Federal policy mandating safer cigarettes: a hypothetical simulation of the anticipated population health gains or losses.

If manufacturing a safer cigarette is technically possible--an open question--then mandating that tobacco manufacturers improve the safety of cigarettes would likely have both positive and negative implications for the nation's health. On the one hand, removing toxins may reduce the incidence of smoking-related diseases and premature mortality in smokers. On the other hand, smokers might be less inclined to quit, those who have quit might resume the habit, and youth who have never smoked will have one less reason to avoid tobacco use. To assess the expected population health impacts of a legislative or regulatory mandate, we created the Tobacco Policy Model, a system dynamics computer simulation model. The model relies on secondary data and simulates the U.S. population over time spans as long as 50 years. Our simulation results reveal that even if requiring cigarettes to be safer makes smoking more attractive and increases tobacco use, a net gain in population health is still possible.     

Perceptions of control,depressive symptomatology,and self-esteem of women in transition from abusive relationships

The relation between women’s histories of experiencing violence and current psychological health were examined. Locus of control, feelings of personal power, depressive symptomatology, self-esteem, and judgments of control over a contingently responsive computer display were investigated in groups of 21 abused women and 18 comparison women. Within the sample of abused women, relationships between severity of abuse and the psychological variables were also examined. The group of abused women had lower beliefs in self-efficacy, were more depressed, and had lower self-esteem than the comparison women. There were no differences found, however, between the two groups in perceptions of control on the computer task. Severity of physical abuse among the abused women was positively correlated with depression scores. Verbal abuse was found to contribute significantly to many of the between-group differences. Empirical evidence of the positive impact of transition house residence on the abused women’s mental health was also presented. The importance of future research into both the differential effects of verbal and physical abuse on women and the role of the transition house in empowering abused women were discussed.     

Interrogating genomic diversity of E. coli O157:H7 using DNA tiling arrays

Here, we describe a novel microarray-based approach for investigating the genomic diversity of Escherichia coli O157:H7 in a semi-high throughput manner using a high density, oligonucleotide-based microarray. This microarray, designed to detect polymorphisms at each of 60,000 base-pair (bp) positions within an E. coli genome, is composed of overlapping 29-mer oligonucleotides specific for 60 equally spaced, 1000-bp loci of the E. coli O157:H7 strain EDL933 chromosome. By use of a novel 12-well microarray that permitted the simultaneous investigation of 12 strains, the genomes of 44 individual isolates of E. coli O157:H7 were interrogated. These analyses revealed more than 150 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and several deletions and amplifications in the test strains. Pyrosequencing was used to confirm the usefulness of the novel SNPs by determining their allelic frequency among a collection of diverse isolates of E. coli O157:H7. The tiling DNA microarray system would be useful for the tracking and identification of individual strains of E. coli O157:H7 needed for forensic investigations.     

The Olympics: 64 years on

In just over a month's time London will be the centre of international focus as athletes from over 200 countries arrive for the Olympic Games. The last Olympic Games held in London was in 1948 – in the same month the National Health Service (NHS) was established. It is a tragic coincidence that the Olympics returns to London in the same year as the Health and Social Care Act was passed, legislation the chairman of the British Medical Association described as likely to be ‘irreversibly damaging to the NHS as a public service, converting it into a competitive marketplace that will widen health inequalities and be detrimental to patient care’ (Buckman, 2012).     

Medical Marijuana Registries: A Painful Choice?

Though the medical use of marijuana is legal in thirty-three states, it remains illegal under the federal Controlled Substances Act. Any marijuana use can subject individuals to severe criminal and civil penalties under federal law. States that condition patient access and treatment on registration in a state database impose real risks on their citizens. Although many scholars have written about the tension between federal and state treatment of marijuana, this is the first article to examine marijuana patient registry privacy and fundamental rights issues. This article first reviews the relationship between marijuana use and patient treatment, with a focus on health-care and privacy rights under state and federal law. The article then explains how marijuana registries compare to broader patient registries, such as contagious disease and other medical condition patient registries, and the unique issues presented by marijuana patient registries. It then discusses the elevated risk to constitutional, privacy, and fundamental rights that may result if states do not carefully construct marijuana registries. The article concludes by proposing principles for how both states and dispensaries should approach marijuana registries in order to provide health benefits and avoid harm to patients.     

Selling favors in the lab: experiments on campaign finance reform

Campaign advertising can provide benefits to constituencies when used to fund the distribution of useful information, but voters can be harmed if candidates finance such advertising by trading policy favors to special interests in exchange for contributions. We report data from novel laboratory campaign finance experiments that shed light on this tradeoff, and that provide rigorous empirical evidence on formal campaign finance theory. Our key finding is that voters respond to advertising differently between special interest and publicly-financed campaigns, and that the nature of this difference is qualitatively consistent with formal models’ predictions.     

Housing Upkeep and Public Good Provision in Residential Neighborhoods

Neighborhood condition is a public good in part provided by neighborhood residents’ private property maintenance. Considering neighborhood condition as an impure public good provides a theoretical basis for understanding how the level of neighborhood quality may affect residents’ home maintenance decisions. Empirical results in a low-income neighborhood, where formulating public policy to improve neighborhoods is of significant concern, indicate a positive substitution effect. When neighborhoods improve, residents respond by increasing exterior home upkeep. This result is robust to both changes in the neighborhood condition generated by other neighbors’ increase in maintenance and exogenous public investment in the neighborhood.