5,686 research outputs found
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A Case-Control Study of Multiple Myeloma Nested in the American Cancer Society Prospective Study
Among the subjects enrolled in the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II, a large nation-wide prospective study, 282 died from multiple myeloma (MM) during the first 4 years of follow-up. These were divided into incident cases who were initially free from disease and prevalent cases who reported MM or related symptoms at the time of enrollment. For each case, 4 controls matched for age, sex, ethnic group and residence were randomly selected. Previous history of diabetes [odds ratio (OR) = 2.0] and employment as farmer (OR = 2.7) were the risk factors consistently suggested by the results of the analysis. The risk associated with farming showed a linear trend with duration of exposure. Pesticide or herbicide exposure was not a risk factor per se but, when combined with farming, it increased the OR to 4.3. Low education, occupational exposure to dyes, and employment in a bank, on the railroad or as a maid were also suggested risk factors, but either they were not statistically significant or they were based on small numbers of exposed subjects. No association between MM and asbestos exposure was observed
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Incarceration and support for children in fragile families
High US incarceration rates have motivated recent research on the negative effects of imprisonment on later employment, earnings, and family relationships. Given the high rates of fatherhood among men in jails and prisons, a large number of children are placed at considerable risk when a parent is incarcerated. This paper examines one dimension of the economic risk faced by children of incarcerated fathers: the reduction in the financial support that they receive. We use a population-based sample of urban children to examine the effects of incarceration on this support. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal regression models indicate that men with incarceration histories are significantly less likely to contribute to their families and those that do contribute provide significantly less. These negative effects of incarceration on fathers' financial support are due not only to diminished performance in the labor market by formerly incarcerated men, but also to their increased likelihood to live apart from their children. Men contribute far less through child support (formal or informal) than they do when they share their earnings within their household, suggesting that the destabilizing effects of incarceration on family relationships place children at significant economic disadvantage
Impaired contextual modulation of memories in PTSD: an fMRI and psychophysiological study of extinction retention and fear renewal
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients display pervasive fear memories, expressed indiscriminately. Proposed mechanisms include enhanced fear learning and impaired extinction or extinction recall. Documented extinction recall deficits and failure to use safety signals could result from general failure to use contextual information, a hippocampus-dependent process. This can be probed by adding a renewal phase to standard conditioning and extinction paradigms. Human subjects with PTSD and combat controls were conditioned (skin conductance response), extinguished, and tested for extinction retention and renewal in a scanner (fMRI). Fear conditioning (light paired with shock) occurred in one context, followed by extinction in another, to create danger and safety contexts. The next day, the extinguished conditioned stimulus (CS+E) was re-presented to assess extinction recall (safety context) and fear renewal (danger context). PTSD patients showed impaired extinction recall, with increased skin conductance and heightened amygdala activity to the extinguished CS+ in the safety context. However, they also showed impaired fear renewal; in the danger context, they had less skin conductance response to CS+E and lower activity in amygdala and ventral-medial prefrontal cortex compared with combat controls. Control subjects displayed appropriate contextual modulation of memory recall, with extinction (safety) memory prevailing in the safety context, and fear memory prevailing in the danger context. PTSD patients could not use safety context to sustain suppression of extinguished fear memory, but they also less effectively used danger context to enhance fear. They did not display globally enhanced fear expression, but rather showed a globally diminished capacity to use contextual information to modulate fear expression
Child support reform: some analysis of the 1999 white paper
This paper uses a sample of lone mothers (and former lone mothers who are now repartnered) drawn from the 1997 Family Resources Survey to analyse the potential effects of reforming the UK system of Child Support. The main deficiency of the data is that non-resident fathers cannot be matched to the mothers in the data and this is overcome by exploiting information from another dataset which gives the joint distribution of the characteristics of separated parents. The effects of reforming the Child Support system is simulated for the amount of maintenance liabilities, the amount paid and the net incomes of households containing mothers with care and households containing non-resident fathers. The likely effects of the reform are simulated at various levels of compliance. The analysis highlights the need for further research into the incentive effects of Child Support on individual behaviour
A Dynamic Theory of Resource Wars
We develop a dynamic theory of resource wars and study the conditions under which such wars can be prevented. Our focus is on the interaction between the scarcity of resources and the incentives for war in the presence of limited commitment. We show that a key parameter determining the incentives for war is the elasticity of demand. Our first result identifies a novel externality that can precipitate war: price-taking firms fail to internalize the impact of their extraction on military action. In the case of inelastic resource demand, war incentives increase over time and war may become inevitable. Our second result shows that in some situations, regulation of prices and quantities by the resource-rich country can prevent war, and when this is the case, there will also be slower resource extraction than the Hotelling benchmark (with inelastic demand). Our third result is that because of limited commitment and its implications for armament incentives, regulation of prices and quantities might actually precipitate war even in some circumstances where wars would not have arisen under competitive markets
On the Influence of North Pacific Sea Surface Temperature on the Arctic Winter Climate
Differences between two ensembles of Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry-Climate Model simulations isolate the impact of North Pacific sea surface temperatures (SSTs) on the Arctic winter climate. One ensemble of extended winter season forecasts is forced by unusually high SSTs in the North Pacific, while in the second ensemble SSTs in the North Pacific are unusually low. High Low differences are consistent with a weakened Western Pacific atmospheric teleconnection pattern, and in particular, a weakening of the Aleutian low. This relative change in tropospheric circulation inhibits planetary wave propagation into the stratosphere, in turn reducing polar stratospheric temperature in mid- and late winter. The number of winters with sudden stratospheric warmings is approximately tripled in the Low ensemble as compared with the High ensemble. Enhanced North Pacific SSTs, and thus a more stable and persistent Arctic vortex, lead to a relative decrease in lower stratospheric ozone in late winter, affecting the April clear-sky UV index at Northern Hemisphere mid-latitudes
Screening for eating disorders: false negatives and eating disorders not otherwise specified
OBJECTIVE: To study the problem of false negatives in the screening for eating disorders. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: We administered the Eating Attitudes Test (EAT40) and the Eating Disorder Inventory (EDI) to 186 Italian female students (age 17.68 ± 0.9; BMI 20.84 ± 2.69). Then we submitted not only high-scorers but also all the subjects to a semi-structured diagnostic interview (Eating Disorder Examination - EDE 12.0D). The diagnosis of eating disorders not otherwise specified (EDNOS) was applied to cases which met all the DSM-IV criteria for AN and/or BN with one exception. RESULTS: 17 girls (9.1%) fulfilled diagnostic criteria for eating disorders: 1 bulimia nervosa full-syndrome and 16 EDNOS. Of the 17 girls 11 were EAT low-scorers (< 30) and 8 were EDI low-scorers (< 50); 5 subjects scored below the cutoff on both instruments. We calculated sensitivity (35.3%), specificity (88.8%), positive predictive value (PPV, 24.0%) and negative predictive value (NPV, 93.2%) of the EAT40; the respective values for the EDI were 52.9% (sensitivity), 85.2% (specificity), 26.4% (PPV) and 94.7% (NPV). DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: Our data show that the introduction of the EDNOS diagnoses increases the PPV of the two questionnaires but lowers their sensitivity. We conclude that using a two stage screening approach leads to a very high rate of false negatives with a significant underestimation of the prevalence of eating disorders, particularly of EDNOS
The influence of âtopic and resourceâ on some aspects of social theorising
Developments in sociological theory since the 1960s have been responses to disciplinary problems rather than changes in fashion. The problem of topic and resourceâwhere sociology has to use everyday understandings and practices as study resources even though they are legitimate topics of enquiryâhas been an important and sometimes neglected spur to many of these developments. The turn to discourse, conversation analysis and the rise of Bourdieu's reflexivity are all attempts to address the problem, but each is shown to be unsatisfactory in different ways. In summary, they seek to address the issue as requiring either a principled methodological or a principled theoretical solution, and neither approach is capable of comprehensively addressing the matter. It is argued that these âsolutionsâ depend, in turn, on one of two particular construals of what the âproblemâ consists in, neither of which is necessary or coherent. Each, it is argued, depends on a philosophical trick: making language out to need formal improvement (the Bertrand Russell trick) or introducing inappropriate scepticism to everyday life (the RenĂ© Descartes trick). It is suggested that treating topic and resource not as a problem but as something which opens up new areas of investigation successfully deflates the issue and avoids unnecessary theoretical and methodological contortions
Increased uncertainty in projections of precipitation and evaporation due to wetâgetâwetter/dryâgetâdrier biases
The research was supported by the Israel Science Foundation Grant 1022/21.A key implication of the well known wetâgetâwetter/dryâgetâdrier (WGW) scaling is that model biases in the representation of precipitation and evaporation in the present climate lead to spurious projected changes under global warming. Here we estimate the extent of such spurious changes in projections by 60 models participating in phases 5 and 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. Utilizing known thermodynamic constraints on evaporation, we show that the WGW scaling can be applied to precipitation and evaporation separately (specific WGW scaling), which we use to correct for spurious projected changes in precipitation and evaporation over tropical oceans. The spurious changes in precipitation can be of comparable amplitude to projected changes, but are generally small for evaporation. The spurious changes may increase the uncertainty in projections of tropical precipitation and evaporation by up to 30% and 15% respectively.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe
Interaction between clients and physiotherapists in group exercise classes in geriatric rehabilitation
The aim of this paper is to explore how older people construct their interaction in group exercise classes in geriatric rehabilitation and what is their contribution to the interaction. Discourse analysis was employed and data, consisting of seven videotaped group-based exercise sessions, were collected from 52 older people (aged 66â93 years) and nine rehabilitation professionals in seven rehabilitation centres. Four discourse categories were found. In âtaciturn exercisingâ, older people remained verbally silent but physically active. In âsubmissive disagreeingâ, older people opposed the professionalsâ agenda by displaying reluctant consent to proposals. In âresilient endeavouringâ, older adults persisted on their course of action, regardless of the disapproval of the professionals. In âlay helpingâ, older people initiated spontaneous encouragement, but also gave verbal and physical assistance to their peers. Older people's meaningful contribution to interaction, whilst it may challenge the institutional flow of activities, can constitute an integral part of the re-ablement process of rehabilitation
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