Increasing Awareness of Health Risks Associated with Vaping in Youths

E-cigarette and use of electronic nicotine delivery systems is a growing trend among youths in the United States. According to the National Institute of Health 2018 Monitoring the Future Survey, the 10th and 12th grade increases in nicotine vaping are the largest ever recorded for any substance in 44 years of tracking youth drug use. Increasing evidence about the potential health risks of vaping, as well as prediction of future cigarette use or experimentation, underlines the need for more preventative health measures to curtail this growing drug epidemic. The aim of this community health project was the development of an educational fact sheet on vaping as an aid for primary health care providers in Vermont to discuss e-cigarette use with teens, older youths, or their guardians.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1548/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of Price Regulation on the Launch Delay of New Drugs - Evidence from Twenty-Five Major Markets in the 1990s

This study analyzes the effect of pharmaceutical price regulation on delays in new drug launches. Because low price in one market may 'spill-over' to others, though parallel trade and external referencing, manufacturers may rationally prefer longer delay or non-launch to accepting a low price. We use a Cox proportional hazard model to analyze the launch experience in 25 major markets of 85 new chemical entities (NCEs) launched in the UK or US between 1994 and 1998. There are 1,167 observed launches, or about 55% of the maximum. The US leads with 73 launches, followed by Germany (66) and the UK (64). Only 13 NCEs launched in Japan, 26 in Portugal and 28 in New Zealand. Countries with fewer launches also have longer average launch lags. The launch hazard is positively related to expected price and to expected volume, controlling for income per capita. The originator firm(s) characteristics, specifically, launch in home country and global experience, also significantly reduce launch delay. Within the EU, likely parallel export countries have the most negative effects. Our results suggest that countries with lower expected prices or smaller expected market size experience longer delays in new drug access, controlling for per capita income and other country and firm characteristics.

PPNID : a reference database and molecular identification pipeline for plant-parasitic nematodes

Motivation: The phylum Nematoda comprises the most cosmopolitan and abundant metazoans on Earth and plant-parasitic nematodes represent one of the most significant nematode groups, causing severe losses in agriculture. Practically, the demands for accurate nematode identification are high for ecological, agricultural, taxonomic and phylogenetic researches. Despite their importance, the morphological diagnosis is often a difficult task due to phenotypic plasticity and the absence of clear diagnostic characters while molecular identification is very difficult due to the problematic database and complex genetic background. Results: The present study attempts to make up for currently available databases by creating a manually-curated database including all up-to-date authentic barcoding sequences. To facilitate the laborious process associated with the interpretation and identification of a given query sequence, we developed an automatic software pipeline for rapid species identification. The incorporated alignment function facilitates the examination of mutation distribution and therefore also reveals nucleotide autapomorphies, which are important in species delimitation. The implementation of genetic distance, plot and maximum likelihood phylogeny analysis provides more powerful optimality criteria than similarity searching and facilitates species delimitation using evolutionary or phylogeny species concepts. The pipeline streamlines several functions to facilitate more precise data analyses, and the subsequent interpretation is easy and straightforward

rho0 Production in Cu+Cu Collisions at 200 and 62.4 GeV in STAR

The results on rho(770)0 production in Cu+Cu collisions at 200 and 62.4 GeV in STAR are presented. The rho0 is measured via its hadronic decay channel and used as a sensitive tool to examine the collision dynamics in the hadronic medium.Comment: 4 pages, 6 figures, to appear at the proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, QM2009, March 30 - April 4, Knoxville, T

The Effect of Monetary Reward on Creativity: The Role of Motivational Orientation

The prolonged debate on the effect of monetary reward on creative performance is still ongoing. Research has shown monetary rewards to have both positive and negative effects on creative performance. We contend that a person’s motivational orientation moderates the effect of monetary rewards on creative performance. An experiment was conducted showing that creative performance can be influenced through two distinct causal pathways. The pathways appear different for people driven predominately by extrinsic motivation and those driven predominately by intrinsic motivation. The exact role of how motivational orientation affects the relationships between monetary reward and creative performance needs further investigation. However, this study generates some insights and suggests directions for future research

Assessing Barriers to Health Care Access for New Americans

Introduction. Healthcare within the United States has been at the forefront of public discussion and political representation in recent years, particularly as it relates to healthcare access and barriers to said access. Focus has been placed on low-income groups that most generally represent the face of the average American, but this leaves the question: How are new Americans faring, and do their struggles match those faced by the rest of the country? The new Americans of Burlington, Vermont serve as a small window into a unique refugee population’s experiences with healthcare in the United States. Methods. A focus group consisting of 8 women was hosted on-site at the Burlington Housing Authority Franklin Square apartments. Questions were designed to determine demographic data as well facilitate subjective discussion on participants’ healthcare experiences. Translation services were provided by the resident manager. Results. Languages spoken were Mai Mai, Swahili, and English. Five major themes for healthcare access barriers were identified: language barriers, having children, transportation barriers, financial barriers, and a lack of preventative care. Sub- themes were also identified, which formed a taxonomy of barriers to healthcare access among the representative population. Discussion/Conclusions. The difficulties faced by new Americans are numerous and interrelated, leading to a perpetual cycle of insufficient healthcare. Throughout the discussion, the financial burden of healthcare was regularly raised as one of the most prominent issues faced. This concern matches with those found in similar, previous studies, that have analyzed the difficulties faced by the rest of America.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1254/thumbnail.jp

The Impact of Price Regulation on the Launch Delay of New Drugs—Evidence From Twenty-Five Major Markets in the 1990s

We analyze the effect of price regulation on delays in launch of new drugs. Because a low price in one market may ‘spill-over’ to other markets, through parallel trade and external referencing, manufacturers may rationally prefer longer delay or non-launch to accepting a relatively low price. We analyze the launch in 25 major markets, including 14 EU countries, of 85 new chemical entities (NCEs) launched between 1994 and 1998. Each NCE’s expected price and market size in a country are estimated using lagged average price and market size of other drugs in the same (or related) therapeutic class. We estimate a Cox proportional hazard model of launch in each country, relative to first global launch. Only 55% of the potential launches occur. The US leads with 73 launches, followed by Germany (66) and the UK (64). Only 13 NCEs are launched in Japan, 26 in Portugal and 28 in New Zealand. The results indicate that countries with lower expected prices or smaller expected market size have fewer launches and longer launch delays, controlling for per capita income and other country and firm characteristics. Controlling for expected price and volume, country effects for the likely parallel export countries are significantly negative

Mispositioned Neurokinin-1 Receptor-Expressing Neurons Underlie Heat Hyperalgesia in Disabled-1 Mutant Mice.

Reelin (Reln) and Disabled-1 (Dab1) participate in the Reln-signaling pathway and when either is deleted, mutant mice have the same spinally mediated behavioral abnormalities, increased sensitivity to noxious heat and a profound loss in mechanical sensitivity. Both Reln and Dab1 are highly expressed in dorsal horn areas that receive and convey nociceptive information, Laminae I-II, lateral Lamina V, and the lateral spinal nucleus (LSN). Lamina I contains both projection neurons and interneurons that express Neurokinin-1 receptors (NK1Rs) and they transmit information about noxious heat both within the dorsal horn and to the brain. Here, we ask whether the increased heat nociception in Reln and dab1 mutants is due to incorrectly positioned dorsal horn neurons that express NK1Rs. We found more NK1R-expressing neurons in Reln-/- and dab1-/- Laminae I-II than in their respective wild-type mice, and some NK1R neurons co-expressed Dab1 and the transcription factor Lmx1b, confirming their excitatory phenotype. Importantly, heat stimulation in dab1-/- mice induced Fos in incorrectly positioned NK1R neurons in Laminae I-II. Next, we asked whether these ectopically placed and noxious-heat responsive NK1R neurons participated in pain behavior. Ablation of the superficial NK1Rs with an intrathecal injection of a substance P analog conjugated to the toxin saporin (SSP-SAP) eliminated the thermal hypersensitivity of dab1-/- mice, without altering their mechanical insensitivity. These results suggest that ectopically positioned NK1R-expressing neurons underlie the heat hyperalgesia of Reelin-signaling pathway mutants, but do not contribute to their profound mechanical insensitivity