Abstract
At all levels of socioeconomic status, Black Americans can expect to live shorter and sicker lives than their White counterparts. This study advances the perspective that anti-Black stigma ...from Whites precludes Blacks from reaping the full health rewards of higher status, particularly within the context of neighborhoods. To test this hypothesis, I merge census data with rich survey and biomarker data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study, a representative sample of Black and White adults from Davidson County, Tennessee (n = 1,252). Initially, I find that Blacks who reside in higher status and mostly White communities exhibit lower levels of neuroendocrine stress hormones, relative to their peers living in disadvantaged Black neighborhoods. But Blacks in higher-status areas also report more perceived discrimination. In turn, perceived discrimination is associated with chronic bodily pain, as well as elevated stress hormones and blood pressure tied to high goal-striving stress, or fears of being blocked from reaching life goals. After accounting for racism-related stressors, Blacks exhibit comparable levels of physiological distress regardless of neighborhood context. The inverse is true for Whites, who report fewer stressors in higher-status neighborhoods, and less physiological distress than Blacks overall. Findings are discussed within the context of social evolutionary theories of the human brain and are dovetailed with broader racial health disparities in the United States.
Striving While Black DeAngelis, Reed T.
Journal of health and social behavior,
03/2020, Letnik:
61, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Population health scientists have largely overlooked anticipatory stressors and how different groups of people experience and cope with anticipatory stress. I address these gaps by examining ...black-white differences in the associations between an important anticipatory stressor—goal-striving stress (GSS)—and several measures of psychophysiology. Hypotheses focusing on racial differences in GSS and psychophysiology are tested using self-report and biomarker data from the Nashville Stress and Health Study (2011–2014), a cross-sectional probability survey of black and white working-age adults from Davidson County, Tennessee (n = 1,252). Compared to their white peers, blacks with higher GSS report greater self-esteem and fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety. However, increased GSS also predicts elevated levels of high-effort coping (i.e., John Henryism), neuroendocrine stress hormones, and blood pressure for blacks but not whites. I discuss the implications of these findings for scholars interested in the stress process and broader black-white health inequalities in the United States.
There is significant evidence that, in living systems, free radicals and other reactive oxygen and nitrogen species play a double role, because they can cause oxidative damage and tissue dysfunction ...and serve as molecular signals activating stress responses that are beneficial to the organism. Mitochondria have been thought to both play a major role in tissue oxidative damage and dysfunction and provide protection against excessive tissue dysfunction through several mechanisms, including stimulation of opening of permeability transition pores. Until recently, the functional significance of ROS sources different from mitochondria has received lesser attention. However, the most recent data, besides confirming the mitochondrial role in tissue oxidative stress and protection, show interplay between mitochondria and other ROS cellular sources, so that activation of one can lead to activation of other sources. Thus, it is currently accepted that in various conditions all cellular sources of ROS provide significant contribution to processes that oxidatively damage tissues and assure their survival, through mechanisms such as autophagy and apoptosis.
Laboratory experiments sensitive to the equation of state of neutron rich matter in the vicinity of nuclear saturation density provide the first rung in a "density ladder" that connects terrestrial ...experiments to astronomical observations. In this context, the neutron skin thickness of ^{208}Pb (R_{skin}^{208}) provides a stringent laboratory constraint on the density dependence of the symmetry energy. In turn, an improved value of R_{skin}^{208} has been reported recently by the PREX collaboration. Exploiting the strong correlation between R_{skin}^{208} and the slope of the symmetry energy L within a specific class of relativistic energy density functionals, we report a value of L=(106±37) MeV-which systematically overestimates current limits based on both theoretical approaches and experimental measurements. The impact of such a stiff symmetry energy on some critical neutron-star observables is also examined.
Computerized clinical decision support systems, or CDSS, represent a paradigm shift in healthcare today. CDSS are used to augment clinicians in their complex decision-making processes. Since their ...first use in the 1980s, CDSS have seen a rapid evolution. They are now commonly administered through electronic medical records and other computerized clinical workflows, which has been facilitated by increasing global adoption of electronic medical records with advanced capabilities. Despite these advances, there remain unknowns regarding the effect CDSS have on the providers who use them, patient outcomes, and costs. There have been numerous published examples in the past decade(s) of CDSS success stories, but notable setbacks have also shown us that CDSS are not without risks. In this paper, we provide a state-of-the-art overview on the use of clinical decision support systems in medicine, including the different types, current use cases with proven efficacy, common pitfalls, and potential harms. We conclude with evidence-based recommendations for minimizing risk in CDSS design, implementation, evaluation, and maintenance.
The aviation industry faces a formidable challenge to cap its climate impact in the face of continued growth in passengers and freight. Liquid hydrogen (LH2) is one of the alternative jet fuels under ...consideration as it does not produce carbon dioxide upon combustion. We conducted a well-to-wake life cycle assessment of CO2 emissions and non-CO2 climate change impacts per passenger-distance for 17 different hydrogen production routes, as well as conventional jet fuel and biofuels. Six other environmental and health impact categories were also considered. The Boeing 787-800 was used as the reference aircraft, and a range of flight distances were explored. Contrail cirrus contributes around 81 ± 31% of the combustion climate impacts for LH2, compared to 32 ± 7% for conventional jet fuel, showing that research is needed to reduce uncertainty in the case of LH2. The life cycle impacts of the two dominant commercial LH2 pathways are on average 8 and 121% larger than conventional jet fuel. Some novel LH2 pathways do show considerable potential for life cycle climate impact reductions versus conventional fuel (up to −205 ± 78%). LH2 from renewable energy is not climate neutral, though, at best −67 ± 10% compared to conventional over the life cycle.
This research note provides new evidence consistent with systemic anti-Black racism in police killings across the United States. Data come from the Mapping Police Violence Database (2013–2021). I ...calculate race-specific odds and probabilities that victims of police killings exhibited mental illness, were armed with a weapon, or attempted to flee the scene at the time of their killing. Multilevel, multivariable logistic regression techniques are applied to further account for the victim's age, gender, year of killing, and geographical clustering. I find that White victims are underrepresented, and Black victims overrepresented in the database. Relative to White victims, Black victims also have 60% lower odds of exhibiting signs of mental illness, 23% lower odds of being armed, and 28% higher odds of fleeing. Hispanic victims exhibit 45% lower odds of being armed relative to their White peers but are otherwise comparable. These patterns persist regardless of the victim's age, gender, year of killing, or geographical location (state, zip code, and neighborhood type). Thus, the threshold for being perceived as dangerous, and thereby falling victim to lethal police force, appears to be higher for White civilians relative to their Black or Hispanic peers. Current findings provide empirical support for political initiatives to curb lethal police force, as such efforts could help to reduce racial disparities in deaths by police nationwide.
Abstract
Does anti-Black racism harm White Americans? We advance hypotheses that address this question within the neighborhood context. Hypotheses are tested with neighborhood and survey data from a ...probability sample of White residents of Nashville, Tennessee. We find that regardless of neighborhood crime rates or socioeconomic compositions, Whites report heightened perceptions of crime and danger in their neighborhoods as the proportion of Black residents increases. Perceived neighborhood danger, in turn, predicts increased symptoms of psychophysiological distress. When stratified by socioeconomic status (SES), however, low-SES Whites also report perceptions of higher status when living near more Black neighbors, which entirely offsets their distress. We conclude that although anti-Black racism can ironically harm the health of White Americans, compensatory racist ideologies can also offset these harms, particularly for lower-status Whites. We situate our findings within broader discussions of anti-Black racism, residential segregation, and psychiatric disorders commonly observed among White Americans.
This study models the CO₂ emissions from electric (EV) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV), and compares the results to published values for the CO₂ emissions from conventional vehicles based ...on internal combustion engines (ICE). PHEVs require fewer batteries than EVs which can make them lighter and more efficient than EVs. PHEVs can also operate their onboard ICEs more efficiently than can conventional vehicles. From this, it was theorized that PHEVs may be able to emit less CO₂ than both conventional vehicles and EVs given certain power generation mixes of varying CO₂ intensities. Amongst the results it was shown that with a highly CO₂ intensive power generation mix, such as in China, PHEVs had the potential to be responsible for fewer tank to wheel CO₂ emissions over their entire range than both a similar electric and conventional vehicle. The results also showed that unless highly CO₂ intensive countries pursue a major decarbonization of their power generation, they will not be able to fully take advantage of the ability of EVs and PHEVs to reduce the CO₂ emissions from automotive transport.
Endoscopic evaluation to reliably grade disease activity, detect complications including cancer and verification of mucosal healing are paramount in the care of patients with ulcerative colitis (UC); ...but this evaluation is hampered by substantial intra- and interobserver variability. Recently, artificial intelligence methodologies have been proposed to facilitate more objective, reproducible endoscopic assessment. In a first step, we compared how well several deep learning convolutional neural network architectures (CNNs) applied to a diverse subset of 8000 labeled endoscopic still images derived from HyperKvasir, the largest multi-class image and video dataset from the gastrointestinal tract available today. The HyperKvasir dataset includes 110,079 images and 374 videos and could (1) accurately distinguish UC from non-UC pathologies, and (2) inform the Mayo score of endoscopic disease severity. We grouped 851 UC images labeled with a Mayo score of 0-3, into an inactive/mild (236) and moderate/severe (604) dichotomy. Weights were initialized with ImageNet, and Grid Search was used to identify the best hyperparameters using fivefold cross-validation. The best accuracy (87.50%) and Area Under the Curve (AUC) (0.90) was achieved using the DenseNet121 architecture, compared to 72.02% and 0.50 by predicting the majority class ('no skill' model). Finally, we used Gradient-weighted Class Activation Maps (Grad-CAM) to improve visual interpretation of the model and take an explainable artificial intelligence approach (XAI).
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