The Experience With Smoke-Free Policies in Affordable Multiunit Housing in North Carolina: A Statewide Survey.

PURPOSE: Previous surveys of housing operators have identified concerns about enforcement, legal issues, and loss of market share as the main barriers to implementing smoke-free policies in multiunit housing. The purpose of this study was to examine enforcement practices as well as economic and legal outcomes in smoke-free affordable multiunit housing. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Affordable multiunit housing in North Carolina. SUBJECTS: Affordable multiunit housing properties (n = 1063, 57% response rate). MEASURES: Property representatives completed a written survey with questions regarding the existence of smoke-free policies, smoke-free policy implementation and enforcement practices, and smoking-related costs. ANALYSIS: Descriptive statistics, χ(2) goodness-of-fit test, and t-test. RESULTS: A total of 16.5% of properties had policies that prohibited smoking in all residential units. Half (49.8%) of smoke-free properties reported no violations to their policies in the past 12 months. Legal actions to enforce policies were rarely needed and were successful when they did occur. Compared to smoking-allowed properties, smoke-free properties did not experience a loss of market share in terms of occupancy rate (t = .09; p = .93) or residents moving away (χ(2) =. 5; p = .48). CONCLUSION: Housing operators' concerns about enforcement, legal issues, and loss of market share associated with smoke-free policies are largely unfounded among affordable housing properties in North Carolina. Public health professionals should use messaging strategies that refute these concerns to encourage more properties to adopt smoke-free policies.

Molecular architecture of the nucleoprotein C-terminal domain from the Ebola and Marburg viruses.

The Filoviridae family of negative-sense, single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) viruses is comprised of two species of Marburgvirus (MARV and RAVV) and five species of Ebolavirus, i.e. Zaire (EBOV), Reston (RESTV), Sudan (SUDV), Taï Forest (TAFV) and Bundibugyo (BDBV). In each of these viruses the ssRNA encodes seven distinct proteins. One of them, the nucleoprotein (NP), is the most abundant viral protein in the infected cell and within the viral nucleocapsid. It is tightly associated with the viral RNA in the nucleocapsid, and during the lifecycle of the virus is essential for transcription, RNA replication, genome packaging and nucleocapsid assembly prior to membrane encapsulation. The structure of the unique C-terminal globular domain of the NP from EBOV has recently been determined and shown to be structurally unrelated to any other known protein [Dziubanska et al. (2014), Acta Cryst. D70, 2420-2429]. In this paper, a study of the C-terminal domains from the NP from the remaining four species of Ebolavirus, as well as from the MARV strain of Marburgvirus, is reported. As expected, the crystal structures of the BDBV and TAFV proteins show high structural similarity to that from EBOV, while the MARV protein behaves like a molten globule with a core residual structure that is significantly different from that of the EBOV protein.