Tobacco Advertising and Promotional Expenditures in Sports and Sporting Events - United States, 1992-2013.

Smokeless tobacco has been actively promoted by tobacco companies using endorsements by major sport figures, and research indicates that tobacco advertising can lead to youth initiation of tobacco use (1,2). Television and radio advertisements for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco have been prohibited since 1969,* and the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement(†) further prohibited tobacco companies from targeting youths with tobacco product advertisements in specified areas. In 2010, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), under authority of the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA), prohibited tobacco-brand sponsorship (i.e., sponsorship of sports and entertainment events or other social or cultural events using the tobacco brand name or anything identifiable with any brand of cigarettes or smokeless tobacco).(§) However, corporate-name tobacco sponsorship (i.e., sponsorship using the name of the corporation that manufactures regulated tobacco products) is still permitted under certain conditions.(¶) To monitor tobacco advertising and promotional activities in sports in the United States, CDC analyzed trends in sports-related marketing expenditures for cigarettes and smokeless tobacco during 1992-2013 using data from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). During 1992-2013, sports-related marketing expenditures, adjusted by the consumer price index to constant 2013 dollars, decreased significantly for both cigarettes (from $136 million in 1992 to $0 in 2013) and smokeless tobacco (from $34.8 million in 1992 to $2.1 million in 2013). During 2010-2013, after the prohibition of tobacco-brand sponsorship in sports under the FSPTCA, cigarette manufacturers reported no spending (i.e., $0) on sports-related advertising and promotional activities; in contrast, smokeless tobacco manufacturers reported expenditures of $16.3 million on advertising and promoting smokeless tobacco in sports during 2010-2013. These findings indicate that despite prohibitions on brand sponsorship, smokeless tobacco products continue to be marketed in sports in the United States, potentially through other indirect channels such as corporate-name sponsorship. Enhanced measures are warranted to restrict youth-oriented tobacco marketing and promotional activities that could lead to tobacco initiation and use among children and adolescents (2). Reducing tobacco industry promotion through sponsorship of public and private events is an evidence-based strategy for preventing youth initiation of tobacco use (3). In addition, other proven interventions (e.g., tobacco price increases, anti-tobacco mass media campaigns, tobacco-free policies inclusive of smokeless tobacco, and barrier-free access to cessation services), could help reduce smokeless tobacco use in the United States (1).

Knowledge retention after an online tutorial: a randomized educational experiment among resident physicians.

BACKGROUND: The time course of physicians' knowledge retention after learning activities has not been well characterized. Understanding the time course of retention is critical to optimizing the reinforcement of knowledge. DESIGN: Educational follow-up experiment with knowledge retention measured at 1 of 6 randomly assigned time intervals (0-55 days) after an online tutorial covering 2 American Diabetes Association guidelines. PARTICIPANTS: Internal and family medicine residents. MEASUREMENTS: Multiple-choice knowledge tests, subject characteristics including critical appraisal skills, and learner satisfaction. RESULTS: Of 197 residents invited, 91 (46%) completed the tutorial and were randomized; of these, 87 (96%) provided complete follow-up data. Ninety-two percent of the subjects rated the tutorial as "very good" or "excellent." Mean knowledge scores increased from 50% before the tutorial to 76% among those tested immediately afterward. Score gains were only half as great at 3-8 days and no significant retention was measurable at 55 days. The shape of the retention curve corresponded with a 1/4-power transformation of the delay interval. In multivariate analyses, critical appraisal skills and participant age were associated with greater initial learning, but no participant characteristic significantly modified the rate of decline in retention. CONCLUSIONS: Education that appears successful from immediate posttests and learner evaluations can result in knowledge that is mostly lost to recall over the ensuing days and weeks. To achieve longer-term retention, physicians should review or otherwise reinforce new learning after as little as 1 week.

Automated expert multiexponential biomodeling interactively over the Internet.

DIMSUM, an acronym for DIMension of a SUM of exponentials, is a highly automated expert system for fitting multiexponential models of increasing dimension to time series data. Up to now, a researcher has needed an individual copy of DIMSUM on his or her own computer as well as support to learn how to use it. W3DIMSUM, a new implementation of DIMSUM, is web-based, new territory for interactive biomodeling, allowing interactive multiexponential model building and model discrimination over the Internet. The algorithms used are numerically intensive, so we have implemented a distributed system, with numerical processing done on our server. Only the user interface is run on the client machine, but users can load and save data and results on their machines, facilitated by our use of Java WebStart.