Prevalence and risk factors for joint pain among men and women in the West of Scotland Twenty-07 study

Objective: To examine the association between three modifiable risk factors (obesity, smoking, and alcohol consumption) and reported joint pain. Methods: Cross sectional data were collected on 858 people aged 58 years living in the West of Scotland and on the same individuals four years later, aged 62 years. Results: There was a positive relation between obesity and reported pain in the hips, knees, ankles, and feet. The strongest relation was with knee pain (odds ratio = 2.42 (95% confidence interval, 1.65 to 3.56)). There were no strong consistent associations between smoking habits and pain in any joint after adjusting for sex, alcohol consumption, body mass index, social class, and occupational exposures. Similarly, alcohol was not consistently related to pain in any joint in the fully adjusted models. Conclusions: Obesity had consistent and readily explained associations with lower limb joint pain. The data suggest that smoking behaviour and alcohol consumption are not consistently associated with joint pain across the body

New heroines of labour: domesticating post-feminism and neoliberal capitalism in Russia

In recent years, postfeminism has become an important element of popular media culture and the object of feminist cultural critique. This paper explores how postfeminism is domesticated in Russia through popular self-help literature aimed at a female audience. Drawing on a close reading of self-help texts by three bestselling Russian authors, the paper examines how postfeminism is made intelligible to the Russian audience through constructions of femininity and how it articulates with other symbolic frameworks. It identifies labour as a key trope through which postfeminism is domesticated and argues that the texts invite women to invest time and energy in the labour of personality, the labour of femininity and the labour of sexuality in order to become ‘valuable subjects’. The paper demonstrates that the domestication of postfeminism also involves the domestication of neoliberal capitalism in Russia, and highlights how popular psychology, neoliberal capitalism and postfeminism are symbiotically relate

Interaction between a normal shock wave and a turbulent boundary layer at high transonic speeds. Part 2: Wall shear stress

An analysis is presented of the flow in the two inner layers, the Reynolds stress sublayer and the wall layer. Included is the calculation of the shear stress at the wall in the interaction region. The limit processes considered are those used for an inviscid flow

Automatic navigation of a long range rocket vehicle

The flight of a rocket vehicle in the equatorial plane of a rotating earth is considered with possible disturbances in the atmosphere due to changes in density, in temperature, and in wind speed. These atmospheric disturbances together with possible deviations in weight and in moment of inertia of the vehicle tend to change the flight path away from the normal flight path. The paper gives the condition for the proper cut-off time for the rocket power, and the proper corrections in the elevator angle so that the vehicle will land at the chosen destination in spite of such disturbances. A scheme of tracking and automatic navigation involving a high-speed computer and elevator servo is suggested for this purpose

Decolonising the medical literature: We are not just a low-resource setting

I was appointed the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the Malawi Medical Journal (MMJ), a periodical of the Malawi College of Medicine (www.medcol.mw) and the Medical Association of Malawi (MAM) in February 2019. It is a daunting task certainly to be at the helm of such a prestigious medical journal indexed in/by almost all the databases that matter in medical publishing. Our journal has published since the 1970s, first as the Medical Quarterly, and later as the Malawi Medical Journal

To screen, or not to screen for SARS-Cov2

One of the trappings, if not a burden, to Editors-in-Chief (EIC) of many medical journals is that one is expected to write editorials. Thus attempting to speak from the Mount, the EIC has the opportunity to identify one or more issues they think is/are important for the readership at that time or had been in the past or for the future

Recent changes in the Malawi Health System: A time for reflection

In this editorial I intend to present a summary of the key issues which have happened in the health sector in Malawi up to the end of 2019. I do believe doing so not only preserves the record but also encourages discussion and debate that may impact the health sector

Antiviral agents : discovery to resistance

Publisher PDFNon peer reviewe

Explaining the gender disparities in SARS-Cov 2 infection and Covid-19 Disease in Malawi

Global Covid-19 data show that there is higher morbidity and mortality among males compared to females1-3. Why, is this the case, and what needs to be done to save lives? Alternatively is this a situation where the observed status is only good for reporting but not worth interventions