The association between green space and cause-specific mortality in urban New Zealand: an ecological analysis of green space utility

<b>Background:</b> There is mounting international evidence that exposure to green environments is associated with health benefits, including lower mortality rates. Consequently, it has been suggested that the uneven distribution of such environments may contribute to health inequalities. Possible causative mechanisms behind the green space and health relationship include the provision of physical activity opportunities, facilitation of social contact and the restorative effects of nature. In the New Zealand context we investigated whether there was a socioeconomic gradient in green space exposure and whether green space exposure was associated with cause-specific mortality (cardiovascular disease and lung cancer). We subsequently asked what is the mechanism(s) by which green space availability may influence mortality outcomes, by contrasting health associations for different types of green space. <b>Methods:</b> This was an observational study on a population of 1,546,405 living in 1009 small urban areas in New Zealand. A neighbourhood-level classification was developed to distinguish between usable (i.e., visitable) and non-usable green space (i.e., visible but not visitable) in the urban areas. Negative binomial regression models were fitted to examine the association between quartiles of area-level green space availability and risk of mortality from cardiovascular disease (n = 9,484; 1996 - 2005) and from lung cancer (n = 2,603; 1996 - 2005), after control for age, sex, socio-economic deprivation, smoking, air pollution and population density. <b>Results:</b> Deprived neighbourhoods were relatively disadvantaged in total green space availability (11% less total green space for a one standard deviation increase in NZDep2001 deprivation score, p < 0.001), but had marginally more usable green space (2% more for a one standard deviation increase in deprivation score, p = 0.002). No significant associations between usable or total green space and mortality were observed after adjustment for confounders. <b>Conclusion</b> Contrary to expectations we found no evidence that green space influenced cardiovascular disease mortality in New Zealand, suggesting that green space and health relationships may vary according to national, societal or environmental context. Hence we were unable to infer the mechanism in the relationship. Our inability to adjust for individual-level factors with a significant influence on cardiovascular disease and lung cancer mortality risk (e.g., diet and alcohol consumption) will have limited the ability of the analyses to detect green space effects, if present. Additionally, green space variation may have lesser relevance for health in New Zealand because green space is generally more abundant and there is less social and spatial variation in its availability than found in other contexts

Expert Judgement Survey of European Political Parties 2010

The Expert Judgement Survey for European Political Parties is a data set consisting of scores of various characteristics of political parties given by political scientists and other experts of political parties in 38 European countries, including both West and East European countries, Turkey and Israel. The data set is the follow-up of the Expert Judgement Survey for West European Political Parties 2000 which aim was ‘to discover opportunity structures for political parties with respect to the immigration theme as well as organizational aspects of political parties’ (Lubbers, 2001: p.2). The Expert Judgement Survey of European Political Parties 2010 has a similar aim and extends the Expert Judgement Survey 2000 by adding other questions that deal with typical radical right party characteristics: immigration restrictiveness, populism, authoritarianism, nationalism, and (anti-) establishment image

Dataset belonging to the paper: What can I do to help you?

Dataset belonging to the paper: What can I do to help you? - A formal framework for agents reasoning about behavior change support for people (currently under submission)This paper describes a formal framework to describe behavior, model a person's wish to change that behavior, and reason about what consequences that change would have.The dataset includes the prolog implementations of the definitions, the materials (e.g. questionnaire) used in the user evaluation, and the R code to analyze the data from this evaluation.</p

Dataset belonging to the paper: What can I do to help you?

Dataset belonging to the paper: What can I do to help you? - A formal framework for agents reasoning about behavior change support for people (currently under submission)This paper describes a formal framework to describe behavior, model a person's wish to change that behavior, and reason about what consequences that change would have.The dataset includes the prolog implementations of the definitions, the materials (e.g. questionnaire) used in the user evaluation, and the R code to analyze the data from this evaluation.</p

Spectral analysis and a closest tree method for genetic sequences

We describe a new method for estimating the evolutionary tree linking a collection of species from their aligned four-state genetic sequences. This method, which can be adapted to provide a branch-and-bound algorithm, is statistically consistent provided the sequences have evolved according to a standard stochastic model of nucleotide mutation. Our approach exploits a recent group-theoretic description of this model. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RO 3318(756) / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman