Sociodemographic Determinants of Nonattendance in a Population-Based Mammography Screening Program in the City of Manisa, Turkey

Objectives. Community based breast cancer screening has decreased breast cancer mortality in women. This study examined the predictors of nonattendence for invitational breast cancer screening in relation to socioeconomic status in the city of Manisa, in western Turkey. Study Design. For the evaluation of the reasons for refusing to participate in the study, two districts were selected. 446 women aged between 50 and 69 years were selected from the program database by systematic random sampling. Methods. The questionnaire consisted of sociodemographic variables and the adapted version of Champion's Health Belief Model Scale. Univariete and multivariete logistic regression analysis were performed throughout the data analysis. Results. Being from an urban district and being from the western region were the risk factors for not participating in the screening program (P = 0.014, P = 0.023). A statistical significance was found between mammography-benefit, mammography-barrier and program participation (P = 0.044, P = 0.006). Although there were many more barriers for not participating in the screening program for the women of the slum district, the attendence rate of the slum district was higher than that of the urban district. Conclusions. Increased attendance may be achieved through enhancement of breast cancer awareness and by reducing some of the modifiable barriers

Periconceptional Mediterranean Diet during Pregnancy on Children’s Health

During pregnancy, rapid and subtle physiological changes are observed from conception to birth. Nutrition and other lifestyle factors before and during pregnancy have been shown in the literature to influence the health of both mother and child. A healthy and varied diet during pregnancy can provide adequate energy and nutrients for both the mother and the growing fetus. Current research focuses on the periconceptional phase, which includes the early processes of gametogenesis, embryogenesis and placentation. A variety of abnormalities and pregnancy-related problems occur during this period, including congenital defects, fetal loss, miscarriage and preterm birth. A varied and balanced diet during periconception is important to maintain fetal development and growth. To date, numerous studies have been conducted to investigate the effects of consuming different nutrients, foods or food groups during pregnancy on the health of mother and child. For example, the Mediterranean diet is considered as a balanced, nutrient-rich diet due to the low consumption of meat products and fatty foods and the high consumption of vegetables, cheese, olive oil, fish, shellfish and little meat. While many studies have been conducted in the literature to investigate the effects of a Mediterranean diet during pregnancy on fetal health, the results have been inconclusive. The aim of this article is to review the current literature on the Mediterranean diet during pregnancy

Violence against women: The perspective of academic women

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Opinion surveys about potential causes of violence against women (VAW) are uncommon. This study explores academic women's opinions about VAW and the ways of reducing violence.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Quantitative and qualitative methods were used in this descriptive study. One hundred-and-fifteen academicians participated in the study from two universities. A questionnaire was used regarding the definition and the causes of VAW, the risk groups and opinions about the solutions. Additionally, two authors interviewed 8 academicians from universities other than that of the interviewing author.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Academicians discussed the problem from the perspective of "gender-based violence" rather than "family violence". The majority of the participants stated that nonworking women of low socioeconomic status are most at risk for VAW. They indicated that psychological violence is more prevalent against educated women, whilst physical violence is more likely to occur against uneducated and nonworking women. Perpetrator related factors were the most frequently stated causes of VAW. Thirty-five percent of the academicians defined themselves as at risk of some act of VAW. Recommendations for actions against violence were empowerment of women, increasing the educational levels in the society, and legal measures.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Academic women introduced an ecological approach for the explanation of VAW by stressing the importance of taking into account the global context of the occurrence of VAW. Similar studies with various community members -including men- will help to define targeted interventions.</p

Traffic Event Related Blog Post Classification by Using Traffic Related Named Entities

Real-time monitoring of traffic flow requires physical sensors to be deployed on road networks. Development of such systems might be impractical due to deployment costs of sensors on large scale networks. This study presents a method to extract traffic event related tweets from social streams in order to employ users of social media as human sensors of traffic conditions or events. The proposed method offers a cost effective way of monitoring events or conditions affecting traffic flow. The method consists of three steps. The first step involves natural language processing tasks for preprocessing the blog posts. The second step extracts a set of traffic event related named entities from blog post texts using the model that is constructed with Conditional Random Fields. The third step includes classification in order to detect blog posts reporting events or conditions affecting traffic flow. The proposed method is experimentally evaluated on a set of tweets collected in one month under varying feature sets. The results show the potential of the approach for traffic monitoring and reveals that the use of traffic related named entities increases the classification accuracy