Background As part of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, the United States Food and Drug Administration charged the Tobacco Products Scientific Advisory Committee with developing a report and recommendations regarding the effect of menthol in cigarettes on the public health. The purpose of this study was to examine smoking behaviors, biomarkers of exposure and subjective responses when switching from a novel menthol cigarette to a non-menthol cigarette to isolate the effect of menthol and to approximate the effect a menthol ban might have on smokers. Methods Thirty two adult smokers completed this 35-day randomized, open-label, laboratory study. After a 5-day baseline period, participants were randomized to the experimental group (n=22) where they would smoke menthol Camel Crush for 15 days followed by 15 days of non-menthol Camel Crush, or the control group (n=10) where they smoked their own brand cigarette across all periods. Participants attended study visits every five days and completed measures of smoking rate, smoking topography, biomarkers of exposure, and subjective responses. Results Although total puff volume tended to increase when the experimental group switched from menthol to non-menthol (p=0.06), there were no corresponding increases in cigarette consumption or biomarkers of exposure (ps>0.1). Subjective ratings related to taste and smell decreased during the non-menthol period (ps<0.01), compared to the menthol. Conclusions Results suggest menthol has minimal impact on smoking behaviors, biomarkers of exposure and subjective ratings. Impact When controlling for all other cigarette design features, menthol in cigarettes had minimal effect on outcome measures.

Given that global warming is the greatest threat to coral reefs, coral restoration projects have expanded worldwide with the goal of replenishing habitats whose reef-building corals succumbed to various stressors. In many cases, however, these efforts will be futile if outplanted corals are unable to withstand warmer oceans and an increased frequency of extreme temperature events. Stress-hardening is one approach proposed to increase the thermal tolerance of coral genotypes currently grown for restoration. Previous studies have shown that corals from environments with natural temperature variability experience less bleaching when exposed to thermal stress, though it remains unclear if this localized acclimatization or adaptation to variable temperatures can be operationalized for enhancing restoration efforts. To evaluate this approach, fragments from six source colonies of nursery-raised Caribbean staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) were treated with a variable temperature regime (oscillating twice per day from 28 to 31ºC) or static temperatures (28ºC) in the laboratory for 89 days. Following this, fragments were subjected to a heat-stress assay (32ºC) for two weeks. Corals treated with variable temperatures manifested signs of severe thermal stress later than static temperature laboratory controls as well as untreated field controls collected from the nursery. Furthermore, there was a stark contrast in the physiological response to heat stress, whereby the laboratory and field control groups had a significantly higher incidence of rapid tissue sloughing and necrosis, while the variable temperature-treated corals succumbed to bleaching more gradually. Overall, our data show that pre-acclimation to a variable temperature regime improves acroporid thermotolerance. As corals continue to be outplanted back onto Florida's changing reef scape, understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying this enhanced thermal tolerance and its endurance in situ will be critical for future research and restoration applications.

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