PRESENCE AND PREDICTORS OF HEALTH PROGRAMMING IN A SAMPLE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN CHURCHES

Churches have played a central role in African American communities for decades. In addition to religious services, African American churches have increasingly offered a variety of health programs. However, there is a dearth of empirical literature on church-initiated health programming. This study examines quantity and variety of health programs and areas addressed by a convenience sample of African American churches (N = 119), as well as church characteristics that predict these health initiatives. Churches offered a mean of 6.08 (SD = 2.15) health programs targeting 4.66 (SD = 3.63) different health topics within the previous 12 months. Various church characteristics indicating greater availability of programming resources were positively associated with the quantity and variety of health initiatives. It is recommended that practitioners partner with under-resourced churches to support their existing health activities and address gaps in health programming. Future research should seek to evaluate the effectiveness of church-initiated health programs

Reliability, Validity, and Exploratory Factor Analyses of Gentrification Health Research Measures

Background Gentrification is a type of neighborhood change (NC) that causes demographic shifts and improvement in the built environment. Adverse health outcomes associated with NC have not been consistently established in the literature. Yet, major methodological barriers define this field of study including lack of tailored and culturally relevant measures. This aim of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of novel and adapted NC measures that sought to improve appropriateness for all literacy levels, to enhance survey efficiency, and to assess features of the built environment. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional study in a highly gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, DC using 17 scales and indexes on neighborhood attachment, effects on family/friends, perceived impact on certain population, and assessment of intensity of NC. We assessed reliability and validity to include tests of internal consistency, split-half reliability testing, and correlation analyses. We sought dimension reduction through factor analysis to understand areas of NC. Results The analytic sample included 146 respondents. The multiitem scales — Neighborhood Attachment (NA), Ability to Influence Neighborhood Change (AINC), and Heightened Perceptions of Neighborhood Change (HPNC) — performed well based on reliability and validity analyses. The factors analysis resulted in three components on NC: positive perceptions of NC, social dimension of NC, and NC change intensity and decline. Discussion Given the promising psychometric quality of measures, this study opens new pathways for conducting gentrification health research by providing new tools and methods for tailoring

Innovative Research Framework for Strengthening Health Care and Public Health Engagement in Neighborhood Change as a Social Determinant of Health

Background Neighborhood change is a social determinant of health (SDOH) that has been associated with adverse health and increased health care utilization. The number of cities and neighborhoods undergoing intense gentrification, defined as an influx of wealthy populations into a working-class neighborhood, is not highly numerous. Public health and health systems are increasingly engaged with SDOH in community-level interventions. Pathways to study and affect NC-related health impacts are limited. This unfunded study provides a research framework to address concerns about financial investment, identifying population health needs, and community stakeholder engagement. Methods The authors conducted a cross-sectional pilot study in a highly gentrifying neighborhood in Washington, DC. They employed adapted and novel measures to gain insight into perspectives about NC and factors associated with poor health and high social vulnerability. The use of community and academic boards supported all phases of the research project. The methodological approaches of this study are discussed at length to benefit ease of adoption. Discussion Several features of this NC study, including lack of funding, use of random household sampling, tailoring of measures to neighborhood, and extensive engagement with a community advisory board distinguish it from other NC studies. This study is beneficial to public health and health systems interested in SDOH, while providing a pathway for compliance with federal requirements on community health need assessments

A Systematic Review of Dietary Interventions for Cancer Survivors and Their Families or Caregivers

Family or caregiver engagement has the potential to support healthy dietary changes among cancer survivors. However, little is known about these family- or caregiver-involved dietary interventions and their effects. This systematic review aimed to identify the behavior change techniques (BCTs) used in dietary interventions for cancer survivors and their families or caregivers and to synthesize intervention effects on dietary and health outcomes. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we conducted systematic searches in three databases and identified 12 trials (16 peer-reviewed manuscripts) for inclusion in this review. Data were extracted from these manuscripts and the BCT taxonomy was used to identify the BCTs. A total of 38 BCTs were identified from 12 trials, 13 of which were used in at least half of the 12 trials. Ten studies reported significant intervention effects on health outcomes (e.g., adiposity) and six suggested significant improvements in dietary behaviors (e.g., fruit and vegetable intake). Overall, this review found that family- or caregiver-involved interventions for cancer survivors significantly improved dietary and health outcomes. Future research should identify BCTs particularly for dietary changes and develop effective dyadic strategies to facilitate diet-related interactions between survivors and their families or caregivers to enhance their engagement in healthy diets

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Optimasi Portofolio Resiko Menggunakan Model Markowitz MVO Dikaitkan dengan Keterbatasan Manusia dalam Memprediksi Masa Depan dalam Perspektif Al-Qur`an

Risk portfolio on modern finance has become increasingly technical, requiring the use of sophisticated mathematical tools in both research and practice. Since companies cannot insure themselves completely against risk, as human incompetence in predicting the future precisely that written in Al-Quran surah Luqman verse 34, they have to manage it to yield an optimal portfolio. The objective here is to minimize the variance among all portfolios, or alternatively, to maximize expected return among all portfolios that has at least a certain expected return. Furthermore, this study focuses on optimizing risk portfolio so called Markowitz MVO (Mean-Variance Optimization). Some theoretical frameworks for analysis are arithmetic mean, geometric mean, variance, covariance, linear programming, and quadratic programming. Moreover, finding a minimum variance portfolio produces a convex quadratic programming, that is minimizing the objective function ðð¥with constraintsð ð 𥠥 ðandð´ð¥ = ð. The outcome of this research is the solution of optimal risk portofolio in some investments that could be finished smoothly using MATLAB R2007b software together with its graphic analysis

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Search for heavy resonances decaying to two Higgs bosons in final states containing four b quarks

A search is presented for narrow heavy resonances X decaying into pairs of Higgs bosons (H) in proton-proton collisions collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC at root s = 8 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 19.7 fb(-1). The search considers HH resonances with masses between 1 and 3 TeV, having final states of two b quark pairs. Each Higgs boson is produced with large momentum, and the hadronization products of the pair of b quarks can usually be reconstructed as single large jets. The background from multijet and t (t) over bar events is significantly reduced by applying requirements related to the flavor of the jet, its mass, and its substructure. The signal would be identified as a peak on top of the dijet invariant mass spectrum of the remaining background events. No evidence is observed for such a signal. Upper limits obtained at 95 confidence level for the product of the production cross section and branching fraction sigma(gg -> X) B(X -> HH -> b (b) over barb (b) over bar) range from 10 to 1.5 fb for the mass of X from 1.15 to 2.0 TeV, significantly extending previous searches. For a warped extra dimension theory with amass scale Lambda(R) = 1 TeV, the data exclude radion scalar masses between 1.15 and 1.55 TeV