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Citywide park renovations and changes in perceived stress: a quasi-experimental study among low-income communities in New York City
Get PDFBackground Quality parks have the potential to promote well-being and health equity in urban communities through reduced stress, yet high-quality epidemiological evidence is limited. This quasi-experimental study measured associations between park renovation and changes in perceived stress among low-income adults in New York City. Methods Pre- and post-renovation data on the Perceived Stress Scale and park use from 162 adults living near (< 0.3 miles) 31 renovated parks and 151 adults living near 21 sociodemographically matched control parks were analyzed. Linear mixed-effects difference-in-difference (DID) regression measured the association between park renovation and change in perceived stress (post-pre) in the overall sample and stratified by baseline sociodemographics. Additional models explored the interaction of post-renovation park use frequency [high (≥ once/week), low (< once/week)] and intervention status on changes in perceived stress. Results Overall, changes in perceived stress were similar between intervention and control groups [DID = 0.28 (95% CI -1.48, 2.03)]. However, park renovation was associated with a significant decrease in perceived stress among divorced/separated/widowed participants [DID = -4.22 (95% CI -7.92, -0.53)] and middle-aged participants (35-49y) with high park use [DID = -4.46 (95% CI -8.28, -0.64)]. Among intervention but not control participants, those with high park use experienced a significantly larger decrease in perceived stress compared to those with low park use [DID = -2.92 (95% CI -5.36, -0.47)]. Conclusions In one of the first and largest studies on park quality improvement and mental health, park renovation near one’s home was associated with decreased perceived stress among divorced/separated/widowed adults and middle-aged frequent park users. Frequent users of renovated parks experienced a larger drop in perceived stress than infrequent users, suggesting that high-quality parks may be an important pre-condition to the benefits of frequent park use on stress reduction
The Relationship Between Student Attendance and Achievement, Pre- and Post-COVID
Get PDFWe examine the relationship between absenteeism and achievement since the onset of COVID-19. Applying first-differences models to North Carolina administrative data, we estimate that, in 2023–2024, each day absent was associated with a 0.0057 standard deviation ( SD ) decline in a student’s math achievement, with evidence of additional negative effects from peer absenteeism. As students averaged three more absences in 2023–2024 than their peers in 2018–2019, these estimates imply that achievement may have improved by 0.017–0.025 SD s if absence rates had returned to pre-pandemic norms in 2023–2024, which would account for 13%–19% of the total needed to achieve a full academic recovery. We additionally find that the negative effect of absenteeism was weaker in immediate post-COVID years, suggesting that the effect of absenteeism on achievement may be affected by changes in contextual factors. Overall, findings highlight the important but partial degree to which attendance recovery may support academic recovery
Towards the New Politics of the Welfare (Chauvinist) State: The Discursive Power of Party Positions on Postindustrial Social Policy
Get PDFLike much in the advanced capitalist world, postindustrialization has recalibrated European welfare states. As this process has altered socio-political cleavages, their associated preferences, and contributed to party realignment, all have implications for social policy. The new politics of the welfare state are no longer solely about more or less. A second cultural dimension of political conflict has further narrowed distributional politics to considerations of deservingness, notably in the context of immigration. Welfare chauvinism – or the preference of excluding immigrants from welfare benefits – is thus a product of this realignment. Utilizing a novel measure of party-level welfare chauvinism, this work finds that, between 2002 and 2019, in fourteen European countries, a greater supply of welfare chauvinism is associated with decreased access to the welfare state for immigrants. In contrast, no effects are observed for overall welfare state generosity for the native population. Moreover, findings suggest that, despite the direct impact of parties in parliament and government coalitions, the overall supply of welfare chauvinism across the entire electoral system has perhaps the strongest correlation with social policy. Welfare chauvinism acts as a discursive power resource, constraining the political environment and legislative governing process. These findings have implications for our understanding of party positions, dynamic postindustrial party politics, how partisanship shapes social policy, and ultimately the nature of power and how it operates in the political sphere.Master of Art
THE ROLE OF SOCIAL EVALUATION AND UNCONTROLLABILITY ON EXPERIMENTALLY INDUCED NEGATIVE AFFECT, CIGARETTE CRAVING, AND SMOKING BEHAVIOR: A META-ANALYSIS
Get PDFNegative affect is a key factor contributing to cigarette use. Laboratory inductions effectively induce negative affect, cigarette craving, and smoking behavior, but moderators of this relationship remain untested. The current study conducted a meta-analysis examining the impact of social evaluation and uncontrollability on these outcomes among cigarette smokers. A comprehensive literature search identified 99 effect sizes which were analyzed using correlated-hierarchical effects models, testing the hypothesis that inductions containing social evaluation and uncontrollability would produce the largest effects. Results showed inductions induce all three outcomes at levels consistent with past findings. Moderation analyses failed to detect an influence of social evaluation and uncontrollability on the impact of inductions on negative affect and craving. Data did not permit analysis on smoking behavior. These findings suggest these methodological components may not influence the effectiveness of negative affect inductions, motivating further examination of these inductions and their effects on smoking and craving outcomes.Master of Art
South African Women of the African National Congress: Gender, Exile, and the Global Struggle against Apartheid, 1976-1990
Get PDFFor three decades, South African women engaged in global anti-colonial networking to achieve a nonracial, nonsexist democracy in South Africa. Concentrating on the period from 1976 to 1990, I examine women who were members of the African National Congress (ANC), a predominantly Black liberation movement that reconstructed the liberation struggle from abroad after its banning by the apartheid regime in 1960. I argue that 1) debates about gender politics between South African women and their international partners produced consequential rhetorical and tactical shifts in the national liberation struggle. 2) The Cold War context shaped engagement with global feminisms, placing the women’s movement of the anti-apartheid struggle within a geopolitical conflict, and compelled South Africans to resist the co-opting of women’s emancipation by competing political and ideological projects. The ANC was not only grappling with securing a strategic advantage on the international stage in the 1980s, but reckoning with contradictions in its aspirations for democracy, manifest in the socioeconomic inequalities present within the movement. Combining archival sources and oral histories collected in the USA, South Africa, England, and Switzerland, I reveal how South African women negotiated demands to transform gender norms while maintaining allegiance to the ANC in the pursuit of international solidarity. The women’s movement in the late twentieth century intersected with decolonization, post-colonial nation building, and the international left to influence anti-apartheid organizing in exile. I adopt the conceptual framework of intimacy to understand how these dynamics shaped South Africans’ personal and political experiences abroad. I show how African women were global actors who strategically navigated local and international networks, reinterpreted nationalisms, and engaged contentious debates about the substance of gender and racial equality. The treatment of women in social movements often exposes contradictory rhetoric and undermines claims to moral authority and legitimacy. While explosive and sensational acts of defiance are more likely to receive attention in scholarship, I demonstrate how movements are often gradual and prosaic, sustained in the compassionate relations of solidarity.Doctor of Philosoph
Efficient and Scalable Deep Learning Systems for Protein Design
Get PDFDe novo protein design has gone from science fiction to reality, thanks to the tightcoupling of theory, computation, and experiments. Recently, deep learning (DL) approaches havetaken advantage of expanding databases and growing compute infrastructure to achieveremarkable results for many design tasks. In this dissertation, we develop DL-based methods tofacilitate efficient protein learning and enhance current design capabilities.In the second chapter, we present a novel architectural component for graph neuralnetworks (GNNs) that directly injects geometric information into network updates, calledinvariant point message passing (IPMP). We demonstrate IPMP’s effectiveness by integrating itinto a new protein side chain packing method called Protein Invariant Point Packer (PIPPack).With IPMP, PIPPack rapidly and accurately generates dihedral angle distributions for each aminoacid in a protein.In the third chapter, we propose a novel DL-based framework for scaffolding atomicconstraints by matching. Representing the constraints as geometric interaction graphs (GIGs), wetrain two GNNs to sequentially design matches into protein scaffolds and then place their sidechains to closely mirror the desired constraint geometry. The resulting method, GIGMatcher,proposes matches for a given scaffold-GIG pair and ranks them based on geometric agreement,producing similar distributions to enumerative methods.Doctor of Philosoph
Behind the Game: Sport Policy and the Social Integration of Immigrants in Sweden
Get PDFThis thesis seeks to understand how Swedish sports policies and programs address and promote the integration of immigrants to Swedish society. Employing the theories of social capital and social inclusion, this study utilizes content analysis of policy documents, program reports, official communications, and an interview with a major tournament organizer to analyze both the intent and implementation of integration policies within the Swedish sports movement. The findings show that funding is significant and broader commitments to inclusion and diversity are strong. However, targeted efforts toward immigrant communities vary. Grassroots programs and clubs play a vital role in fulfilling integration goals, but their success often depends on resources and leadership. There is a need for collaborative, community-based approaches that emphasize the diverse experiences of immigrants. This study highlights the potential of sport as a meaningful integration tool in the Swedish context, with implications for European integration policy.Master of Art
LATENT PROFILES OF MOOD: TOWARD AN EMPIRICAL DEFINITION OF MIXED MOOD IN YOUTH
Get PDFMixed mood states are common in pediatric mood disorders. However, disagreements regarding the diagnostic criteria (e.g., mismatches between empirical findings regarding mixed mood and their diagnostic criteria) thwart optimal diagnosis. Disagreements regarding the mixed mood diagnosis study aimed to build empirical definitions of mood disorder dimensions and categorical episode presentations, including mixed mood, using clinically relevant and substantiated assessments of depression and mania. Participants were families with children, ages 5-18, seeking outpatient mental health services between July 2003 to July 2007. Analyses indicated depression, mania, and psychomotor retardation may be underlying mood dimensions that distinguish unique groups of youth. Findings demonstrated that mixed mood youth can be clearly identified using a dimensional approach despite categorical systems deprioritizing mixed presentation. This study contributes empirical findings that can be used to rebuild categorical or dimensional taxonomies of pediatric mood disorders, which would lead to improved, timely diagnosis and treatment for affected youth.Master of Art
Interplays of ADH1B Genotype, Alcohol Consumption, and Gut Microbiota in Relation to Insulin Resistance
Get PDFBackground/Objective: Alcohol consumption has been linked to alterations in gut microbiota and insulin resistance. The alcohol dehydrogenase 1B (ADH1B) gene plays a crucial role in alcohol catabolism, where rs1229984 variant carriers (CT/TT) catabolize ethanol at an 80-fold faster rate than non-carriers (CC). This study investigates the relationships between ADH1B gene rs1229984 mutation, alcohol consumption, gut microbiota, and insulin resistance. Methods: We performed cross-sectional analysis on fecal metagenomic sequencing data from diabetes-free participants in a longitudinal cohort of the Hispanic Community Health Study/Study of Latinos. We used Analysis of Composition of Microbiomes to identify gut microbial species associated with alcohol consumption in non-carriers (n = 1399) and carriers (n = 193). We constructed genotype-specific gut microbiome scores (GMSs) based on the identified species associated with alcohol consumption to examine how gut microbiota may influence the relationship between alcohol consumption and insulin resistance across ADH1B genotypes. Insulin resistance was defined as Homeostatic Model Assessment for Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) > 2.5. Results: Distinct microbial species associated with alcohol consumption were identified in non-carriers (54 species) and carriers (16 species). In non-carriers, the genotype-specific GMS modified the relationship between alcohol consumption and insulin resistance (Pinteraction = 0.011). The odds ratios (OR) for insulin resistance with increasing alcohol consumption levels across low, moderate, and high tertiles of GMS were 0.75 (95%CI 0.58–0.96), 0.82 (0.67–1), and 1.13 (0.93–1.39), respectively. We identified that individual alcohol-related species, such as Prevotella copri, Ruminococcus callidus, and Erysipelatoclostridium ramosum, modified the relationship between alcohol consumption and insulin resistance in non-carriers. Conclusions: This study suggests that the ADH1B gene rs1229984 mutation is associated with gut microbiota profiles altered by alcohol consumption. Our findings also suggest a potential role of gut microbiota in the protective association between alcohol consumption and insulin resistance in the ADH1B variant non-carriers
Phase 1/2 study of H3B-6545 in women with locally advanced/metastatic estrogen receptor-positive, HER2-negative breast cancer
Get PDFBackground Although endocrine therapies, alone or in combination with CDK4/6 inhibitors, have led to notable improvements in the treatment of estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) breast cancer, progression is inevitable for most patients. We report dose escalation and expansion data from a trial of H3B-6545 (a novel selective ER covalent antagonist that inactivates wild-type and mutant ERα) in women with locally advanced/metastatic ER+, HER2-negative breast cancer (BC). Methods This study was a multicenter, open-label, phase 1/2 trial. Women ≥ 18 years of age with ER+, HER2 − BC whose disease progressed on their most recent therapy were eligible. Prior therapy must have included at least 2 hormonal therapies (HTs), or 1 HT and 1 chemotherapy, or 1 HT and a CDK4/6 inhibitor. In phase 1, H3B-6545 was administered orally once daily at doses of 100–600 mg. In phase 2, the efficacy of the recommended phase 2 dose (RP2D) determined in phase 1 was examined in additional patients, including those with/without ERα mutation. The primary endpoints were RP2D determination (phase 1) and objective response rate (ORR) (phase 2, investigator-assessed per RECIST v1.1). Additional primary endpoints (phase 2) included progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS), per Kaplan-Meier estimates. Results 151 Patients were treated across phases. During phase 1, 2 DLTs (drug eruption and fatigue, both grade 3) were observed at the 600 mg dose, and 450 mg was deemed the RP2D. In the total population (phases 1 and 2), all patients experienced ≥ 1 treatment-emergent adverse event (TEAE), and 50.3% had grade 3–4 TEAEs, with no grade 5 TEAEs observed. In phase 1, the overall ORR was 7.5% (95% CI 1.6–20.4). The ORR in all response-evaluable patients treated at 450 mg (n = 94) was 20.2% (95% CI 12.6–29.8). Patients with clonal ESR1 Y537S mutation had an ORR of 32.1% (95% CI 15.9–52.4). For all patients who received H3B-6545 450 mg, median PFS was 4.6 months (95% CI 3.5–6.7) and median OS was 21.5 months (95% CI 16.6–25.5). Conclusions Results suggest that H3B-6545 may be further investigated as an endocrine therapy option for patients with previously treated metastatic ER + BC. Trial registration NCT03250676. Registered August 11, 2017