Measurement Issues for Adequacy Comparisons among Pension Systems. ENEPRI Research Report No. 64, 16 January 2009

In this paper, indexes are proposed in order to capture the degree to which a pension scheme 1) prevents poverty among the elderly, 2) enables smoothing of living standards after retirement and 3) induces both intra- and inter-generational solidarity

The Experience of Intimate Partner Violence Among Pregnant Women Seeking Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder

Introduction: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a major health issue among those with substance use disorder. A history of partner violence is associated with increased health problems and less improvement in treatment. The perinatal period is a time of increased risk of IPV for women, as well as a key opportunity for opioid use disorder treatment intervention. The purpose of this study is to characterize the experience of partner violence and evaluate the typology of sequelae associated with it in a population of pregnant women seeking medication assisted treatment for opioid use disorder. Methods: The population of interest in this study is pregnant or parenting women seeking treatment for opioid use disorder at MATER, a comprehensive addiction treatment center in Philadelphia, PA. The main data source used was the Biopsychosocial Document, a form completed by patients upon entry into the program. Data from 168 respondents were used to capture the frequency and character of intimate partner violence as well as related sequelae. Descriptive statistics including means and standard deviations for continuous data and count and percent frequencies for categorical data, will be used to describe the data. Results: Experience of IPV was very common among the study population, with 62.3% of participants reporting abuse as an adult. Among women who had experienced IPV, the types of abuse with the most frequency were physical (87.9%) and sexual (66.7%). The full spectrum of abuse including psychological, financial, and stalking was observed. Of note, even among those respondents who did not self-report IPV, rates of abuse subtypes were non-zero. This study will further analyze recent drug use, previous treatment attempts, sexual exploitation, and experience of childhood abuse and their associations to violence experienced as an adult. Conclusion: Opioid use disorder treatment programs are likely to engage women experiencing intimate partner violence, and treatment initiation represents an important area of potential intervention. Next steps should include qualitative interview-based research into this population’s experience of intimate partner violence to further elucidate best methods of support

Novel approaches for the evolutionary engineering of pathways in saccharomyces cerevisiae

Modern biotechnological tools are making microbial production of chemicals, fuels, and pharmaceuticals increasingly practical and economically feasible. The field of metabolic engineering aims to enable this production by hijacking cellular systems to modify metabolism, converting each cell into an efficient chemical reactor. Traditionally, this has been accomplished through combining various knockouts and/or overexpressions of metabolic genes, but directed evolution strategies are often critical for improving metabolic pathways beyond native activity. Due to the complexity of cellular metabolism, simply evolving single genetic parts in a stepwise fashion can be limiting. In this work, we develop novel and powerful methods for applying directed evolution to the engineering of metabolic pathways in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. First, we develop a method for in vivo Continuous Evolution (ICE), which uses a synthetic retrotransposon element to allow generation of the largest mutant libraries of any in vivo mutational generation approach in yeast. This method is then validated by using it to rapidly evolve a variety of diverse genetic systems, including single enzymes, global transcriptional regulators, and multi-gene pathways. Next, we apply a modeling approach to create novel biosensors that can rapidly screen for production and secretion phenotypes in these large mutant libraries. These biosensors are then imported into microfluidic droplet systems to apply this screen in a high-throughput manner, creating a novel platform for screening libraries finally commensurate with the high level of diversity generation previously enabled. This method is validated by evolving an overproduction and secretion phenotype, resulting in strains that produce significantly elevated levels of aromatic amino acids. Finally, we develop and characterize new tools to enable the expression and evolution of multiple genes in a single genetic cassette. Taken together, these novel technologies significantly advance the state of the art for evolutionary engineering of metabolic pathways and will enable the evolution of pathways of enzymes for rapidly improving production of a number of desirable high-value biochemicals.Chemical Engineerin

Examining the Associations Between Addiction Severity and Prior Adverse Childhood Experiences in Pregnant Women Receiving Treatment for Opioid Addiction

Introduction: Opioid use during pregnancy poses risk to both the mother and fetus, including fetal loss and pre-term birth. Prior research suggests that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are a plausible antecedent to opioid abuse. However, there is insufficient understanding of the association between prior ACEs, familial history of substance use, and treatment outcomes in pregnant women receiving treatment for opioid addiction. Methods: A retrospective chart review will be used to review data from 167 MATER patients who entered treatment between 1997 and 2017. Descriptive statistics will be utilized to characterize the study population. Regression and chi-square analyses will be conducted to establish whether demographic factors and history of substance use differ as a function of child abuse. Results: We expect to observe a positive association between number of ACEs, number of family members with a history of substance use, duration of treatment, and number of relapses. We anticipate that demographic variables such as race and education will moderate this association. Conclusion: Understanding what associations may exist between ACES and addiction severity could identify potential interventions to improve psychosocial health and quality of parenting behaviors in pregnant women who are receiving treatment for opioid addiction. Additionally, having this understanding could improve treatment outcomes for patients and providers’ ability to deliver trauma-informed care

RNA-aptamers-in-droplets (RAPID) high-throughput screening for secretory phenotypes.

Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering seek to re-engineer microbes into living foundries for the production of high value chemicals. Through a design-build-test cycle paradigm, massive libraries of genetically engineered microbes can be constructed and tested for metabolite overproduction and secretion. However, library generation capacity outpaces the rate of high-throughput testing and screening. Well plate assays are flexible but with limited throughput, whereas droplet microfluidic techniques are ultrahigh-throughput but require a custom assay for each target. Here we present RNA-aptamers-in-droplets (RAPID), a method that greatly expands the generality of ultrahigh-throughput microfluidic screening. Using aptamers, we transduce extracellular product titer into fluorescence, allowing ultrahigh-throughput screening of millions of variants. We demonstrate the RAPID approach by enhancing production of tyrosine and secretion of a recombinant protein in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by up to 28- and 3-fold, respectively. Aptamers-in-droplets affords a general approach for evolving microbes to synthesize and secrete value-added chemicals.Screening libraries of genetically engineered microbes for secreted products is limited by the available assay throughput. Here the authors combine aptamer-based fluorescent detection with droplet microfluidics to achieve high throughput screening of yeast strains engineered for enhanced tyrosine or streptavidin production

Certainty equivalent citation: generalized classes of citation indexes

Citation indexes have attracted the interest of many researchers in the recent years. In this paper we propose a new class of citation indexes which is shown to generalize most of the citation indexes in the existing literature (h-, g-, f-, t-index). The class of indexes is obtained borrowing from the notion of ``certainty equivalent income'' or ``equally distributed equivalent income'' which has been largely implemented in the field of risk and inequality measurement. As a result citation orderings are shown to depend on a parameter of concentration/dispersion aversion capturing the value judgments of the decision-maker with respect to the distribution of citations. In order to verify the sensitivity of scientific productivity orderings with respect to concentration/dispersion aversion, an empirical application to a representative sample of Italian academic economists is presented

More Social Needs Endorsed by Caregivers of Young Children Experiencing Everyday Discrimination

Background: Both discrimination and social needs are underlying risk factors for poor health outcomes; however, there are no studies looking at how feelings of discrimination impact reporting of social needs in the pediatric health care setting. Objective: To compare caregiver report of social needs and desire for help addressing social needs in the pediatric primary care setting based on respondents’ experiences with discrimination. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study of caregivers of children aged 2-5 in an urban primary care setting. Caregivers completed a tool to screen for 15 social needs and desire for help to address these needs, with in-person assistance available. The tool was adapted based on qualitative data with this same population and included items from the PHQ-2, 2-item food insecurity screener, and WE CARE survey. The short version of the “Everyday Discrimination Scale” was also completed, and caregivers were categorized as experiencing everyday discrimination if they responded “rarely”, “sometimes”, or “often” on any of 5 types of discrimination. If caregivers experienced everyday discrimination, they were also asked about perceived basis for discrimination. T-tests were conducted to compare the number of reported social needs and number of needs for which a caregiver desired help between groups based on experience of everyday discrimination and type of discrimination. Results: One hundred seventy-eight caregivers (94% mothers, mean age 32) of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds (29% white, 61% black; 10% Hispanic) completed the screening tool. Sixty-seven percent had public insurance, and 35% were from households with an annual income below $20,000. Fifty-three percent of caregivers reported everyday discrimination, especially in regards to being treated with less respect and receiving poorer service in stores and restaurants (Figure 1) and most commonly on the basis of race (48%), gender (38%), and age (31%). Both caregivers who endorsed everyday discrimination in general, and those endorsing discrimination specifically by gender and age, reported a significantly higher number of social needs and number of social needs for which they wanted help (Table 1). Conclusions: In an urban population of mostly young Black mothers, the majority endorsed feeling some degree of everyday discrimination. Despite this, caregivers who endorsed feelings of discrimination, especially because of their gender and age, reported more social needs and a greater desire for help addressing these needs. This suggests that caregivers feel comfortable reporting sensitive social needs in the context of a child’s healthcare setting even though they may experience everyday discrimination. These findings may also suggest an association between experienced discrimination and social needs, with both potentially influenced by similar sociodemographic factors

Fiscal Illusion and Progressive Taxation with Retrospective Voting

We consider the tax progressivity decision of a rent‐maximizing government when voters’ perceptions of the tax price of public goods are biased by cognitive anomalies (i.e., fiscal illusion), and the electorate opts for re‐appointing or for dismissing the incumbent according to a retrospective voting logic. Given electoral and constitutional constraints, we show that the design of the tax system can be sensibly affected by fiscal illusion within the population of voters. Specifically, we find that (i) the tax system is more (less) progressive when taxes and public expenditures are perceived less (more), and (ii) an increase in the median voter’s income may positively or negatively affect tax progressivity depending on the nature (pessimistic or optimistic) of fiscal illusion. The impact of fiscal illusion on tax progressivity is validated by econometric analysis

Certainty equivalent citation: a generalized class of citation indexes

Citation indexes have attracted the interest of many researchers in the recent years. In this paper we propose a new class of citation indexes which is shown to generalize most of the citation indexes in the existing literature (h-, g-, f-, t-index). The class of indexes is obtained borrowing from the notion of ``certainty equivalent income'' or ``equally distributed equivalent income'' which has been largely implemented in the field of risk and inequality measurement. As a result citation orderings are shown to depend on a parameter of concentration/dispersion aversion capturing the value judgments of the decision-maker with respect to the distribution of citations. In order to verify the sensitivity of scientific productivity orderings with respect to concentration/dispersion aversion, an empirical application to a representative sample of Italian academic economists is presented