Ordered restriction endonuclease maps of yeast artificial chromosomes created by optical mapping on surfaces.

We have developed a surface mounting technology for the rapid construction of ordered restriction maps from individual DNA molecules. Optical restriction maps constructed from yeast artificial chromosome DNA molecules mounted on specially derivatized glass surfaces are accurate and reproducible, and the technology is amenable to automation. The mounting procedures described here should also be useful for fluorescence in situ hybridization studies. We believe these improvements to optical mapping will further stimulate the development of nonelectrophoretic approaches to genome analysis.     

When Health Policy and Empirical Evidence Collide: The Case of Cigarette Package Warning Labels and Economic Consumer Surplus

In its graphic warning label regulations on cigarette packages, the Food and Drug Administration severely discounts the benefits of reduced smoking because of the lost “pleasure” smokers experience when they stop smoking; this is quantified as lost “consumer surplus.” Consumer surplus is grounded in rational choice theory. However, empirical evidence from psychological cognitive science and behavioral economics demonstrates that the assumptions of rational choice are inconsistent with complex multidimensional decisions, particularly smoking. Rational choice does not account for the roles of emotions, misperceptions, optimistic bias, regret, and cognitive inefficiency that are germane to smoking, particularly because most smokers begin smoking in their youth. Continued application of a consumer surplus discount will undermine sensible policies to reduce tobacco use and other policies to promote public health.The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (HR 1256, 2009) required the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to issue a regulation requiring cigarette companies to place large graphic warnings on all cigarette packages. As part of the process of issuing this regulation, the FDA conducted a cost–benefit analysis of the graphic warning label regulation.1 In its analysis, the FDA estimated the benefits of graphic warning labels, including reduced tobacco-induced illness and premature death, then cut the estimated benefits of these warning labels in half to account for the cost of lost “pleasure” smokers incurred as a result of quitting (and lost pleasure would-be smokers would never experience) because of the new warning labels. The FDA quantified the cost of this lost pleasure using the economic concept of “consumer surplus,” which is the difference between what a utility maximizing individual would be willing to pay and the actual price.2–6Because of the extent that smokers are willing to pay more for cigarettes than their monetary cost, this willingness to pay more is an indication that smokers obtain a surplus benefit of smoking beyond the cost of the cigarettes. The FDA justified applying a large discount to the estimated health benefits of the warning labels, stating,

The concept of consumer surplus is a basic tool of welfare economics… . In an analysis of benefits based on willingness-to-pay, we cannot reject this tool and still fulfill our obligation to conduct a full and an objective economic analysis.1^(p36714)

Consumer surplus based on willingness to pay is a well-established concept in classical economics and is grounded in rational choice theory, a normative model of human decision-making.7 Rational choice theory represents human decision-making at its most logical, when decisions are the result of careful cost–benefit analysis, with people choosing the option that maximizes the utility of the choice after subtracting perceived costs.8–10When applied to smoking, this theory posits that smokers (and potential smokers) smoke because they computed that the current and future benefits of the pleasures of smoking outweigh the present value of future financial, social, and medical costs of smoking.11–13 These benefits may include both the physiologic responses and emotional or social advantages (either real or imagined) that smoking provides.By contrast, a large body of empirical evidence from cognitive behavioral sciences demonstrates that smokers (and would-be smokers) smoke because they are addicted and overestimate their ability to quit in the future.14 Rational choice theory (and the adjustments that have been proposed to deal with addictive behaviors) assumes stable preferences, foresight, knowledge, and adequate cognitive abilities to make the decision to start or continue smoking. Conversely, empirical evidence demonstrates that these assumptions are seriously violated by smoking behavior that almost always begins during adolescence15^(p179) and continues in adulthood through addictive consumption. In addition, there is no empirical literature that suggests adults who start smoking engage in deliberate decision-making processes in which they evaluate risks against benefits. The empirical literature suggests the opposite; even adults, who presumably are better equipped to consider the risks and benefits of smoking, do not anticipate regret or understand addiction.16–18Applying a significant loss in (real or potential) consumer surplus when measuring the value of antismoking initiatives has important implications for policy, including reducing the benefits of proposed health regulations. This reduction in the estimated benefits of the policy results in weakened regulations that are harder to defend when challenged in court.19,20 In using consumer surplus, a measure grounded in rational choice theory, to estimate a theoretical “cost” of not smoking,1^(p36772),4 the FDA is ignoring the strong empirical evidence against the validity of applying rational choice to smoking decisions, leading the FDA to seriously overestimate the costs of reducing smoking, and in turn, underestimate the net benefits.     

Infant rats can acquire,but not retain contextual associations in object-in-context and contextual fear conditioning paradigms

Context learning in postnatal day (PD) 16–18 rats has been taken by Revillo, Cotella, Paglini, and Arias (2015, Physiology & Behavior, 148 , 6–21) to challenge the view that the ontogeny of contextual learning is related to the development of the hippocampal system (Rudy, 1993, Behavioral Neuroscience, 107 (5), 887–891; Schiffino, Murawski, Rosen, & Stanton, 2011 Neurobiology of Learning and Memory, 95 (2), 190–198). Whether context learning is “incidental” or “reinforcement-driven” may determine the ontogeny and neural systems involved (Rudy, 2009, Learning & Memory (Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y.), 16 , 573–585). However, we have shown differential ontogeny of two different forms of incidental context learning, the context pre-exposure facilitation effect (CPFE; Jablonski, Schiffino, & Stanton, 2012, Developmental Psychobiology, 54 (7), 714–722), which emerges between PD 17 and 21; and object-in-context recognition (OiC, Ramsaran, Westbrook, & Stanton, 2016, Developmental Psychobiology, 58 (7), 883–895; Ramsaran, Sanders, & Stanton, 2016, Behavioural Brain Research, 298 , 37–47), which is present on PD17. We investigated whether this task-dissociation reflects an encoding or a retention deficit, by varying the sample-to-testing intervals for both tasks. Experiment 1A found that PD17 rats were able to perform the OiC task after short (5 min) but not long (24 hr) sample-to-test intervals. Experiments 1B and 1C found that PD17 rats trained on the CPFE are able to acquire and express context-shock associations after short but not long retention intervals. These findings suggest that pre-weanling rats encode contexts but show poor consolidation or retrieval after longer retention intervals.     

EAACI position paper on diet diversity in pregnancy,infancy and childhood: Novel concepts and implications for studies in allergy and asthma

To fully understand the role of diet diversity on allergy outcomes and to set standards for conducting research in this field, the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology Task Force on Diet and Immunomodulation has systematically explored the association between diet diversity and allergy outcomes. In addition, a detailed narrative review of information on diet quality and diet patterns as they pertain to allergic outcomes is presented. Overall, we recommend that infants of any risk category for allergic disease should have a diverse diet, given no evidence of harm and some potential association of benefit in the prevention of particular allergic outcomes. In order to harmonize methods for future data collection and reporting, the task force members propose relevant definitions and important factors for consideration, when measuring diet diversity in the context of allergy. Consensus was achieved on practice points through the Delphi method. It is hoped that the definitions and considerations described herein will also enable better comparison of future studies and improve mechanistic studies and pathway analysis to understand how diet diversity modulates allergic outcomes.     

The Impact of COVID-19 on Routine Medical Care and Cancer Screening

BackgroundCOVID-19 restrictions and fear dramatically changed the use of medical care. Understanding the magnitude of cancelled and postponed appointments and associated factors can help identify approaches to mitigate unmet need.ObjectiveTo determine the proportion of medical visits cancelled or postponed and for whom. We hypothesized that adults with serious medical conditions and those with higher anxiety, depressive symptoms, and avoidance-oriented coping would have more cancellations/postponements.DesignFour nationally representative cross-sectional surveys conducted online in May, July, October, and December 2020.Participants59,747 US adults who completed 15-min online surveys. 69% cooperation rate.MeasuresPhysical and mental health visits and cancer screening cancelled or postponed over prior 2 months. Plan to cancel or postpone visits over the next 2 months. Relationship with demographics, medical conditions, local COVID-19 death rate, anxiety, depressive symptoms, coping, intolerance of uncertainty, and perceived COVID-19 risk.Key ResultsOf the 58% (N = 34,868) with a medical appointment during the 2 months before the survey, 64% had an appointment cancelled or postponed in May, decreasing to 37% in December. Of the 41% of respondents with scheduled cancer screening, 20% cancelled/postponed, which was stable May to December. People with more medical conditions were more likely to cancel or postpone medical visits (OR 1.19 per condition, 95% CI 1.16, 1.22) and cancer screening (OR 1.20, 95% CI 1.15, 1.24). Race, ethnicity, and income had weak associations with cancelled/postponed visits, local death rate was unrelated, but anxiety and depressive symptoms were strongly related to cancellations, and this grew between May and December.ConclusionsCancelled medical care and cancer screening were more common among persons with medical conditions, anxiety and depression, even after accounting for COVID-19 deaths. Outreach and support to ensure that patients are not avoiding needed care due to anxiety, depression and inaccurate perceptions of risk will be important.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11606-021-07254-x.KEY WORDS: COVID-19, missed medical appointments, cancer screening