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Decades of air pollution regulation have yielded enormous benefits in the United States, but vehicle emissions remain a climate and public health issue. Studies have quantified the vehicle-related fine particulate matter (PM2.5)-attributable mortality but lack the combination of proper counterfactual scenarios, latest epidemiological evidence, and detailed spatial resolution; all needed to assess the benefits of recent emission reductions. We use this combination to assess PM2.5-attributable health benefits and also assess the climate benefits of on-road emission reductions between 2008 and 2017. We estimate total benefits of $270 (190 to 480) billion in 2017. Vehicle-related PM2.5-attributable deaths decreased from 27,700 in 2008 to 19,800 in 2017; however, had per-mile emission factors remained at 2008 levels, 48,200 deaths would have occurred in 2017. The 74% increase from 27,700 to 48,200 PM2.5-attributable deaths with the same emission factors is due to lower baseline PM2.5 concentrations (+26%), more vehicle miles and fleet composition changes (+22%), higher baseline mortality (+13%), and interactions among these (+12%). Climate benefits were small (3 to 19% of the total). The percent reductions in emissions and PM2.5-attributable deaths were similar despite an opportunity to achieve disproportionately large health benefits by reducing high-impact emissions of passenger light-duty vehicles in urban areas. Increasingly large vehicles and an aging population, increasing mortality, suggest large health benefits in urban areas require more stringent policies. Local policies can be effective because high-impact primary PM2.5 and NH3 emissions disperse little outside metropolitan areas. Complementary national-level policies for NOx are merited because of its substantial impacts--with little spatial variability--and dispersion across states and metropolitan areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: EUS-guided biliary drainage has emerged as a technique to enable endobiliary drainage in failed ERCP. A newer model, lumen-apposing metal stents (LAMS), with a cautery-enhanced delivery system became available in the USA in late 2015. This cautery-tipped version may facilitate EUS-guided choledochoduodenostomy (EUS-CD), but data using this model are lacking.Methods: We reviewed outcomes of attempted EUS-CD using cautery-enhanced LAMS from 6, US centers. The following data were collected: patient and procedure details, technical success, adverse events, clinical success (resolution of jaundice or improvement in bilirubin > 50%), and biliary re-interventions.Results: EUS-CD was attempted in 67 patients (mean age 68.8) with malignant obstruction after failed ERCP between September 2015 and April 2018. EUS-CD was technically successful in 64 (95.5%). A plastic or metal stent was inserted through the lumen of the deployed LAMS in 50 of 64 (78.1%) patients to maintain a non-perpendicular LAMS axis into the bile duct. Adverse events occurred in 4 (6.3%) and included: abdominal pain (n = 2), peritonitis that responded to antibiotics (n = 1), and bleeding requiring transfusion (n = 1). Among 40 patients with follow-up of > 4 weeks, clinical success was achieved in 100%. Biliary re-interventions for obstruction were needed in 7(17.5%), in 3 of 6 (50.0%) that underwent EUS-CD with LAMS alone versus 4 of 34 (5%) with LAMS plus an axis-orienting stent (p = 0.02).Conclusion: EUS-CD using LAMS with cautery-enhanced delivery systems has high technical and clinical success rates, with a low rate of adverse events. Inserting an axis-orienting stent through the lumen of the LAMS may reduce the need for biliary re-interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper consists of the transcripts of a panel discussion focusing on athletic directors', chancellors', and presidents' experiences with academic reform. The panel participants discuss a number of topics, including recent and past academic retbrm efforts, the process of implementing those initiatives, and the effects of those policies on student athletes and intercollegiate sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the problem of obesity in school children. It analyzes the role played by physical education teachers in developing the health of school children. Physical education has long been associated officially with the development and maintenance of the health of school children in the Great Britain, the U.S. and elsewhere. It is the responsibility of physical education to make children fit, eat well and be thin. The routine dissemination by teachers of appropriate information regarding body weight and shape and the provision of protective values through the daily experiences they provide to students in their classrooms would be a significant step in that direction.

The world economy has been shown to be a complex adaptive system with the consequence that companies within the global economy are constantly needing to react to influences from the activities of other companies with which they are interconnected and external influences. This paper uses a methodology developed for complex adaptive systems to analyse the characteristics of multiple credit default events in the United States, Europe and Asia over the period 1990–2010 to establish the significance of factors driving credit defaults. The analysis indicates that factors controllable by companies are more significant in the United States and Europe than uncontrollable events, but the reverse occurs in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses the U.S. legal organization, worker centers, and issues associated with these organizations. It reflects on an analysis which confirms that several worker centers are not legal organizations because they fall within "social cause exception." It mentions that worker centers could be destructive due to the limitations of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) which is responsibility for illegal labor practices and the restrictions on secondary activity.

American sociology has not taken and does not take religion as seriously as it needs to in order to do the best sociology possible. Despite religion being an important and distinctive kind of practice in human social life, both historically and in the world today, American sociologists often neglect religion or treat it reductionistically. We explore several reasons for this negligence, focusing on key historical, conceptual, methodological, and institutional factors. We then turn to offer a number of proposals to help remedy American sociology's negligence of religion, advance the study of religion in particular, and enhance sociology's broader disciplinary capacity to improve our understanding and explanation of human social life. Our purpose in this analysis is to stimulate critical and constructive discussion about the significance of religion in human life and scholarly research on it. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article examines the relationship between environmental social governance (ESG) factors and portfolio returns and the impact of stock valuation and operating performance on the U.S. listed companies. It states that ESG rating criteria and return on assets and market-to-book value measures have positive relationships. It notes that company's involvement in general non-stakeholder-related social issues have negative to operating performance and stock return.

Section 337 of the Tariff Act of 1930 empowers the United States International Trade Commission to investigate imports to ensure imports do not infringe on U.S. trademarks. The Commission permits patent, copyright, and trademark owners to notify the Commission of possibly infringing imports and to obtain exclusion orders that prevent importation of products that infringe their intellectual property. The total number of investigations increased from 1996 to 2005, yet the proportion of respondent defaults rose as well. The increase in defaults suggests there is some systemic difficulty in ensuring full participation. This Note argues that the res judicata effects of particular outcomes in patent-based investigations may skew respondents participation incentives. To recalibrate respondent participation incentives and spread participation costs more equitably, this Note proposes respondent class certification in patent-based section 337 investigations as a procedural alternative to intervention and mass joinder. The proposed respondent class certification would also require bifurcation be available because, while many patent issues apply generally to each member of the proposed respondent class, some issues require an individualized determination for each respondent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how journalistic framing of the democratic globalization movement evolved in the five years after its 1999 emergence in Seattle. It takes a longitudinal approach to analyzing social movement coverage by looking for changes in news reporting over time. Protests against the World Trade Organization put this movement on The New York Times' map, with 'Seattle' enduring as a symbolic reference connoting the threat of civic disorder. We found signs of both resilience and change in the newspaper's coverage, which demonstrates complex interactions between reporters, activist groups and real-world events. Delegitimizing language was constant over time, evoking the protest paradigm and riot, confrontation and circus frames as templates. However, this analysis also found evidence of frame dynamism, suggestive of a possible evolving sympathy through which movement members improve access to reporters and get their issues across to the public. Journalists increasingly used movement members as sources, described the movement with fewer marginalizing terms and framed protests more favorably. Our findings about the increased presence of celebrities over other sources and of photographs over text - a phenomenon we call the tabloidization of protest - could have important strategic consequences for social movements. We argue, based on news values relevant to this activism, that mainstream spokespeople and tabloid-like coverage - which may indeed oversimplify and trivialize issues - also have the potential to publicize and popularize social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the common challenges for life cycle impact assessment and risk assessment is the need to estimate the population exposures associated with emissions. The concept of intake fraction (a unitless term representing the fraction of material or its precursor released from a source that is eventually inhaled or ingested) can be used when limited site data are available or the number of sources to model is large. Although studies have estimated intake fractions for some pollutant–source combinations, there is a need to quickly and accurately estimate intake fractions for sources and settings not previously evaluated. It would be expected that limited source or site information could be used to yield intake fraction estimates with reasonable accuracy. To test this theory, we developed regression models to predict intake fractions previously estimated for primary fine particles (PM[sub 2.5]) and secondary sulfate and nitrate particles from power plants and mobile sources in the United States. Our regression models were able to predict pollutant–specific intake fractions with R[sup 2] between 0.53 and 0.86 and equations that reflected expected relationships (e.g., intake fraction increased with population density, stack height influenced the intake fraction of primary but not secondary particles). Further analysis would be needed to generalize beyond this case study and construct models applicable across source categories and settings, but our analysis demonstrates that inclusion of a limited number of parameters can significantly reduce the uncertainty in population–average exposure estimates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine scientific evidence and related uncertainties in two steps of benefit — cost analyses of ozone reduction: estimating the health improvements attributable to reductions in ozone and determining the appropriate monetary values of these improvements. Although substantial evidence exists on molecular and physiologic impacts, the evidence needed to establish concentration — response functions is somewhat limited. Furthermore, because exposure to ozone depends on factors such as air conditioning use, past epidemiologic studies may not be directly applicable in unstudied settings. To evaluate the evidence likely to contribute significantly to benefits, we focus on four health outcomes: premature mortality, chronic asthma, respiratory hospital admissions, and minor restricted activity days. We determine concentration — response functions for these health outcomes for a hypothetical case study in Houston, Texas, using probabilistic weighting reflecting our judgment of the strength of the evidence and the possibility of confounding. We make a similar presentation for valuation, where uncertainty is due primarily to the lack of willingness-to-pay data for the population affected by ozone. We estimate that the annual monetary value of health benefits from reducing ozone concentrations in Houston is approximately $10 per person per microgram per cubic meter (24-hr average) reduced (95% confidence interval, $0.70-$40). The central estimate exceeds past estimates by approximately a factor of five, driven by the inclusion of mortality. We discuss the implications of our findings for future analyses and determine areas of research that might help reduce the uncertainties in benefit estimation. Key words: benefit — cost analysis, epidemiology, exposure assessment, monetary valuation, ozone, premature mortality. Environ Health Perspect 109:1215-1226 (2001). [Online 24 November 2001] http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Headspaces of the underground high-level radioactive waste-storage tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site have been sampled to resolve tank safety and industrial hygiene issues and to estimate regulated air pollutant emissions. Because sampling these tanks is difficult and expensive, samples have been collected from a single location of the headspaces, based on the supposition that this would provide representative samples. In most tanks, mixing of vapors occurs because of thermally driven convection from heat generated by radioactive decay of the waste. However, in some low-temperature tanks, the ground temperature above the tank may be warmer than the waste, minimizing thermally induced convection, and raising the concern that samples from a single location may not be representative. To resolve this issue, six samples at different vertical and horizontal locations were taken from each of three low-temperature tanks and analyzed for ammonia, water, permanent gases, total non-methane organic compound concentration, and selected organic vapors. Statistical analysis of the data indicated that the tanks did not exhibit significant horizontal or vertical concentration gradients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the impact of antipornography laws and pornography availability on sex crimes. Association of nonenforcement with an increase in the availability of sexually explicit materials; Violent and property crimes arrest rates by year for all states; Intertemporal correlations among all states for rape, prostitution and sex offenses; National and state means.

Deals with a study of attitudes toward sex and nudity in the mass media through public opinion surveys in ten states in the United States. Population variables; Community standards; State as a sociocultural entity.

Studies the effectiveness of trading limits on cotton futures market in the United States. Information on trading limits; Condition of cotton market in the country; Effect of price limits on trading volume; Options on futures volume.

This study uses pooled data on U.S. manufacturing industries and on U.S. imports to analyze the level of monopoly power and the restraining influence of the import penetration ratio at the industry level. In general, industries with higher levels of imports have lower levels of monopoly power. In addition, imports have a greater impact on industries with more monopoly power (i.e., higher concentration), even though the level of imports may be lower. Finally, the impact of imports on monopoly power appears to be increasing over time indicating that U.S. manufacturing has become significantly more competitive over the 1961 to 1984 period. QEL F14, L12) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the factors contributing to the flow of undocumented migrants from Mexico, demonstrating the problem to be both massive and enduring. The authors focus on the inadequate growth of productive employment, income inequality, and rapid population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The characteristic vagueness of economist Thorstein Veblen's expositions has permitted conflicting interpretations of his Soviet of Technicians. That, the Soviet represented Veblen's preference for rule by a technical elite is, effectively repudiated by Professor Rick Tilman. However, the notion persists that the Soviet represents Veblen's prophecy as to the future of industrial States, despite the fact that Veblen actually made no such prediction. At best, he suggested that the business enterprise system was outmoded and would eventually be eliminated. The outcome could be either victory for the machine process or a reversion back to the nationalistic Barbarian State. The purpose of this article is to refute that assertion by pointing to several explicit fundamental differences between the power structures of the modern corporate State and the Soviet of Technicians. The comparison serves not only to reject the idea that Veblenian technocrats currently rule modern industry, but also to indicate that the modern corporate State is simply a mature version of Veblen's Business Enterprise System in which technicians and specialists have an expanded role.

This article focuses on the need for useful empirical evaluations of large-scale social action programs in the U.S. The reason most often given as to why the U.S. have not produced useful empirical evaluations of large-scale social action programs. That is, the U.S. lack adequate social science methodology, measuring instruments are too primitive, the real world environment is too complex to sort out cause-effect relationships, and so forth. There is no question that the "state of the art" is a very important factor contributing to the underdeveloped state of evaluation, and there is no question that the long catalogue of deficiencies and complexities, recited with hand- wringing despair by both administrators and social scientists, is all true. Our measuring instruments--in the area of cognitive and affective development in children, for example--are far from what we would like to have. The methodological task of sorting out the influence of an education or manpower training program from all the other relevant influences in its participants' lives is indeed so formidable that many say it simply can't be done with any confidence.

• Electric vehicles lead to substantial air pollution health benefits in the U.S. • Electric vehicles lead to positive benefits in all 53 metropolitan areas studied. • Benefits of vehicle electrification vary widely among metropolitan areas in the U.S. • Rapid fleet electrification warrants incentives due to quickly achievable benefits. The environmental consequences of electric vehicles (EV) have been extensively studied, but the literature on their health impacts is scant. At the same time, fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), for which transportation is a major source, remains an important public health issue in the United States. Motivated by recent developments in epidemiology and reduced-form air pollution modeling, as well as reductions in power plant emissions, we conduct an updated assessment of health benefits of light-duty vehicle electrification in large metropolitan areas (MSAs) in the United States. We first calculate MSA-specific mortality impacts per mile attributable to fine particles from internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) tailpipe emissions of PM 2.5 , SO 2 , NO x , NH 3 , and volatile organic compounds, and power plant emissions of PM 2.5 , SO 2 , and NO x. We complement these with changes in greenhouse-gas emissions associated with vehicle electrification. We find that electrification leads to large benefits, even with EVs powered exclusively by fossil fuel plants. VMT-weighted mean benefits in the 53 MSAs are 6.9 ¢/mile ($10,400 per 150,000 miles), 83% of which (5.7 ¢/mile or $8600 per 150,000 miles) comes from reductions in PM 2.5 -attributable mortality. Variability among the MSAs is large, with benefits ranging from 3.4 ¢/mile ($5100 per 150,000 miles) in Rochester, NY, to 11.5 ¢/mile ($17,200 per 150,000 miles) in New York, NY. This large variability suggests incentives should vary by MSA and presents an opportunity to target areas for EV deployment aimed at maximizing public health benefits. Impacts are smaller when EVs disproportionately replace newer ICEV models but EVs still lead to positive benefits in all MSAs. Vehicle electrification in urban areas is an opportunity to achieve large public health benefits in the United States in the short term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information about the history of geriatric medicine. Contribution of Marjory Warren on geriatric medicine; How were the geriatric skills in general hospitals in Great Britain recognized; Difference of the geriatric medicine in United States with Great Britain.

The article recaps the health care systems and the reform process in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain, discussed during the Anglo-American Conference held from May 18 to 20, 1994. Accountability in health care demands quality health information. Proper management is necessary when deciding to implement advances in medical technology. Several recommendations are given to manage the supply of physicians in countries and the health care reform process.

Describes a peer counseling training program in Rhode Island. Components of the training program; Enhancement of skills and motivation of disabled persons for peer counseling; Improvement of the skill level of the participants.

The article presents information on the objectives of the "Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine." People in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain have benefited from the resurgence of interest in health care reform. The journal's objectives are important to implementing change in the health care system.

Air pollution benefit-cost analyses depend on dispersion models to predict population exposures to pollutants, but it is difficult to determine the reasonableness of the model estimates. This is in part because validation with field measurements is not feasible for marginal concentration changes and because few models can capture the necessary spatial and temporal domains with adequate sophistication. In this study, we use the concept of an intake fraction (the fraction of a pollutant or its precursor emitted that is eventually inhaled) to provide insight about population exposures and model performance. We apply CALPUFF, a regional-scale dispersion model common in health benefits assessments, to seven power plants in northern Georgia, considering both direct emissions of fine particulate matter (PM[sub2.5]) and secondarily formed ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate particles over a domain within 500 km of Atlanta. We estimate emission-weighted average intake fractions of 6 x 10[sup-7] for primary PM[sub2.5], 2 × 10[sup-7] for ammonium sulfate from SO[sub2], and 6 × 10[sup-8] for ammonium nitrate from NO[subx], with no effect of SO[sub2] on ammonium nitrate. To provide insight about model strengths and limitations, we compare our findings with those from a frequently applied source-receptor (S-R) matrix. Using S-R matrix over an identical domain, the corresponding intake fractions are 5 × 10[sup-7], 2 x 10[sup-8], 3 × 10[sup-8], and -2 × 10[sup-8], respectively, with the values approximately doubling if the domain is expanded to cover the continental United States. Evaluation of model assumptions and comparison of past intake fraction estimates using these two models illustrates the importance of assumptions about the relative concentrations of ammonia, sulfate, and nitrate, which significantly influences ammonium nitrate intake fractions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports the severity of the adverse effects of chemicals per unit intake in the U.S. Relationship between intake and emissions; Calculation of benzene exposure scenarios; Characterization of human contact and uptake of pollutants. INSETS: Two sources of benzene exposure.;Notation for disaggregated iFs..

Background: Studies examining the nonfatal health outcomes of exposure to air pollution have been limited by the number of pollutants studied and focus on short-term exposures.Methods: We examined the relationship between long-term exposure to fine particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter <2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), NO2, and tropospheric ozone and hospital admissions for 4 cardiovascular and respiratory outcomes (myocardial infarction, ischemic stroke, atrial fibrillation and flutter, and pneumonia) among the Medicare population of the United States. We used a doubly robust method for our statistical analysis, which relies on both inverse probability weighting and adjustment in the outcome model to account for confounding. The results from this regression are on an additive scale. We further looked at this relationship at lower pollutant concentrations, which are consistent with typical exposure levels in the United States, and among potentially susceptible subgroups.Results: Long-term exposure to fine PM2.5 was associated with an increased risk of all outcomes with the highest effect seen for stroke with a 0.0091% (95% CI, 0.0086-0.0097) increase in the risk of stroke for each 1-µg/m3 increase in annual levels. This translated to 2536 (95% CI, 2383-2691) cases of hospital admissions with ischemic stroke per year, which can be attributed to each 1-unit increase in fine particulate matter levels among the study population. NO2 was associated with an increase in the risk of admission with stroke by 0.00059% (95% CI, 0.00039-0.00075) and atrial fibrillation by 0.00129% (95% CI, 0.00114-0.00148) per ppb and tropospheric ozone was associated with an increase in the risk of admission with pneumonia by 0.00413% (95% CI, 0.00376-0.00447) per parts per billion. At lower concentrations, all pollutants were consistently associated with an increased risk for all our studied outcomes.Conclusions: Long-term exposure to air pollutants poses a significant risk to cardiovascular and respiratory health among the elderly population in the United States, with the greatest increase in the association per unit of exposure occurring at lower concentrations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have shown strong associations between particulate matter (PM) levels and a variety of health outcomes, leading to changes in air quality standards in many regions, especially the United States and Europe. Kuwait, a desert country located on the Persian Gulf, has a large petroleum industry with associated industrial and urban land uses. It was marked by environmental destruction from the 1990 Iraqi invasion and subsequent oil fires. A detailed particle characterization study was conducted over 12 months in 2004-2005 at three sites simultaneously with an additional 6 months at one of the sites. Two sites were in urban areas (central and southern) and one in a remote desert location (northern). This paper reports the concentrations of particles less than 10 μm in diameter (PM10) and fine PM (PM2.5), as well as fine particle nitrate, sulfate, elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC), and elements measured at the three sites. Mean annual concentrations for PM10 ranged from 66 to 93 μg/m3 across the three sites, exceeding the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines for PM10 of 20 μg/m3. The arithmetic mean PM2.5 concentrations varied from 38 and 37 μg/m3 at the central and southern sites, respectively, to 31 μg/m3 at the northern site. All sites had mean PM2.5 concentrations more than double the U.S. National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) for PM2.5. Coarse particles comprised 50-60% of PM10. The high levels of PM10 and large fraction of coarse particles comprising PM10 are partially explained by the resuspension of dust and soil from the desert crust. However, EC, OC, and most of the elements were significantly higher at the urbanized sites, compared with the more remote northern site, indicating significant pollutant contributions from local mobile and stationary sources. The particulate levels in this study are high enough to generate substantial health impacts and present opportunities for improving public health by reducing airborne PM. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In support of an assessment of the mortality impacts of the Kuwait Oil Fires we interviewed six European experts in epidemiology and toxicology using formal procedures for elicitation of expert judgment. While the primary focus of the elicitations was to characterize the public health impacts of the fires, the experts provided quantitative estimates of the mortality impacts of hypothetical changes in the levels of ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in both the United States and Europe. Uncertainty was assessed by asking each expert to provide the 5th, 25th, 50th, 75th, and 90th percentiles of their subjective cumulative probability density function for each quantity of interest. The results suggest that many regulatory risk assessments underestimate the impacts of PM2.5 mortality; confirm that only a small fraction of the mortality impact occurs within the first few months after exposure; and indicate that it may be important to better address the differential toxicities of particles from various source classes. By providing quantitative estimates of the uncertainty in current estimates of PM2.5 mortality risks, the study facilitates structured analysis of the value of further research on PM2.5 and its impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]