Rates of heavy drinking, tobacco use and illicit substance use peak among college students between 18 and 25 years of age. Attitudes, personal characteristics, and behaviors that are called protective factors could pl...Rates of heavy drinking, tobacco use and illicit substance use peak among college students between 18 and 25 years of age. Attitudes, personal characteristics, and behaviors that are called protective factors could play a role in reducing college students’ use of alcohol and drugs. We studied the relationships between selected protective factors and alcohol consumption in college students from a public commuter university in New Orleans, Louisiana pre-and post-Hurricane Katrina utilizing the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey (CADS) Long Form. We applied Hirschi’s social control theory to examine the relationships between drinking and the identified protective factors. Three research questions with null and alternative hypotheses were tested to explore the impact of Hurricane Katrina on protective factors and drinking utilizing linear/ logistic and multivariate regression models to test the hypotheses. We found that post-Katrina students were on average about 1.5 years older and drank approximately 1.5 more drinks per week than pre-Katrina students. Both pre and post Katrina age, gender, and race/ethnicity were significantly related to drinking among these groups of college students such that older students, women, and non-Whites tended to have reduced odds of drinking. There were no statistically significant relationships between individual protective factors or any group of protective factors and drinking after controlling for age, gender, and race/ethnicity indicating that these 3 individual characteristics that cannot be altered were stronger predictors of drinking than any other factors we tested.展开更多
A natural disaster leading to accumulation of environmental contaminants may have substantial effects on the male reproductive system. Our aim was to compare and assess semen parameters in a normospermic population re...A natural disaster leading to accumulation of environmental contaminants may have substantial effects on the male reproductive system. Our aim was to compare and assess semen parameters in a normospermic population residing in the Southern Louisiana, USA area pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina. We retrospectively evaluated semen analyses data （n = 3452） of 1855 patients who attended the Tulane University Andrology/Fertility Clinic between 1999 and 2013. The study inclusion criteria were men whose semen analyses showed -〉 1.5 ml volume; _〉15 million ml1 sperm concentration; _〉39 million total sperm count; _〉40% motility; 〉30% morphology, with an abstinence interval of 2-7 days. After the inclusion criteria applied to the population, 367 normospermic patients were included in the study. Descriptive statistics and group-based analyses were performed to interpret the differences between the pre-Katrina （Group 1, 1999-2005） and the post-Katrina （Group 2, 2006-2013） populations. There were significant differences in motility, morphology, number of white blood cell, immature germ cell count, pH and presence of sperm agglutination, but surprisingly there were no significant differences in sperm count between the two populations. This long-term comparative analysis further documents that a major natural disaster with its accompanied environmental issues can influence certain semen oarameters （e.g.. motility and morphology） and, bv extension, fertility potential of the population of such areas.展开更多
The increasing risk and exposure of people and assets to natural hazards and disasters suggests an increasing need for temporary housing following disasters.Resilience to natural hazards is dependent on the resources ...The increasing risk and exposure of people and assets to natural hazards and disasters suggests an increasing need for temporary housing following disasters.Resilience to natural hazards is dependent on the resources available to families or communities to prepare for and mitigate risk,influenced by social vulnerability.This study seeks to quantify the total environmental impact of temporary housing deployment in New Orleans,using the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina in southern Louisiana in August 2005 as a case example.We employ a novel approach to estimate displacement period and take into account social vulnerability across New Orleans neighborhoods to better understand the scale of post-disaster relief and its global warming potential.The methodology implemented in this study comprises three steps:a risk assessment,a life cycle assessment,and a resulting total impact assessment.We demonstrate the considerable risk of greenhouse gas emissions and energy impacts from temporary housing deployment linked to hurricane hazard.Furthermore,we show that environmental impact is highly sensitive to displacement period and find the current methodology of anticipating temporary housing use by hazard alone to be inadequate.Additionally,the approach presented in this article provides tools to politicians and disaster risk professionals that allow for resource investment planning to decrease social vulnerability,thus enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity in a more homogeneous way at the urban scale.展开更多
文摘Rates of heavy drinking, tobacco use and illicit substance use peak among college students between 18 and 25 years of age. Attitudes, personal characteristics, and behaviors that are called protective factors could play a role in reducing college students’ use of alcohol and drugs. We studied the relationships between selected protective factors and alcohol consumption in college students from a public commuter university in New Orleans, Louisiana pre-and post-Hurricane Katrina utilizing the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey (CADS) Long Form. We applied Hirschi’s social control theory to examine the relationships between drinking and the identified protective factors. Three research questions with null and alternative hypotheses were tested to explore the impact of Hurricane Katrina on protective factors and drinking utilizing linear/ logistic and multivariate regression models to test the hypotheses. We found that post-Katrina students were on average about 1.5 years older and drank approximately 1.5 more drinks per week than pre-Katrina students. Both pre and post Katrina age, gender, and race/ethnicity were significantly related to drinking among these groups of college students such that older students, women, and non-Whites tended to have reduced odds of drinking. There were no statistically significant relationships between individual protective factors or any group of protective factors and drinking after controlling for age, gender, and race/ethnicity indicating that these 3 individual characteristics that cannot be altered were stronger predictors of drinking than any other factors we tested.
文摘A natural disaster leading to accumulation of environmental contaminants may have substantial effects on the male reproductive system. Our aim was to compare and assess semen parameters in a normospermic population residing in the Southern Louisiana, USA area pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina. We retrospectively evaluated semen analyses data （n = 3452） of 1855 patients who attended the Tulane University Andrology/Fertility Clinic between 1999 and 2013. The study inclusion criteria were men whose semen analyses showed -〉 1.5 ml volume; _〉15 million ml1 sperm concentration; _〉39 million total sperm count; _〉40% motility; 〉30% morphology, with an abstinence interval of 2-7 days. After the inclusion criteria applied to the population, 367 normospermic patients were included in the study. Descriptive statistics and group-based analyses were performed to interpret the differences between the pre-Katrina （Group 1, 1999-2005） and the post-Katrina （Group 2, 2006-2013） populations. There were significant differences in motility, morphology, number of white blood cell, immature germ cell count, pH and presence of sperm agglutination, but surprisingly there were no significant differences in sperm count between the two populations. This long-term comparative analysis further documents that a major natural disaster with its accompanied environmental issues can influence certain semen oarameters （e.g.. motility and morphology） and, bv extension, fertility potential of the population of such areas.
文摘The increasing risk and exposure of people and assets to natural hazards and disasters suggests an increasing need for temporary housing following disasters.Resilience to natural hazards is dependent on the resources available to families or communities to prepare for and mitigate risk,influenced by social vulnerability.This study seeks to quantify the total environmental impact of temporary housing deployment in New Orleans,using the catastrophic impact of Hurricane Katrina in southern Louisiana in August 2005 as a case example.We employ a novel approach to estimate displacement period and take into account social vulnerability across New Orleans neighborhoods to better understand the scale of post-disaster relief and its global warming potential.The methodology implemented in this study comprises three steps:a risk assessment,a life cycle assessment,and a resulting total impact assessment.We demonstrate the considerable risk of greenhouse gas emissions and energy impacts from temporary housing deployment linked to hurricane hazard.Furthermore,we show that environmental impact is highly sensitive to displacement period and find the current methodology of anticipating temporary housing use by hazard alone to be inadequate.Additionally,the approach presented in this article provides tools to politicians and disaster risk professionals that allow for resource investment planning to decrease social vulnerability,thus enhancing resilience and adaptive capacity in a more homogeneous way at the urban scale.
