Association between solar insolation and a history of suicide attempts in bipolar I disorder

In many international studies, rates of completed suicide and suicide attempts have a seasonal pattern that peaks in spring or summer. This exploratory study investigated the association between solar insolation and a history of suicide attempt in patients with bipolar I disorder. Solar insolation is the amount of electromagnetic energy from the Sun striking a surface area on Earth. Data were collected previously from 5536 patients with bipolar I disorder at 50 collection sites in 32 countries at a wide range of latitudes in both hemispheres. Suicide related data were available for 3365 patients from 310 onset locations in 51 countries. 1047 (31.1%) had a history of suicide attempt. There was a significant inverse association between a history of suicide attempt and the ratio of mean winter solar insolation/mean summer solar insolation. This ratio is smallest near the poles where the winter insolation is very small compared to the summer insolation. This ratio is largest near the equator where there is relatively little variation in the insolation over the year. Other variables in the model that were positively associated with suicide attempt were being female, a history of alcohol or substance abuse, and being in a younger birth cohort. Living in a country with a state-sponsored religion decreased the association. (All estimated coefficients p <0.01). In summary, living in locations with large changes in solar insolation between winter and summer may be associated with increased suicide attempts in patients with bipolar disorder. Further investigation of the impacts of solar insolation on the course of bipolar disorder is needed.Peer reviewe

Height and body-mass index trajectories of school-aged children and adolescents from 1985 to 2019 in 200 countries and territories: a pooled analysis of 2181 population-based studies with 65 million participants

Summary Background Comparable global data on health and nutrition of school-aged children and adolescents are scarce. We aimed to estimate age trajectories and time trends in mean height and mean body-mass index (BMI), which measures weight gain beyond what is expected from height gain, for school-aged children and adolescents. Methods For this pooled analysis, we used a database of cardiometabolic risk factors collated by the Non-Communicable Disease Risk Factor Collaboration. We applied a Bayesian hierarchical model to estimate trends from 1985 to 2019 in mean height and mean BMI in 1-year age groups for ages 5–19 years. The model allowed for non-linear changes over time in mean height and mean BMI and for non-linear changes with age of children and adolescents, including periods of rapid growth during adolescence. Findings We pooled data from 2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories. In 2019, we estimated a difference of 20 cm or higher in mean height of 19-year-old adolescents between countries with the tallest populations (the Netherlands, Montenegro, Estonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina for boys; and the Netherlands, Montenegro, Denmark, and Iceland for girls) and those with the shortest populations (Timor-Leste, Laos, Solomon Islands, and Papua New Guinea for boys; and Guatemala, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Timor-Leste for girls). In the same year, the difference between the highest mean BMI (in Pacific island countries, Kuwait, Bahrain, The Bahamas, Chile, the USA, and New Zealand for both boys and girls and in South Africa for girls) and lowest mean BMI (in India, Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, Ethiopia, and Chad for boys and girls; and in Japan and Romania for girls) was approximately 9–10 kg/m2. In some countries, children aged 5 years started with healthier height or BMI than the global median and, in some cases, as healthy as the best performing countries, but they became progressively less healthy compared with their comparators as they grew older by not growing as tall (eg, boys in Austria and Barbados, and girls in Belgium and Puerto Rico) or gaining too much weight for their height (eg, girls and boys in Kuwait, Bahrain, Fiji, Jamaica, and Mexico; and girls in South Africa and New Zealand). In other countries, growing children overtook the height of their comparators (eg, Latvia, Czech Republic, Morocco, and Iran) or curbed their weight gain (eg, Italy, France, and Croatia) in late childhood and adolescence. When changes in both height and BMI were considered, girls in South Korea, Vietnam, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and some central Asian countries (eg, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and boys in central and western Europe (eg, Portugal, Denmark, Poland, and Montenegro) had the healthiest changes in anthropometric status over the past 3·5 decades because, compared with children and adolescents in other countries, they had a much larger gain in height than they did in BMI. The unhealthiest changes—gaining too little height, too much weight for their height compared with children in other countries, or both—occurred in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, New Zealand, and the USA for boys and girls; in Malaysia and some Pacific island nations for boys; and in Mexico for girls. Interpretation The height and BMI trajectories over age and time of school-aged children and adolescents are highly variable across countries, which indicates heterogeneous nutritional quality and lifelong health advantages and risks

Data-Driven Models of Governance Across Borders: Assessing Participation, Inclusion, and Convergence in the Digital Era

We have come quite a distance from Chris Anderson’s “end of theory” euphoria for big data at the helm of decision-making for the betterment of society (2008). Today, numerous scholars have critiqued data-centrism in policy-making and practice (for example, boyd and Crawford 2011). Hannah Arendt argues that governance has repeatedly fallen victim to the “utterly irrational confidence in the calculability of reality” (1972). However, we are also witnessing a number of social innovations across the world that are strategically leveraging on digitization to enable a more transparent, inclusive and representative form of political enactment. These social experiments promise to break away from traditional modes of institutional practice and offer instead a more vibrant form of democratic engagement, empowered by the affordances of “datafication.” This panel critically assesses the nature and role of data emerging from new forms of information and communication technologies in the shaping of social order. Each paper in this panel evaluates the particulars of select social innovations posited to strengthen policymaking and citizen activism in the digital era. The papers that make up this panel move beyond polarizing dialectical perspectives by illuminating the ways in which databases have enabled newer forms of mobilization and solidarity but have equally allowed for novel and hitherto unimagined operations of state and corporate power. We aim for a more nuanced and complex understanding of how a multiplicity of social actors come to play in the makings of public service in the big data era. The first paper examines two new models of governance emerging in the Global South – the social credit system in the People’s Republic of China and the biometric identity system in India. Each promises to consolidate public services and citizen identities for social good. The second paper analyzes the opening of government data in Singapore through the website data.gov.sg. It examines the motivations behind such opening of data and assesses the extent to which it enables citizen and civil society action. The third paper examines the emergence of data-driven cities in the Netherlands, comparing Amsterdam, Utrecht, Eindhoven, and Dordrecht. A fourth paper focuses on user experiences in relation to mobile privacy in the United States and the Netherlands. It focuses on everyday negotiations and the participation of citizen/consumers in the production of different forms of data within these two countries. The final paper turns attention to the role of “citizen conferences” in Germany and proposes new approaches to policy-making that emerge from both digital and material engagements. The studies in these papers are situated in diverse models of policy-making, governance, and/or activism across borders. They address the datafication of publics, spaces and social interactions. Thereby, this panel opens up a conversation on global templates of databased governance through the lens of participation, inclusion and convergence. This is occurring within increasingly networked publics, raising questions for instance about privacy in context (see for instance Nissenbaum 2009), divides between digital and material practices or online-offline distinctions, the potentials for urban-digital commons, and the embeddedness of value laden systems, particularly with regard to their enculturation across different (political, social, and economic) contexts. By comparing examples emerging from different national and political circumstances, we hope to illuminate the diverse potentialities and valences of big data. Moreover, these panels examine both top-down and highly centralized efforts to mobilize data, alongside citizen-driven, bottom-up data-collection schemes. By placing these cases side-by-side, we hope to show the vastly divergent possibilities and meanings of data work, as well as suggesting some limitations on data’s democratic potential. References Anderson, Chris (2008). The end of theory: The data deluge makes the scientific method obsolete. Wired, 23 June. https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/ Arendt, Hannah (1972). Crises of the Republic. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. boyd, danah and Kate Crawford (2011). Six provocations for big data. A decade in Internet time: Symposium on the dynamics of Internet and society, 21 September. Available at SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1926431 Nissenbaum, H. (2009). Privacy in context: Technology, policy, and the integrity of social life. Stanford University Press