Comparison of Alternative Approaches to Using Race-and-Ethnicity Data in Estimating Differences in Health Care and Social Determinants of Health.

Objective: The objective of this study was to compare 2 approaches for representing self-reported race-and-ethnicity, additive modeling (AM), in which every race or ethnicity a person endorses counts toward measurement of that category, and a commonly used mutually exclusive categorization (MEC) approach. The benchmark was a gold-standard, but often impractical approach that analyzes all combinations of race-and-ethnicity as distinct groups.

Methods: Data came from 313,739 respondents to the 2021 Medicare Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) surveys who self-reported race-and-ethnicity.

Preventative Cancer Vaccine-Elicited Human Anti-MUC1 Antibodies Have Multiple Effector Functions.

Background/objectives: Mucin-1 (MUC1) is a transmembrane glycoprotein that is overexpressed and hypoglycosylated in premalignant and malignant epithelial cells compared to normal cells, creating a target antigen for humoral and cellular immunity. Healthy individuals with a history of advanced colonic adenomas and at high risk for colon cancer were enrolled in a clinical trial to evaluate the feasibility of using a MUC1 peptide vaccine to prevent colon cancer. Anti-MUC1 antibodies elicited by this vaccine were cloned using peripheral blood B cells and sera collected two weeks after a one-year booster.

Loneliness, Discrimination, Stress, and Type 2 Diabetes Risk in Young Adults.

Introduction: The aim of this study was to determine the associations between type 2 diabetes or prediabetes and loneliness and related social experiences in young adults, a population at increasingly high risk of type 2 diabetes.

Methods: This was a cross-sectional analysis using data from adults aged 18-35 years enrolled in the All of Us Research Program. Exposures included loneliness, social support, discrimination, neighborhood social cohesion, and stress, measured by standardized surveys.

Geriatric grade 2 and 3 gliomas: A national cancer database analysis of demographics, treatment utilization, and survival.

With increasing life expectancies and population aging, the incidence of elderly patients with grade 2 and 3 gliomas is increasing. However, there is a paucity of knowledge on factors affecting their treatment selection and overall survival (OS). Geriatric patients aged between 60 and 89 years with histologically proven grade 2 and 3 intracranial gliomas were identified from the National Cancer Database between 2010 and 2017.

Chondrosarcoma of the Mobile Spine in the Elderly: A National Cancer Database Study.

Background: The current research on geriatric patients with spinal chondrosarcoma is limited. This study aimed to investigate the demographics, patterns of care, and survival of geriatric patients with chondrosarcoma of the mobile spine.

Methods: The National Cancer Database was queried from 2008 to 2018 for geriatric patients (60-89 years) with chondrosarcoma of the mobile spine.

Atypical and anaplastic meningiomas in the later decades of life: A national cancer database analysis.

Purpose: We conducted a National Cancer Database (NCDB) study to investigate the epidemiological characteristics and identify predictors of outcomes associated with geriatric meningiomas.

Methods: The NCDB was queried for adults aged 60-89 years diagnosed between 2010 and 2017 with grade 2 and 3 meningiomas. The patients were classified into three age groups based on their age: 60-69 (hexagenarians), 70-79 (septuagenarians), and 80-89 (octogenarians).

Associations of adolescent substance use and depressive symptoms with adult major depressive disorder in the United States: NSDUH 2016-2019.

Background: Few studies have focused on the associations of adolescent substance use and depressive symptoms with adult major depressive disorder (MDD).

Methods: Data from 168,859 adults, among which, 15,959 had experienced MDD in the past year, as indicated by a major depressive episode (MDE) marked by MDD symptoms, were from the 2016-2019 National Surveys on Drug Use and Health. Weighted multivariable logistic regression (MLR) analyses were used to determine the associations.

Clusters of substance use and mental health variables with emergency room visits in U.S. adults: The 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health.

Background: This study evaluated the prevalence of emergency room (ER) visits, given numerous substance use and mental health variables in the past year.

Methods: Data from 5206 emergency room visits out of 27,170 adults were extracted from the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Oblique principal component cluster analysis was used to classify 39 substance use and mental health variables into disjoint clusters.

Machine Learning Case Study: Patterns of Kidney Function Decline and Their Association With Clinical Outcomes Within 90 Days After the Initiation of Renal Dialysis.

A case study explores patterns of kidney function decline using unsupervised learning methods first and then associating patterns with clinical outcomes using supervised learning methods. Predicting short-term risk of hospitalization and death prior to renal dialysis initiation may help target high-risk patients for more aggressive management. This study combined clinical data from patients presenting for renal dialysis at Fresenius Medical Care with laboratory data from Quest Diagnostics to identify disease trajectory patterns associated with the 90-day risk of hospitalization and death after beginning renal dialysis.

In-flight positional and energy use data set of a DJI Matrice 100 quadcopter for small package delivery.

We autonomously directed a small quadcopter package delivery Uncrewed Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or "drone" to take off, fly a specified route, and land for a total of 209 flights while varying a set of operational parameters. The vehicle was equipped with onboard sensors, including GPS, IMU, voltage and current sensors, and an ultrasonic anemometer, to collect high-resolution data on the inertial states, wind speed, and power consumption. Operational parameters, such as commanded ground speed, payload, and cruise altitude, were varied for each flight.

Aggression heuristics underlie animal dominance hierarchies and provide evidence of group-level social information.

Members of a social species need to make appropriate decisions about who, how, and when to interact with others in their group. However, it has been difficult for researchers to detect the inputs to these decisions and, in particular, how much information individuals actually have about their social context. We present a method that can serve as a social assay to quantify how patterns of aggression depend upon information about the ranks of individuals within social dominance hierarchies.

Do physician incentives increase patient medication adherence?

Objective: To test the effectiveness of physician incentives for increasing patient medication adherence in three drug classes: diabetes medication, antihypertensives, and statins.

Data Sources: Pharmacy and medical claims from a large Medicare Advantage Prescription Drug Plan from January 2011 to December 2012.

Study Design: We conducted a randomized experiment (911 primary care practices and 8,935 nonadherent patients) to test the effect of paying physicians for increasing patient medication adherence in three drug classes: diabetes medication, antihypertensives, and statins.

The effect of effects on effectiveness: A boon-bane asymmetry.

Beliefs about how effective a cause will be at achieving possible outcomes are critical inputs into a range of decisions, from how to treat an illness to which products to purchase. We identify scope-the number of distinct outcomes a cause is known to achieve-as an important input into judgments of efficacy. We compare causes that lead to worse outcomes (i.

Mobile Assessment of Acute Effects of Marijuana on Cognitive Functioning in Young Adults: Observational Study.

Background: Mobile assessment of the effects of acute marijuana on cognitive functioning in the natural environment would provide an ecologically valid measure of the impacts of marijuana use on daily functioning.

Objective: This study aimed to examine the association of reported acute subjective marijuana high (rated 0-10) with performance on 3 mobile cognitive tasks measuring visuospatial working memory (Flowers task), attentional bias to marijuana-related cues (marijuana Stroop), and information processing and psychomotor speed (digit symbol substitution task [DSST]). The effect of distraction as a moderator of the association between the rating of subjective marijuana high and task performance (ie, reaction time and number of correct responses) was explored.

Effects of self- and partner's online disclosure on relationship intimacy and satisfaction.

Most research on the effects of disclosure on close relationships have been done using offline disclosure. However, disclosure done online has disparate features and thus its effects on relationships may also differ. In five studies and using primes emulating Facebook timelines and messages, we compared the effects of disclosure depth on intimacy and satisfaction in online vs.

Consumption of Health-Related Content on Social Media Among Adolescent Girls: Mixed-Methods Pilot Study.

Background: Consumption of health- and fitness-related social media content is a predominant behavior among teenage girls, which puts them at risk for consuming unreliable health-related information.

Objective: This mixed-methods study (qualitative and quantitative) assessed health behavior attitudes and practices as well as social media use among adolescent girls. Additionally, similar practices and behaviors of adults who regularly interact with this population were studied.

Understanding causes of fall and struck-by incidents: What differentiates construction safety in the Arabian Gulf region?

Rapid growth in the Arabian Gulf region has fueled an explosive pace of construction and a rise in risks of occupational injury. Scarcity of pertinent data, however, makes it hard to determine whether accident characteristics, causal factors and remedial interventions identified elsewhere apply to the Gulf in comparable ways. This difficulty stems from unusual construction sector characteristics, notably a heterogeneous mix of expatriate laborers and firms working without a common language, work culture or labor practices.

Priming Gestures with Sounds.

We report a series of experiments about a little-studied type of compatibility effect between a stimulus and a response: the priming of manual gestures via sounds associated with these gestures. The goal was to investigate the plasticity of the gesture-sound associations mediating this type of priming. Five experiments used a primed choice-reaction task.

The center for causal discovery of biomedical knowledge from big data.

The Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Center for Causal Discovery is developing and disseminating an integrated set of open source tools that support causal modeling and discovery of biomedical knowledge from large and complex biomedical datasets. The Center integrates teams of biomedical and data scientists focused on the refinement of existing and the development of new constraint-based and Bayesian algorithms based on causal Bayesian networks, the optimization of software for efficient operation in a supercomputing environment, and the testing of algorithms and software developed using real data from 3 representative driving biomedical projects: cancer driver mutations, lung disease, and the functional connectome of the human brain. Associated training activities provide both biomedical and data scientists with the knowledge and skills needed to apply and extend these tools.