Shadows of the Captain of the Men of Death: Health Innovation, Human Capital Investment, and Institutions

We leverage introduction of the first antibiotic therapies in 1937 to examine impacts of pneumonia in infancy on adult education, employment, disability, income and income mobility, and identify large impacts on each. We then examine how racial segregation in the pre-Civil Rights Era moderated the long-run benefits of antibiotics among blacks. We find that blacks born in more segregated states reaped smaller and less pervasive long run benefits despite sharp drops in pneumonia exposure. Our findings demonstrate causal effects of early life health on economic mobility and the importance of an investment-rewarding institutional environment in realization of the full potential of a healthy star

Economic opportunity, health behaviours, and health outcomes in the USA: a population-based cross-sectional study

Background Inequality of opportunity, defined as differences in the prospects for upward social mobility, might have important consequences for health. Diminished opportunity can lower the motivation to invest in future health by reducing economic returns to health investments and undermining hope. We estimated the association between county-level economic opportunity and individual-level health in young adults in the general US population. Methods In this population-based cross-sectional study, we used individual-level data from the 2009–12 United States Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Surveys. Our primary outcomes were current self-reported overall health and the number of days of poor physical and mental health in the last month. Economic opportunity was measured by the county-averaged national income rank attained by individuals born to families in the lowest income quartile. We restricted our sample to adults aged 25–35 years old to match the data used to assign exposure. Multivariable ordinary least squares and probit models were used to estimate the association between the outcomes and economic opportunity. We adjusted for a range of demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, including age, sex, race, education, income, access to health care, area income inequality, segregation, and social capital. Findings We assessed nearly 147 000 individuals between the ages of 25 years and 35 years surveyed from 2009 to 2012. In models adjusting for individual-level demographics and county-level socioeconomic characteristics, increases in county-level economic opportunity were associated with greater self-reported overall health. An interdecile increase in economic opportunity was associated with 0·76 fewer days of poor mental health (95% CI −1·26 to −0·25) and 0·53 fewer days of poor physical health (−0·96 to −0·09) in the last month. The results were robust to sensitivity analyses. Interpretation Economic opportunity is independently associated with self-reported health and health behaviours. Policies seeking to expand economic opportunities might have important spillover effects on health. Funding Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholars Program

Understanding the retinal basis of vision across species

The vertebrate retina first evolved some 500 million years ago in ancestral marine chordates. Since then, the eyes of different species have been tuned to best support their unique visuoecological lifestyles. Visual specializations in eye designs, large-scale inhomogeneities across the retinal surface and local circuit motifs mean that all species' retinas are unique. Computational theories, such as the efficient coding hypothesis, have come a long way towards an explanation of the basic features of retinal organization and function; however, they cannot explain the full extent of retinal diversity within and across species. To build a truly general understanding of vertebrate vision and the retina's computational purpose, it is therefore important to more quantitatively relate different species' retinal functions to their specific natural environments and behavioural requirements. Ultimately, the goal of such efforts should be to build up to a more general theory of vision

MicroMotility: State of the art, recent accomplishments and perspectives on the mathematical modeling of bio-motility at microscopic scales

Mathematical modeling and quantitative study of biological motility (in particular, of motility at microscopic scales) is producing new biophysical insight and is offering opportunities for new discoveries at the level of both fundamental science and technology. These range from the explanation of how complex behavior at the level of a single organism emerges from body architecture, to the understanding of collective phenomena in groups of organisms and tissues, and of how these forms of swarm intelligence can be controlled and harnessed in engineering applications, to the elucidation of processes of fundamental biological relevance at the cellular and sub-cellular level. In this paper, some of the most exciting new developments in the fields of locomotion of unicellular organisms, of soft adhesive locomotion across scales, of the study of pore translocation properties of knotted DNA, of the development of synthetic active solid sheets, of the mechanics of the unjamming transition in dense cell collectives, of the mechanics of cell sheet folding in volvocalean algae, and of the self-propulsion of topological defects in active matter are discussed. For each of these topics, we provide a brief state of the art, an example of recent achievements, and some directions for future research

Health consequences of the US Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) immigration programme: a quasi-experimental study

Background The effects of changes in immigration policy on health outcomes among undocumented immigrants are not well known. We aimed to examine the physical and mental health effects of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) programme, a 2012 US immigration policy that provided renewable work permits and freedom from deportation for a large number of undocumented immigrants. Methods We did a retrospective, quasi-experimental study using nationally representative, repeated cross-sectional data from the US National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) for the period January, 2008, to December, 2015. We included non-citizen, Hispanic adults aged 19–50 years in our analyses. We used a difference-in-differences strategy to compare changes in health outcomes among individuals who met key DACA eligibility criteria (based on age at immigration and at the time of policy implementation) before and after programme implementation versus changes in outcomes for individuals who did not meet these criteria. We additionally restricted the sample to individuals who had lived in the USA for at least 5 years and had completed high school or its equivalent, in order to hold fixed two other DACA eligibility criteria. Our primary outcomes were self-reported overall health (measured on a 5 point Likert scale) and depression symptom severity (Patient Health Questionnaire-9 [PHQ-9]), the latter was administered to a random subset of NHIS respondents. Findings Our final sample contained 14 973 respondents for the self-reported health outcome and 5035 respondents for the PHQ-9 outcome. Of these individuals, 3972 in the self-reported health analysis and 1138 in the PHQ-9 analysis met the DACA eligibility criteria. Compared with people ineligible for DACA, the introduction of DACA was associated with no significant change among DACA-eligible individuals in terms of self-reported overall health (b=0·056, 95% CI −0·024 to 0·14, p=0·17) or the likelihood of reporting poor or fair health (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 0·98, 95% CI 0·66–1·44, p=0·91). However, DACA-eligible individuals experienced a reduction in PHQ-9 score compared with DACA-ineligible individuals (adjusted incident risk ratio 0·78, 95% CI 0·56–0·95, p=0·020) and were less likely to meet screening criteria for moderate-to-severe depression (aOR 0·51, 95% CI 0·27–0·95, p=0·035). Interpretation Economic opportunities and protection from deportation for undocumented immigrants, as offered by DACA, could confer large mental health benefits to such individuals. Health consequences should be considered by researchers and policy makers in evaluations of the broa der welfare effects of immigration policy. Funding None

Temperature dependence of FMR and magnetization in nanocrystalline zinc ferrite thin films

Single phase nano-crystalline zinc ferrite thin films were deposited by RF-magnetron sputtering on quartz substrate at room temperature (RT) in pure Argon environment and annealed (in air) at different temperatures. Temperature dependence of magnetization was studied on these films using both VSM and by observing FMR (in X band). Value of exchange stiffness constant (D) was obtained by fitting Bloch's law to the low temperature magnetization data. The value of D decreased monotonously with the annealing temperature (T-A) of the samples. A film annealed at T-A=523 K, exhibited the highest magnetization value. The FMR line width of the films decreased with increase in measurement temperature. At RT (similar to 293 K), the lowest value of line width (Delta H) was 15 kA/m and 13 kA/m in parallel and perpendicular configuration respectively for the sample annealed at T-A=623 K. (C) 2016 Author(s)