Deprivation and Disease in Early Twentieth-Century America

This paper explores how early life exposure to poverty and want adversely affects later life health outcomes. In particular, it examines how exposure to crowded housing conditions and impure drinking water undermines long-term health prospects and increases the risk of age-related pathologies such as cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, and stroke. Exploiting city-level data from early-twentieth century America, evidence is presented that cities with unusually high rates of typhoid fever in 1900 had elevated rates of heart and kidney disease fifteen years later; also cities with unusually high rates of tuberculosis in 1900 had elevated rates of cancer and stroke fifteen years later. The estimated coefficients suggest that eradicating typhoid fever (through water purification) and tuberculosis (through improved housing and nutrition) would have reduced later death rates from heart disease, cancer, stroke, and kidney disease by 23 to 35 percent.

Lead Pipes and Child Mortality

Beginning around 1880, public health issues and engineering advances spurred the installation of city water and sewer systems. As part of this growth, many cities chose to use lead service pipes to connect residences to city water systems. This choice had negative consequences for child mortality, although the consequences were often hard to observe amid the overall falling death rates. This paper uses national data from the public use sample of the 1900 Census of Population and data on city use of lead pipes in 1897 to estimate the effect of lead pipes on child mortality. In 1900, 29 percent of the married women in the United States who had given birth to at least one child and were age forty-five or younger lived in locations where lead service pipes were used to deliver water. Because the effect of lead pipes depended on the acidity and hardness of the water, much of the negative effect was concentrated on the densely populated eastern seaboard. In the full sample, women who lived on the eastern seaboard in cities with lead pipes experienced increased child mortality of 9.3 percent relative to the sample average. These estimates suggest that the number of child deaths attributable to the use of lead pipes numbered in the tens of thousands. Many surviving children may have experienced substantial IQ impairment as a result of lead exposure. The tragedy is that lead problems were avoidable, particularly once data became available on the toxicity of lead. These findings have implications for current policy and events.

Competition and bistability of ordered undulations and undulation chaos in inclined layer convection

Experimental and theoretical investigations of undulation patterns in high-pressure, inclined layer gas convection at a Prandtl number near unity are reported. Particular focus is given to the competition between the spatiotemporal chaotic state of undulation chaos and stationary patterns of ordered undulations. In experiments a competition and bistability between the two states is observed, with ordered undulations most prevalent at higher Rayleigh number. The spectral pattern entropy, spatial correlation lengths, and defect statistics are used to characterize the competing states. The experiments are complemented by a theoretical analysis of the Oberbeck-Boussinesq equations. The stability region of the ordered undulation as a function of their wavevectors and the Rayleigh number is obtained with Galerkin techniques. In addition, direct numerical simulations are used to investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics. In the simulations both ordered undulations and undulation chaos were observed dependent on initial conditions. Experiment and theory are found to agree well.Comment: Reduced-resolution figure

An MCMC study of general squark flavour mixing in the MSSM

We present an extensive study of non-minimally flavour violating (NMFV) terms in the Lagrangian of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM). We impose a variety of theoretical and experimental constraints and perform a detailed scan of the parameter space by means of a Markov Chain Monte-Carlo (MCMC) setup. This represents the first study of several non-zero flavour-violating elements within the MSSM. We present the results of the MCMC scan with a special focus on the flavour-violating parameters. Based on these results, we define benchmark scenarios for future studies of NMFV effects at the LHC.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures. To appear in the proceedings of the European Physical Society Conference on High Energy Physics 2015 (EPS-HEP 2015), Vienna, Austria, 22nd to 29th of July 201

Lead and Mortality

This paper examines the effect of water-borne lead exposure on infant mortality in American cities over the period 1900-1920. Infants are highly sensitive to lead, and more broadly are a marker for current environmental conditions. The effects of lead on infant mortality are identified by variation across cities in water acidity and the types of service pipes that the water ran through – lead, iron, or concrete – which together determined the extent of lead exposure. Estimates that restrict the sample to cities with lead pipes and panel estimates provide further support for the causal link between water-borne lead and infant mortality. The magnitudes of the effects were large. In 1900, a decline in exposure equivalent to an increase in pH from 6.675 (25th percentile) to 7.3 (50th percentile) in cities with lead-only pipes would have been associated with a decrease in infant mortality of 7 to 33 percent or at least 12 fewer infant deaths per 1,000 live births. This paper examines the effect of water-borne lead exposure on infant mortality in American cities over the period 1900-1920. Infants are highly sensitive to lead, and more broadly are a marker for current environmental conditions. The effects of lead on infant mortality are identified by variation across cities in water acidity and the types of service pipes that the water ran through – lead, iron, or concrete – which together determined the extent of lead exposure. Estimates that restrict the sample to cities with lead pipes and panel estimates provide further support for the causal link between water-borne lead and infant mortality. The magnitudes of the effects were large. In 1900, a decline in exposure equivalent to an increase in pH from 6.675 (25th percentile) to 7.3 (50th percentile) in cities with lead-only pipes would have been associated with a decrease in infant mortality of 7 to 33 percent or at least 12 fewer infant deaths per 1,000 live births.

Cognitive Disparities, Lead Plumbing, and Water Chemistry: Intelligence Test Scores and Exposure to Water-Borne Lead Among World War Two U.S. Army Enlistees

Assessing the impact of lead exposure is difficult if individuals select on the basis of their characteristics into environments with different exposure levels. We address this issue with data from when the dangers of lead exposure were still largely unknown, using new evidence on intelligence test scores for male World War Two U.S. Army enlistees linked to the households where they resided in 1930. Higher exposure to water-borne lead (proxied by urban residence and low water pH levels) was associated with lower test scores: going from pH 6 to pH 5.5, scores fell 5 points (1/4 standard deviation). A longer time exposed led to a more severe effect. The ubiquity of lead in urban water systems at this time and uncertainty regarding its impact mean these effects are unlikely to have resulted from selection into locations with different levels of exposure.

Video Test to Evaluate Detection Performance of Drivers with Hemianopia: Preliminary Results

The ability of individuals with hemianopia to compensate for their vision impairment by eye/head scanning to detect hazards in their non-seeing (blind) hemifield varies widely in both simulator and on-road tests. Conventional visual fields tests do not reflect this variability, while simulator and on-road tests are time-consuming and expensive. We therefore developed a simple, 15-minute video-based pedestrian detection test suitable for implementation on a desktop computer and monitor. The test was found to be sensitive to detection deficits in both hemianopia and quadranopia, and predictive of detection performance in a driving simulator. Our preliminary findings suggest that the test provides a simple method of measuring detection ability relevant to driving which may be useful both as a screening test and as an evaluation tool for rehabilitation devices and training

Phylogenetic diversity, antimicrobial susceptibility and virulence gene profiles of Brachyspira hyodysenteriae isolates from pigs in Germany

Swine dysentery (SD) is an economically important diarrheal disease in pigs caused by different strongly hemolytic Brachyspira (B.) species, such as B. hyodysenteriae, B. suanatina and B. hampsonii. Possible associations of epidemiologic data, such as multilocus sequence types (STs) to virulence gene profiles and antimicrobial susceptibility are rather scarce, particularly for B. hyodysenteriae isolates from Germany. In this study, B. hyodysenteriae (n = 116) isolated from diarrheic pigs between 1990 and 2016 in Germany were investigated for their STs, susceptibility to the major drugs used for treatment of SD (tiamulin and valnemulin) and genes that were previously linked with virulence and encode for hemolysins (tlyA, tlyB, tlyC, hlyA, BHWA1_RS02885, BHWA1_RS09085, BHWA1_RS04705, and BHWA1_RS02195), outer membrane proteins (OMPs) (bhlp16, bhlp17.6, bhlp29.7, bhmp39f, and bhmp39h) as well as iron acquisition factors (ftnA and bitC). Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) revealed that 79.4% of the isolates belonged to only three STs, namely ST52 (41.4%), ST8 (12.1%), and ST112 (25.9%) which have been observed in other European countries before. Another 24 isolates belonged to twelve new STs (ST113-118, ST120-123, ST131, and ST193). The temporal distribution of STs revealed the presence of new STs as well as the regular presence of ST52 over three decades (1990s–2000s). The proportion of strains that showed resistance to both tiamulin und valnemulin (39.1%) varied considerably among the most frequent STs ranging from 0% (0/14 isolates resistant) in ST8 isolates to 46.7% (14/30), 52.1% (25/48), and 85.7% (6/7) in isolates belonging to ST112, ST52, and ST114, respectively. All hemolysin genes as well as the iron-related gene ftnA and the OMP gene bhlp29.7 were regularly present in the isolates, while the OMP genes bhlp17.6 and bhmp39h could not be detected. Sequence analysis of hemolysin genes of selected isolates revealed co-evolution of tlyB, BHWA1_RS02885, BHWA1_RS09085, and BHWA1_RS02195 with the core genome and suggested independent evolution of tlyA, tlyC, and hlyA. Our data indicate that in Germany, swine dysentery might be caused by a limited number of B. hyodysenteriae clonal groups. Major STs (ST8, ST52, and ST112) are shared with other countries in Europe suggesting a possible role of the European intra-Community trade of pigs in the dissemination of certain clones. The identification of several novel STs, some of which are single or double locus variants of ST52, may on the other hand hint towards an ongoing diversification of the pathogen in the studied area. The linkage of pleuromutilin susceptibility and sequence type of an isolate might reflect a clonal expansion of the underlying resistance mechanism, namely mutations in the ribosomal RNA genes. A linkage between single virulence-associated genes (VAGs) or even VAG patterns and the phylogenetic background of the isolates could not be established, since almost all VAGs were regularly present in the isolates

Applied Learning Activity for Health and Fitness Students to Advocate for School Playground and Gymnasium Safety

Playground accidents are a leading cause of injury to children at school and home. Health and physical education faculty and students from a university school of education and college of nursing collaborated with wellness team members in a public school system to complete a systematic planning process. The aim was to enhance the school health program and reduce risk of injuries. University faculty mentored health and physical education students as they developed professional competencies related to program planning and advocacy. Students identified safety hazards in 52 school/community playgrounds and 45 gymnasiums, and reported maintenance issues to reduce the risk of injuries. Teachers, parents, students and community residents can learn to assess playground and gymnasium safety, identify hazards, and plan improvements to the school health environment