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.

Windows of Susceptibility to Air Pollution During and Surrounding Pregnancy in Relation to Longitudinal Maternal Measures of Adiposity and Lipid Profiles.

Pregnancy is a critical window for long-term metabolic programming of fetal effects stemming from airborne particulate matter ≤2.5μm (PM ) exposure. Yet, little is known about long-term metabolic effects of PM exposure during and surrounding pregnancy in mothers.

Expert Consultation: Factors Influencing End-of-Life Decision-Making for Dairy Cattle Across the United States Supply Chain.

The end-of-life (i.e., on-farm euthanasia and culling, including fitness for transport to slaughter) of a dairy cow or calf is preceded by a series of decisions often influenced by many complex factors.

spconfShiny: An R Shiny application for calculating the spatial scale of smoothing splines for point data.

Epidemiological analyses of environmental exposures often benefit from including spatial splines in models to account for confounding by spatial location. Understanding how the number of splines relates to physical spatial differences is not always intuitive and can be context-dependent. To address this, we developed a R Shiny application, spconfShiny, that provides a user-friendly platform to calculate an effective bandwidth metric that quantifies the relationship between spatial splines and the range of implied spatial smoothing.

Impact of randomly assigned "pay-as-you-go" liquefied petroleum gas prices on energy use for cooking: Experimental pilot evidence from rural Rwanda.

The disease burden related to air pollution from traditional solid-fuel cooking practices in low- and middle-income countries impacts millions of people globally. Although the use of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) fuel for cooking can meaningfully reduce household air pollution concentrations, major barriers, including affordability and accessibility, have limited widespread adoption. Using a randomized controlled trial, our objective was to evaluate the association between the cost and use of LPG among 23 rural Rwandan households.

Early-life exposure to residential black carbon and childhood cardiometabolic health.

Background: Early life exposure to air pollution, such as particulate matter ≤2.5 μm (PM), may be associated with obesity and adverse cardiometabolic health outcomes in childhood. However, the toxicity of PM varies according to its chemical composition.

Large Particle Emissions from Human Vocalization and Playing of Wind Instruments.

Humans emit large salivary particles when talking, singing, and playing musical instruments, which have implications for respiratory disease transmission. Yet little work has been done to characterize the emission rates and size distributions of such particles. This work characterized large particle ( > 35 μm in aerodynamic diameter) emissions from 70 volunteers of varying age and sex while vocalizing and playing wind instruments.

A nationwide survey on producer and veterinarian perceptions of the painfulness of procedures and disease states in dairy and beef cattle.

Failure to adequately manage pain in cattle causes suffering and is thus a welfare concern for the livestock industry. The objectives of this study were to summarize caregiver perceptions of the painfulness of various procedures and disease conditions in cattle. This survey also assessed factors that impact the perception of painfulness and determined relationships between pain perception and mitigation in producers and veterinarians in the United States beef and dairy cattle industries.