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Scholarly Works (452 results)

  • Article
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Davis Previously Published Works (2015)
Background The U.S. policy goals regarding influenza vaccination coverage rate among the elderly include the increase in the coverage rate and the elimination of disparities across racial/ethnic groups. Objective To examine the potential effectiveness of a television (TV) campaign to increase seasonal influenza vaccination among the elderly. Methods We estimated the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER, defined as incremental cost per additionally vaccinated Medicare individual) of a hypothetical nationwide TV campaign for influenza vaccination compared with no campaign. We measured the effectiveness of the nationwide TV campaign (advertised once a week at prime time for 30 seconds) during a 17-week influenza vaccination season among four racial/ethnic elderly groups (N=39 million): non-Hispanic white (W), non-Hispanic African American (AA), English-speaking Hispanic (EH), and Spanish-speaking Hispanic (SH). Results The hypothetical campaign cost was $5,960,000 (in 2012 US dollars). The estimated campaign effectiveness ranged from -1.1% (the SH group) to 1.42% (the W group), leading to an increased disparity in influenza vaccination among non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic African American (W-AA) groups (0.6 percentage points), W-EH groups (0.1 percentage points), and W-SH groups (1.5 percentage points). The estimated ICER was $23.54 (95% confidence interval $14.21-$39.37) per additionally vaccinated Medicare elderly in a probabilistic analysis. Race/ethnicity-specific ICERs were lowest among the EH group ($22.27), followed by the W group ($22.47) and the AA group ($30.55). The nationwide TV campaign was concluded to be reasonably cost-effective compared with a benchmark intervention (with ICER $44.39 per vaccinated individual) of a school-located vaccination program. Break-even analyses estimated the maximum acceptable campaign cost to be $14,870,000, which was comparable to the benchmark ICER. Conclusions The results could justify public expenditures on the implementation of a future nationwide TV campaign, which should include multilingual campaigns, for promoting seasonal influenza vaccination.
    Cover page: Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of a Television Campaign to Promote Seasonal Influenza Vaccination Among the Elderly
    • Article
    American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 31, Issue 3 (2007)
      Cover page: Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. By Ned Blackhawk.Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
      • Article
      American Indian Culture and Research Journal , Volume 45, Issue 2 (2021)
        Cover page: Being and Becoming Ute: The Story of an American Indian People. By Sondra G. Jones.Creative Commons 'BY-NC' version 4.0 license
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Davis Previously Published Works (2019)
          Cover page: Additional Safety Assessments Needed for Diamide Insecticides
          • Article
          • Peer Reviewed
          UC Riverside Previously Published Works (2015)
          This study examines whether working with a broker increases or reduces the payment received for the last client among female sex workers. Building on research on the informal economy and sex work, we formulate a positive embeddedness hypothesis, expecting a positive association, and an exploitation hypothesis, expecting a negative association. We analyze a large survey combined with intensive interview data on female sex workers in Andhra Pradesh, India. These data uniquely distinguish between the amount the sex worker actually received and the amount the client paid. The analyses show that brokers are associated with significantly lower last payment received. Although brokers are associated with a greater number of clients in the past week, this does not result in significantly higher total earnings in the past week. Further analyses suggest that much of the negative relationship with earnings is due to the fact that brokers lead to a lack of control over the amount clients are charged. At the same time, the results fail to show that brokers actually provide services of value. Ultimately, the results support the exploitation hypothesis. We conclude by encouraging the refinement of theories of embeddedness and exploitation and calling for greater research on workers in the informal economy of developing countries.
            • Thesis
            • Peer Reviewed
            UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2014)

            One of the fundamental developmental tasks that adolescents face is how to negotiate their individual autonomy and connectedness to the family. This dissertation includes two studies that employed the daily diary approach to examine how adolescents maintain the important sense of connectedness to their families in their every day lives. The goal of Study 1 was to examine how adolescents (N = 297; Mage = 16.39 years; 43% males) from diverse ethnic backgrounds (44% Latino; 25% Asian; 41% European) balanced their leisure time with family in conjunction with time commitments with friends and schoolwork on the same day. In general, adolescents' time with friends impinged upon their leisure time with family, whereas more time spent on schoolwork went hand in hand with greater family leisure. Whereas females experienced difficulty negotiating time with family and friends on the same day, males and adolescents from Latino families were better able to maintain time with family, friends and schoolwork all on the same day. Spending time with family reinforced adolescents' daily sense of family membership; however, competing demands between family and friends on the same day were linked to feelings of distress especially for females. Overall, Study 1 demonstrates the daily behavioral processes that adolescents undertake to stay connected to their families, yet also meet their needs for autonomy and independence. The goal of Study 2 was to understand how familial conditions at home promote adolescents' family connectedness by way of adolescents' provision of emotional support to their families. In the two-year longitudinal study, participants included 421 Mexican-American parent-adolescent dyads (adolescents: Mage = 15 years, 50% males; parents: Mage = 42 years, 83% mothers). Although adolescents provide emotional support to parents and other family members at similar rates, parents' daily familial stressors encouraged adolescents to provide emotional caregiving to other family members, rather than to their parents. This daily contingency between parental stressors and adolescents' emotional caregiving was especially pronounced among parents with poor physical health. Furthermore, adolescents who endorsed strong family obligation values displayed the greatest inclinations to provide emotional support to their families on days marked by parental need. And on days when adolescents provided support to their family, they experienced elevated feelings of family membership. Provision of emotional support was not concurrently or longitudinally linked to adverse psychological well-being. Overall, Study 2 demonstrates that adolescents' provision of emotional support is a culturally relevant and meaningful activity for Mexican-American youth.

              Cover page: Adolescents' Maintenance of Family Connectedness in Their Everyday Lives
              • Article
              • Peer Reviewed
              UC Davis Previously Published Works (2019)
              Chlorantraniliprole (CP) and flubendiamide (FD) are widely used in agriculture globally to control lepidopteran pests. Both insecticides target ryanodine receptors (RyRs) and promote Ca2+ leak from sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) within insect skeletal muscle yet are purportedly devoid of activity toward mammalian RyR1 and muscle. RyRs are ion channels that regulate intracellular Ca2+ release from SR during physiological excitation-contraction coupling. Mutations in RYR1 genes confer malignant hyperthermia susceptibility (MHS), a potentially lethal pharmacogenetic disorder in humans and animals. Compared with vehicle control, CP (10 µM) triggers a 65-fold higher rate of Ca2+ efflux from Ca2+-loaded mammalian WT-RyR1 SR vesicles, whereas FD (10 µM) produces negligible influence on Ca2+ leak. We, therefore, compared whether CP or FD differentially influence patterns of high-affinity [3H]ryanodine ([3H]Ry) binding to RyR1 isolated from muscle SR membranes prepared from adult C57BL/6J mice expressing WT, homozygous C-terminal MHS mutation T4826I, or heterozygous N-terminal MHS mutation R163C. Basal [3H]Ry binding differed among genotypes with rank order T4826I ≫R163C∼WT, regardless of [Ca2+] in the assay medium. Both CP and FD (0.01-100 µM) elicited concentration-dependent increase in [3H]Ry binding, although CP showed greater efficacy regardless of genotype or [Ca2+]. Exposure to CP (500 mg/kg; p.o) failed to shift intolerance to heat stress (38°C) characteristic of R163C and T4826I MHS mice, nor cause lethality in WT mice. Although nM-µM of either diamide is capable of differentially altering WT and MHS RyR1 conformation in vitro, human RyR1 mutations within putative diamide N- and C-terminal interaction domains do not alter heat stress intolerance (HSI) in vivo.
                Cover page: Comparison of Chlorantraniliprole and Flubendiamide Activity Toward Wild-Type and Malignant Hyperthermia-Susceptible Ryanodine Receptors and Heat Stress Intolerance
                • Article
                • Peer Reviewed
                UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2016)
                Protein-ligand binding accompanies changes in the surrounding electrostatic environments of the two binding partners and may lead to changes in protonation upon binding. In cases where the complex formation results in a net transfer of protons, the binding process is pH-dependent. However, conventional free energy computations or molecular docking protocols typically employ fixed protonation states for the titratable groups in both binding partners set a priori, which are identical for the free and bound states. In this review, we draw attention to these important yet largely ignored binding-induced protonation changes in protein-ligand association by outlining physical origins and prevalence of the protonation changes upon binding. Following a summary of various theoretical methods for pKa prediction, we discuss the theoretical framework to examine the pH dependence of protein-ligand binding processes.
                  • Article
                  • Peer Reviewed
                  UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2010)
                  This longitudinal study examined associations between three after-school program quality features (positive staff–child relations, available activities, programming flexibility) and child developmental outcomes (reading and math grades, work habits, and social skills with peers) in Grade 2 and then Grade 3. Participants (n = 120 in Grade 2, n = 91 in Grade 3) attended after-school programs more than 4 days per week, on average. Controlling for child and family background factors and children’s prior functioning on the developmental outcomes, positive staff–child relations in the programs were positively associated with children’s reading grades in both Grades 2 and 3, and math grades in Grade 2. Positive staff–child relations also were positively associated with social skills in Grade 2, for boys only. The availability of a diverse array of age-appropriate activities at the programs was positively associated with children’s math grades and classroom work habits in Grade 3. Programming flexibility (child choice of activities) was not associated with child outcomes.
                    Cover page: Specific Features of After-School Program Quality: Associations with Children’s Functioning in Middle Childhood
                    • Article
                    • Peer Reviewed
                    UC Merced Previously Published Works (2015)

                    Background

                    Pre-drinking refers to the consumption of alcohol at home or a private residence prior to attending a subsequent social event. We present the study protocol of an online theory-based intervention to reduce pre-drinking and related harm in pre-drinking undergraduates, using behavior change techniques targeting the motivational and volitional phases of behaviour.

                    Design

                    A fully randomized 2 (autonomy support: present vs. absent) x 2 (implementation intention: present vs. absent) between-participants design will be used to ascertain the effectiveness of the intervention in reducing pre-drinking alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm. Participants will complete a range of theory-based measures prior to being allocated to one of the four experimental conditions. Four weeks later, participants will complete a follow-up questionnaire comprised of theoretical and behavioral measures.

                    Analyses

                    The main and interactive effects of the intervention components in reducing our primary dependent variables, namely, pre-drinking alcohol consumption and alcohol-related harm at four-week follow-up will be tested. Baseline alcohol consumption and demographic information will be included in the analysis as covariates.

                    Discussion

                    This online intervention is the first to be developed to reduce pre-drinking alcohol consumption, a behaviour linked to increased risk of alcohol-related harm. The intervention targets motivational and volitional components of the behaviour change process and is therefore likely to lead to greater reductions in pre-drinking alcohol consumption and experience of alcohol-related harm compared to either approach in isolation. If successful, the intervention can be implemented across various contexts and in populations where pre-drinking is prevalent.

                    Trial registration

                    ACTRN12614001102662 . Registered 16 October 2014.
                      Cover page: Combining motivational and volitional approaches to reducing excessive alcohol consumption in pre-drinkers: a theory-based intervention protocol
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