Evaluation of Ireland's Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax (SSBT).

Background: Ireland is experiencing high levels of overweight and obesity. The adverse health impacts of excess weight include cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and dental decay, as well as a host of other conditions. In response, the Irish Government introduced a Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax (SSBT) in 2018.

"The chaos of not knowing": Embodied experiences of waiting for public housing redevelopment and relocation.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development has instituted several successive programs to redevelop aging and distressed US public housing. The current program, the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, aims not only to redevelop housing but also to improve the health of public housing residents through a whole neighborhood transformation, at the cost of privatizing components of housing. In the present case study, we examine relationships and perceptions about public housing redevelopment and health among residents affected by the Sun Valley Choice Neighborhood Initiative in Denver, Colorado.

Neighborhood Walkability, Historical Redlining, and Childhood Obesity in Denver, Colorado.

Childhood obesity is a precursor to future health complications. In adults, neighborhood walkability is inversely associated with obesity prevalence. Recently, it has been shown that current urban walkability has been influenced by historical discriminatory neighborhood disinvestment.

Post-Operative Order Set Decreases Opioid Prescriptions and Increases Efficiency.

Background: Opioid addiction remains a public health crisis. We aimed to create an electronic medical record (EMR) based protocol to decrease post-operative prescribing of opioid medications and streamline the ordering process while maintaining adequate pain control.

Methods: An order set was created to minimize opioid prescriptions.

Testosterone replacement therapy and cardiovascular disease.

The use of testosterone therapy has a complex history of apprehension and questions regarding its safety. Despite an eventual consensus that testosterone therapy was safe and effective, several studies relating to cardiovascular risks emerged in the last decade, rekindling skepticism regarding the safety of testosterone therapy. Given the utility of testosterone therapy in treating the symptoms of hypogonadism, it remains crucial to closely examine the safety of testosterone therapy.

Evaluating incidence, prevalence, and treatment trends in adult men with hypogonadism in the United States.

No extensive studies have investigated current diagnosis and treatment trends of hypogonadism (HG) in adult men in the United States. Using a comprehensive commercial insurance database, we surveyed current trends in incidence, prevalence, and treatment of hypogonadism in the United States. We analyzed insurance claims data from 2008-2017 using the IBM MarketScan™ Commercial Claims and Encounters database for men ≥18.

Local network connectivity optimization: an evaluation of heuristics applied to complex spatial networks, a transportation case study, and a spatial social network.

Optimizing global connectivity in spatial networks, either through rewiring or adding edges, can increase the flow of information and increase the resilience of the network to failures. Yet, rewiring is not feasible for systems with fixed edges and optimizing global connectivity may not result in optimal local connectivity in systems where that is wanted. We describe the local network connectivity optimization problem, where costly edges are added to a systems with an established and fixed edge network to increase connectivity to a specific location, such as in transportation and telecommunication systems.

Testosterone's Role in COVID-19.

COVID-19 consistently displays a higher mortality in males. This sex-specific difference in outcomes is seen not only in the current COVID-19 pandemic, but also in prior viral epidemics and pandemics. Sex hormones, such as testosterone, play a clear role in modulating the immune response, providing a clue that may illuminate the underpinnings of these outcomes.

Hypogonadism management and cardiovascular health.

In the early days of its use, testosterone therapy faced skepticism regarding its safety and efficacy. After a converging consensus that testosterone therapy was safe and effective for the treatment of hypogonadism, several recent studies showed adverse cardiovascular outcomes associated with testosterone treatment, ultimately resulting in a mandated FDA label warning about the unknown safety of testosterone therapy. Given the clear efficacy of testosterone therapy in the treatment of hypogonadism, establishing the safety of this therapeutic tool is essential.

Convergence to consensus in heterogeneous groups and the emergence of informal leadership.

When group cohesion is essential, groups must have efficient strategies in place for consensus decision-making. Recent theoretical work suggests that shared decision-making is often the most efficient way for dealing with both information uncertainty and individual variation in preferences. However, some animal and most human groups make collective decisions through particular individuals, leaders, that have a disproportionate influence on group decision-making.

Mathematical modeling reveals kinetics of lymphocyte recirculation in the whole organism.

The kinetics of recirculation of naive lymphocytes in the body has important implications for the speed at which local infections are detected and controlled by immune responses. With a help of a novel mathematical model, we analyze experimental data on migration of 51Cr-labeled thoracic duct lymphocytes (TDLs) via major lymphoid and nonlymphoid tissues of rats in the absence of systemic antigenic stimulation. We show that at any point of time, 95% of lymphocytes in the blood travel via capillaries in the lung or sinusoids of the liver and only 5% migrate to secondary lymphoid tissues such as lymph nodes, Peyer's patches, or the spleen.

Thermodynamic characterization of dissociation rate variations of human leukocyte antigen and peptide complexes.

Stability of minor histocompatibility antigen-MHC molecule complexes is a major requirement for the successful presentation of the antigen to T cell receptors. In this letter we show thermodynamic features of the complexes made of a peptide antigen and its three variants to explain molecular basis of variable stability of the complexes. Our analysis suggests that enthalpy is a major factor in determining the stability of the complexes.