Non-invasive methods characterise the world's largest tiger shark aggregation in Fuvahmulah, Maldives.

Tiger sharks are apex predators with a circumglobal tropical and warm-temperate distribution, with a general lack of population data for the central Indian Ocean. In Fuvahmulah, Maldives, tiger sharks display frequent use of the harbour area, attracted by discarded fish waste. Here, we document the population structure, residency, and reproductive characteristics of the world's largest known tiger shark aggregation in a geographically-restricted area.

The mortality burden attributable to wood heater smoke particulate matter (PM) in Australia.

Air pollution is the leading environmental risk factor for mortality worldwide. In Australia, residential wood heating is the single largest source of pollution in many regions of the country. Estimates around the world and in some limited locations across Australia have shown that the health burden attributable to wood heating PM is considerable, and that there is great potential to reduce this burden.

Mortality burden attributable to exceptional PM air pollution events in Australian cities: A health impact assessment.

Background: People living in Australian cities face increased mortality risks from exposure to extreme air pollution events due to bushfires and dust storms. However, the burden of mortality attributable to exceptional PM levels has not been well characterised. We assessed the burden of mortality due to PM pollution events in Australian capital cities between 2001 and 2020.

Child anemia in Cambodia: A descriptive analysis of temporal and geospatial trends and logistic regression-based examination of factors associated with anemia in children.

Anemia in children remains a public health concern in many resource-limited countries. To better understand child anemia in Cambodia, we examined temporal and geospatial trends of childhood anemia and used logistic regression to analyze its association with individual and household characteristics using data from the Cambodia Demographic and Health Surveys for 2005, 2010, and 2014. The prevalence of childhood anemia decreased from 62.

The Effect of Soy and Whey Protein Supplementation on Glucose Homeostasis in Healthy Normal Weight Asian Indians.

Milk and legumes are good source of protein foods used to sustain muscle mass, but their effects on postprandial glucose homeostasis and energy metabolism may be different. This is relevant, for example, in the dietetic response to obesity or diabetes, where the intake of high-quality protein is often increased significantly. The objective of this study was to characterize the acute effect of whey and soy protein (15% vs.

Measuring Food Insecurity: The Problem with Semantics.

Rising rates of hunger and food insecurity have sparked a major re-evaluation of all aspects of food systems. Because of the multifaceted nature of food insecurity, however, determining what actions should be taken is challenging, especially since reevaluation efforts are led by experts from several disciplines and there is no consensus about which indicators should be used and how they should be measured. Confusion surrounding the meaning of the terms 'food security' and 'food insecurity' has contributed to this lack of consensus.

New Conceptual Model of Social Sustainability: Review from Past Concepts and Ideas.

The social dimension of sustainability has remained relatively underdefined, despite the efforts to specify and integrate this dimension into the general sustainability conversation of scholars and practitioners. This study aims to advance the conversation of social sustainability by examining past the multi-disciplinary literature and policy documents, as well as proposing a comprehensive conceptual model of social sustainability. We present a model with five dimensions: safety and security, equity, adaptability, social inclusion and cohesion, and quality of life.

Identifying and Understanding the Non-Clinical Impacts of Delayed or Cancelled Surgery in Order to Inform Prioritisation Processes: A Scoping Review.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in significant delays to non-urgent elective surgery. Decision making regarding prioritisation for surgery is currently informed primarily by clinical urgency. The ways in which decision making should also consider potential social and economic harm arising from surgical delay are currently unclear.

The Benefits of Intergenerational Wisdom-Sharing: A Randomized Controlled Study.

Adolescents' opportunities to benefit from the life wisdom of older persons are very limited. To address this issue, we designed and tested the Building a Community Legacy Together (BCLT) program based on research on the benefits of older people's wisdom for youth development. In the intervention, the youth participants were trained prior to conducting interviews with older persons regarding their advice for living.

"We Got an Invite into the Fortress": VA-Community Partnerships for Meeting Veterans' Healthcare Needs.

Responding to identified needs for increased veterans' access to healthcare, in 2010 the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) launched the Veteran Community Partnership (VCP) initiative to "foster seamless access to, and transitions among, the full continuum of non-institutional extended care and support services in VA and the community". This initiative represents an important effort by VA to promote collaboration with a broad range of community organizations as equal partners in the service of veteran needs. The purpose of the study is an initial assessment of the VCP program.

Gender Marginalization in Sports Participation through Advertising: The Case of Nike.

The sport sector functions as a site of health-promotion by encouraging and enabling individuals to invest in their health and giving them tools to do so. This investment is often initiated by, or altered by, role modeling, or seeing other individuals engaging in sport. This could include family or peers but could also include depictions of sport in popular media.

Privilege and Place: an exploratory study about healthcare bypass behavior.

Aim: Bypass, or utilizing healthcare outside of one's community rather than local health care, can have serious consequences on rural healthcare availability, quality, and outcomes. Previous studies of the likelihood of healthcare bypass used various individual and community characteristics. This study includes measures for individuals and communities, as well as place-based characteristics.

Avoidable Mortality Attributable to Anthropogenic Fine Particulate Matter (PM) in Australia.

Ambient fine particulate matter <2.5 µm (PM) air pollution increases premature mortality globally. Some PM is natural, but anthropogenic PM is comparatively avoidable.

Impact of exposure to mine fire emitted PM on ambulance attendances: A time series analysis from the Hazelwood Health Study.

Background: For six weeks from February 9, 2014, smoke and ash from a fire in the Morwell open cut brown coal mine adjacent to the Hazelwood power station covered parts of the Latrobe Valley, in south eastern Australia.

Aims: To evaluate the health impact of the mine fire, daily counts of ambulance attendances from July 2010 to March 2015 were analysed.

Methods: Time series models were used to evaluate the relative risk of ambulance attendances during the mine fire, in comparison with the remainder of the analysis period, and to also assess the risk of ambulance attendances associated with lagged effects of exposure to mine fire-related PM levels.

Evaluating the integrity of forested riparian buffers over a large area using LiDAR data and Google Earth Engine.

Spatial and temporal changes in land cover have direct impacts on the hydrological cycle and stream quality. Techniques for accurately and efficiently mapping these changes are evolving quickly, and it is important to evaluate how useful these techniques are to address the environmental impact of land cover on riparian buffer areas. The objectives of this study were to: (1) determine the classes and distribution of land cover in the riparian areas of streams; (2) examine the discrepancies within the existing land cover data from National Land Cover Database (NLCD) using high-resolution imagery of the National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) and a LiDAR canopy height model; and (3) develop a technique using LiDAR data to help characterize riparian buffers over large spatial extents.

Community recovery after a natural disaster: Core data from a survey of communities affected by the 2010 Mt. Merapi eruptions in Central Java, Indonesia.

The ``Community Recovery after a Natural Disaster: A Survey of Communities Affected by Mt. Merapi Eruptions'' data that are described herein were gathered 16 months after the 2010 Mt. Merapi volcanic eruptions in Central Java, Indonesia.

A deep learning approach to identify smoke plumes in satellite imagery in near-real time for health risk communication.

Background: Wildland fire (wildfire; bushfire) pollution contributes to poor air quality, a risk factor for premature death. The frequency and intensity of wildfires are expected to increase; improved tools for estimating exposure to fire smoke are vital. New-generation satellite-based sensors produce high-resolution spectral images, providing real-time information of surface features during wildfire episodes.

The Louisiana Community Oil Spill Survey (COSS) dataset.

This article presents an overview of the Louisiana Community Oil Spill Survey (COSS), the dataset used in "Community Sentiment following the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Disaster: A Test of Time, Systemic Community, and Corrosive Community Models" [1] as well as elsewhere [2-6]. The COSS, administered by the Louisiana State University's Public Policy Research Laboratory, consists of five waves of cross-sectional trend data attuned to the characteristics and effects of the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon (BP-DH) oil spill on those coastal Louisiana residents most affected by the disaster. Respondents were randomly drawn from a list of nearly 6,000 households in the coastal Louisiana zip codes located in Lafourche Parish, Plaquemines Parish, Terrebonne Parish, and the community of Grand Isle.

Taking another look at the sense of community index: Six confirmatory factor analyses.

Previous studies focusing on the effects of the social aspects of community have often used the Sense of Community Index (SCI), despite other research showing that it is not a good-fit measure for its expected dimensions. Using a sample of students from Brigham Young University, we performed confirmatory factor analysis of the SCI to assess 1-factor, 4-factor, 1-factor revised, 3-factor revised, 1-factor revised, 4-factor revised, and 1-factor revised models. Our study resulted in mixed findings: models were neither a poor-fit nor a good fit.

The mortality effect of PM sources in the Greater Metropolitan Region of Sydney, Australia.

We describe an assessment of the impact on mortality of eight major sources of PM in the Greater Metropolitan Region of Sydney, Australia (GMR). We modeled exposure to PM for the year July 2010 to June 2011 and estimated the burden of current mortality attributable to these sources. We also estimated the number of life-years that would be produced if emissions from wood heaters and power stations, the two largest emissions sources, were reduced.

Roof cavity dust as an exposure proxy for extreme air pollution events.

Understanding exposure to air pollution during extreme events such as fire emergencies is critical for assessing their potential health impacts. However, air pollution emergencies often affect places without a network of air quality monitoring and characterising exposure retrospectively is methodologically challenging due to the complex behaviour of smoke and other air pollutants. Here we test the potential of roof cavity (attic) dust to act as a robust household-level exposure proxy, using a major air pollution event associated with a coal mine fire in the Latrobe Valley, Australia, as an illustrative study.

Infants without health insurance: Racial/ethnic and rural/urban disparities in infant households' insurance coverage.

In order to gain insights into how the effects of the uneven adoption of Medicaid expansion varies across the rural/urban spectrum and between racial/ethnic groups in the United States, this research used the fertility question in the 2011-2015 American Community Survey to link infants' records to their mothers' household health insurance status. This preliminary exploration of the Medicaid expansion used logistic regression to examine the probability that an infant will be born without health insurance coverage. Overall, the states that adopted Medicaid expansion improved the health insurance coverage for households with infants.

Associations between long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and Parkinson's disease prevalence: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Epidemiological studies have reported contradictory results regarding the effects of ambient air pollution on Parkinson's disease (PD). This study investigated the associations between long-term exposure to particulate matter <2.5 μm in diameter (PM) and nitrogen dioxide (NO) and PD among participants in the 45 and Up Study, which comprised adults older than 45 years living in New South Wales, Australia.

Migration and Mental Health in the Aftermath of Disaster: Evidence from Mt. Merapi, Indonesia.

Migration is a standard survival strategy in the context of disasters. While prior studies have examined factors associated with return migration following disasters, an area that remains relatively underexplored is whether moving home to one's original community results in improved health and well-being compared to other options such as deciding to move on. In the present study, our objective is to explore whether return migration, compared to other migration options, results in superior improvements to mental health.