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Information and Perceptions of Electability in Primary Elections
Get PDFWhen citizens vote in primary elections, they have good reason to consider each candidate’s electability—the chances of winning the general election if they become their party’s nominee. Although electability perceptions are potentially a critical determinant of who wins, little is known about how voters form such perceptions. Using a pre-registered survey experiment conducted on voters in advance of several real competitive senatorial and gubernatorial primary elections in 2022, we examine three candidate attributes that plausibly shape and are correlated with voters’ perceptions of electability: ideological moderation, experience in elected office, and campaign fundraising success. We find evidence that providing new information about candidate attributes affects perceptions of electability, with fundraising being most important. Subsequent analysis shows that this effect is largely driven by Republican voters. Our results highlight the need to better understand differences across the parties in perceptions of electability and how voters learn about campaign finance information
Unexpected Transmission Dynamics in a University Town: Lessons from COVID-19
Get PDFInstitutions of higher education faced a number of challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chief among them was whether or not to reopen during the second wave of COVID-19 in the fall of 2020, which was controversial because incidence in young adults was on the rise. The migration of students back to campuses worried many that transmission within student populations would spread into surrounding communities. In light of this, many colleges and universities implemented mitigation strategies, with varied degrees of success. Washington State University, located in the city of Pullman in Whitman County, WA, is an example of this type of university-community co-location, where the role of students returning to the area for the fall 2020 semester was contentious. Using COVID-19 incidence in Pullman, WA, reported to the Whitman County Health Department, we retrospectively study the transmission dynamics that occurred between the student and community subpopulations in fall 2020. We develop a two-population ordinary differential equations mechanistic model to infer transmission rates within and across the university student and community subpopulations. We use results from Bayesian parameter estimation to determine if exponential transmission of COVID-19 occurred in Pullman, WA, and the magnitude of cross-transmission from students to community members. We find these results are consistent with the estimation of the time-varying reproductive number that outbreak potential was minimal and resolved quickly, and conclude that the students returning to Washington State University-Pullman did not place the surrounding community at disproportionate risk of COVID-19 during fall 2020 when mitigation efforts were in place
Piercing the future of vaccination: the revolutionary role of microneedle-based systems in healthcare advancements
Get PDFMicroneedle (MNs)-based vaccine systems have emerged as a groundbreaking innovation in healthcare, presenting an alternative to conventional vaccine delivery approaches. This study provides an extensive review of the role of MNs in enhancing modern healthcare through improved vaccine delivery strategies, emphasizing advances, advantages, and challenges associated with the integration of MNs and vaccine development technologies. MN-based systems offer a novel approach for vaccine delivery that is associated with an enhanced immunogenic response, and improved vaccine formulation stability. These advantages position MN-based vaccine systems as a transformative solution for overcoming the limitations associated with conventional injection methods, potentially increasing patient compliance and broadening immunization coverage. However, the widespread adoption of MN-based vaccine systems faces several challenges, including scaled up MN production, maintaining formulation stability, ensuring regulatory compliance, and addressing safety concerns. Addressing these challenges requires collaborative activities among MN manufacturers, researchers, regulatory bodies, and healthcare providers to facilitate the successful development and implementation of this innovative technology that holds great promise for enhancing vaccine delivery, offering a more efficient, accessible approach to vaccination, and contributing to global public health initiatives
The effect of postoperative interventions on smoking cessation following cardiothoracic surgery for patients with prior cigarette use: a systematic review and meta-analysis protocol
Get PDFIntroduction: Continued smoking following cardiothoracic surgery is associated with worse outcomes. Continued smoking or smoking relapse following cardiothoracic is a pervasive problem. Postoperative smoking cessation counseling is one strategy to promote sustained cessation. The objective of this review is to determine the effect of these interventions on smoking cessation in the postoperative period.
Methods: Population of interest includes adults who underwent cardiothoracic surgery who have a prior smoking cessation history of any length. Interventions included will be any postoperative interventions specific to smoking cessation such as counseling, education, pharmacotherapy, or any combination of those. Interventions can be of any length and in any setting (inpatient, outpatient, virtual) where cardiothoracic surgery is performed. Usual care will be the comparison. Outcomes to include are continued tobacco abstinence at any time point and point prevalence abstinence. Smoking cessation can be self-reported and/or biochemically confirmed. All follow-up time points will be included. Studies performed in any country will be included. Non-English studies will be excluded. As for study design, RCTs, non-randomized trials, prospective cohort studies with a concurrent comparison group, and pre-post studies will be included. Five databases will be searched: CINAHL, Embase, PsycInfo, PubMed, and Scopus. Type of surgery, setting of intervention, avenue of interventions, staff involvement, intervention length, outcome measures outlined above, avenue of follow up, length of follow up, and country will be abstracted. Risk of bias will be assessed by two independent reviewers using Cochrane RoB 2 Tool for RCTs and the ROBINS-I tool for non-randomized studies. Meta-analysis for the effect estimate will be performed in studies in which follow up time for the effect estimate is comparable for the 2 outcome measures. Funnel plots will be used to assess for publication bias.
Discussion: Tobacco smoking continues to be a problem for cardiothoracic surgery patients postoperatively. No prior systematic review has examined the effect of postoperative interventions in this specific patient population. Previous systematic reviews related to this topic focused on different patient populations or different interventions. Thus, a systematic review on this topic is worthwhile to inform future postoperative practice for cardiothoracic surgery patients
Evolving infectious disease dynamics shape school-based intervention effectiveness
Get PDFSchool-based interventions during epidemics are often controversial, as experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, where reducing transmission had to be weighed against the adverse effects on young children. However, it remains unclear how the broader epidemiologic context influences the effectiveness of these interventions and when they should be implemented. Through integrated modeling of epidemiological and genetic data from a longitudinal school-based surveillance study of SARS-CoV-2 in 2021–2022 (N children = 336, N adults = 51) and scenario simulations, we show how transmission dynamics in schools changed markedly due to strong increases in community-acquired infections in successive periods of viral variants, ultimately undermining the potential impact of school-based interventions in reducing infection rates in the school-aged population. With pandemic preparedness in mind, this study advocates for a dynamic perspective on the role and importance of schools in infectious disease control, one that adapts to the evolving epidemiological landscape shaped by pathogen characteristics and evolution, shifting public health policies, and changes in human behavior., School-based non-pharmaceutical interventions were widely used for COVID-19 control. Here, the authors use simulations to investigate how the potential effectiveness of these interventions can vary depending on the relative contribution of community and school-based transmission
Corrigendum to “Unveiling cGAS mechanisms: Insights into DNA damage and immune sensing in cancer” [DNA Repair 152 (2025) 103868]
Get PDFCorrigendum to “Unveiling cGAS mechanisms: Insights into DNA damage and immune sensing in cancer
Corrigendum: Conformal blocks for Galois covers of algebraic curves
Get PDFCorrigendum to: Conformal blocks for Galois covers of algebraic curve
Exploring the Links Between Highway Development and Crime in the United States: A Case Study of Durham, NC
No full textThis PowerPoint is a short overview of research completed during the 2025 SURF, which explores the links between highway development and crime, focusing on the Hayti community in Durham
Integrating Malaria Molecular Epidemiology into Routine Surveillance in Kenya
Get PDFMalaria resistance has become a growing concern across Africa, deeply threatening treatment efficacy and malaria elimination goals. New molecular biology techniques such as PfSMARRTer and sWGA can enable the detection of new resistance mutations, track how parasites spread, and show how infections are related. To understand malaria resistance in Kenya, 549 regional Kenyan samples were processed through the PfSMARRTer assay to evaluate resistance. Pfk13 mutations associated with artemisinin resistance were present as mixed genotype infections for the M476I, Y493H, P553L, R561H mutation, and the A675V mutation in 31 different samples. The genomic surveillance of these samples across Kenya provides an early warning signal for at least 3 artemisinin resistance mutations circulating in the region
Therapist–Client Synchrony in Students with Depression Symptoms: Physiological Motion Analysis - Pilot/Exploratory Project
No full textThis project examined therapist–client synchrony during psychosocial interventions using motion energy analysis (MEA) of video-recorded sessions. Synchrony was assessed by comparing observed movement coupling to pseudo-synchrony null distributions generated following Altmann (2011). Six sessions were analyzed, with results showing synchrony consistently above chance levels. To further characterize these dynamics, high motion energy synchrony windows (MES > 0.80) were identified, and exploratory analyses using DeepLabCut were initiated to evaluate body-part specific contributions to synchrony. While recruitment and technical challenges limited the full scope of analysis, the project advanced methods for quantifying nonverbal therapist–client coordination and highlighted future directions for integrating computational tools with clinical research on therapeutic processes