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The year 2020 provided a rare opportunity to examine how US households experience economic hardship when natural disasters occur during a large‐scale public health crisis, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic. Using a nationally representative sample of adults, this study examines the effect of natural disasters on household economic hardships during a pandemic, measured by food insecurity, mortgage or rent delinquency, and unemployment. The study estimated individual fixed‐effect models after controlling for time trends and time‐variant covariates. We find that while a disaster incident in the community during a pandemic is not associated with household economic hardships in aggregate, its effects are experienced differently by people according to the community‐level severity of COVID‐19 and the individual‐level factors characterized as vulnerability and resilience. Our findings have implications for targeted disaster relief and for building resilience among residents to adverse events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: This study was designed to investigate whether necroptosis is involved in the pathogenesis of chemoradiation‐induced oral mucositis in a murine model and whether 1‐palmitoyl‐2‐linoleoyl‐3‐acetyl‐rac‐glycerol (PLAG) ameliorates this disorder. Materials and Methods: A chemoradiation‐induced oral mucositis model was established by treating mice with concurrent 5‐fluorouracil (100 mg/kg, i.p.) and head and neck X‐irradiation (20 Gy). Phosphate‐buffered saline or PLAG (100 mg/kg or 250 mg/kg, p.o.) was administered daily. Body weights were recorded daily, and mice were sacrificed on Day 9 for tongue tissue analysis. Results: On Day 9, chemoradiotherapy‐treated (ChemoRT) mice had tongue ulcerations and experienced significant weight loss (Day 0:26.18 ± 1.41 g; Day 9:19.44 ± 3.26 g). They also had elevated serum macrophage inhibitory protein 2 (MIP‐2) (control: 5.57 ± 3.49 pg/ml; ChemoRT: 130.14 ± 114.54 pg/ml) and interleukin (IL)‐6 (control: 198.25 ± 16.91 pg/ml; ChemoRT: 467.25 ± 108.12 pg/ml) levels. ChemoRT‐treated mice who received PLAG exhibited no weight loss (Day 0:25.78 ± 1.04 g; Day 9:26.46 ± 1.68 g) and had lower serum MIP‐2 (4.42 ± 4.04 pg/ml) and IL‐6 (205.75 ± 30.41 pg/ml) levels than ChemoRT‐treated mice who did not receive PLAG. Tongue tissues of mice who received PLAG also displayed lower phosphorylation levels of necroptotic signalling proteins. Conclusion: 1‐Palmitoyl‐2‐linoleoyl‐3‐acetyl‐rac‐glycerol mitigated chemoradiation‐induced oral mucositis by modulating necroptosis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the effects of using bootstrap weights to account for the complex sample design in analyses of Survey of Consumer Finances ( SCF) datasets. No article published in this journal that has used the SCF has mentioned the issue of complex sample designs. We compared results obtained without weights and with application of population and bootstrap weights in a logistic regression, and found no substantial differences between the unweighted and the weighted analyses. We also compared results for an ordinary least squares regression, and found few differences between unweighted and weighted models. Unweighted regressions produced more conservative significance tests than the counterpart, and some econometricians have suggested that unweighted analyses are better for hypothesis testing. If estimation of the magnitudes of effects is important, weighted regression may be better because it produces consistent estimators. Researchers should be cautious in drawing conclusions when weighted and unweighted effects are substantially different. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]