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Safety and Tolerability of APOE Genotyping and Disclosure in Cognitively Normal Volunteers From the Butler Alzheimer’s Prevention Registry
No full textAims: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a gradually progressive neurodegenerative disease that ultimately results in total loss of cognitive and functional independence in older adults. This study aimed to examine the safety and tolerability of APOE disclosure in community-dwelling, cognitively normal (CN) older adults from the Butler Alzheimer’s Prevention Registry (BAPR), and to determine whether APOE disclosure impacted participant’s decisions to participate in AD clinical research. Methods: 186 (N = 106 ∊4 non-carriers, 80 ∊4 carriers) CN older adults aged 58-78 from the BAPR completed 2 visits: one for psychological readiness screening and genotyping and one for APOE disclosure. Online follow-ups were completed 3 days, 6 weeks, and 6 months post-disclosure. Primary outcomes were scores on self-report measures of depression, anxiety, impact of events, and perceived risk of AD, along with enrollment in AD clinical trials. Results: ∊4 carriers and non-carriers did not differ significantly on measures of depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideation over the 6-month follow-up period. ∊4 carriers reported higher impact of disclosure than non-carriers immediately after disclosure, but both groups’ scores on impact of events measures remained sub-clinical. ∊4 carriers and non-carriers were equally likely to participate in AD research after disclosure, with genotype-dependent differences in type of clinical trial enrollment. Conclusions: APOE genotyping and disclosure was safe and well tolerated in a group of CN, community-dwelling older adults, who were pre-screened after volunteering for AD research through BAPR. Implications for the inclusion of APOE genotyping and disclosure at AD clinical trial sites are discussed
Ramming Capitalism: Protest and Dissent at the University of Rhode Island, 1961-72
Get PDFThe University of Rhode Island, like many other universities, is a fertile ground for the reproduction of human capital. It houses strong engineering, computer science, and pharmaceutical programs, all highly profitable fields. Though protest and resistance are not the norms on the URI campus today, this was not always the case. Wherever capital is reproduced, so is class struggle.
The 1960s saw a new wave of dissent and protest spread throughout the globe. One of the largest movements during this period was the student movement. University students became the vanguard of a “new left.” One that dissented from the old and archaic communist parties of the 1930s and 40s and embraced new and exciting ideas. This new left would even permeate through the often apolitical campus of the University of Rhode Island. The university would see its own organization form, the Students for Democratic Action (SDA). Like its parent organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the group took on issues surrounding racism, poverty, compulsory army reserve training, and the doctrine of In Loco Parentis. The SDA’s campaign against such issues was not an easy one, however. The group encountered stark resistance from the student population and a university administration headed by two critical presidents: Francis Horn and Werner Baum. By no means would the campus become a rallying place for all forms of dissent, but in many ways, this is what makes it an interesting case study. By examining protest and dissent at the University of Rhode Island during the 1960s, not only can another case study be added to the scholarship surrounding student protest, but also a picture of dissent at an average state university can be painted, something the literature has not been able to do properly thus far
The Impact of Media and Information Literacy on Students’ Acquisition of the Skills Needed to Detect Fake News
Get PDFThis research investigated the impact of media and information literacy (MIL) on education faculty students’ acquisition of the skills needed to detect fake news. A one-group experimental design was employed with a randomly selected sample of 100 Jordanian undergraduate students. The participants completed one pre-test and two post-tests, each of which consisted of 10 closed-ended questions and one open-ended question on how to detect fake news. The results indicated that studying MIL has an impact on students’ acquisition of the skills needed to detect fake news. The findings also suggested that the methods students employed to identify and detect fake news after studying the MIL course were scientific and well-reasoned. Based on the results, several recommendations are made that will be of value to researchers and workers in this field
Police narrative reports: Do they provide end-users with the data they need to help prevent bicycle crashes?
No full textBicycles gained significant popularity among Americans in 2020. Greater investment in adequate bicycle safety facilities will be needed. Crash data from police will undoubtedly play a role in decision-making. This research evaluated the data quality of text narratives in police reports on bicycle crashes. The aims were to identify situations in which police officers wrote more detail in the narrative text, investigate if longer reports translate to more in-depth crash descriptions, examine the extent to which narrative texts cover details useful for those charged with bicycle safety. This is a 4-year retrospective cohort study of vehicle-vs-bicycle crashes that occurred between January 1, 2009, and December 31, 2012, in Boston, Massachusetts (USA). Police reports were matched with the Pedestrian and Bicycle Crash Analysis Tool (PBCAT) to measure how much information was captured and when reports were more likely to capture more information. Police reports only captured most information in one area of the standardized form (Crash Typing), with average total missingness of over 75%. Longer reports did reduce the amount of missingness, and officers were more likely to write longer reports when they were on the crash site, when there was an injury, when the crash involved an extended car door, and during the day. A 100% increase in the report\u27s words was associated with a four-percentage point reduction in PBCAT missingness. While longer reports result in less missingness when measured against the standardized crash form, the average report still misses most of the information that the form would capture. We recommend that police departments adopt a standardized form to facilitate information capture at the scene of bicycle-vehicle crashes
Critical new insights into the binding of poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) to albumin protein
Get PDFWith an increasing number of health-related impacts of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) being reported, there is a pressing need to understand PFAS transport within both the human body and the environment. As proteins can serve as a primary transport mechanism for PFAS, understanding PFAS binding to proteins is essential for predictive physiological models where accurate values of protein binding constants are vital. In this work we present a critical analysis of three common models for analyzing PFAS binding to bovine serum albumin (BSA) based on fluorescence quenching: the Stern-Volmer model, the modified Stern-Volmer model, and the Hill equation. The PFAS examined include perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), perfluorononanoic acid (PFNA), perfluorodecanoic acid (PFDA), perfluorobutanesulfonic acid (PFBS), perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS), perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), and the replacement compound 2,3,3,3-tetrafluoro-2-(heptafluoropropoxy)propanoate (HFPO-DA or GenX). While all three models capture the general effects of hydrophobicity and steric limitations to PFAS binding, the Hill equation highlighted a unique relationship between binding cooperativity and the number of fluorinated carbons, with PFOA exhibiting the greatest binding cooperativity. The significance of steric limitations was confirmed by comparing results obtained by fluorescence quenching, which is an indirect method based on specific binding, to those obtained by equilibrium dialysis where PFAS binding directly correlated with traditional measures of hydrophobicity. Finally, the binding constants were correlated with PFAS physicochemical properties where van der Waals volume best described the steric limitations observed by fluorescence quenching
Quantifying the Impact of Traffic on Electric Vehicle Efficiency
Get PDFWhile the influence of several factors on battery electric vehicle (BEV) efficiency has been investigated in the past, their impact on traffic is not yet fully understood, especially when driving in a natural environment. This paper investigates the influence of driving in intense traffic conditions while considering the ambient temperature and driving behavior on BEV energy efficiency in a field study. A total of 30 BEV inexperienced drivers test drove a 2017 Volkswagen eGolf on a route with various road types in two different traffic intensity scenarios: During morning commute hours with higher traffic congestion and lower congestion hours throughout the middle of the day. Results support the hypothesis that traffic conditions significantly impact the vehicle’s efficiency, with additional consumption of approximately 4–5% in the high traffic scenario. By creating and comparing driving in traffic to an underlying base case scenario, the additional range potential by avoiding traffic for this particular vehicle can be quantified as up to seven miles. New patterns of BEV efficiencies emerged, which can help stakeholders understand how eco-driving can be strategically improved by selecting trip times and routes that avoid high traffic intensity
Minds Circumscribed by Fear. A Review of Garrisoned Minds: Women and Armed Conflicts in South Asia, Edited by Lazmi Murthy and Mitu Varma
Get PDFImmigration, Policy Exclusion, and State-Level Inequality in TANF Usage
Get PDFThe relationship between immigration and welfare provision is at the heart of welfare politics research. While prior studies have examined how immigration affects welfare generosity, less is known about the consequences of exclusive welfare policies and immigration on social inequality. In this paper, by using TANF as the policy context, we offer a systematic examination of how immigration combined with state immigrant welfare policies affect inequality in welfare usage between citizens and immigrants. Using data across the fifty American states from 2001 to 2016, we find evidence that exclusive state immigrant TANF policies are a key source of decreased immigrant TANF caseload rate and enlarged citizen-immigrant TANF caseload gap. Moreover, states’ immigrant population density moderates the effect of state immigrant welfare eligibility policies on immigrant TANF caseload rate and citizen-immigrant TANF caseload gap. Our robustness checks by using alternative measures of the dependent variable and key independent variable verify these findings