Search for correlation between geomagnetic disturbances and mortality

Statistical evaluation of death rates in the U.S.A. from heart diseases or stroke did not show any correlation with measured geomagnetic pulsations and thus do not support a claimed relationship between geomagnetic activity and mortality rates to low frequency fluctuations of the earth's magnetic field

Education Differences in Life Expectancy With Cognitive Impairment

Background. Low education has an impact on life expectancy and level of cognition, but little is known on its effect on life expectancy with cognitive impairment. Methods. The Medical Research Council Cognitive Function and Ageing Study (MRC CFAS) collected population-based longitudinal data on people aged 65 years and older including measures of education and cognitive impairment, using the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), for five geographically diverse areas around England and Wales interviewed between 1991 and 2003. Transitions between health states were calculated using Markov chain methods. Life expectancy in different states of cognitive function as measured by MMSE were further explored for different education groups. The effect of fixed and educationally based cut points for cognitive impairment are investigated. Results. Life expectancy spent with cognitive impairment is fairly constant with increasing age at around 1.4 years in men and 2.5 years in women, though this reflects a large increase in the proportion of life spent with cognitive impairment. The differences seen between education groups for the proportion of total life with cognitive impairment (men 13% and women 22% of life lived for low education vs men 7% and women 12% in high education group) disappear when education-adjusted cut points are used (10% in men and 17% in women at age 65 for all education groups). Conclusions. The results show that there is a substantial amount of life expectancy with cognitive impairment in both men and women. The impairment burden is just as great for those with high education as the lowest educated group. © 2009 The Author(s)

Inequality in Human Development: An Empirical Assessment of 32 Countries

One of the most frequent critiques of the HDI is that is does not take into account inequality within countries in its three dimensions. In this paper, we apply a simply approach to compute the three components and the overall HDI for quintiles of the income distribution. This allows a comparison of the level in human development of the poor with the level of the non-poor within countries, but also across countries. This is an application of the method presented in Grimm et al. (World Development 36(12):2527–2546, 2008) to a sample of 21 low and middle income countries and 11 industrialized countries. In particular the inclusion of the industrialized countries, which were not included in the previous work, implies to deal with a number of additional challenges, which we outline in this paper. Our results show that inequality in human development within countries is high, both in developed and industrialized countries. In fact, the HDI of the lowest quintiles in industrialized countries is often below the HDI of the richest quintile in many middle income countries. We also find, however, a strong overall negative correlation between the level of human development and inequality in human development

Metropolitan New York in the Greenhouse: Air Quality and Health Effects

A variety of potential effects on human health resulting from climate change have been identified in several assessments. According to an international panel{sup 1} they include direct effects of extreme temperatures on cardiovascular deaths, secondary effects due to vector-borne diseases or crop yields, and tertiary effects such as those that might arise from conflicts over freshwater supplies. To this fist we add the secondary effects of increased air pollution, which may result either directly from climate change or indirectly from increased air conditioning loads and the corresponding pollutant emissions from electric utilities. Higher ozone concentrations have been linked to increased ambient temperatures by both theory and observations of monitoring data. A similar association with particulate matter has been limited to observations, thus far. The pollution-heat linkage has been recognized before` but health effects have not been evaluated in terms of predictions of the joint effects of both agents. This paper has been prepared in two sections. First, we discuss the ozone situation with special reference to the Northeast Corridor and New York. In the second section, we present estimates of the health effects of climate change on New York and discuss some mitigation options

The impact of ambient temperature on mortality among the urban population in Skopje, Macedonia during the period 1996–2000

BACKGROUND: This study assesses the relationship between daily numbers of deaths and variations in ambient temperature within the city of Skopje, R. Macedonia. METHODS: The daily number of deaths from all causes, during the period 1996–2000, as well as those deaths from cardiovascular diseases, occurring within the city of Skopje were related to the average daily temperature on the same day using Multiple Regression statistical analyses. Temperature was measured within the regression model as two complementary variables: 'Warm' and 'Cold'. Excess winter mortality was calculated as winter deaths (deaths occurring in December to March) minus the average of non-winter deaths (April to July of the current year and August to November of the previous year). RESULTS: In this study the average daily total of deaths was 7% and 13% greater in the cold when compared to the whole period and warm period respectively. The same relationship was noticed for deaths caused by cardiovascular diseases. The Regression Beta Coefficient (b = -0.19) for the total mortality as a function of the temperature in Skopje during the period 1996–2000 was statistically significant with negative connotation as was the circulatory mortality due to average temperature (statistically significant regression Beta coefficient (b = -0.24)). A measure of this increase is provided, on an annual basis, in the form of the excess winter mortality figure. CONCLUSION: Mortality with in the city of Skopje displayed a marked seasonality, with peaks in the winter and relative troughs in the summer

Profitability of Pension Contributions: Evidence from Real-Life Employment Biographies

Micro-econometric intra-cohort profitability analyses of pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pension contributions are rare. We use representative employment histories of a birth cohort of German PAYG pension insurants retiring in year 2005 to econometrically examine the determinants of the profitability of such contributions using nominal internal rates of return (IRR) as profitability measure. When future nominal pension entitlements are frozen at today's level, average IRR is slightly above three percent. At the same time, IRR differs substantially across beneficiaries. IRR is increasing in beneficiaries' remaining life expectancies at retirement and in the length of non-contribution periods resulting, for example, from child care or care for an ill partner. Due to survivor pensions, married insurants benefit from higher IRR as compared to the non-married. Interestingly, IRR is decreasing in insurants' earnings capacity, indicating that the system entails an intra-cohort progressive element

Association between winter season and risk of death from cardiovascular diseases: a study in more than half a million inpatients in Beijing, China

BACKGROUND: Seasonal associations of cardiovascular mortality have been noted in most populations of European origin years ago, but are not well evaluated in Asian populations recently. METHODS: Utilizing the electronic Hospitalization Summary Reports (HSRs) from 32 top-ranked hospitals in Beijing, China, we evaluated the association between winter season and the risk of cardiovascular death among hospitalized individuals. General additive models and logistic regression models were adjusted for confounding factors. RESULTS: Older patients who were admitted to the hospital in the winter months (January, February, November and December) had a death risk that was increased by approximately 30% to 50% (P < 0.01) over those who were admitted in May. However, younger patients did not seem to experience the same seasonal variations in death risk. The excess winter deaths among older patients were associated with ischemic heart disease (RR = 1.22; 95% CI 1.13 to 1.31), pulmonary heart disease (RR = 1.42; 95% CI 1.10 to 1.83), cardiac arrhythmias (RR = 1.67; 95% CI 1.36 to 2.05), heart failure (RR = 1.30; 95% CI 1.09 to 1.54), ischemic stroke (RR = 1.30; 95% CI 1.17 to 1.43), and other cerebrovascular diseases (RR = 1.78; 95% CI 1.40 to 2.25). The risks of mortality were higher in winter months than in the month of May, regardless of the presence or absence of respiratory disease. CONCLUSIONS: Winter season was associated with a substantially increased risk of cardiovascular death among older Chinese cardiovascular inpatients