The IceCube report of a excess of 13 5 neutrino events in the direction of the blazar TXS 0506+056 in 2014-2015 and the 2017 detection of a high-energy neutrino event, IceCube-170922A, during a ...gamma-ray flare from the same blazar, have revived the interest in scenarios for neutrino production in blazars. We perform comprehensive analyses on the long-term electromagnetic emission of TXS 0506+056 using optical, X-ray, and gamma-ray data from the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image, and the Fermi Large Area Telescope. We also perform numerical modeling of the spectral energy distributions (SEDs) in four epochs prior to 2017 with contemporaneous gamma-ray and lower-energy (optical and/or X-ray) data. We find that the multi-epoch SEDs are consistent with a hybrid leptonic scenario, where the gamma-rays are produced in the blazar zone via external inverse Compton scattering of accelerated electrons, and high-energy neutrinos are produced via the photomeson production process of co-accelerated protons. The multi-epoch SEDs can be satisfactorily explained with the same jet parameters and variable external photon density and electron luminosity. Using the maximal neutrino flux derived for each epoch, we put an upper limit of ∼0.4-2 on the muon neutrino number in 10 years of IceCube observations. Our results are consistent with the IceCube-170922A detection, which can be explained as an upper fluctuation from the average neutrino rate expected from the source, but in strong tension with the 2014-2015 neutrino flare.
Determining whether the prevalence of gun ownership is associated with youth suicide is critical to inform policy to address this problem. The objective of this study is to investigate the ...relationship between the prevalence of household gun ownership in a state and that state's rate of youth suicide.
This study, conducted in 2018, involved a secondary analysis of state-level data for the U.S. using multivariable linear regression. The relationship between the prevalence of household gun ownership and youth (aged 10–19 years) suicide rates was examined in a time-lagged analysis of state-level household gun ownership in 2004 and youth suicide rates in the subsequent decade (2005–2015), while controlling for the prevalence of youth suicide attempts and other risk factors.
Household gun ownership was positively associated with the overall youth suicide rate. For each 10 percentage-point increase in household gun ownership, the youth suicide rate increased by 26.9% (95% CI=14.0%, 39.8%).
Because states with high levels of household gun ownership are likely to experience higher youth suicide rates, these states should be especially concerned about implementing programs and policies to ameliorate this risk.
A better understanding of the lawful use of guns and the symbolic meaning of guns to gun owners is essential to bridge the divide in public opinion regarding policies to reduce gun violence in the ...U.S.
A national, prerecruited Internet panel of U.S. adults in 2019 was used to survey gun owners (n=2,086) to ascertain their gun-related attitudes and practices. Data were analyzed in 2020.
The primary reason given for owning a gun was defense (59.4%), followed by recreation (26.8%). A minority of the gun owners in the sample (22.9%) reported taking part in any gun-related activity more than rarely. The proportion of respondents who agreed that guns are an important part of their identity was just 10.0%. The majority of the gun owners viewed gun control advocates as wanting to take away all guns (58.5%). Nearly 70% of gun owners reported that a reason for their reluctance to engage in gun violence prevention was that they feel alienated because they perceive gun control advocates as blaming them for the gun violence problem, not understanding gun ownership, and not understanding much about guns.
For most of the gun owners, gun ownership plays a practical role as a method of self-protection and has a symbolic association with freedom. Public health practitioners must develop novel communication strategies that avoid alienating gun owners by creating a perception that the ultimate aim is to take their guns away.
Introduction Obesity is a pervasive public health problem in the U.S. Reducing soda consumption is important for stemming the obesity epidemic. However, several articles and one book suggest that ...soda companies are using their resources to impede public health interventions that might reduce soda consumption. Although corporate sponsorship by tobacco and alcohol companies has been studied extensively, there has been no systematic attempt to catalog sponsorship activities of soda companies. This study investigates the nature, extent, and implications of soda company sponsorship of U.S. health and medical organizations, as well as corporate lobbying expenditures on soda- or nutrition-related public health legislation from 2011 to 2015. Methods Records of corporate philanthropy and lobbying expenditures on public health legislation by soda companies in the U.S. during 2011–2015 were found through Internet and database searches. Results From 2011 to 2015, the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo were found to sponsor a total of 95 national health organizations, including many medical and public health institutions whose specific missions include fighting the obesity epidemic. During the study period, these two soda companies lobbied against 29 public health bills intended to reduce soda consumption or improve nutrition. Conclusions There is surprisingly pervasive sponsorship of national health and medical organizations by the nation’s two largest soda companies. These companies lobbied against public health intervention in 97% of cases, calling into question a sincere commitment to improving the public’s health. By accepting funding from these companies, health organizations are inadvertently participating in their marketing plans.
Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) are battery-powered devices that deliver nicotine without any combustion or smoke. These devices have generated much publicity among the smoking-cessation ...community and support from dedicated users; however, little is known about the efficacy of the device as a smoking-cessation tool.
This study aimed to examine the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for smoking cessation using a survey of smokers who had tried e-cigarettes.
Using as a sampling frame a cohort of all first-time purchasers of a particular brand of e-cigarettes during a 2-week period, a cross-sectional, online survey was conducted in 2010 to describe e-cigarette use patterns and their effectiveness as a smoking-cessation tool. There were 222 respondents, with a survey response rate of 4.5%. The primary outcome variable was the point prevalence of smoking abstinence at 6 months after initial e-cigarette purchase.
The primary finding was that the 6-month point prevalence of smoking abstinence among the e-cigarette users in the sample was 31.0% (95% CI=24.8%, 37.2%). A large percentage of respondents reported a reduction in the number of cigarettes they smoked (66.8%) and almost half reported abstinence from smoking for a period of time (48.8%). Those respondents using e-cigarettes more than 20 times per day had a quit rate of 70.0%. Of respondents who were not smoking at 6 months, 34.3% were not using e-cigarettes or any nicotine-containing products at the time.
Findings suggest that e-cigarettes may hold promise as a smoking-cessation method and that they are worthy of further study using more-rigorous research designs.
Abstract
We have carried out a search for above-horizontal-branch (AHB) stars—objects lying above the horizontal branch (HB) and blueward of the asymptotic giant branch (AGB) in the color–magnitude ...diagram—in 97 Galactic and seven Magellanic Cloud globular clusters (GCs). We selected AHB candidates based on photometry in the
uBVI
system, which is optimized for detection of low-surface-gravity stars with large Balmer jumps, in the color range −0.05 ≤ (
B
−
V
)
0
≤1.0. We then used Gaia astrometry and Gaussian-mixture modeling to confirm cluster membership and remove field interlopers. Our final catalog contains 438 AHB stars, classified and interpreted in the context of post-HB evolution as follows: (1) AHB1: 280 stars fainter than
M
V
= −0.8, evolving redward from the blue HB (BHB) toward the base of the AGB. (2) Post-AGB (PAGB): 13 stars brighter than
M
V
≃ −2.75, departing from the top of the AGB and evolving rapidly blueward. (3) AHB2: 145 stars, with absolute magnitudes between those of the AHB1 and PAGB groups. This last category includes a mixture of objects leaving the extreme BHB and evolving toward the AGB, and brighter ones moving back from the AGB toward higher temperatures. Among the AHB1 stars are 59 RR Lyrae interlopers, observed by chance in our survey near maximum light. PAGB and AHB2 stars (including W Virginis Cepheids) overwhelmingly belong to GCs containing BHB stars, in accordance with predictions of post-HB evolutionary tracks. We suggest that most W Vir variables are evolving toward lower temperatures and are in their first crossings of the instability strip. Nonvariable yellow PAGB stars show promise as a Population II standard candle for distance measurement.
The role of electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) in product transitions has been debated.
We used nationally representative data from the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study waves 1 ...(2013-2014) and 2 (2014-2015) to investigate the associations between e-cigarette initiation and cigarette cessation/reduction in the USA. We limited the sample to current cigarette smokers aged 25+ years who were not current e-cigarette users at wave 1. We modelled 30-day cigarette cessation and substantial reduction in cigarette consumption as a function of e-cigarette initiation between surveys using multivariable logistic regression.
Between waves 1 and 2, 6.9% of cigarette smokers who were not current e-cigarette users transitioned to former smokers. After adjusting for covariates, cigarette smokers who initiated e-cigarette use between waves and reported they used e-cigarettes daily at wave 2 had 7.88 (95% CI 4.45 to 13.95) times the odds of 30-day cigarette cessation compared with non-users of e-cigarettes at wave 2. Cigarette smokers who began using e-cigarettes every day and did not achieve cessation had 5.70 (95% CI 3.47 to 9.35) times the odds of reducing their average daily cigarette use by at least 50% between waves 1 and 2 compared with e-cigarette non-users.
Daily e-cigarette initiators were more likely to have quit smoking cigarettes or reduced use compared with non-users. However, less frequent e-cigarette use was not associated with cigarette cessation/reduction. These results suggest incorporating frequency of e-cigarette use is important for developing a more thorough understanding of the association between e-cigarette use and cigarette cessation.
Firearm injury remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States. Because of prior lack of comprehensive data sources, there is a paucity of literature on nonfatal firearm injury. ...Associations have previously been shown between state-level firearm laws and firearm fatalities, but few studies have examined the effects of these laws on nonfatal firearm hospitalization rates. Our objective was to examine the relationship between state firearm laws and firearm injury-related hospitalization rates across all 50 states over a 17-year period.
In this panel study design, we used fixed effects multivariate regression models to analyze the relationship between 12 laws and firearm state-level injury-related hospitalization rates from 2000 to 2016 using the RAND Corporation Inpatient Hospitalizations for Firearm Injury Database. We used difference-in-differences to determine the impact of law passage in a given state compared with those states without the law, controlling for state-level covariates. The main outcome measure was the change in annual firearm injury-related inpatient hospitalization rates after passage or repeal of a state-level firearm law.
Examining each law individually, passage of violent misdemeanor, permitting, firearm removal from domestic violence offenders, and 10-round limit laws were associated with significant firearm injury-related hospitalization rate reductions. Examining multiple laws in the same model, passage of violent misdemeanor laws was associated with a 19.9% (confidence interval, 11.6%-27.4%) reduction, and removal of firearms from domestic violence offenders was associated with a 17.0% (confidence interval, 9.9%-23.6%) reduction in hospitalization rates.
State laws related to preventing violent offenders from possessing firearms are associated with firearm injury-related hospitalization rate reductions. Given significant physical, mental, and social burdens of nonfatal firearm injury, determining the efficacy of firearm-related policy is critical to violence and injury prevention efforts.
Prognostic and Epidemiologic; Level IV.
Abstract
We use the results of a survey for low-surface-gravity stars in Galactic (and LMC) globular clusters to show that “yellow” post-asymptotic-branch (yPAGB) stars are likely to be excellent ...extragalactic standard candles, capable of producing distances to early-type galaxies that are accurate to a couple of percent. We show that the mean bolometric magnitude of the 10 yPAGB stars in globular clusters is 〈
M
bol
〉 = −3.38 ± 0.03, a value that is ∼0.2 mag brighter than that predicted from the latest post-horizontal-branch evolutionary tracks. More importantly, we show that the observed dispersion in the distribution is only 0.10 mag, i.e., better than the scatter for individual Cepheids. We describe the physics that can produce such a small dispersion and show that, if one restricts surveys to the color range 0.0 ≲ (
B
−
V
)
0
≲ 0.5, then samples of nonvariable yPAGB stars can be identified quite easily with a minimum of contamination. The extremely bright absolute
V
magnitudes of these stars (〈
M
V
〉 = −3.37) make them, by far, the visually brightest objects in old stellar populations and ideal Population II standard candles for measurements out to ∼10 Mpc with current instrumentation. A Hubble Space Telescope survey in the halos of galaxies in the M81 and Sculptor groups could therefore serve as an effective cross-check on both the Cepheid and tip-of-the-red-giant-branch distance scales.
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