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Sean Nash

Airplane Noise Exposure May Increase Risk of Chronic Disease | SPH - 0 views

www.bu.edu/...crease-risk-of-chronic-disease

HSR HSR-2025 airplane noise disease environmental science questions statistical analysis mathematics computer science potential research idea behavioralscience

shared by Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • people who were exposed to higher levels of noise from aircraft were more likely to have a higher body mass index, an indicator for obesity that can lead to stroke or hypertension. The findings highlight how the environment—and environmental injustices—can shape health outcomes
  • self-reported body mass index (BMI)
  • The study is the first to explore a connection between aircraft noise exposure and obesity nationwide in the United States; past studies on this subject have focused on European populations, and results have varied
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      It would be interesting to see how these studied varied. I would bet that there are other, stronger factors overlying this effect, and it would be challenging to tease out this signal from other socioeconomic factors, but I very much like this concept.
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • “Prior research has shown that aircraft noise can elevate stress responses and disturb sleep, but there has been mixed evidence of any links with body mass index,” says study lead and corresponding author Matthew Bozigar, assistant professor of epidemiology at OSU and a former postdoctoral associate at SPH. “We were surprised to see a fairly robust link between aircraft noise and higher body mass index among women across the US.”
  • These new findings underscore the role of the environment on one’s risk of chronic disease.
  • Junenette Peters, associate professor of environmental health, and colleagues examined airplane noise exposure and self-reported BMI and other individual characteristics among nearly 75,000 participants living around 90 of the major US airports
  • The team examined aircraft noise levels every five years from 1995 to 2010, using a day-night estimate (DNL) that captures the average noise level over a 24-hour period and applies a 10 dB adjustment for aircraft noise occurring at night, when background noise is low.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      I'm sure there are low-powered data loggers that measure dB that we could plant in various places (varying distances from airports (or other things... even just distances from population centers in general). This would allow us to not only work with and search for correlations between data points already collected, but also to generate more specific data on our own. The human data might not necessarily have to be collected by us. The challenge might be just to find databases that have already been collected for various reasons. Much science is done in this way, where instead of generating a ton of data to analyze, the researcher used previously collected data to ask new and interesting questions of.
  • Although the team acknowledges that BMI is a suboptimal metric, the independent and strong association between more aircraft noise exposure and higher BMI that they observed is notable.
  • “We can only hypothesize about why we saw these regional variations, but one reason may relate to the era of regional development, building characteristics, and climate which may affect factors such as housing age, design, and level of insulation,” says Peters. “Regional differences in temperature and humidity may influence behaviors such as window opening, so perhaps study participants living in the West were more exposed to aircraft noise due to open windows or housing type, which allowed more noise to penetrate.”
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      The really interesting work here would be teasing interesting patterns out of really complex data sets. For example, people living near airports typically live in housing that is less expensive due to the lesser desirability of living in that area. That tends to correlate with lower socio-economic status found near airports. However, this is interesting because the major flightpaths to the KCI airport do not exactly line up in this way. For example, three of the school districts in Missouri that line up with KCI runways (Park Hill Schools - where we live, Platte County Schools, Kearney Schools, Smithville Schools, and the northern part of North Kansas City Schools) are all of a higher than average socioeconomic status than outlying areas closer to the city. This is unusual in major metropolitan areas.
  • Previous data suggest that Black, Hispanic, and low-income populations are disproportionately exposed to aircraft noise. The participants in the NHS study groups were primarily White and of mid-level socioeconomic status. 
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      Again, this is a bit different than around most airports. The area immediately surrounding KCI is rather white and mid-to-upper SES.
  • “We need to study the potential health impacts of environmental injustices in transportation noise exposures alongside other environmental drivers of poor health outcomes” Bozigar says. “There is a lot more to figure out, but this study adds evidence to a growing body of literature that noise negatively impacts health.”
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 06 Jun 24
       
      What other environmental factors can be studied either by direct measurement, or by querying previously-collected data to ask/answer questions about environmental health?
Kylie John

The Impossible Goal of a Disease-Free World - 1 views

undark.org/...opinion-disease-free-world

HSR-2025 environmental biology disease

shared by Kylie John on 10 May 24 - No Cached
  • The environmental impacts of such actions were potentially devastating in retrospect. And ultimately, they had little influence on the long-term prevalence of plague.
  • Kylie John on 10 May 24
     
    "The environmental impacts of such actions were potentially devastating in retrospect. And ultimately, they had little influence on the long-term prevalence of plague. "
Caleb Jasper

Racing drivers blink at the same points when going round a track | New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...oints-when-going-round-a-track

HSR-2025 science questions potential research idea behavioralscience

shared by Caleb Jasper on 13 Jun 24 - No Cached
Sean Nash liked it
  • Studying this further could help us better understand conditions where blinking rates change, such as Parkinson’s disease.
  • Caleb Jasper on 13 Jun 24
     
    Not a lot of information in this particular article here, however it does introduce a possible connection to Parkinson's disease. There are multiple links within the article containing a surplus of information around this subject that I will have to research further.
Kylie John

Stony coral tissue loss disease indirectly alters reef communities | Science Advances - 2 views

www.science.org/...sciadv.adk6808

shared by Kylie John on 06 May 24 - No Cached
Sean Nash liked it
  • Butterflyfishes, which are facultative corallivores in this region, have even been found to prefer SCTLD-infected coral
    • Kylie John
      Kylie John on 06 May 24
       
      Some species like the infected coral Maybe it has different properties or something
  • Sean Nash on 07 May 24
     
    You know, there are repositories of publicly available image/video data from coral reef surveys.... somewhere online. They make them available for people to devise creative ways of pulling data out of such raw material. Might be something to look into.
Sean Nash

Wild plants and crops don't make great neighbors | UCR News | UC Riverside - 0 views

news.ucr.edu/...rops-dont-make-great-neighbors

crops disease native non-native plants botany agriculture plantpathology pathology HSR HSR-2025 potential research idea science environmental questions biology

shared by Sean Nash on 16 Jul 24 - No Cached
  • Sean Nash on 16 Jul 24
     
    There are plenty of things about this study that are not so feasible for us at the moment, but... this general area: plant pathology, interactions between native and non-native plants & crops... is a very cool area to explore that would present some feasibility for us.
Sean Nash

Microwaving an insecticide restores its mosquito-killing power - 1 views

www.sciencenews.org/...to-microwave-insecticide-spray

deltamethrin pesticide mosquito insecticide DDT crystals crystalline structure biochemistry environment evolution ecology chemistry heat potential research idea biology engineering environmental science HSR HSR-2023 HSR-2025

shared by Sean Nash on 11 Jun 24 - No Cached
  • Heating an insecticide can give it new life.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 11 Jun 24
       
      Wait... what?
  • Microwaving the insecticide deltamethrin rearranges its crystal structure but doesn’t change its chemical composition. The rearrangement renews deltamethrin’s ability to kill mosquitoes that have become resistant to the insecticide, researchers report April 21 in Malaria Journal.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 11 Jun 24
       
      Seems like potential feasibility
  • The microwave worked just as well, but Kahr cautions that people shouldn’t use the same microwave for heating food and insecticides.
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 11 Jun 24
       
      Ha! Oh really??
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • insecticide resistance is a growing problem
  • “There are all kinds of social and cultural things that you could propose from a scientific perspective that wouldn’t be welcomed by a community of homeowners.”
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 11 Jun 24
       
      Another positive...
  • It’s not certain that the heat-treated deltamethrin would retain its more potent crystal structure through the net-making process.
  • Kahr’s team is working on incorporating the heat-treated crystal into nets.
  • It is encouraging that heated insecticide killed highly resistant mosquitoes, says Hemingway, who directs the Infection Innovation Consortium, a public-private effort to find new ways to combat infectious diseases. But, she says, “this is not something we can take and use that tomorrow.”
    • Sean Nash
      Sean Nash on 11 Jun 24
       
      OK.... this is how you can find an opening (not saying THIS ONE is necessarily, but, when you see language like: "we can't really do it just yet," that is a screaming opportunity to see what we MIGHT be able to add to that. We would just want to get early approval from the fair re: hazardous substances. I think we could.
  • Kahr and colleagues previously discovered that heating deltamethrin changed its crystal structure, which let it work faster
  • Sean Nash on 11 Jun 24
     
    "Wait, what? Do say more....."
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