For Colored Girls and Boys Who Have Considered Suicide/ When Prayer and GOOD Music Weren’t Enough

Lauren Chanel Allen, a 22-year-old Christian graduate student at Howard University, struggled with mental illness for years. Like so many blacks, Lauren expected her faith to serve an elixir for her problems, including depression. However, her prayers were not sufficient. When she was unable to find solace in the church, she sought out an alternative source: the music of Kanye West. She shared her story in a 2016 article, “How An Ultralight Beam Helped My Dark Depression,” which she published in Abernathy magazine. Lauren’s story speaks to the disconnect that many millennials have with the church. Nowhere in her article did she use the word – therapy – or mention seeking professional help for her condition. Lauren’s avoidance of medical specialists speaks to broader issues in the African American community related to mental illness. This article addresses the following questions: Why do some blacks place more faith in their churches than professional therapy to address their mental health concerns? How does the church’s inability to properly address mental illness contribute to the fact that some black millennials find more solace in Hip Hop than in the church when they experience suffering? What do black pastors think about millennials turning to Hip Hop and rappers like Kanye West for comfort instead of the church? How much reliance should black millennials who are struggling with their mental health place in their faith in Hip Hop musicians such as Kanye West that uplift their spirits

I Gotta Testify: Kanye West, Hip Hop, and the Church

The goal of this project, “I Gotta Testify: Kanye West, Hip Hop, and the Church,” is to add a new perspective to the scholarly discourse on Hip Hop and Christianity within classrooms, religious institutions, and popular culture by focusing on Kanye. We chose to focus on Kanye because he has been one of Hip Hop’s most influential artists in the past decade. Furthermore, Kanye is one of the most polarizing celebrities in America and across the globe. His music, fashion, political views, and family (which includes the Kardashians) dominate discourse on social media, blogs, television, and other forms of mass media. With the exception of Julius Bailey’s 2014 edited book, The Cultural Impact of Kanye West, there has been little scholarly work published on Kanye. Bailey’s book contained just one essay, written by Monica R. Miller, dedicated to the theme of Kanye and religion. We intended to produce a nontraditional journal issue, partly because Kanye has never adhered to traditional boundaries. We also chose this method because we wanted to provide a document suitable for both academic and popular audiences. Kanye West identifies as a Christian and primarily uses Christian themes in his music, videos, concerts, and messaging. Dr. Joshua K. Wright, Dr. Adria Y. Goldman and Dr. VaNatta S. For

Accounting for the growth of observation stays in the assessment of Medicare\u27s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program

IMPORTANCE: Decreases in 30-day readmissions following the implementation of the Medicare Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) have occurred against the backdrop of increasing hospital observation stay use, yet observation stays are not captured in readmission measures. OBJECTIVE: To examine whether the HRRP was associated with decreases in 30-day readmissions after accounting for observation stays. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This retrospective cohort study included a 20% sample of inpatient admissions and observation stays among Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries from January 1, 2009, to December 31, 2015. Data analysis was performed from November 2021 to June 2022. A differences-in-differences analysis assessed changes in 30-day readmissions after the announcement of the HRRP and implementation of penalties for target conditions (heart failure, acute myocardial infarction, and pneumonia) vs nontarget conditions under scenarios that excluded and included observation stays. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Thirty-day inpatient admissions and observation stays. RESULTS: The study included 8 944 295 hospitalizations (mean [SD] age, 78.7 [8.2] years; 58.6% were female; 1.3% Asian; 10.0% Black; 2.0% Hispanic; 0.5% North American Native; 85.0% White; and 1.2% other or unknown). Observation stays increased from 2.3% to 4.4% (91.3% relative increase) of index hospitalizations among target conditions and 14.1% to 21.3% (51.1% relative increase) of index hospitalizations for nontarget conditions. Readmission rates decreased significantly after the announcement of the HRRP and returned to baseline by the time penalties were implemented for both target and nontarget conditions regardless of whether observation stays were included. When only inpatient hospitalizations were counted, decreasing readmissions accrued into a -1.48 percentage point (95% CI, -1.65 to -1.31 percentage points) absolute reduction in readmission rates by the postpenalty period for target conditions and -1.13 percentage point (95% CI, -1.30 to -0.96 percentage points) absolute reduction in readmission rates by the postpenalty period for nontarget conditions. This reduction corresponded to a statistically significant differential change of -0.35 percentage points (95% CI, -0.59 to -0.11 percentage points). Accounting for observation stays more than halved the absolute decrease in readmission rates for target conditions (-0.66 percentage points; 95% CI, -0.83 to -0.49 percentage points). Nontarget conditions showed an overall greater decrease during the same period (-0.76 percentage points; 95% CI, -0.92 to -0.59 percentage points), corresponding to a differential change in readmission rates of 0.10 percentage points (95% CI, -0.14 to 0.33 percentage points) that was not statistically significant. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: The findings of this study suggest that the reduction of readmissions associated with the implementation of the HRRP was smaller than originally reported. More than half of the decrease in readmissions for target conditions appears to be attributable to the reclassification of inpatient admission to observation stays

HIP 38939B: A New Benchmark T Dwarf in the Galactic Plane Discovered with Pan-STARRS1

We report the discovery of a wide brown dwarf companion to the mildly metal-poor ([Fe/H]=-0.24), low galactic latitude (b = 1.88 deg) K4V star HIP 38939. The companion was discovered by its common proper motion with the primary and its red optical (Pan-STARRS1) and blue infrared (2MASS) colors. It has a projected separation of 1630 AU and a near-infrared spectral type of T4.5. As such it is one of only three known companions to a main sequence star which have early/mid-T spectral types (the others being HN Peg B and eps Indi B). Using chromospheric activity we estimate an age for the primary of 900{+1900,-600} Myr. This value is also in agreement with the age derived from the star's weak ROSAT detection. Comparison with evolutionary models for this age range indicates that HIP 38939B falls in the mass range 38+/-20 Mjup with an effective temperature range of 1090+/-60 K. Fitting our spectrum with atmospheric models gives a best fitting temperature of 1100 K. We include our object in an analysis of the population of benchmark T dwarfs and find that while older atmospheric models appeared to over-predict the temperature of the coolest objects compared to evolutionary models, more recent atmospheric models provide better agreement.Comment: ApJ, in press. Tiny changes incorporated into final version: added analysis of likelihood of companionship, clarified the fitting proceedure, and updated the benchmark analysis to highlight when the quoted evolutionary models use the atmospheric model they are being compared to as a boundary conditio

Identification of Widespread Adenosine Nucleotide Binding in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

SummaryComputational prediction of protein function is frequently error-prone and incomplete. In Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), ∼25% of all genes have no predicted function and are annotated as hypothetical proteins, severely limiting our understanding of Mtb pathogenicity. Here, we utilize a high-throughput quantitative activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) platform to probe, annotate, and validate ATP-binding proteins in Mtb. We experimentally validate prior in silico predictions of >240 proteins and identify 72 hypothetical proteins as ATP binders. ATP interacts with proteins with diverse and unrelated sequences, providing an expanded view of adenosine nucleotide binding in Mtb. Several hypothetical ATP binders are essential or taxonomically limited, suggesting specialized functions in mycobacterial physiology and pathogenicity

Debiasing the NEOWISE Cryogenic Mission Comet Populations

We use NEOWISE data from the four-band and three-band cryogenic phases of the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission to constrain size distributions of the comet populations and debias measurements of the short- and long-period comet (LPC) populations. We find that the fit to the debiased LPC population yields a cumulative size−frequency distribution (SFD) power-law slope (β) of −1.0 ± 0.1, while the debiased Jupiter-family comet (JFC) SFD has a steeper slope with β = −2.3 ± 0.2. The JFCs in our debiased sample yielded a mean nucleus size of 1.3 km in diameter, while the LPCs' mean size is roughly twice as large, 2.1 km, yielding mean size ratios (〈D_(LPC)〉/〈D_(JFC)〉) that differ by a factor of 1.6. Over the course of the 8 months of the survey, our results indicate that the number of LPCs passing within 1.5 au are a factor of several higher than previous estimates, while JFCs are within the previous range of estimates of a few thousand down to sizes near 1.3 km in diameter. Finally, we also observe evidence for structure in the orbital distribution of LPCs, with an overdensity of comets clustered near 110° inclination and perihelion near 2.9 au that is not attributable to observational bias