Search results for "North America"
showing 10 items of 109 documents
Decolonizing Othello in search of black feminist North American identities: Djanet Sears' Harlem duet and Toni Morrison's Desdemona
2017
<p>The plays <em>Harlem duet </em>(1997) by African Canadian playwright Djanet Sears and <em>Desdemona </em>(2012) by Toni Morrison signify upon European texts aiming to carve out a new definition of what it means to be black in North America. Therefore both texts make for interesting reading in the study of (black) identity construction within US and Canadian contexts for, by revising Shakespeare’s <em>Othello</em>, they rethink and rewrite a social and racial reality unrelentingly disrupted by difference and hybridity. Sears’ play establishes a specific reading of Canadianness in dialogue with African America to erect a possibility of healing and …
Adolescents' medicine use for headache: secular trends in 20 countries from 1986 to 2010
2015
BACKGROUND: This study reports secular trends in medicine use for headache among adolescents in 20 countries from 1986 to 2010.METHODS: The international Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey includes self-reported data about medicine use for headaches among nationally representative samples of 11-, 13- and 15-year-olds. We included 20 countries with data from at least three data collection waves, with a total of 380 129 participants.RESULTS: The prevalence of medicine use for headaches varied from 16.5% among Hungarian boys in 1994 to 62.9% among girls in Wales in 1998. The prevalence was higher among girls than boys in every country and data collection year. The prevalenc…
Maternal body mass index, gestational weight gain, and the risk of overweight and obesity across childhood: An individual participant data meta-analy…
2019
Background Maternal obesity and excessive gestational weight gain may have persistent effects on offspring fat development. However, it remains unclear whether these effects differ by severity of obesity, and whether these effects are restricted to the extremes of maternal body mass index (BMI) and gestational weight gain. We aimed to assess the separate and combined associations of maternal BMI and gestational weight gain with the risk of overweight/obesity throughout childhood, and their population impact. Methods and findings We conducted an individual participant data meta-analysis of data from 162,129 mothers and their children from 37 pregnancy and birth cohort studies from Europe, No…
Do firms share the same functional form of their growth rate distribution? A statistical test
2014
We introduce a new statistical test of the hypothesis that a balanced panel of firms have the same growth rate distribution or, more generally, that they share the same functional form of growth rate distribution. We applied the test to European Union and US publicly quoted manufacturing firms data, considering functional forms belonging to the Subbotin family of distributions. While our hypotheses are rejected for the vast majority of sets at the sector level, we cannot rejected them at the subsector level, indicating that homogenous panels of firms could be described by a common functional form of growth rate distribution.
Personal protective equipment and intensive care unit healthcare worker safety in the COVID-19 era (PPE-SAFE): An international survey
2020
Purpose To survey healthcare workers (HCW) on availability and use of personal protective equipment (PPE) caring for COVID-19 patients in the intensive care unit (ICU). Materials and method A web-based survey distributed worldwide in April 2020. Results We received 2711 responses from 1797 (67%) physicians, 744 (27%) nurses, and 170 (6%) Allied HCW. For routine care, most (1557, 58%) reportedly used FFP2/N95 masks, waterproof long sleeve gowns (1623; 67%), and face shields/visors (1574; 62%). Powered Air-Purifying Respirators were used routinely and for intubation only by 184 (7%) and 254 (13%) respondents, respectively. Surgical masks were used for routine care by 289 (15%) and 47 (2%) for…
Regional and global contributions of air pollution to risk of death from COVID-19
2020
Abstract Aims The risk of mortality from the coronavirus disease that emerged in 2019 (COVID-19) is increased by comorbidity from cardiovascular and pulmonary diseases. Air pollution also causes excess mortality from these conditions. Analysis of the first severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV-1) outcomes in 2003, and preliminary investigations of those for SARS-CoV-2 since 2019, provide evidence that the incidence and severity are related to ambient air pollution. We estimated the fraction of COVID-19 mortality that is attributable to the long-term exposure to ambient fine particulate air pollution. Methods and results We characterized global exposure to fine particulates…
Hospitalisation and length of hospital stay following first-episode psychosis:Systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal studies
2019
AbstractBackgroundReducing hospitalisation and length of stay (LOS) in hospital following first episode psychosis (FEP) is important, yet reliable measures of these outcomes and their moderators are lacking. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to investigate the proportion of FEP cases who were hospitalised after their first contact with services and the LOS in a hospital during follow-up.MethodsStudies were identified from a systematic search across major electronic databases from inception to October 2017. Random effects meta-analyses and meta-regression analyses were conducted.Results81 longitudinal studies encompassing data for 23 280 FEP patients with an average follow-u…
Predicting who fails to meet the physical activity guideline in pregnancy: a prospective study of objectively recorded physical activity in a populat…
2016
Background A low physical activity (PA) level in pregnancy is associated with several adverse health outcomes. Early identification of pregnant women at risk of physical inactivity could inform strategies to promote PA, but no studies so far have presented attempts to develop prognostic models for low PA in pregnancy. Based on moderate-to-vigorous intensity PA (MVPA) objectively recorded in mid/late pregnancy, our objectives were to describe MVPA levels and compliance with the PA guideline (≥150 MVPA minutes/week), and to develop a prognostic model for non-compliance with the PA guideline. Methods From a multi-ethnic population-based cohort, we analysed data from 555 women with MVPA recorde…
Genotypic analysis at multiple loci across Kaposi's sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) DNA molecules: clustering patterns, novel variants and chimerism
2001
Abstract Background: the genomes of human Kaposi's sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) display several levels of DNA sequence heterogeneity and subgrouping that show distinctive clustering patterns in related human populations. The four major subtype patterns for the hypervariable ORF-K1 protein correlate closely with the principal diasporas resulting from the migration of modern humans out of East Africa and suggest that KSHV is an ancient human virus that is transmitted primarily in a familial fashion with consequent very low recombination rates. However, chimeric genomes have also been detected, especially with regard to the presence of P versus M alleles of the ORF-K15 gene. Objective…
National, regional, and global trends in systolic blood pressure since 1980: systematic analysis of health examination surveys and epidemiological st…
2011
Summary Background Data for trends in blood pressure are needed to understand the effects of its dietary, lifestyle, and pharmacological determinants; set intervention priorities; and evaluate national programmes. However, few worldwide analyses of trends in blood pressure have been done. We estimated worldwide trends in population mean systolic blood pressure (SBP). Methods We estimated trends and their uncertainties in mean SBP for adults 25 years and older in 199 countries and territories. We obtained data from published and unpublished health examination surveys and epidemiological studies (786 country-years and 5·4 million participants). For each sex, we used a Bayesian hierarchical mo…