proportionally with the amounts of sIgA detected by ELISA, but for S. mutans NS such relations with the amounts of sIgA detected on the protein-coated substrata were not found. Thus, for S. mutans NS a specific antibody effect seems to exist in addition to a non-specific protein effect like that observed for S. sanguis 12 and S. mitis BMS