1,721,096 research outputs found
Fish consumption and dementia in older people: impacts and determinants
Full text linkA thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement of the University of Wolverhampton for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Background: Dementia is one of the world's biggest health problems and is a major public health challenge that is becoming more common as the aged population grows. There is no known cure for dementia, and thus more efforts have been made to investigate its risk or protective factors for prevention. Previous studies suggested that increased consumption of fish reduces the risk of cardiovascular diseases. However, it is unclear whether the consumption of fish was associated with the risk of dementia and outcomes of people with dementia. Also, few studies have specifically examined factors influencing the consumption of fish in older people, despite the world population aging. The purpose of this research project was to conduct a systematic literature review and examine the determinants and impacts of fish consumption on the incidence and mortality of dementia in older people using a convergent parallel database mixed methodological approach.
Methods: This study employed a systematic literature review and a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches that is based on a large cohort study dataset from China and two focus group discussions from the United Kingdom. In 2007-2009, 6071 participants aged ≥60 years were randomly selected from urban and rural communities in five-provinces, China. Using a standard interview method, participants’ socio-economic status, disease risk factors and fish consumption over the past two years were documented at baseline and this was followed up until 2012. The data of the cohort were analysed in multivariate adjusted logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards regression models. In 2018, the focus group discussions that consisted of 12 older adults were conducted in the UK, and the qualitative data was analysed using thematic analysis.
Results: The findings of these studies demonstrated that increased consumption of fish was associated with reduced risk of dementia and all-cause mortality among older people. The study also examined and found that large socioeconomic inequalities, and certain lifestyle, psychosocial factors and health-related conditions are significant determinants of fish consumption. The qualitative study further revealed that participants consume fish for its taste, flavour, the desire for variety of food and the nutritional and health benefit including reducing the risk of dementia and other health outcomes. Although cost, bony/scaly fish, smell and availability/accessibility of fish were highlighted as the major barriers of fish consumption.
Conclusions: This research has provided evidence for preventing dementia and reducing all-cause mortality through adequate fish consumption. The findings of the study should be extended to improve public health policy, and this could form the basis for further research
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Risk factors and health effects of overweight and obesity in older adults
Full text linkA thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the University of Wolverhampton for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.Introduction: The older adult population is rapidly increasing, and overweight and obesity prevalence is fast rising in older people globally. It is unclear whether excess body weight in older age reduces or increases the risk of incident dementia and whether it prolongs survival. Evidence of the risk factors for overweight and obesity in older age is scarce. This thesis investigated the risk factors and health effects of overweight and obesity in older age, with a focus on their impacts on incident dementia and all-cause mortality.
Methodology: This study employed a mixed method of quantitative and qualitative approaches that are based on a large cohort study dataset from China and two focus group discussions from the United Kingdom. The cohort consisted of 3,336 participants in total: 1,736 aged >= 65 years recruited from urban areas in 2001 and 1,600 aged>=60 years from rural areas in 2003 in Anhui province, China. In the standard methods of interview, they were documented for sociodemographic, lifestyle, social network, disease, and other risk factors at the baseline survey. Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist circumference (WC) were measured, and dementia was diagnosed by the GMS-AGECAT for each of the participants. The cohort members were followed up for 10 years to monitor mortality and examine the cause of death. There were three waves of interview for surviving cohort members during the follow up to document incident dementia apart from the causes of mortality. The data of the Anhui cohort study were analysed in multivariate Logistic and Cox regression models. Two focus groups research were conducted in Wolverhampton UK. It included 12 twelve older adults who were recruited from the community through their place of worship. The focus group data were collected in a digital audiotape. They were transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically.
Findings: The data from the cohort wave three surveys showed that the risk factors for overweight and obesity in older people included female gender, low education, low income, residing in urban areas, being married, watching TV/reading newspapers, and hypertension at baseline. Over the 10-year follow-up, 271 participants were diagnosed as having incident dementia. The continuous BMI at baseline increased the risk of incident dementia (multivariate-adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.06, 95%CI 1.00-1.11). There was no significant increase in OR in participants who were overweight (1.34, 0.91-1.98) and obese (1.52, 0.86-2.70) when compared to normal weight, but separate data by gender showed that dementia risk was significantly increased in men with overweight (3.09, 1.65-5.77) and obesity (4.19, 1.75-10.03) and not in women (0.74, 0.43-1.27; 0.72, 0.32-1.64). The prediction was similar regardless of different adiposity measures used; the risk of dementia was elevated in non-smokers with obesity measured by BMI (4.28, 1.46-12.53) and in non-smokers with waist circumference classed as action level two (3.19, 1.04-9.77). The Anhui cohort data did not show significantly reduced mortality in older people with overweight (HR 0.78, 95%CI 0.56-1.08) and obese BMI (0.79, 0.47-1.33) when compared to normal BMI. There were no gender differences. But the risk of all-cause mortality was significantly increased in older people with underweight (2.04, 1.25-3.33), and the sex-stratified data analysis showed a stronger effect in men (2.31, 1.21-4.42) and not in women (1.59, 0.73-3.44). The focus group data also supported such findings of deleterious effects of overweight and obesity by major themes including theme-harm, impairment, and mortality.
Conclusions: Overweight and obesity in older age increased the risk of incident dementia. They were not significantly associated with reduced risk of mortality although underweight increased the risk. Curtailing overweight and obesity and maintaining normal weight in older age could help reduce the risk of developing dementia and extend survival
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Age-related disparities in modifiable risk factors for diabetes in adult populations
Full text link© 2021 The Author. Published by Elsevier. This is an open access article available under a Creative Commons licence. The published version can be accessed at the following link on the publisher’s website: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2666-7568(21)00214-2Published versio
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