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1. The Effect of COVID-19 on Various Racial Demographics in the United States

   Rayan, Trisha; Brown, Adrian; Carillo, Andrei; Sharma, Sharad (January 2020, 2020 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI))

   There is growing concern that racial and ethnic minority communities around the United States are experiencing a disproportionate burden of infection rate and mortality from the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19). While most research, media newspapers, websites, and television networks are providing statistical numbers of daily infection and death rate across US by state, these numbers fail to study the actual impact of COVID-19 to each race. Our approach has taken the top five races by population count in the US and has calculated the impact index by race for each state for COVID-19 infections and death rate. We also examine the rise in the utilization of hospitals as a result of the rise in cases of COVID-19 in the United states. We conclude that the African American race and Hispanic race is disproportionately impacted more than the white population for infection rate. 

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2. Impacts of California Proposition 47 on crime in Santa Monica, California

   https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251199  

   Crodelle, Jennifer; Vallejo, Celeste; Schmidtchen, Markus; Topaz, Chad M.; D’Orsogna, Maria R. (May 2021, PLOS ONE)

   Ribeiro, Haroldo V. (Ed.)

   We examine patterns of reported crime in Santa Monica, California before and after the passage of Proposition 47, a 2014 initiative that reclassified some non-violent felonies as misdemeanors. We also investigate impacts of the opening of four new light rail stations in 2016 and of increased community-based policing starting in late 2018. Our statistical analyses of reclassified crimes—larceny, fraud, possession of narcotics, forgery, receiving/possessing stolen property—and non-reclassified ones are based on publicly available reported crime data from 2006 to 2019. These analyses examine reported crime at various levels: city-wide, within eight neighborhoods, and within a 450-meter radius of the new transit stations. Monthly reported reclassified crimes increased city-wide by approximately 15% after enactment of Proposition 47, with a significant drop observed in late 2018. Downtown exhibited the largest overall surge. Reported non-reclassified crimes fell overall by approximately 9%. Areas surrounding two new train stations, including Downtown, saw significant increases in reported crime after train service began. While reported reclassified crimes increased after passage of Proposition 47, non-reclassified crimes, for the most part, decreased or stayed constant, suggesting that Proposition 47 may have impacted reported crime in Santa Monica. Reported crimes decreased in late 2018 concurrent with the adoption of new community-based policing measures. Follow-up studies needed to confirm long-term trends may be challenging due to the COVID-19 pandemic that drastically changed societal conditions. While our research detects changes in reported crime, it does not provide causative explanations. Our work, along with other considerations relevant to public utility, respect for human rights, and existence of socioeconomic disparities, may be useful to law enforcement and policymakers to assess the overall effect of Proposition 47. 

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3. COVID‐19‐related anxiety: How do coping and optimism relate to substance use in African–American young adults?

   https://doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22863  

   Singleton, Gwendolyn; Johnson, Leona; Singleton, Nkosi; Li, Huijun (April 2022, Journal of Community Psychology)

   The COVID–19 pandemic has greatly affected college students nationwide. Recent research suggests that theCOVID–19 pandemic has disproportionately impactedAfrican–American young adults. The infection case rates, hospitalizations, and death rates in African–American populations are 2–5 times higher than among White populations. The intergenerational trauma and systemic racism that African–Americans have faced in past and present times have fomented conditions that lead to vulnerability within this historically resilient community.These stresses and losses increase the risks of anxiety and substance use. This study examined the relationship between COVID‐19‐related anxiety and substance use, and how adaptive coping and optimism influence this relationship in African–Americans young adults. Results reveal that COVID‐related anxiety predicts alcohol and drug use. Optimism and adaptive coping are related to lower pandemic‐related anxiety, alcohol, and drug use among African-American young adults. 

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4. Data Visualization Tool for Covid-19 and Crime Data

   Sean Walker and Sharad Sharma (January 2021, Proceeding of the IEEE International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence, (CSCI'21),Symposium of Big Data and Data Science (CSCI-ISBD))

   Data visualization gives a visual context through maps or graphs and makes it easier for the human mind to identify trends, patterns, and outliers within large data sets. The understanding of patterns and location of crime through data visualization and data mining techniques approaches is a very useful tool which can help and support police forces. Identification of crime characteristics and types are the first step for developing further analysis. This paper describes the development of data visualization tool using Unity 3D and Maptitude GIS for visualization of Baltimore COVID-19 and crime data. This effort aims to determine parameters that influence the vulnerability of African Americans to COVID-19 during the pandemic. The study has found that the factors shown to be influential in a person’s susceptibility include neighborhood and physical environment, housing, occupation, education, income, and wealth gaps. The data collected from Baltimore incident reports and findings shared by Maryland SOA office shows that crime has increased and decreased in different areas during the time of COVID pandemic. 

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5. Racial Disparities in Methylation of NRF1, FTO, and LEPR Gene in Childhood Obesity

   https://doi.org/10.3390/genes13112030  

   Patel, Priyadarshni; Selvaraju, Vaithinathan; Babu, Jeganathan Ramesh; Wang, Xu; Geetha, Thangiah (November 2022, Genes)

   Childhood obesity has affected the health of millions of children around the world despite vigorous efforts by health experts. The obesity epidemic in the United States has disproportionately afflicted certain racial and ethnic minority groups. African American children are more likely than other children to have obesity-related risk factors such as hyperlipidemia, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and coronavirus disease (COVID-19). For the reduction in obesity-related health inequalities to be successful, it is essential to identify the variables affecting various groups. A notable advancement in epigenetic biology has been made over the past decade. Epigenetic changes like DNA methylation impact on many genes associated with obesity. Here, we evaluated the DNA methylation levels of the genes NRF1, FTO, and LEPR from the saliva of children using real-time quantitative PCR-based multiplex MethyLight technology. ALU was used as a reference gene, and the Percent of Methylated Reference (PMR) was calculated for each sample. European American children showed a significant increase in PMR of NRF1 and FTO in overweight/obese participants compared to normal weight, but not in African American children. After adjusting for maternal education and annual family income by regression analysis, the PMR of NRF1 and FTO was significantly associated with BMI z-score only in European American children. While for the gene LEPR, African American children had higher methylation in normal weight participants as compared to overweight/obese and no methylation difference in European American children. The PMR of LEPR was significantly negative associated with the obesity measures only in African American children. These findings contribute to a race-specific link between NRF1, FTO, and LEPR gene methylation and childhood obesity. 

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