ASU Scholarship Showcase

Cities in the Global South face rapid urbanization challenges and often suffer an acute lack of infrastructure and governance capacities. Smart Cities Mission, in India, launched in 2015, aims to offer a novel approach for urban renewal of 100 cities following an area‐based development approach, where the use of ICT and digital technologies is particularly emphasized. This article presents a critical review of the design and implementation framework of this new urban renewal program across selected case‐study cities. The article examines the claims of the so‐called “smart cities” against actual urban transformation on‐ground and evaluates how “inclusive” and “sustainable” these developments are. We quantify the scale and coverage of the smart city urban renewal projects in the cities to highlight who the program includes and excludes. The article also presents a statistical analysis of the sectoral focus and budgetary allocations of the projects under the Smart Cities Mission to find an inherent bias in these smart city initiatives in terms of which types of development they promote and the ones it ignores. The findings indicate that a predominant emphasis on digital urban renewal of selected precincts and enclaves, branded as “smart cities,” leads to deepening social polarization and gentrification. The article offers crucial urban planning lessons for designing ICT‐driven urban renewal projects, while addressing critical questions around inclusion and sustainability in smart city ventures.`

Background: Increasing our understanding of the factors affecting the severity of the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic in different regions of the world could lead to improved clinical practice and mitigation strategies for future influenza pandemics. Even though a number of studies have shed light into the risk factors associated with severe outcomes of 2009 A/H1N1 influenza infections in different populations (e.g., [1-5]), analyses of the determinants of mortality risk spanning multiple pandemic waves and geographic regions are scarce. Between-country differences in the mortality burden of the 2009 pandemic could be linked to differences in influenza case management, underlying population health, or intrinsic differences in disease transmission [6]. Additional studies elucidating the determinants of disease severity globally are warranted to guide prevention efforts in future influenza pandemics.

In Mexico, the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic was characterized by a three-wave pattern occurring in the spring, summer, and fall of 2009 with substantial geographical heterogeneity [7]. A recent study suggests that Mexico experienced high excess mortality burden during the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic relative to other countries [6]. However, an assessment of potential factors that contributed to the relatively high pandemic death toll in Mexico are lacking. Here, we fill this gap by analyzing a large series of laboratory-confirmed A/H1N1 influenza cases, hospitalizations, and deaths monitored by the Mexican Social Security medical system during April 1 through December 31, 2009 in Mexico. In particular, we quantify the association between disease severity, hospital admission delays, and neuraminidase inhibitor use by demographic characteristics, pandemic wave, and geographic regions of Mexico.

Methods: We analyzed a large series of laboratory-confirmed pandemic A/H1N1 influenza cases from a prospective surveillance system maintained by the Mexican Social Security system, April-December 2009. We considered a spectrum of disease severity encompassing outpatient visits, hospitalizations, and deaths, and recorded demographic and geographic information on individual patients. We assessed the impact of neuraminidase inhibitor treatment and hospital admission delay (≤ > 2 days after disease onset) on the risk of death by multivariate logistic regression.

Results: Approximately 50% of all A/H1N1-positive patients received antiviral medication during the Spring and Summer 2009 pandemic waves in Mexico while only 9% of A/H1N1 cases received antiviral medications during the fall wave (P < 0.0001). After adjustment for age, gender, and geography, antiviral treatment significantly reduced the risk of death (OR = 0.52 (95% CI: 0.30, 0.90)) while longer hospital admission delays increased the risk of death by 2.8-fold (95% CI: 2.25, 3.41).

Conclusions: Our findings underscore the potential impact of decreasing admission delays and increasing antiviral use to mitigate the mortality burden of future influenza pandemics.

Plasmodium vivax is the most prevalent malarial species in South America and exerts a substantial burden on the populations it affects. The control and eventual elimination of P. vivax are global health priorities. Genomic research contributes to this objective by improving our understanding of the biology of P. vivax and through the development of new genetic markers that can be used to monitor efforts to reduce malaria transmission. Here we analyze whole-genome data from eight field samples from a region in Cordóba, Colombia where malaria is endemic. We find considerable genetic diversity within this population, a result that contrasts with earlier studies suggesting that P. vivax had limited diversity in the Americas. We also identify a selective sweep around a substitution known to confer resistance to sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP). This is the first observation of a selective sweep for SP resistance in this species. These results indicate that P. vivax has been exposed to SP pressure even when the drug is not in use as a first line treatment for patients afflicted by this parasite. We identify multiple non-synonymous substitutions in three other genes known to be involved with drug resistance in Plasmodium species. Finally, we found extensive microsatellite polymorphisms. Using this information we developed 18 polymorphic and easy to score microsatellite loci that can be used in epidemiological investigations in South America.

Inbreeding in hermaphroditic plants can occur through two different mechanisms: biparental inbreeding, when a plant mates with a related individual, or self-fertilization, when a plant mates with itself. To avoid inbreeding, many hermaphroditic plants have evolved self-incompatibility (SI) systems which prevent or limit self-fertilization. One particular SI system—homomorphic SI—can also reduce biparental inbreeding. Homomorphic SI is found in many angiosperm species, and it is often assumed that the additional benefit of reduced biparental inbreeding may be a factor in the success of this SI system. To test this assumption, we developed a spatially-explicit, individual-based simulation of plant populations that displayed three different types of homomorphic SI. We measured the total level of inbreeding avoidance by comparing each population to a self-compatible population (NSI), and we measured biparental inbreeding avoidance by comparing to a population of self-incompatible plants that were free to mate with any other individual (PSI).

Because biparental inbreeding is more common when offspring dispersal is limited, we examined the levels of biparental inbreeding over a range of dispersal distances. We also tested whether the introduction of inbreeding depression affected the level of biparental inbreeding avoidance. We found that there was a statistically significant decrease in autozygosity in each of the homomorphic SI populations compared to the PSI population and, as expected, this was more pronounced when seed and pollen dispersal was limited. However, levels of homozygosity and inbreeding depression were not reduced. At low dispersal, homomorphic SI populations also suffered reduced female fecundity and had smaller census population sizes. Overall, our simulations showed that the homomorphic SI systems had little impact on the amount of biparental inbreeding in the population especially when compared to the overall reduction in inbreeding compared to the NSI population. With further study, this observation may have important consequences for research into the origin and evolution of homomorphic self-incompatibility systems.

The 1918 influenza pandemic was a major epidemiological event of the twentieth century resulting in at least twenty million deaths worldwide; however, despite its historical, epidemiological, and biological relevance, it remains poorly understood. Here we examine the relationship between annual pneumonia and influenza death rates in the pre-pandemic (1910–17) and pandemic (1918–20) periods and the scaling of mortality with latitude, longitude and population size, using data from 66 large cities of the United States. The mean pre-pandemic pneumonia death rates were highly associated with pneumonia death rates during the pandemic period (Spearman ρ = 0.64–0.72; P<0.001). By contrast, there was a weak correlation between pre-pandemic and pandemic influenza mortality rates. Pneumonia mortality rates partially explained influenza mortality rates in 1918 (ρ = 0.34, P = 0.005) but not during any other year. Pneumonia death counts followed a linear relationship with population size in all study years, suggesting that pneumonia death rates were homogeneous across the range of population sizes studied. By contrast, influenza death counts followed a power law relationship with a scaling exponent of ∼0.81 (95%CI: 0.71, 0.91) in 1918, suggesting that smaller cities experienced worst outcomes during the pandemic. A linear relationship was observed for all other years. Our study suggests that mortality associated with the 1918–20 influenza pandemic was in part predetermined by pre-pandemic pneumonia death rates in 66 large US cities, perhaps through the impact of the physical and social structure of each city. Smaller cities suffered a disproportionately high per capita influenza mortality burden than larger ones in 1918, while city size did not affect pneumonia mortality rates in the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods.

Background: The historical Japanese influenza vaccination program targeted at schoolchildren provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the indirect benefits of vaccinating high-transmitter groups to mitigate disease burden among seniors. Here we characterize the indirect mortality benefits of vaccinating schoolchildren based on data from Japan and the US.

Methods: We compared age-specific influenza-related excess mortality rates in Japanese seniors aged ≥65 years during the schoolchildren vaccination program (1978–1994) and after the program was discontinued (1995–2006). Indirect vaccine benefits were adjusted for demographic changes, socioeconomics and dominant influenza subtype; US mortality data were used as a control.

Results: We estimate that the schoolchildren vaccination program conferred a 36% adjusted mortality reduction among Japanese seniors (95%CI: 17–51%), corresponding to ∼1,000 senior deaths averted by vaccination annually (95%CI: 400–1,800). In contrast, influenza-related mortality did not change among US seniors, despite increasing vaccine coverage in this population.

Conclusions: The Japanese schoolchildren vaccination program was associated with substantial indirect mortality benefits in seniors.

Background: Prior research shows that work in agriculture and construction/extraction occupations increases the risk of environmental heat-associated death.

Purpose: To assess the risk of environmental heat-associated death by occupation.

Methods: This was a case-control study. Cases were heat-caused and heat-related deaths occurring from May-October during the period 2002–2009 in Maricopa County, Arizona. Controls were selected at random from non-heat-associated deaths during the same period in Maricopa County. Information on occupation, age, sex, and race-ethnicity was obtained from death certificates. Logistic regression analysis was used to estimate odds ratios for heat-associated death.

Results: There were 444 cases of heat-associated deaths in adults (18+ years) and 925 adult controls. Of heat-associated deaths, 332 (75%) occurred in men; a construction/extraction or agriculture occupation was described on the death certificate in 115 (35%) of these men. In men, the age-adjusted odds ratios for heat-associated death were 2.32 (95% confidence interval 1.55, 3.48) in association with construction/extraction and 3.50 (95% confidence interval 1.94, 6.32) in association with agriculture occupations. The odds ratio for heat-associated death was 10.17 (95% confidence interval 5.38, 19.23) in men with unknown occupation. In women, the age-adjusted odds ratio for heat-associated death was 6.32 (95% confidence interval 1.48, 27.08) in association with unknown occupation. Men age 65 years and older in agriculture occupations were at especially high risk of heat-associated death.

Conclusion: The occurrence of environmental heat-associated death in men in agriculture and construction/extraction occupations in a setting with predictable periods of high summer temperatures presents opportunities for prevention.

Methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) is currently a major cause of skin and soft tissue infections (SSTI) in the United States. Seasonal variation of MRSA infections in hospital settings has been widely observed. However, systematic time-series analysis of incidence data is desirable to understand the seasonality of community acquired (CA)-MRSA infections at the population level. In this paper, using data on monthly SSTI incidence in children aged 0–19 years and enrolled in Medicaid in Maricopa County, Arizona, from January 2005 to December 2008, we carried out time-series and nonlinear regression analysis to determine the periodicity, trend, and peak timing in SSTI incidence in children at different age: 0-4 years, 5-9 years, 10-14 years, and 15-19 years. We also assessed the temporal correlation between SSTI incidence and meteorological variables including average temperature and humidity. Our analysis revealed a strong annual seasonal pattern of SSTI incidence with peak occurring in early September. This pattern was consistent across age groups. Moreover, SSTIs followed a significantly increasing trend over the 4-year study period with annual incidence increasing from 3.36% to 5.55% in our pediatric population of approximately 290,000. We also found a significant correlation between the temporal variation in SSTI incidence and mean temperature and specific humidity. Our findings could have potential implications on prevention and control efforts against CA-MRSA.

Background: Blindness has evolved repeatedly in cave-dwelling organisms, and many hypotheses have been proposed to explain this observation, including both accumulation of neutral loss-of-function mutations and adaptation to darkness. Investigating the loss of sight in cave dwellers presents an opportunity to understand the operation of fundamental evolutionary processes, including drift, selection, mutation, and migration.

Results: Here we model the evolution of blindness in caves. This model captures the interaction of three forces: (1) selection favoring alleles causing blindness, (2) immigration of sightedness alleles from a surface population, and (3) mutations creating blindness alleles. We investigated the dynamics of this model and determined selection-strength thresholds that result in blindness evolving in caves despite immigration of sightedness alleles from the surface. We estimate that the selection coefficient for blindness would need to be at least 0.005 (and maybe as high as 0.5) for blindness to evolve in the model cave-organism, Astyanax mexicanus.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that strong selection is required for the evolution of blindness in cave-dwelling organisms, which is consistent with recent work suggesting a high metabolic cost of eye development.

Background: The role of demographic factors, climatic conditions, school cycles, and connectivity patterns in shaping the spatio-temporal dynamics of pandemic influenza is not clearly understood. Here we analyzed the spatial, age and temporal evolution of the 2009 A/H1N1 influenza pandemic in Chile, a southern hemisphere country covering a long and narrow strip comprising latitudes 17°S to 56°S.

Methods: We analyzed the dissemination patterns of the 2009 A/H1N1 pandemic across 15 regions of Chile based on daily hospitalizations for severe acute respiratory disease and laboratory confirmed A/H1N1 influenza infection from 01-May to 31-December, 2009. We explored the association between timing of pandemic onset and peak pandemic activity and several geographical and demographic indicators, school vacations, climatic factors, and international passengers. We also estimated the reproduction number (R) based on the growth rate of the exponential pandemic phase by date of symptoms onset, estimated using maximum likelihood methods.

Results: While earlier pandemic onset was associated with larger population size, there was no association with connectivity, demographic, school or climatic factors. In contrast, there was a latitudinal gradient in peak pandemic timing, representing a 16-39-day lag in disease activity from the southern regions relative to the northernmost region (P < 0.001). Geographical differences in latitude of Chilean regions, maximum temperature and specific humidity explained 68.5% of the variability in peak timing (P = 0.01). In addition, there was a decreasing gradient in reproduction number from south to north Chile (P < 0.0001). The regional mean R estimates were 1.6-2.0, 1.3-1.5, and 1.2-1.3 for southern, central and northern regions, respectively, which were not affected by the winter vacation period.

Conclusions: There was a lag in the period of most intense 2009 pandemic influenza activity following a South to North traveling pattern across regions of Chile, significantly associated with geographical differences in minimum temperature and specific humidity. The latitudinal gradient in timing of pandemic activity was accompanied by a gradient in reproduction number (P < 0.0001). Intensified surveillance strategies in colder and drier southern regions could lead to earlier detection of pandemic influenza viruses and improved control outcomes.