Environmentally mediated indirect pathogen transmission is linked to host movement and foraging in areas where pathogens are maintained in the environment. In the case of anthrax, spores of the causative bacterium Bacillus anthracis are released into the environment following host death and create locally infectious zones (LIZs) around carcass sites; by grazing at LIZs, herbivores are potentially exposed to spores. Here, we used camera traps to assess how ungulate species use carcass sites in southwestern Montana and evaluated how these behaviours may promote indirect anthrax transmission, thus providing, to our knowledge, the first detailed documentation and study of the fine-scale mechanisms underlying foraging-based disease transmission in this ecosystem. We found that carcasses at LIZs significantly increased aboveground biomass of vegetation and concentrations of sodium and phosphorus, potentially making these sites more appealing to grazers. Host behavioural responses to LIZs varied depending on species, sex, season and carcass age; but, overall, our results demonstrated that carcasses or carcass sites serve as an attractant to herbivores in this system. Attraction to LIZs probably represents an increased risk of exposure to B. anthracis and, consequently, increased anthrax transmission rates. Accordingly, continued anthrax surveillance and control strategies are critical in this system.
Undocumented immigrants and their children have worse selfreported health than documented immigrants and US citizens do. Evidence suggests that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which was created in 2012 by President Barack Obama and which granted some rights to undocumented immigrants who arrived as children, improved the well-being of recipients and their children in the first three years after the program's introduction. However, DACA is subject to executive discretion, and the US presidential campaign that began in 2015 introduced substantial uncertainty regarding the program's future. We examined whether DACA's health benefits persisted beyond 2015 using the 2007-17 waves of the California Health Interview Survey and dynamic treatment effects models. Our results show that selfreported health improved for Latina/o DACA-eligible immigrants and their children from 2012 to 2015 but worsened after 2015. Our results suggest that the political climate of the 2016 presidential election may have underscored the politically contingent nature of the DACA program and eroded the program's health benefits for eligible immigrants and their children.
Public concerns about food risks have grown in recent decades in response to many food-related scandals. Despite some evidence that risk concerns vary across societies and risk domains, these variations remain understudied. To address this gap, this paper conducts a multi-level analysis of public concerns about biological and chemical/technical food risks in 26 European countries. Findings confirm previous work on individual predictors of risk concern and suggest that several contextual factors contribute to cross-national variations: aggregate perceptions of risks as unnatural, retail concentration in the food sector, and media coverage. The effect of institutional trust on risk concerns varies substantially across nations. Findings also reveal important differences in public concerns about biological versus chemical/technical food risks, supporting the view that food risk perception is multi-dimensional and complex.
These figures display gender- and education-related gaps in U.S. gender attitudes from 1977 to 2018. The authors use data from the General Social Survey ( N = 57,224) to estimate the historical trajectory of U.S. attitudes about women in politics, familial roles, and working motherhood. Of all attitudes analyzed, Americans hold the most liberal attitudes toward women in politics, with no gender gap and little educational difference on this issue. Attitudes toward familial roles have the largest educational gap but a small gender difference. The gender gap in attitudes toward working motherhood has persisted over time, with women holding more egalitarian attitudes than men. The educational disparity on this issue disappeared during the mid-1990s “stalled gender revolution” but has widened since. Although the “stall” occurred among all gender and educational groups on all four gender attitude measures, the decline was starkest among the college educated regarding working motherhood.
Millions of households in the United States are forced to juggle different basic needs. Housing and utility costs consume the majority of many households’ monthly incomes. Consequences for missed payments include large fees, utility shutoffs, and evictions. Either hardship puts households at risk of losing adequate shelter. This study examines the prevalence and persistence of different combinations of housing and/or utility hardship using nationally representative panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). It also predicts transitions into these hardship combinations following commonly studied household dynamics: income changes, household composition changes, and poor health. Utility hardship is both more common and persistent than housing hardship, and households experiencing utility hardship have more disadvantaged characteristics. Entries into poor health are the strongest predictors of hardship. Other shocks predict one form of hardship more than the other. Most notably, income losses predict housing hardship but not utility hardship.
Millions of households in the United States are forced to juggle different basic needs. Housing and utility costs consume the majority of many households' monthly incomes. Consequences for missed payments include large fees, utility shutoffs, and evictions. Either hardship puts households at risk of losing adequate shelter. This study examines the prevalence and persistence of different combinations of housing and/or utility hardship using nationally representative panel data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). It also predicts transitions into these hardship combinations following commonly studied household dynamics: income changes, household composition changes, and poor health. Utility hardship is both more common and persistent than housing hardship, and households experiencing utility hardship have more disadvantaged characteristics. Entries into poor health are the strongest predictors of hardship. Other shocks predict one form of hardship more than the other. Most notably, income losses predict housing hardship but not utility hardship.
This paper explores differences in national responses to foodborne disease outbreaks, addressing both the sources of policy divergence and their implications for public health and coordinated emergency response. It presents findings from a comparative study of two multi-state E. coli outbreaks, one in the United States (2006) and one in Germany (2011), demonstrating important differences in how risk managers understood and responded to each nation’s first major outbreak associated with fresh produce. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of 36 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders and hundreds of archival documents, this paper traces how social constructions of the E. coli risk interacted with organizational dynamics among state and industry actors to produce divergent policy outcomes: the U.S. outbreak was understood primarily as an agricultural problem that led to an industry-led agricultural solution, whereas the German outbreak was understood as a human disease problem that did not result in a substantial policy response once the acute health crisis passed. The paper concludes by discussing how these policy processes generate partial solutions to foodborne contamination that expose modern societies to systemic vulnerabilities.
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