bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Previously described sequence variant in CDK5RAP2gene in a Pakistani family with autosomal recessive primary microcephaly
Authors: Hassan Muhammad Jawad , Khurshid Maryam , Azeem Zahid , John Peter , Ali Ghazanfar , Chishti Muhammad Salman , Ahmad Wasim 
Published: September 2007

Abstract

Background
Autosomal Recessive Primary Microcephaly (MCPH) is a disorder of neurogenic mitosis. MCPH leads to reduced cerebral cortical volume and hence, reduced head circumference associated with mental retardation of variable degree. Genetic heterogeneity is well documented in patients with MCPH with six loci known, while pathogenic sequence variants in four respective genes have been identified so far. Mutations in CDK5RAP2 gene at MCPH3 locus have been least involved in causing MCPH phenotype.

Methods
All coding exons and exon/intron splice junctions of CDK5RAP2 gene were sequenced in affected and normal individuals of Pakistani MCPH family of Kashmiri origin, which showed linkage to MCPH3 locus on chromosome 9q33.2.

Results
A previously described nonsense mutation [243 T>A (S81X)] in exon 4 of CDK5RAP2 gene has been identified in the Pakistani family, presented here, with MCPH Phenotype. Genomic and cDNA sequence comparison revealed that the exact nomenclature for this mutation is 246 T>A (Y82X).

Conclusion
Recurrent observation of Y82X mutation in CDK5RAP2 gene in this Pakistani family may be a sign of confinement of a rare ancestral haplotype carrying this pathogenic variant within Northern Pakistani population, as this has not been reported in any other population.
Meta-analysis of the literature on diagnostic accuracy of SPECT in parkinsonian syndromes
Authors: Vlaar Annemarie MM , van Kroonenburgh Marinus JPG , Kessels Alfons GH , Weber Wim EJ 
Published: September 2007

Abstract

Background
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. One of the most widely used techniques to diagnose PD is a Single Photon Emission Computer Tomography (SPECT) scan to visualise the integrity of the dopaminergic pathways in the brain. Despite this there remains some discussion on the value of SPECT in the differential diagnosis of PD. We did a meta-analysis of all the existing literature on the diagnostic accuracy of both pre- and post-synaptic SPECT imaging in the differential diagnosis of PD.

Methods
Relevant studies were searched in Medline, EMBASE and Cochrane databases with back-searching of their reference lists. We limited our analysis to studies with a clinically relevant methodology: i.e. when they assessed the ability of the SPECT to provide 1. diagnosis of PD in an early phase vs. normalcy; 2 diagnostic differentiation between PD and essential tremor (ET); 3. distinguishing between PD and vascular parkinsonism (VP); 4. delineation of PD from atypical parkinsonian syndromes (APS). Gold standard was, dependent on the study type, clinical examination at initial visit or follow-up, and/or response to dopaminergic agents.

Results
The search gave 185 hits, of which we deemed 32 suitable for our analysis. From these we recalculated the diagnostic odds ratio of SPECT for the clinical questions above. The pooled odds ratio (with 95%CI) for presynaptic SPECT scan's ability to distinguish between early PD and normalcy was 60 (13 – 277). For the ability to differentiate between PD and ET this ratio was 210 (79–562). The ratio for presynaptic SPECT's ability to delineate PD from VP was 105 (32 – 348). The mean odds ratio for the presynaptic SPECT scans to differentiate between PD and the two APS was 2 (1 – 4), and for the postsynaptic SPECT imaging this was 19 (9–36).

Conclusion
SPECT with presynaptic radiotracers is relatively accurate to differentiate patients with PD in an early phase from normalcy, patients with PD from those with ET, and PD from VP.
The accuracy of SPECT with both presynaptic and postsynaptic tracers to differentiate between PD and APS is relatively low.
Uncompleted Emergency Department Care: Patients Who Leave against Medical Advice
Authors: Ding Ru , Jung Julianna J. , Kirsch Thomas D. , Levy Frederick , McCarthy Melissa L. 
Published: September 2007

Objectives: To compare the patient characteristics, clinical conditions, and short‐term recidivism rates of emergency department (ED) patients who leave against medical advice (AMA) with those who leave without being seen (LWBS) or complete their ED care.Methods: All eligible patients who visited the ED between July 1, 2004, and June 30, 2005 (N= 31,252) were classified into one of four groups: 1) AMA (n= 857), 2) LWBS (n= 2,767), 3) admitted (n= 8,894), or 4) discharged (n= 18,734). The patient characteristics, primary diagnosis, and 30‐day rates of emergent hospitalizations, nonemergent hospitalizations, and ED discharge visits were compared between patients who left AMA and each of the other study groups. A Cox proportional hazards model was used to examine the influence of study group status on the risk of emergent hospitalization, adjusted for patient characteristics.Results: Patients who left AMA were significantly more likely to be uninsured or covered by Medicaid compared with those admitted or discharged (p < 0.001). The AMA visit rates were highest for nausea and vomiting (9.7%), abdominal pain (7.9%), and nonspecific chest pain (7.6%). During the 30‐day follow‐up period, patients who left AMA had significantly higher emergent hospitalization and ED discharge visit rates compared with each of the other study groups (p < 0.001). Insurance status, male gender, and higher acuity level were also associated with a significantly higher emergent hospitalization rate.Conclusions: Patients who leave AMA may do so prematurely, as evidenced by higher emergent hospitalization rates compared with those who LWBS or complete their care.
How do marital status, work effort, and wage rates interact?
Authors: Ahituv Avner , Lerman Robert I. 
Published: September 2007

AbstractHow marital status interacts with men’s earnings is an important analytic and policy issue, especially in the context of debates in the United States over programs that encourage healthy marriage. This paper generates new findings about the earnings-marriage relationship by estimating the linkages among flows into and out of marriage, work effort, and wage rates. The estimates are based on National Longitudinal Survey of Youth panel data, covering 23 years of marital and labor market outcomes, and control for unobserved heterogeneity. We estimate marriage effects on hours worked (our proxy for work effort) and on wage rates for all men and for black and low-skilled men separately. The estimates reveal that entering marriage raises hours worked quickly and substantially but that marriage’s effect on wage rates takes place more slowly while men continue in marriage. Together, the stimulus to hours worked and wage rates generates an 18%–19% increase in earnings, with about one-third to one-half of the marriage earnings premium attributable to higher work effort. At the same time, higher wage rates and hours worked encourage men to marry and to stay married. Thus, being married and having high earnings reinforce each other over time.
Self-selection and earnings assimilation: Immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Israel and the United States
Authors: Cohen Yinon , Haberfeld Yitchak 
Published: September 2007

Abstract
Drawing on U.S. decennial census data and on Israeli census and longitudinal data, we compare the educational levels and earnings assimilation of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union (FSU) in the United States and Israel during 1968–2000. Because the doors to both countries were practically open to FSU immigrants between 1968 and 1989, when FSU immigrants were entitled to refugee visas in the United States, the comparison can be viewed as a natural experiment in immigrants’ destination choices. The results suggest that FSU immigrants to the United States are of significantly higher educational level and experience significantly faster rates of earnings assimilation in their new destination than their counterparts who immigrated to Israel. We present evidence that patterns of self-selection in immigration to Israel and the United States—on both measured and unmeasured productivity-related traits—is the main reason for these results. When the immigration regulations in the United States changed in 1989, and FSU Jewish immigrants to the United States had to rely on family reunification for obtaining immigrant visas, the adverse effects of the policy change on the type of FSU immigrants coming to the United States were minor and short-lived. As early as 1992, the gaps in the educational levels between FSU immigrants coming to Israel and to the United States returned to their pre-1989 levels, and the differences in earnings assimilation of post-1989 immigrants in the United States and Israel are similar to the differences detected in the 1980s.
The political ecology of disaster: An analysis of factors influencing U.S. tornado fatalities and injuries, 1998–2000
Authors: Donner William R. 
Published: September 2007

AbstractThis study examines casualties from tornadoes in the United States between the years 1998 and 2000. A political model of human ecology (POET) was used to explore how the environment, technology, and social inequality influence rates of fatalities and injuries in two models. Data were drawn from four sources: John Hart’s Severe Plot v2.0, National Weather Service (NWS) Warning Verification data, Storm Prediction Center (SPC) watch data, and tract-level census data. Negative binomial regression was used to analyze the causes of tornado fatalities and injuries. Independent variables (following POET) are classified in the following manner: population, organization, environment, and technology. Rural population, population density, and household size correspond to population; racial minorities and deprivation represent social organization; tornado area represents environment; and tornado watches and warnings, as well as mobile homes, correspond to technology. Findings suggest a strong relationship between the size of a tornado path and both fatalities and injuries, whereas other measures related to technology, population, and organization produce significant yet mixed results. Census tracts having larger populations of rural residents was, of the nonenvironmental factors, the most conclusive regarding its effects across the two models. The outcomes of analysis, although not entirely supportive of the model presented in this study, suggest to some degree that demographic and social factors play a role in vulnerability to tornadoes.
Chronic conditions and the decline in late-life disability
Authors: Freedman Vicki A. , Schoeni Robert F. , Martin Linda G. , Cornman Jennifer C. 
Published: September 2007

AbstractUsing data from the 1997–2004 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), we examine the role of chronic conditions in recent declines in late-life disability prevalence. Building upon prior studies, we decompose disability declines into changes in the prevalence of chronic conditions and in the risk of disability given a condition. In doing so, we extend Kitigawa’s (1955) classical decomposition technique to take advantage of the annual data points in the NHIS. Then we use respondents’ reports of conditions causing their disability to repartition these traditional decomposition components. We find a general pattern of increasing prevalence of chronic conditions accompanied by declines in the percentage reporting disability among those with a given condition. We also find declines in heart and circulatory conditions, vision impairments, and possibly arthritis and increases in obesity as reported causes of disability. Based on decomposition analyses, we conclude that heart and circulatory conditions as well as vision limitations played a major role in recent declines in late-life disability prevalence and that arthritis may also be a contributing factor. We discuss these findings in light of improvements in treatments and changes in the environments of older adults.
A fixed-effects multilevel analysis of how community family structure affects individual mortality in Norway
Authors: Kravdal Øystein 
Published: September 2007

AbstractBy using register data for the entire Norwegian population aged 50–89 in the period 1980–1999, during which there were about 720,000 deaths, I estimate how the proportions of persons who were divorced or never married in the municipality affected all-cause mortality, net of individual marital status. The data include individual histories of changes in marital status and places of residence, providing a rare opportunity to enter municipality fixed effects into the model, thereby capturing the time-invariant unobserved factors at that level. The positive health externality of marriage that is suggested in the literature is supported by some of the estimates for women. Other estimates—especially those for men—point in the opposite direction. One possible interpretation of these findings is that social cohesion is perhaps not as beneficial for people’s health as often claimed, at least not for both sexes. Alternatively, the results may reflect that marriage perhaps undermines rather than strengthens social cohesion, or that other mechanisms are involved—for example, those that are related to people’s perceptions of their health relative to the health of others. Estimates from models without such municipality fixed effects are markedly different, but these also shed doubt on the notion that a high proportion of unmarried persons generally increases individual mortality.
National estimates of racial segregation in rural and small-town America
Authors: Lichter Daniel T. , Parisi Domenico , Grice Steven Michael , Taquino Michael C. 
Published: September 2007

Abstract
The objective of this paper is to provide, for the first time, comparative estimates of racial residential segregation of blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan places in 1990 and 2000. Analyses are based on block data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. decennial censuses. The results reveal a singularly important and perhaps surprising central conclusion: levels and trends in recent patterns of racial segregation in America’s small towns are remarkably similar to patterns observed in larger metropolitan cities. Like their big-city counterparts, nonmetropolitan blacks are America’s most highly segregated racial minority—roughly 30% to 40% higher than the indices observed for Hispanics and Native Americans. Finally, baseline ecological models of spatial patterns of rural segregation reveal estimates that largely support the conclusions reached in previous metropolitan studies. Racial residential segregation in rural places increases with growing minority percentage shares and is typically lower in “new” places (as measured by growth in the housing stock), while racially selective annexation and the implied “racial threat” at the periphery exacerbate racial segregation in rural places. Our study reinforces the need to broaden the spatial scale of segregation beyond its traditional focus on metropolitan cities or suburban places, especially as America’s population shifts down the urban hierarchy into exurban places and small towns.
Race and the spatial segregation of jobless men in urban America
Authors: Wagmiller Robert L. 
Published: September 2007

AbstractChanges in U.S. metropolitan areas over the past 30 years are thought to have concentrated jobless men in low-income, predominantly minority neighborhoods clustered near the center of the city. Using tract-level data from the Neighborhood Change Database for 1970–2000, I examine how the residential segregation of jobless from employed men has changed over the past three decades. I find that jobless men in U.S. metropolitan areas have become less uniformly distributed throughout the metropolis and more isolated, concentrated, and clustered since 1970; but they have also become less centralized. Racial and ethnic group differences in the spatial segregation of jobless men are large. Jobless black men occupy a uniquely disadvantaged ecological position in the metropolis: in comparison with other jobless men, they are much less uniformly distributed throughout the metropolis and much more isolated from employed men, they are concentrated in a smaller amount of physical space, and their neighborhoods are more clustered and are located closer to the center of the city. The dimensions of segregation strongly overlap for black jobless men, producing a multidimensional layering of segregation not encountered by other jobless men. Multivariate models reveal that the uniquely disadvantaged ecological position of jobless black men is less a reflection of different patterns of regional concentration and metropolitan settlement or of differences in group-status characteristics than it is an inevitable consequence of extreme levels of racial residential segregation in the United States.
The association of childhood socioeconomic conditions with healthy longevity at the oldest-old ages in China
Authors: Yi Zeng , Gu Danan , Land Kenneth C. 
Published: September 2007

AbstractBased on unique data from the largest-ever sample of the Chinese oldest-old aged 80 and older, our multivariate logistic regression analyses show that either receiving adequate medical service during sickness in childhood or never/rarely suffering from serious illness during childhood significantly reduces the risk of being ADL (activities of daily living) impaired, being cognitively impaired, and self-reporting poor health by 18%–33% at the oldest-old ages. Estimates of effects for five other indicators of childhood conditions are similarly positive but mostly not statistically significant. Multivariate survival analysis shows that better childhood socioeconomic conditions in general tend to reduce the four-year period mortality risk among the oldest-old. But after additional controls for 14 covariates are put into the model, the effects are not statistically significant, thus suggesting that most of the effects of childhood conditions on oldest-old mortality are indirect—at least to the point of affecting current health status at the oldest-old ages, which itself is strongly associated with mortality. While acknowledging limitations of the present analyses due to a lack of information on childhood illness, the oldest-olds’ recollection errors, and other data problems, we conclude, based on this and other studies, that policies that enhance childhood health care and children’s socioeconomic wellbeing can have large and long-lasting benefits up to the oldest-old ages.
Carbon Turnover and Ammonia Emissions during Composting of Biowaste at Different Temperatures
Authors: Eklind Ylva , Sundberg Cecilia , Smårs Sven , Steger Kristin , Sundh Ingvar , Kirchmann Holger , Jönsson Håkan 
Published: September 2007

AbstractThe effects of different process temperatures (40, 55, and 67°C) during composting of source‐separated household waste were studied in a 200 L compost reactor at an oxygen concentration of 16%. The overall decomposition measured as carbon mineralization, decomposition of different carbon constituents, and the dynamics of nitrogen mineralization and the microbial community, are reported. Ammonia emissions at 67°C were more than double those at lower temperatures, and they were lowest at 40°C. The decomposition rate, measured as CO2emission, was highest at 55°C. Decomposition of crude fat was slower at 40°C than at 55 and 67°C. The peak in microbial biomass was largest in the run at 40°C, where substantial differences were seen in the microbial community structure and succession compared to thermophilic temperatures. Biowaste composting can be optimized to obtain both a high decomposition rate and low ammonia emissions by controlling the process at about 55°C in the initial, high‐rate stage. To reduce ammonia emissions it seems worthwhile to reduce the temperature after an initial high‐temperature stage.
Dendrochemical Record of Historical Lead Contamination Sources, Wells G&H Superfund Site, Woburn, Massachusetts
Authors: Burnett Aaron , Kurtz Andrew C. , Brabander Daniel , Shailer Mark 
Published: September 2007

AbstractLaser‐ablation inductively coupled‐plasma mass‐spectrometry analysis of red oak (Quercus rubra) from a well documented heavy metal contaminated United States Environmental Protection Agency superfund site in Woburn, Massachusetts reveals decade‐long trends in Pb contaminant sources. Lead isotope ratios (207Pb/206Pb and208Pb/206Pb) in tree rings plot along a linear trend bracketed by several local and regional contamination sources. Statistically significant interannual variations in207Pb/206Pb suggest that atmospheric Pb is rapidly incorporated into wood, with minimal mobility subsequent to deposition in annual growth rings. We interpret the decadal trends in our record as a changing mixture of local pollution sources and gasoline‐derived Pb. Between 1940 and 1970, Pb was predominantly derived from remobilization of local industrial Pb sources. An abrupt shift in207Pb/206Pb may indicate that local Pb sources were overwhelmed by gasoline‐derived Pb during the peak of leaded gasoline emissions in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Comparison of Plant Families in a Greenhouse Phytoremediation Study on an Aged Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon–Contaminated Soil
Authors: Olson Paul E. , Castro Ana , Joern Mark , DuTeau Nancy M. , Pilon‐Smits Elizabeth A. H. , Reardon Kenneth F. 
Published: September 2007

AbstractPolycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous, recalcitrant, and potentially carcinogenic pollutants. Plants and their associated rhizosphere microbes can promote PAH dissipation, offering an economic and ecologically attractive remediation technique. This study focused on the effects of different types of vegetation on PAH removal and on the interaction between the plants and their associated microorganisms. Aged PAH‐polluted soil with a total PAH level of 753 mg kg−1 soil dry weight was planted with 18 plant species representing eight families. The levels of 17 soil PAHs were monitored over 14 mo. The size of soil microbial populations of PAH degraders was also monitored. Planting significantly enhanced the dissipation rates of all PAHs within the first 7 mo, but this effect was not significant after 14 mo. Although the extent of removal of lower‐molecular‐weight PAHs was similar for planted and unplanted control soils after 14 mo, the total mass of five‐ and six‐ring PAHs removed was significantly greater in planted soils at the 7‐ and 14‐mo sampling points. Poaceae (grasses) were the most effective of the families tested, and perennial ryegrass was the most effective species; after 14 mo, soils planted with perennial ryegrass contained 30% of the initial total PAH concentration (compared with 51% of the initial concentrations in unplanted control soil). Although the presence of some plant species led to higher populations of PAH degraders, there was no correlation across plant species between PAH dissipation and the size of the PAH‐degrading population. Research is needed to understand differences among plant families for stimulating PAH dissipation.