The Impact of Welfare Reform on Public Shelter Utilization in Philadelphia: A Time-Series Analysis

The use of public shelters in Philadelphia was examined both before and after the implementation of Act 35, Pennsylvania’s response to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. Univariate interrupted time-series analyses were conducted to determine if trends in shelter utilization (the number of families admitted, by family size, by race, by age of household head, by income, by disability indicator, and by average length of stay) changed significantly after March 1997, the month in which Act 35 was implemented, or after 3, 6, 9, and 12 months of implementation. Results indicate that family size and household head age increased after the implementation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, although not at consistent lags. A small negative effect on self-reported substance abuse and a small positive effect on the proportion of household heads with a disability were found, but at inconsistent lags. As is the case with most evaluations of welfare reform, it is difficult to separate the effects of welfare reform and Philadelphia\u27s economy during the study period. To test the effect of Act 35\u27s implementation while controlling for economic factors, a multivariate regression analysis of family shelter admissions was conducted along with variables for the unemployment rate and for the consumer price index for the cost of rental housing. This analysis revealed a significant positive effect of unemployment and housing costs on public shelter admissions among families and no effect of the implementation of welfare reform

Muon antineutrino disappearance and non-standard interactions at the T2K experiment

T2K is a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment, which studies the changing avour composition of a beam over a 295 km baseline from an accelerator at J-PARC to Super-Kamiokande, a 50 kt water Cerenkov detector. The T2K neutrino beam has an energy peak at 0.6 GeV which gives strong sensitivity to oscillations at the atmospheric mass squared splitting. The beam can be run in two modes, producing a beam either dominated by neutrinos or by antineutrinos. Collecting data in antineutrino-mode allows the measurement of the neutrino mixing parameters on antineutrinos only. In the first analysis of T2K antineutrino-mode data, we use beam data collected up to June 2015 to measure sin2⊖23 and j m2 32j. The 90% CL allowed values for mixing angle are 0.327 < sin2⊖23 < 0.692 (normal hierarchy) and 0.332 < sin2⊖23 < 0.697 (inverted hierarchy). The 90% CL allowed values for mass splitting are 2.03x10-3 eV2 < j m2 32j < 2.92x10-3 eV2 (normal hierarchy) and 2.03x10-3 eV2 < j m2 31j < 2.92x10-3 eV2(inverted hierarchy). This is the world's best measurement in sin2⊖23. A difference between neutrino and antineutrino survival probabilities could result from physics beyond the Standard Model, known as non-standard interactions. A simultaneous fit to the T2K neutrino-mode and antineutrino-mode datasets allows for a direct search for such interactions. We see no evidence for this hypothesis

Successful Cessation Programs that Reduce Comorbidity May Explain Surprisingly Low Smoking Rates Among Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients

A recent, non-peer-reviewed meta-analysis suggests that smoking may reduce the risk of hospitalization with COVID-19 because the prevalence of smoking among hospitalized COVID-19 is less than that of the general population. However, there are alternative explanations for this phenomena based on (1) the failure to report, or accurately record, smoking history during emergency hospital admissions and (2) a pre-disposition to avoid smoking among COVID-19 patients with tobacco-related comorbidities (a type of “reverse” causation). For example, urine testing of hospitalized patients in Australia for cotinine showed that smokers were under-counted by 37% because incoming patients failed to inform staff about their smoking behavior. Face-to-face interviews can introduce bias into the responses to attitudinal and behavioral questions not present in the self-completion interviews typically used to measure smoking prevalence in the general population. Subjects in face-to-face interviews may be unwilling to admit socially undesirable behavior and attitudes under direct questioning. Reverse causation may also contribute to the difference between smoking prevalence in the COVID-19 and general population. Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 may be simply less prone to use tobacco than the general population. A potentially robust “reverse causation” hypothesis for reduced prevalence of smokers in the COVID-19 population is the enrichment of patients in that population with serious comorbidities that motivates them to quit smoking. We judge that this “smoking cessation” mechanism may account for a significant fraction of the reduced prevalence of smokers in the COVID-19 population. Testing this hypothesis will require a focused research program

General and Specific Promotion of Flagellar Assembly by a Flagellar Nucleoside Diphosphate Kinase

Nucleoside diphosphate kinases (NDKs) play a central role in diverse cellular processes using the canonical NDK activity or alternative mechanisms that remain poorly defined. Our study of dimeric NDK5 in a flagellar motility control complex, the radial spoke (RS), has revealed new modalities. The flagella in Chlamydomonas ndk5 mutant were paralyzed, albeit only deficient in three RS subunits. RS morphology appeared severely changed in averaged cryo-electron tomograms, suggesting that NDK5 is crucial for the intact spokehead formation as well as RS structural stability. Intriguingly, ndk5’s flagella were also short, resembling those of an allelic spoke-less mutant. All ndk5’s phenotypes were rescued by expressions of NDK5 or a mutated NDK5 lacking the canonical kinase activity. Importantly, the mutated NDK5 that appeared fully functional in ndk5 cells elicited a dominant-negative effect in wild-type cells, causing paralyzed short flagella with hypophosphorylated, less abundant, but intact RSs, and accumulated hypophosphorylated NDK5 in the cell body. We propose that NDK5 dimer is an RS structural subunit with an additional mechanism that uses cross-talk between the two NDK monomers to accelerate phosphorylation-related assembly of RSs and entire flagella

Prediction and prevention of the next pandemic zoonosis.

Most pandemics--eg, HIV/AIDS, severe acute respiratory syndrome, pandemic influenza--originate in animals, are caused by viruses, and are driven to emerge by ecological, behavioural, or socioeconomic changes. Despite their substantial effects on global public health and growing understanding of the process by which they emerge, no pandemic has been predicted before infecting human beings. We review what is known about the pathogens that emerge, the hosts that they originate in, and the factors that drive their emergence. We discuss challenges to their control and new efforts to predict pandemics, target surveillance to the most crucial interfaces, and identify prevention strategies. New mathematical modelling, diagnostic, communications, and informatics technologies can identify and report hitherto unknown microbes in other species, and thus new risk assessment approaches are needed to identify microbes most likely to cause human disease. We lay out a series of research and surveillance opportunities and goals that could help to overcome these challenges and move the global pandemic strategy from response to pre-emption

An Assessment of the Housing Needs of Persons with HIV/AIDS: New York City Eligible Metropolitan Statistica Area, Final Report

This report is the final deliverable of a study of the housing needs of persons with HIV/AIDS in the New York City Eligible Metropolitan Statistical Area that was commissioned in 2001 by the New York City Mayor’s Office of AIDS Policy Coordination under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) program. The Hudson Planning Group (HPG) and a team of professionals including the University of Pennsylvania Center for Mental Health Policy and Services Research, the Center for Urban Community Services, and Public Sector Research was selected to perform the assessment under the direction of the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health (PCMH), as the City’s Master Contractor, and with the help of an Advisory Group composed of consumers, service providers, government representatives and experts in health and housing policy. The release of the report has been delayed close to a year beyond its due date. The assessment was scheduled to take two years and to be completed in the fall of 2003, in accordance with the terms of an agreement between HPG and the PCMH. HPG submitted a complete draft of the report to the York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Bureau of HIV/AIDS in February 2004. Review and comment by City agencies and HPG’s revisions to the draft took an extended time and the final report is being released in November 2004. Accordingly, data in the report are current as of December 2003, with the exception of a few cases where it is noted that more recent data were provided at the request of a City agency reviewing the report

Health care payments in the asia pacific: validation of five survey measures of economic burden

Introduction: Many low and middle-income countries rely on out-of-pocket payments to help finance health care. These payments can pose financial hardships for households; valid measurement of this type of economic burden is therefore critical. This study examines the validity of five survey measures of economic burden caused by health care payments. Methods: We analyzed 2002/03 World Health Survey household-level data from four Asia Pacific countries to assess the construct validity of five measures of economic burden due to health care payments: any health expenditure, health expenditure amount, catastrophic health expenditure, indebtedness, and impoverishment. We used generalized linear models to assess the correlations between these measures and other constructs with which they have expected associations, such as health care need, wealth, and risk protection. Results: Measures of impoverishment and indebtedness most often correlated with health care need, wealth, and risk protection as expected. Having any health expenditure, a large health expenditure, or even a catastrophic health expenditure did not consistently predict degree of economic burden. Conclusions: Studies that examine economic burden attributable to health care payments should include measures of impoverishment and indebtedness

Managing hostile subsoils in the high rainfall zone of south-western Australia

This report is designed to complement existing information on the management of crops in the High Rainfall Zone of south-western Australia and to identify limitations for crop production arising from the soil properties in this area