1,721,169 research outputs found
Worldwide trends in suicide mortality, 1955-1989
No full textPatterns and trends in suicide mortality for the period 1955-89 for 57 countries (28 from Europe, the former Soviet Union, Canada, the United States, 14 Latin American countries, 8 from Asia and 2 from Africa, Australia and Oceania) were analyzed on the basis of official death certification data included in the World Health Organization mortality database. Over the most recent calendar quinquennium (1985-1989), Hungary had the highest rate for men (52.1 per 100,000, all ages, world standard), followed by Sri Lanka (49.6), Finland (37.2) and a number of central European countries. North American, Japan, Australia and New Zealand and several European countries had intermediate suicide rates (between 15 and 25 per 100,000), whereas overall mortality from suicide was low in the United Kingdom, southern Europe, Latin America and reporting countries and areas from Africa and Asia, except Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong. The pattern for women was similar, although the absolute values were considerably lower. The highest values were in Sri Lanka (19.0 per 100,000), followed by Hungary (17.6) and several other central European countries, with rates between 9 and 15 per 100,000. Female suicide rates were comparatively elevated in Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Cuba. With respect to trends over time, the figures were relatively favourable in less developed areas of the world, including Latin America and several countries from Asia, with the major exception of Sri Lanka. Of concern are, in contrast, the upward trends, particularly for elderly men in Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand and, mostly, the substantial rises over most recent decades of suicide rates in young cohorts of males in Japan and several European countries, Australia and New Zealand. These trends were often in contrast with more favourable patterns in women, and can be discussed in terms of ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic factors, aspects of psychiatric care or availability of instruments and methods of suicide
Trends in mortality from bronchial asthma in Switzerland, 1969-1993
No full textSeveral unfavourable trends and epidemics of fatal asthma have been registered in various developed countries of Europe, the United States and New Zealand over the last three decades. These have been related to problems in the treatment of the disease, following the introduction and/or inappropriate utilization of selected beta-agonist treatments. Thus, trends in mortality rates from bronchial asthma have been analyzed in Switzerland, where the Eighth Revision of the International Classification of Diseases has been in operation from 1969 to 1993. Overall age-standardized mortality rates (world standard) declined, from 4.3/100,000 males in 1969-73 to 2.8 in 1989-93, and from 2.0 to 1.5/100,000 females. The declines were consistent in both sexes for the age group 35 to 64 years, and some downward trend was observed also above age 65, particularly in males. Asthma mortality trends were inconsistent in children and young adults ( < 35 years), with some increase in males aged 15 to 34 after 1983, in the absence however of any significant linear trend in rates. Thus, trends in asthma mortality in Switzerland showed a moderate and steady decline in rates, particularly in middle aged males, in the absence of any systematic upward trend or epidemic peak. Still, the trends were only moderately favourable, and in the early 1990's about 250 deaths per year were attributed in Switzerland to bronchial asthma, i.e. an avoidable, in principle, cause of death
Mortality from benign prostatic hyperplasia : worldwide trends 1950-92
No full textStudy objective - To provide a systematic overview of worldwide trends in mortality from benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) over the past four decades.
Design - This was a descriptive analysis based on age adjusted mortality rates for BPH between 1950 and 1999 for 41 countries from five continents.
Setting - Official death certifications from the World Health Organization database.
Main results - In the 1950s, the highest age adjusted (on the world standard population) mortality rates for BPH in Europe were in Denmark (22.8/100 000) and Germany (18.1), followed by Scandinavian countries, the UK, and Switzerland. Italy had rates around 10/100 000, and rates were lower in eastern and southern Europe (5-8/100 000). Between 1950 and 1990, a fall of over 90%, or even 95%, was observed in most western European countries. Thus, in the early 1980s, overall mortality from BPH ranged between 0.5 and 1.5/100 000 in most western European countries. In proportional terms, similar reductions were registered in other developed countries of North America, Asia (that is, Japan or Singapore), and Oceania. A fall in rates was also observed in eastern Europe and in Latin America, particularly from the late 1970s onwards, although these reductions were generally much smaller. Thus, in the early 1990s, most countries in these areas had BPH rates between 1 and 5/100 000. The pattern of trends was, at least qualitatively, similar at younger ages, although most falls were proportionally greater.
Conclusions - The most probable interpretation of these trends is that therapeutic improvements - including more widespread and timely surgery, introduction of less invasive techniques, such as transurethral prostatectomy, and possibly the development of medical treatments - have had a favourable and substantial impact on BPH mortality. There are, however, areas of the world, including several countries of western Europe and South America, where rates are still very high
Worldwide patterns of cancer mortality, 1985-89
No full textHistograms of all age-standardized death certification rates from 26 cancers or groups of cancers and total cancer mortality for the most recent calendar quinquennium (generally 1985-89) were produced for 55 countries: 26 in Europe, the former Soviet Union (USSR), three in North America, 13 in Latin America and the Caribbean, two in Africa, eight in Asia and two in Oceania, providing interpretable data to the World Health Organization database. Major differences were observed for all common cancer sites, including stomach (49/100,000 males in Costa Rica, 38 in the USSR and Japan vs 5/100,000 in the United States), intestines (over 25/100,000 males in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and New Zealand vs 10-15/100,000 in Japan and Southern Europe and less than 5/100,000 in most Latin American and Asian countries), lung (over 70/100,000 in Belgium, Scotland, The Netherlands, Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and less than 20/100,000 in most Latin American and Asian countries; over 20/100,000 females in Britain, Hong Kong, the United States and Denmark vs less than 5/100,000 in France, Spain and again most areas of Asia and Africa providing data; breast (over 25/100,000 females in Great Britain, New Zealand, Belgium, The Netherlands and Uruguay, vs less than 10/100,000 in Japan, Hong Kong and most Latin American countries). Thus, there was over a fivefold variation in total cancer mortality for both sexes, the highest rates being in Hungary (237/100,000) and Czechoslovakia (229/100,000) for males, and in Denmark (142/100,000) and Scotland (138/100,000) for females. Although problems of validity and reliability of cancer death certification, mostly in developing countries, may in part explain this variation, these substantial differences are at least in part real and essentially reflect, besides the impact of breast cancer in females and of stomach and colorectal cancer in both sexes, the different spectrum of the tobacco-related lung cancer epidemic in the two sexes and in various areas of the world
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
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
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