bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Review: The treatment of irritable bowel syndrome
Authors: Lacy Brian E. , Weiser Kirsten , De Lee Ryan
Published: June 2009

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a highly prevalent functional bowel disorder routinely encountered by healthcare providers. Although not life-threatening, this chronic disorder reduces patients' quality of life and imposes a significant economic burden to the healthcare system. IBS is no longer considered a diagnosis of exclusion that can only be made after performing a battery of expensive diagnostic tests. Rather, IBS should be confidently diagnosed in the clinic at the time of the first visit using the Rome III criteria and a careful history and physical examination. Treatment options for IBS have increased in number in the past decade and clinicians should not be limited to using only fiber supplements and smooth muscle relaxants. Although all patients with IBS have symptoms of abdominal pain and disordered defecation, treatment needs to be individualized and should focus on the predominant symptom. This paper will review therapeutic options for the treatment of IBS using a tailored approach based on the predominant symptom. Abdominal pain, bloating, constipation and diarrhea are the four main symptoms that can be addressed using a combination of dietary interventions and medications. Treatment options include probiotics, antibiotics, tricyclic antidepressants, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and agents that modulate chloride channels and serotonin. Each class of agent will be reviewed using the latest data from the literature.
Review: Predicting response to anti-TNF agents for the treatment of Crohn's disease
Authors: Siegel Corey A. , Melmed Gil Y.
Published: June 2009

The arrival of anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) agents has led to a dramatic improvement in the care of patients with Crohn's disease. Since these medications do not work in everyone, and are associated with rare, but serious side effects, we want to selectively treat patients who have the highest chance of responding. A number of variables have been studied to determine their association with response to anti-TNF agents. Clinical parameters include patient characteristics, smoking status and disease phenotype, and biologic markers include C-reactive protein, serum TNF levels and immune responses to microbial antigens. More recently, research has focused on genetics to identify polymorphisms associated with treatment response. Results from individual studies of these factors have not yet allowed for solid clinical applicability. However, further work in this area along with multivariate clinical prediction modeling may soon allow us to deliver `personalized medicine' by predicting individualized treatment response in patients with Crohn's disease.
Re-using intermittent pneumatic compression garments designed for single-patient-use is a potential source of cross-infection
Authors: Tweed Carol , Wigglesworth Neil
Published: June 2009

Hospital acquired illnesses such as healthcare associated infection (HCAI) and venous thromboembolism (VTE) are often preventable; however, they occur frequently, are hugely expensive and cause increased patient morbidity and mortality.

Intermittent pneumatic compression (IPC) has been proven to reduce the risk of patients developing a deep vein thrombosis (DVT). DVT prophylaxis IPC garments are designed to be single patient use, however anecdotally some hospitals re-use these products on multiple patients. This study examines the bacterial bio-burden present on IPC garments from three different manufacturers after an episode of single patient use and compares these results to a sample of unused (clean) garments. Sixty-one percent of used garments recorded >100 colony forming units (CFU) present on at least one sample plate, while the samples taken from unused garments reported either no growth (67%) or had very few organisms (less than five CFU) present (33%). IPC garment wear time and/or presence of graduated compression stockings worn beneath the garment had no impact on reducing the garment bio-burden.

After an episode of single patient use, IPC garments carry a significant bio-burden and could be a source of pathogens. DVT prophylaxis IPC garments should be utilised as single patient use.
Appraising the need for tighter control over the practices of the tattooing and body piercing industry
Authors: Chalmers Claire
Published: June 2009

Tattooing and body piercing have had a resurgence in popularity over the past few decades, taking the activities of the industry from a place on the fringes of society into a position of mainstream status. This shift has led to debate on the level of legislation and control over the industry's practices, where concerns around risk to public health from such practices have prompted calls for tighter control over the industry (Anderson, 2006; Noah, 2006).

This debate, however, is arguably more complex than simply reflecting upon the association between tattooing and body piercing activities and the risk of infection.

This is the second in a three-part series of articles on the topical issue of tattooing and body piercing. It highlights and discusses additional key factors that have been influential, either explicitly or implicitly, within the debate to determine the need for tighter controls over the tattooing and body piercing industry.
A review of the risks and disease transmission associated with aerosol generating medical procedures
Authors: Davies Anna , Thomson Gail , Walker Jimmy , Bennett Allan
Published: June 2009

Several medical procedures, including bronchoscopy, intubation, and non-invasive ventilation, frequently used in the treatment or diagnosis of respiratory diseases, have been identified as potentially `aerosol generating'. It is thought that the nature of the `aerosol generating' procedure (`AGP') results in an infectious aerosol beyond that which would normally be released by a patient coughing, breathing, or talking, presenting an increased risk to any healthcare worker in proximity to the patient. Smoke models on dummies have provided a visual image of possible aerosol behaviour and indicate a possible zone of transmission. However, they are not necessarily representative of the behaviour of a respiratory aerosol and any infectious particles contained therein. No quantitative study has yet been carried out on AGPs. Bronchoscopy and sputum induction have been associated with nosocomial transmission of tuberculosis, and guidelines have been produced describing the appropriate ventilation, isolation and respiratory protection that should be applied when carrying out such procedures. The uncertainty surrounding AGPs makes it difficult to construct effective infection control policy. The protection of healthcare workers is paramount. However, during a pandemic, resources may be stretched. Therefore it is important to clarify whether these procedures do generate aerosols.
Et Nunc... Per Hoc Signum: A Meditation on Genitives in Everyday Life Stories
Authors: Mudimbe V. Y.
Published: June 2009

Looking at texts in everyday life might seem an effort in both detachment and critical indifference. But, is it really? Texts deliver their visibility in the contrasts spelled out by a grammar in which qualities and functions depend on word orders and the intervention of prepositions. An inwardness documents their features, substantiates fragile items in comparison with a Greek or Latin declension and word-ending systems. It may detail signals, for example, the supernatural traits of an absent Momma, the virtues of a mythic figure, gendered labors, and only interpretive but systematic comparisons with different linguistic tables and memorial substantives. From the linguistic background—genetically identical with English and some twenty centuries distant—an old Greek or Latin framework transforms reading into a perpetual exercise in comparative interpretations. The main functions of the genitive might thus serve the task of a first vignette.
A Future for Africana (Post-)Analytic Philosophy
Authors: Taylor Paul C.
Published: June 2009

Recent years have brought substantial changes in the conditions that motivate and frame the work of Africana philosophy. Racist domination has largely given way to racialized hegemony; formal colonization has largely given way to neoliberal trade, aid, and debt regimes; and towering revolutionaries and reformers continue to give way to younger generations of politicians, scholars, artists, and activists. In light of these and other developments, it is important to ask about the future of Africana philosophy. More precisely, in light of the ideological, discursive, and methodological variety in the field, and the variety of issues that Africana peoples face around the world, it is important to think about some futures for Africana philosophy. I propose to think here about one, by examining some recent developments in and near Africana analytic philosophy. I will focus specifically on work by Bernard Boxill, Tommie Shelby, Cathy Cohen, and Michael Dawson.
Untimeliness, or Négritude and the Poetics of Contramodernity
Authors: Melas Natalie
Published: June 2009

This essay aims to develop the notion of untimeliness in order to complicate the often mimetic historicism that underwrites approaches to the question of colonial and postcolonial modernities and modernism. Starting from Homi Bhabha's notion of contramodernity, particularly in its response to Michel Foucault's ontology of the present, the essay reexamines the cultural ideology and poetics of négritude in light of the idea of an untimely and fractured present. At the center of the analysis is Aimé Césaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land. Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida are also mentioned.
“The Death of the Novel” And Its Afterlives: Toward a History of the “Big, Ambitious Novel”
Authors: Greif Mark
Published: June 2009

The category of the “big, ambitious novel,” circumscribing works by authors such as Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, David Foster Wallace, and William Vollmann, has come to constitute one of the major forms through which postwar U.S. fiction is sorted and evaluated. A history of this form must not start in the 1970s, however, nor with distant forerunners such as James Joyce's Ulysses, but from 1945. After the Second World War, critics and novelists negotiated the sort of literature that would count as great after the end of high modernism, in service of a new humanism. The novels Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison and The Adventures of Augie March by Saul Bellow succeeded stylistically and thematically where Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea and William Faulkner's A Fable did not. They offered a new vitality to overcome critics' discourse of the “death of the novel” and probed new forms of human peculiarity that managed fears of the decline of the will of “man.” This long history helps to extend our understanding of the origins and significance of interminable and system-centered fictions denounced by critics such as James Wood as mere “hysterical realism.” It reorients contemporary criticism of these books to the shared, credible subjects of enforced liveliness and endlessness in narration, and a longer-term questioning of the human in a wider range of American fictions. It also shows how the novelists' apparent betrayal of humanist concerns actually emerged from earlier stages of interaction between novelists and mistrustful critics.
The Liberal Form: An Interview with Jonathan Franzen
Authors: Connery Christopher , Franzen Jonathan
Published: June 2009

Christopher Connery and Jonathan Franzen recorded this interview at a moment when Franzen's new work in progress was morphing into something quite different from the original plan. The discussion was fairly wide ranging—it touched on topics of regionalism, character, the novel versus the short story, and contemporary politics, but it was centered on the social and political capacity of the modern novel, the form's ability to reflect on or respond to its times, the novel's relationship to society, and the nature of politics in the current period, a period marked, in contrast to the nineteenth-century heyday of the realist novel, by a host of other media allowing for more immediate, constant, and comprehensive representations of the social and political. What can the novel add, in this mediated environment?

The interview touches on the blurred distinctions between the public and the private in the contemporary United States. Franzen reflects on the challenges that this situation of cultural entropy poses to the novelist, and on the capacity of the novel to respond to or affect this situation. Recognizing and rejecting the temptation in fiction to convey authoritative knowledge of or judgment on the social world, Franzen is inspired by fiction's capacity—when it is true to its exploratory, inventive, and creative character—to convey something significant about individual and social life, and about the complicated intersection of public and private. Throughout the interview, he shows a deep commitment to his readers and to the pleasure of reading.
Violence and the Human Voice: Critique and Hope in Native Speaker
Authors: Arac Jonathan
Published: June 2009

Chang-Rae Lee's Native Speaker (1995) demonstrates the work a novel can do in speaking (up) for the human in the current life of the United States, even though the novel as an institution has become residual, as print literature yields to other media forms. Through his epigraph from Walt Whitman and his structural echoes of American first-person narratives such as Moby-Dick, The Great Gatsby, All the King's Men, and Invisible Man, Lee troubles the autoethnographic mode that he employs, in common with other important Asian American writings. Lee's work combines imaginative political vision with a commitment to the interpersonal intimacies of language in the human mouth, speaking across ethnic and racial lines.
The Brand as Cognitive Map in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition
Authors: Konstantinou Lee
Published: June 2009

This essay analyzes William Gibson's eighth novel, Pattern Recognition, and argues that Gibson uses literary style to invite his readers to embrace the ethos of the coolhunter. Modeled on but not identical to Cayce Pollard's “violent reactivity to the semiotics of the marketplace,” Gibson's proposed coolhunting ethos treats the brand name as a cognitive map of the multinational economic supply chains that underlie the glossy surface of the brand.

The need for such a mapping exists because, across many industries, the brand has been transformed from a way of insuring product quality into a piece of intellectual property valuable in and of itself. As multinational corporations have outsourced less profitable areas of production, and brand ownership has become relatively more profitable, the connection between any particular brand name and the supply chains supporting it is increasingly concealed within a global maze of anonymous subcontractors.

Gibson's coolhunting aesthetic seeks to transform the reader's relationship to the “logo-maze,” to reconnect the free-floating brand to the hidden supply chains behind it. I relate this project of relinking to what Bruce Robbins has called the “sweatshop sublime” and to popular notions of ethical consumption and argue that Gibson's coolhunter is a modified type of ethical consumer, a person able to map economic systems onto personal meanings as meanings, translating the behavior of the market not into a more just price point at the mall but into an aesthetic sensibility.
Do They Believe in Magic? Politics and Postmodern Literature
Authors: McClure John A.
Published: June 2009

In “`Do You Believe in Magic?' Literary Thinking After the New Left,” Sean McCann and Michael Szalay argue that postmodern American novelists, by celebrating “the spontaneous, the symbolic, and ultimately the magical” undermine the good sense of progressive thought and contribute to the hegemony of neoliberalism. That literary thinking in the contemporary American novel breaks with conventional progressive thinking in several ways is undeniable. But that it does so in a manner consistent with the “magical thinking” of the sixties and inconsistent with the broader progressive project is not. On the contrary, many of the writers McCann and Szalay indict—Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, and Toni Morrison, for instance—are as aware of the limits of magical politics as they are, and as committed to a chastened, melioristic model of social struggle. Where the novelists break with McCann and Szalay, this article argues, is in their readiness to grapple with the profound crisis of ideas and strategies that overtook the Left in the second half of the twentieth century, as the tenets of traditional progressive thought and struggle came to seem ever less efficacious. The break with conventional ideas and strategies of struggle, the turn to spirituality, and the exploration of practices of retreat in this literature needs to be seen as an effort to negotiate this crisis and imagine new forms of progressive becoming. In developing this argument, the article draws heavily on William Connolly's efforts to imagine a new progressivism in Capitalism and Christianity, American Style.
Rwanda's Bones
Authors: Guyer Sara
Published: June 2009

The genocide memorials in Rwanda that preserve and expose the bones of the dead, including Nyamata, Nyarubuye, and Murambi, reflect a complex, unstable distinction between the commemoration of the destruction of a population (genocide) and the commemoration of death in general. At the moment that these memorials bear witness to genocide as genocide, by viewing the victims anonymously, as the perpetrators also viewed them, they also show that the difference between genocide and mass death cannot be represented by bones. In this way, they collapse the foundations of two apparently, and necessarily, opposed ways of seeing. Thus, far from solving problems of testimony by displaying hard evidence of death, the memorials reveal anew the necessity of an impossible testimony, that is, a testimony of the dead.
“Empire of the Machine”: Oil in the Arabic Novel
Authors: McLarney Ellen
Published: June 2009

Mechanization of human life is the main subject of the oil novel, a genre that charts the explosion of industrial production in the remote regions of the earth. One of the products of this process is a nostalgic vision of nature, imagined as an untouched, utopian paradise. Agrarian existence becomes infused with authenticity, valorized as a site of cultural origins, and envisioned as an antidote to the globalizing force of the military-industrial complex. This essay examines two seminal works in the canon of Arabic literature, Ghassan Kanafani's Rijal fi al-Shams (Men in the Sun, 1963) and `Abd al-Rahman Munif's Mudun al-Milh (Cities of Salt, 1984). Both depict metaphysical, transcendent worlds that are destroyed by the inexorable march of modernity. These narratives begin with idealized agrarian communities but climax with the metamorphosis of humanity into a machinelike entity. Machines preside over—and embody—the ritualistic state of transition to the age of technology. There is a spiritual cost to this material transformation. Apocalyptic imagery permeates the novels' climactic scenes, as the natural order is turned upside down, man falls from the garden, and paradise is lost. The world is abandoned by God, Lukács very definition of the novel. Paradoxically, it is precisely through this loss that Kanafani and Munif become modern novelists, producing a sacralized aura of authenticity that they then proceed to destroy.
Promises of Violence: David Cronenberg on Globalized Geopolitics
Authors: Lowenstein Adam
Published: June 2009

In his two most recent films, Eastern Promises (2007) and A History of Violence (2005), the director David Cronenberg turns his attention more specifically than ever before to the conjuncture of violence and globalized geopolitics. The resulting illumination of how violence circulates in a global era where we are shown so much but see so little represents a crucial political turn for Cronenberg. Analyzing this turn invites consideration, through a particularly ambitious case, of how commercial narrative cinema might imagine globalized geopolitics after 9/11. These two films bring to light something too often invisible in today's world: the imbrication of America with Russia, of London with Indiana, of Iraq with Chechnya at the level of shared violence. Shared, that is, in the most intimate sense of the body, not some abstractly conceptual “global village.” When we fail to see and feel globalized geopolitics in this way, Cronenberg suggests, we risk the worst kinds of political and ethical blindness.
Confucianism, Humanism, and Human Rights
Authors: Waters Lindsay
Published: June 2009

Although Westerners are apt to say, without much on-the-ground knowledge of China, that China's population is irredeemably conformist, in fact both Chinese and American societies have a strong inclination to conformism, which is why great American thinkers have, again and again, through the life of the Republic, condemned that propensity to submit to government authority and the opinion of the majority. The Chinese praise the rebel against authority in a way that would shock foreigners who think only in stereotypes. The problem at the present time in the world, and especially in the United States and China, is that the bureaucrat and the authoritarian have a tendency to dominate their societies, and the system thus squashes the individual. Waters suggests we need a new theory of fascism to analyze how insidiously authoritarianism is creeping into power worldwide. Against the demands of the group, Waters sees the individual as a countervailing force.
The Hardest Magnet from a Coordination Polymer of Alternating Cobalt(II)–Radical Heterospins
Authors: Okamura Yoshitomo , Nogami Takashi , Ishida Takayuki
Published: June 2009

A coordination polymer [Co(hfac)2·L] (L = o-ethoxyphenyl nitronyl nitroxide) was prepared, structurally characterized, and revealed to show a record coercive field of 54 kOe at 6 K. The magnetic easy axis was found to be perpendicular to the chain direction. Interchain dipolar coupling is important for the bulk and/or single-chain properties in this series.
Direct Deposition of Au Nanoparticles onto TiO2 Rods
Authors: Das Jaykrushna , Rane Gayatri , Khushalani Deepa
Published: June 2009

A novel nongrafting route has been developed to anchor Au nanoparticles (NPs) onto titanium oxide rods. These rods have been synthesized through a process involving a glycolate precursor. A facile solid-state transformation allows anatase and rutile phases to be formed without the overall rod-like morphology being altered. Importantly, the sizes of the rods can be controlled through varying reflux time and temperature only, and hence the procedure does not necessitate the use of additives. These rods have then been used as supports to deposit Au NPs through a simple method that relies on hydrophobic interactions.
Synthesis of Indolo[2,3-b]quinolines by Palladium-catalyzed Annulation of Unsaturated Isothioureas
Authors: Takeda Hiroshi , Ishida Takayuki , Takemoto Yoshiji
Published: June 2009

Treatment of 1-(2-alkynyl)phenyl-3-aryl-2-methylisothioureas with 5 mol % [Pd(η3-C3H5)Cl]2 in the presence of CuTC (copper thiophenecarboxylate) and Cs2CO3 at 130 °C provided a wide range of 6-N-alkylated indolo[2,3-b]quinolines in good yields.
Synthesis of Carboxylic Group Functionalized Monodispersed Mesoporous Silica Spheres (MMSSs) via Costructure Directing Method
Authors: Chen Qianru , Han Lu , Che Shunai
Published: June 2009

MMSSs with radially oriented porous structure were successfully synthesized by using cationic gemini surfactant as template and carboxyethylsilanetriol sodium salt (CES) as costructure-directing agent (CSDA). Particle size can be controlled by adding different cosolvent such as isopropanol, methanol, ethanol, or dimethyl sulfoxide.
O2 Binding Properties of Human Serum Albumin Quadruple Mutant Complexed Iron Protoporphyrin IX with Axial His-186 Coordination
Authors: Nakagawa Akito , Komatsu Teruyuki , Curry Stephen , Tsuchida Eishun
Published: June 2009

The O2 binding properties of complexes of iron(II) protoporphyrin IX with quadruple mutants of recombinant human serum albumin (rHSA) that provide axial His-186 coordination have been characterized; their O2 binding parameters were similar to those of analogues having proximal His-185 and of human red blood cells.
Ambidextrous Gel Property and pH-Responsive Sol–Gel Transition of Low Molecular Mass Gelator Based on a Long-chain Amide Derivative
Authors: Imura Yoshiro , Matsue Keisuke , Sugimoto Hiroki , Ito Reizo , Kondo Takeshi , Kawai Takeshi
Published: June 2009

An amphiphilic compound of long-chain amide derivative bearing hydroxy groups as the terminal groups possessed an ambidextrous gel property, i.e., it made gels in both organic solvents and in aqueous solutions. Further, sol–gel transition of the hydrogel was able to be controlled reversibly by pH. Small-angle X-ray scattering and FT-IR measurements showed that the main interaction of the aggregate formation was hydrogen bonding between the amide groups and that the aggregates had lamellar structures in both the organogel and the hydrogel.
Synthesis of Ordered Cage-like Mesoporous Aluminosilicates from Na-A Zeolite Precursors Dissolved in HCl
Authors: Tanaka Shunsuke , Nakatani Norihito , Miyake Yoshikazu
Published: June 2009

Highly ordered cubic mesoporous aluminosilicates were synthesized using PEO106PPO70PEO106 triblock copolymer and aluminosilicate sols containing Si–O–Al bonds, which are obtained by dissolving Na-A type zeolite in HCl, under mild acidic conditions (pH 1.9–3.2).
Spiro-ammonium Imide Salts as Electrolytes for Lithium Batteries
Authors: Abu-Lebdeh Yaser , Austin Emily , Davidson Isobel J
Published: June 2009

Organic salts based on the bicyclic (spiro) ammonium cation were synthesized with a systematic variation in the size of the rings. The salts show high melting points and plastic crystal phases. The SP-56 salt showed the lowest melting point, highest ionic conductivity, and a reduction potential more positive than that of the Li/Li+ couple; therefore, it was mixed with EC before being employed in a Li/LiFePO4 battery. The battery maintained capacities between 100 and 113 mA h g−1 over 100 cycles.
Lactone Formation on Carbonaceous Materials during Electrochemical Oxidation
Authors: Nose Masafumi , Kinumoto Taro , Choo Hyun-Suk , Miyazaki Kohei , Abe Takeshi , Ogumi Zempachi
Published: June 2009

We focused on lactone formation during the electrochemical oxidation of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) as a model carbonaceous material for use in polymer electrolyte fuel cells in the potential range between 0.6 and 1.0 V against a normal hydrogen electrode. Lactone groups could be identified on the oxidized HOPG surface after holding at 1.0 V. Therefore, lactone groups are formed from the reaction between carbonyl groups and carboxylic groups as an intermediate in the electrochemical carbon oxidation reaction to CO2 evolution.
Henry Reaction Catalyzed by Aminopropylated Nanosilica
Authors: Hagiwara Hisahiro , Sekifuji Masayoshi , Tsubokawa Norio , Hoshi Takashi , Suzuki Toshio
Published: June 2009

The Henry reaction was catalyzed by 0.01 equiv of aminopropylated nanosilica particles (nano-NAP) in refluxing nitroalkanes to provide nitrostyrenes in good yields. The catalyst could be recycled up to three times in 76% average yield.
Demographic Variations in HIV Testing History among Emergency Department Patients: Implications for Hiv Screening in US Emergency Departments
Authors: Merchant Roland C , Catanzaro Bethany M , Seage George R , Mayer Kenneth H , Clark Melissa A , Degruttola Victor G , Becker Bruce M
Published: June 2009

Objective

To determine the proportion of emergency department (ED) patients who have been tested for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection and assess if patient history of HIV testing varies according to patient demographic characteristics.

Design

From July 2005–July 2006, a random sample of 18–55-year-old English-speaking patients being treated for sub-critical injury or illness at a northeastern US ED were interviewed on their history of HIV testing. Logistic regression models were created to compare patients by their history of being tested for HIV according to their demography. Odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated.

Results

Of 2107 patients surveyed who were not known to be HIV-infected, the median age was 32 years; 54% were male, 71% were white, and 45% were single/never married; 49% had private health-care insurance and 45% had never been tested for HIV. Of the 946 never previously tested for HIV, 56.1% did not consider themselves at risk for HIV In multivariable logistic regression analyses, those less likely to have been HIV tested were male (OR: 1.32 [1.37–2.73]), white (OR: 1.93 [1.37–2.73]), married (OR: 1.53 [1.12–2.08]), and had private health-care insurance (OR: 2.10 [1.69–2.61]). There was a U-shaped relationship between age and history of being tested for HIV; younger and older patients were less likely to have been tested. History of HIV testing and years of formal education were not related.

Conclusion

Almost half of ED patients surveyed had never been tested for HIV. Certain demographic groups are being missed though HIV diagnostic testing and screening programmes in other settings. These groups could potentially be reached through universal screening.
Variation in the Cervical Cancer Screening Compliance among Women with Disability
Authors: Chen Long-Sheng , Chou Yiing-Jenq , Tsay Jen-Huoy , Lee Cheng-Hua , Chou Pesus , Huang Nicole
Published: June 2009

Objective

To investigate the relationship between the level of disability and regular Pap smear testing among women in Taiwan and explore how this relationship may vary with the various levels of physician availability.

Methods

This population-based cohort study followed a total of 5,469,581 women from Taiwan, who were 30 years old or older in 2001 and covered the period January 2001 to December 2003. Of the total study population, 184,701 individuals were women with disability. Gynecologist-obstetrician/general practitioner to female population ratio was used as an indicator of physician availability. Multiple logistical regression models were used.

Results

After adjusting for age, socioeconomic status, racial group, residence area and physician availability, women with severe disability (OR = 0.38; 95% CI: 0.38, 0.39) were the least likely to undergo Pap smear testing. Women with moderate disability (OR = 0.59; 95% CI: 0.58, 0.60) and mild disability (OR = 0.88; 95% CI: 0.86, 0.89) were also significantly less likely to undergo a routine test than women without disability. Women residing in the areas with the greatest physician availability (OR = 0.93; 95% CI: 0.93, 0.94) were significantly less likely to undergo a Pap test than those in the areas with the lowest level of resource availability. The disparity in routine screening between women with and without disability remained across the different levels of physician availability.

Conclusions

In Taiwan, women with disability were found to be at higher risk of lower compliance than women without disability. The gap between women with and without disability persisted across different levels of physician availability.
Validity of Self-reported Pap Smear History in Norwegian Women
Authors: Klungsøyr Ole , Nygård Mari , Skare Gry , Eriksen Tormod , Nygård Jan F
Published: June 2009

Objectives

To assess the validity of self-reported Papanicolau (Pap) smear history in Norwegian women and to identify characteristics that influence the validity.

Methods

Interview data from a sample of 16,574 Norwegian women, aged 18–45, in 2004–2005, was compared with information from the population-based cytology register. Crude validity in the self-reports with respect to ever/never having taken a Pap smear was summarized. The validity of the reported interval since last Pap smear was assessed by a smoothed distribution of the reported interval, stratified by the registered interval. Characteristics of influence on validity were identified by logistic regression for true positives (sensitivity and positive predictive value), true negatives (specificity and negative predictive value) and for more than one year discrepancy in time since last Pap smear, between reported and registered interval.

Results

Overall validity was summarized by: concordance = 0.9, sensitivity = 0.97, positive predictive value = 0.92, specificity = 0.55, negative predictive value = 0.78 and report-to-records ratio = 1.51. The variance in the reported interval increased proportionally with the registered interval, and women tended to underestimate the interval (telescoping). Age and registered number of years since last Pap smear had the strongest influence on ever/never and time interval validity, respectively.

Conclusions

Estimated screening rates, based on self-reporting without organized screening, are biased. Telescoping leads to increased risk for developing invasive disease, because women will postpone their next Pap smear.
League Tables of Breast Cancer Screening Units: Worst-case and Best-case Scenario Ratings Helped in Exposing Real Differences between Performance Ratings
Authors: Lemmers Oscar , Broeders Mireille , Verbeek André , Den Heeten Gerard , Holland Roland , Borm George F
Published: June 2009

Objectives

Data on the performance of health boards, hospitals and medical specialists, etc., are being collected at various levels in the health-care system and are often presented as league tables. These tables ignore natural variation and/or confounders, and this introduces uncertainty about their interpretation. The purpose of this study was to devise and illustrate a method to expose the real difference between the ratings in league tables.

Methods

Two values per rating were added to the league tables: the best-case scenario and the worst-case scenario. True performance will lie somewhere between these two values. The method is illustrated using data from the Dutch breast cancer screening programme.

Results

By focusing on one performance indicator and one confounder, it was possible to show shifts in the rating order of breast cancer screening units and thus expose the uncertainty about the true performance of each screening unit.

Conclusions

The worst-case and best-case scenario ratings demonstrated the uncertainty within the ratings of a league table. League tables should therefore only be used with great caution and after providing the public with sufficient information.
Differences in Endpoints between the Swedish W-E (Two County) Trial of Mammographic Screening and the Swedish Overview: Methodological Consequences
Authors: Holmberg L , Duffy S W , Yen A M F , Tabár L , Vitak B , Nyström L , Frisell J
Published: June 2009

Objectives

To characterize and quantify the differences in the number of cases and breast cancer deaths in the Swedish W-E Trial compared with the Swedish Overview Committee (OVC) summaries and to study methodological issues related to trials in secondary prevention.

Setting

The study population of the W-E Trial of mammography screening was included in the first (W and E county) and the second (E-county) OVC summary of all Swedish randomized mammography screening trials. The OVC and the W-E Trial used different criteria for case definition and causes of death determination.

Method

A Review Committee compared the original data files from Wand E county and the first and second OVC. The reason for a discrepancy was determined individually for all non-concordant cases or breast cancer deaths.

Results

Of the 2615 cases included by the W-E Trial or the OVC, there were 478 (18%) disagreements. Of the disagreements 82% were due to inclusion/exclusion criteria, and 18% to disagreement with respect to cause of death or vital status at ascertainment. For E-County, the OVC inclusion rules and register based determination of cause of death (second OVC) rather than individual case review (W-E Trial and 1st OVC) resulted in a reduction of the estimate of the effect of screening, but for W-County the difference between the original trial and the OVC was modest.

Conclusions

The conclusion that invitation to mammography screening reduces breast cancer mortality remains robust. Disagreements were mainly due to study design issues, while disagreements about cause of death were a minority. When secondary research does not adhere to the protocols of the primary research projects, the consequences of such design differences should be investigated and reported. Register linkage of trials can add follow-up information. The precision of trials with modest size is enhanced by individual monitoring of case status and outcome status such as determination of cause of death.
The Ability of the Quadruple Test to Predict Adverse Perinatal Outcomes in a High-risk Obstetric Population
Authors: Lao Michael R , Calhoun Byron C , Bracero Luis A , Wang Ying , Seybold Dara J , Broce Mike , Hatjis Christos G
Published: June 2009

Objective

To determine the ability of the quadruple Down's syndrome screening test (quad screen) to predict other adverse perinatal outcomes (APO) in a high-risk obstetric population.

Setting

A tertiary medical centre in West Virginia.

Methods

We retrospectively reviewed 342 obstetric patients with quad screen data from a single clinic. The quad screen included maternal serum levels of alphafetoprotein (AFP), human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), uncongjugated oestriol (uE3), and inhibin A. The risk of APO was compared between patients with at least one abnormal marker versus no abnormal markers and ≥2 abnormal markers versus <2 abnormal markers. Abnormal markers were determined by cut-off values produced by Receiver Operator Characteristic (ROC) curves and the FASTER trial. Unadjusted and adjusted effects were estimated using logistic regression analysis.

Results

The risk of having an APO increased significantly for patients with abnormal markers by about three-fold using ROC and two-fold using FASTER trial thresholds.

Conclusions

The quad screen shows value in predicting risk of APO in high-risk patients.
Adjustment of Serum Markers in First Trimester Screening
Authors: Lambert-Messerlian Geralyn , Palomaki Glenn E , Canick Jacob A
Published: June 2009

First trimester combined screening can be performed using maternal serum pregnancy-associated plasma protein A, total human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and ultrasound measurement of nuchal translucency at 11–13 weeks of pregnancy. Our objective was to explore the effects of covariates on total hCG in the first trimester. First trimester total hCG levels were significantly increased in twins (median = 1.87 MoM), mildly increased in pregnancies achieved by in vitro fertilization (1.04 MoM) and decreased in smokers (0.80 MoM).
Book Review
Authors: Henry Ann
Published: June 2009

Understanding criminal behaviour, psychosocial approaches to criminality

D. W. Jones Devon: Willan Publishing, 2008.
The Other as Brother: Nation Building and Ethnic Ambivalence in Early Jewish-Israeli Anthropology
Authors: Goodman Yehuda , Loss Joseph
Published: June 2009

Most depictions of "peripheral," nation-states' anthropologies assume that the anthropology's Other is a given, pre-defined subordinated group. Using the beginnings of Israeli anthropology (1960s–1970s) as our case study, we explore instead how while appropriating academic dominant paradigms of the time and aspiring to national unity, Israeli anthropologists were articulating through their choices of research subjects and research topics, and through their interpretations of the field an ethnic difference between themselves, European Jews and their "brothers," Oriental Jews. We follow the ambivalent discursive strategies through which this research project was created, and explore its implications for understanding other nation-building anthropologies.
The Wedding Banquet Revisited: "Contract Marriages" Between Korean Gays and Lesbians
Authors: Cho John (Song Pae)
Published: June 2009

This paper examines how Korean gays and lesbians negotiate South Korea's heteronormative system anchored in the heterosexual and patriarchal family through marriages of convenience ("contract marriages"). Korean gays and lesbians pursue contract marriages in order to fulfill their filial duties to marry, while maintaining their gay and lesbian lifestyles. Yet, in pursuing contract marriages as individuals but in the service of conforming to the family, they both reinscribe and transform the heteronormative values of marriage, family, and children. They also challenge the Westernized model of the "out and proud" gay or lesbian.
On Church Grounds: Political Funerals and the Contest to Lead Catholic Ireland
Authors: Brophy Thomas J.
Published: June 2009

Political funerals organized by Irish nationalists, who intended to use the heady mixture of sacred ceremony and political imperative to create a secular sainthood, bedeviled much of Cardinal Paul Cullen’s Dublin episcopate (1852–78). Cullen, who did not share the principles or aspirations of the men who sought his acquiescence in their funereal ventures, would not countenance the use of church resources or rituals as means to what he perceived as irreligious republican ends. In the competition for the political allegiance of Ireland’s Catholics these demonstrations came to epitomize the divide between the cardinal and nationalists from parliamentary and militant groups.
The Spirit of Martí in the Land of Coaybay
Authors: Price Rachel
Published: June 2009

[U]no de los dilemas irresolubles del futuro de Cuba es, precisamente, la extranjería de su pasado.

—Rafael Rojas, Tumbas sin sosiego
This article analyzes a shift in Republican-era Cuban literature from a preoccupation with romantic notions of sovereignty to concerns with neocolonial status and consumption, as read through representations of José Martí’s relics and spirit. Examining works by José Antonio Ramos, Bonifacio Byrne, and José Lezama Lima, among others, I argue that Martí’s ghostly return in post-1902 literature may be attributed to multiple, but related factors: (1) his prophetic measures were stymied in neocolonial Cuba; (2) the nation as such—even Martí’s re-imagination of it—remains haunted by what it excludes; and (3) Martí’s status as a specter, a material form of the immaterial, mirrors a Republican Cuba whose sovereignty and territory were eviscerated by foreign capital.
Plants and Progress: Rethinking the Islamic Agricultural Revolution
Authors: Decker Michael
Published: June 2009

Since it was first proposed in the 1970s, the concept of an Islamic agricultural revolution, in which new plants and techniques spread rapidly from east to west and transformed agriculture in the Mediterranean basin, has gained widespread acceptance. Based on an investigation of a sample of plants, the present article argues that changes in farming attributed to the era of classical Islam were far more complex and distended than previously acknowledged. This casts doubt on the validity of the theory of a medieval "green revolution" and calls for a reexamination of its fundamental tenets.
Pictorial Representations of British America Resisting Rape: Rhetorical Re-Circulation of a Print Series Portraying the Boston Port Bill of 1774
Authors: Olson Lester C.
Published: June 2009

Michael Warner and others have characterized "circulation" as enabling a composition to address an audience of strangers who, by devoting attention to it, become its public. To examine Warner's notion critically, this essay traces the "re-circulation" of one eighteenth-century print to argue that, despite the seemingly stable surface imagery, the composition's migration across place, time, and medium affected the eventfulness and timeliness of its contingent meanings and the shifting terrain of its rhetorical usages. Re-circulation can be rhetorical in that it is both a response to an earlier version and a reshaping of it for other, sometimes overlapping audiences.
Political Economy and Rhetorical Matter
Authors: Murphy John M.
Published: June 2009

In March, 2008, a major financial crisis began with the collapse of the investment firm Bear Stearns. Each of the three remaining presidential candidates, John McCain, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Barack Obama, responded to that exigence with a major address during the week of March 24. This essay explores the visions of political economy forwarded by the three senators. It suggests that they understand the economic activity through fundamentally different principles: virtue, expertise, and contingency, respectively.
2009 CLAH Luncheon Address: Recuerdos/Remembrances
Authors: Lavrin Asunción
Published: June 2009

There is a special relationship between historians and remembering as an act of the will. Forgetting is not what we are supposed to do or want to do. As people, historians love to remember and act deliberately to achieve the reconstruction of the past, which is itself the product of as many forms of remembrance and memory-keeping as there are people who want to remember—about themselves, their actions, their sentiments, and their understanding of the world in which they lived. Pursuing that objective I would like to share with my audience at this luncheon and later with my readers some memories of my life as a historian. Through sharing them I know we will come closer together as friends and colleagues.
The Political Sociology of a Concept: Corporatism and the “Distinct Tradition”
Authors: Wiarda Howard J.
Published: June 2009

The field of Latin American Studies owes much to Professor Howard J. Wiarda, whose pioneering work on “corporatism” and political culture during the 1960s and 1970s helped establish a new conceptual paradigm for interpreting the persistence of corporately defined, institutional identities throughout Latin America, despite the purported triumph of the “Liberal Tradition.” A child of Dutch parents, his early travels throughout Africa, Asia, and Latin America sparked a keen interest in the question of “third world development.” Entering graduate school in the early 1960s, Professor Wiarda gravitated to the newly emergent field of modernization studies at the University of Florida, where he received his masters and doctorate degrees in Latin American politics. It was a time of tremendous social ferment in Latin America and his early fieldwork took him to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Brazil, among other places. In each instance, he found recognizable patterns that transcended geographic locations, patterns that seemed to directly challenge the predominant arguments set forth in the modernization literature at the time.
Catalytic hydrogenolysis of ethanol organosolv lignin
Authors: Nagy Máté , David Kasi , Britovsek George J.P. , Ragauskas Arthur J.
Published: June 2009

The production of ethanol based on lignocellulosic materials will bring about the coproduction of significant amounts of under-utilized lignin. This study examines the potential of conventional heterogeneous and novel homogeneous catalysts for the selective cleavage of the aryl-O-aryl and aryl-O-aliphatic linkages of ethanol organosolv lignin to convert it from a low grade fuel to potential fuel precursors or other value added chemicals. The development of hydrogenolysis conditions that effectively increase the solubility of lignin were initially examined with Ru(Cl)2(PPh3)3 and demonstrated the ability to decrease the molecular weight and enhance the solubility of the lignin polymer. Later studies examined several heterogeneous and homogeneous hydrogenation catalysts at optimized reaction conditions resulting in 96.4% solubility with Ru(Cl)2(PPh3)3, increase in H/C ratio with Raney-Ni, Pt/C and extensive monomer formation with NaBH4/I2. The changes in molecular structure of lignin were followed by size exclusion chromatography, qualitative and quantitative NMR spectroscopy and elemental analysis. These studies demonstrated that aryl-O-aryl and aryl-O-aliphatic linkages could be cleaved and the hydrogenated lignin had a decrease in oxygen functionality and the formation of products with lower oxygen content.