Identifying Variation in Physical Health Behaviors and Depressive Symptoms among Religiosity Clusters of African American Adults in the United States.

Religiosity is an important factor in the lives of many African Americans, who suffer a greater health burden than their White counterparts. In this study, we examined associations between dimensions of religiosity with health behaviors and depressive symptoms in a sample of African American adults in the United States. Participants (N = 2086) completed five measures of religiosity (religious involvement, positive and negative religious coping, scriptural influence, belief in illness as punishment for sin) and measures of several health behaviors, cancer screening behaviors, and depressive symptoms.

Explaining the Varying Patterns of COVID-19 Deaths Across the United States: 2-Stage Time Series Clustering Framework.

Background: Socially vulnerable communities are at increased risk for adverse health outcomes during a pandemic. Although this association has been established for H1N1, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and COVID-19 outbreaks, understanding the factors influencing the outbreak pattern for different communities remains limited.

Objective: Our 3 objectives are to determine how many distinct clusters of time series there are for COVID-19 deaths in 3108 contiguous counties in the United States, how the clusters are geographically distributed, and what factors influence the probability of cluster membership.

Modeling the differences in the time-series profiles of new COVID-19 daily confirmed cases in 3,108 contiguous U.S. counties: A retrospective analysis.

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. has exhibited a distinct multiwave pattern beginning in March 2020.

Predicting unsafe driving risk among commercial truck drivers using machine learning: Lessons learned from the surveillance of 20 million driving miles.

The emergence of sensor-based Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring technologies have paved the way for conducting large-scale naturalistic driving studies, where continuous kinematic driver-based data are generated, capturing crash/near-crash safety critical events (SCEs) and their precursors. However, it is unknown whether the SCEs risk can be predicted to inform driver decisions in the medium term (e.g.

Association between maternal outdoor physical exercise and the risk of preterm birth: a case-control study in Wuhan, China.

Background: China had the second largest proportion of preterm birth (PTB) internationally. However, only 11% of pregnant women in China meet international guidelines for maternal physical activity, a significantly lower proportion than that in Western countries. This study aims to examine the association between outdoor physical exercise during pregnancy and PTB among Chinese women in Wuhan, China.

Investigating a disease outbreak.

Teams of epidemiological and medical "detectives" are working to get a coronavirus pandemic under control. and walk us through a typical investigation.

Comparing the Performance of Charlson and Elixhauser Comorbidity Indices to Predict In-Hospital Mortality Among a Chinese Population.

Objective: Earlier comorbidity measures have been developed or validated using the North American population. This study aims to compare five Charlson or Elixhauser comorbidity indices to predict in-hospital mortality using a large electronic medical record database from Shanxi, China.

Methods: Using the primary diagnosis code and surgery procedure codes, we identified four hospitalized patient cohorts, hospitalized between 2013 and 2017, in Shanxi, China, as follows: congestive heart failure (CHF, n=41,577), chronic renal failure (CRF, n=40,419), diabetes (n=171,355), and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI, n=39,097).

A Review of Data Analytic Applications in Road Traffic Safety. Part 2: Prescriptive Modeling.

In the first part of the review, we observed that there exists a significant gap between the predictive and prescriptive models pertaining to crash risk prediction and minimization, respectively. In this part, we review and categorize the optimization/ prescriptive analytic models that focus on minimizing crash risk. Although the majority of works in this segment of the literature are related to the hazardous materials (hazmat) trucking problems, we show that (with some exceptions) many can also be utilized in non-hazmat scenarios.

Ambient fine particulate matter and ozone higher than certain thresholds associated with myopia in the elderly aged 50 years and above.

Although myopia has been largely ignored among the elderly population, there is an increased risk of myopia with advancing age. Ambient air pollution is one potential contributor to vision impairments, but few epidemiological studies have demonstrated such an association. This cross-sectional survey collected the information of 33,626 subjects aged ≥50 years in six developing countries during 2007-2010.

Mapping rates of inpatient hospitalizations related to mental disorders in the state of Missouri: A conditional autoregressive model with zip code-level data.

Nearly one in five American adults suffers from mental illness in a given year. Mental health conditions are known to be spatially clustered, but no prior work has examined the clustering of mental health related hospitalizations. This analysis uses Bayesian hierarchical models to predict rates of inpatient hospitalizations attributed to mental disorders within zip codes in Missouri, USA.

Ambient PM and O and their combined effects on prevalence of presbyopia among the elderly: A cross-sectional study in six low- and middle-income countries.

Background: Ambient air pollutant directly contacts with the eyes, however, the effect of ambient fine particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O) on vision impairment, such as presbyopia, has been kept largely unknown.

Methods: We surveyed a total of 36,620 participants aged 50 years and above in six low- and middle-income countries. Ambient annual concentrations of PM and O for the residential community were estimated using satellite data and chemical transport model.

A respiratory health survey of a subsurface smoldering landfill.

In late 2010, a subsurface smoldering event was detected in the Bridgeton Sanitary Landfill in St. Louis County, Missouri. This was followed by complaints from nearby residents of foul odors emanating from the landfill.

Exposure to ambient PM associated with overall and domain-specific disability among adults in six low- and middle-income countries.

Background: Exposure to particulate matter pollution is associated with various cardiopulmonary diseases, which are closely related with disability. The direct relationship between air pollution and disability, however, has not been fully explored.

Methods: We used data from 45,625 participants in the Study on global AGEing and adult health in six low- and middle-income countries.