Aims

The tobacco and alcohol industries share common policy goals when facing regulation, opposing policies such as tax increases and advertising restrictions. The collaboration between these two industries in the tobacco policy arena is unknown. This study explored if tobacco and alcohol companies built alliances to influence tobacco legislation and, if so, how those alliances worked.

Methods

Analysis of previously secret tobacco industry documents.

Findings

In the early 1980s, tobacco companies started efforts to build coalitions with alcohol and other industries to oppose cigarette excise taxes, clean indoor air policies and tobacco advertising and promotion constraints. Alcohol companies were often identified as a key partner and source of financial support for the coalitions. These coalitions had variable success interfering with tobacco control policy-making.

Conclusions

The combined resources of tobacco and alcohol companies may have affected tobacco control legislation. These alliances helped to create the perception that there is a broader base of opposition to tobacco control. Advocates should be aware of the covert alliances between tobacco, alcohol and other industries and expose them to correct this misperception.

Objectives

We examined cigarette smoking and quit attempts in the context of alcohol use and bar attendance among young adult bar patrons with different smoking patterns. Methods. We used randomized time location sampling to collect data among adult bar patrons aged 21 to 26 years in San Diego, California (n = 1235; response rate = 73%). We used multinomial and multivariate logistic regression models to analyze the association between smoking and quit attempts and both drinking and binge drinking among occasional, regular, very light, and heavier smokers, controlling for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and education.

Results

Young adult bar patrons reported high rates of smoking and co-use of cigarettes and alcohol. Binge drinking predicted smoking status, especially occasional and very light smoking. All types of smokers reported alcohol use, and bar attendance made it harder to quit. Alcohol use was negatively associated with quit attempts for very light smokers, but positively associated with quitting among heavier smokers.

Conclusions

Smoking and co-use of cigarettes and alcohol are common among young adult bar patrons, but there are important differences by smoking patterns. Tobacco interventions for young adults should prioritize bars and address alcohol use.

Objective

Young adults frequently report social smoking. This study examined the relationship between different social smoking definitions and the co-use of cigarettes and alcohol, tobacco-related attitudes, and quitting efforts.

Method

Cross-sectional data were collected at bars using randomized time location sampling among young adults aged 21-26 in San Diego, California from 2010 to 2011 (73% response rate). Multivariable logistic regression examined if current smoking and quit attempts were associated with tobacco-related attitudes, and whether social smoking self-identification or behavior was associated with cigarette-and-alcohol co-use, tobacco-related attitudes, quit attempts, or quitline use.

Results

Among 537 current smokers, 80% self-identified and 49% behaved as social smokers. Social smoking self-identification was positively associated with cigarette-and-alcohol co-use, and quit attempts. Social smoking behavior was negatively associated with tobacco marketing receptivity, quit attempts, and quitline use. Tobacco-related attitudes were associated with smoking but did not generally differ by social smoking status.

Conclusion

Identification and behavior as a social smoker have opposing associations with co-use of cigarettes and alcohol and quit attempts. Tobacco cessation programs for self-identified social smokers should address co-use. Interventions denormalizing the tobacco industry or emphasizing the health effects of temporary smoking and secondhand smoke may address smoking among young adult bar patrons regardless of social smoking status.

Background

Bars and nightclubs are key public venues where young adults congregate and use both tobacco and alcohol, and young adult bar patrons are at high risk for substance use. This study examined the association between cigarette smoking and alcohol use among a random sample of young adult bar patrons from three different cities in the USA.

Methods

Cross-sectional data was collected from a random sample of young adult bar patrons aged 18-29 in San Diego, CA (N = 1,150), Portland, ME (N = 1,019), and Tulsa, OK (N = 1,106) from 2007-2010 (response rate 88%) using randomized time location sampling. Respondents reported the number of days they smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, and binge drank in the past 30 days. Multinomial logistic regression was used to analyze the association between smoking (nonsmoker, occasional smoker, and regular smoker) and drinking and binge drinking for each city controlling for age, gender, race/ethnicity, and education. Predicted probabilities of each smoking category were calculated by drinking and binge drinking status. The association between smoking and drinking and binge drinking among combined samples was also analyzed, controlling for demographic variables and city.

Results

Respondents reported high current smoking rates, ranging from 51% in Portland to 58% in Tulsa. Respondents in Tulsa were more likely to report regular smoking than those in San Diego and Portland, with demographic variables being controlled. Young adult bar patrons also exhibited a strong association between smoking and drinking. In general, as the frequency of drinking and binge drinking increased, the predicted probability of being a smoker, especially a regular smoker, increased in each city.

Conclusions

Young adult bar patrons consistently reported a high smoking rate and a strong relationship between smoking and drinking, regardless of the different bar cultures and tobacco control contexts in each of the three cities. While smoke-free bar policies were negatively associated with regular smoking, these policies alone may not be enough to influence the association between smoking and drinking, particularly if tobacco marketing continues in these venues, or in the absence of programs specifically addressing the co-use of tobacco and alcohol.

The design of active, robust, and nonprecious electrocatalysts with both H2 and O2 evolution reaction (HER and OER) activities for overall water splitting is highly desirable but remains a grand challenge. Herein, we report a facile two-step method to synthesize porous Co-P/NC nanopolyhedrons composed of CoPx (a mixture of CoP and Co2P) nanoparticles embedded in N-doped carbon matrices as electrocatalysts for overall water splitting. The Co-P/NC catalysts were prepared by direct carbonization of Co-based zeolitic imidazolate framework (ZIF-67) followed by phosphidation. Benefiting from the large specific surface area, controllable pore texture, and high nitrogen content of ZIF (a subclass of metal-organic frameworks), the optimal Co-P/NC showed high specific surface area of 183 m2 g-1 and large mesopores, and exhibited remarkable catalytic performance for both HER and OER in 1.0 M KOH, affording a current density of 10 mA cm-2 at low overpotentials of -154 mV for HER and 319 mV for OER, respectively. Furthermore, a Co-P/NC-based alkaline electrolyzer approached 165 mA cm-2 at 2.0 V, superior to that of Pt/IrO2 couple, along with strong stability. Various characterization techniques including X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) revealed that the superior activity and strong stability of Co-P/NC originated from its 3D interconnected mesoporosity with high specific surface area, high conductivity, and synergistic effect of CoPx encapsulated within N-doped carbon matrices.

PGG–PTX is a water-soluble formulation of paclitaxel (PTX), made by conjugating PTX to poly(l-γ-glutamylglutamine) acid (PGG) via ester bonds, that spontaneously forms a nanoparticle in aqueous environments. The purpose of this study was to compare the pharmacokinetics and tissue distribution of PTX following injection of either free PTX or PGG–PTX in mice. Both [3H]PTX and PGG–[3H]PTX were administered as an IV bolus injection to mice bearing SC NCI-H460 lung cancer xenografts at a dose of 40-mg PTX equivalents/kg. Plasma, tumor, major organs, urine, and feces were collected at intervals out to 340 h. Total taxanes, taxane extractable into ethyl acetate, and native PTX were quantified by liquid scintillation counting and HPLC. Conjugation of PTX to the PGG polymer increased plasma and tumor C max, prolonged plasma half-life and the period of accumulation in tumor, and reduced washout from tumor. In plasma injection of PGG–PTX increased total taxane AUC0–340 by 23-fold above that attained with PTX. In tumors, it increased the total taxane by a factor of 7.7, extractable taxane by 5.7, and native PTX by a factor of 3.5-fold. Conjugation delayed and reduced total urinary and fecal excretion of total taxanes. Incorporation of PTX into the PGG–PTX polymer significantly prolonged the half-life of total taxanes, extractable taxane, and native PTX in both the plasma and tumor compartments. This resulted in a large increase in the amount of active PTX delivered to the tumor. PGG–PTX is an attractive candidate for further development.

How native and non-native languages are represented in the brain is one of the most important questions in neurolinguistics. Much research has found that the similarity in neural activity of native and non-native languages are influenced by factors such as age of acquisition, language proficiency, and language exposure in the non-native language. Nevertheless, it is still unclear how the similarity between native and non-native languages in orthographic transparency, a key factor that affects the cognitive and neural mechanisms of phonological access, modulates the cross-language similarity in neural activation and which brain regions show the modulatory effects of language distance in orthographic transparency. To address these questions, the present study used representational similarity analysis (RSA) to precisely estimate the neural pattern similarity between native language and two non-native languages in Uyghur-Chinese-English trilinguals, whose third language (i.e., English) was more similar to the native language (i.e., Uyghur) in orthography than to their second language (i.e., Chinese). Behavioral results revealed that subjects responded faster to words in the non-native language with more similar orthography to their native language in the word naming task. More importantly, RSA revealed greater neural pattern similarity between Uyghur and English than between Uyghur and Chinese in select brain areas for phonological processing, especially in the left hemisphere. Further analysis confirmed that those brain regions represented phonological information. These results provide direct neuroimaging evidence for the modulatory effect of language distance in orthographic transparency on cross-language pattern similarity between native and non-native languages during word reading.

The chemical and electronic structures of 15 different sulfates are studied using S L_2,3 soft X-ray emission spectroscopy (XES). Sulfur L_2,3 XES spectra of sulfates are distinctively different from those of other sulfur compounds, which makes XES a powerful technique for sulfate detection. Furthermore, subtle but distinct differences between the spectra of sulfates with different cations are observed, which allow a further differentiation of the specific compound. Most prominently, the position and width of the emission from "S 3s" derived bands systematically vary for different compounds, which can be understood with electronic structure and spectral calculations based on density functional theory.

Background

Advertising influences people's health behaviors. Tobacco companies have linked tobacco and alcohol in their marketing activities. We examined how depictions of alcohol were placed in lifestyle magazines produced by tobacco companies, and if these references differed depending on if the magazine was oriented towards men, women, or if it was unisex.

Methods

Content analysis of 6 different tobacco industry lifestyle magazines (73 issues), including 73 magazine covers, 1558 articles, 444 tobacco ads, and 695 non-tobacco ads.

Results

14 of 73 (19%) magazine covers featured alcohol; 581 of 1558 (37%) magazine articles mentioned alcohol; 119 of 444 (27%) tobacco ads showed alcohol images; and 57 of 695 (8%) non-tobacco ads portrayed alcohol. Male-oriented magazines (Unlimited, CML, and Real Edge) contained the most alcohol references, and the references were mainly beer, mixed drinks, and liquor or spirits. Female-oriented magazines (All Woman and Flair) contained the fewest alcohol references, and wine and mixed drinks were the major types of alcoholic beverage portrayed. For unisex magazine (P.S.), the frequency of alcohol references fell between the male- and female-oriented magazines, and most frequently mentioned mixed drinks.

Conclusions

Frequent depictions of smoking and drinking in tobacco industry lifestyle magazines might have reinforced norms about paired use of tobacco and alcohol among young adults. The pairing of tobacco and alcohol may particularly target young men. Anti-tobacco interventions need to address the co-use of tobacco and alcohol, change the social acceptability of smoking in any social settings, and tailor alcohol related anti-tobacco messaging by gender.