The Effects of Outdoor Air Pollutants on the Costs of Stroke Hospitalizations in China

Stroke, the most frequent cause of severe disability and the second cause of death among adults in the world, brings tremendous mental and economic burden to patients and their families. Emerging evidence indicates that the air pollution mixture contributes to strokes. Knowing the relationship between the air pollution and the hospital costs of stroke can help us predict the costs due to air pollution, provide grounds for the allocation of medical insurance funds, and provide better working arrangements for CDC. However, few studies have examined this connection. We used time series analysis with a generalized additive model to estimate the associations between ambient air pollutions and hospital costs between the period of 2015–2017. We were surprised to find that although same-day air pollutions were positively associated with stroke mortality hospital costs were found to have a negatively association. Suggestive evidence of an association between fine particles and the costs of stroke were found: more serious air pollution increases the risk of stroke, but has a dampening effect on hospital costs. This study is the first step in optimizing medical resources, which is essential for policy making, service planning, and cost-effectiveness analysis of new therapeutic strategies

An Alternative Constitutional Implementation Mechanism? A Case Study of Kenya’s Commission for the Implementation of the Constitution.

This Paper analyzes the independent implementation commission of Kenya and its work in facilitating the implementation process of the 2010 Kenyan Constitution, and further evaluates the effectiveness of such implementation mechanism. The case study of the Kenyan Constitution implementation shows that an independent implementation commission established by the constitution can have substantially positive impact over the implementation process. To design a successful commission, it is crucial to ensure its institutional independence, legal and enforcement power, and collaboration with civil society

Dancing in Davos: Combining Private Sector, Government, and Rising Nonstate Actors

Nonstate actors, nongovernmental organizations, and diaspora communities are forming connections across national borders. These actors insert themselves into a wide range of decision-making processes, but it is unclear how states and international institutions enable or constrain transnational participation. This paper analyzes the existing partnership among nonstate actors, sovereign states, and the private sector. It discusses the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its annual meetings in Davos, Switzerland, and examines its ability to serve as a platform to combine the three different international actors and deal with global issues. By combining the three forces— sovereign states, private sector and the transnational civil society — and paying more attention to the role of NSAs, a new institution can be developed to confront global challenges

The effect of RNA stiffness on the self-assembly of virus particles

Under many in vitro conditions, some small viruses spontaneously encapsidate a single stranded (ss) RNA into a protein shell called the capsid. While viral RNAs are found to be compact and highly branched because of long distance base-pairing between nucleotides, recent experiments reveal that in a head-to-head competition between a ssRNA with no secondary or higher order structure and a viral RNA, the capsid proteins preferentially encapsulate the linear polymer! In this paper, we study the impact of genome stiffness on the encapsidation free energy of the complex of RNA and capsid proteins. We show that an increase in effective chain stiffness because of base-pairing could be the reason why under certain conditions linear chains have an advantage over branched chains when it comes to encapsidation efficiency. While branching makes the genome more compact, RNA base-pairing increases the effective Kuhn length of the RNA molecule, which could result in an increase of the free energy of RNA confinement, that is, the work required to encapsidate RNA, and thus less efficient packaging

Icariin protects myocardial cells in spontaneously hypertensive rats by inhibiting mitochondrial and endopla smic reticulum stress related pathways

Purpose: To investigate the protective effect of icariin (ICA) on myocardial cells in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs), and the mechanism involved. Methods: Twenty-four SPF-grade, 12-week-old SHRs were randomly assigned to model group and ICA group, with 12 rats/group. There were 12 Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats (aged 12 weeks) in the control group. Rats in ICA group were given ICA suspension (40 mg/kg) through gavage, daily for 3 months, while model rats were given equivalent volume of double distilled water (in place of ICA suspension) via gavage for 12 weeks. Blood pressure, cardiac function, left ventricular (LV) mass index, myocardial morphology and apoptosis-related protein levels were determined and compared among the four groups. Results: The myocardial cells were hypertrophic and disorderly arranged, with widened intercellular spaces. Besides, there were increases in protein expression levels of p53, caspase 3, Bok, Bax, GRP78, p-PERK, ATF-4, CHOP and DR5, while Bcl-2 protein was down-regulated. In contrast, the levels of these indicators in the ICA group were significantly better than those in the model group (p < 0.05). Conclusion: ICA reduces blood pressure in rats, but improves cardiac function and cardiomyocyte morphology by decreasing apoptosis in cardiomyocytes through down-regulation of mitochondrial and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-related apoptosis pathways. Thus, icariin may be suitable for the treatment of hypertension; however, clinical trials need to be undertaken first