Eligibility and enrollment in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)--27 states and New York City, 2007-2008.

The national Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) provides nutrition education, growth monitoring, breastfeeding promotion and support, and food to low-income pregnant or postpartum women, infants, and children aged <5 years. Several studies have linked WIC services with improved maternal and infant health outcomes. Most population-based studies have lacked information needed to identify eligible women who are not receiving WIC services and might be at risk for poor health outcomes. This report uses multistate, population-based 2007-2008 survey data from CDC's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) and California's Maternal and Infant Health Assessment (MIHA) to estimate how many women were eligible but not enrolled in WIC during pregnancy and to describe their characteristics and their prevalence of markers of risk for poor maternal or infant health outcomes. Approximately 17% of all women surveyed were eligible but not enrolled in WIC during pregnancy. The proportion of women eligible for WIC and WIC participation rates varied by state. WIC participants had higher prevalences of markers of risk for poor maternal or infant health outcomes than eligible nonparticipants, but both groups had higher prevalences of risk markers than ineligible women, suggesting that many eligible women and their children might benefit from WIC services. The results of this analysis can help identify the scope of WIC outreach needed to include more eligible nonparticipants in WIC and whom to target

Compulsivity Across the Pathological Misuse of Drug and Non-Drug Rewards.

Behavioral adaptation is required for the successful navigation of a constantly changing environment. Impairments in behavioral flexibility are commonly observed in psychiatric disorders including those of addiction. This study investigates two distinct facets of compulsivity, namely reversal learning and attentional set shifting, implicating orbitofrontal and lateral prefrontal regions respectively, across disorders of primary and secondary rewards. Obese subjects with and without binge eating disorder (BED), individuals with compulsive sexual behaviors (CSB), alcohol dependence (AD) and pathological video-gaming (VG) were tested with two computerized tasks: the probabilistic reversal task (trials to criterion and win-stay/lose-shift errors) and the intra/extra-dimensional set shift task (IED). Individuals with AD and pathological VG were slower at reversal learning irrespective of valence, with AD subjects more likely to perseverate after losses. Compared to obese subjects without BED, BED subjects were worse at reversal learning to wins but better at losses highlighting valence effects as a function of binge eating. CSB subjects demonstrated enhanced sensitivity to reward outcomes with faster acquisition and greater perseveration with higher magnitude rewards. We further show an impairment in attentional set shifting in individuals with BED and AD relative to healthy volunteers (HV). This study provides evidence for commonalities and differences in two distinct dimensions of behavioral inflexibility across disorders of compulsivity. We summarize studies on compulsivity subtypes within this same patient population. We emphasize commonalities in AD and BED with impairments across a range of compulsivity indices, perhaps supporting pathological binge eating as a form of behavioral addiction. We further emphasize commonalities in reversal learning across disorders and the crucial role of valence effects. These findings highlight the role of behavioral inflexibility and compulsivity as a relevant domain in defining dimensional psychiatry and the identification of relevant cognitive endophenotypes as targets for therapeutic modulation.PB was supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (individual fellowship: SFRH/BD/33889/2009). VV and NAH are Wellcome Trust Intermediate Fellows. The study was funded by the Wellcome Trust (WT093705/Z/10/Z).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Frontiers via http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2016.0015

Understanding high-end climate change: from impacts to co-creating integrated and transformative solutions

Editorial. The world is not yet on track to meet the Paris Agreement climate change target of keeping global average temperature rise within 2 °C above pre-industrial levels. Current greenhouse gas emission trends point to much more substantial warming, with possible increases of 4 °C or more in the long-term. This Special Issue describes findings from the IMPRESSIONS project which advanced the understanding of impacts of high-end climate change (defined as global mean temperatures > 2 °C above pre-industrial levels) and potential solutions for reducing these impacts through adaptation, mitigation and transformative actions. With stakeholders, the project developed a set of integrated climate and socio-economic scenarios and applied these to multi-sectoral impact models in five case studies: Hungary, Scotland, Iberia, Europe as a whole and Central Asia. This showed that benefits in some regions and sectors, such as increasing forest productivity in northern Europe, are offset by detrimental effects in others, such as severe water scarcity, heat stress and loss of productivity in southern Europe and parts of central and eastern Europe, and widespread flood damage. Adaptation and mitigation pathways were generated with stakeholders to address these impacts and identify integrated and transformative solutions. These highlighted the importance of shifting to sustainable lifestyles, good governance for sustainability and climate resilience, and new forms of integrated and sustainable resource management. The stakeholder-led approach of IMPRESSIONS ensured that the research was driven by the priorities of decision-makers, enabling significant co-learning and the identification of robust, innovative and effective solutions for addressing high-end climate change

Modelling the seasonality of Lyme disease risk and the potential impacts of a warming climate within the heterogeneous landscapes of Scotland

Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in the temperate Northern Hemisphere. The abundance of infected nymphal ticks is commonly used as a Lyme disease risk indicator. Temperature can influence the dynamics of disease by shaping the activity and development of ticks and, hence, altering the contact pattern and pathogen transmission between ticks and their host animals. A mechanistic, agent-based model was developed to study the temperature-driven seasonality of Ixodes ricinus ticks and transmission of Borrelia burgdorferi sensu lato across mainland Scotland. Based on 12-year averaged temperature surfaces, our model predicted that Lyme disease risk currently peaks in autumn, approximately six weeks after the temperature peak. The risk was predicted to decrease with increasing altitude. Increases in temperature were predicted to prolong the duration of the tick questing season and expand the risk area to higher altitudinal and latitudinal regions. These predicted impacts on tick population ecology may be expected to lead to greater tick–host contacts under climate warming and, hence, greater risks of pathogen transmission. The model is useful in improving understanding of the spatial determinants and system mechanisms of Lyme disease pathogen transmission and its sensitivity to temperature changes

Population and age structure in Hungary: a residential preference and age dependency approach to disaggregate census data

We present a simple model to disaggregate age structured population census data to a 1-km grid for Hungary. A dasymetric approach was used to predict the spatial distribution of population in different age groups by distinguishing residential preferences (in relation to accessible social, economic and green amenities) for working age groups (15–29, 30–49 and 50–64) and population dependencies for children and the elderly (aged 0–14 and 65+). By using open-access land cover data and fine-level population census data as inputs, the model predicts the likely spatial distribution of population and age structure for Hungary in 2011. The resulting map and gridded data provide information to support spatial planning of residential development and urban infrastructure. The model is less data-demanding than most existing approaches, but provides greater power for describing population patterns. It can also be used to create scenarios of future demographic change

New European socio-economic scenarios for climate change research: operationalising concepts to extend the shared socio-economic pathways

Scenarios have been recognised as a useful tool for planning, which have resulted in a strong increase in the number of (multi-scale) scenarios in climate change research. This paper addresses the need for methodological progress and testing of conceptual considerations, by extending the global shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). We present a set of four European SSPs until 2100 and a novel method to develop qualitative stories for Europe equivalent to the global SSPs starting from an existing set of European scenarios. Similar to the global SSPs, the set includes a sustainable future with global cooperation and less intensive lifestyles (We are the World; Eur-SSP1); a future in which countries struggle to maintain living standards in a high-carbon intensive Europe (Icarus; Eur-SSP3); a world in which power becomes concentrated in a small elite and where Europe becomes an important player (Riders on the Storm; Eur-SSP4); and one where a lack of environmental concern leads to the over-exploitation of fossil fuel resources addressed by technological solutions (Fossil-fuelled Development; Eur-SSP5). We conclude that the global SSPs are a good starting point for developing equivalent continental scale scenarios that, in turn, can serve multiple purposes. There are, however, methodological challenges related to the choice for equivalence and the exact methods by which scenarios are constructed that need to be tested further

Bridging uncertainty concepts across narratives and simulations in environmental scenarios

Uncertainties in our understanding of current and future climate change projections, impacts and vulnerabilities are structured by scientists using scenarios, which are generally in qualitative (narrative) and quantitative (numerical) forms. Although conceptually strong, qualitative and quantitative scenarios have limited complementarity due to the lack of a fundamental bridge between two different concepts of uncertainty: linguistic and epistemic. Epistemic uncertainty is represented by the range of scenarios and linguistic variables within them, while linguistic uncertainty is represented by the translation of those linguistic variables via the fuzzy set approach. Both are therefore incorporated in the models that utilise the final quantifications. The application of this method is demonstrated in a stakeholder-led development of socioeconomic scenarios. The socioeconomic scenarios include several vague elements due to heterogeneous linguistic interpretations of future change on the part of stakeholders. We apply the so-called ‘Centre of Gravity’ (CoG) operator to defuzzify the quantifications of linguistic values provided by stakeholders. The results suggest that, in these cases, uniform distributions provide a close fit to the membership functions derived from ranges of values provided by stakeholders. As a result, the 90 or 95% intervals of the probability density functions are similar to the 0.1 or 0.05 degrees of membership of the linguistic values of linguistic variables. By bridging different uncertainty concepts (linguistic and epistemic uncertainties), this study offers a substantial step towards linking qualitative and quantitative scenarios

Modelling regional cropping patterns under scenarios of climate and socio-economic change in Hungary

Impacts of socio-economic, political and climatic change on agricultural land systems are inherently uncertain. The role of regional and local-level actors is critical in developing effective policy responses that accommodate such uncertainty in a flexible and informed way across governance levels. This study identified potential regional challenges in arable land use systems, which may arise from climate and socio-economic change for two counties in western Hungary: Veszprém and Tolna. An empirically-grounded, agent-based model was developed from an extensive farmer household survey about local land use practices. The model was used to project future patterns of arable land use under four localised, stakeholder-driven scenarios of plausible future socio-economic and climate change. The results show strong differences in farmers' behaviour and current agricultural land use patterns between the two regions, highlighting the need to implement focused policy at the regional level. For instance, policy that encourages local food security may need to support improvements in the capacity of farmers to adapt to physical constraints in Veszprém and farmer access to social capital and environmental awareness in Tolna. It is further suggested that the two regions will experience different challenges to adaptation under possible future conditions (up to 2100). For example, Veszprém was projected to have increased fallow land under a scenario with high inequality, ineffective institutions and higher-end climate change, implying risks of land abandonment. By contrast, Tolna was projected to have a considerable decline in major cereals under a scenario assuming a de-globalising future with moderate climate change, inferring challenges to local food self-sufficiency. The study provides insight into how socio-economic and physical factors influence the selection of crop rotation plans by farmers in western Hungary and how farmer behaviour may affect future risks to agricultural land systems under environmental change

GALEX, Optical and IR Light Curves of MQ Dra: UV Excesses at Low Accretion Rates

Ultraviolet light curves constructed from NUV and FUV detectors on GALEX reveal large amplitude variations during the orbital period of the Low Accretion Rate Polar MQ Dra (SDSSJ1553+55). This unexpected variation from a UV source is similar to that seen and discussed in the Polar EF Eri during its low state of accretion, even though the accretion rate in MQ Dra is an order of magnitude lower than even the low state of EF Eri. The similarity in phasing of the UV and optical light curves in MQ Dra imply a similar location for the source of light. We explore the possibilities of hot spots and cyclotron emission with simple models fit to the UV, optical and IR light curves of MQ Dra. To match the GALEX light curves with a single temperature circular hot spot requires different sizes of spots for the NUV and FUV, while a cyclotron model that can produce the optical harmonics with a magnetic field near 60 MG requires multipoles with fields > 200 MG to match the UV fluxes.Comment: accepted for ApJ; 15 pages, 7 tables, 8 fig