Search results for " America."
showing 10 items of 686 documents
Forecasting Latin America’s Country Risk Scores by Means of a Dynamic Diffusion Model
2013
Over the last years, worldwide financial market instability has shaken confidence in global economies. Global financial crisis and changes in sovereign debts ratings have affected the Latin American financial markets and their economies. However, Latin American s relative resilience to the more acute rise in risk seen in other regions like Europe during last years is offering investors new options for improving risk-return trade-offs. Therefore, forecasting the future of economic situation involves high levels of uncertainty. The Country Risk Score (CRS) represents a broadly used indicator to measure the current situation of a country regarding measures of economic, political, and financial…
Carriage of Enterobacteria Producing Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamases and Composition of the Gut Microbiota in an Amerindian Community
2015
ABSTRACT Epidemiological and individual risk factors for colonization by enterobacteria producing extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (E-ESBL) have been studied extensively, but whether such colonization is associated with significant changes in the composition of the rest of the microbiota is still unknown. To address this issue, we assessed in an isolated Amerindian Guianese community whether intestinal carriage of E-ESBL was associated with specificities in gut microbiota using metagenomic and metatranscriptomic approaches. While the richness of taxa of the active microbiota of carriers was similar to that of noncarriers, the taxa were less homogeneous. In addition, species of four genera,…
Finger ridge-count asymmetry and diversity in Andean Indians and interpopulation comparisons
1998
A separate analysis of ulnar and radial finger ridge-counts, obtained from 115 Aymara Indians (55 males and 60 females) of northern Chile, was performed. From these variables, directional asymmetry, fluctuating asymmetry, indices of bilateral asymmetry (square root of A2), and intraindividual diversity (s/square root of 5) were calculated for each sex. The results show that most bimanual differences for the ridge-counts are not statistically significant in the Aymara, except for radial counts in female first and second fingers (right hand means are larger), while most ulnar-radial differences are highly significant in both sexes (radial values exceed ulnar ones). Most sex differences do not…
FUS mutations in sporadic amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
2011
Mutations in the FUS gene have recently been described as a cause of familial amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), but their role in the pathogenesis of sporadic ALS is unclear. We undertook mutational screening of all coding exons of FUS in 228 sporadic ALS cases, and, as previous reports suggest that exon 15 represents a mutational hotspot, we sequenced this exon in an additional 1295 sporadic cases. Six variants in six different cases were found, indicating that FUS mutations can underlie apparently sporadic ALS, but account for less than 1% of this form of disease. © 2010 .
Age Identification: A Comparison between Finnish and North-American Cultures
1998
This study examined perceptions of age among Finnish males and females in three age groups; twenty-five to thirty-nine-year-olds ( n = 446), forty to fifty-four-year-olds ( n = 482) and fifty-five to sixty-four-year-olds ( n = 427). The age perceptions of the Finnish sample were further compared with those of a North-American sample with corresponding age groups ( n = 169, n = 187, n = 222) reported by Barak, Stern, and Gould (1988). Four age concepts used were chronological age, subjective age, ideal age, and disparity age. As expected on the basis of previous studies in age identification, no difference was found between Finnish males and females in terms of subjective age. Ideal age, ho…
Perceived Racial/Ethnic Discrimination and Psychological Outcomes Among Adult International Adoptees in Finland: Moderating Effects of Social Support…
2015
Quantitative literature on international adoptees and racial/ethnic discrimination is lacking despite results in qualitative studies from Europe and the United States that have consistently indicated how racism constantly complicates adoptees' everyday lives. To advance the literature, the present study examined the prevalence of perceived racial/ethnic discrimination among 213 adult international adoptees in Finland (59.6% women and 40.4% men, mean age 24.1 years), and the association between perceived racial/ethnic discrimination and psychological well-being indicators, including psychological distress and sleeping problems. In addition, we examined social support and sense of coherence a…
Perceptions and experiences of parenthood and maternal health care among Latin American women living in Spain: A qualitative study
2013
Objective: to explore the experiences and perceptions of parenthood and maternal health care among Latin American women living in Spain. Design: an exploratory qualitative research using focus groups and thematic analysis of the discussion. Setting and participants: three focus groups with 26 women from Bolivia and Ecuador and three focus groups with 24 midwives were performed in three towns in the Valencian Community receiving a large influx of immigrants. Findings: the women interpreted motherhood as the role through which they achieve fulfilment and assumed that they were the ones who could best take care of their children. They perceived that men usually make decisions about sex and pre…
Etiologic Heterogeneity Among Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Subtypes: The InterLymph Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma Subtypes Project
2014
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) is the most common hematologic malignancy and the fifth most common type of cancer in more developed regions of the world (1). Numerous NHL subtypes with distinct combinations of morphologic, immunophenotypic, genetic, and clinical features are currently recognized (2,3). The incidence of NHL subtypes varies substantially by age, sex, and race/ethnicity (4–7). However, the etiological implications of this biological, clinical, and epidemiological diversity are incompletely understood. The importance of investigating etiology by NHL subtype is clearly supported by research on immunosuppression, infections, and autoimmune diseases, which are the strongest and most e…
Genome-Wide Association Studies of the PR Interval in African Americans.
2011
The PR interval on the electrocardiogram reflects atrial and atrioventricular nodal conduction time. The PR interval is heritable, provides important information about arrhythmia risk, and has been suggested to differ among human races. Genome-wide association (GWA) studies have identified common genetic determinants of the PR interval in individuals of European and Asian ancestry, but there is a general paucity of GWA studies in individuals of African ancestry. We performed GWA studies in African American individuals from four cohorts (n = 6,247) to identify genetic variants associated with PR interval duration. Genotyping was performed using the Affymetrix 6.0 microarray. Imputation was p…
Large-Scale Gene-Centric Meta-Analysis across 39 Studies Identifies Type 2 Diabetes Loci
2012
To identify genetic factors contributing to type 2 diabetes (T2D), we performed large-scale meta-analyses by using a custom ∼50,000 SNP genotyping array (the ITMAT-Broad-CARe array) with ∼2000 candidate genes in 39 multiethnic population-based studies, case-control studies, and clinical trials totaling 17,418 cases and 70,298 controls. First, meta-analysis of 25 studies comprising 14,073 cases and 57,489 controls of European descent confirmed eight established T2D loci at genome-wide significance. In silico follow-up analysis of putative association signals found in independent genome-wide association studies (including 8,130 cases and 38,987 controls) performed by the DIAGRAM consortium id…