The Association of County-Level Presidential Election Outcome and COVID-19 Mortality in Colorado, 2020-2022.

Context: The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic occurred during a time of political tension in the United States. County-level political environment may have been influential in COVID-19 outcomes.

Objective: This study examined the association between county-level political environment and age-adjusted COVID-19 mortality rates from 2020 to 2022.

Urbanization exacerbates disparities in exposure to air pollution in China.

Prolonged exposure to fine particulate matter (PM) is associated with harmful impacts on human health and population growth in urban areas has exacerbated this exposure. In this study, we compare the exposure between cities at a national level and between different regions within cities considering the population in situ. We estimate the impacts of pollution and population on exposure by spatial and time series analysis from 2000 to 2018 based on 1-km grid data.

Hierarchy of topological transitions in a network liquid.

The representation of complex systems as networks has become a critical tool across many fields of science. In the context of physical networks, such as biological neural networks, vascular networks, or network liquids where the nodes and edges occupy volume in three-dimensional space, the question of how they become densely packed is of special importance. Here, we investigate a model network liquid, which is known to densify via two successive liquid-liquid phase transitions (LLPTs).

Bridging Differences in Cohort Analyses of the Relationship between Secondhand Smoke Exposure during Pregnancy and Birth Weight: The Transportability Framework in the ECHO Program.

Background: Estimates for the effects of environmental exposures on health outcomes, including secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure, often present considerable variability across studies. Knowledge of the reasons behind these differences can aid our understanding of effects in specific populations as well as inform practices of combining data from multiple studies.

Objectives: This study aimed to assess the presence of effect modification by measured sociodemographic characteristics on the effect of SHS exposure during pregnancy on birth weights that may drive differences observed across cohorts.

Reducing air pollution does not necessarily reduce related adults' mortality burden: Variations in 177 countries with different economic levels.

Prolonged exposure to PM is associated with increased mortality. However, reducing air pollution concentrations does not necessarily reduce the related burden of deaths. Here, we aim to estimate the variations in PM-related mortality due to contributions from key factors - PM concentration, population exposure, and healthcare levels - for 177 countries from 2000 to 2018 at the 1-km grid scale according to the Global Mortality Exposure Model (GEMM) model.

Potential energy landscape of a coarse grained model for water: ML-BOP.

We quantify the statistical properties of the potential energy landscape for a recently proposed machine learning coarse grained model for water, machine learning-bond-order potential [Chan et al., Nat. Commun.

Diesel exhaust and respiratory dust exposure in miners and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality in DEMS II.

Background: Diesel exhaust and respirable dust exposures in the mining industry have not been studied in depth with respect to non-malignant respiratory disease including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), with most available evidence coming from other settings.

Objectives: To assess the relationship between occupational diesel exhaust and respirable dust exposures and COPD mortality, while addressing issues of survivor bias in exposed miners.

Methods: The study population consisted of 11,817 male workers from the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study II, followed from 1947 to 2015, with 279 observed COPD deaths.

Effect of coat-protein concentration on the self-assembly of bacteriophage MS2 capsids around RNA.

Self-assembly is a vital part of the life cycle of certain icosahedral RNA viruses. Furthermore, the assembly process can be harnessed to make icosahedral virus-like particles (VLPs) from coat protein and RNA in vitro. Although much previous work has explored the effects of RNA-protein interactions on the assembly products, relatively little research has explored the effects of coat-protein concentration.

Effect of coat-protein concentration on the self-assembly of bacteriophage MS2 capsids around RNA.

Self-assembly is a vital part of the life cycle of certain icosahedral RNA viruses. Furthermore, the assembly process can be harnessed to make icosahedral virus-like particles (VLPs) from coat protein and RNA . Although much previous work has explored the effects of RNA-protein interactions on the assembly products, relatively little research has explored the effects of coat-protein concentration.

A Bayesian joint model for compositional mediation effect selection in microbiome data.

Analyzing multivariate count data generated by high-throughput sequencing technology in microbiome research studies is challenging due to the high-dimensional and compositional structure of the data and overdispersion. In practice, researchers are often interested in investigating how the microbiome may mediate the relation between an assigned treatment and an observed phenotypic response. Existing approaches designed for compositional mediation analysis are unable to simultaneously determine the presence of direct effects, relative indirect effects, and overall indirect effects, while quantifying their uncertainty.

Associations between Prenatal and Postnatal Exposure to Cannabis with Cognition and Behavior at Age 5 Years: The Healthy Start Study.

Background: Prenatal exposure to cannabis may influence childhood cognition and behavior, but the epidemiologic evidence is mixed. Even less is known about the potential impact of secondhand exposure to cannabis during early childhood.

Objective: This study sought to assess whether prenatal and/or postnatal exposure to cannabis was associated with childhood cognition and behavior.

Programmed Self-Assembly of Single Colloidal Gyroids for Chiral Photonic Crystals.

Gyroid structures are of extensive interest because they provide a rich platform for chiroptics as well as topological photonics. While the double-gyroid morphology as a bicontinuous structure is not uncommon in self-assembled soft materials, direct self-assembly of single-network gyroids has proven elusive. Here, an enantiomorphic pair of single-gyroid crystals comprising colloidal spheres is presented, and two distinct routes are demonstrated for programmed self-assembly of each single colloidal gyroid enantiomorph from rationally designed patchy spheres.

Associations between prenatal and early-life air pollution exposure and lung function in young children: Exploring influential windows of exposure on lung development.

Background: Evidence in the literature suggests that air pollution exposures experienced prenatally and early in life can be detrimental to normal lung development, however the specific timing of critical windows during development is not fully understood.

Objectives: We evaluated air pollution exposures during the prenatal and early-life period in association with lung function at ages 6-9, in an effort to identify potentially influential windows of exposure for lung development.

Methods: Our study population consisted of 222 children aged 6-9 from the Fresno-Clovis metro area in California with spirometry data collected between May 2015 and May 2017.

Long-Term Fine Particulate Matter Concentrations and Prevalence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2: Differential Relationships by Socioeconomic Status Among Pregnant Individuals in New York City.

We aimed to determine whether long-term ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than or equal to 2.5 μm (PM2.5)) were associated with increased risk of testing positive for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) among pregnant individuals who were universally screened at delivery and whether socioeconomic status (SES) modified this relationship.

Facile self-assembly of colloidal diamond from tetrahedral patchy particles via ring selection.

Diamond-structured crystals, particularly those with cubic symmetry, have long been attractive targets for the programmed self-assembly of colloidal particles, due to their applications as photonic crystals that can control the flow of visible light. While spherical particles decorated with four patches in a tetrahedral arrangement-tetrahedral patchy particles-should be an ideal building block for this endeavor, their self-assembly into colloidal diamond has proved elusive. The kinetics of self-assembly pose a major challenge, with competition from an amorphous glassy phase, as well as clathrate crystals, leaving a narrow widow of patch widths where tetrahedral patchy particles can self-assemble into diamond crystals.

Investigating the trade-off between color saturation and angle-independence in photonic glasses.

Photonic glasses-isotropic structures with short-range correlations-can produce structural colors with little angle-dependence, making them an alternative to dyes in applications such as cosmetics, coatings, and displays. However, the low angle-dependence is often accompanied by low color saturation. To investigate how the short-range correlations affect the trade-off between saturation and angle-independence, we vary the structure factor and use a Monte Carlo model of multiple scattering to investigate the resulting optical properties.

Traffic-related air pollution is associated with glucose dysregulation, blood pressure, and oxidative stress in children.

Background: Metabolic syndrome increases the risk of cardiovascular disease in adults. Antecedents likely begin in childhood and whether childhood exposure to air pollution plays a contributory role is not well understood.

Objectives: To assess whether children's exposure to air pollution is associated with markers of risk for metabolic syndrome and oxidative stress, a hypothesized mediator of air pollution-related health effects.

Native American Ancestry and Air Pollution Interact to Impact Bronchodilator Response in Puerto Rican Children with Asthma.

Objective: Asthma is the most common chronic disease in children. Short-acting bronchodilator medications are the most commonly prescribed asthma treatment worldwide, regardless of disease severity. Puerto Rican children display the highest asthma morbidity and mortality of any US population.

Self-Assembly of Patchy Colloidal Rods into Photonic Crystals Robust to Stacking Faults.

Diamond-structured colloidal photonic crystals are much sought-after for their applications in visible light management because of their ability to support a complete photonic band gap (PBG). However, their realization self-assembly pathways is a long-standing challenge. This challenge is rooted in three fundamental problems: the design of building blocks that assemble into diamond-like structures, the sensitivity of the PBG to stacking faults, and ensuring that the PBG opens at an experimentally attainable refractive index.

Associations of Residential Brownness and Greenness with Fasting Glucose in Young Healthy Adults Living in the Desert.

Evolutionary psychology theories propose that contact with green, natural environments may benefit physical health, but little comparable evidence exists for brown, natural environments, such as the desert. In this study, we examined the association between "brownness" and "greenness" with fasting glucose among young residents of El Paso, Texas. We defined brownness as the surface not covered by vegetation or impervious land within Euclidian buffers around participants' homes.

Educational note: addressing special cases of bias that frequently occur in perinatal epidemiology.

The epidemiologic study of pregnancy and birth outcomes may be hindered by several unique and challenging issues. Pregnancy is a time-limited period in which severe cohort attrition takes place between conception and birth and adverse outcomes are complex and multi-factorial. Biases span those familiar to epidemiologists: selection, confounding and information biases.

Comment on "A global-scale ecological niche model to predict SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection rate", author Coro.

In this letter we present comments on the article "A global-scale ecological niche model to predict SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus" by Coro published in 2020.

Improved asthma outcomes observed in the vicinity of coal power plant retirement, retrofit, and conversion to natural gas.

Coal-fired power plants release substantial air pollution, including over 60% of U.S. sulfur dioxide (SO) emissions in 2014.