A Comparative Assessment of Cooling Center Preparedness across Twenty-Five U.S. Cities

Cooling centers have played a significant role in reducing the risks of adverse health impacts of extreme heat exposure. However, there have been no comparative studies investigating cooling center preparedness in terms of population coverage, location efficiency, and population coverage disparities among different subpopulation groups. Using a catchment area method with a 0.8 km walking distance, we compared three aspects of cooling center preparedness across twenty-five cities in the U.S. We first calculated the percentage of the population covered by a single cooling center for each city. Then, the extracted values were separately compared to the city’s heat indexes, latitudes, and spatial patterns of cooling centers. Finally, we investigated population coverage disparities among multiple demographics (age, race/ethnicity) and socioeconomic (insurance, poverty) subpopulation groups by comparing the percentage of population coverage between selected subpopulation groups and reference subpopulation groups. Our results showed that cooler cities, higher latitude cities, and cities with dispersed cooling centers tend to be more prepared than warmer cities, lower latitude cities, and cities with clustered cooling centers across the U.S. Moreover, older people (≥65) had 9% lower population coverage than younger people (≤64). Our results suggest that the placement of future cooling centers should consider both the location of other nearby cooling centers and the spatial distribution of subpopulations to maximize population coverage and reduce access disparities among several subpopulations.

Statistical Characteristics of the Response of Sea Surface Temperatures to Westward Typhoons in the South China Sea

The strong interaction between a typhoon and ocean air is one of the most important forms of typhoon and sea air interaction. In this paper, the daily mean sea surface temperature (SST) data of Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for Earth Observation System (EOS) (AMSR-E) are used to analyze the reduction in SST caused by 30 westward typhoons from 1998 to 2018. The findings reveal that 20 typhoons exerted obvious SST cooling areas. Moreover, 97.5% of the cooling locations appeared near and on the right side of the path, while only one appeared on the left side of the path. The decrease in SST generally lasted 6–7 days. Over time, the cooling center continued to diffuse, and the SST gradually rose. The slope of the recovery curve was concentrated between 0.1 and 0.5.

Assessing Adaptation Strategies for Extreme Heat: A Public Health Evaluation of Cooling Centers in Maricopa County, Arizona

Preventing heat-associated morbidity and mortality is a public health priority in Maricopa County, Arizona (United States). The objective of this project was to evaluate Maricopa County cooling centers and gain insight into their capacity to provide relief for the public during extreme heat events. During the summer of 2014, 53 cooling centers were evaluated to assess facility and visitor characteristics. Maricopa County staff collected data by directly observing daily operations and by surveying managers and visitors. The cooling centers in Maricopa County were often housed within community, senior, or religious centers, which offered various services for at least 1500 individuals daily. Many visitors were unemployed and/or homeless. Many learned about a cooling center by word of mouth or by having seen the cooling center’s location. The cooling centers provide a valuable service and reach some of the region’s most vulnerable populations. This project is among the first to systematically evaluate cooling centers from a public health perspective and provides helpful insight to community leaders who are implementing or improving their own network of cooling centers.

Effective suppression of hippocampal seizures in rats by direct hippocampal cooling with a Peltier chip

Object The use of focal brain cooling to eliminate epileptic discharges (EDs) has attracted increasing attention in the scientific community. In this study, the inhibitory effect of selective hippocampal cooling on experimental hippocampal seizures was investigated using a newly devised cooling system with a thermoelectric (Peltier) chip. Methods A copper needle coated with silicone and attached to the Peltier chip was used for the cooling device. The experiments were performed first in a phantom model with thermography and second in adult male Sprague–Dawley rats in a state of halothane anesthesia. The cooling needle, a thermocouple, and a needle electrode for electroencephalography recording were inserted into the right hippocampus. Kainic acid (KA) was injected into the right hippocampus to provoke the EDs. The animals were divided into hippocampal cooling (10 rats) and noncooling (control, 10 rats) groups. Results In the phantom study, the cooling effects (9°C) occurred in the spherical areas around the needle tip. In the rats the temperature of the cooled hippocampus decreased below 20°C within a 1.6-mm radius and below 25°C within a 2.4-mm radius from the cooling center. The temperature at the needle tip decreased below 20°C within 1 minute and was maintained at the same level until the end of the cooling process. The amplitude of the EDs was suppressed to 68.1 ± 4.8% of the precooling value and remained low thereafter. No histological damage due to cooling was observed in the rat hippocampus. Conclusions Selective hippocampal cooling effectively suppresses the KA-induced hippocampal EDs. Direct hippocampal cooling with a permanently implantable system is potentially useful as a minimally invasive therapy for temporal lobe epilepsy and therefore could be an alternative to the temporal lobectomy.