A Bayesian spatio-temporal nowcasting model for public health decision-making and surveillance

As COVID-19 spread through the United States in 2020, states began to set up alert systems to inform policy decisions and serve as risk communication tools for the general public. Many of these systems, like in Ohio, included indicators based on an assessment of trends in reported cases. However, when cases are indexed by date of disease onset, reporting delays complicate the interpretation of trends. Despite a foundation of statistical literature to address this problem, these methods have not been widely applied in practice. In this paper, we develop a Bayesian spatio-temporal nowcasting model for assessing trends in county-level COVID-19 cases in Ohio. We compare the performance of our model to the current approach used in Ohio and the approach that was recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We demonstrate gains in performance while still retaining interpretability using our model. In addition, we are able to fully account for uncertainty in both the time series of cases and in the reporting process. While we cannot eliminate all of the uncertainty in public health surveillance and subsequent decision-making, we must use approaches that embrace these challenges and deliver more accurate and honest assessments to policymakers

Household Debt and Social Interactions

Can concern with relative standing, which has been shown to influence consumption and labor supply, also increase borrowing and the likelihood of financial distress? We find that perceived peer income contributes to debt and the likelihood of financial distress among those who consider themselves poorer than their peers. We use unique responses describing perceived peer characteristics from a Dutch population-wide survey to handle two major challenges of uncovering social interaction effects on borrowing: (1) debts, unlike conspicuous consumption, are often hidden from peers and (2) location is missing in anonymized data. We employ several approaches to uncover exogenous, rather than correlated, effects

Diseño de un portal educativo a propósito de la vida de Don Sebastián de Marisancena (habitante de la casa del virrey, Cartago)

Nota aclaratoria: Se anexa el autor Gutiérrez Ruiz, Maicol Steven por realizar el trabajo de grado conjuntamente con Diego Alejandro Medina Rayo y Jhon David Lenis Cardona, pero en su momento no cumplía ciertos requisitos que si aprobaban los otros dos autores.El trabajo “Diseño de un portal educativo a propósito de la vida de Don Sebastián de Marisancena (Habitante de la Casa del Virrey, Cartago)”, constituye una propuesta pedagógica, con uso de tecnologías digitales, desarrollada en el municipio de Cartago (Valle del Cauca), con un grupo de estudiantes del grado octavo (2017-2018) del Liceo Cartago. Esta experiencia educativa se centra en la asignatura de Ciencias Sociales, buscando generar el reconocimiento de la historia local del municipio por parte de los educados, seleccionándose como tema de estudio: Cartago como un centro de trata negrera durante la época colonial. Para construir esta experiencia, se hace empleo de recursos bibliográficos que dan cuenta de la historia colonial cartagüeña, y fundamentalmente se reivindica la importancia del patrimonio histórico y documental, a través del reconocimiento de la Casa del Virrey (Casa Museo que es herencia arquitectónica de la época colonial, donde habitó el criollo y juez poblador Sebastián de Marisancena) y el Archivo Histórico de Cartago (tomándose como referencia los documentos que hacen mención a los procesos de venta y compra de esclavos durante la Cartago colonial). Así mismo, a nivel teórico el proyecto se nutre de los aportes del socio-constructivismo de Lev Vigotsky, la propuesta del aprendizaje significativo de David Paul Ausubel, entre otros autores que ofrecen una reflexión sobre los procesos educomunicativos y una conceptualización sobre aquello que es entendido como portal educativo, tal es el caso de Mario Kaplún y Pere Marquès Graells. Como sustento metodológico se hace empleo de un enfoque cualitativo interpretativo y se acude a la secuencia didáctica. “Diseño de un portal educativo a propósito de la vida de Don Sebastián de Marisancena (Habitante de la Casa del Virrey, Cartago)”, finalmente es un trabajo que aporta a la reflexión sobre la importancia de vincular los procesos de aprendizaje de los estudiantes con su entorno, poniendo el foco, en este caso particular, sobre la relación Institución Educativa-Museo-Archivo Histórico

A submarine volcanic eruption leads to a novel microbial habitat

Postprin

Go Shush Yourself: Student Habitus at the New Thompson Library

Poster with the results of a collaborative ethnographic study of students' behavior in a university library. The study was conducted within the framework of the anthropology course 650H: Research Design and Ethnographic Methods (Autumn 2010) taught by Dr. Mark Morit

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

A global experiment on motivating social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic

Finding communication strategies that effectively motivate social distancing continues to be a global public health priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. This cross-country, preregistered experiment (n = 25,718 from 89 countries) tested hypotheses concerning generalizable positive and negative outcomes of social distancing messages that promoted personal agency and reflective choices (i.e., an autonomy-supportive message) or were restrictive and shaming (i.e., a controlling message) compared with no message at all. Results partially supported experimental hypotheses in that the controlling message increased controlled motivation (a poorly internalized form of motivation relying on shame, guilt, and fear of social consequences) relative to no message. On the other hand, the autonomy-supportive message lowered feelings of defiance compared with the controlling message, but the controlling message did not differ from receiving no message at all. Unexpectedly, messages did not influence autonomous motivation (a highly internalized form of motivation relying on one’s core values) or behavioral intentions. Results supported hypothesized associations between people’s existing autonomous and controlled motivations and self-reported behavioral intentions to engage in social distancing. Controlled motivation was associated with more defiance and less long-term behavioral intention to engage in social distancing, whereas autonomous motivation was associated with less defiance and more short- and long-term intentions to social distance. Overall, this work highlights the potential harm of using shaming and pressuring language in public health communication, with implications for the current and future global health challenges