EPIDEMIOLOGICAL STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD ONSET TYPE 1 DIABETES IN DEVON AND CORNWALL

A high quality register of children with type 1 diabetes, The Cornwall and Plymouth Children's Diabetes Register (CPCDR), has been successfully established in the far South West of England for this thesis. Children aged 0-15 years of age who were diagnosed with type I diabetes in the study area have been systematically registered on the database since 01 /01/1975 until the present day. Children are now registered prospectively, to provide a database of the disease in this region and to allow epidemiological studies. Basic descriptive studies on the occurrence of the disease based on the CPCDR between 1975-1996 have been carried out for this thesis. In addition, space-time clustering analysis of the disease has been conducted, as well as an exploration of the association of some chemical contents in domestic drinking water, serum minerals and birth weight to the risk of developing the disease. The incidence study demonstrated that the overall incidence rate of childhood onset type 1 diabetes was 14.9 cases/100 000/year in this area during the 22-year study period (1975-1996). The case ascertainment was 94.4% for the whole register. A significant increase (2.49% per year) of overall incidence has been observed, mainly due to a significant increase in the 0-4-year age group (6.32% per year). The incidence significantly differed among the 22 years with peak incidences seen in the years 1977, 1983, 1988, 1990 and 1993-94. Incidence increased with age, with a peak age of 12 years for girls and 14 years for boys. Girls had a significantly higher incidence than boys. The significant seasonal variations at diagnosis were detected with the peak incidence appearing in autumn and winter. Significant space-time clustering was found by the Knox test in the study region in the following combinations of critical cutoff values, 25, 35 and 50 km and 270 or 360 days (P values < 0.05), and 50 km and 90 days (P < 0.05) with the highest level of significance found at 35 km and 360 days (P < 0.01). Stronger clustering was found in the younger children (0-4 years). Therefore, there is evidence of space-time clustering in the onset of childhood diabetes in the far South West of England. These results lend some support to the hypothesis that viral infections in early life or other unknown environmental factor(s) may have a role to play in the development of childhood diabetes. The relationship between childhood diabetes and drinking water quality has been explored in the study area. The initial analysis with the Spearman's rank test and χ² test for trend on the tertiles of the dataset suggest that copper, magnesium and nitrate have some protective effect on children for developing type 1 diabetes. However, Poisson regression analyses revealed that zinc and magnesium were the main possible protective chemicals. The concentration ranges of zinc (22.27-27.00 µg/L) and magnesium (>= 2.61 mg/L) in domestic drinking water would significantly decrease the risk of childhood diabetes. The results indicated that zinc and magnesium in drinking water are protective factors against the development of childhood diabetes. No significant associations were detected between birth weight or serum minerals and the risk of developing the disease

Translation Standards and Strategies for Trademark Names of Cosmetics

With the development of the society and the improvement of the people's living standard, people have gradually realized the importance of the external image while paying attention to the "inner beauty", so the cosmetics are becoming more and more popular. Proper brand name translation can not only bring consumers the feeling of beauty, but also enhance the brand level and promote products in the invisible way. This paper discusses the translation criteria and Strategies of cosmetic brand names, hoping to contribute to the development of this field

UNWED FATHERS AND FRAGILE FAMILIES

Nearly a third of all births in the United States today occur to parents who are not legally married. The proportions are even higher among poor and minority populations, 40% among Hispanics, and 70% among blacks (Ventura et al. 1995). Out-of-wedlock childbearing is occurring with increasing frequency in nearly all western industrialized countries. Indeed, the proportion of children born outside marriage is even higher in the Scandinavian countries than it is in the U.S. (McLanahan and Casper 1996). However, the U.S. is somewhat unique with respect to the involvement of unwed fathers in the lives of their children. Whereas in the western European countries, the vast majority of unmarried parents are living together when their child is born, in the U.S. only about 25% of unwed parents are cohabiting (Bumpass and Sweet 1989). At first glance, these figures would seem to suggest that American men who father children outside marriage are less attached to their children than European men. This impression is further reinforced by research which shows that a substantial proportion of never married fathers have virtually no contact with their children (McLanahan and Sandefur 1994).

State Ownership and Firm Innovation in China: An Integrated View of Institutional and Efficiency Logics

Using two longitudinal panel datasets of Chinese manufacturing firms, we assess whether state ownership benefits or impedes firms’ innovation. We show that state ownership in an emerging economy enables a firm to obtain crucial R&D resources but makes the firm less efficient in using those resources to generate innovation, and we find that a minority state ownership is an optimal structure for innovation development in this context. Moreover, the inefficiency of state ownership in transforming R&D input into innovation output decreases when industrial competition is high, as well as for start-up firms. Our findings integrate the efficiency logic (agency theory), which views state ownership as detrimental to innovation, and institutional logic, which notes that governments in emerging economies have critical influences on regulatory policies and control over scarce resources. We discuss the implications of these findings for research on state ownership and firm innovation in emerging economies

Tuning the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction in Pt/Co/MgO heterostructures through MgO thickness

The interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) in the ferromagnetic/heavy metal ultra-thin film structures , has attracted a lot of attention thanks to its capability to stabilize Neel-type domain walls (DWs) and magnetic skyrmions for the realization of non-volatile memory and logic devices. In this study, we demonstrate that magnetic properties in perpendicularly magnetized Ta/Pt/Co/MgO/Pt heterostructures, such as magnetization and DMI, can be significantly influenced through both the MgO and the Co ultrathin film thickness. By using a field-driven creep regime domain expansion technique, we find that non-monotonic tendencies of DMI field appear when changing the thickness of MgO and the MgO thickness corresponding to the largest DMI field varies as a function of the Co thicknesses. We interpret this efficient control of DMI as subtle changes of both Pt/Co and Co/MgO interfaces, which provide a method to investigate ultra-thin structures design to achieve skyrmion electronics.Comment: 18 pages, 11 figure

Role of sea quarks in the nucleon transverse spin

We present a phenomenological extraction of transversity distribution functions and Collins fragmentation functions by simultaneously fitting to semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering and electron-positron annihilation data. The analysis is performed within the transverse momentum dependent factorization formalism, and sea quark transversity distributions are taken into account for the first time. We find the $\bar u$ quark favors a negative transversity distribution while that of the $\bar d$ quark is consistent with zero according to the current accuracy. In addition, based on a combined analysis of world data and simulated data, we quantitatively demonstrate the impact of the proposed Electron-ion Collider in China on precise determinations of the transversity distributions, especially for sea quarks, and the Collins fragmentation functions