Characterizing the effects of structural fires on fine particulate matter with a dense sensing network.

Short-term increases in air pollution levels are linked to large adverse effects on health and productivity. However, existing regulatory monitoring systems lack the spatial or temporal resolution needed to capture localized events. This study uses a dense network of over 100 sensors, deployed across the city of Chicago, Illinois, to capture the spread of smoke from short-term structural fire events.

Neighborhood Composition and Air Pollution in Chicago: Monitoring Inequities With a Dense, Low-Cost Sensing Network, 2021.

To evaluate the efficacy of a novel, real-time sensor network for routine monitoring of racial and economic disparities in fine particulate matter (PM; particulate matter ≤ 2.5 µm in diameter) exposures at the neighborhood level. We deployed a dense network of low-cost PM sensors in Chicago, Illinois, to evaluate associations between neighborhood-level composition variables (percentage of Black residents, percentage of Hispanic/Latinx residents, and percentage of households below poverty) and interpolated PM.

WIC Food Package Changes: Trends in Childhood Obesity Prevalence.

Objectives: To evaluate the association of the 2009 changes to the US Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) food package and childhood obesity trends. We hypothesized that the food package change reduced obesity among children participating in WIC, a population that has been especially vulnerable to the childhood obesity epidemic.

Methods: We used an interrupted time-series design with repeated cross-sectional measurements of state-specific obesity prevalence among WIC-participating 2- to 4-year-old children from 2000 to 2014.

Assessing exposure to food and beverage advertisements surrounding schools in Vancouver, BC.

Recent policy initiatives call for restricting food marketing to children, yet little is known about children's current exposure to outdoor advertisements. This paper describes the prevalence and characteristics of food- or beverage-related advertisements surrounding 25 public elementary and secondary schools in Vancouver, Canada and assesses whether the informational food environment differs by neighbourhood or school characteristics. All but four schools had at least one food- or beverage-related advertisement within 400 m (median: 18, range: 0-96) and approximately 90% of food or beverage advertisements were for items not recommended for frequent consumption by provincial school food guidelines.

The effect of health on socioeconomic status: Using instrumental variables to revisit a successful randomized controlled trial.

Poor health is widely recognized as a consequence of social disadvantage, but health problems may also help transmit social disadvantage over time and generations. Experimentally assigned health exposures, namely those tested in randomized controlled trials, may provide opportunities to estimate the causal effects of health on socioeconomic status (SES). We revisit data from the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial, a randomized controlled trial of glucose control therapy in Type 1 diabetic patients, and use treatment assignment as an instrument for health status to test the causal effect of treatment-related health improvement on subsequent SES measured during the trial's follow-up study, the Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications study.

Quantifying the foodscape: A systematic review and meta-analysis of the validity of commercially available business data.

This paper reviews studies of the validity of commercially available business (CAB) data on food establishments ("the foodscape"), offering a meta-analysis of characteristics associated with CAB quality and a case study evaluating the performance of commonly-used validity indicators describing the foodscape. Existing validation studies report a broad range in CAB data quality, although most studies conclude that CAB quality is "moderate" to "substantial". We conclude that current studies may underestimate the quality of CAB data.

Diet-related chronic disease in the northeastern United States: a model-based clustering approach.

Background: Obesity and diabetes are global public health concerns. Studies indicate a relationship between socioeconomic, demographic and environmental variables and the spatial patterns of diet-related chronic disease. In this paper, we propose a methodology using model-based clustering and variable selection to predict rates of obesity and diabetes.

The mortality of companies.

The firm is a fundamental economic unit of contemporary human societies. Studies on the general quantitative and statistical character of firms have produced mixed results regarding their lifespans and mortality. We examine a comprehensive database of more than 25 000 publicly traded North American companies, from 1950 to 2009, to derive the statistics of firm lifespans.