A procedure for the assessment of low frequency noise complaints

The development and application of a procedure for the assessment of low frequency noise (LFN) complaints are described. The development of the assessment method included laboratory tests addressing low frequency hearing threshold and the effect on acceptability of fluctuation, and field measurements complemented with interview-based questionnaires. Environmental health departments then conducted a series of six trials with genuine "live" LFN complaints to test the workability and usefulness of the procedure. The procedure includes guidance notes and a pro-forma report with step-by-step instructions. It does not provide a prescriptive indicator of nuisance but rather gives a systematic procedure to help environmental health practitioners to form their own opinion. Examples of field measurements and application of the procedure are presented. The procedure and examples are likely to be of particular interest to environmental health practitioners involved in the assessment of LFN complaints

SB 106 Congressional and state legislative districts; standards and criteria

This report examines Senate Bill (SB) 106, introduced during the 2018 Virginia General Assembly session to address the criterion of redistricting and the specific impact on racial and ethnic minorities. This legislation is a direct response to previous legislative attempts to address gerrymandering and remains an evolving issue in the Commonwealth

Polytobacco use and multiple-product smoking among a random community sample of African-American adults

Objectives Little is known about polytobacco use among African-American adults. This study is the first to explore this among a random, statewide, community sample of African-American adults. Setting Community-based sampling obtained a random, household-probability sample of African-American adults from California, surveyed door to door in randomly selected census tracts statewide. Participants Participants were a statewide, random-household sample of N=2118 African-American adults from California who completed a survey on past 30-day smoking of cigarettes, blunts, bidis, kreteks, cigarillos, marijuana and cigars. Results Almost half (49.3%) of the African-American cigarette-smokers and 14.9% of the cigarette non-smokers had smoked at least one non-cigarette product in the past 30 days. Smokers had a substantial prevalence of smoking cigarillos (28.7%) and blunts (27.7%). Logistic regressions revealed that the odds of smoking most of the non-cigarette products were higher for cigarette smokers and men, inversely related to age, and unrelated to socioeconomic status. However, smoking of blunts, bidis and kreteks was not predicted by cigarette smoking. Conclusions Smoking of cigarillos (eg, Phillies, Black & Mild) and blunts may be prevalent among African-American cigarette-smokers and non-smokers alike, but such products are not examined in most population-level smoking research. Smoking of these products should be included in surveillance studies, in cancer prevention programmes and in healthcare provider-assessment of smoking, and addressed in smoking cessation programmes as well

Early MicroRNA expression profile as a prognostic biomarker for the development of pelvic inflammatory disease in a mouse model of chlamydial genital infection

It is not currently possible to predict the probability of whether a woman with a chlamydial genital infection will develop pelvic inflammatory disease (PID). To determine if specific biomarkers may be associated with distinct chlamydial pathotypes, we utilized two Chlamydia muridarum variants (C. muridarum Var001 [CmVar001] and CmVar004) that differ in their abilities to elicit upper genital tract pathology in a mouse model. CmVar004 has a lower growth rate in vitro and induces pathology in only 20% of C57BL/6 mouse oviducts versus 83.3% of oviducts in CmVar001-infected mice. To determine if chemokine and cytokine production within 24 h of infection is associated with the outcome of pathology, levels of 15 chemokines and cytokines were measured. CmVar004 infection induced significantly lower levels of CXCL1, CXCL2, tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), and CCL2 in comparison to CmVar001 infection with similar rRNA (rs16) levels for Chlamydiae. A combination of microRNA (miRNA) sequencing and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis of 134 inflammation-related miRNAs was performed 24 h postinfection to determine if the chemokine/cytokine responses would also be reflected in miRNA expression profiles. Interestingly, 12 miRNAs (miR-135a-5p, miR298-5p, miR142-3p, miR223-3p, miR299a-3p, miR147-3p, miR105, miR325-3p, miR132-3p, miR142-5p, miR155-5p, and miR-410-3p) were overexpressed during CmVar004 infection compared to CmVar001 infection, inversely correlating with the respective chemokine/cytokine responses. To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating that early biomarkers elicited in the host can differentiate between two pathological variants of chlamydiae and be predictive of upper tract disease. © 2014 Yeruva et al

Telephone Surveys Underestimate Cigarette Smoking among African-Americans

Background: This study tested the hypothesis that data from random digit-dial telephone surveys underestimate the prevalence of cigarette smoking among African-American adults. Method: A novel, community-sampling method was used to obtain a statewide, random sample of N = 2118 California (CA) African-American/Black adults, surveyed door-to-door. This Black community sample was compared to the Blacks in the CA Health Interview Survey (N = 2315), a statewide, random digit-dial telephone survey conducted simultaneously. Results: Smoking prevalence was significantly higher among community (33%) than among telephone survey (19%) Blacks, even after controlling for sample differences in demographics. Conclusion: Telephone surveys underestimate smoking among African-Americans and probably underestimate other health risk behaviors as well. Alternative methods are needed to obtain accurate data on African-American health behaviors and on the magnitude of racial disparities in them

A Single Bolus of Docosahexaenoic Acid Promotes Neuroplastic Changes in the Innervation of Spinal Cord Interneurons and Motor Neurons and Improves Functional Recovery after Spinal Cord Injury

This work was supported by Chang GungMemorialHospital, Taiwan CMRPG3A1051–1054to Z.-H.L., CMDRP and Barts and the London Charity to P.K.Y. and A.T.M.-T., and the Nathalie Rose Barr PhD Studentship ISRT to L.A. andJ.V.P

Sensorimotor priors in non-stationary environments

In the course of its interaction with the world, the human nervous system must constantly estimate various variables in the surrounding environment. Past research indicates that environmental variables may be represented as probabilistic distributions of a priori information (priors). Priors for environmental variables that do not change much over time have been widely studied. Little is known however, about how priors develop in environments with non-stationary statistics. We examine whether humans change their reliance on the prior based on recent changes in environmental variance. Through experimentation, we obtain an online estimate of the human sensorimotor prior (prediction) and then compare it to similar online predictions made by various non-adaptive and adaptive models. Simulations show that models that rapidly adapt to non-stationary components in the environments predict the stimuli better than models that do not take the changing statistics of the environment into consideration. We found that adaptive models best predict participants' responses in most cases. However, we find no support for the idea that this is a consequence of increased reliance on recent experience just after the occurrence of a systematic change in the environment