Stony Brook University

Background Street violence has detrimental effects on cardiovascular health (CVH). However, the significance of these consequences have not been systematically evaluated. In this study, we aimed to assess the impact of fear of crime on CVH status among community-dwellers aged ≥40 years living in a rural village stricken by violence. Methods Participants were selected from individuals enrolled in the Atahualpa Project Cohort, a population-based longitudinal study that aims to reduce the burden of cardiovascular risk factors and diseases in rural Ecuador. Fear of crime was evaluated using a structured scale. The Life’s Simple 7 construct of the American Heart Association was employed to assess CVH before the escalation of violence and crime in the village (2019) and at the end of the study (2024). Multivariate logistic regression models were fitted to examine the association between the exposure and outcomes. Results A total of 648 individuals (mean age = 57.4 ± 11.7 years; 56% women) were included. At the end of the follow-up, significant association between fear of crime levels and worsening CVH status was noted. Participants allocated to the second and third tertiles of fear of crime were 3.27 (95% CI = 2.07-5.19) and 5.46 (95% CI = 3.14-9.48) times more likely to have worsening CVH status at follow-up compared to baseline determinations, respectively. Conclusion This study shows an aggravating impact of fear of crime on the CVH status and identifies interventional targets that may help to reduce the risk of CVH status worsening in community-dwellers living in rural settings afflicted by violence.

Patient-reported outcomes (PROs) are crucial endpoints in multiple myeloma (MM) randomized controlled trials (RCTs), yet there is significant variability in their methodology and reporting. Our study aimed to (a) identify the most commonly pre-specified PRO domains in MM RCTs and those most responsive to modern therapies, and (b) examine the association between PROs and progression-free survival (PFS)/overall survival (OS). We performed a systematic review of MM RCTs that used EORTC QLQ-C30 and published between 01/2014–06/2023. The association between PFS/OS and PRO was explored using Fisher's exact test or Pearson's Chi-squared test. Thirty-five RCTs were identified, with PROs as secondary or exploratory endpoints in all studies. About one-third of RCTs (n=11, 31.4%) pre-specified at least one EORTC QLQ-C30 domain, with the most common domains being Global health status/Quality of life (GHS/QoL) (n = 10, 90.9%), Physical Functioning (n = 6, 54.5%), Fatigue (n = 6, 54.5%), and Pain (n = 6, 54.5%). A statistically significant and/or clinically meaningful difference in at least one EORTC QLQ-C30 domain between arms was seen in 23/35 trials (65.7%), with the most common domains showing improvement being GHS/QoL (12/23 trials), Pain (11/23 trials), Fatigue (9/23 trials), and Physical Functioning (9/23 trials). PRO was noted to be concordant with PFS in 19/33 (57.6%) trials (p = 0.398), and with OS in 22/31 (71%) trials (p = 0.018). Our study identified key PRO domains that can be potentially used as primary endpoint in MM RCTs. Additionally, significant association between PROs and OS highlight the importance of integrating PROs to better capture treatment efficacy.

Screen-based digital media devices potentially impact pediatric sleep health, which is fundamental to healthy development. Systematic reviews of the literature consistently show that screen use is associated with delayed bedtimes, shorter sleep duration, and reduced sleep quality. Studies also demonstrate that interactivity, content, and timing of exposure influence sleep health and that the effects of interventions are small and difficult to achieve. The mechanisms underlying these associations include (1) activity displacement, (2) decreased interoceptive awareness, (3) psychological/emotional stimulation from the content or social interaction, (4) physiological effects of light exposure, and (5) noises, beeps, and vibrations from devices during the sleep period. Due to limitations in both data quality and study design, future research should seek to improve measurement of timing and content of digital media. Efforts should be invested in developing, implementing, and evaluating sustainable interventions to reduce the negative effects of screen use on sleep health. These studies should also consider potential moderating factors (e.g., age, sex, race/ethnicity) and other downstream consequences on child health and development. We conclude with recommendations to help mitigate the possible effects of screen use on sleep, including making sleep a priority, facilitating screen-free bedtime routines, and removal of devices from bedrooms.

Depression among children and adolescents is linked to a variety of negative outcomes, but many causes of depression are either difficult or impossible to alter. It is vital to identify the controllable causes of depressive symptoms, including time spent on screen media. Many studies demonstrate associations between time spent on social media and depressive symptoms. Time-lag evidence also demonstrates an association, with rates of adolescent depression doubling during the period when smartphone and social media use became common. Experimental evidence indicates that cutting back on social media use diminishes depressive symptoms. Social media time may cause depressive symptoms via several mechanisms including displacing time spent on healthy activities, increased body image concerns, cyberbullying, reinforcing spirals of negative content, and interference with sleep. Future research should include experimental trials among adolescents, determine which types of screen activities and social media platforms are most strongly linked to depressive symptoms, explore which populations are most impacted, and determine effective interventions. Recommendations include educating parents and adolescents to keep devices out of their bedrooms overnight, not allowing children and younger teens to use social media, and encouraging parents to model appropriate limits around screen devices.

Much of the scientific literature on the effects of digital screen media use on child well-being focuses on the wide-ranging psychological, cognitive, and social effects. More recently, there has been growing evidence of the role of digital screen media use in physical health. This section on physical health includes five chapters exploring distinct dimensions of physical health, including physical activity, nutrition, food marketing, marketing of other health risk behaviors, sleep health, physical injuries, and ocular health. Each chapter describes the current state of the evidence, gaps and limitations in the literature, and directions for future research about the pervasive role of screens in the lives of children and the implications (potentially both positive and negative) for physical health. A consistent limitation across all the chapters includes challenges with measurement and assessing causality. Finally, each chapter concludes with recommendations aimed at mitigating the effects of digital screen media use on the range of physical health outcomes addressed.

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) reconstruction is one of the most frequently performed orthopedic procedures, particularly for athletes seeking to restore knee stability and function. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is widely used for artificial ligaments due to its durability and chemical stability. However, PETs inherent limitations, including poor osteoconductivity and biocompatibility, contribute to graft failure and postoperative infections. Recent advancements in surface functionalization, including the incorporation of hydroxyapatite (HAp) and bioactive glass, have significantly improved PET's osteoconductive and osteoinductive properties, promoting enhanced bone integration and healing. Additionally, innovations in antibacterial coatings, such as silver nanoparticles and polydopamine, have demonstrated potential in reducing infection rates and improving the longevity of implants. This review highlights these technological advances, emphasizing how biomaterials and surface modifications are transforming the performance of PET-based artificial ligaments, leading to more successful ACL reconstructions and improved patient outcomes.

High maternal stress during pregnancy is a risk factor for preterm birth and low birthweight, which endanger infant, child, and adult health and development. Interventions to alleviate the conditions that contribute to pregnant women's stress and to diminish its harmful consequences can target both societal and individual levels. Policy-relevant examples include: expanding healthcare access and screening to identify women experiencing high stress or engaged in risky behaviors, reducing the prevalence of unintended pregnancy and widening access to abortion, improving the living conditions of women in under-resourced communities, diversifying and training healthcare providers to reduce discriminatory treatment of pregnant women of color, and ensuring paid maternal leave and affordable childcare for all. Measures that alleviate stress and its harms to pregnancy promote healthier outcomes for mothers and babies and benefit society at large.

Rapid global expansion of offshore wind farms, tidal, and wave technologies signifies a new era of renewable energy development. While a promising means to combat the impacts of climate change, such developments necessitate fine-scale monitoring of biological communities to determine impacts associated with construction, operation, and eventual decommission. Here, we evaluate the performance of a gridded, Innovasea Systems, Inc. fine-scale acoustic telemetry positioning system (FSPS, n = 20 acoustic receivers) for tracking behaviors of diverse, temperate fish assemblages in relation to a subsea cable route supporting the Ørsted offshore wind development in coastal New York. We examined array performance through positioning error derived from receiver reference transmitters and tracked animals (n = 260) comprising 17 species of teleost and elasmobranch. We evaluated the effects of environmental variables (temperature, tilt, noise, and depth), transmitter power, individual movement rates, and receiver loss on horizontal positioning error (HPE) and route mean squared error (RMSE). Across a 16-month deployment period, many positions were derived for Atlantic sturgeon (n = 2,612), black sea bass (n = 9,175), clearnose skate (n = 10,306), summer flounder (n = 13,304), and little skate (n = 15,186), suggesting that these species may serve as sentinel candidates for assessing behavioral changes following construction, operation, and decommission. We found that receivers placed at the boundary of the grid exhibited higher HPE and RMSE, however these errors did not significantly change despite large receiver losses (25%). Generalized Linear Models revealed that temperature, noise, tilt, and depth were often significant predictors of HPE and RMSE, however, a substantial amount of variance was not explained by the models (~ 70%). Average movement rates ranged from 1.1 m s⁻¹ (common thresher shark) to 0.03 m s⁻¹ (little skate and summer flounder) but had minimal effects on positioning error. Finally, we observed that higher transmitter powers (158 dB) may lead to higher and more variable HPE values. Overall, these findings provide new insight into the drivers of FSPS array performance and illustrate their broad utility for monitoring fish behavior associated with offshore marine developments.

In the development of high-performance lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), the design of polymer binders, particularly through manipulation of side-chain chemistry, plays a pivotal role in optimizing electrode stability, ion transport, and...

We show that the Euclidean 3-space $\mathbb{R}^{3}$ is stable for the Positive Mass Theorem in the following sense. Let $(M_{i},g_{i})$ be a sequence of complete asymptotically flat 3-manifolds with nonnegative scalar curvature and suppose that the ADM mass $m(g_{i})$ of one end of $M_{i}$ converges to 0. Then for all i, there is a subset $Z_{i}$ in $M_{i}$ such that $M_{i}\setminus Z_{i}$ contains the given end, the area of the boundary $\partial Z_{i}$ converges to zero, and $(M_{i}\setminus Z_{i},g_{i})$ converges to $\mathbb{R}^{3}$ in the pointed measured Gromov-Hausdorff topology for any choice of basepoints. This confirms a conjecture of G. Huisken and T. Ilmanen. Additionally, we find an almost quadratic upper bound for the area of $\partial Z_{i}$ in terms of $m(g_{i})$. As an application of the main result, we also prove R. Bartnik’s strict positivity conjecture.

Background In rural Nepal, poor road and transport networks and few testing laboratories impede tuberculosis diagnosis. A drone transport system was established to transport sputum samples to laboratories with advanced molecular diagnostic machines – GeneXpert MTB/RIF. This study explored the perceptions of using drones for tuberculosis diagnosis among community stakeholders, female community health volunteers, and healthcare providers from communities with drones implemented and without drone programs. Methods In December 2019, we conducted focus group discussions in two drone-implemented and three without drone programs. We purposively selected 40 participants: Female community health volunteers (n=16), community stakeholders (n=18), and healthcare providers (n=6). Focus group discussions employed semi-structured questions, which were audio-recorded, transcribed, and translated into English. Codebook thematic analysis was performed and charted using three levels of the socioecological model: individual, community, and health system. Results We identified four themes (i) Trust in drones underpins successful use for tuberculosis diagnosis; (ii) Drone-based sample transport optimised connectivity and accessibility for people with tuberculosis and healthcare providers; (iii) Drones create opportunities to improve community and health system, and (iv) External factors impede the use of drones to facilitate tuberculosis diagnosis. The study reported, at an individual level, people’s trust in drones mainly through community-based events. For local healthcare providers, drones reduce transport time, opportunity costs, and immediate cash costs of transport. At the community level, drone use creates opportunities to increase the skills of local people as drone pilots. At the health system level, drone transport increases efficient sputum sample delivery and provides opportunities to transport medicines and other biomedical samples. Perceived challenges of using drones were adverse weather, limitations in skilled human resources, and financial resources to operate drones sustainably. Conclusions Healthcare providers, female community health volunteers, and community stakeholders reported high levels of trust in drones and perceived their use for tuberculosis diagnosis and care to substantially benefit people with tuberculosis and providers in rural Nepal. There was a high level of demand for application to other healthcare services and wider geographical coverage, demonstrating drones as a potential tool for enhancing access to healthcare in geographically remote communities.

A bstract In this paper, we construct the associated vertex operator algebras for all $\mathcal{N}$ N = 2 superconformal field theories of rank one. We give a uniform presentation through free-field realizations, which turns out to be a particularly suitable framework for this task. The elementary building blocks of the construction are dictated by the low energy degrees of freedom on the Higgs branch, which are well understood for rank-one theories. We further analyze the interplay between Higgs and Coulomb data on the moduli space of vacua, which tightly constrain the overall structure of the free field realizations. Our results suggest a plausible bottom-up classification scheme for low-rank SCFTs incorporating vertex algebra techniques.

Entanglement entropy has emerged as a novel tool for probing nonperturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD) phenomena, such as color confinement in protons. While recent studies have demonstrated its significant capability in describing hadron production in deep inelastic scatterings, the QCD evolution of entanglement entropy remains unexplored. In this work, we investigate the differential rapidity-dependent entanglement entropy within the proton and its connection to final-state hadrons, aiming to elucidate its QCD evolution. Our analysis reveals a strong agreement between the rapidity dependence of von Neumann entropy, obtained from QCD evolution equations, and the corresponding experimental data on hadron entropy. These findings provide compelling evidence for the emergence of a maximally entangled state, offering new insights into the nonperturbative structure of protons.

With nearly 30 living species of relatively similar ecological traits, Crocodylomorpha is represented today by only a small fraction of its past diversity. The well‐documented crocodylomorph fossil record has revealed more than 500 taxa, with much higher ecological and morphological diversity than their extant counterparts. An example of such astonishing diversity is the Late Cretaceous rocks of the Bauru Group (southeast Brazil), from which numerous taxa are known, belonging to the clade Notosuchia. These were predominantly terrestrial taxa, some of which exhibited traits associated with omnivorous or even herbivorous feeding behaviors, such as Sphagesauridae, whereas others were adapted to a carnivore diet, such as Baurusuchidae and Peirosauridae. Among these is Barreirosuchus franciscoi, originally described as a neosuchian (Trematochampsidae) but later interpreted as a peirosaurid notosuchian. Even though included in recent morphological and phylogenetic analyses, B. franciscoi still lacked a more detailed description. Here, we provide an in‐depth description of the cranial elements of B. franciscoi, using data from computed tomography and a broad sample of comparative material, including living and fossil crocodylomorphs. Also, the neuro‐cavities, including the endocast, nasopharyngeal duct, and the olfactory region, were digitally reconstructed. Finally, a new phylogenetic analysis recovered B. franciscoi nested within Peirosauria, forming the Itasuchidae clade with other potentially semiaquatic species: Rukwasuchus yajabalajekundu, Pepesuchus deiseae, and Itasuchus jesuinoi. The morphological and phylogenetic reassessment of B. franciscoi indicates a semiaquatic form, highlighting the ecological diversity of notosuchians from the Bauru Group as well as the capacity of notosuchians to explore a myriad of environments.

Background Computed tomography (CT) reconstruction problems are always framed as inverse problems, where the attenuation map of an imaged object is reconstructed from the sinogram measurement. In practice, these inverse problems are often ill‐posed, especially under few‐view and limited‐angle conditions, which makes accurate reconstruction challenging. Existing solutions use regularizations such as total variation to steer reconstruction algorithms to the most plausible result. However, most prevalent regularizations rely on the same priors, such as piecewise constant prior, hindering their ability to collaborate effectively and further boost reconstruction precision. Purpose This study aims to overcome the aforementioned challenge a prior previously limited to discrete tomography. This enables more accurate reconstructions when the proposed method is used in conjunction with most existing regularizations as they utilize different priors. The improvements will be demonstrated through experiments conducted under various conditions. Methods Inspired by the discrete algebraic reconstruction technique (DART) algorithm for discrete tomography, we find out that pixel grayscale values in CT images are not uniformly distributed and are actually highly clustered. Such discovery can be utilized as a powerful prior for CT reconstruction. In this paper, we leverage the collaborative filtering technique to enable the collaboration of the proposed prior and most existing regularizations, significantly enhancing the reconstruction accuracy. Results Our experiments show that the proposed method can work with most existing regularizations and significantly improve the reconstruction quality. Such improvement is most pronounced under limited‐angle and few‐view conditions. Furthermore, the proposed regularization also has the potential for further improvement and can be utilized in other image reconstruction areas. Conclusions We propose improving the performance of iterative CT reconstruction algorithms by applying the collaborative filtering technique along with a prior based on the densely clustered distribution of pixel grayscale values in CT images. Our experimental results indicate that the proposed methodology consistently enhances reconstruction accuracy when used in conjunction with most existing regularizations, particularly under few‐view and limited‐angle conditions.