Impact on Children and Families of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: Preliminary Findings of the Coastal Population Impact Study

Although the ruptured Deepwater Horizon oil well was capped on July 15, 2010, an estimated 3 to 5 million barrels of oil spilled in to the Gulf of Mexico over a three-month period. Several surveys prior to the capping of the well documented the concerns and immediate effects of the oil spill on coastal residents. One report by a team of LSU sociologists highlighted the anxiety caused by the oil spill - nearly 60% of the 925 coastal Louisiana residents interviewed said they were almost constantly worried by the oil spill. As the "acute phase" of the oil spill transitions to a longer-term "chronic phase," researchers at Columbia University's National Center for Disaster Preparedness, in collaboration with the Children's Health Fund and The Marist Poll, interviewed over 1,200 coastal residents in Louisiana and Mississippi, with a particular focus on the short- and potential long-term impact of the disaster on children. This study was informed by work the researchers have done post-Katrina as part of the Gulf Coast Child & Family Health Study, which has documented the enduring effects on impacted populations in the two states, particularly children

Second Wind: The Impact of Hurricane Gustav on Children and Families Who Survived Katrina

The category 2 Hurricane Gustav made landfall on the Louisiana Coast on Sept. 1, 2008, nearly three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, resulting in an evacuation of approximately 2 million people and considerable property damage. Although it did not match the intensity or consequence of Hurricane Katrina, the experience of anticipating and responding to Hurricane Gustav had the potential to trigger emotional and physical consequences among a population previously traumatized or displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Gustav also had the potential to exert a considerable impact upon the overall economic, social, and emotional recovery of these populations. The Gulf Coast Child and Family Health Study (G-CAFH), a randomly-sampled post-Katrina longitudinal cohort study of 1,079 displaced and impacted households in Louisiana and Mississippi, was uniquely positioned to examine the evolving impact of Gustav upon a previously traumatized population. G-CAFH researchers were in the final stages of the third round of interviews with the study group when Hurricane Gustav struck, thus allowing for comparable pre- and post-event data for approximately 700 respondent households. Further information on the study, including previous reports and peer-reviewed research articles, may be found at www.gcafh.org. In particular, the research team was interested in the following issues: Evacuation: People's response to the event itself -- did they evacuate, and if so, where and how did they evacuate? How did people decide whether to evacuate or not? For those who did, what was the economic impact of the evacuation? Recovery Impact: What was the impact on post-Katrina recovery amongst this group, particularly since Hurricane Gustav may have set some people even further back in their efforts to recover their homes and their lives? Psychological Impact: What was the emotional impact on adults and children: among adults, did Hurricane Gustav trigger Katrina-related post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms? Among children, did Hurricane Gustav lead to newly experienced behavioral or emotional problems? Health Effects: What were the health consequences of Hurricane Gustav on children, particularly those who needed access to medications and medical care? Within three weeks of Hurricane Gustav, the G-CAFH field team had reassembled after their own evacuation and begun re-contacting the 718 respondents whom they had recently interviewed as part of the third round of the study. Of these 718 respondents, 528 were located and interviewed (a 73.5% retention rate). Respondents received a $20 gift card for participating in this study supplement, which had received approval by the Columbia University Medical Center Institutional Review Board

Children’s Health after the Oil Spill: A Four-State Study Findings from the Gulf Coast Population Impact (GCPI) Project

In 2012, with funding from the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University, in partnership with the Children’s Health Fund, launched a four-state study in order (1) to identify communities of children in the coastal areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida who were adversely impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, (2) to explore the prevalence of physical and mental health effects among these children, and (3) to conduct a preliminary assessment of the health services available to these children and the potential for targeted interventions or health system enhancements. We identified fifteen communities with higher numbers of BP compensation claims submitted by individuals and by businesses, and which also had higher rates of oil washing up on their shores based upon monitoring data collected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Over a span of four and a half months, a field team of six interviewers and two field coordinators completed 1,437 face-to-face household surveys. The parents whom we interviewed reported considerable exposure to the oil spill as well as a number of physical and mental health problems among their children. Over half of the parents interviewed in these highly-impacted communities reported that their children had some type of oil spill-related exposure, whether it was through physical, environmental, or economic factors. One in every five parents said their children had direct contact with the oil; one in four reported smelling strong oil-related odors; and two of every five said their household had lost income or a job since the oil spill. A little over 40% of parents in these high-impact communities reported some type of health effect experienced by their children since the oil spill. 18.1% of the parents said their children had experienced breathing problems after the oil spill, 14.8% noted skin problems, 16.0% reported visual problems and 21.6% mentioned emotional or behavioral problems since the oil spill. In October 2012 our research team traveled to four communities to interview local officials and leaders and conduct in-depth parent focus groups. We selected the four communities based on the household data, where parents had reported significant health effects. Across the four communities, the team heard of significant issues related to children’s health and well-being

Gauss decomposition for Chevalley groups, revisited

In the 1960's Noboru Iwahori and Hideya Matsumoto, Eiichi Abe and Kazuo Suzuki, and Michael Stein discovered that Chevalley groups $G=G(\Phi,R)$ over a semilocal ring admit remarkable Gauss decomposition $G=TUU^-U$, where $T=T(\Phi,R)$ is a split maximal torus, whereas $U=U(\Phi,R)$ and $U^-=U^-(\Phi,R)$ are unipotent radicals of two opposite Borel subgroups $B=B(\Phi,R)$ and $B^-=B^-(\Phi,R)$ containing $T$. It follows from the classical work of Hyman Bass and Michael Stein that for classical groups Gauss decomposition holds under weaker assumptions such as \sr(R)=1 or \asr(R)=1. Later the second author noticed that condition \sr(R)=1 is necessary for Gauss decomposition. Here, we show that a slight variation of Tavgen's rank reduction theorem implies that for the elementary group $E(\Phi,R)$ condition \sr(R)=1 is also sufficient for Gauss decomposition. In other words, $E=HUU^-U$, where $H=H(\Phi,R)=T\cap E$. This surprising result shows that stronger conditions on the ground ring, such as being semi-local, \asr(R)=1, \sr(R,\Lambda)=1, etc., were only needed to guarantee that for simply connected groups $G=E$, rather than to verify the Gauss decomposition itself

Death-associated protein 3 is overexpressed in human thyroid oncocytic tumours

Background: The human death-associated protein 3 (hDAP3) is a GTP-binding constituent of the small subunit of the mitochondrial ribosome with a pro-apoptotic function.Methods: A search through publicly available microarray data sets showed 337 genes potentially coregulated with the DAP3 gene. The promoter sequences of these 337 genes and 70 out of 85 mitochondrial ribosome genes were analysed in silico with the DAP3 gene promoter sequence. The mitochondrial role of DAP3 was also investigated in the thyroid tumours presenting various mitochondrial contents. Results: The study revealed nine transcription factors presenting enriched motifs for these gene promoters, five of which are implicated in cellular growth (ELK1, ELK4, RUNX1, HOX11-CTF1, TAL1-ternary complex factor 3) and four in mitochondrial biogenesis (nuclear respiratory factor-1 (NRF-1), GABPA, PPARG-RXRA and estrogen-related receptor alpha (ESRRA)). An independent microarray data set showed the overexpression of ELK1, RUNX1 and ESRRA in the thyroid oncocytic tumours. Exploring the thyroid tumours, we found that DAP3 mRNA and protein expression is upregulated in tumours presenting a mitochondrial biogenesis compared with the normal tissue. ELK1 and ESRRA were also showed upregulated with DAP3. Conclusion: ELK1 and ESRRA may be considered as potential regulators of the DAP3 gene expression. DAP3 may participate in mitochondrial maintenance and play a role in the balance between mitochondrial homoeostasis and tumourigenesis