bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Protein translation, 2008
Authors: Kaeberlein Matt , Kennedy Brian K. 
Published: September 2008

SummaryThe important role that regulation of protein translation plays in determining longevity in invertebrate organisms became widely appreciated in 2007, with the publication of several papers discussed in last year's review. During 2008, several studies have further strengthened the idea that regulation of translation is one component of a highly evolutionarily conserved pathway that modifies longevity. Importantly, studies published this year also began to provide insights into specific mechanisms by which altered mRNA translation does (and in some cases does not) slow aging in invertebrate model organisms.
Persistence of HMO Performance Measures
Authors: Swaminathan Shailender , Chernew Michael , Scanlon Dennis P. 
Published: September 2008

Objective. To simplify the decision‐making process, we propose and implement an approach to assess the stability of health plan performance over time when multiple indicators of performance exist.Data Source. National Committee for Quality Assurance Health Care Effectiveness Data and Information Set data for childhood immunization for both publicly and nonpublicly reporting health plans between 1998 and 2002.Data/Study Design. We use longitudinal data to examine whether plan quality ratings are stable from year to year. We estimate a parametric Multiple Indicator Multiple Cause Model, a model which allows us to aggregate the multiple measures of performance. The model controls for observed characteristics of the plan and market, allowing for unmeasured heterogeneity.Principal Findings. We find moderate persistence in plan performance over time. A plan in the upper tier of performance in the year 1999 has only a 0.47 probability of remaining in the upper tier in the year 2001. Multiple years of good performance increase the probability of good performance in the future. For example, from the subset of plans in the upper tier of performance in 1999, 63 percent continued to perform in the upper tier in 2000. However, from the subset of plans in the upper tier in both 1998 and 1999, about three‐fourths of the plans continued to perform in the upper tier in the year 2000. Finally, better performance in the more recent past is more indicative of better performance in the future than better performance in the more distant past.Conclusions. Although there is some persistence in health plan ratings over time, it is not uncommon for ratings of plans to change between when the data are generated and when actions based on that data, such as employers' contracting decisions or consumers' enrollment decisions, may take effect. Decision makers should be cognizant of this issue and methods should be developed to mitigate its consequences.
Measuring Hospital Inefficiency: The Effects of Controlling for Quality and Patient Burden of Illness
Authors: Mutter Ryan L. , Rosko Michael D. , Wong Herbert S. 
Published: September 2008

Objective.To assess the impact of employing a variety of controls for hospital quality and patient burden of illness on the mean estimated inefficiency and relative ranking of hospitals generated by stochastic frontier analysis (SFA).Study Setting.This study included urban U.S. hospitals in 20 states operating in 2001.Data Design/Data Collection.We took hospital data for 1,290 hospitals from the American Hospital Association Annual Survey and the Medicare Cost Reports. We employed a variety of controls for hospital quality and patient burden of illness. Among the variables we used were a subset of the quality indicators generated from the application of the Patient Safety Indicator and Inpatient Quality Indicator modules of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality,Quality Indicatorsoftware to the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP), State Inpatient Databases. Measures of a component of patient burden of illness came from the application of theComorbidity Softwareto HCUP data.Data Analysis.We used SFA to estimate hospital cost‐inefficiency. We tested key assumptions of the SFA model with likelihood ratio tests.Principal Findings.The measures produced by theComorbidity Softwareappear to account for variations in patient burden of illness that had previously been masquerading as inefficiency. Outcome measures of quality can provide useful insight into a hospital's operations but may have little impact on estimated inefficiency once controls for structural quality and patient burden of illness have been employed.Conclusions.Choices about controlling for quality and patient burden of illness can have a nontrivial impact on mean estimated hospital inefficiency and the relative ranking of hospitals generated by SFA.
Case‐Mix Adjustment of Consumer Reports about Managed Behavioral Health Care and Health Plans
Authors: Eselius Laura L. , Cleary Paul D. , Zaslavsky Alan M. , Huskamp Haiden A. , Busch Susan H. 
Published: September 2008

Objective. To develop a model for adjusting patients' reports of behavioral health care experiences on the Experience of Care and Health Outcomes (ECHO™) survey to allow for fair comparisons across health plans.Data Source. Survey responses from 4,068 individuals enrolled in 21 managed behavioral health plans who received behavioral health care within the previous year (response rate=48 percent).Study Design. Potential case‐mix adjustors were evaluated by combining information about their predictive power and the amount of within‐ and between‐plan variability. Changes in plan scores and rankings due to case‐mix adjustment were quantified.Principal Findings. The final case‐mix adjustment model included self‐reported mental health status, self‐reported general health status, alcohol/drug treatment, age, education, and race/ethnicity. The impact of adjustment on plan report scores was modest, but large enough to change some plan rankings.Conclusions. Adjusting plan report scores on the ECHO survey for differences in patient characteristics had modest effects, but still may be important to maintain the credibility of patient reports as a quality metric. Differences between those with self‐reported fair/poor health compared with those in excellent/very good health varied by plan, suggesting quality differences associated with health status and underscoring the importance of collecting quality information.
Multilevel Analysis of the Chronic Care Model and 5A Services for Treating Tobacco Use in Urban Primary Care Clinics
Authors: Hung Dorothy Y. , Shelley Donna R. 
Published: September 2008

Objective. To examine the chronic care model (CCM) as a framework for improving provider delivery of 5A tobacco cessation services.Methods. Cross‐sectional surveys were used to obtain data from 497 health care providers in 60 primary care clinics serving low‐income patients in New York City. A hierarchical generalized linear modeling approach to ordinal regression was used to estimate the probability of full 5A service delivery, adjusting for provider covariates and clustering effects. We examined associations between provider delivery of 5A services, clinic implementation of CCM elements tailored for treating tobacco use, and the degree of CCM integration in clinics.Principal Findings. Providers practicing in clinics with enhanced delivery system design, clinical information systems, and self‐management support for cessation were 2.04–5.62 times more likely to perform all 5A services ( p<.05). CCM integration in clinics was also positively associated with 5As delivery. Compared with none, implementation of one to six CCM elements corresponded with a 3.69–30.9 increased odds of providers delivering the full spectrum of 5As ( p<.01).Conclusions. Findings suggest that the CCM facilitates provider adherence to the Public Health Service 5A clinical guideline. Achieving the full benefits of systems change may require synergistic adoption of all model components.
Assessing the Impact of Drug Use on Hospital Costs
Authors: Stuart Bruce C. , Doshi Jalpa A. , Terza Joseph V. 
Published: September 2008

Objective. To assess whether outpatient prescription drug utilization produces offsets in the cost of hospitalization for Medicare beneficiaries.Data Sources/Study Setting. The study analyzed a sample (N=3,101) of community‐dwelling fee‐for‐service U.S. Medicare beneficiaries drawn from the 1999 and 2000 Medicare Current Beneficiary Surveys.Study Design. Using a two‐part model specification, we regressed any hospital admission (part 1: probit) and hospital spending by those with one or more admissions (part 2: nonlinear least squares regression) on drug use in a standard model with strong covariate controls and a residual inclusion instrumental variable (IV) model using an exogenous measure of drug coverage as the instrument.Principal Findings. The covariate control model predicted that each additional prescription drug used (mean=30) raised hospital spending by $16 (p<.001). The residual inclusion IV model prediction was that each additional prescription fill reduced hospital spending by $104 (p<.001).Conclusions. The findings indicate that drug use is associated with cost offsets in hospitalization among Medicare beneficiaries, once omitted variable bias is corrected using an IV technique appropriate for nonlinear applications.
Maintaining Continuity of Care for Nursing Home Residents: Effect of States' Medicaid Bed‐Hold Policies and Reimbursement Rates
Authors: Intrator Orna , Schleinitz Mark , Grabowski David C. , Zinn Jacqueline , Mor Vincent 
Published: September 2008

Objective.Recent public concern in response to states' intended repeal of Medicaid bed‐hold policies and report of their association with higher hospitalization rates prompts examination of these policies in ensuring continuity of care within the broader context of Medicaid policies.Data Sources/Study Design.Minimum Data Set assessments of long‐stay nursing home residents in April–June 2000 linked to Medicare claims enabled tracking residents' hospitalizations during the ensuing 5 months and determining hospital discharge destination. Multinomial multilevel models estimated the effect of state policies on discharge destination controlling for resident, hospitalization, nursing home, and market characteristics.Results.Among 77,955 hospitalizations, 5,797 (7.4 percent) were not discharged back to the baseline nursing home. Bed‐hold policies were associated with lower odds of transfer to another nursing home (AOR=0.55, 95 percent CI 0.52–0.58) and higher odds of hospitalization (AOR=1.36), translating to 9.5 fewer nursing home transfers and 77.9 more hospitalizations per 1,000 residents annually, and costing Medicaid programs about $201,311. Higher Medicaid reimbursement rates were associated with lower odds of transfer.Conclusions.Bed‐hold policies were associated with greater continuity of NH care; however, their high cost compared with their small impact on transfer but large impact on increased hospitalizations suggests that they may not be effective.
Disegno and desire in Pontormo's Alessandro de’ Medici
Authors: Simons Patricia 
Published: September 2008

ABSTRACTPontormo's portrait of Alessandro de’ Medici (c. 1534–35), showing the duke drawing a portrait of his beloved, cleverly engages with the history and fictive nature of art‐making. Pliny's tale about the invention of drawing forms one resonance, Castiglione's praise of the noble art of drawing another, the theorization of disegno by Vasari and others yet a third. Poetic conventions about the picturing of the beloved inform the image of a ruler who is presented as a courtly lover, adept observer, discerning patron, Medicean loyalist, and cultivated prince. Layers of presence and absence, naturalism and idealism are at work in the image, which addresses the perspicacity of sight and the poetics of its very making. The duke adopts a mythic persona but so too does the painter endow his craft with a distinguished pedigree, ranging from Pliny, Petrarch and poets like Lorenzo de’ Medici to the era's notions of perceptual psychology, amorous imprinting and the conceptual basis of disegno.
Scholars and the Sea: A Historiography of the Indian Ocean
Authors: Prange Sebastian R. 
Published: September 2008

Abstract This essay won the 2007 History Compass Graduate Essay Prize, World Section. This article surveys the historiography of the Indian Ocean to examine the problems and opportunities of using maritime spaces as frameworks for world history studies. It first considers the problem of demarcating maritime space according to different material and mental definitions. Its second part assesses different periodizations that reflect the main themes of scholarly engagement with the Indian Ocean. The final section looks at the emerging field of network studies as a new approach to the study of interconnections across the Indian Ocean world.
Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English Worlds? A Four‐Nation Approach to the History of the British Empire
Authors: MacKenzie John M. 
Published: September 2008

AbstractA four‐nation approach to the history of the British Empire is becoming increasingly necessary. For a number of years, it has been accepted that the domestic history of the British and Hibernian Isles (sometimes known as the Atlantic Archipelago) can only be understood in terms of an analysis on the basis of the four constituent ethnicities of those islands (Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English). Even these four conceal further ethnic breakdowns, but they are the main categories which help to facilitate such an approach. The British Empire was supposed to act as a solvent for these different ethnicities and identities, but it can now be suggested, from recent work, that the reality was very different. The four nations each had separate relationships with empire and each identity was developed and enhanced rather than destroyed by the imperial experience. So far there have been separate studies of aspects of Scottish, Irish, Welsh and English empires. But there is now a need to bring them together to recognise the fact that the British Empire was merely a name which obscured many more complex phenomena. Members of each ethnicity interacted with empire, and its indigenous peoples, in different ways. Moreover, simple bilateral metropole‐periphery relations can no longer be sustained as a basis for analysis: empire constituted sets of multilateral relationships which help to explain both the expansion, settlement, and patterns of dominance of the imperial connection and also the pressures towards decolonisation.
The Medical History of South Africa: An Overview
Authors: Digby Anne 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThe article surveys half a century of historical writing on South African medicine, which is defined widely to include discussion of health care professions, public health, hospitals and asylums, and indigenous medicine as well as the cross‐overs and hybridisation between biomedicine and indigenous medicine. A rapidly growing historiography has been influenced both by general literature in the history of medicine as well as by the more specific context of South Africa. Here the colonial and post‐colonial pasts shape the present to an unusual extent and the legacy both of apartheid and of an ongoing democratic transformation impact on the historian's choice of subject.
Grieving Cosmopolitanism in Middle East Studies
Authors: Hanley Will 
Published: September 2008

AbstractPolitical philosophers and cultural theorists studying twenty‐first‐century globalization have found cosmopolitanism to be a productive concept. In Middle East scholarship, however, cosmopolitan has been less than effective. This review illustrates three characteristics of cosmopolitanism in Middle East historiography – elitism in formulation and content, grieving nostalgia, and the privileging of formal labels over content – with examples from nineteenth‐century cities and globalized metropolises. Scholars must confront the anti‐nationalist teleology and secularizing, bourgeois fantasy at the heart of cosmopolitanism as it is currently used if they are to produced more accurate accounts of diversity in Middle East societies past and present.
Convents and Nuns: New Approaches to the Study of Female Religious Institutions in Colonial Mexico
Authors: Chowning Margaret 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThis article serves as an introduction to the subject of the colonial Mexican convent for non‐experts, while surveying recent historiographical trends. In the past ten years, historical scholarship on nuns and convents has taken three broad directions. First, historians have begun to study other female religious institutions and other kinds of religious women than cloistered convents and nuns, though the number of works that explicitly compare these institutions and experiences is still disappointingly small. Second, historians have focused on the understudied sixteenth‐ and late eighteenth‐century convents, with the result that we are beginning to gain a textured understanding of how the convent changed over time and responded to changes in the world around it. Third, the older feminist scholarship that tended to characterize the convent as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for women – that is, either less subject to patriarchal maneuverings than the outside world, or more so – is being complicated by more subtle approaches that take nuns’ spirituality and the dynamics of community seriously. We are beginning to build a picture of a complex institution that still tells us much about women's experience in the colonial period, but also tells us a great deal about the institutional church and about the religious values of the broader society.
The Uncertain Death of Edward II?
Authors: Hamilton J.S. 
Published: September 2008

AbstractThe traditional account of the death of Edward II of England says that he died, probably murdered on the order of Roger Mortimer, 1st earl of March, at Berkeley Castle on September 21, 1327, and was buried at Gloucester Abbey on December 20, 1327. Rumors of his survival circulated soon after his death. Historians, particularly Ian Mortimer, have recently challenged the traditional view of the death of Edward II, suggesting that he did not die at Berkeley and was not buried at Gloucester in 1327. This article surveys the historical literature and evidence concerning the death of Edward II and concludes by endorsing the traditional view.
The Virtual and the Real: The Case of the Mysterious Documents from Naples
Authors: Andrien Kenneth 
Published: September 2008

AbstractIn 1996 Laura Laurencich Minelli, an archeologist at the University of Bologna announced the existence of a privately held series of documents and artifacts, known as the Naples documents,1 which claimed to undermine historical consensus about the Inca Empire, the Spanish Conquest of the Andes, and the well‐known historical sources. Most of the Naples documents were purportedly written by an enigmatic mestizo Jesuit, Blas Valera, whose works defending Inca culture and language had long been thought lost. These documents have created a series of acrimonious scholarly controversies over the authenticity of the Naples documents. The burden of proving the authenticity of the Naples documents, however, must lie with Laurencich Minelli and their other advocates, and to date, they have not done so.
Kanak Experiences of WWI: New Caledonia's Tirailleurs, Auxiliaries and ‘Rebels’
Authors: Muckle Adrian 
Published: September 2008

AbstractKanak, the indigenous Melanesians of New Caledonia, experienced the First World War as tirailleurs, auxiliaries and ‘rebels’. As volunteer tirailleurs, in 1916–18, Kanak fought and died in France and New Caledonia in the service of the French colonial administration. As ‘rebels’ many Kanak also died fighting against the French army and its Kanak auxiliaries in the north of New Caledonia in 1917–18 (the ‘1917’ revolt). Until the end of the twentieth century these varied experiences were largely ignored in local (New Caledonian), regional (Pacific islands) and international (French colonial) historiography. However, as New Caledonia acquires greater political autonomy and seeks to develop a local citizenship incorporating Kanak and New Caledonian identity within the French Republic, interest in New Caledonia's participation in the Great War has grown. A central issue is the extent to which recent writing and commemorations adequately take into account Kanak experiences and acknowledge the war fought in New Caledonia and its legacy.
Cerebral MRI abnormalities associated with vigabatrin therapy
Authors: Pearl Phillip L. , Vezina Louis G. , Saneto Russell P. , McCarter Robert , Molloy‐Wells Elizabeth , Heffron Ari , Trzcinski Stacey , McClintock William M. , Conry Joan A. , Elling Nancy J. , Goodkin Howard P. , De Menezes Marcio Sotero , Ferri Raymond , Gilles Elizabeth , Kadom Nadja , Gaillard William D. 
Published: September 2008

SummaryPurpose: Investigate whether patients on vigabatrin demonstrated new‐onset and reversible T2‐weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) abnormalities.Methods: MRI of patients treated during vigabatrin therapy was reviewed, following detection of new basal ganglia, thalamus, and corpus callosum hyperintensities in an infant treated for infantile spasms. Patients were assessed for age at time of MRI, diagnosis, duration, and dose, MRI findings pre‐, on, and postvigabatrin, concomitant medications, and clinical correlation. These findings were compared to MRI in patients with infantile spasms who did not receive vigabatrin.Results: Twenty‐three patients were identified as having MRI during the course of vigabatrin therapy. After excluding the index case, we detected new and reversible basal ganglia, thalamic, brainstem, or dentate nucleus abnormalities in 7 of 22 (32%) patients treated with vigabatrin. All findings were reversible following discontinuation of therapy. Diffusion‐weighted imaging (DWI) was positive with apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps demonstrating restricted diffusion. Affected versus unaffected patients, respectively, had a median age of 11 months versus 5 years, therapy duration 3 months versus 12 months, and dosage 170 mg/kg/day versus 87 mg/kg/day. All affected patients were treated for infantile spasms; none of 56 patients with infantile spasms who were not treated with vigabatrin showed the same abnormalities.Discussion: MRI abnormalities attributable to vigabatrin, characterized by new‐onset and reversible T2‐weighted hyperintensities and restricted diffusion in thalami, globus pallidus, dentate nuclei, brainstem, or corpus callosum were identified in 8 of 23 patients. Young age and relatively high dose appear to be risk factors.