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At least 883 records · Page 49Linked to original sources
PubMed2005

Temporal and geographic variation in United States motor neuron disease mortality, 1969-1998.

OBJECTIVE: To describe temporal trends of motor neuron disease (MND) mortality in the United States. Variations in MND by demographic variables of sex, age, geography, and race/ethnicity were evaluated to assess the possible explanations for observed trends. METHODS: Multiple-cause mortality files from the National Center for Health Statistics for the years 1969 through 1998 were searched for all United States death records with codes corresponding to MND. Age-adjusted mortality rates were calculated by sex, race/ethnicity, age, birth cohort, and place of death. RESULTS: Overall MND mortality rates increased from 1.25 per 100,000 to 1.82 per 100,000, representing a 46% increase during the 30-year period. Rates among women increased by 60% and continue to rise. Rates among men rose by 35% during this period but have leveled off in the most recent decade evaluated. Mortality rates among African Americans and Hispanics were approximately 50% lower than rates among non-Hispanic whites. A southeast to northwest gradient was observed when rates were grouped by 12 geographic areas. MND mortality rates per 100,000 (and 95% CI) ranged from 2.22 (1.89 to 2.55) in the Northwest to 1.57 (1.44 to 1.71) in the Southeast. CONCLUSIONS: Variations in motor neuron disease (MND) mortality by time, race/ethnicity, sex, and geography were consistent with the hypothesis that environmental exposures, combined with factors of genetic susceptibility, play a role in the development of MND.

Adult↗
PubMed2003

Hay fever holiday: health, leisure, and place in Gilded-Age America.

By the 1880s hay fever (also called June Cold, Rose Cold, hay asthma, hay cold, or autumnal catarrh) had become the pride of America's leisure class. In mid-August each year, thousands of sufferers fled to the White Mountains of New Hampshire, to the Adirondacks in upper New York State, to the shores of the Great Lakes, or to the Colorado plateau, hoping to escape the dreaded seasonal symptoms of watery eyes, flowing nose, sneezing fits, and attacks of asthma, which many regarded as the price of urban wealth and education. Through a focus on the White Mountains as America's most fashionable hay fever resort in the late nineteenth century, this essay explores the embodied local geography of hay fever as a disease. The sufferers found in the White Mountains physical relief, but also a place whose history affirmed their social identity and shaped their relationship to the natural environment. And, they, in turn, became active agents in shaping the geography of place: in the very material relationships of daily life, in the social contours of the region, and in the symbolic space that nature inhabited. In the consumption of nature for health and pleasure, this article suggests, lies an important, yet relatively unexplored, source for understanding changing perceptions of environment and place and the impact of health on the local and regional transformation of the North American landscape.

Geography↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Incidence of cancer in Sydney and Cape Breton County, Nova Scotia 1979-1997.

The primary purpose of this study was to assess whether Sydney, Industrial Cape Breton County excluding Sydney (ICBxS) and Cape Breton County (CBCo) residents were at increased risk for cancer compared to Nova Scotia (NS) residents over five-year periods during 1979 through 1997. Gender-stratified, age-standardized cancer incidence rates were calculated following the direct method. All-cause rates were higher for female and male residents of Sydney, ICBxS and CBCo compared to NS based upon both municipality and postal code methods of residence classification. A sensitivity analysis of residential coding yielded a high degree of consistency for all geographies except Sydney, limiting comparisons of Sydney rates with other local geographies except where consistencies were observed. The results of this ecological study support the need for further analysis of factors contributing to the increased risk for cancer in CBCo.

Age Distribution↗
PubMed1999

The geographical data of the Kāśyapa Samhitā.

One of the parameters in ascertaining the date of the Kashyapa Samhita is the data of geography referred to there in. Geography abounds various spheres like country, province, city, river, mountain and sea. The whole geographical material is mentioned in the chapter "Bhojana Kalpa" of the Kalpasthana, 22nd and 25th chapters of the Khilasthana.

Geography↗
PubMed2005

Geographic variation in diapause incidence, life-history traits, and climatic adaptation in Drosophila melanogaster.

In Drosophila melanogaster, exposure of females to low temperature and shortened photoperiod can induce the expression of reproductive quiescence or diapause. Diapause expression is highly variable within and among natural populations and has significant effects on life-history profiles, including patterns of longevity, fecundity, and stress resistance. We hypothesized that if diapause expression is associated with overwintering mechanisms and adaptation to temperate environments, the frequency of diapause incidence would exhibit a latitudinal cline among natural populations. Because stress resistance and reproductive traits are also clinal in this species, we also examined how patterns of fecundity and longevity varied with geography and how stress resistance and associated traits differed constitutively between diapause and nondiapause lines. Diapause incidence was shown to vary predictably with latitude, ranging from 35% to 90% among natural populations in the eastern United States Survivorship under starvation stress differed between diapause and nondiapause lines; diapause phenotypes were also distinct for total body triglyceride content and the developmental distribution of oocytes in the ovary following stress exposure. Patterns of longevity, fecundity, and ovariole number also varied with geography. The data suggest that, for North American populations, diapause expression is functionally associated with overwintering mechanisms and may be an integral life-history component in natural populations.

Adaptation, Biological↗
PubMed2005

The crisis of the thesis of climatic pessimism: malaria and the climatic question.

The publication of Boudin's Traité de Geographie et de Statistique médicale (1857) and the creation in 1908 of the Institut de Pathologie Exotique by Laveran, correspond to two entirely different manners of considering tropical diseases and adaptability (or acclimatation) to the Tropics, directly associated with the idea of capability or incapability of Europeans to resist tropical diseases. We analyse the way perspectives have changed with respect to the influence that climate, particularly tropical, exert on the body of individuals and on populations used to live under temperate climatic conditions. The manner the concepts of medical geography, climatic pessimism and individual acclimatation get articulated with the discovery of tropical diseases, their aetiological agents and their localisation, particularly malaria, can only be understood by also analysing how the problems generated by the diversity of races and migration phenomena have been envisaged.

Adaptation, Physiological↗
PubMedDate not supplied

[Diego de Cisneros and novo-Hispanic astrological and geographical medicine].

The collection of geographical information about the New World which was originated during the XVI century started being organized during the XVI century started being organized and explained, in the field of medicine, towards the end of the century and continued during the earliest decades of the following. Writers in the medical profession of these days are characterized by their interest, sometimes coexisting with or alternated with the outlooks of geography of illness and astrology. Diego Cisneros is a outstanding writer of a single place of valuable work so far Known, who was born in Madrid, became a doctor at Alcala de Henares and then arrive in New Spain in 1612. His book represents the incipient baroque of the time and is a valuable contribution to the Knowledge of geography and medicine and is also a piece of art work. It contains one of the first plans of the City of Mexico and its neighbouring sites drawn ina a typical baroque style. The scientific importance of the book consists of the clearcut separation between science and belief leading to assert the freedom of Mankind to put an end to medieval astrology which imprisoned the individual. Because of his leanings towards the Alcala School he upholds the idea of the utility of science and experience linked up to objective clinical observation. Cisneros contributes through his work to the unfolding of two significant processes in the history of national culture: one relates to identity and the other one to scientific community. These pages contain an analysis of the development of his work.

Astrology↗
PubMed1998

International retirement migration in Europe.

"This paper presents a review and prospectus of international retirement migration (IRM), dealing mainly with European evidence but also referring to some analogous trends in North America. The paper is in three main parts. It first makes the case for regarding IRM as a significant aspect of population geography and of migration studies; in certain areas of Mediterranean Europe, IRM also has effects on regional economic geography. The second section of the paper discusses some of the early findings from a comparative study of British elderly residents in Tuscany, Malta, the Costa del Sol and the Algarve.... The final part of the article offers further reflections on why IRM is important--for the individual migrants themselves, for the host communities, and for public policy."

Adult↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Race, region and the territorial politics of immigration in the US.

Zelinsky and Lee recently unveiled a model of the sociospatial process of immigrant settlement designed to augment and possibly supplant the well-known theories of assimilation and pluralism. Although in some ways new, their work continues a tradition in social science that treats the settlement geography of immigrants as a measure of their more general fit into American society. The authors question the prevailing assumption that immigrant settlement patterns represent a barometer of their adaptation, or lack thereof, to a host society. This critique of the concepts of assimilation, pluralism and Zelinsky and Lee's alternative "heterolocal" model of immigrant settlement pivots around the issues of spatial scale and race. The authors argue that the contestations over immigration and how well immigrants fit into society are increasingly constructed at the regional scale. The authors also assert that questions race infuse almost all aspects of these debates. The transformation of America's largest city-regions into places of non-White immigrants, and the shifting political balance of power to states like California through immigration-driven reapportionment, are touchstones for anti-immigration initiatives and associated local and national debate. Fear of racial regional changes underpins an increasingly powerful response to immigration. The reactions elicited by these settlement geographies fall under the heading the authors call the "territorial politics of immigration".

Acculturation↗
PubMedDate not supplied

A new protocol for evaluating putative causes for multiple variables in a spatial setting, illustrated by its application to European cancer rates.

We introduce a statistical protocol for analyzing spatially varying data, including putative explanatory variables. The procedures comprise preliminary spatial autocorrelation analysis (from an earlier study), path analysis, clustering of the resulting set of path diagrams, ordination of these diagrams, and confirmatory tests against extrinsic information. To illustrate the application of these methods, we present incidence and mortality rates of 31 organ- and sex-specific cancers in Europe; these rates vary markedly with geography and type of cancer. Additionally, we investigated three factors (ethnohistory, genetics, and geography) putatively affecting these rates. The five variables were correlated separately for the 31 cancers over European reporting stations. We analyzed the correlations by path analysis, k-means clustering, and nonmetric multidimensional scaling; coefficients of the 31 path diagrams modeling the correlations vary substantially. To simplify interpretation, we grouped the diagrams into five clusters, for which we describe the differential effects of the three putative causes on incidence and mortality. When scaled, the path coefficients intergrade without marked gaps between clusters. Ethnic differences make for differences in cancer rates, even when the populations tested are ancient and complex mixtures. Path analysis usefully decomposes a structural model involving effects and putative causes, and estimates the magnitude of the model's components. Smooth intergradation of the path coefficients suggests the putative causes are the results of multiple forces. Despite this continuity of the path diagrams of the 31 cancers, clustering offers a useful segmentation of the continuum. Etiological and other extrinsic information on the cancers map significantly into the five clusters, demonstrating their epidemiological relevance.

Biometry↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Genetic structure of Algerian populations.

Blood samples were collected in Algeria from 4,444 army recruits and tested for 10 genetic polymorphic systems. These samples were collected from territorial Wilayas (administrative units of Algeria) from which the young soldiers had originated. Based on similar geography and economic and political history, these Wilayas were clustered into 10 regions. These regions, not part of the governmental administrative units, were characterized by allelic frequencies, and analyzed using R-matrix principal components, Wright's F(ST), spatial autocorrelation, and Mantel tests. Hierarchical relationships between the culturally defined regions were examined using two different analytical methods of phylogenetic tree constructions: neighbor-joining, and unweighted pair group average arithmetic (UPGMA). These results indicated the predominance of genetic homogeneity due to the gene flow between regions, but with some migration emanating from sub-Saharan Africa and Mediterranean Europe. Wright's F(ST) value of 0.0063, based on 16 alleles, suggested a relatively small genetic microdifferentiation of the regions. In Algeria, gene flow apparently swamped most of the effects of stochastic processes and disrupted the relationship between geography and genetics, as characterized by the isolation-by-distance model. Some genetic differences and similarities were observed between regions or clusters of regions. The resulting genetic structure of the Algerian populations is best explained by a combination of gene flow, ecology, and history.

Algeria↗
PubMed1987

Partial correlation of distance matrices in studies of population structure.

Anthropological studies of human population structure commonly compare various monogenic and polygenic (metric) distance matrices to distance matrices obtained from measures of geographical dispersion, linguistic differences, and migration patterns in an attempt to infer something about the effects of evolutionary factors (drift and differential selection, in particular). It is, though, commonly recognized that geography, language, and migration patterns may be intercorrelated due to the common effects of historical and social processes. Previous attempts to deal with the problems of assessing relative effects among such sets of intercorrelated factors using partial correlations have resulted in coefficients that are either not well defined or have no known sampling distribution or both. Here, we outline a general approach to partialling distance matrices that results in well-defined coefficients and valid significance testing procedures. Application of the matrix partialling methods to a variety of distance matrices obtained for a sample of eight ethnolinguistic groups from the Harvard Solomon Islands Expedition (Friedlaender et al., 1986) reveals a close association between language dissimilarity and dermatoglyphics controlling for geography, thus reinforcing earlier suggestions that dermatoglyphics, properly used, reflect historical relationships of groups in this region better than do anthropometry, odontometrics, or small batteries of blood polymorphisms.

Anthropology↗
PubMed2006

Navigating laparoscopic surgery into the next decade in developing countries - a personal perspective.

INTRODUCTION: Over 500 years ago, Vasco de Gama navigated from west to east, from Lisbon in Portugal to Calicut in India, in an epic voyage that lasted over 1 year (Fig. 1). This voyage was perhaps the greatest historic and, certainly, the greatest navigational achievement of the last millennium. For better or for worse, it catalysed a series of events that forever changed not only the history, but also the geography of the world. DISCUSSION: In our plans to navigate endoscopic surgery into the next decade in developing countries, we too should endeavour to change both the history and the geography of surgery. This talk traces a journey over 34 years of effort to spread laparoscopic surgery into developing countries.

Cholecystectomy, Laparoscopic↗
PubMed2000

The geographic distribution of cystic fibrosis mutations gives clues about population origins.

UNLABELLED: Information regarding three of the more common cystic fibrosis mutations is presented (delta F508, G542X, N13031K) to support the concept of a geography associated with cystic fibrosis mutations. We present the hypothesis that a knowledge of the geography of cystic fibrosis mutations is important for an understanding of genotype-phenotype correlations, gene flow, historical population migration and cystic fibrosis screening. CONCLUSION: A new method of study of mankind's cultural spread is being revealed and the survival of the various mutations supports the concept that they may provide a selective advantage to the carrier.

Africa↗
PubMed1991

Pioneer medical missions in colonial Africa.

Protestant and Roman Catholic missions pioneered Western medicine and public health in much of Africa decades in advance of health services provided by colonial governments. A century later church-based hospitals and health care programs continue to account for 25% to 50% of available services in most African countries. In view of the important historical and continuing role of medical missions it is remarkable that there have been no systematic scholarly studies of the impacts of these pioneer institutions on the geography of health and social change in colonial Africa. How, for example, was the health of African populations and the areas they inhabited changed by the activities of medical missions? And how did Africans respond to Western medicine and its alien institutional social and technological structures and relations? This paper develops the historical context and conceptual framework for investigating such topics. It presents a detailed research agenda organized around nine themes, each of which suggests a series of interrelated questions. The methodology employs the techniques of medical and historical geography, and is based on comparative, longitudinal case-studies of medical missions at the local level coupled with archival study.

Africa↗
PubMed1993

The inequalities of morbidity and mortality in Mauritius--its ethnic [correction of ethic] and geographic dimension.

This overview of the changing patterns of morbidity and mortality on the one hand and ethnicity and geographic variables on the other is an attempt to understand the changes which are taking place in the economic and social geography of Mauritius. Recently in the economic literature, there has been constant reference to the changes taking place in Mauritius. This article explores the changing patterns of morbidity and mortality based on official censuses, reports and studies. It further seeks to relate these to the geography of Mauritius.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Places of social poverty and service dependency of people with intellectual disabilities: a case study in Baltimore, Maryland.

In the United States, post-asylum geographies of people with intellectual disabilities implicate the condition of service dependency in their social impoverishment, here defined as "isolation from the community and lack of real friendships and relationships" (The importance of income. The Self-Determination National Program Office of the Institute on Disability, University of New Hampshire, Concord, 1998, p. 2). Social historical geographies of people with intellectual disabilities, both general and local to Baltimore, Maryland, contextualize how one voluntary service organization re/created service dependency and social poverty of people with intellectual disabilities through residential location decisions.

Baltimore↗
PubMed2005

Radiation oncology career decision variables for graduating trainees seeking positions in 2003-2004.

PURPOSE: Radiation oncology trainees must consider an array of variables when deciding upon an academic or private practice career path. This prospective evaluation of the 2004 graduating radiation oncology trainees, evaluates such variables and provides additional descriptive data. METHODS: A survey that included 15 questions (one subjective, eleven categorical, and 3 continuous variables) was mailed to the 144 graduating radiation oncology trainees in United States programs in January of 2004. Questions were designed to gather information regarding factors that may have influenced career path choices. The responses were anonymous, and no identifying information was sought. Survey data were collated and analyzed for differences in both categorical and continuous variables as they related to choice of academic or private practice career path. RESULTS: Sixty seven (47%) of the surveys were returned. Forty-five percent of respondents indicated pursuit of an academic career. All respondents participated in research during training with 73% participating in research publication authorship. Post graduate year-3 was the median in which career path was chosen, and 20% thought that a fellowship position was "perhaps" necessary to secure an academic position. Thirty percent of the respondents revealed that the timing of the American Board of Radiology examination influenced their career path decision. Eighteen variables were offered as possibly influencing career path choice within the survey, and the top five identified by those seeking an academic path were: (1) colleagues, (2) clinical research, (3) teaching, (4) geography, (5) and support staff. For those seeking private practice, the top choices were: (1) lifestyle, (2) practice environment, (3) patient care, (4) geography, (5) colleagues. Female gender (p = 0.064), oral meeting presentation (p = 0.053), and international meeting presentation (p = 0.066) were the variables most significantly associated with pursuing an academic career path. The following variables were ranked significantly differently in hierarchy (p < 0.05) by those seeking an academic versus private practice path with respect to having influence on the career decision: lifestyle, income, case-mix, autonomy, ability to sub-specialize, basic research, clinical research, teaching, patient care, board structure, practice environment, and mentoring. CONCLUSION: These data offer descriptive information regarding variables that lead to radiation oncology trainee career path decisions. Such information may be of use in modification of training programs to meet future personnel and programmatic needs within the specialty.

Career Choice↗