Unsupervised discrimination of patterns in spiking neural networks with excitatory and inhibitory synaptic plasticity.

Science.gov (United States)

Srinivasa, Narayan; Cho, Youngkwan

2014-01-01

A spiking neural network model is described for learning to discriminate among spatial patterns in an unsupervised manner. The network anatomy consists of source neurons that are activated by external inputs, a reservoir that resembles a generic cortical layer with an excitatory-inhibitory (EI) network and a sink layer of neurons for readout. Synaptic plasticity in the form of STDP is imposed on all the excitatory and inhibitory synapses at all times. While long-term excitatory STDP enables sparse and efficient learning of the salient features in inputs, inhibitory STDP enables this learning to be stable by establishing a balance between excitatory and inhibitory currents at each neuron in the network. The synaptic weights between source and reservoir neurons form a basis set for the input patterns. The neural trajectories generated in the reservoir due to input stimulation and lateral connections between reservoir neurons can be readout by the sink layer neurons. This activity is used for adaptation of synapses between reservoir and sink layer neurons. A new measure called the discriminability index (DI) is introduced to compute if the network can discriminate between old patterns already presented in an initial training session. The DI is also used to compute if the network adapts to new patterns without losing its ability to discriminate among old patterns. The final outcome is that the network is able to correctly discriminate between all patterns-both old and new. This result holds as long as inhibitory synapses employ STDP to continuously enable current balance in the network. The results suggest a possible direction for future investigation into how spiking neural networks could address the stability-plasticity question despite having continuous synaptic plasticity.

Sources of Discrimination and Their Associations With Health in Sexual Minority Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Figueroa, Wilson S; Zoccola, Peggy M

2016-06-01

Health disparities exist between sexual minorities and heterosexuals. These health disparities may be due to stressful social situations and environments that are created by discrimination. The current study recruited 277 sexual minorities to complete an online survey to examine the effects of discrimination on health. Discrimination from family and friends, compared to non-family and friends, was found to be more strongly associated with poorer health. This effect was partially statistically mediated by perceived stress reactivity. Findings from this study highlight the importance of distinguishing between different sources of discrimination when examining the effect of discrimination on health in sexual minority adults.

Discrimination and sleep: a systematic review.

Science.gov (United States)

Slopen, Natalie; Lewis, Tené T; Williams, David R

2016-02-01

An increasing body of literature indicates that discrimination has a negative impact on health; poor sleep may be an underlying mechanism. The primary objective of this review was to examine existing studies on the relationship between discrimination and sleep to clarify (a) the potential role of discrimination in shaping population patterns of sleep and sleep disparities, and (b) the research needed to develop interventions at individual and institutional levels. We identified articles from English-language publications in PubMed and EBSCO databases from inception through July 2014. We employed a broad definition of discrimination to include any form of unfair treatment and all self-reported and objectively assessed sleep outcomes, including duration, difficulties, and sleep architecture. Seventeen studies were identified: four prospective, 12 cross-sectional, and one that utilized a daily-diary design. Fifteen of the 17 studies evaluated interpersonal discrimination as the exposure and the majority of studies included self-reported sleep as the outcome. Only four studies incorporated objective sleep assessments. All 17 studies identified at least one association between discrimination and a measure of poorer sleep, although studies with more detailed consideration of either discrimination or sleep architecture revealed some inconsistencies. Taken together, existing studies demonstrate consistent evidence that discrimination is associated with poorer sleep outcomes. This evidence base can be strengthened with additional prospective studies that incorporate objectively measured aspects of sleep. We outline important extensions for this field of inquiry that can inform the development of interventions to improve sleep outcomes, and consequently promote well-being and reduce health inequities across the life course. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Discrimination and mental health among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults in the United States.

Science.gov (United States)

Bostwick, Wendy B; Boyd, Carol J; Hughes, Tonda L; West, Brady T; McCabe, Sean Esteban

2014-01-01

Health disparities among sexual minority groups, particularly mental health disparities, are well-documented. Numerous studies have demonstrated heightened prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders among lesbian, gay, and bisexual groups as compared with heterosexuals. Some authors posit that these disparities are the result of the stress that prejudice and perceived discrimination can cause. The current study extends previous research by examining the associations between multiple types of discrimination, based on race or ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, and past-year mental health disorders in a national sample of self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual women and men (n = 577). Findings suggest that different types of discrimination may be differentially associated with past-year mental health disorders. Notably, sexual orientation discrimination was associated with higher odds of a past-year disorder only in combination with other types of discrimination. These findings point to the complexity of the relationship between discrimination experiences and mental health, and suggest that further work is needed to better explicate the interplay among multiple marginalized identities, discrimination, and mental health. (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Disparities in Mental Health Quality of Life Between Hispanic and Non-Hispanic White LGB Midlife and Older Adults and the Influence of Lifetime Discrimination, Social Connectedness, Socioeconomic Status, and Perceived Stress.

Science.gov (United States)

Kim, Hyun-Jun; Fredriksen-Goldsen, Karen I

2017-10-01

We assessed factors contributing to ethnic and racial disparities in mental health quality of life (MHQOL) among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) midlife and older adults. We utilized cross-sectional survey data from a sample of non-Hispanic White and Hispanic LGB adults aged 50 and older. Structural equation modeling was used to test the indirect effect of ethnicity/race on MHQOL via explanatory factors including social connectedness, lifetime discrimination, socioeconomic status (SES), and perceived stress. Hispanics reported significantly lower levels of MHQOL, compared to non-Hispanic Whites. In the final model, the association between ethnicity/race and MHQOL was explained by higher levels of perceived stress related to lower SES, higher frequency of lifetime discrimination, and lack of social connectedness among Hispanic LGB adults. This study suggests that perceived stress related to social disadvantage and marginalization plays an important role in MHQOL disparities among Hispanic LGB midlife and older adults.

Neutron-gamma discrimination employing pattern recognition of the signal from liquid scintillator

CERN Document Server

Kamada, K; Ogawa, S

1999-01-01

A pattern recognition method was applied to the neutron-gamma discrimination of the pulses from the liquid scintillator, NE-213. The circuit for the discrimination is composed of A/D converter, fast SCA, memory control circuit, two digital delay lines and two buffer memories. All components are packed on a small circuit board and are installed into a personal computer. Experiments using a weak sup 2 sup 5 sup 2 Cf n-gamma source were undertaken to test the feasibility of the circuit. The circuit is of very easy adjustment and, at the same time, of very economical price when compared with usual discrimination circuits, such as the TAC system.

Neutron-gamma discrimination employing pattern recognition of the signal from liquid scintillator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kamada, Kohji; Enokido, Uhji; Ogawa, Seiji

1999-01-01

A pattern recognition method was applied to the neutron-gamma discrimination of the pulses from the liquid scintillator, NE-213. The circuit for the discrimination is composed of A/D converter, fast SCA, memory control circuit, two digital delay lines and two buffer memories. All components are packed on a small circuit board and are installed into a personal computer. Experiments using a weak 252 Cf n-γ source were undertaken to test the feasibility of the circuit. The circuit is of very easy adjustment and, at the same time, of very economical price when compared with usual discrimination circuits, such as the TAC system

Perceived discrimination and health-related quality-of-life: gender differences among older African Americans.

Science.gov (United States)

Coley, Sheryl L; Mendes de Leon, Carlos F; Ward, Earlise C; Barnes, Lisa L; Skarupski, Kimberly A; Jacobs, Elizabeth A

2017-12-01

Emerging data suggest that African-American women may fare worse than African-American men in health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL). Perceived discrimination is an important contributor to poor health overall among African Americans, but few studies examined the intersecting effects of perceived discrimination and gender in explaining HRQOL disparities. We investigated gender differences in HRQOL and tested whether perceived discrimination accounted for these differences. We examined data from the Chicago Health and Aging Project in which 5652 African-American adults aged 65 and older completed structured questionnaires about demographic and socioeconomic characteristics, HRQOL, perceived discrimination, and health-related variables. Logistic regression models were used to identify associations between perceived discrimination and gender differences in poor HRQOL outcomes (defined as 14+ unhealthy days in overall, physical, or mental health over the past 30 days) when controlling for the other variables. More women reported poor overall HRQOL than men (24 vs. 16% respectively). Higher perceived discrimination was significantly associated with worse overall HRQOL (OR 1.11; 95% CI 1.08, 1.15), with stronger effects for women in overall and mental HRQOL. These gender disparities remained significant until controlling for potentially confounding variables. Perceived discrimination did not account for gender differences in poor physical HRQOL. Perceived discrimination is associated with poor HRQOL in older African Americans, with this association appearing stronger in women than men for mental HRQOL. These findings warrant further investigation of effects of perceived discrimination in gender disparities in overall health, and such research can inform and guide efforts for reducing these disparities.

Examining the Impact of Structural Racism on Food Insecurity: Implications for Addressing Racial/Ethnic Disparities.

Science.gov (United States)

Odoms-Young, Angela; Bruce, Marino A

Food insecurity is defined as "a household-level economic and social condition of limited or uncertain access to adequate food." While, levels of food insecurity in the United States have fluctuated over the past 20 years; disparities in food insecurity rates between people of color and whites have continued to persist. There is growing recognition that discrimination and structural racism are key contributors to disparities in health behaviors and outcomes. Although several promising practices to reduce food insecurity have emerged, approaches that address structural racism and discrimination may have important implications for alleviating racial/ethnic disparities in food insecurity and promoting health equity overall.

Black-White Disparities in Breast Cancer Subtype: The Intersection of Socially Patterned Stress and Genetic Expression

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Erin Linnenbringer

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Hormone receptor negative (HR- breast cancer subtypes are etiologically distinct from the more common, less aggressive, and more treatable form of estrogen receptor positive (ER+ breast cancer. Numerous population-based studies have found that, in the United States, Black women are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop HR- breast cancer than White women. Much of the existing research on racial disparities in breast cancer subtype has focused on identifying predisposing genetic factors associated with African ancestry. This approach fails to acknowledge that racial stratification shapes a wide range of environmental and social exposures over the life course. Human stress genomics considers the role of individual stress perceptions on gene expression. Yet, the role of structurally rooted biopsychosocial processes that may be activated by the social patterning of stressors in an historically unequal society, whether perceived by individual black women or not, could also impact cellular physiology and gene expression patterns relevant to HR- breast cancer etiology. Using the weathering hypothesis as our conceptual framework, we develop a structural perspective for examining racial disparities in breast cancer subtypes, integrating important findings from the stress biology, breast cancer epidemiology, and health disparities literatures. After integrating key findings from these largely independent literatures, we develop a theoretically and empirically guided framework for assessing potential multilevel factors relevant to the development of HR- breast cancer disproportionately among Black women in the US. We hypothesize that a dynamic interplay among socially patterned psychosocial stressors, physiological & behavioral responses, and genomic pathways contribute to the increased risk of HR- breast cancer among Black women. This work provides a basis for exploring potential alternative pathways linking the lived experience of race to the risk of HR

Black-White Disparities in Breast Cancer Subtype: The Intersection of Socially Patterned Stress and Genetic Expression.

Science.gov (United States)

Linnenbringer, Erin; Gehlert, Sarah; Geronimus, Arline T

2017-01-01

Hormone receptor negative (HR-) breast cancer subtypes are etiologically distinct from the more common, less aggressive, and more treatable form of estrogen receptor positive (ER+) breast cancer. Numerous population-based studies have found that, in the United States, Black women are 2 to 3 times more likely to develop HR- breast cancer than White women. Much of the existing research on racial disparities in breast cancer subtype has focused on identifying predisposing genetic factors associated with African ancestry. This approach fails to acknowledge that racial stratification shapes a wide range of environmental and social exposures over the life course. Human stress genomics considers the role of individual stress perceptions on gene expression. Yet, the role of structurally rooted biopsychosocial processes that may be activated by the social patterning of stressors in an historically unequal society, whether perceived by individual black women or not, could also impact cellular physiology and gene expression patterns relevant to HR- breast cancer etiology. Using the weathering hypothesis as our conceptual framework, we develop a structural perspective for examining racial disparities in breast cancer subtypes, integrating important findings from the stress biology, breast cancer epidemiology, and health disparities literatures. After integrating key findings from these largely independent literatures, we develop a theoretically and empirically guided framework for assessing potential multilevel factors relevant to the development of HR- breast cancer disproportionately among Black women in the US. We hypothesize that a dynamic interplay among socially patterned psychosocial stressors, physiological & behavioral responses, and genomic pathways contribute to the increased risk of HR- breast cancer among Black women. This work provides a basis for exploring potential alternative pathways linking the lived experience of race to the risk of HR- breast cancer, and

Global Disparities Since 1800: Trends and Regional Patterns

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

M. Shahid Alam

2015-08-01

Full Text Available This paper reviews the growing body of evidence on the relative economic standing of different regions of the world in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In general, it does not find support for Euro-centric claims regarding Western Europe’s early economic lead. The Eurocentric claims are based primarily on estimates of per capita income, which are plagued by conceptual problems, make demands on historical data that are generally unavailable, and use questionable assumptions to reconstruct early per capita income. A careful examination of these conjectural estimates of per capita income, however, does not support claims that Western Europe had a substantial lead over the rest of the world at the beginning of the nineteenth century. An examination of several alternative indices of living standards in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries—such as real wages, labor productivity in agriculture, and urbanization—also fails to confirm claims of European superiority. In addition, this paper examines the progress of global disparities—including the presence of regional patterns—using estimates of per capita income.

Discrimination and sexual risk among young urban pregnant women of color.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenthal, Lisa; Earnshaw, Valerie A; Lewis, Jessica B; Lewis, Tené T; Reid, Allecia E; Stasko, Emily C; Tobin, Jonathan N; Ickovics, Jeannette R

2014-01-01

Discrimination predicts increased risk for many negative health outcomes, helping explain a variety of racial and socioeconomic health disparities. Recent research suggests discrimination may play a role in disparities in HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs); however, this research has focused on risk behaviors and has yet to establish a link between discrimination and STI diagnosis specifically. This investigation tested whether discrimination predicted condom use, risky sexual partners, and self-reported STI diagnosis among a population disproportionately affected by HIV and STIs in the U.S.: young, pregnant, socioeconomically disadvantaged, women of color. During second and third trimesters, 885 mostly Latina and Black pregnant women, 14-21 years old, attending 14 hospitals and health centers in New York City for prenatal care, completed interviews. Greater discrimination during second trimester predicted greater odds of STI diagnosis and having a risky sexual partner during third trimester, but not condom use. Whether discrimination was attributed to race, identifying as Black, or identifying as Latina did not moderate effects. This is the first investigation establishing a link between discrimination and STI diagnosis, not just risk behavior. It does so among a sample of at-risk, young, pregnant, women of color. Findings suggest implications for sexual risk during pregnancy and across the life span, and risks for the pregnancy and fetus. It is vital to reduce discrimination to eliminate disparities in HIV and STIs. Future research should continue examining the role of discrimination in sexual risk among different populations and work to uncover potential mechanisms. 2014 APA, all rights reserved

Discrimination, harassment, abuse, and bullying in the workplace: contribution of workplace injustice to occupational health disparities.

Science.gov (United States)

Okechukwu, Cassandra A; Souza, Kerry; Davis, Kelly D; de Castro, A Butch

2014-05-01

This paper synthesizes research on the contribution of workplace injustices to occupational health disparities. We conducted a broad review of research and other reports on the impact of workplace discrimination, harassment, and bullying on workers' health and on family and job outcomes. Members of demographic minority groups are more likely to be victims of workplace injustice and suffer more adverse outcomes when exposed to workplace injustice compared to demographic majority groups. A growing body of research links workplace injustice to poor psychological and physical health, and a smaller body of evidence links workplace injustice to unhealthy behaviors. Although not as well studied, studies show that workplace injustice can influence workers' health through effects on workers' family life and job-related outcomes. Injustice is a key contributor to occupational health injustice and prospective studies with oversample of disadvantaged workers and refinement of methods for characterizing workplace injustices are needed. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Workplace Discrimination Is Associated With Alcohol Abuse Among Ethnically Diverse Hospital Staff.

Science.gov (United States)

Thrasher, Angela D; Wells, Anita M; Spencer, S Melinda; Cofie, Leslie; Yen, Irene H

2016-05-01

Research suggests that workplace discrimination plays a role in absenteeism, productivity, and turnover. A link among workplace discrimination, mental health, and health disparities may also exist. The purpose of this study was to determine whether self-reported workplace discrimination is associated with alcohol abuse among hospital workers. Cross-sectional analysis of baseline data collected from a prospective cohort study of workers in two healthcare institutions (n = 664) was conducted. Workplace discrimination in the previous 12 months was reported by 14% (n = 91) of participants who were four times more likely to score higher on likely alcohol abuse than their peers. White participants who reported any discrimination were more likely to score higher on likely alcohol abuse than racial/ethnic minority participants who reported any discrimination. Given a diversifying workforce, further research is needed on how workplace discrimination contributes to stress and maladaptive coping, and ultimately health disparities. © 2016 The Author(s).

The Economics of Discrimination: Evidence from Basketball

OpenAIRE

Kahn, Lawrence M.

2009-01-01

This Chapter reviews evidence on discrimination in basketball, primarily examining studies on race but with some discussion of gender as well. I focus on discrimination in pay, hiring, and retention against black NBA players and coaches and pay disparities by gender among college coaches. There was much evidence for each of these forms of discrimination against black NBA players in the 1980s. However, there appears to be less evidence of racial compensation, hiring and retention discriminatio...

Light-Regulated Electrochemical Sensor Array for Efficiently Discriminating Hazardous Gases.

Science.gov (United States)

Liang, Hongqiu; Zhang, Xin; Sun, Huihui; Jin, Han; Zhang, Xiaowei; Jin, Qinghui; Zou, Jie; Haick, Hossam; Jian, Jiawen

2017-10-27

Inadequate detection limit and unsatisfactory discrimination features remain the challenging issues for the widely applied electrochemical gas sensors. Quite recently, we confirmed that light-regulated electrochemical reaction significantly enhanced the electrocatalytic activity, and thereby can potentially extend the detection limit to the parts per billion (ppb) level. Nevertheless, impact of the light-regulated electrochemical reaction on response selectivity has been discussed less. Herein, we systematically report on the effect of illumination on discrimination features via design and fabrication of a light-regulated electrochemical sensor array. Upon illumination (light on), response signal to the examined gases (C 3 H 6 , NO, and CO) is selectively enhanced, resulting in the sensor array demonstrating disparate response patterns when compared with that of the sensor array operated at light off. Through processing all the response patterns derived from both light on and light off with a pattern recognition algorithm, a satisfactory discrimination feature is observed. In contrast, apparent mutual interference between NO and CO is found when the sensor array is solely operated without illumination. The impact mechanism of the illumination is studied and it is deduced that the effect of the illumination on the discriminating features can be mainly attributed to the competition of electrocatalytic activity and gas-phase reactivity. If the enhanced electrocatalytic activity (to specific gas) dominates the whole sensing progress, enhancements in the corresponding response signal would be observed upon illumination. Otherwise, illumination gives a negligible impact. Hence, the response signal to part of the examined gases is selectively enhanced by illumination. Conclusively, light-regulated electrochemical reaction would provide an efficient approach to designing future smart sensing devices.

Gender Discrimination in Higher Education in Pakistan: A Survey of University Faculty

Science.gov (United States)

Shaukat, Sadia; Siddiquah, Aishah; Pell, Anthony William

2014-01-01

Problem statement: Gender disparity is a worldwide phenomenon. This disparity is not only with respect to opportunities and resources but also in rewards, and exists in all regions and classes. Gender disparity exists in the field of education as well. Females experience overt and subtle gender discrimination to some extent nearly at every stage…

"More than skin deep": stress neurobiology and mental health consequences of racial discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Berger, Maximus; Sarnyai, Zoltán

2015-01-01

Ethnic minority groups across the world face a complex set of adverse social and psychological challenges linked to their minority status, often involving racial discrimination. Racial discrimination is increasingly recognized as an important contributing factor to health disparities among non-dominant ethnic minorities. A growing body of literature has recognized these health disparities and has investigated the relationship between racial discrimination and poor health outcomes. Chronically elevated cortisol levels and a dysregulated hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis appear to mediate effects of racial discrimination on allostatic load and disease. Racial discrimination seems to converge on the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and may impair the function of the prefrontal cortex (PFC), hence showing substantial similarities to chronic social stress. This review provides a summary of recent literature on hormonal and neural effects of racial discrimination and a synthesis of potential neurobiological pathways by which discrimination affects mental health.

Social, Economic, and Health Disparities Among LGBT Older Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Emlet, Charles A

2016-01-01

LGBT older adults are a heterogeneous population with collective and unique strengths and challenges. Health, personal, and economic disparities exist in this group when compared to the general population of older adults, yet subgroups such as transgender and bisexual older adults and individuals living with HIV are at greater risk for disparities and poorer health outcomes. As this population grows, further research is needed on factors that contribute to promoting health equity, while decreasing discrimination and improving competent service delivery.

Allometric disparity in rodent evolution

OpenAIRE

Wilson LAB

2013-01-01

In this study, allometric trajectories for 51 rodent species, comprising equal representatives from each of the major clades (Ctenohystrica, Muroidea, Sciuridae), are compared in a multivariate morphospace (=allometric space) to quantify magnitudes of disparity in cranial growth. Variability in allometric trajectory patterns was compared to measures of adult disparity in each clade, and dietary habit among the examined species, which together encapsulated an ecomorphological breadth. Results ...

Parity among interpretation methods of MLEE patterns and disparity among clustering methods in epidemiological typing of Candida albicans.

Science.gov (United States)

Boriollo, Marcelo Fabiano Gomes; Rosa, Edvaldo Antonio Ribeiro; Gonçalves, Reginaldo Bruno; Höfling, José Francisco

2006-03-01

The typing of C. albicans by MLEE (multilocus enzyme electrophoresis) is dependent on the interpretation of enzyme electrophoretic patterns, and the study of the epidemiological relationships of these yeasts can be conducted by cluster analysis. Therefore, the aims of the present study were to first determine the discriminatory power of genetic interpretation (deduction of the allelic composition of diploid organisms) and numerical interpretation (mere determination of the presence and absence of bands) of MLEE patterns, and then to determine the concordance (Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient) and similarity (Jaccard similarity coefficient) of the groups of strains generated by three cluster analysis models, and the discriminatory power of such models as well [model A: genetic interpretation, genetic distance matrix of Nei (d(ij)) and UPGMA dendrogram; model B: genetic interpretation, Dice similarity matrix (S(D1)) and UPGMA dendrogram; model C: numerical interpretation, Dice similarity matrix (S(D2)) and UPGMA dendrogram]. MLEE was found to be a powerful and reliable tool for the typing of C. albicans due to its high discriminatory power (>0.9). Discriminatory power indicated that numerical interpretation is a method capable of discriminating a greater number of strains (47 versus 43 subtypes), but also pointed to model B as a method capable of providing a greater number of groups, suggesting its use for the typing of C. albicans by MLEE and cluster analysis. Very good agreement was only observed between the elements of the matrices S(D1) and S(D2), but a large majority of the groups generated in the three UPGMA dendrograms showed similarity S(J) between 4.8% and 75%, suggesting disparities in the conclusions obtained by the cluster assays.

Attractor structure discriminates sleep states: recurrence plot analysis applied to infant breathing patterns.

Science.gov (United States)

Terrill, Philip Ian; Wilson, Stephen James; Suresh, Sadasivam; Cooper, David M; Dakin, Carolyn

2010-05-01

Breathing patterns are characteristically different between infant active sleep (AS) and quiet sleep (QS), and statistical quantifications of interbreath interval (IBI) data have previously been used to discriminate between infant sleep states. It has also been identified that breathing patterns are governed by a nonlinear controller. This study aims to investigate whether nonlinear quantifications of infant IBI data are characteristically different between AS and QS, and whether they may be used to discriminate between these infant sleep states. Polysomnograms were obtained from 24 healthy infants at six months of age. Periods of AS and QS were identified, and IBI data extracted. Recurrence quantification analysis (RQA) was applied to each period, and recurrence calculated for a fixed radius in the range of 0-8 in steps of 0.02, and embedding dimensions of 4, 6, 8, and 16. When a threshold classifier was trained, the RQA variable recurrence was able to correctly classify 94.3% of periods in a test dataset. It was concluded that RQA of IBI data is able to accurately discriminate between infant sleep states. This is a promising step toward development of a minimal-channel automatic sleep state classification system.

Conjunctions between motion and disparity are encoded with the same spatial resolution as disparity alone.

Science.gov (United States)

Allenmark, Fredrik; Read, Jenny C A

2012-10-10

Neurons in cortical area MT respond well to transparent streaming motion in distinct depth planes, such as caused by observer self-motion, but do not contain subregions excited by opposite directions of motion. We therefore predicted that spatial resolution for transparent motion/disparity conjunctions would be limited by the size of MT receptive fields, just as spatial resolution for disparity is limited by the much smaller receptive fields found in primary visual cortex, V1. We measured this using a novel "joint motion/disparity grating," on which human observers detected motion/disparity conjunctions in transparent random-dot patterns containing dots streaming in opposite directions on two depth planes. Surprisingly, observers showed the same spatial resolution for these as for pure disparity gratings. We estimate the limiting receptive field diameter at 11 arcmin, similar to V1 and much smaller than MT. Higher internal noise for detecting joint motion/disparity produces a slightly lower high-frequency cutoff of 2.5 cycles per degree (cpd) versus 3.3 cpd for disparity. This suggests that information on motion/disparity conjunctions is available in the population activity of V1 and that this information can be decoded for perception even when it is invisible to neurons in MT.

The differential impact of discrimination on health among Black and White women.

Science.gov (United States)

Versey, H Shellae; Curtin, Nicola

2016-05-01

Despite a large body of research examining the impact of discrimination on health, the ways in which perceived discrimination may lead to disparate health outcomes through a sense of self and system consciousness is less understood. The current paper is concerned with both mental and physical health consequences of discrimination, as well as mediating pathways among African American and White women. Indirect effects analyses examine mediating paths from discrimination to health outcomes via structural awareness and self-esteem, using data from the Women's Life Path Study (N = 237). Our findings suggest that discrimination is both directly and indirectly associated with health outcomes for both Black and White women, mediated by individual (self-esteem) and group-level (structural awareness) processes. Evidence from this study indicates that discrimination is associated with heightened structural awareness, as well as lower self-esteem - both of which are related to poorer health. Discrimination negatively affected health across three domains, although the mechanisms varied somewhat for Black and White women. Broad implications of this research for interdisciplinary scholarship on the effects of discrimination on health and health disparities are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Reproducibility and discriminability of brain patterns of semantic categories enhanced by congruent audiovisual stimuli.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yuanqing Li

Full Text Available One of the central questions in cognitive neuroscience is the precise neural representation, or brain pattern, associated with a semantic category. In this study, we explored the influence of audiovisual stimuli on the brain patterns of concepts or semantic categories through a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI experiment. We used a pattern search method to extract brain patterns corresponding to two semantic categories: "old people" and "young people." These brain patterns were elicited by semantically congruent audiovisual, semantically incongruent audiovisual, unimodal visual, and unimodal auditory stimuli belonging to the two semantic categories. We calculated the reproducibility index, which measures the similarity of the patterns within the same category. We also decoded the semantic categories from these brain patterns. The decoding accuracy reflects the discriminability of the brain patterns between two categories. The results showed that both the reproducibility index of brain patterns and the decoding accuracy were significantly higher for semantically congruent audiovisual stimuli than for unimodal visual and unimodal auditory stimuli, while the semantically incongruent stimuli did not elicit brain patterns with significantly higher reproducibility index or decoding accuracy. Thus, the semantically congruent audiovisual stimuli enhanced the within-class reproducibility of brain patterns and the between-class discriminability of brain patterns, and facilitate neural representations of semantic categories or concepts. Furthermore, we analyzed the brain activity in superior temporal sulcus and middle temporal gyrus (STS/MTG. The strength of the fMRI signal and the reproducibility index were enhanced by the semantically congruent audiovisual stimuli. Our results support the use of the reproducibility index as a potential tool to supplement the fMRI signal amplitude for evaluating multimodal integration.

Anthropometric geography applied to the analysis of socioeconomic disparities: cohort trends and spatial patterns of height and robustness in 20th-century Spain.

Science.gov (United States)

Camara, Antonio D; Roman, Joan Garcia

2015-11-01

Anthropometrics have been widely used to study the influence of environmental factors on health and nutritional status. In contrast, anthropometric geography has not often been employed to approximate the dynamics of spatial disparities associated with socioeconomic and demographic changes. Spain exhibited intense disparity and change during the middle decades of the 20 th century, with the result that the life courses of the corresponding cohorts were associated with diverse environmental conditions. This was also true of the Spanish territories. This paper presents insights concerning the relationship between socioeconomic changes and living conditions by combining the analysis of cohort trends and the anthropometric cartography of height and physical build. This analysis is conducted for Spanish male cohorts born 1934-1973 that were recorded in the Spanish military statistics. This information is interpreted in light of region-level data on GDP and infant mortality. Our results show an anthropometric convergence across regions that, nevertheless, did not substantially modify the spatial patterns of robustness, featuring primarily robust northeastern regions and weak Central-Southern regions. These patterns persisted until the 1990s (cohorts born during the 1970s). For the most part, anthropometric disparities were associated with socioeconomic disparities, although the former lessened over time to a greater extent than the latter. Interestingly, the various anthropometric indicators utilized here do not point to the same conclusions. Some discrepancies between height and robustness patterns have been found that moderate the statements from the analysis of cohort height alone regarding the level and evolution of living conditions across Spanish regions.

Pattern recognition in bees : orientation discrimination

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Hateren, J.H. van; Srinivasan, M.V.; Wait, P.B.

1990-01-01

Honey bees (Apis mellifera, worker) were trained to discriminate between two random gratings oriented perpendicularly to each other. This task was quickly learned with vertical, horizontal, and oblique gratings. After being trained on perpendicularly-oriented random gratings, bees could discriminate

Structural stigma and sexual orientation disparities in adolescent drug use.

Science.gov (United States)

Hatzenbuehler, Mark L; Jun, Hee-Jin; Corliss, Heather L; Bryn Austin, S

2015-07-01

Although epidemiologic studies have established the existence of large sexual orientation disparities in illicit drug use among adolescents and young adults, the determinants of these disparities remain understudied. This study sought to determine whether sexual orientation disparities in illicit drug use are potentiated in states that are characterized by high levels of stigma surrounding sexual minorities. State-level structural stigma was coded using a previously established measure based on a 4-item composite index: (1) density of same-sex couples; (2) proportion of Gay-Straight Alliances per public high school; (3) 5 policies related to sexual orientation discrimination (e.g., same-sex marriage, employment non-discrimination); and (4) public opinion toward homosexuality (aggregated responses from 41 national polls). The index was linked to individual-level data from the Growing Up Today Study, a prospective community-based study of adolescents (2001-2010). Sexual minorities report greater illicit drug use than their heterosexual peers. However, for both men and women, there were statistically significant interactions between sexual orientation status and structural stigma, such that sexual orientation disparities in marijuana and illicit drug use were more pronounced in high-structural stigma states than in low-structural stigma states, controlling for individual- and state-level confounders. For instance, among men, the risk ratio indicating the association between sexual orientation and marijuana use was 24% greater in high- versus low-structural stigma states, and for women it was 28% greater in high- versus low-structural stigma states. Stigma in the form of social policies and attitudes may contribute to sexual orientation disparities in illicit drug use. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Psychological pathways from racial discrimination to cortisol in African American males and females.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Daniel B; Peckins, Melissa K; Heinze, Justin E; Miller, Alison L; Assari, Shervin; Zimmerman, Marc A

2018-04-01

The association between racial discrimination (discrimination) and stress-related alterations in the neuroendocrine response-namely, cortisol secretion-is well documented in African Americans (AAs). Dysregulation in production of cortisol has been implicated as a contributor to racial health disparities. Guided by Clark et al. (Am Psychol 54(10):805-816, 1999. doi: 10.1037/0003-066X.54.10.805 ) biopsychosocial model of racism and health, the present study examined the psychological pathways that link discrimination to total cortisol concentrations in AA males and females. In a sample of 312 AA emerging adults (45.5% males; ages 21-23), symptoms of anxiety, but not depression, mediated the relation between discrimination and total concentrations of cortisol. In addition, the results did not reveal sex differences in the direct and indirect pathways. These findings advance our understanding of racial health disparities by suggesting that the psychological consequences of discrimination can uniquely promote physiologic dysregulation in AAs.

Controlling disease and creating disparities: a fundamental cause perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Phelan, Jo C; Link, Bruce G

2005-10-01

The United States and other developed countries experienced enormous improvements in population health during the 20th century. In the context of this dramatic positive change, health disparities by race and socioeconomic status emerged for several potent killers. Any explanation for current health disparities must take these changing patterns into account. Any explanation that ignores large improvements in population health and fails to account for the emergence of disparities for specific diseases is an inadequate explanation of current disparities. We argue that genetic explanations and some prominent social causation explanations are incompatible with these facts. We propose that the theory of "fundamental causes" can account for both vast improvements in population health and the creation of large socioeconomic and racial disparities in mortality for specific causes of death over time. Specifically, we argue that it is our enormously expanded capacity to control disease and death in combination with existing social and economic inequalities that create health disparities by race and socioeconomic status: When we develop the ability to control disease and death, the benefits of this new-found ability are distributed according to resources of knowledge, money, power, prestige, and beneficial social connections. We present data on changing mortality patterns by race and socioeconomic status for two types of diseases: those for which our capacity to prevent death has increased significantly and those for which we remain largely unable to prevent death. Time trends in mortality patterns are consistent with the fundamental cause explanation.

The influence of active coping and perceived stress on health disparities in a multi-ethnic low income sample

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tomar Scott L

2008-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Extensive research has shown that ethnic health disparities are prevalent and many psychological and social factors influence health disparities. Understanding what factors influence health disparities and how to eliminate health disparities has become a major research objective. The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of coping style, stress, socioeconomic status (SES, and discrimination on health disparities in a large urban multi-ethnic sample. Methods Data from 894 participants were collected via telephone interviews. Independent variables included: coping style, SES, sex, perceived stress, and perceived discrimination. Dependent variables included self-rated general and oral health status. Data analysis included multiple linear regression modeling. Results Coping style was related to oral health for Blacks (B = .23, p Conclusion Our results indicate that perceived stress is a critical component in understanding health outcomes for all ethnoracial groups. While SES related significantly to general health for Whites and Hispanics, this relationship was mediated by perceived stress. Active coping was associated only with oral health.

Factors Associated with Medical Doctors' Intentions to Discriminate Against Transgender Patients in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

OpenAIRE

Vijay, Aishwarya; Earnshaw, Valerie A.; Tee, Ying Chew; Pillai, Veena; White Hughto, Jaclyn M.; Clark, Kirsty; Kamarulzaman, Adeeba; Altice, Frederick L.; Wickersham, Jeffrey A.

2018-01-01

Purpose: Transgender people are frequent targets of discrimination. Discrimination against transgender people in the context of healthcare can lead to poor health outcomes and facilitate the growth of health disparities. This study explores factors associated with medical doctors' intentions to discriminate against transgender people in Malaysia.

Acute neuroinflammation impairs context discrimination memory and disrupts pattern separation processes in hippocampus.

Science.gov (United States)

Czerniawski, Jennifer; Guzowski, John F

2014-09-10

Although it is known that immune system activation can impair cognition, no study to date has linked cognitive deficits during acute neuroinflammation to dysregulation of task-relevant neuronal ensemble activity. Here, we assessed both neural circuit activity and context discrimination memory retrieval, in a within-subjects design, of male rats given systemic administration of saline or lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Rats were exposed over several days to two similar contexts: one of which was paired with weak foot shock and the other was not. After reaching criteria for discriminative freezing, rats were given systemic LPS or saline injection and tested for retrieval of context discrimination 6 h later. Importantly, LPS administration produced an acute neuroinflammatory response in dorsal hippocampus at this time (as assessed by elevation of proinflammatory cytokine mRNA levels) and abolished retrieval of the previously acquired discrimination. The impact of neuroinflammation on hippocampal CA3 and CA1 neural circuit activity was assessed using the Arc/Homer1a cellular analysis of temporal activity by fluorescence in situ hybridization imaging method. Whereas the saline-treated subjects discriminated and had low overlap of hippocampal ensembles activated in the two contexts, LPS-treated subjects did not discriminate and had greater ensemble overlap (i.e., reduced orthogonalization). Additionally, retrieval of standard contextual fear conditioning, which does not require context discrimination, was not affected by pretesting LPS administration. Together, the behavioral and circuit analyses data provide compelling evidence that LPS administration impairs context discrimination memory by disrupting cellular pattern separation processes within the hippocampus, thus linking acute neuroinflammation to disruption of specific neural circuit functions and cognitive impairment. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/3412470-11$15.00/0.

Recurrent coupling improves discrimination of temporal spike patterns

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Chun-Wei eYuan

2012-05-01

Full Text Available Despite the ubiquitous presence of recurrent synaptic connections insensory neuronal systems, their general functional purpose is not wellunderstood. A recent conceptual advance has been achieved by theoriesof reservoir computing in which recurrent networks have been proposedto generate short-term memory as well as to improve neuronalrepresentation of the sensory input for subsequent computations.Here, we present a numerical study on the distinct effects ofinhibitory and excitatory recurrence in a canonical linearclassification task. It is found that both types of coupling improvethe ability to discriminate temporal spike patterns as compared to apurely feed-forward system, although in different ways. For a largeclass of inhibitory networks, the network's performance is optimal aslong as a fraction of roughly 50% of neurons per stimulus is activein the resulting population code. Thereby the contribution of inactiveneurons to the neural code is found to be even more informative thanthat of the active neurons, generating an inherent robustness ofclassification performance against temporal jitter of the inputspikes. Excitatory couplings are found to not only produce ashort-term memory buffer but also to improve linear separability ofthe population patterns by evoking more irregular firing as comparedto the purely inhibitory case. As the excitatory connectivity becomesmore sparse, firing becomes more variable and pattern separabilityimproves. We argue that the proposed paradigm is particularlywell-suited as a conceptual framework for processing of sensoryinformation in the auditory pathway.

Gender Discrimination in Higher Education in Pakistan: A Survey of University Faculty

OpenAIRE

SHAUKAT, Sadia; SIDDIQUAH, Aishah; PELL, Anthony WILLIAM

2014-01-01

Problem statement: Gender disparity is a worldwide phenomenon. This disparity is not only with respect to opportunities and resources but also in rewards, and exists in all regions and classes. Gender disparity exists in the field of education as well. Females experience overt and subtle gender discrimination to some extent nearly at every stage of their career. Males represent the majority of the faculty of higher education institutes across the globe. Managerial positions are usually held b...

Discrimination and Mental Health Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adults in the United States

OpenAIRE

Bostwick, Wendy B.; Boyd, Carol J.; Hughes, Tonda L.; West, Brady

2014-01-01

Health disparities among sexual minority groups, particularly mental health disparities, are well-documented. Numerous studies have demonstrated heightened prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders among lesbian, gay, and bisexual groups as compared to heterosexuals. Some authors posit that these disparities are the result of the stress that prejudice and perceived discrimination can cause. The current study extends previous research by examining the associations between multiple types o...

Gender wage discrimination

OpenAIRE

Hirsch, Boris

2016-01-01

There are pronounced and persistent wage differences between men and women in all parts of the world. A significant element of these wage disparities can be attributed to differences in worker and workplace characteristics, which are likely to mirror differences in worker productivity. However, a large part of these differences remains unexplained, and it is common to attribute them to discrimination by the employer that is rooted in prejudice against female workers. Yet recent empirical evid...

The effects of using stimuli from three different dimensions on autoshaping with a complex negative patterning discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Pearce, John M; George, David N

2002-10-01

In two experiments pigeons received a complex negative patterning discrimination, using autoshaping, in which food was made available after three stimuli if they were presented alone (A, B, C), or in pairs (AB, AC, BC), but not when they were all presented together (ABC). Subjects also received a positive patterning discrimination in which three additional stimuli were not followed by food when presented alone (D, E, F), or in pairs (DE, DF, EF), but they were followed by food when presented together (DEF). Stimuli A and D belonged to one dimension, B and E to a second dimension, and D and F to a third dimension. For both problems, the discrimination between the individual stimuli and the triple-element compounds developed more readily than that between the pairs of stimuli and the triple-element compound. The results are consistent with predictions that can be derived from a configural theory of conditioning.

Discrimination, Mental Health, and Substance Use Disorders Among Sexual Minority Populations

OpenAIRE

Lee, Ji Hyun; Gamarel, Kristi E.; Bryant, Kendall J.; Zaller, Nickolas D.; Operario, Don

2016-01-01

Purpose: Sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual) populations have a higher prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Such disparities have been attributed, in part, to minority stressors, including distal stressors such as discrimination. However, few studies have examined associations between discrimination, mental health, and substance use disorders by gender among sexual minority populations.

300-MHz optical discriminator-counter

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Turko, B.; Lo, C.C.

1981-07-01

The prediction of future CO 2 content in the atmosphere is not completely credible because the oceanographers and terrestrial ecologists do not agree on the global CO 2 balance. Very precise measurements of O 2 /N 2 ratio using Raman scattering over a few years' period could provide important information and lead to the explanation of the disparity in the atmospheric CO 2 balance. An optical discriminator-counter has been developed to count closely spaced optical events in the few photon level. Simulated optical events as close as 2.5 ns apart had been positively detected by using selected photomultipliers and optimized discriminators. Testing of the optical discriminator-counter was done by using an electrical pulse pair spaced 3 ns apart and also by a similar optical pulse pair generated by fast light-emitting diode. The photomultiplier is capable of counting an average single photoelectron pulse frequency of 50 MHz and has a sensitive detecting area of 50 mm in diameter. The discriminator performance is discussed

Sex and Race Disparities in Health: Cohort Variations in Life Course Patterns

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Yang; Lee, Linda C.

2009-01-01

This study assesses changes in sex and race disparities in health over the life course and across cohorts by conducting growth curve analyses of nationally representative longitudinal data that spans 15 years. It finds that changes in disparities in depressive symptoms, disability and self-assessments of health across the life course are…

Distributed hippocampal patterns that discriminate reward context are associated with enhanced associative binding.

Science.gov (United States)

Wolosin, Sasha M; Zeithamova, Dagmar; Preston, Alison R

2013-11-01

Recent research indicates that reward-based motivation impacts medial temporal lobe (MTL) encoding processes, leading to enhanced memory for rewarded events. In particular, previous functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies of motivated learning have shown that MTL activation is greater for highly rewarded events, with the degree of reward-related activation enhancement tracking the corresponding behavioral memory advantage. These studies, however, do not directly address leading theoretical perspectives that propose such reward-based enhancements in MTL encoding activation reflect enhanced discrimination of the motivational context of specific events. In this study, a high-value or low-value monetary cue preceded a pair of objects, indicating the future reward for successfully remembering the pair. Using representational similarity analysis and high-resolution fMRI, we show that MTL activation patterns are more similar for encoding trials preceded by the same versus different reward cues, indicating a distributed code in this region that distinguishes between motivational contexts. Moreover, we show that activation patterns in hippocampus and parahippocampal cortex (PHc) that differentiate reward conditions during anticipatory cues and object pairs relate to successful associative memory. Additionally, the degree to which patterns differentiate reward contexts in dentate gyrus/CA2,3 and PHc is related to individual differences in reward modulation of memory. Collectively, these findings suggest that distributed activation patterns in the human hippocampus and PHc reflect the rewards associated with individual events. Furthermore, we show that these activation patterns-which discriminate between reward conditions--may influence memory through the incorporation of information about motivational contexts into stored memory representations. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Sexual orientation discrimination and tobacco use disparities in the United States.

Science.gov (United States)

McCabe, Sean Esteban; Hughes, Tonda L; Matthews, Alicia K; Lee, Joseph G L; West, Brady T; Boyd, Carol J; Arslanian-Engoren, Cynthia

2017-12-30

Differences in tobacco/nicotine use by sexual orientation are well documented. Development of interventions requires attention to the etiology of these differences. This study examined associations among sexual orientation discrimination, cigarette smoking, any tobacco/nicotine use, and DSM-5 tobacco use disorder (TUD) in the U.S. We used data from the 2012-2013 National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions based on in-person interviews with a nationally representative sample of non-institutionalized U.S. adults. Approximately 8.3% of the population reported same-sex sexual attraction, 3.1% reported at least one same-sex sexual partner in the past-year, and 2.8% self-identified as lesbian, gay or bisexual. Sexual attraction, sexual behavior, and sexual identity were significantly associated with cigarette smoking, any tobacco/nicotine use, and DSM-5 TUD. Risk of all tobacco/nicotine outcomes was most pronounced for bisexual adults across all three sexual orientation dimensions. Approximately half of sexual minorities who identified as lesbian or gay and one-fourth of those who identified as bisexual reported past-year sexual orientation discrimination. Sexual minorities who experienced high levels of past-year sexual orientation discrimination had significantly greater probability of past-year cigarette smoking, any tobacco/nicotine use, and TUD relative to sexual minorities who experienced lower levels of sexual orientation discrimination or no discrimination. Sexual minorities, especially bisexual adults, are at heightened risk of cigarette smoking, any tobacco/nicotine use, and DSM-5 TUD across all three major sexual orientation dimensions. Tobacco prevention and cessation efforts should target bisexual adults and consider the role sexual orientation discrimination plays in cigarette smoking and treatment of TUD. Differences in tobacco/nicotine use by sexual orientation are well documented, but little is known about differences across all three

Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States

OpenAIRE

Lauritsen, Janet L.; Sampson, Robert

1997-01-01

Although racial discrimination emerges some of the time at some stages of criminal justice processing-such as juvenile justice-there is little evidence that racial disparities result from systematic, overt bias. Discrimination appears to be indirect, stemming from the amplification of initial disadvantages over time, along with the social construction of "moral panics" and associated political responses. The "drug war" of the 1980s and 1990s exacerbated the disproportionate representation of ...

Evidence on Discrimination in Employment: Codes of Color, Codes of Gender

OpenAIRE

William A. Darity; Patrick L. Mason

1998-01-01

There is substantial racial and gender disparity in the American economy. As we will demonstrate, discriminatory treatment within the labor market is a major cause of this inequality. Yet, there appear to have been particular periods in which racial minorities, and then women, experienced substantial reductions in economic disparity and discrimination. Some questions remain: Why did the movement toward racial equality stagnate after the mid-1970s? What factors are most responsible for the rem...

Vigilance in the discrimination-stress model for Black Americans.

Science.gov (United States)

Himmelstein, Mary S; Young, Danielle M; Sanchez, Diana T; Jackson, James S

2015-01-01

Daily events of discrimination are important factors in understanding health disparities. Vigilant coping, or protecting against anticipated discrimination by monitoring and modifying behaviour, is an understudied mechanism that may link discrimination and health outcomes. This study investigates how responding to everyday discrimination with anticipatory vigilance relates to the health of Black men and women. Black adults (N = 221) from the Detroit area completed measures of discrimination, adverse life events, vigilance coping, stress, depressive symptoms and self-reported health. Vigilance coping strategies mediated the relationship between discrimination and stress. Multi-group path analysis revealed that stress in turn was associated with increased depression in men and women. Self-reported health consequences of stress differed between men and women. Vigilance coping mediates the link between discrimination and stress, and stress has consequences for health outcomes resulting from discrimination. More research is needed to understand other underlying contributors to discrimination, stress and poor health outcomes as well as to create potential interventions to ameliorate health outcomes in the face of discrimination-related stress.

Racial Discrimination, Ethnic-Racial Socialization, and Crime: A Micro-Sociological Model of Risk and Resilience

Science.gov (United States)

Burt, Callie Harbin; Simons, Ronald L.; Gibbons, Frederick X.

2012-01-01

Dominant theoretical explanations of racial disparities in criminal offending overlook a key risk factor associated with race: interpersonal racial discrimination. Building on recent studies that analyze race and crime at the micro-level, we specify a social psychological model linking personal experiences with racial discrimination to an…

An Application of Discriminant Analysis to Pattern Recognition of Selected Contaminated Soil Features in Thin Sections

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ribeiro, Alexandra B.; Nielsen, Allan Aasbjerg

1997-01-01

qualitative microprobe results: present elements Al, Si, Cr, Fe, As (associated with others). Selected groups of calibrated images (same light conditions and magnification) submitted to discriminant analysis, in order to find a pattern of recognition in the soil features corresponding to contamination already...

The association between discrimination and PTSD in African Americans: exploring the role of gender.

Science.gov (United States)

Brooks Holliday, Stephanie; Dubowitz, Tamara; Haas, Ann; Ghosh-Dastidar, Bonnie; DeSantis, Amy; Troxel, Wendy M

2018-02-28

Research has demonstrated the adverse impact that discrimination has on physical and mental health. However, few studies have examined the association between discrimination and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). There is evidence that African Americans experience higher rates of PTSD and are more likely to develop PTSD following trauma exposure than Whites, and discrimination may be one reason for this disparity. To examine the association between discrimination and PTSD among a cross-sectional sample largely comprising African American women, controlling for other psychosocial stressors (psychological distress, neighborhood safety, crime). A sample of 806 participants was recruited from two low-income predominantly African American neighborhoods. Participants completed self-report measures of PTSD symptoms, perceived discrimination, perceived safety, and psychological distress. Information on neighborhood crime was obtained through data requested from the city. Multivariate linear regression models were estimated to assess adjusted relationships between PTSD symptoms and discrimination. Discrimination was significantly associated with PTSD symptoms with a small effect size, controlling for relevant sociodemographic variables. This association remained consistent after controlling for psychological distress, perceived safety, and total neighborhood crime. There was no evidence of a gender by discrimination interaction. Participants who experienced any discrimination were significantly more likely to screen positive for PTSD. Discrimination may contribute to the disparate rates of PTSD experienced by African Americans. PTSD is associated with a range of negative consequences, including poorer physical health, mental health, and quality of life. These results suggest the importance of finding ways to promote resilience in this at-risk population.

Psychosocial Effects of Health Disparities of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Older Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Zelle, Andraya; Arms, Tamatha

2015-07-01

The 1.5 million older adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) are expected to double in number by 2030. Research suggests that health disparities are closely linked with societal stigma, discrimination, and denial of civil and human rights. More LGBT older adults struggle with depression, substance abuse, social isolation, and acceptance compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Despite individual preferences, most health care providers recognize the right of any individual to have access to basic medical services. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requires that all hospitals receiving funds from Medicare and Medicaid respect visitation and medical decision-making rights to all individuals identifying as LGBT. The Joint Commission also requires a non-discrimination statement for accreditation. The current literature review examines LGBT health disparities and the consequential psychosocial impact on LGBT older adults as well as brings awareness to the needs of this underserved and underrepresented population. Copyright 2015, SLACK Incorporated.

Unequal Depression for Equal Work? How the wage gap explains gendered disparities in mood disorders

OpenAIRE

Platt, Jonathan; Prins, Seth; Bates, Lisa; Keyes, Katherine

2015-01-01

Mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are more prevalent among women than men. This disparity may be partially due to the effects of structural gender discrimination in the work force, which acts to perpetuate gender differences in opportunities and resources and may manifest as the gender wage gap. We sought to quantify and operationalize the wage gap in order to explain the gender disparity in depression and anxiety disorders, using data from a 2001–2002 US nationally representati...

Visual discrimination and short-term memory for random patterns in patients with a focal cortical lesion

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Greenlee, MW; Koessler, M; Cornelissen, FW; Mergner, T

1997-01-01

Visual discrimination and short-term recognition memory for computer-generated random patterns were explored in 23 patients with a postsurgical lesion in one of the cortical hemispheres. Their results are compared with those of 23 age-matched volunteers. In a same-different forced-choice

Complex networks from experimental horizontal oil–water flows: Community structure detection versus flow pattern discrimination

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Gao, Zhong-Ke; Fang, Peng-Cheng; Ding, Mei-Shuang; Yang, Dan; Jin, Ning-De

2015-01-01

We propose a complex network-based method to distinguish complex patterns arising from experimental horizontal oil–water two-phase flow. We first use the adaptive optimal kernel time–frequency representation (AOK TFR) to characterize flow pattern behaviors from the energy and frequency point of view. Then, we infer two-phase flow complex networks from experimental measurements and detect the community structures associated with flow patterns. The results suggest that the community detection in two-phase flow complex network allows objectively discriminating complex horizontal oil–water flow patterns, especially for the segregated and dispersed flow patterns, a task that existing method based on AOK TFR fails to work. - Highlights: • We combine time–frequency analysis and complex network to identify flow patterns. • We explore the transitional flow behaviors in terms of betweenness centrality. • Our analysis provides a novel way for recognizing complex flow patterns. • Broader applicability of our method is demonstrated and articulated

Disparities at the intersection of marginalized groups

Science.gov (United States)

Jackson, John W.; Williams, David R.; VanderWeele, Tyler J.

2016-01-01

Mental health disparities exist across several dimensions of social inequality, including race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status and gender. Most investigations of health disparities focus on one dimension. Recent calls by researchers argue for studying persons who are marginalized in multiple ways, often from the perspective of intersectionality, a theoretical framework applied to qualitative studies in law, sociology, and psychology. Quantitative adaptations are emerging but there is little guidance as to what measures or methods are helpful. Here, we consider the concept of a joint disparity and its composition, show that this approach can illuminate how outcomes are patterned for social groups that are marginalized across multiple axes of social inequality, and compare the insights gained with that of other measures of additive interaction. We apply these methods to a cohort of males from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, examining disparities for black males with low early life SES vs. white males with high early life SES across several outcomes that predict mental health, including unemployment, wages, and incarceration. We report striking disparities in each outcome, but show that the contribution of race, SES, and their intersection varies. PMID:27531592

Sex Disparities in Arrest Outcomes for Domestic Violence

Science.gov (United States)

Hamilton, Melissa; Worthen, Meredith G. F.

2011-01-01

Domestic violence arrests have been historically focused on protecting women and children from abusive men. Arrest patterns continue to reflect this bias with more men arrested for domestic violence compared to women. Such potential gender variations in arrest patterns pave the way to the investigation of disparities by sex of the offender in…

Effects of perceived discrimination on mental health and mental health services utilization among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons.

Science.gov (United States)

Burgess, Diana; Tran, Alisia; Lee, Richard; van Ryn, Michelle

2007-01-01

Previous research has found that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals are at risk for a variety of mental health disorders. We examined the extent to which a recent experience of a major discriminatory event may contribute to poor mental health among LGBT persons. Data were derived from a cross-sectional strata-cluster survey of adults in Hennepin County, Minnesota, who identified as LGBT (n=472) or heterosexual (n=7,412). Compared to heterosexuals, LGBT individuals had poorer mental health (higher levels of psychological distress, greater likelihood of having a diagnosis of depression or anxiety, greater perceived mental health needs, and greater use of mental health services), more substance use (higher levels of binge drinking, greater likelihood of being a smoker and greater number of cigarettes smoked per day), and were more likely to report unmet mental healthcare needs. LGBT individuals were also more likely to report having experienced a major incident of discrimination over the past year than heterosexual individuals. Although perceived discrimination was associated with almost all of the indicators of mental health and utilization of mental health care that we examined, adjusting for discrimination did not significantly reduce mental health disparities between heterosexual and LGBT persons. LGBT individuals experienced more major discrimination and reported worse mental health than heterosexuals, but discrimination did not account for this disparity. Future research should explore additional forms of discrimination and additional stressors associated with minority sexual orientation that may account for these disparities.

Ethnical discrimination in Europe: Field evidence from the finance industry.

Science.gov (United States)

Stefan, Matthias; Holzmeister, Felix; Müllauer, Alexander; Kirchler, Michael

2018-01-01

The integration of ethnical minorities has been a hotly discussed topic in the political, societal, and economic debate. Persistent discrimination of ethnical minorities can hinder successful integration. Given that unequal access to investment and financing opportunities can cause social and economic disparities due to inferior economic prospects, we conducted a field experiment on ethnical discrimination in the finance sector with 1,218 banks in seven European countries. We contacted banks via e-mail, either with domestic or Arabic sounding names, asking for contact details only. We find pronounced discrimination in terms of a substantially lower response rate to e-mails from Arabic senders. Remarkably, the observed discrimination effect is robust for loan- and investment-related requests, across rural and urban locations of banks, and across countries.

Objective quality assessment of stereoscopic images with vertical disparity using EEG

Science.gov (United States)

Shahbazi Avarvand, Forooz; Bosse, Sebastian; Müller, Klaus-Robert; Schäfer, Ralf; Nolte, Guido; Wiegand, Thomas; Curio, Gabriel; Samek, Wojciech

2017-08-01

Objective. Neurophysiological correlates of vertical disparity in 3D images are studied in an objective approach using EEG technique. These disparities are known to negatively affect the quality of experience and to cause visual discomfort in stereoscopic visualizations. Approach. We have presented four conditions to subjects: one in 2D and three conditions in 3D, one without vertical disparity and two with different vertical disparity levels. Event related potentials (ERPs) are measured for each condition and the differences between ERP components are studied. Analysis is also performed on the induced potentials in the time frequency domain. Main results. Results show that there is a significant increase in the amplitude of P1 components in 3D conditions in comparison to 2D. These results are consistent with previous studies which have shown that P1 amplitude increases due to the depth perception in 3D compared to 2D. However the amplitude is significantly smaller for maximum vertical disparity (3D-3) in comparison to 3D with no vertical disparity. Our results therefore suggest that the vertical disparity in 3D-3 condition decreases the perception of depth compared to other 3D conditions and the amplitude of P1 component can be used as a discriminative feature. Significance. The results show that the P1 component increases in amplitude due to the depth perception in the 3D stimuli compared to the 2D stimulus. On the other hand the vertical disparity in the stereoscopic images is studied here. We suggest that the amplitude of P1 component is modulated with this parameter and decreases due to the decrease in the perception of depth.

International Trade and Labor Market Discrimination

NARCIS (Netherlands)

R. Chisik (Richard); J.E. Namini (Julian Emami)

2016-01-01

textabstractWe embed a competitive search model with labor market discrimination, or nepotism, into a two-sector, two-country framework in order to analyze how labor market discrimination impacts the pattern of international trade and also how trade trade affects discrimination. Discrimination, or

Neurons Forming Optic Glomeruli Compute Figure–Ground Discriminations in Drosophila

Science.gov (United States)

Aptekar, Jacob W.; Keleş, Mehmet F.; Lu, Patrick M.; Zolotova, Nadezhda M.

2015-01-01

Many animals rely on visual figure–ground discrimination to aid in navigation, and to draw attention to salient features like conspecifics or predators. Even figures that are similar in pattern and luminance to the visual surroundings can be distinguished by the optical disparity generated by their relative motion against the ground, and yet the neural mechanisms underlying these visual discriminations are not well understood. We show in flies that a diverse array of figure–ground stimuli containing a motion-defined edge elicit statistically similar behavioral responses to one another, and statistically distinct behavioral responses from ground motion alone. From studies in larger flies and other insect species, we hypothesized that the circuitry of the lobula—one of the four, primary neuropiles of the fly optic lobe—performs this visual discrimination. Using calcium imaging of input dendrites, we then show that information encoded in cells projecting from the lobula to discrete optic glomeruli in the central brain group these sets of figure–ground stimuli in a homologous manner to the behavior; “figure-like” stimuli are coded similar to one another and “ground-like” stimuli are encoded differently. One cell class responds to the leading edge of a figure and is suppressed by ground motion. Two other classes cluster any figure-like stimuli, including a figure moving opposite the ground, distinctly from ground alone. This evidence demonstrates that lobula outputs provide a diverse basis set encoding visual features necessary for figure detection. PMID:25972183

Speech-discrimination scores modeled as a binomial variable.

Science.gov (United States)

Thornton, A R; Raffin, M J

1978-09-01

Many studies have reported variability data for tests of speech discrimination, and the disparate results of these studies have not been given a simple explanation. Arguments over the relative merits of 25- vs 50-word tests have ignored the basic mathematical properties inherent in the use of percentage scores. The present study models performance on clinical tests of speech discrimination as a binomial variable. A binomial model was developed, and some of its characteristics were tested against data from 4120 scores obtained on the CID Auditory Test W-22. A table for determining significant deviations between scores was generated and compared to observed differences in half-list scores for the W-22 tests. Good agreement was found between predicted and observed values. Implications of the binomial characteristics of speech-discrimination scores are discussed.

Ethnical discrimination in Europe: Field evidence from the finance industry

Science.gov (United States)

Stefan, Matthias; Holzmeister, Felix; Müllauer, Alexander

2018-01-01

The integration of ethnical minorities has been a hotly discussed topic in the political, societal, and economic debate. Persistent discrimination of ethnical minorities can hinder successful integration. Given that unequal access to investment and financing opportunities can cause social and economic disparities due to inferior economic prospects, we conducted a field experiment on ethnical discrimination in the finance sector with 1,218 banks in seven European countries. We contacted banks via e-mail, either with domestic or Arabic sounding names, asking for contact details only. We find pronounced discrimination in terms of a substantially lower response rate to e-mails from Arabic senders. Remarkably, the observed discrimination effect is robust for loan- and investment-related requests, across rural and urban locations of banks, and across countries. PMID:29377964

Comparing success levels of different neural network structures in extracting discriminative information from the response patterns of a temperature-modulated resistive gas sensor

Science.gov (United States)

Hosseini-Golgoo, S. M.; Bozorgi, H.; Saberkari, A.

2015-06-01

Performances of three neural networks, consisting of a multi-layer perceptron, a radial basis function, and a neuro-fuzzy network with local linear model tree training algorithm, in modeling and extracting discriminative features from the response patterns of a temperature-modulated resistive gas sensor are quantitatively compared. For response pattern recording, a voltage staircase containing five steps each with a 20 s plateau is applied to the micro-heater of the sensor, when 12 different target gases, each at 11 concentration levels, are present. In each test, the hidden layer neuron weights are taken as the discriminatory feature vector of the target gas. These vectors are then mapped to a 3D feature space using linear discriminant analysis. The discriminative information content of the feature vectors are determined by the calculation of the Fisher’s discriminant ratio, affording quantitative comparison among the success rates achieved by the different neural network structures. The results demonstrate a superior discrimination ratio for features extracted from local linear neuro-fuzzy and radial-basis-function networks with recognition rates of 96.27% and 90.74%, respectively.

Comparing success levels of different neural network structures in extracting discriminative information from the response patterns of a temperature-modulated resistive gas sensor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hosseini-Golgoo, S M; Bozorgi, H; Saberkari, A

2015-01-01

Performances of three neural networks, consisting of a multi-layer perceptron, a radial basis function, and a neuro-fuzzy network with local linear model tree training algorithm, in modeling and extracting discriminative features from the response patterns of a temperature-modulated resistive gas sensor are quantitatively compared. For response pattern recording, a voltage staircase containing five steps each with a 20 s plateau is applied to the micro-heater of the sensor, when 12 different target gases, each at 11 concentration levels, are present. In each test, the hidden layer neuron weights are taken as the discriminatory feature vector of the target gas. These vectors are then mapped to a 3D feature space using linear discriminant analysis. The discriminative information content of the feature vectors are determined by the calculation of the Fisher’s discriminant ratio, affording quantitative comparison among the success rates achieved by the different neural network structures. The results demonstrate a superior discrimination ratio for features extracted from local linear neuro-fuzzy and radial-basis-function networks with recognition rates of 96.27% and 90.74%, respectively. (paper)

Perceptions of weight discrimination: prevalence and comparison to race and gender discrimination in America.

Science.gov (United States)

Puhl, R M; Andreyeva, T; Brownell, K D

2008-06-01

Limited data are available on the prevalence and patterns of body weight discrimination from representative samples. This study examined experiences of weight/height discrimination in a nationally representative sample of US adults and compared their prevalence and patterns with discrimination experiences based on race and gender. Data were from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, a 1995-1996 community-based survey of English-speaking adults aged 25-74 (N=2290). Reported experiences of weight/height discrimination included a variety of institutional settings and interpersonal relationships. Multivariate regression analyses were used to predict weight/height discrimination controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and body weight status. The prevalence of weight/height discrimination ranged from 5% among men to 10% among women, but these average percentages obscure the much higher risk of weight discrimination among heavier individuals (40% for adults with body mass index (BMI) of 35 and above). Younger individuals with a higher BMI had a particularly high risk of weight/height discrimination regardless of their race, education and weight status. Women were at greater risk for weight/height discrimination than men, especially women with a BMI of 30-35 who were three times more likely to report weight/height discrimination compared to male peers of a similar weight. Weight/height discrimination is prevalent in American society and is relatively close to reported rates of racial discrimination, particularly among women. Both institutional forms of weight/height discrimination (for example, in employment settings) and interpersonal mistreatment due to weight/height (for example, being called names) were common, and in some cases were even more prevalent than discrimination due to gender and race.

Colorectal cancer screening, perceived discrimination, and low-income and trust in doctors: a survey of minority patients

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bhattacharya Shelley B

2009-09-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Completion of colorectal cancer (CRC screening testing is lower among low-income and minority groups than the population as a whole. Given the multiple cancer screening health disparities known to exist within the U.S., this study investigated the relationship between perceived discrimination, trust in most doctors, and completion of Fecal Occult Blood Testing (FOBT among a low-income, minority primary care population in an urban setting. Methods We recruited a convenience sample of adults over age 40 (n = 282 from a federally qualified community health center (70% African American. Participants completed a survey which included measures of trust in most doctors, perceived discrimination, demographics and report of cancer screening. Results Participants reported high levels of trust in most doctors, regardless of sex, race, education or income. High trust was associated with low perceived discrimination (p Conclusion Perceived discrimination was related to income, but not race, suggesting that discrimination is not unique to minorities, but common to those in poverty. Since trust in most doctors trended toward being related to age, FOBT screening could be negatively influenced by low trust and perceived discrimination in health care settings. A failure to address these issues in middle-aged, low income individuals could exacerbate future disparities in CRC screening.

Face adaptation improves gender discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Yang, Hua; Shen, Jianhong; Chen, Juan; Fang, Fang

2011-01-01

Adaptation to a visual pattern can alter the sensitivities of neuronal populations encoding the pattern. However, the functional roles of adaptation, especially in high-level vision, are still equivocal. In the present study, we performed three experiments to investigate if face gender adaptation could affect gender discrimination. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that adapting to a male/female face could selectively enhance discrimination for male/female faces. Experiment 3 showed that the discrimination enhancement induced by face adaptation could transfer across a substantial change in three-dimensional face viewpoint. These results provide further evidence suggesting that, similar to low-level vision, adaptation in high-level vision could calibrate the visual system to current inputs of complex shapes (i.e. face) and improve discrimination at the adapted characteristic. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

The energy implications of Chinese regional disparities

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Huang Yuanxi; Todd, Daniel

2010-01-01

Chinese regional disparities are readily apparent, with well-being seen the highest at the coast and declining steadily inland. Their mitigation will clearly be hostage to improvement in economic development, since the unevenness of that development created them in the first place. Integral to development is structural change, and the key to effecting that change is improved energy efficiency. Indeed, this paper explores energy usage and regional development from 1952 to the present, establishing that they both conform to an inverted-U pattern. Eastern China, the leader in industrialization, has moved beyond the apogee of the curve, but Central and Western China have failed to follow suit, being held back by poor industrial structures and adverse patterns of energy consumption. Remedying this laggardly performance preoccupies China's Government, for rendering the country energy-efficient and containing regional disparities, both rest on pushing the Central and Western regions down the curve in the wake of the prosperous coast.

Decoding conjunctions of direction-of-motion and binocular disparity from human visual cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Seymour, Kiley J; Clifford, Colin W G

2012-05-01

Motion and binocular disparity are two features in our environment that share a common correspondence problem. Decades of psychophysical research dedicated to understanding stereopsis suggest that these features interact early in human visual processing to disambiguate depth. Single-unit recordings in the monkey also provide evidence for the joint encoding of motion and disparity across much of the dorsal visual stream. Here, we used functional MRI and multivariate pattern analysis to examine where in the human brain conjunctions of motion and disparity are encoded. Subjects sequentially viewed two stimuli that could be distinguished only by their conjunctions of motion and disparity. Specifically, each stimulus contained the same feature information (leftward and rightward motion and crossed and uncrossed disparity) but differed exclusively in the way these features were paired. Our results revealed that a linear classifier could accurately decode which stimulus a subject was viewing based on voxel activation patterns throughout the dorsal visual areas and as early as V2. This decoding success was conditional on some voxels being individually sensitive to the unique conjunctions comprising each stimulus, thus a classifier could not rely on independent information about motion and binocular disparity to distinguish these conjunctions. This study expands on evidence that disparity and motion interact at many levels of human visual processing, particularly within the dorsal stream. It also lends support to the idea that stereopsis is subserved by early mechanisms also tuned to direction of motion.

Neurons forming optic glomeruli compute figure-ground discriminations in Drosophila.

Science.gov (United States)

Aptekar, Jacob W; Keleş, Mehmet F; Lu, Patrick M; Zolotova, Nadezhda M; Frye, Mark A

2015-05-13

Many animals rely on visual figure-ground discrimination to aid in navigation, and to draw attention to salient features like conspecifics or predators. Even figures that are similar in pattern and luminance to the visual surroundings can be distinguished by the optical disparity generated by their relative motion against the ground, and yet the neural mechanisms underlying these visual discriminations are not well understood. We show in flies that a diverse array of figure-ground stimuli containing a motion-defined edge elicit statistically similar behavioral responses to one another, and statistically distinct behavioral responses from ground motion alone. From studies in larger flies and other insect species, we hypothesized that the circuitry of the lobula--one of the four, primary neuropiles of the fly optic lobe--performs this visual discrimination. Using calcium imaging of input dendrites, we then show that information encoded in cells projecting from the lobula to discrete optic glomeruli in the central brain group these sets of figure-ground stimuli in a homologous manner to the behavior; "figure-like" stimuli are coded similar to one another and "ground-like" stimuli are encoded differently. One cell class responds to the leading edge of a figure and is suppressed by ground motion. Two other classes cluster any figure-like stimuli, including a figure moving opposite the ground, distinctly from ground alone. This evidence demonstrates that lobula outputs provide a diverse basis set encoding visual features necessary for figure detection. Copyright © 2015 the authors 0270-6474/15/357587-13$15.00/0.

Discrimination against older women in health care.

Science.gov (United States)

Belgrave, L L

1993-01-01

Growing awareness of apparent gaps in health care received by women and men raises concern over possible discrimination. This literature review examines this issue for elderly women, whose health care is obtained in a system that also may be permeated with age discrimination. Physicians tend to spend more time with women and older patients, suggesting that discrimination may not be an issue in the physician-patient relationship or may work in favor of older women. However, this may simply reflect elderly women's poorer health. Gender and age disparities in medical treatments received provide a more compelling argument that the health care system is a source of discrimination against older women, who are less likely than others to receive available treatments for cardiac, renal, and other conditions. The history of medical treatment of menopause suggests that stereotypes of older women have been advantageous for segments of the health care system. Finally, in addition to discrimination that has its source within the health care system itself, societal-wide inequities, particularly economic, are extremely detrimental to older women's health care. As we respond to the health care crisis, we must be alert to the potential to rectify those structures and tendencies that can lead to discrimination against women and the aged. Health care reform presents a unique opportunity to ensure health care equity.

When are Racial Disparities in Education the Result of Racial Discrimination? A Social Science Perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin

2003-01-01

Synthesizes the social science research on racially correlated disparities in education, focusing on biological determinism (behavioral genetics); social structure (e.g., reproduction theory and resistance theory); school organization and opportunities to learn (e.g., resources, racial composition, and tracking); family background (financial,…

Health disparities, social injustice, and the culture of nursing.

Science.gov (United States)

Giddings, Lynne S

2005-01-01

Nurses are well positioned to challenge institutionalized social injustices that lead to health disparities. The aim of this cross-cultural study was to collect stories of difference and fairness within nursing. The study used a life history methodology informed by feminist theory and critical social theory. Life story interviews were conducted with 26 women nurses of varying racial, cultural, sexual identity, and specialty backgrounds in the United States (n = 13) and Aotearoa New Zealand (n = 13). Participants reported having some understanding of social justice issues. They were asked to reflect on their experience of difference and fairness in their lives and specifically within nursing. Their stories were analyzed using a life history immersion method. Nursing remains attached to the ideological construction of the "White good nurse." Taken-for-granted ideals privilege those who fit in and marginalize those who do not. The nurses experienced discrimination and unfairness, survived by living in two worlds, learned to live in contradiction, and worked surreptitiously for social justice. For nurses to contribute to changing the systems and structures that maintain health disparities, the privilege of not seeing difference and the processes of mainstream violence that support the construction of the "White good nurse" must be challenged. Nurses need skills to deconstruct the marginalizing social processes that sustain inequalities in nursing and healthcare. These hidden realities--racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other forms of discrimination--will then be made visible and open to challenge.

Socially disparate trends in lifespan variation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Brønnum-Hansen, Henrik

2017-01-01

BACKGROUND: Social inequality trends in life expectancy are not informative as to changes in social disparity in the age-at-death distribution. The purpose of the study was to investigate social differentials in trends and patterns of adult mortality in Denmark. METHODS: Register data on income...... quartile. The results do not provide support for a uniformly extension of pension age for all....

Auditory Discrimination of Lexical Stress Patterns in Hearing-Impaired Infants with Cochlear Implants Compared with Normal Hearing: Influence of Acoustic Cues and Listening Experience to the Ambient Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Segal, Osnat; Houston, Derek; Kishon-Rabin, Liat

2016-01-01

To assess discrimination of lexical stress pattern in infants with cochlear implant (CI) compared with infants with normal hearing (NH). While criteria for cochlear implantation have expanded to infants as young as 6 months, little is known regarding infants' processing of suprasegmental-prosodic cues which are known to be important for the first stages of language acquisition. Lexical stress is an example of such a cue, which, in hearing infants, has been shown to assist in segmenting words from fluent speech and in distinguishing between words that differ only the stress pattern. To date, however, there are no data on the ability of infants with CIs to perceive lexical stress. Such information will provide insight to the speech characteristics that are available to these infants in their first steps of language acquisition. This is of particular interest given the known limitations that the CI device has in transmitting speech information that is mediated by changes in fundamental frequency. Two groups of infants participated in this study. The first group included 20 profoundly hearing-impaired infants with CI, 12 to 33 months old, implanted under the age of 2.5 years (median age of implantation = 14.5 months), with 1 to 6 months of CI use (mean = 2.7 months) and no known additional problems. The second group of infants included 48 NH infants, 11 to 14 months old with normal development and no known risk factors for developmental delays. Infants were tested on their ability to discriminate between nonsense words that differed on their stress pattern only (/dóti/ versus /dotí/ and /dotí/ versus /dóti/) using the visual habituation procedure. The measure for discrimination was the change in looking time between the last habituation trial (e.g., /dóti/) and the novel trial (e.g., /dotí/). (1) Infants with CI showed discrimination between lexical stress pattern with only limited auditory experience with their implant device, (2) discrimination of stress

Gender disparity in late-life cognitive functioning in India: findings from the longitudinal aging study in India.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Jinkook; Shih, Regina; Feeney, Kevin; Langa, Kenneth M

2014-07-01

To examine gender disparities in cognitive functioning in India and the extent to which education explains this disparity in later life. This study uses baseline interviews of a prospective cohort study of 1,451 community-residing adults 45 years of age or older in four geographically diverse states of India (Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, Rajasthan). Data collected during home visits includes cognitive performance tests, and rich sociodemographic, health, and psychosocial variables. The cognitive performance tests include episodic memory, numeracy, and a modified version of the Mini-Mental State Examination. We find gender disparity in cognitive function in India, and this disparity is greater in the north than the south. We also find that gender disparities in educational attainment, health, and social and economic activity explain the female cognitive disadvantage in later life. We report significant gender disparities in cognitive functioning among older Indian adults, which differ from gender disparities in cognition encountered in developed countries. Our models controlling for education, health status, and social and economic activity explain the disparity in southern India but not the region-specific disparity in the northern India. North Indian women may face additional sources of stress associated with discrimination against women that contribute to persistent disadvantages in cognitive functioning at older ages. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Gerontological Society of America. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Unequal Depression for Equal Work? How the wage gap explains gendered disparities in mood disorders

Science.gov (United States)

Platt, Jonathan; Prins, Seth; Bates, Lisa; Keyes, Katherine

2016-01-01

Mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are more prevalent among women than men. This disparity may be partially due to the effects of structural gender discrimination in the work force, which acts to perpetuate gender differences in opportunities and resources and may manifest as the gender wage gap. We sought to quantify and operationalize the wage gap in order to explain the gender disparity in depression and anxiety disorders, using data from a 2001–2002 US nationally representative survey of 22,581 working adults ages 30–65. Using established Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods to account for gender differences in individual-level productivity, our models reduced the wage gap in our sample by 13.5%, from 54% of men’s pay to 67.5% of men’s pay. We created a propensity-score matched sample of productivity indicators to test if the direction of the wage gap moderated the effects of gender on depression or anxiety. Where female income was less than the matched male counterpart, odds of both disorders were significantly higher among women versus men (major depressive disorder OR: 2.43, 95% CI: 1.95–3.04; generalized anxiety disorder OR: 4.11, 95% CI: 2.80–6.02). Where female income was greater than the matched male, the higher odds ratios for women for both disorders were significantly attenuated (Major Depressive Disorder OR: 1.20; 95% CI: 0.96–1.52) (Generalized Anxiety Disorder OR: 1.5; 95% CI: 1.04–2.29). The test for effect modification by sex and wage gap direction was statistically significant for both disorders. Structural forms of discrimination may explain mental health disparities at the population level. Beyond prohibiting overt gender discrimination, policies must be created to address embedded inequalities in procedures surrounding labor markets and compensation in the workplace. PMID:26689629

Unequal depression for equal work? How the wage gap explains gendered disparities in mood disorders.

Science.gov (United States)

Platt, Jonathan; Prins, Seth; Bates, Lisa; Keyes, Katherine

2016-01-01

Mood disorders, such as depression and anxiety, are more prevalent among women than men. This disparity may be partially due to the effects of structural gender discrimination in the work force, which acts to perpetuate gender differences in opportunities and resources and may manifest as the gender wage gap. We sought to quantify and operationalize the wage gap in order to explain the gender disparity in depression and anxiety disorders, using data from a 2001-2002 US nationally representative survey of 22,581 working adults ages 30-65. Using established Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods to account for gender differences in individual-level productivity, our models reduced the wage gap in our sample by 13.5%, from 54% of men's pay to 67.5% of men's pay. We created a propensity-score matched sample of productivity indicators to test if the direction of the wage gap moderated the effects of gender on depression or anxiety. Where female income was less than the matched male counterpart, odds of both disorders were significantly higher among women versus men (major depressive disorder OR: 2.43, 95% CI: 1.95-3.04; generalized anxiety disorder OR: 4.11, 95% CI: 2.80-6.02). Where female income was greater than the matched male, the higher odds ratios for women for both disorders were significantly attenuated (Major Depressive Disorder OR: 1.20; 95% CI: 0.96-1.52) (Generalized Anxiety Disorder OR: 1.5; 95% CI: 1.04-2.29). The test for effect modification by sex and wage gap direction was statistically significant for both disorders. Structural forms of discrimination may explain mental health disparities at the population level. Beyond prohibiting overt gender discrimination, policies must be created to address embedded inequalities in procedures surrounding labor markets and compensation in the workplace. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Social Status Correlates of Reporting Racial Discrimination and Gender Discrimination among Racially Diverse Women

Science.gov (United States)

Ro, Annie E.; Choi, Kyung-Hee

2009-01-01

The growing body of research on discrimination and health indicates a deleterious effect of discrimination on various health outcomes. However, less is known about the sociodemographic correlates of reporting racial discrimination and gender discrimination among racially diverse women. We examined the associations of social status characteristics with lifetime experiences of racial discrimination and gender discrimination using a racially-diverse sample of 754 women attending family planning clinics in Northern California (11.4% African American, 16.8% Latina, 10.1% Asian and 61.7% Caucasian). A multivariate analysis revealed that race, financial difficulty and marital status were significantly correlated with higher reports of racial discrimination, while race, education, financial difficulty and nativity were significantly correlated with gender discrimination scores. Our findings suggest that the social patterning of perceiving racial discrimination is somewhat different from that of gender discrimination. This has implications in the realm of discrimination research and applied interventions, as different forms of discrimination may have unique covariates that should be accounted for in research analysis or program design. PMID:19485231

Social status correlates of reporting gender discrimination and racial discrimination among racially diverse women.

Science.gov (United States)

Ro, Annie E; Choi, Kyung-Hee

2009-01-01

The growing body of research on discrimination and health indicates a deleterious effect of discrimination on various health outcomes. However, less is known about the sociodemographic correlates of reporting racial discrimination and gender discrimination among racially diverse women. We examined the associations of social status characteristics with lifetime experiences of racial discrimination and gender discrimination using a racially-diverse sample of 754 women attending family planning clinics in North California (11.4% African American, 16.8% Latina, 10.1% Asian and 61.7% Caucasian). A multivariate analysis revealed that race, financial difficulty and marital status were significantly correlated with higher reports of racial discrimination, while race, education, financial difficulty and nativity were significantly correlated with gender discrimination scores. Our findings suggest that the social patterning of perceiving racial discrimination is somewhat different from that of gender discrimination. This has implications in the realm of discrimination research and applied interventions, as different forms of discrimination may have unique covariates that should be accounted for in research analysis or program design.

Gender disparity in internet utilisation habits of medical students ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

... that there still exists gender inequality in internet utilization by students of tertiary institutions in Nigeria. It recommends paradigm shift in teaching, information dissemination patterns and policy implementation to accomplish the desired change. Keywords: Internet, Utilization, Habits, Gender, Disparity, Digital, Divide.

Discrimination of chromosome by autoradiography

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Masubuchi, Masanori

1975-01-01

This paper describes discrimination of chromosome by autoradiography. In this method, the difference in DNA synthetic phase between each chromosome was used as a standard, and the used chromosome was in metaphase, as morphological characteristics were markedly in this phase. Cell cycle and autoradiography with 3 H-thymidine were also examined. In order to discriminate chromosome by autoradiography, it was effective to utilize the labelled pattern in late DNA synthetic phase, where asynchronous replication of chromosome appeared most obviously. DNA synthesis in chromosome was examined in each DNA synthetic phase by culturing the chromosome after the treatment with 3 H-thymidine and altering the time to prepare chromosome specimen. Discrimination of chromosome in plants and animals by autoradiography was also mentioned. It was noticed as a structural and functional discrimination of chromosome to observe amino acid uptake into chromosome protein and to utilize the difference in labelled pattern between the sites of chromosome. (K. Serizawa)

Perceived experiences of discrimination in health care: a barrier for cancer screening among American Indian women with type 2 diabetes.

Science.gov (United States)

Gonzales, Kelly L; Harding, Anna K; Lambert, William E; Fu, Rongwei; Henderson, William G

2013-01-01

Breast and cervical cancer-mortality disparities are prominent among American Indian women. These disparities, in part, may result from patients perceived experiences of discrimination in health care. This report evaluates the impact of perceived discrimination on screening for breast and cervical cancer in a sample of 200 American Indian women with type 2 diabetes. Data were collected from patient report and medical records. Prevalence of breast and cervical cancer screening were assessed. Unadjusted and adjusted logistic regression analyses were used to assess associations between perceived discrimination, cancer screening status, and patients' health care-seeking behaviors. Substantial proportions of AI women in our sample were behind the recommended schedules of screening for breast and cervical cancer. Adjusted estimates revealed that perceived discrimination was significantly associated with not being current for clinical breast examination and Pap test, and was close to statistical significance with not being current for mammography. The number of suboptimal health care-seeking behaviors increased with higher mean levels of perceived discrimination. Among AI women, perceived discrimination in health care may negatively influence use of breast and cancer screening services, and health care-seeking behaviors. More research is needed among AIs to examine features of health care systems related to the phenomenon patients perceived experience of discrimination. Copyright © 2013 Jacobs Institute of Women's Health. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Discriminative training of self-structuring hidden control neural models

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Helge Bjarup Dissing; Hartmann, Uwe; Hunnerup, Preben

1995-01-01

This paper presents a new training algorithm for self-structuring hidden control neural (SHC) models. The SHC models were trained non-discriminatively for speech recognition applications. Better recognition performance can generally be achieved, if discriminative training is applied instead. Thus...... we developed a discriminative training algorithm for SHC models, where each SHC model for a specific speech pattern is trained with utterances of the pattern to be recognized and with other utterances. The discriminative training of SHC neural models has been tested on the TIDIGITS database...

Exploring Discrimination and Mental Health Disparities Faced By Black Sexual Minority Women Using a Minority Stress Framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Calabrese, Sarah K; Meyer, Ilan H; Overstreet, Nicole M; Haile, Rahwa; Hansen, Nathan B

2015-09-01

Black sexual minority women are triply marginalized due to their race, gender, and sexual orientation. We compared three dimensions of discrimination-frequency (regularity of occurrences), scope (number of types of discriminatory acts experienced), and number of bases (number of social statuses to which discrimination was attributed)-and self-reported mental health (depressive symptoms, psychological well-being, and social well-being) between 64 Black sexual minority women and each of two groups sharing two of three marginalized statuses: (a) 67 White sexual minority women and (b) 67 Black sexual minority men. Black sexual minority women reported greater discrimination frequency, scope, and number of bases and poorer psychological and social well-being than White sexual minority women and more discrimination bases, a higher level of depressive symptoms, and poorer social well-being than Black sexual minority men. We then tested and contrasted dimensions of discrimination as mediators between social status (race or gender) and mental health outcomes. Discrimination frequency and scope mediated the association between race and mental health, with a stronger effect via frequency among sexual minority women. Number of discrimination bases mediated the association between gender and mental health among Black sexual minorities. Future research and clinical practice would benefit from considering Black sexual minority women's mental health in a multidimensional minority stress context.

Friend Effects and Racial Disparities in Academic Achievement

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jennifer Flashman

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Racial disparities in achievement are a persistent fact of the US educational system. An often cited but rarely directly studied explanation for these disparities is that adolescents from different racial and ethnic backgrounds are exposed to different peers and have different friends. In this article I identify the impact of friends on racial and ethnic achievement disparities. Using data from Add Health and an instrumental variable approach, I show that the achievement characteristics of youths’ friends drive friend effects; adolescents with friends with higher grades are more likely to increase their grades compared to those with lower-achieving friends. Although these effects do not differ across race/ethnicity, given differences in friendship patterns, if black and Latino adolescents had friends with the achievement characteristics of white students, the GPA gap would be 17 to 19 percent smaller. Although modest, this effect represents an important and often overlooked source of difference among black and Latino youth.

Cancer Disparities

Science.gov (United States)

Basic information about cancer disparities in the U.S., factors that contribute to the disproportionate burden of cancer in some groups, and examples of disparities in incidence and mortality among certain populations.

Health Disparities

Science.gov (United States)

... Health and Health Disparities conduct transdisciplinary research involving social, behavioral, biological, and genetic research to improve knowledge of the causes of health disparities and devise effective methods of preventing, diagnosing, and treating disease and promoting ...

Discrimination and anger control as pathways linking socioeconomic disadvantage to allostatic load in midlife.

Science.gov (United States)

Zilioli, Samuele; Imami, Ledina; Ong, Anthony D; Lumley, Mark A; Gruenewald, Tara

2017-12-01

Recent evidence suggests that experiences of discrimination contribute to socioeconomic status health disparities. The current study examined if the experience and regulation of anger-an expected emotional response to discrimination-serves as an explanatory factor for the previously documented links between socioeconomic disadvantage (SED), discrimination, and allostatic load. Data were drawn from the second wave of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study and included 909 adults who participated in the biomarkers subproject. Results revealed that perceived discrimination was associated with higher levels of allostatic load. Furthermore, we found evidence that perceived discrimination and anger control sequentially explained the relationship between SED and allostatic load, such that greater discrimination was associated with lower levels of anger control, which, in turn accounted for the effects of discrimination on allostatic load. These results remained significant after controlling for negative affect, positive affect, other forms of anger expression, as well as demographic covariates. Our findings suggest that low anger control may be an important psychological pathway through which experiences of discrimination influence health. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Enhancing the discrimination accuracy between metastases, gliomas and meningiomas on brain MRI by volumetric textural features and ensemble pattern recognition methods.

Science.gov (United States)

Georgiadis, Pantelis; Cavouras, Dionisis; Kalatzis, Ioannis; Glotsos, Dimitris; Athanasiadis, Emmanouil; Kostopoulos, Spiros; Sifaki, Koralia; Malamas, Menelaos; Nikiforidis, George; Solomou, Ekaterini

2009-01-01

Three-dimensional (3D) texture analysis of volumetric brain magnetic resonance (MR) images has been identified as an important indicator for discriminating among different brain pathologies. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of 3D textural features using a pattern recognition system in the task of discriminating benign, malignant and metastatic brain tissues on T1 postcontrast MR imaging (MRI) series. The dataset consisted of 67 brain MRI series obtained from patients with verified and untreated intracranial tumors. The pattern recognition system was designed as an ensemble classification scheme employing a support vector machine classifier, specially modified in order to integrate the least squares features transformation logic in its kernel function. The latter, in conjunction with using 3D textural features, enabled boosting up the performance of the system in discriminating metastatic, malignant and benign brain tumors with 77.14%, 89.19% and 93.33% accuracy, respectively. The method was evaluated using an external cross-validation process; thus, results might be considered indicative of the generalization performance of the system to "unseen" cases. The proposed system might be used as an assisting tool for brain tumor characterization on volumetric MRI series.

Unraveling Health Disparities Among Sexual and Gender Minorities: A Commentary on the Persistent Impact of Stigma.

Science.gov (United States)

Valdiserri, Ronald O; Holtgrave, David R; Poteat, Tonia C; Beyrer, Chris

2018-01-03

LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) populations experience disparities in health outcomes, both physical and mental, compared to their heterosexual and cisgender peers. This commentary confronts the view held by some researchers that the disparate rates of mental health problems reported among LGBT populations are the consequences of pursuing a particular life trajectory, rather than resulting from the corrosive and persistent impact of stigma. Suggesting that mental health disparities among LGBT populations arise internally, de novo, when individuals express non-heterosexual and non-conforming gender identities ignores the vast body of evidence documenting the destructive impact of socially mediated stigma and systemic discrimination on health outcomes for a number of minorities, including sexual and gender minorities. Furthermore, such thinking is antithetical to widely accepted standards of health and wellbeing because it implies that LGBT persons should adopt and live out identities that contradict or deny their innermost feelings of self.

Action recognition and movement direction discrimination tasks are associated with different adaptation patterns

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Stephan eDe La Rosa

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The ability to discriminate between different actions is essential for action recognition and social interaction. Surprisingly previous research has often probed action recognition mechanisms with tasks that did not require participants to discriminate between actions, e.g. left-right direction discrimination tasks. It is not known to what degree visual processes in direction discrimination tasks are also involved in the discrimination of actions, e.g. when telling apart a handshake from a high-five. Here, we examined whether action discrimination is influenced by movement direction and whether direction discrimination depends on the type of action. We used an action adaptation paradigm to target action and direction discrimination specific visual processes. In separate conditions participants visually adapted to forward and backward moving handshake and high-five actions. Participants subsequently either categorized the action or the movement direction of an ambiguous action. The results showed that direction discrimination adaptation effects were modulated by the type of action but action discrimination adaptation effects were unaffected by movement direction. These results suggest that action discrimination and direction categorization rely on partly different visual information. We propose that action discrimination tasks should be considered for the exploration of visual action recognition mechanisms.

Anti-discrimination Analysis Using Privacy Attack Strategies

KAUST Repository

Ruggieri, Salvatore; Hajian, Sara; Kamiran, Faisal; Zhang, Xiangliang

2014-01-01

Social discrimination discovery from data is an important task to identify illegal and unethical discriminatory patterns towards protected-by-law groups, e.g., ethnic minorities. We deploy privacy attack strategies as tools for discrimination

Disparities in Birth Weight and Gestational Age by Ethnic Ancestry in South American countries

Science.gov (United States)

Wehby, George L.; Gili, Juan A.; Pawluk, Mariela; Castilla, Eduardo E.; López-Camelo, Jorge S.

2015-01-01

Objective We examine disparities in birth weight and gestational age by ethnic ancestry in 2000–2011 in eight South American countries. Methods The sample included 60480 singleton live-births. Regression models were estimated to evaluate differences in birth outcomes by ethnic ancestry controlling for time trends. Results Significant disparities were found in seven countries. In four countries – Brazil, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Venezuela – we found significant disparities in both low birth weight and preterm birth. Disparities in preterm birth alone were observed in Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia. Several differences in continuous birth weight, gestational age, and fetal growth rate were also observed. There were no systematic patterns of disparities between the evaluated ethnic ancestry groups across the study countries, in that no racial/ethnic group consistently had the best or worst outcomes in all countries. Conclusions Racial/ethnic disparities in infant health are common in several South American countries. Differences across countries suggest that racial/ethnic disparities are driven by social and economic mechanisms. Researchers and policymakers should acknowledge these disparities and develop research and policy programs to effectively target them. PMID:25542227

Same-Sex and Race-Based Disparities in Statutory Rape Arrests.

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Chaffin, Mark; Chenoweth, Stephanie; Letourneau, Elizabeth J

2016-01-01

This study tests a liberation hypothesis for statutory rape incidents, specifically that there may be same-sex and race/ethnicity arrest disparities among statutory rape incidents and that these will be greater among statutory rape than among forcible sex crime incidents. 26,726 reported incidents of statutory rape as defined under state statutes and 96,474 forcible sex crime incidents were extracted from National Incident-Based Reporting System data sets. Arrest outcomes were tested using multilevel modeling. Same-sex statutory rape pairings were rare but had much higher arrest odds. A victim-offender romantic relationship amplified arrest odds for same-sex pairings, but damped arrest odds for male-on-female pairings. Same-sex disparities were larger among statutory than among forcible incidents. Female-on-male incidents had uniformly lower arrest odds. Race/ethnicity effects were smaller than gender effects and more complexly patterned. The findings support the liberation hypothesis for same-sex statutory rape arrest disparities, particularly among same-sex romantic pairings. Support for race/ethnicity-based arrest disparities was limited and mixed. © The Author(s) 2014.

The Effects of School-Based Discrimination on Adolescents of Color Sexual Health Outcomes: A Social Determinants Approach.

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Respress, Brandon N; Amutah-Onukagha, Ndidiamaka N; Opara, Ijeoma

2018-01-01

Social inequalities are at the heart of disparities in sexual health outcomes among African American and Latino/a adolescents living in the United States. Schools are typically the largest and primary context in youth development. School characteristics such as peer and teacher discrimination and school performance were examined to determine whether such characteristics predict sexual behavior in adolescents of color. This study utilized a representative sample of high school age students to assess sexual risk behavior. Findings indicate that there was a clear disparity in sexually transmitted infection diagnoses. School characteristics such as teacher discrimination and Grade Point Average were significant predictors to sexual risky behaviors among adolescents of color. The study adds to the literature in examining contextual factors that are associated with adolescent sexual risk behavior, and findings provide implications for future prevention work.

[Healthcare mistreatment attributed to discrimination among mapuche patients and discontinuation of diabetes care].

Science.gov (United States)

Ortiz, Manuel S; Baeza-Rivera, María José; Salinas-Oñate, Natalia; Flynn, Patricia; Betancourt, Héctor

2016-10-01

The negative impact of perceived discrimination on health outcomes is well established. However, less attention has been directed towards understanding the effect of perceived discrimination on health behaviors relevant for the treatment of diabetes in ethnic minorities. To examine the effects of healthcare mistreatment attributed to discrimination on the continuity of Type 2 Diabetes (DM2) care among mapuche patients in a southern region of Chile. A non-probabilistic sample of 85 mapuche DM2 patients were recruited from public and private health systems. Eligibility criteria included having experienced at least one incident of interpersonal healthcare mistreatment. All participants answered an instrument designed to measure healthcare mistreatment and continuity of diabetes care. Healthcare mistreatment attributed to ethnic discrimination was associated with the discontinuation of diabetes care. Healthcare mistreatment attributed to discrimination negatively impacted the continuity of diabetes care, a fact which may provide a better understanding of health disparities in ethnic minorities.

Drivers of Disparity: Differences in Socially Based Risk Factors of Self-Injurious and Suicidal Behaviors among Sexual Minority College Students

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Blosnich, John; Bossarte, Robert

2012-01-01

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (ie, sexual minority) populations have increased prevalence of both self-injurious and suicidal behaviors, but reasons for these disparities are poorly understood. Objective: To test the association between socially based stressors (eg, victimization, discrimination) and self-injurious behavior, suicide ideation, and…

Learning discriminant face descriptor.

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Lei, Zhen; Pietikäinen, Matti; Li, Stan Z

2014-02-01

Local feature descriptor is an important module for face recognition and those like Gabor and local binary patterns (LBP) have proven effective face descriptors. Traditionally, the form of such local descriptors is predefined in a handcrafted way. In this paper, we propose a method to learn a discriminant face descriptor (DFD) in a data-driven way. The idea is to learn the most discriminant local features that minimize the difference of the features between images of the same person and maximize that between images from different people. In particular, we propose to enhance the discriminative ability of face representation in three aspects. First, the discriminant image filters are learned. Second, the optimal neighborhood sampling strategy is soft determined. Third, the dominant patterns are statistically constructed. Discriminative learning is incorporated to extract effective and robust features. We further apply the proposed method to the heterogeneous (cross-modality) face recognition problem and learn DFD in a coupled way (coupled DFD or C-DFD) to reduce the gap between features of heterogeneous face images to improve the performance of this challenging problem. Extensive experiments on FERET, CAS-PEAL-R1, LFW, and HFB face databases validate the effectiveness of the proposed DFD learning on both homogeneous and heterogeneous face recognition problems. The DFD improves POEM and LQP by about 4.5 percent on LFW database and the C-DFD enhances the heterogeneous face recognition performance of LBP by over 25 percent.

Socioeconomic and Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Cancer Mortality, Incidence, and Survival in the United States, 1950–2014: Over Six Decades of Changing Patterns and Widening Inequalities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gopal K. Singh

2017-01-01

Full Text Available We analyzed socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in US mortality, incidence, and survival rates from all-cancers combined and major cancers from 1950 to 2014. Census-based deprivation indices were linked to national mortality and cancer data for area-based socioeconomic patterns in mortality, incidence, and survival. The National Longitudinal Mortality Study was used to analyze individual-level socioeconomic and racial/ethnic patterns in mortality. Rates, risk-ratios, least squares, log-linear, and Cox regression were used to examine trends and differentials. Socioeconomic patterns in all-cancer, lung, and colorectal cancer mortality changed dramatically over time. Individuals in more deprived areas or lower education and income groups had higher mortality and incidence rates than their more affluent counterparts, with excess risk being particularly marked for lung, colorectal, cervical, stomach, and liver cancer. Education and income inequalities in mortality from all-cancers, lung, prostate, and cervical cancer increased during 1979–2011. Socioeconomic inequalities in cancer mortality widened as mortality in lower socioeconomic groups/areas declined more slowly. Mortality was higher among Blacks and lower among Asian/Pacific Islanders and Hispanics than Whites. Cancer patient survival was significantly lower in more deprived neighborhoods and among most ethnic-minority groups. Cancer mortality and incidence disparities may reflect inequalities in smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, diet, alcohol use, screening, and treatment.

Discrimination, Mental Health, and Substance Use Disorders Among Sexual Minority Populations.

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Lee, Ji Hyun; Gamarel, Kristi E; Bryant, Kendall J; Zaller, Nickolas D; Operario, Don

2016-08-01

Sexual minority (lesbian, gay, bisexual) populations have a higher prevalence of mental health and substance use disorders compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Such disparities have been attributed, in part, to minority stressors, including distal stressors such as discrimination. However, few studies have examined associations between discrimination, mental health, and substance use disorders by gender among sexual minority populations. We analyzed data from 577 adult men and women who self-identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and participated in Wave 2 of the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). Six questions assessed discrimination due to sexual orientation. Weighted multivariable logistic regression examined associations between experiences of sexual orientation discrimination and both mental health and substance use disorders. Analyses were conducted separately for sexual minority men and women, adjusting for sociodemographic covariates. Sexual minority men who ever experienced discrimination (57.4%) reported higher odds of any lifetime drug use disorder and cannabis use disorder compared to sexual minority men who never experienced discrimination. Sexual minority women who ever experienced discrimination (42.9%) reported higher odds of any lifetime mood disorder and any lifetime anxiety disorder compared to sexual minority women who never experienced discrimination. The findings suggest that discrimination is differentially associated with internalizing (mental health) and externalizing (substance use) disorders for sexual minority men and women. These findings indicate a need to consider how homophobia and heteronormative discrimination may contribute to distinct health outcomes for lesbian and bisexual women compared with gay and bisexual men.

Exploring Discrimination and Mental Health Disparities Faced By Black Sexual Minority Women Using a Minority Stress Framework

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Calabrese, Sarah K.; Meyer, Ilan H.; Overstreet, Nicole M.; Haile, Rahwa; Hansen, Nathan B.

2015-01-01

Black sexual minority women are triply marginalized due to their race, gender, and sexual orientation. We compared three dimensions of discrimination—frequency (regularity of occurrences), scope (number of types of discriminatory acts experienced), and number of bases (number of social statuses to which discrimination was attributed)—and self-reported mental health (depressive symptoms, psychological well-being, and social well-being) between 64 Black sexual minority women and each of two groups sharing two of three marginalized statuses: (a) 67 White sexual minority women and (b) 67 Black sexual minority men. Black sexual minority women reported greater discrimination frequency, scope, and number of bases and poorer psychological and social well-being than White sexual minority women and more discrimination bases, a higher level of depressive symptoms, and poorer social well-being than Black sexual minority men. We then tested and contrasted dimensions of discrimination as mediators between social status (race or gender) and mental health outcomes. Discrimination frequency and scope mediated the association between race and mental health, with a stronger effect via frequency among sexual minority women. Number of discrimination bases mediated the association between gender and mental health among Black sexual minorities. Future research and clinical practice would benefit from considering Black sexual minority women's mental health in a multidimensional minority stress context. PMID:26424904

Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis Discovered a Dietary Pattern Inversely Associated with Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Risk.

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Lo, Yen-Li; Pan, Wen-Harn; Hsu, Wan-Lun; Chien, Yin-Chu; Chen, Jen-Yang; Hsu, Mow-Ming; Lou, Pei-Jen; Chen, I-How; Hildesheim, Allan; Chen, Chien-Jen

2016-01-01

Evidence on the association between dietary component, dietary pattern and nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is scarce. A major challenge is the high degree of correlation among dietary constituents. We aimed to identify dietary pattern associated with NPC and to illustrate the dose-response relationship between the identified dietary pattern scores and the risk of NPC. Taking advantage of a matched NPC case-control study, data from a total of 319 incident cases and 319 matched controls were analyzed. Dietary pattern was derived employing partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) performed on energy-adjusted food frequencies derived from a 66-item food-frequency questionnaire. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated with multiple conditional logistic regression models, linking pattern scores and NPC risk. A high score of the PLS-DA derived pattern was characterized by high intakes of fruits, milk, fresh fish, vegetables, tea, and eggs ordered by loading values. We observed that one unit increase in the scores was associated with a significantly lower risk of NPC (ORadj = 0.73, 95% CI = 0.60-0.88) after controlling for potential confounders. Similar results were observed among Epstein-Barr virus seropositive subjects. An NPC protective diet is indicated with more phytonutrient-rich plant foods (fruits, vegetables), milk, other protein-rich foods (in particular fresh fish and eggs), and tea. This information may be used to design potential dietary regimen for NPC prevention.

Patient-reported Communication Quality and Perceived Discrimination in Maternity Care.

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Attanasio, Laura; Kozhimannil, Katy B

2015-10-01

High-quality communication and a positive patient-provider relationship are aspects of patient-centered care, a crucial component of quality. We assessed racial/ethnic disparities in patient-reported communication problems and perceived discrimination in maternity care among women nationally and measured racial/ethnic variation in the correlates of these outcomes. Data for this analysis came from the Listening to Mothers III survey, a national sample of women who gave birth to a singleton baby in a US hospital in 2011-2012. Outcomes were reluctance to ask questions and barriers to open discussion in prenatal care, and perceived discrimination during the birth hospitalization, assessed using multinomial and logistic regression. We also estimated models stratified by race/ethnicity. Over 40% of women reported communication problems in prenatal care, and 24% perceived discrimination during their hospitalization for birth. Having hypertension or diabetes was associated with higher levels of reluctance to ask questions and higher odds of reporting each type of perceived discrimination. Black and Hispanic (vs. white) women had higher odds of perceived discrimination due to race/ethnicity. Higher education was associated with more reported communication problems among black women only. Although having diabetes was associated with perceptions of discrimination among all women, associations were stronger for black women. Race/ethnicity was associated with perceived racial discrimination, but diabetes and hypertension were consistent predictors of communication problems and perceptions of discrimination. Efforts to improve communication and reduce perceived discrimination are an important area of focus for improving patient-centered care in maternity services.

Slow and steady: the evolution of cranial disparity in fossil and recent turtles.

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Foth, Christian; Joyce, Walter G

2016-11-30

Turtles (Testudinata) are a diverse group of amniotes that have a rich fossil record that extends back to the Late Triassic, but little is known about global patterns of disparity through time. We here investigate the cranial disparity of 172 representatives of the turtle lineage and their ancestors grouped into 20 time bins ranging from the Late Triassic until the Recent using two-dimensional geometric morphometrics. Three evolutionary phases are apparent in all three anatomical views investigated. In the first phase, disparity increases gradually from the Late Triassic to the Palaeogene with only a minor perturbation at the K/T extinct event. Although global warming may have influenced this increase, we find the Mesozoic fragmentation of Pangaea to be a more plausible factor. Following its maximum, disparity decreases strongly towards the Miocene, only to recover partially towards the Recent. The marked collapse in disparity is likely a result of habitat destruction caused by global drying, combined with the homogenization of global turtle faunas that resulted from increased transcontinental dispersal in the Tertiary. The disparity minimum in the Miocene is likely an artefact of poor sampling. © 2016 The Author(s).

Searching for Silver Linings: Is Perceived Medical Discrimination Weaker in Segregated Areas?

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Gibbons, Joseph; Yang, Tse-Chuan

2018-03-01

An ongoing obstacle in dealing with minority health disparities is discriminatory behavior from healthcare practitioners, also known as medical discrimination. It is not clear, however, if the effects of medical discriminations onto health are constant across space. For example, there is evidence to suspect minorities in racially segregated neighborhoods suffer less from discrimination compared to those living elsewhere. To determine the presence of spatial heterogeneity underlying medical discrimination, we implement logistic geographically weighted regression (GWR) using individual data in the city of Philadelphia from the 2006 and 2008 Public Health Management Corporation's Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Surveys. Evaluating the potential role residential segregation has in offsetting medical discrimination, we compare the GWR results to tract data from the 2005-2009 American Community Survey. Through this comparison, we find that the effects of medical discrimination on self-rated health are weaker in magnitude in areas that are mostly minority. However, evidence of direct health benefits for minorities in segregated communities is inconclusive. Thus, while we cannot say living in segregated neighborhoods leads to better minority health, the sting of medical discrimination can be weaker in these places. These results emphasize the importance of local variation, even within a city like Philadelphia, challenging the aspatial one-model-fits-all approach normally found in population studies.

The State of Research on Racial/Ethnic Discrimination in The Receipt of Health Care

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Fagan, Pebbles; Jones, Dionne; Klein, William M. P.; Boyington, Josephine; Moten, Carmen; Rorie, Edward

2012-01-01

Objectives. We conducted a review to examine current literature on the effects of interpersonal and institutional racism and discrimination occurring within health care settings on the health care received by racial/ethnic minority patients. Methods. We searched the PsychNet, PubMed, and Scopus databases for articles on US populations published between January 1, 2008 and November 1, 2011. We used various combinations of the following search terms: discrimination, perceived discrimination, race, ethnicity, racism, institutional racism, stereotype, prejudice or bias, and health or health care. Fifty-eight articles were reviewed. Results. Patient perception of discriminatory treatment and implicit provider biases were the most frequently examined topics in health care settings. Few studies examined the overall prevalence of racial/ethnic discrimination and none examined temporal trends. In general, measures used were insufficient for examining the impact of interpersonal discrimination or institutional racism within health care settings on racial/ethnic disparities in health care. Conclusions. Better instrumentation, innovative methodology, and strategies are needed for identifying and tracking racial/ethnic discrimination in health care settings. PMID:22494002

FROM BIAS TO BISEXUAL HEALTH DISPARITIES: ATTITUDES TOWARD BISEXUAL MEN AND WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES.

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Friedman, M Reuel; Dodge, Brian; Schick, Vanessa; Herbenick, Debby; Hubach, Randolph; Bowling, Jessamyn; Goncalves, Gabriel; Krier, Sarah; Reece, Michael

2014-12-01

A newly emergent literature suggest that bisexual men and women face profound health disparities in comparison to both heterosexual and homosexual individuals. Additionally, bisexual individuals often experience prejudice, stigma, and discrimination from both gay/lesbian and straight communities, termed "biphobia." However, only limited research exists that empirically tests the extent and predictors of this double discrimination. The Bisexualities: Indiana Attitudes Survey (BIAS) was developed to test associations between biphobia and sexual identity. Using standard techniques, we developed and administered a scale to a purposive online sample of adults from a wide range of social networking websites. We conducted exploratory factor analysis to refine scales assessing attitudes toward bisexual men and bisexual women, respectively. Using generalized linear modeling, we assessed relationships between BIAS scores and sexual identity, adjusting for covariates. Two separately gendered scales were developed, administered, and refined: BIAS-m (n=645), focusing on attitudes toward bisexual men; and BIAS-f (n=631), focusing on attitudes toward bisexual women. Across scales, sexual identity significantly predicted response variance. Lesbian/gay respondents had lower levels of bi-negative attitudes than their heterosexual counterparts (all p-values stereotypes and stigma may lead to dramatic disparities in depression, anxiety, stress, and other health outcomes among bisexual individuals in comparison to their heterosexual and homosexual counterparts. Our results yield valuable data for informing social awareness and intervention efforts that aim to decrease bi-negative attitudes within both straight and gay/lesbian communities, with the ultimate goal of alleviating health disparities among bisexual men and women.

How Resource Dynamics Explain Accumulating Developmental and Health Disparities for Teen Parents’ Children

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Mollborn, Stefanie; Lawrence, Elizabeth; James-Hawkins, Laurie; Fomby, Paula

2014-01-01

This study examines the puzzle of disparities experienced by U.S. teen parents’ young children, whose health and development increasingly lag behind those of peers while their parents are simultaneously experiencing socioeconomic improvements. Using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (2001–2007; N ≈ 8,600), we assess four dynamic patterns in socioeconomic resources that might account for these growing developmental and health disparities throughout early childhood and then test them in multilevel growth curve models. Persistently low socioeconomic resources constituted the strongest explanation, given that consistently low income, maternal education, and assets fully or partially account for growth in cognitive, behavioral, and health disparities experienced by teen parents’ children from infancy through kindergarten. That is, although teen parents gained socioeconomic resources over time, those resources remained relatively low, and the duration of exposure to limited resources explains observed growing disparities. Results suggest that policy interventions addressing the time dynamics of low socioeconomic resources in a household, in terms of both duration and developmental timing, are promising for reducing disparities experienced by teen parents’ children. PMID:24802282

Common spatial pattern combined with kernel linear discriminate and generalized radial basis function for motor imagery-based brain computer interface applications

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Hekmatmanesh, Amin; Jamaloo, Fatemeh; Wu, Huapeng; Handroos, Heikki; Kilpeläinen, Asko

2018-04-01

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) can be a challenge for developing of robotic, prosthesis and human-controlled systems. This work focuses on the implementation of a common spatial pattern (CSP) base algorithm to detect event related desynchronization patterns. Utilizing famous previous work in this area, features are extracted by filter bank with common spatial pattern (FBCSP) method, and then weighted by a sensitive learning vector quantization (SLVQ) algorithm. In the current work, application of the radial basis function (RBF) as a mapping kernel of linear discriminant analysis (KLDA) method on the weighted features, allows the transfer of data into a higher dimension for more discriminated data scattering by RBF kernel. Afterwards, support vector machine (SVM) with generalized radial basis function (GRBF) kernel is employed to improve the efficiency and robustness of the classification. Averagely, 89.60% accuracy and 74.19% robustness are achieved. BCI Competition III, Iva data set is used to evaluate the algorithm for detecting right hand and foot imagery movement patterns. Results show that combination of KLDA with SVM-GRBF classifier makes 8.9% and 14.19% improvements in accuracy and robustness, respectively. For all the subjects, it is concluded that mapping the CSP features into a higher dimension by RBF and utilization GRBF as a kernel of SVM, improve the accuracy and reliability of the proposed method.

The impact of discrimination on the mental health of trans*female youth and the protective effect of parental support

OpenAIRE

Wilson, Erin C.; Chen, Yea-Hung; Arayasirikul, Sean; Raymond, H. Fisher; McFarland, Willi

2016-01-01

Significant health disparities exist for transgender female (trans*female) youth. We assessed differences in mental health outcomes based on exposure to discrimination among transgender female youth in the San Francisco Bay Area aged 16–24 years. Youth were recruited using a combination of respondent driven sampling with online and social media methods. Logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios for the mental health outcomes, comparing levels of discrimination and levels of...

Engendering health disparities.

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Spitzer, Denise L

2005-01-01

How is gender implicated in our exploration of health disparities in Canada? Set against the backdrop of federal government policy, this review paper examines the ways in which gender intersects with other health determinants to produce disparate health outcomes. An overview of salient issues including the impact of gender roles, environmental exposures, gender violence, workplace hazards, economic disparities, the costs of poverty, social marginalization and racism, aging, health conditions, interactions with health services, and health behaviours are considered. This review suggests health is detrimentally affected by gender roles and statuses as they intersect with economic disparities, cultural, sexual, physical and historical marginalization as well as the strains of domestic and paid labour. These conditions result in an unfair health burden borne in particular by women whose access to health determinants is--in various degrees--limited. While progress has certainly been made on some fronts, the persistence of health disparities among diverse populations of women and men suggests a postponement of the vision of a just society with health for all that was articulated in the Federal Plan on Gender Equality. Commitment, creativity and collaboration from stakeholders ranging from various levels of government, communities, academics, non-governmental agencies and health professionals will be required to reduce and eliminate health disparities between and among all members of our society.

Testing for statistical discrimination in health care.

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Balsa, Ana I; McGuire, Thomas G; Meredith, Lisa S

2005-02-01

To examine the extent to which doctors' rational reactions to clinical uncertainty ("statistical discrimination") can explain racial differences in the diagnosis of depression, hypertension, and diabetes. Main data are from the Medical Outcomes Study (MOS), a 1986 study conducted by RAND Corporation in three U.S. cities. The study compares the processes and outcomes of care for patients in different health care systems. Complementary data from National Health And Examination Survey III (NHANES III) and National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) are also used. Across three systems of care (staff health maintenance organizations, multispecialty groups, and solo practices), the MOS selected 523 health care clinicians. A representative cross-section (21,480) of patients was then chosen from a pool of adults who visited any of these providers during a 9-day period. We analyzed a subsample of the MOS data consisting of patients of white family physicians or internists (11,664 patients). We obtain variables reflecting patients' health conditions and severity, demographics, socioeconomic status, and insurance from the patients' screener interview (administered by MOS staff prior to the patient's encounter with the clinician). We used the reports made by the clinician after the visit to construct indicators of doctors' diagnoses. We obtained prevalence rates from NHANES III and NCS. We find evidence consistent with statistical discrimination for diagnoses of hypertension, diabetes, and depression. In particular, we find that if clinicians act like Bayesians, plausible priors held by the physician about the prevalence of the disease across racial groups could account for racial differences in the diagnosis of hypertension and diabetes. In the case of depression, we find evidence that race affects decisions through differences in communication patterns between doctors and white and minority patients. To contend effectively with inequities in health care, it is necessary to understand

Trends and Patterns in Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) Charges.

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von Schrader, Sarah; Nazarov, Zafar E

2016-07-01

The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) protects individuals aged 40 years and over from discrimination throughout the employment process. Using data on ADEA charges from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1993 to 2010, we present labor force-adjusted charge rates demonstrating that the highest charge rates are among those in the preretirement age range, and only the rate of charges among those aged 65 years and older has not decreased. We examine characteristics of ADEA charges including the prevalence of different alleged discriminatory actions (or issues) and highlight the increasing proportion of age discrimination charges that are jointly filed with other antidiscrimination statutes. Through a regression analysis, we find that the likelihood of citing various issues differs by charging party characteristics, such as age, gender, and minority status, and on charges that cite only age discrimination as compared to those that are jointly filed. Implications of these findings for employers are discussed. © The Author(s) 2016.

Message design strategies to raise public awareness of social determinants of health and population health disparities.

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Niederdeppe, Jeff; Bu, Q Lisa; Borah, Porismita; Kindig, David A; Robert, Stephanie A

2008-09-01

Raising public awareness of the importance of social determinants of health (SDH) and health disparities presents formidable communication challenges. This article reviews three message strategies that could be used to raise awareness of SDH and health disparities: message framing, narratives, and visual imagery. Although few studies have directly tested message strategies for raising awareness of SDH and health disparities, the accumulated evidence from other domains suggests that population health advocates should frame messages to acknowledge a role for individual decisions about behavior but emphasize SDH. These messages might use narratives to provide examples of individuals facing structural barriers (unsafe working conditions, neighborhood safety concerns, lack of civic opportunities) in efforts to avoid poverty, unemployment, racial discrimination, and other social determinants. Evocative visual images that invite generalizations, suggest causal interpretations, highlight contrasts, and create analogies could accompany these narratives. These narratives and images should not distract attention from SDH and population health disparities, activate negative stereotypes, or provoke counterproductive emotional responses directed at the source of the message. The field of communication science offers valuable insights into ways that population health advocates and researchers might develop better messages to shape public opinion and debate about the social conditions that shape the health and well-being of populations. The time has arrived to begin thinking systematically about issues in communicating about SDH and health disparities. This article offers a broad framework for these efforts and concludes with an agenda for future research to refine message strategies to raise awareness of SDH and health disparities.

Anti-discrimination Analysis Using Privacy Attack Strategies

KAUST Repository

Ruggieri, Salvatore

2014-09-15

Social discrimination discovery from data is an important task to identify illegal and unethical discriminatory patterns towards protected-by-law groups, e.g., ethnic minorities. We deploy privacy attack strategies as tools for discrimination discovery under hard assumptions which have rarely tackled in the literature: indirect discrimination discovery, privacy-aware discrimination discovery, and discrimination data recovery. The intuition comes from the intriguing parallel between the role of the anti-discrimination authority in the three scenarios above and the role of an attacker in private data publishing. We design strategies and algorithms inspired/based on Frèchet bounds attacks, attribute inference attacks, and minimality attacks to the purpose of unveiling hidden discriminatory practices. Experimental results show that they can be effective tools in the hands of anti-discrimination authorities.

Factors Associated with Medical Doctors' Intentions to Discriminate Against Transgender Patients in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Science.gov (United States)

Vijay, Aishwarya; Earnshaw, Valerie A.; Tee, Ying Chew; Pillai, Veena; White Hughto, Jaclyn M.; Clark, Kirsty; Kamarulzaman, Adeeba; Altice, Frederick L.

2018-01-01

Abstract Purpose: Transgender people are frequent targets of discrimination. Discrimination against transgender people in the context of healthcare can lead to poor health outcomes and facilitate the growth of health disparities. This study explores factors associated with medical doctors' intentions to discriminate against transgender people in Malaysia. Methods: A total of 436 physicians at two major university medical centers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, completed an online survey. Sociodemographic characteristics, stigma-related constructs, and intentions to discriminate against transgender people were measured. Bivariate and multivariate linear regression were used to evaluate independent covariates of discrimination intent. Results: Medical doctors who felt more fearful of transgender people and more personal shame associated with transgender people expressed greater intention to discriminate against transgender people, whereas doctors who endorsed the belief that transgender people deserve good care reported lower discrimination intent. Stigma-related constructs accounted for 42% of the variance and 8% was accounted for by sociodemographic characteristics. Conclusions: Constructs associated with transgender stigma play an important role in medical doctors' intentions to discriminate against transgender patients. Development of interventions to improve medical doctors' knowledge about and attitudes toward transgender people are necessary to reduce discriminatory intent in healthcare settings. PMID:29227183

Factors Associated with Medical Doctors' Intentions to Discriminate Against Transgender Patients in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Science.gov (United States)

Vijay, Aishwarya; Earnshaw, Valerie A; Tee, Ying Chew; Pillai, Veena; White Hughto, Jaclyn M; Clark, Kirsty; Kamarulzaman, Adeeba; Altice, Frederick L; Wickersham, Jeffrey A

2018-01-01

Transgender people are frequent targets of discrimination. Discrimination against transgender people in the context of healthcare can lead to poor health outcomes and facilitate the growth of health disparities. This study explores factors associated with medical doctors' intentions to discriminate against transgender people in Malaysia. A total of 436 physicians at two major university medical centers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, completed an online survey. Sociodemographic characteristics, stigma-related constructs, and intentions to discriminate against transgender people were measured. Bivariate and multivariate linear regression were used to evaluate independent covariates of discrimination intent. Medical doctors who felt more fearful of transgender people and more personal shame associated with transgender people expressed greater intention to discriminate against transgender people, whereas doctors who endorsed the belief that transgender people deserve good care reported lower discrimination intent. Stigma-related constructs accounted for 42% of the variance and 8% was accounted for by sociodemographic characteristics. Constructs associated with transgender stigma play an important role in medical doctors' intentions to discriminate against transgender patients. Development of interventions to improve medical doctors' knowledge about and attitudes toward transgender people are necessary to reduce discriminatory intent in healthcare settings.

Physician referral patterns and racial disparities in total hip replacement: A network analysis approach.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hassan M K Ghomrawi

Full Text Available Efforts to reduce racial disparities in total hip replacement (THR have focused mainly on patient behaviors. While these efforts are no doubt important, they ignore the potentially important role of provider- and system-level factors, which may be easier to modify. We aimed to determine whether the patterns of interaction among physicians around THR episodes differ in communities with low versus high concentrations of black residents.We analyzed national Medicare claims from 2008 to 2011, identifying all fee-for-service beneficiaries who underwent THR. Based on physician encounter data, we then mapped the physician referral networks at the hospitals where beneficiaries' procedures were performed. Next, we measured two structural properties of these networks that could affect care coordination and information sharing: clustering, and the number of external ties. Finally, we estimated multivariate regression models to determine the relationship between the concentration of black residents in the community [as measured by the hospital service area (HSA] served by a given network and each of these 2 network properties.Our sample included 336,506 beneficiaries (mean age 76.3 ± SD, 63.1% of whom were women. HSAs with higher concentrations of black residents tended to be more impoverished than those with lower concentrations. While HSAs with higher concentrations of black residents had, on average, more acute care beds and medical specialists, they had fewer surgeons per capita than those with lower concentrations. After adjusting for these differences, we found that HSAs with higher concentrations of black residents were served by physician referral networks that had significantly higher within-network clustering but fewer external ties.We observed differences in the patterns of interaction among physicians around THR episodes in communities with low versus high concentrations of black residents. Studies investigating the impact of these differences

Cancer Disparities - Cancer Currents Blog

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Blog posts on cancer health disparities research—including factors that influence disparities, disparities-related research efforts, and diversity in the cancer research workforce—from NCI Cancer Currents.

Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Education: Psychology's Role in Understanding and Reducing Disparities

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Quintana, Stephen M.; Mahgoub, Lana

2016-01-01

We review the scope and sources of ethnic and racial disparities in education with a focus on the the implications of psychological theory and research for understanding and redressing these disparities. We identify 3 sources of ethnic and racial disparities including (a) social class differences, (b) differential treatment based on ethnic and…

Perceived discrimination and health outcomes a gender comparison among Asian-Americans nationwide.

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Hahm, Hyeouk Chris; Ozonoff, Al; Gaumond, Jillian; Sue, Stanley

2010-09-01

We examined whether similarities and differences exist in the association between perceived discrimination and poor mental and physical health among Asian-American adult women and men. We also tested whether Asian-American women would have a lower perceived discrimination threshold for developing negative health outcomes than Asian-American men. Data were derived from the National Latino and Asian-American Study (2002-2003). A nationally representative sample of Asian-American adults (1,075 women and 972 men) was examined. There were more gender similarities than differences in the strong association between discrimination and health. More prominent gender differences were found for the specific level of discrimination and its potential health effects. Specifically, for both Asian women and men, a high level of perceived discrimination showed stronger associations with mental health than with physical health outcomes. And yet, compared with men, the threshold of discrimination was lower for women in affecting mental and physical health status. The findings underscore that a high level of discrimination was associated with negative mental and physical health outcomes for both women and men. However, women had more negative mental and physical health outcomes when exposed to a lower threshold of discrimination than men. These findings suggest that failing to examine women and men separately in discrimination research may no longer be appropriate among the Asian-American population. Future research should focus attention on the biological, social, and political mechanisms that mitigate the adverse health effects of discrimination in order to develop a more comprehensive approach to eliminate disparities in health. 2010 Jacobs Institute of Women

Ethnic and Gender Disparities in Premature Adult Mortality in Belize 2008-2010.

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Francis Morey

Full Text Available Data on disparities in mortality within low and middle income countries are limited, with little published data from the Caribbean or Central America. Our aim was to investigate disparities in overall and cause specific premature adult mortality in the multi-ethnic middle income country of Belize.Mortality data from Belize 2008-2010 classified using the International Classification of Diseases 10 and the 2010 census stratified by age and ethnicity were used to calculate age, sex, and ethnic specific mortality rates for those 15-59 years, and life table analysis was used to estimate the probability of death between the ages of 15 and 59 (45q15.The probability of death among those aged 15 to 59 years was 18.1% (women 13.5%, men 22.7%. Creole and Garifuna ethnic groups have three times the 45q15 probability of death compared to Mayan and Mestizo groups (Creole 31.2%, Garifuna 31.1%, Mayan 10.2%, Mestizo 12.0%. This pattern of ethnic disparity existed in both sexes but was greater in men. The probability of death from injuries was 14.8% among Creole men, more than twice the rate of other ethnicities and peaks among young Creole men. These deaths are dominated by homicides and unspecified deaths involving firearms.Marked disparities in mortality between ethnic groups exist in this Central American/Caribbean country, from rates that are typical of high-income countries to those of low-income countries. The pattern of these extreme differences likely suggests that they reflect underlying social determinants rooted in the country's colonial past.

Understanding Employment Discrimination Law: Clarifying Disparate Treatment Analysis after St. Mary’s Honor Center V. Hicks

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1994-04-01

focus of this thesis. The Supreme Court articulated an analytical framework for Title VII disparate treatment cases principally in McDonald Douglas Corp...a footnote. Roush v. KFC National Management Co., 10 F.3d 392, 396 n.5 (6th Cir. 1993). 276. Bodenheimer v. PPG Industries, Inc., 5 F.3d 955, 957

Language Patterns Discriminate Mild Depression From Normal Sadness and Euthymic State

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Daria Smirnova

2018-04-01

Full Text Available ObjectivesDeviations from typical word use have been previously reported in clinical depression, but language patterns of mild depression (MD, as distinct from normal sadness (NS and euthymic state, are unknown. In this study, we aimed to apply the linguistic approach as an additional diagnostic key for understanding clinical variability along the continuum of affective states.MethodsWe studied 402 written reports from 124 Russian-speaking patients and 77 healthy controls (HC, including 35 cases of NS, using hand-coding procedures. The focus of our psycholinguistic methods was on lexico-semantic [e.g., rhetorical figures (metaphors, similes], syntactic [e.g., predominant sentence type (single-clause and multi-clause], and lexico-grammatical [e.g., pronouns (indefinite, personal] variables. Statistical evaluations included Cohen’s kappa for inter-rater reliability measures, a non-parametric approach (Mann–Whitney U-test and Pearson chi-square test, one-way ANOVA for between-group differences, Spearman’s and point-biserial correlations to analyze relationships between linguistic and gender variables, discriminant analysis (Wilks’ λ of linguistic variables in relation to the affective diagnostic types, all using SPSS-22 (significant, p < 0.05.ResultsIn MD, as compared with healthy individuals, written responses were longer, demonstrated descriptive rather than analytic style, showed signs of spoken and figurative language, single-clause sentences domination over multi-clause, atypical word order, increased use of personal and indefinite pronouns, and verb use in continuous/imperfective and past tenses. In NS, as compared with HC, we found greater use of lexical repetitions, omission of words, and verbs in continuous and present tenses. MD was significantly differentiated from NS and euthymic state by linguistic variables [98.6%; Wilks’ λ(40 = 0.009; p < 0.001; r = 0.992]. The highest predictors in discrimination between

Discrimination and Depressive Symptoms Among Black American Men: Moderated-Mediation Effects of Ethnicity and Self-Esteem.

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Mereish, Ethan H; N'cho, Hammad S; Green, Carlton E; Jernigan, Maryam M; Helms, Janet E

2016-01-01

Discrimination is related to depression and poor self-esteem among Black men. Poorer self-esteem is also associated with depression. However, there is limited research identifying how self-esteem may mediate the associations between discrimination and depressive symptoms for disparate ethnic groups of Black men. The purpose of this study was to examine ethnic groups as a moderator of the mediating effects of self-esteem on the relationship between discrimination and depressive symptoms among a nationally representative sample of African American (n = 1201) and Afro-Caribbean American men (n = 545) in the National Survey of American Life. Due to cultural socialization differences, we hypothesized that self-esteem would mediate the associations between discrimination and depressive symptoms only for African American men, but not Afro-Caribbean American men. Moderated-mediation regression analyses indicated that the conditional indirect effects of discrimination on depressive symptoms through self-esteem were significant for African American men, but not for Afro-Caribbean men. Our results highlight important ethnic differences among Black men.

Perceived discrimination is associated with reduced breast and cervical cancer screening: the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN).

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Jacobs, Elizabeth A; Rathouz, Paul J; Karavolos, Kelly; Everson-Rose, Susan A; Janssen, Imke; Kravitz, Howard M; Lewis, Tené T; Powell, Lynda H

2014-02-01

Racial disparities in breast and cervical cancer screening have been documented in African American, Hispanic, and Asian populations. Perceived discrimination may contribute to this disparity. The aim of this study was to understand the relationship between perceived everyday racial/ethnic and other discrimination and receipt of breast and cervical cancer screening in a multiethnic population of women. We analyzed data from 3,258 women participating in the Study of Women's Health Across the Nation (SWAN), a multiethnic/racial, longitudinal cohort study of the natural history of the menopausal transition conducted at seven U.S. sites. Participants completed a validated measure of perceived discrimination and reasons for believing that they were treated differently, along with Pap smears, clinical breast exams (CBE), and mammography at each follow-up period. We used multiple logistic regression for the binary outcomes of having a Pap smear, CBE, or mammogram in each of the two follow-up years, using self-reported "race discrimination" and "other discrimination" at baseline as the main predictors. African American women reported the highest percentage of racial discrimination (35%), followed by Chinese (20%), Hispanic (12%), Japanese (11%), and non-Hispanic white women (3%). Non-Hispanic white women reported the highest percentage of "other" discrimination (40%), followed by Chinese (33%), African American (24%), Japanese (23%), and Hispanic women (16%). Perceived racial discrimination was not associated with reduced receipt of preventive screening, except in one fully adjusted model. Reported discrimination owing to "other" reasons, such as age or gender, was associated with reduced receipt of Pap smear (odds ratio [OR] 0.85; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.74-0.99), CBE (OR 0.78; 95% CI 0.67-0.91), and mammography (OR 0.80; 95% CI 0.69-0.92) regardless of patient race. Perceived discrimination is an important issue across racial/ethnic groups and is negatively

Numerosity but not texture-density discrimination correlates with math ability in children.

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Anobile, Giovanni; Castaldi, Elisa; Turi, Marco; Tinelli, Francesca; Burr, David C

2016-08-01

Considerable recent work suggests that mathematical abilities in children correlate with the ability to estimate numerosity. Does math correlate only with numerosity estimation, or also with other similar tasks? We measured discrimination thresholds of school-age (6- to 12.5-years-old) children in 3 tasks: numerosity of patterns of relatively sparse, segregatable items (24 dots); numerosity of very dense textured patterns (250 dots); and discrimination of direction of motion. Thresholds in all tasks improved with age, but at different rates, implying the action of different mechanisms: In particular, in young children, thresholds were lower for sparse than textured patterns (the opposite of adults), suggesting earlier maturation of numerosity mechanisms. Importantly, numerosity thresholds for sparse stimuli correlated strongly with math skills, even after controlling for the influence of age, gender and nonverbal IQ. However, neither motion-direction discrimination nor numerosity discrimination of texture patterns showed a significant correlation with math abilities. These results provide further evidence that numerosity and texture-density are perceived by independent neural mechanisms, which develop at different rates; and importantly, only numerosity mechanisms are related to math. As developmental dyscalculia is characterized by a profound deficit in discriminating numerosity, it is fundamental to understand the mechanism behind the discrimination. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Spatial mode discriminator based on leaky waveguides

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Xu, Jing; Liu, Jialing; Shi, Hongkang; Chen, Yuntian

2018-06-01

We propose a conceptually simple and experimentally compatible configuration to discriminate the spatial mode based on leaky waveguides, which are inserted in-between the transmission link. The essence of such a spatial mode discriminator is to introduce the leakage of the power flux on purpose for detection. Importantly, the leaky angle of each individual spatial mode with respect to the propagation direction are different for non-degenerated modes, while the radiation patterns of the degenerated spatial modes in the plane perpendicular to the propagation direction are also distinguishable. Based on these two facts, we illustrate the operation principle of the spatial mode discriminators via two concrete examples; a w-type slab leaky waveguide without degeneracy, and a cylindrical leaky waveguide with degeneracy. The correlation between the leakage angle and the spatial mode distribution for a slab leaky waveguide, as well as differences between the in-plane radiation patterns of degenerated modes in a cylindrical leaky waveguide, are verified numerically and analytically. Such findings can be readily useful in discriminating the spatial modes for optical communication or optical sensing.

Vertical binocular disparity is encoded implicitly within a model neuronal population tuned to horizontal disparity and orientation.

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Jenny C A Read

2010-04-01

Full Text Available Primary visual cortex is often viewed as a "cyclopean retina", performing the initial encoding of binocular disparities between left and right images. Because the eyes are set apart horizontally in the head, binocular disparities are predominantly horizontal. Yet, especially in the visual periphery, a range of non-zero vertical disparities do occur and can influence perception. It has therefore been assumed that primary visual cortex must contain neurons tuned to a range of vertical disparities. Here, I show that this is not necessarily the case. Many disparity-selective neurons are most sensitive to changes in disparity orthogonal to their preferred orientation. That is, the disparity tuning surfaces, mapping their response to different two-dimensional (2D disparities, are elongated along the cell's preferred orientation. Because of this, even if a neuron's optimal 2D disparity has zero vertical component, the neuron will still respond best to a non-zero vertical disparity when probed with a sub-optimal horizontal disparity. This property can be used to decode 2D disparity, even allowing for realistic levels of neuronal noise. Even if all V1 neurons at a particular retinotopic location are tuned to the expected vertical disparity there (for example, zero at the fovea, the brain could still decode the magnitude and sign of departures from that expected value. This provides an intriguing counter-example to the common wisdom that, in order for a neuronal population to encode a quantity, its members must be tuned to a range of values of that quantity. It demonstrates that populations of disparity-selective neurons encode much richer information than previously appreciated. It suggests a possible strategy for the brain to extract rarely-occurring stimulus values, while concentrating neuronal resources on the most commonly-occurring situations.

Disparity-driven vs blur-driven models of accommodation and convergence in binocular vision and intermittent strabismus.

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Horwood, Anna M; Riddell, Patricia M

2014-12-01

To propose an alternative and practical model to conceptualize clinical patterns of concomitant intermittent strabismus, heterophoria, and convergence and accommodation anomalies. Despite identical ratios, there can be a disparity- or blur-biased "style" in three hypothetical scenarios: normal; high ratio of accommodative convergence to accommodation (AC/A) and low ratio of convergence accommodation to convergence (CA/C); low AC/A and high CA/C. We calculated disparity bias indices (DBI) to reflect these biases and provide early objective data from small illustrative clinical groups that fit these styles. Normal adults (n = 56) and children (n = 24) showed disparity bias (adult DBI 0.43 [95% CI, 0.50-0.36], child DBI 0.20 [95% CI, 0.31-0.07]; P = 0.001). Accommodative esotropia (n = 3) showed less disparity-bias (DBI 0.03). In the high AC/A-low CA/C scenario, early presbyopia (n = 22) showed mean DBI of 0.17 (95% CI, 0.28-0.06), compared to DBI of -0.31 in convergence excess esotropia (n=8). In the low AC/A-high CA/C scenario near exotropia (n = 17) showed mean DBI of 0.27. DBI ranged between 1.25 and -1.67. Establishing disparity or blur bias adds to AC/A and CA/C ratios to explain clinical patterns. Excessive bias or inflexibility in near-cue use increases risk of clinical problems. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Implications of sleep and energy drink use for health disparities

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Grandner, Michael A; Knutson, Kristen L; Troxel, Wendy; Hale, Lauren; Jean-Louis, Girardin; Miller, Kathleen E

2014-01-01

The popularity of energy drinks has increased rapidly in the past decade. One of the main reasons people use energy drinks is to counteract effects of insufficient sleep or sleepiness. Risks associated with energy drink use, including those related to sleep loss, may be disproportionately borne by racial minorities and those of lower socioeconomic status. In this review, a brief introduction to the issue of health disparities is provided, population-level disparities and inequalities in sleep are described, and the social-ecological model of sleep and health is presented. Social and demographic patterns of energy drink use are then presented, followed by discussion of the potential ways in which energy drink use may contribute to health disparities, including the following: 1) effects of excessive caffeine in energy drinks, 2) effects of energy drinks as sugar-sweetened beverages, 3) association between energy drinks and risk-taking behaviors when mixed with alcohol, 4) association between energy drink use and short sleep duration, and 5) role of energy drinks in cardiometabolic disease. The review concludes with a research agenda of critical unanswered questions. PMID:25293540

Healthcare disparities in critical illness.

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Soto, Graciela J; Martin, Greg S; Gong, Michelle Ng

2013-12-01

To summarize the current literature on racial and gender disparities in critical care and the mechanisms underlying these disparities in the course of acute critical illness. MEDLINE search on the published literature addressing racial, ethnic, or gender disparities in acute critical illness, such as sepsis, acute lung injury, pneumonia, venous thromboembolism, and cardiac arrest. Clinical studies that evaluated general critically ill patient populations in the United States as well as specific critical care conditions were reviewed with a focus on studies evaluating factors and contributors to health disparities. Study findings are presented according to their association with the prevalence, clinical presentation, management, and outcomes in acute critical illness. This review presents potential contributors for racial and gender disparities related to genetic susceptibility, comorbidities, preventive health services, socioeconomic factors, cultural differences, and access to care. The data are organized along the course of acute critical illness. The literature to date shows that disparities in critical care are most likely multifactorial involving individual, community, and hospital-level factors at several points in the continuum of acute critical illness. The data presented identify potential targets as interventions to reduce disparities in critical care and future avenues for research.

What Are Cancer Disparities?

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This infographic shows the factors associated with cancer disparities, examples of how the cancer burden differs across certain population groups, and NCI actions to understand and reduce cancer disparities.

Distribution and differential diagnosis of Entamoeba Histolytica from Entamoeba Dispar by the PCR-RFLP method in central Iran

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hooshyar, Hossein; Rezian, Mostafa; Kazemi, Bahram

2003-01-01

Entamoeba histolytica and Entamoeba dispar are two morphologically indistinguishable human protozoan parasites that are genetically distinct species. The potential invasive pathogenic Entamoeba histolytica and non-invasive parasites Entamoeba dispar can be differentiated by molecular and other methods. We used Polymer Chain Reaction (PCR) to determine the ratio of two species in a population in central Iran.Human stool samples(n=12 148) were randomly collected in Tehran and Karaj and examined for E.histolytica/E.dispar cysts with direct and formalin-ether methods.Eighty -seven (0.7%) cases were positive, of which 49 (62.8%) isolates were successfully cultured in Robison's medium. A pair of oligonucleotide primers designed from sequence data for genomic DNA coding the 30-KD surface antigen of E.histolytica/E.dipar was used to amplify a 374 base-pair (bp) fragment. The restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) pattern obtained from a standard E.histolytica isolate had had two fragments (219 bp and 155bp), but the standard isolate of E. disparshowed three fragments (155, 152 and 67bp ). Differential diagonosis of 49 isolates of E. histolytica/ E. dispar from Tehran and Karaj using PCR-RFLP revealed that 46(93.9%) were E. were E. dispar while only 2(4.1%) were E. histolytica .One person (2%) had a mixed infection and showed both patterns The differential diagonosis of the potentially pathogenic parasite E.histolytica from the non-pathogenic E. dispar is of clinical and epidemiological importance. This study demonstrated E. dispar is much more prevalent than E.histolytica among the c yst passersin Tehran and Kraj in Central Iran. (author)

The moral problem of health disparities.

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Jones, Cynthia M

2010-04-01

Health disparities exist along lines of race/ethnicity and socioeconomic class in US society. I argue that we should work to eliminate these health disparities because their existence is a moral wrong that needs to be addressed. Health disparities are morally wrong because they exemplify historical injustices. Contractarian ethics, Kantian ethics, and utilitarian ethics all provide theoretical justification for viewing health disparities as a moral wrong, as do several ethical principles of primary importance in bioethics. The moral consequences of health disparities are also troubling and further support the claim that these disparities are a moral wrong. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights provides additional support that health disparities are a moral wrong, as does an analogy with the generally accepted duty to provide equal access to education. In this article, I also consider and respond to 3 objections to my thesis.

Mapping Medicare Disparities Tool

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U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — The CMS Office of Minority Health has designed an interactive map, the Mapping Medicare Disparities Tool, to identify areas of disparities between subgroups of...

Racial and nonracial discrimination and smoking status among South African adults ten years after apartheid

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Dutra, Lauren M; Williams, David R; Kawachi, Ichiro; Okechukwu, Cassandra A

2014-01-01

Background Despite a long history of discrimination and persisting racial disparities in smoking prevalence, little research exists on the relationship between discrimination and smoking in South Africa. Methods This analysis examined chronic (day to day) and acute (lifetime) experiences of racial and nonracial (e.g., age, gender, or physical appearance) discrimination and smoking status among respondents to the South Africa Stress and Health Study (SASH). Logistic regression models were constructed using SAS-Callable SUDAAN. Results Both chronic racial discrimination (RR=1.45, 95%CI: 1.14–1.85) and chronic nonracial discrimination (RR=1.69, 95%CI: 1.37–2.08) predicted a higher risk of smoking, but neither type of acute discrimination did. Total (sum of racial and nonracial) chronic discrimination (RR=1.46, 95%CI: 1.20–1.78) and total acute discrimination (RR=1.28, 95%CI: 1.01–1.60) predicted a higher risk of current smoking. Conclusions Racial and nonracial discrimination may be related to South African adults’ smoking behavior, but this relationship likely varies by the timing and frequency of these experiences. Future research should use longitudinal data to identify the temporal ordering of the relationships studied, include areas outside of South Africa to increase generalizability, and consider the implications of these findings for smoking cessation approaches in South Africa. PMID:24789604

Integrating Multiple Social Statuses in Health Disparities Research: The Case of Lung Cancer

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Williams, David R; Kontos, Emily Z; Viswanath, K; Haas, Jennifer S; Lathan, Christopher S; MacConaill, Laura E; Chen, Jarvis; Ayanian, John Z

2012-01-01

Objective To illustrate the complex patterns that emerge when race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status (SES), and gender are considered simultaneously in health care disparities research and to outline the needed research to understand them by using disparities in lung cancer risks, treatment, and outcomes as an example. Principal Findings SES, gender, and race/ethnicity are social categories that are robust predictors of variations in health and health services utilization. These are usually considered separately, but intersectionality theory indicates that the impact of each depends on the others. Each reflects historically and culturally contingent variations in social, economic, and political status. Distinct patterns of risk and resilience emerge at the intersections of multiple social categories and shape the experience of health, health care access, utilization, quality, and outcomes where these categories intersect. Intersectional approaches call for greater attention to understand social processes at multiple levels of society and require the collection of relevant data and utilization of appropriate analytic approaches to understand how multiple risk factors and resources combine to affect the distribution of disease and its management. Conclusions Understanding how race/ethnicity, gender, and SES are interactive, interdependent, and social identities can provide new knowledge to enhance our efforts to effectively address health disparities. PMID:22568674

Spatial and Inter-temporal Sources of Poverty, Inequality and Gender Disparities in Cameroon: a Regression-Based Decomposition Analysis

OpenAIRE

Boniface Ngah Epo; Francis Menjo Baye; Nadine Teme Angele Manga

2011-01-01

This study applies the regression-based inequality decomposition technique to explain poverty and inequality trends in Cameroon. We also identify gender related factors which explain income disparities and discrimination based on the 2001 and 2007 Cameroon household consumption surveys. The results show that education, health, employment in the formal sector, age cohorts, household size, gender, ownership of farmland and urban versus rural residence explain household economic wellbeing; dispa...

Regional income disparities in Canada: exploring the geographical dimensions of an old debate

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Sébastien Breau

2016-01-01

Full Text Available The existing literature on convergence in Canada largely ignores the underlying geographical dimensions of regional disparities. By using income measures developed from census micro-data files to analyze patterns of convergence across census divisions, we show that regional disparities are increasingly clustered across the Canadian space-economy along (1 East–West and (2 urban–rural gradients. Rural census divisions in the Eastern provinces, in particular, are showing increased signs of distress in terms of differences in levels and growth rates of incomes with other regions in the country. Such findings have important policy implications which are briefly discussed.

Longitudinal relationships between antiretroviral treatment adherence and discrimination due to HIV-serostatus, race, and sexual orientation among African-American men with HIV.

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Bogart, Laura M; Wagner, Glenn J; Galvan, Frank H; Klein, David J

2010-10-01

African-Americans show worse HIV disease outcomes compared to Whites. Health disparities may be aggravated by discrimination, which is associated with worse health and maladaptive health behaviors. We examined longitudinal effects of discrimination on antiretroviral treatment adherence among 152 HIV-positive Black men who have sex with men. We measured adherence and discrimination due to HIV-serostatus, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation at baseline and monthly for 6 months. Hierarchical repeated-measures models tested longitudinal effects of each discrimination type on adherence. Over 6 months, participants took 60% of prescribed medications on average; substantial percentages experienced discrimination (HIV-serostatus, 38%; race/ethnicity, 40%; and sexual orientation, 33%). Greater discrimination due to all three characteristics was significantly bivariately associated with lower adherence (all p's discrimination was significant (p < 0.05). Efforts to improve HIV treatment adherence should consider the context of multiple stigmas, especially racism.

Perceived Discrimination, Peer Influence and Sexual Behaviors in Mexican American Preadolescents.

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Sanchez, Delida; Whittaker, Tiffany A; Hamilton, Emma

2016-05-01

Both discrimination and sexual health disparities have significant negative health implications for Latina/o preadolescent youth, including negative mental health outcomes, STIs/HIV, unintended pregnancy, and ongoing poverty. Studying these links within this population, therefore, has significant public health relevance, both in terms of promoting sexual health in general as well as serving the specific needs of Latina/o youth. This study explored the relationship between perceived discrimination, peer influence and sexual behaviors among 438 Mexican American preadolescents in the Southwest United States (55.3 % male). Additionally, this study examined whether psychological distress, substance use, and sexual motives mediated and whether gender moderated these relations. A multiple-group path analysis of the analytical model was performed to examine the hypothesized relations between perceived discrimination, peer influence, psychological distress, substance use, sexual motives and sexual behaviors. The findings indicated that perceived discrimination was directly linked to sexual behaviors among participants and indirectly linked via substance use. The findings also indicated that peer influence was indirectly linked to sexual behaviors via substance use among participants and via sexual motives among boys. This study underscores the importance of substance use in the perceived discrimination, peer influence and sexual behavior link in Mexican American preadolescents. Additionally, it highlights the importance of sexual motives in the link between peer influence and sexual behaviors of Mexican American boys.

Unequal Treatment or Uneven Consequence: A Content Analysis of Americans with Disabilities Act Title I Disparate Impact Cases from 1992 – 2012

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Sara P. Johnston

2015-09-01

Full Text Available This study identified patterns and trends of litigation in all reported U.S. Appellate Court ADA cases charged under the theory of disparate impact (unintentional discrimination from 1992 through 2012. The results produced four themes: accommodation(s; workplace culture, norms, and policies; judicial process; and policy space; and three relationships: gap-filling, weighing and balancing, and maintaining status quo versus effecting social change. The results may provide information about the types of workplace policies and procedures that are most frequently litigated. Disability scholars, advocates, and practitioners may be able to use the information to develop education and outreach strategies for employers on best practices for hiring, accommodating, and promoting employees with disabilities. The results may also be used to educate and inform advocates about the process of litigation. A greater understanding of how judges make decisions in a subset of ADA cases may increase employees with disabilities' ability to self-advocate in the workplace.

Acute Moderate Exercise Improves Mnemonic Discrimination in Young Adults

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Suwabe, Kazuya; Hyodo, Kazuki; Byun, Kyeongho; Ochi, Genta; Yassa, Michael A.; Soya, Hideaki

2018-01-01

Increasing evidence suggests that regular moderate exercise increases neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus and improves memory functions in both humans and animals. The DG is known to play a role in pattern separation, which is the ability to discriminate among similar experiences, a fundamental component of episodic memory. While long-term voluntary exercise improves pattern separation, there is little evidence of alterations in DG function after an acute exercise session. Our previous studies showing acute moderate exercise-enhanced DG activation in rats, and acute moderate exercise-enhanced prefrontal activation and executive function in humans, led us to postulate that acute moderate exercise may also activate the hippocampus, including more specifically the DG, thus improving pattern separation. We thus investigated the effects of a 10-min moderate exercise (50% V̇O2peak) session, the recommended intensity for health promotion, on mnemonic discrimination (a behavioral index of pattern separation) in young adults. An acute bout of moderate exercise improved mnemonic discrimination performance in high similarity lures. These results support our hypothesis that acute moderate exercise improves DG-mediated pattern separation in humans, proposing a useful human acute-exercise model for analyzing the neuronal substrate underlying acute and regular exercise-enhanced episodic memory based on the hippocampus. PMID:27997992

Association of Discrimination and Stress With Cardiometabolic Risk Factors in Ethnic Minority Women.

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Shin, Cha-Nam; Soltero, Erica; Mama, Scherezade K; Sunseri, Christopher; Lee, Rebecca E

2017-12-01

Psychological stressors can contribute to adverse health outcomes and lead to health disparities. To examine associations among psychological stressors, coping, blood pressure, body mass index, and body fat in ethnic minority women, we conducted a secondary analysis using data from 178 African American and Hispanic/Latina women who completed measures of perceived racial discrimination and stress, coping, blood pressure, and body composition. The mean age of participants was 45.3 (±9.3 years), and most were obese (74.2%) and had prehypertensive systolic blood pressure (125.7 ± 14.6 mmHg). Hierarchical multiple regression models indicated a significant negative relationship between racial discrimination and percent body fat, and positive associations between stress and blood pressure. Coping did not moderate the association between racial discrimination and blood pressure or body composition. Health care providers should consider psychological stressors as underlying causes for hypertension and address tailored stress-reduction coping strategies when treating African American and Hispanic/Latina women with hypertension.

Discrimination of Xihulongjing tea grade using an electronic tongue ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Five grades of Xihulongjing tea (grade: AAA, AA, A, B and C, from the same region and processed with the same processing method) were discriminated using -Astree II electronic tongue (e-tongue) coupled with pattern recognition methods including principal component analysis (PCA), canonical discriminant analysis ...

Musculoskeletal networks reveal topological disparity in mammalian neck evolution.

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Arnold, Patrick; Esteve-Altava, Borja; Fischer, Martin S

2017-12-13

The increase in locomotor and metabolic performance during mammalian evolution was accompanied by the limitation of the number of cervical vertebrae to only seven. In turn, nuchal muscles underwent a reorganization while forelimb muscles expanded into the neck region. As variation in the cervical spine is low, the variation in the arrangement of the neck muscles and their attachment sites (i.e., the variability of the neck's musculoskeletal organization) is thus proposed to be an important source of neck disparity across mammals. Anatomical network analysis provides a novel framework to study the organization of the anatomical arrangement, or connectivity pattern, of the bones and muscles that constitute the mammalian neck in an evolutionary context. Neck organization in mammals is characterized by a combination of conserved and highly variable network properties. We uncovered a conserved regionalization of the musculoskeletal organization of the neck into upper, mid and lower cervical modules. In contrast, there is a varying degree of complexity or specialization and of the integration of the pectoral elements. The musculoskeletal organization of the monotreme neck is distinctively different from that of therian mammals. Our findings reveal that the limited number of vertebrae in the mammalian neck does not result in a low musculoskeletal disparity when examined in an evolutionary context. However, this disparity evolved late in mammalian history in parallel with the radiation of certain lineages (e.g., cetartiodactyls, xenarthrans). Disparity is further facilitated by the enhanced incorporation of forelimb muscles into the neck and their variability in attachment sites.

Practitioner and client explanations for disparities in health care use between migrant and non-migrant groups in Sweden: a qualitative study.

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Akhavan, Sharareh; Karlsen, Saffron

2013-02-01

To investigate variations in explanations given for disparities in health care use between migrant and non-migrant groups, by clients and care providers in Sweden. Qualitative evidence collected during in-depth interviews with five 'migrant' health service clients and five physicians. The interview data generated three categories which were perceived by respondents to produce ethnic differences in health service use: "Communication issues", "Cultural differences in approaches to medical consultations" and "Effects of perceptions of inequalities in care quality and discrimination". Explanations for disparities in health care use in Sweden can be categorized into those reflecting social/structural conditions and the presence/absence of power and those using cultural/behavioural explanations. The negative perceptions of 'migrant' clients held by some Swedish physicians place the onus for addressing their poor health with the clients themselves and risks perpetuating their health disadvantage. The power disparity between doctors and 'migrant' patients encourages a sense of powerlessness and mistreatment among patients.

Social Stress and Substance Use Disparities by Sexual Orientation Among High School Students.

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Lowry, Richard; Johns, Michelle M; Robin, Leah E; Kann, Laura K

2017-10-01

Sexual minority youth often experience increased social stress due to prejudice, discrimination, harassment, and victimization. Increased stress may help explain the disproportionate use of substances like tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other illicit drug use by sexual minority youth. This study examined the effect of social stress on substance use disparities by sexual orientation among U.S. high school students. In 2016, data from the national 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, conducted among a nationally representative sample of 15,624 U.S. high school students, were analyzed to examine the effect of school-related (threatened/injured at school, bullied at school, bullied electronically, felt unsafe at school) and non-school-related (forced sexual intercourse, early sexual debut) social stress on substance use disparities by sexual orientation, by comparing unadjusted prevalence ratios (PRs) and adjusted (for social stressors, age, sex, and race/ethnicity) prevalence ratios (APRs). Unadjusted PRs reflected significantly (pprevention programs might appropriately include strategies to reduce social stress, including policies and practices designed to provide a safe school environment and improved access to social and mental health services. Published by Elsevier Inc.

The disparate histories of binocular vision and binaural hearing.

Science.gov (United States)

Wade, Nicholas J

2018-01-01

Vision and hearing are dependent on disparities of spatial patterns received by two eyes and on time and intensity differences to two ears. However, the experiences of a single world have masked attention to these disparities. While eyes and ears are paired, there has not been parity in the attention directed to their functioning. Phenomena involving binocular vision were commented upon since antiquity whereas those about binaural hearing are much more recent. This history is compared with respect to the experimental manipulations of dichoptic and dichotic stimuli and the instruments used to stimulate the paired organs. Binocular color mixing led to studies of binaural hearing and direction and distance in visual localization were analyzed before those for auditory localization. Experimental investigations began in the nineteenth century with the invention of instruments like the stereoscope and pseudoscope, soon to be followed by their binaural equivalents, the stethophone and pseudophone.

Fingerprinting for discriminating tea germplasm using inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Liu, B.Y.; Li, Y.Y.; Wang, P.S.; Wang, L.Y.; Wang, P.S.

2012-01-01

For the discrimination of tea germplasm at the inter-specific level, 134 tea varieties preserved in the China National Germplasm Tea Repositories (CNGTR) were analyzed using inter simple sequence repeat (ISSR) markers. Eighteen primers were chosen from 60 screened for ISSR amplification, generating 99.4% polymorphic bands. The mean Nei's gene diversity (H) and the overall mean Shannon's Information index (I) were 0.396 and 0.578, respectively, indicating a wide gene pool. Using the presence, sometimes absence of unique ISSR markers, it was possible to discriminate 32 of the genotypes tested. No single primer could discriminate all the 134 genotypes. However, UBC811 provided rich band patterns and it can discriminate 35 genotypes. The combination of two and three primers could discriminate 99 and 121 genotypes, respectively. Furthermore, the combination of band patterns or the DNA fingerprinting based on specific ISSR markers generated by UBC811, UBC835, ISSR2 and ISSR3 could discriminate all 134 genotypes tested. ISSR markers also provide a powerful tool to discriminate tea germplasm at the inter-specific level. (author)

Disparities in Gynecological Malignancies

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Sudeshna eChatterjee

2016-02-01

Full Text Available Objectives: Health disparities and inequalities in access to care among different socioeconomic, ethnic, and racial groups have been well documented in the U.S. healthcare system. In this review, we aimed to provide an overview of barriers to care contributing to health disparities in gynecological oncology management and to describe site-specific disparities in gynecologic care for endometrial, ovarian, and cervical cancer. Methods: We performed a literature review of peer-reviewed academic and governmental publications focusing on disparities in gynecological care in the United States by searching PubMed and Google Scholar electronic databases. Results: There are multiple important underlying issues that may contribute to the disparities in gynecological oncology management in the United States, namely geographic access and hospital based-discrepancies, research-based discrepancies, influence of socioeconomic and health insurance status, and finally the influence of race and biological factors. Despite the reduction in overall cancer-related deaths since the 1990s, the 5-year survival for Black women is significantly lower than for White women for each gynecologic cancer type and each stage of diagnosis. For ovarian and endometrial cancer, black patients are less likely to receive treatment consistent with evidence-based guidelines and have worse survival outcomes even after accounting for stage and comorbidities. For cervical and endometrial cancer, the mortality rate for black women remains twice that of White women. Conclusions: Health care disparities in the incidence and outcome of gynecologic cancers are complex and involve biologic factors as well as racial, socioeconomic and geographic barriers that influence treatment and survival. These barriers must be addressed to provide optimal care to women in the U.S. with gynecologic cancer.

The evolution of lycopsid rooting structures: conservatism and disparity.

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Hetherington, Alexander J; Dolan, Liam

2017-07-01

Contents 538 I. 538 II. 539 III. 541 IV. 542 543 References 543 SUMMARY: The evolution of rooting structures was a crucial event in Earth's history, increasing the ability of plants to extract water, mine for nutrients and anchor above-ground shoot systems. Fossil evidence indicates that roots evolved at least twice among vascular plants, in the euphyllophytes and independently in the lycophytes. Here, we review the anatomy and evolution of lycopsid rooting structures. Highlighting recent discoveries made with fossils we suggest that the evolution of lycopsid rooting structures displays two contrasting patterns - conservatism and disparity. The structures termed roots have remained structurally similar despite hundreds of millions of years of evolution - an example of remarkable conservatism. By contrast, and over the same time period, the organs that give rise to roots have diversified, resulting in the evolution of numerous novel and disparate organs. © 2016 The Authors. New Phytologist © 2016 New Phytologist Trust.

Pigeons can discriminate "good" and "bad" paintings by children.

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Watanabe, Shigeru

2010-01-01

Humans have the unique ability to create art, but non-human animals may be able to discriminate "good" art from "bad" art. In this study, I investigated whether pigeons could be trained to discriminate between paintings that had been judged by humans as either "bad" or "good". To do this, adult human observers first classified several children's paintings as either "good" (beautiful) or "bad" (ugly). Using operant conditioning procedures, pigeons were then reinforced for pecking at "good" paintings. After the pigeons learned the discrimination task, they were presented with novel pictures of both "good" and "bad" children's paintings to test whether they had successfully learned to discriminate between these two stimulus categories. The results showed that pigeons could discriminate novel "good" and "bad" paintings. Then, to determine which cues the subjects used for the discrimination, I conducted tests of the stimuli when the paintings were of reduced size or grayscale. In addition, I tested their ability to discriminate when the painting stimuli were mosaic and partial occluded. The pigeons maintained discrimination performance when the paintings were reduced in size. However, discrimination performance decreased when stimuli were presented as grayscale images or when a mosaic effect was applied to the original stimuli in order to disrupt spatial frequency. Thus, the pigeons used both color and pattern cues for their discrimination. The partial occlusion did not disrupt the discriminative behavior suggesting that the pigeons did not attend to particular parts, namely upper, lower, left or right half, of the paintings. These results suggest that the pigeons are capable of learning the concept of a stimulus class that humans name "good" pictures. The second experiment showed that pigeons learned to discriminate watercolor paintings from pastel paintings. The subjects showed generalization to novel paintings. Then, as the first experiment, size reduction test

Processing vertical size disparities in distinct depth planes.

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Duke, Philip A; Howard, Ian P

2012-08-17

A textured surface appears slanted about a vertical axis when the image in one eye is horizontally enlarged relative to the image in the other eye. The surface appears slanted in the opposite direction when the same image is vertically enlarged. Two superimposed textured surfaces with different horizontal size disparities appear as two surfaces that differ in slant. Superimposed textured surfaces with equal and opposite vertical size disparities appear as a single frontal surface. The vertical disparities are averaged. We investigated whether vertical size disparities are averaged across two superimposed textured surfaces in different depth planes or whether they induce distinct slants in the two depth planes. In Experiment 1, two superimposed textured surfaces with different vertical size disparities were presented in two depth planes defined by horizontal disparity. The surfaces induced distinct slants when the horizontal disparity was more than ±5 arcmin. Thus, vertical size disparities are not averaged over surfaces with different horizontal disparities. In Experiment 2 we confirmed that vertical size disparities are processed in surfaces away from the horopter, so the results of Experiment 1 cannot be explained by the processing of vertical size disparities in a fixated surface only. Together, these results show that vertical size disparities are processed separately in distinct depth planes. The results also suggest that vertical size disparities are not used to register slant globally by their effect on the registration of binocular direction of gaze.

Public opinion about laws to prohibit weight discrimination in the United States.

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Puhl, Rebecca M; Heuer, Chelsea A

2011-01-01

Weight discrimination is pervasive in American society and impairs quality of life for obese persons. With approximately two-thirds of Americans now overweight or obese, vast numbers of people are vulnerable to weight prejudice and its consequences. Currently, no laws exist to prohibit weight discrimination. This study conducted an online survey with a national sample of 1,001 adults (representing demographics of the United States) to examine public support for six potential legislative measures to prohibit weight discrimination in the United States. Results indicated substantial support (65% of men, 81% of women) for laws to prohibit weight discrimination in the workplace, especially for legal measures that would prohibit employers from refusing to hire, terminate, or deny promotion based on a person's body weight. Laws that proposed extending the same protections to obese persons as people with physical disabilities received the least support, suggesting that Americans may not be in favor of considering obesity as a disability. Findings also highlight specific predictors of support (related to sex, age, education, income, body weight, and political ideology). These findings can be used to inform policy makers in efforts to develop antidiscrimination laws. Such measures will rectify health disparities for overweight Americans and facilitate public health efforts to address obesity.

Disparity changes in 370 Ma Devonian fossils: the signature of ecological dynamics?

Science.gov (United States)

Girard, Catherine; Renaud, Sabrina

2012-01-01

Early periods in Earth's history have seen a progressive increase in complexity of the ecosystems, but also dramatic crises decimating the biosphere. Such patterns are usually considered as large-scale changes among supra-specific groups, including morphological novelties, radiation, and extinctions. Nevertheless, in the same time, each species evolved by the way of micro-evolutionary processes, extended over millions of years into the evolution of lineages. How these two evolutionary scales interacted is a challenging issue because this requires bridging a gap between scales of observation and processes. The present study aims at transferring a typical macro-evolutionary approach, namely disparity analysis, to the study of fine-scale evolutionary variations in order to decipher what processes actually drove the dynamics of diversity at a micro-evolutionary level. The Late Frasnian to Late Famennian period was selected because it is punctuated by two major macro-evolutionary crises, as well as a progressive diversification of marine ecosystem. Disparity was estimated through this period on conodonts, tooth-like fossil remains of small eel-like predators that were part of the nektonic fauna. The study was focused on the emblematic genus of the period, Palmatolepis. Strikingly, both crises affected an already impoverished Palmatolepis disparity, increasing risks of random extinction. The major disparity signal rather emerged as a cycle of increase and decrease in disparity during the inter-crises period. The diversification shortly followed the first crisis and might correspond to an opportunistic occupation of empty ecological niche. The subsequent oriented shrinking in the morphospace occupation suggests that the ecological space available to Palmatolepis decreased through time, due to a combination of factors: deteriorating climate, expansion of competitors and predators. Disparity changes of Palmatolepis thus reflect changes in the structure of the ecological

Disparity changes in 370 Ma Devonian fossils: the signature of ecological dynamics?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Catherine Girard

Full Text Available Early periods in Earth's history have seen a progressive increase in complexity of the ecosystems, but also dramatic crises decimating the biosphere. Such patterns are usually considered as large-scale changes among supra-specific groups, including morphological novelties, radiation, and extinctions. Nevertheless, in the same time, each species evolved by the way of micro-evolutionary processes, extended over millions of years into the evolution of lineages. How these two evolutionary scales interacted is a challenging issue because this requires bridging a gap between scales of observation and processes. The present study aims at transferring a typical macro-evolutionary approach, namely disparity analysis, to the study of fine-scale evolutionary variations in order to decipher what processes actually drove the dynamics of diversity at a micro-evolutionary level. The Late Frasnian to Late Famennian period was selected because it is punctuated by two major macro-evolutionary crises, as well as a progressive diversification of marine ecosystem. Disparity was estimated through this period on conodonts, tooth-like fossil remains of small eel-like predators that were part of the nektonic fauna. The study was focused on the emblematic genus of the period, Palmatolepis. Strikingly, both crises affected an already impoverished Palmatolepis disparity, increasing risks of random extinction. The major disparity signal rather emerged as a cycle of increase and decrease in disparity during the inter-crises period. The diversification shortly followed the first crisis and might correspond to an opportunistic occupation of empty ecological niche. The subsequent oriented shrinking in the morphospace occupation suggests that the ecological space available to Palmatolepis decreased through time, due to a combination of factors: deteriorating climate, expansion of competitors and predators. Disparity changes of Palmatolepis thus reflect changes in the structure

The Effects of Gender- and Sexuality-Based Harassment on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Substance Use Disparities.

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Coulter, Robert W S; Bersamin, Melina; Russell, Stephen T; Mair, Christina

2018-06-01

We tested three competing models about whether gender- and sexuality-based harassment at school have nonindependent, additive, or interactive effects on adolescents' electronic cigarette use (i.e., vaping), cigarette smoking, alcohol use, and heavy episodic drinking (HED). We also tested whether harassment mediated substance use disparities between lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) adolescents and their cisgender heterosexual peers. We analyzed cross-sectional data from the 2013-2014 California Healthy Kids Survey, including 316,766 students in grades 7, 9, and 11 from more than 1,500 middle and high schools. We used logistic regression models and interaction terms to estimate associations of past-year gender- and sexuality-based harassment at school on past-month substance use, and the Karlson-Holm-Breen method to test whether harassment mediated LGBT disparities in substance use. Vaping, smoking, drinking, HED, and gender- and sexuality-based harassment were higher for transgender adolescents than for cisgender males and females, and for adolescents who were lesbian, gay, or bisexual only versus heterosexual only. Gender- and sexuality-based harassments were independently associated with greater odds of using each substance in every grade. These two types of harassment had positive interactions with each other for vaping in grade 11, smoking in grade 11, and HED in grades 9 and 11. Gender- and sexuality-based harassment significantly mediated many of the LGBT disparities in substance use. Gender- and sexuality-based harassment at school independently or interactively produced LGBT disparities in substance use. Reducing these types of discrimination in schools will likely mitigate these disparities. Copyright © 2017 The Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Uso da bioinformática na diferenciação molecular da Entamoeba histolytica e Entamoeba díspar - DOI: 10.4025/actascihealthsci.v30i2.2375 Molecular discrimination of Entamoeba histolytica and Entamoeba dispar by bioinformatics resources - DOI: 10.4025/actascihealthsci.v30i2.2375

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Débora Sommer

2008-12-01

Full Text Available Amebíase invasiva, causada por Entamoeba histolytica, é microscopicamente indistinguível da espécie não-patogênica Entamoeba dispar. Com auxílio de ferramentas de bioinformática, objetivou-se diferenciar Entamoeba histolytica e Entamoeba dispar por técnicas moleculares. A análise foi realizada a partir do banco de dados da National Center for Biotechnology Information; pela pesquisa de similaridade de sequências, elegeu-se o gene da cisteína sintase. Um par de primer foi desenhado (programa Web Primer e foi selecionada a enzima de restrição TaqI (programa Web Cutter. Após a atuação da enzima, o fragmento foi dividido em dois, um com 255 pb e outro com 554 pb, padrão característico da E. histolytica. Na ausência de corte, o fragmento apresentou o tamanho de 809 pb, referente à E. dispar.Under microscopic conditions, the invasive Entamoeba histolytica is indistinguishable from the non-pathogenic species Entamoeba dispar. In this way, the present study was carried out to determine a molecular strategy for discriminating both species by the mechanisms of bioinformatics. The gene cysteine synthetase was considered for such a purpose by using the resources of the National Center for Biotechnology Information data bank in the search for similarities in the gene sequence. In this way, a primer pair was designed by the Web Primer program and the restriction enzyme TaqI was selected by the Web Cutter software program. The DNA fragment had a size of 809 bp before cutting, which is consistent with E. dispar. The gene fragment was partitioned in a first fragment with 255 bp and a second one with 554 bp, which is similar to the genetic characteristics of E. histolytica.

Minority Health and Health Disparities

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... ik People" People Awakening Resilience Project (PARP), Cuqyun "Measuring" Treatment and Health Services Research Alcohol Treatment and ... addressing Health Disparities . 1 2009-2013 Health Disparities Strategic Plan, p.4 2 Ibid, p.4 3 ...

Trophic discrimination of stable isotopes and potential food source partitioning by leaf-eating crabs in mangrove environments

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kristensen, Erik; Lee, Shing Yip; Mangion, Perrine

2017-01-01

Diet composition of leaf-eating mangrove crabs is a puzzle among mangrove ecologists. Nutrient-poor leaf litter can in most cases not support animal growth. Food partitioning (mangrove leaves, animal tissue, and microphytobenthos [MPB]) of sesarmid and ucidid mangrove crabs from eight locations...... here for crabs foraging on leaf litter to identify discrimination values that provide a balanced diet with sufficient nutrients (i.e., N) when combined with other food sources. The data from all mangrove locations suggest that sesarmid and ucidid crabs ingest and assimilate mixtures of available food...... is probably caused by metabolic disparities between these two crab families. Deviations in 15N discrimination have in most cases only minor influence on the model-based 13C discrimination thresholds. The present findings lead us to suggest a modified Optimal Foraging Theory for leaf-eating mangrove crabs....

Sociodemographic Disparities in Local Smoke-Free Law Coverage in 10 States.

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Huang, Jidong; King, Brian A; Babb, Stephen D; Xu, Xin; Hallett, Cynthia; Hopkins, Maggie

2015-09-01

We assessed sociodemographic disparities in local 100% smoke-free laws prohibiting smoking in all indoor areas of nonhospitality worksites, restaurants, and bars in 10 states. We obtained data on local 100% smoke-free laws (US Tobacco Control Laws Database) and subcounty characteristics (2006-2010 American Community Survey) for Alabama, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, Texas, and West Virginia. Outcomes included (1) 100% smoke-free law covering restaurants, bars, and workplaces; (2) 100% smoke-free law covering restaurants, bars, or workplaces; and (3) number of venue types covered by 100% smoke-free laws (0-3). Sociodemographics included total population, urban status, percentage racial/ethnic minority, per capita income, percentage with high-school diploma, percentage with blue-collar jobs, and percentage of workers who live and work in the same locality. Across states, localities with less-educated residents, smaller proportions of workers living and working in the same locality, or both generally had lower odds of being covered by 100% smoke-free laws. Coverage varied across states for other sociodemographics. Disparities exist in local smoke-free law coverage. Identifying patterns in coverage can inform state efforts to address related disparities.

Discrimination and excessive weight gain during pregnancy among Black and Latina young women.

Science.gov (United States)

Reid, Allecia E; Rosenthal, Lisa; Earnshaw, Valerie A; Lewis, Tené T; Lewis, Jessica B; Stasko, Emily C; Tobin, Jonathan N; Ickovics, Jeannette R

2016-05-01

Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is a major determinant of later life obesity among both Black and Latina women and their offspring. However, psychosocial determinants of this risk, including everyday discrimination, and potential moderators of such effects remain unexplored. We examined the influence of discrimination, a culturally relevant stressor, on odds of gaining weight beyond Institute of Medicine recommendations during pregnancy. Whether the effect was moderated by race/ethnicity, age, or depressive symptoms was also examined. Participants were 413 Black and Latina pregnant young women, ages 14-21 years. Experience with discrimination and all moderators were assessed in the second trimester. Last weight recorded in the third trimester was abstracted from medical records and used to determine excessive weight gain. Ever experiencing discrimination was associated with a 71% increase in the odds of excessive weight gain. The effect of discrimination was primarily present among women who attributed this treatment to membership in a historically oppressed group (e.g., ethnic minority, female) or to membership in other stigmatized groups (e.g., overweight). The effect of ever experiencing discrimination was not moderated by race/ethnicity or age but was moderated by depressive symptoms. Supporting the perspective of the environmental affordances model, discrimination strongly predicted excessive weight gain when women were low in depressive symptoms but had no effect when women were high in depressive symptoms. The moderating role of depressive symptoms was equivalent for Black and Latina women. Results highlight the role of discrimination in perpetuating weight-related health disparities and suggest opportunities for improving health outcomes among young pregnant women. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Discrimination and Excessive Weight Gain During Pregnancy Among Black and Latina Young Women

Science.gov (United States)

Reid, Allecia E.; Rosenthal, Lisa; Earnshaw, Valerie A.; Lewis, Tené T.; Lewis, Jessica B.; Stasko, Emily C.; Tobin, Jonathan N.; Ickovics, Jeannette R.

2016-01-01

Rationale Excessive weight gain during pregnancy is a major determinant of later life obesity among both Black and Latina women and their offspring. However, psychosocial determinants of this risk, including everyday discrimination, and potential moderators of such effects remain unexplored. Objective We examined the influence of discrimination, a culturally relevant stressor, on odds of gaining weight beyond Institute of Medicine recommendations during pregnancy. Whether the effect was moderated by race/ethnicity, age, or depressive symptoms was also examined. Method Participants were 413 Black and Latina pregnant young women, ages 14-21 years. Experience with discrimination and all moderators were assessed in the second trimester. Last weight recorded in the third trimester was abstracted from medical records and used to determine excessive weight gain. Results Ever experiencing discrimination was associated with a 71% increase in the odds of excessive weight gain. The effect of discrimination was primarily present among women who attributed this treatment to membership in a historically oppressed group (e.g., ethnic minority, female) or to membership in other stigmatized groups (e.g., overweight). The effect of ever experiencing discrimination was not moderated by race/ethnicity or age but was moderated by depressive symptoms. Supporting the perspective of the environmental affordances model, discrimination strongly predicted excessive weight gain when women were low in depressive symptoms but had no effect when women were high in depressive symptoms. The moderating role of depressive symptoms was equivalent for Black and Latina women. Conclusion Results highlight the role of discrimination in perpetuating weight-related health disparities and suggest opportunities for improving health outcomes among young pregnant women. PMID:27038321

Prejudice and Discrimination as Expressions of Violence

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Lourdes Bandeira

2002-01-01

Full Text Available This essay examines the construction of prejudice – and the visibility of the ensuing discriminations – associated with the emergence of differences, be it through the affirmation and manipulation of the conditions of difference or through their denial and dissimulation. In both cases, there is a lack of recognition of, or disrespect for, differences that is constitutive of new patterns of violence. This essay builds a bridge between discrimination and violence, emphasizing the diverse forms of discrimination and exclusion, which include: the juridical parameters related to co-existence and re-cognition; the social sciences approach to the construction of differences/non-similarities; the conceptual framework of the category ‘prejudice‘ and its derivative forms of discrimination and social exclusion; the mechanisms of prejudice; and the difference-prejudice relation, image and rationalization of the Other .

Understanding ethnic/racial health disparities in youth and families in the US.

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Carlo, Gustavo; Crockett, Lisa J; Carranza, Miguel A; Martinez, Miriam M

2011-01-01

To summarize, ethnic and social class disparities are evident across a spectrum of markers of psychological, behavioral, and physical health. Furthermore, the pattern is often complex such that disparities are sometimes found within ethnic/racial groups as well as across those groups. Indeed, it is likely that the causes of health disparities may be different across specific subgroups. Moreover, theoretical models are needed that examine biological, contextual, and person-level variables (including culture-specific variables) to account for health disparities. The scholars in the present volume provide exemplary research that moves us towards more comprehensive and integrative models of health disparities. A brief glance at the work summarized by these scholars yields some common elements of focus for future researchers regarding risk (e.g., poverty, lack of contextual diversity) and protective (e.g., family support, cultural identity) factors yet they also identify aspects (e.g., genetic vulnerabilities) that may be unique to specific ethnic/racial groups. In addition to employing more integrative and culturally sensitive models of health disparities, future research studies could expand the scope of investigation to include transnational studies of health disparities and the processes contributing to them. They might also consider culture-specific health problems and syndromes such as "nervios" in Latino cultures. Within nations, further attention might be directed to the community contexts in which ethnic minority and low SES families reside, not only urban areas but the much less studied rural areas. Finally, efforts to assess health disparities and the factors contributing to them across cultural and ethnic groups need to attend closely to the issue of measurement equivalence in order to ensure valid cross-group comparisons. We would add that future research on health disparities will need to examine markers of positive health outcomes and well being (e

Maternal experiences with everyday discrimination and infant birth weight: a test of mediators and moderators among young, urban women of color.

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Earnshaw, Valerie A; Rosenthal, Lisa; Lewis, Jessica B; Stasko, Emily C; Tobin, Jonathan N; Lewis, Tené T; Reid, Allecia E; Ickovics, Jeannette R

2013-02-01

Racial/ethnic disparities in birth weight persist within the USA. The purpose of this study is to examine the association between maternal everyday discrimination and infant birth weight among young, urban women of color as well as mediators (depressive symptoms, pregnancy distress, and pregnancy symptoms) and moderators (age, race/ethnicity, and attributions of discrimination) of this association. A total of 420 women participated (14-21 years old; 62 % Latina, 38 % Black), completing measures of everyday discrimination and moderators during their second trimester of pregnancy and mediators during their third trimester. Birth weight was primarily recorded from medical record review. Path analysis demonstrated that everyday discrimination was associated with lower birth weight. Depressive symptoms mediated this relationship, and no tested factors moderated this relationship. Given the association between birth weight and health across the lifespan, it is critical to reduce discrimination directed at young, urban women of color so that all children can begin life with greater promise for health.

White Infant Mortality in Appalachian States, 1976-1980 and 1996-2000: Changing Patterns and Persistent Disparities

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Yao, Nengliang; Matthews, Stephen A.; Hillemeier, Marianne M.

2012-01-01

Purpose: Appalachian counties have historically had elevated infant mortality rates. Changes in infant mortality disparities over time in Appalachia are not well-understood. This study explores spatial inequalities in white infant mortality rates over time in the 13 Appalachian states, comparing counties in Appalachia with non-Appalachian…

Racial and non-racial discrimination and smoking status among South African adults 10 years after apartheid.

Science.gov (United States)

Dutra, Lauren M; Williams, David R; Kawachi, Ichiro; Okechukwu, Cassandra A

2014-11-01

Despite a long history of discrimination and persisting racial disparities in smoking prevalence, little research exists on the relationship between discrimination and smoking in South Africa. This analysis examined chronic (day-to-day) and acute (lifetime) experiences of racial and non-racial (eg, age, gender or physical appearance) discrimination and smoking status among respondents to the South Africa Stress and Health study. Logistic regression models were constructed using SAS-Callable SUDAAN. Both chronic racial discrimination (RR=1.45, 95% CI 1.14 to 1.85) and chronic non-racial discrimination (RR=1.69, 95% CI 1.37 to 2.08) predicted a higher risk of smoking, but neither type of acute discrimination did. Total (sum of racial and non-racial) chronic discrimination (RR=1.46, 95% CI 1.20 to 1.78) and total acute discrimination (RR=1.28, 95% CI 1.01 to 1.60) predicted a higher risk of current smoking. Racial and non-racial discrimination may be related to South African adults' smoking behaviour, but this relationship likely varies by the timing and frequency of these experiences. Future research should use longitudinal data to identify the temporal ordering of the relationships studied, include areas outside of South Africa to increase generalisability and consider the implications of these findings for smoking cessation approaches in South Africa. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://group.bmj.com/group/rights-licensing/permissions.

Pitch discrimination associated with phonological awareness: Evidence from congenital amusia.

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Yanan; Lu, Xuejing; Ho, Hao Tam; Thompson, William Forde

2017-03-13

Research suggests that musical skills are associated with phonological abilities. To further investigate this association, we examined whether phonological impairments are evident in individuals with poor music abilities. Twenty individuals with congenital amusia and 20 matched controls were assessed on a pure-tone pitch discrimination task, a rhythm discrimination task, and four phonological tests. Amusic participants showed deficits in discriminating pitch and discriminating rhythmic patterns that involve a regular beat. At a group level, these individuals performed similarly to controls on all phonological tests. However, eight amusics with severe pitch impairment, as identified by the pitch discrimination task, exhibited significantly worse performance than all other participants in phonological awareness. A hierarchical regression analysis indicated that pitch discrimination thresholds predicted phonological awareness beyond that predicted by phonological short-term memory and rhythm discrimination. In contrast, our rhythm discrimination task did not predict phonological awareness beyond that predicted by pitch discrimination thresholds. These findings suggest that accurate pitch discrimination is critical for phonological processing. We propose that deficits in early-stage pitch discrimination may be associated with impaired phonological awareness and we discuss the shared role of pitch discrimination for processing music and speech.

Detection and genotyping of Entamoeba histolytica, Entamoeba dispar, Giardia lamblia, and Cryptosporidium parvum by oligonucleotide microarray.

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Zheng; Vora, Gary J; Stenger, David A

2004-07-01

Entamoeba histolytica, Giardia lamblia, and Cryptosporidium parvum are the most frequently identified protozoan parasites causing waterborne disease outbreaks. The morbidity and mortality associated with these intestinal parasitic infections warrant the development of rapid and accurate detection and genotyping methods to aid public health efforts aimed at preventing and controlling outbreaks. In this study, we describe the development of an oligonucleotide microarray capable of detecting and discriminating between E. histolytica, Entamoeba dispar, G. lamblia assemblages A and B, and C. parvum types 1 and 2 in a single assay. Unique hybridization patterns for each selected protozoan were generated by amplifying six to eight diagnostic sequences/organism by multiplex PCR; fluorescent labeling of the amplicons via primer extension; and subsequent hybridization to a set of genus-, species-, and subtype-specific covalently immobilized oligonucleotide probes. The profile-based specificity of this methodology not only permitted for the unequivocal identification of the six targeted species and subtypes, but also demonstrated its potential in identifying related species such as Cryptosporidium meleagridis and Cryptosporidium muris. In addition, sensitivity assays demonstrated lower detection limits of five trophozoites of G. lamblia. Taken together, the specificity and sensitivity of the microarray-based approach suggest that this methodology may provide a promising tool to detect and genotype protozoa from clinical and environmental samples.

Regional Disparities in Emissions of Rural Household Energy Consumption: A Case Study of Northwest China

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Wenheng Wu

2017-05-01

Full Text Available The purpose of this paper is to present the emissions status of multiple rural areas from the perspective of a field survey and make up for the defects of the traditional emission cognition of single type of area. The basic data in the lower reaches of the Weihe River of Northwest China were collected through household questionnaire surveys, and emissions from rural household energy consumption were calculated in the paper. In addition, the grey relational analysis method was used to identify influential factors of emission disparities. The results show that the total emissions of the plain, loess tableland, and Qinling piedmont areas are 1863.20, 1850.43, and 2556.68 kg, respectively. Regional disparities in emissions of rural household energy consumption vary greatly. CO2 emissions are highest in the Qinling piedmont area, followed by the loess tableland area. For other emissions, there is no fixed order of the three areas, which suggests that disparities in emissions are connected with the dominant type of energy consumption. Diversification of energy use might not necessarily produce higher emissions, but the traditional biomass energy pattern does generate more emissions. The regional supply capacity of household energy is the original influence factor of disparities in emissions, and factors that influence these disparities are directly related to differences among farmers, followed by the age structure, educational background, income level, occupation, and so on.

Chromatic discrimination: differential contributions from two adapting fields

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Cao, Dingcai; Lu, Yolanda H.

2012-01-01

To test whether a retinal or cortical mechanism sums contributions from two adapting fields to chromatic discrimination, L/M discrimination was measured with a test annulus surrounded by an inner circular field and an outer rectangular field. A retinal summation mechanism predicted that the discrimination pattern would not change with a change in the fixation location. Therefore, the fixation was set either in the inner or the outer field in two experiments. When one of the adapting fields was “red” and the other was “green,” the adapting field where the observer fixated always had a stronger influence on chromatic discrimination. However, when one adapting field was “white” and the other was red or green, the white field always weighted more heavily than the other adapting field in determining discrimination thresholds, whether the white field or the fixation was in the inner or outer adapting field. These results suggest that a cortical mechanism determines the relative contributions from different adapting fields. PMID:22330364

How discriminating are discriminative instruments?

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Hankins, Matthew

2008-05-27

The McMaster framework introduced by Kirshner & Guyatt is the dominant paradigm for the development of measures of health status and health-related quality of life (HRQL). The framework defines the functions of such instruments as evaluative, predictive or discriminative. Evaluative instruments are required to be sensitive to change (responsiveness), but there is no corresponding index of the degree to which discriminative instruments are sensitive to cross-sectional differences. This paper argues that indices of validity and reliability are not sufficient to demonstrate that a discriminative instrument performs its function of discriminating between individuals, and that the McMaster framework would be augmented by the addition of a separate index of discrimination. The coefficient proposed by Ferguson (Delta) is easily adapted to HRQL instruments and is a direct, non-parametric index of the degree to which an instrument distinguishes between individuals. While Delta should prove useful in the development and evaluation of discriminative instruments, further research is required to elucidate the relationship between the measurement properties of discrimination, reliability and responsiveness.

How discriminating are discriminative instruments?

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Hankins Matthew

2008-05-01

Full Text Available Abstract The McMaster framework introduced by Kirshner & Guyatt is the dominant paradigm for the development of measures of health status and health-related quality of life (HRQL. The framework defines the functions of such instruments as evaluative, predictive or discriminative. Evaluative instruments are required to be sensitive to change (responsiveness, but there is no corresponding index of the degree to which discriminative instruments are sensitive to cross-sectional differences. This paper argues that indices of validity and reliability are not sufficient to demonstrate that a discriminative instrument performs its function of discriminating between individuals, and that the McMaster framework would be augmented by the addition of a separate index of discrimination. The coefficient proposed by Ferguson (Delta is easily adapted to HRQL instruments and is a direct, non-parametric index of the degree to which an instrument distinguishes between individuals. While Delta should prove useful in the development and evaluation of discriminative instruments, further research is required to elucidate the relationship between the measurement properties of discrimination, reliability and responsiveness.

Extant-only comparative methods fail to recover the disparity preserved in the bird fossil record.

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Mitchell, Jonathan S

2015-09-01

Most extant species are in clades with poor fossil records, and recent studies of comparative methods show they have low power to infer even highly simplified models of trait evolution without fossil data. Birds are a well-studied radiation, yet their early evolutionary patterns are still contentious. The fossil record suggests that birds underwent a rapid ecological radiation after the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, and several smaller, subsequent radiations. This hypothesized series of repeated radiations from fossil data is difficult to test using extant data alone. By uniting morphological and phylogenetic data on 604 extant genera of birds with morphological data on 58 species of extinct birds from 50 million years ago, the "halfway point" of avian evolution, I have been able to test how well extant-only methods predict the diversity of fossil forms. All extant-only methods underestimate the disparity, although the ratio of within- to between-clade disparity does suggest high early rates. The failure of standard models to predict high early disparity suggests that recent radiations are obscuring deep time patterns in the evolution of birds. Metrics from different models can be used in conjunction to provide more valuable insights than simply finding the model with the highest relative fit. © 2015 The Author(s). Evolution © 2015 The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Appliance Efficiency Standards and Price Discrimination

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Spurlock, Cecily Anna [Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)

2013-05-08

I explore the effects of two simultaneous changes in minimum energy efficiency and ENERGY STAR standards for clothes washers. Adapting the Mussa and Rosen (1978) and Ronnen (1991) second-degree price discrimination model, I demonstrate that clothes washer prices and menus adjusted to the new standards in patterns consistent with a market in which firms had been price discriminating. In particular, I show evidence of discontinuous price drops at the time the standards were imposed, driven largely by mid-low efficiency segments of the market. The price discrimination model predicts this result. On the other hand, in a perfectly competition market, prices should increase for these market segments. Additionally, new models proliferated in the highest efficiency market segment following the standard changes. Finally, I show that firms appeared to use different adaptation strategies at the two instances of the standards changing.

Does place explain racial health disparities? Quantifying the contribution of residential context to the Black/white health gap in the United States.

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Do, D Phuong; Finch, Brian Karl; Basurto-Davila, Ricardo; Bird, Chloe; Escarce, Jose; Lurie, Nicole

2008-10-01

The persistence of the black health disadvantage has been a puzzling component of health in the United States in spite of general declines in rates of morbidity and mortality over the past century. Studies that have focused on well-established individual-level determinants of health such as socio-economic status and health behaviors have been unable to fully explain these disparities. Recent research has begun to focus on other factors such as racism, discrimination, and segregation. Variation in neighborhood context-socio-demographic composition, social aspects, and built environment-has been postulated as an additional explanation for racial disparities, but few attempts have been made to quantify its overall contribution to the black/white health gap. This analysis is an attempt to generate an estimate of place effects on explaining health disparities by utilizing data from the U.S. National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) (1989-1994), combined with a methodology for identifying residents of the same blocks both within and across NHIS survey cross-sections. Our results indicate that controlling for a single point-in-time measure of residential context results in a roughly 15-76% reduction of the black/white disparities in self-rated health that were previously unaccounted for by individual-level controls. The contribution of residential context toward explaining the black/white self-rated health gap varies by both age and gender such that contextual explanations of disparities decline with age and appear to be smaller among females.

Associations between trajectories of perceived racial discrimination and psychological symptoms among African American adolescents.

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Smith-Bynum, Mia A; Lambert, Sharon F; English, Devin; Ialongo, Nicholas S

2014-11-01

Many African American adolescents experience racial discrimination, with adverse consequences; however, stability and change in these experiences over time have not been examined. We examined longitudinal patterns of perceived racial discrimination assessed in Grades 7-10 and how these discrimination trajectories related to patterns of change in depressive and anxious symptoms and aggressive behaviors assessed over the same 4-year period. Growth mixture modeling performed on a community epidemiologically defined sample of urban African American adolescents (n = 504) revealed three trajectories of discrimination: increasing, decreasing, and stable low. As predicted, African American boys were more frequent targets for racial discrimination as they aged, and they were more likely to be in the increasing group. The results of parallel process growth mixture modeling revealed that youth in the increasing racial discrimination group were four times more likely to be in an increasing depression trajectory than were youth in the low stable discrimination trajectory. Though youth in the increasing racial discrimination group were nearly twice as likely to be in the high aggression trajectory, results were not statistically significant. These results indicate an association between variation in the growth of perceived racial discrimination and youth behavior and psychological well-being over the adolescent years.

Discrimination, Harassment, and Gendered Health Inequalities: Do Perceptions of Workplace Mistreatment Contribute to the Gender Gap in Self-reported Health?

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Harnois, Catherine E; Bastos, João L

2018-06-01

This study examines the extent to which discrimination and harassment contribute to gendered health disparities. Analyzing data from the 2006, 2010, and 2014 General Social Surveys ( N = 3,724), we ask the following: (1) To what extent are perceptions of workplace gender discrimination and sexual harassment associated with self-reported mental and physical health? (2) How do multiple forms of workplace mistreatment (e.g., racism, ageism, and sexism) combine to structure workers' self-assessed health? and (3) To what extent do perceptions of mistreatment contribute to the gender gap in self-assessed health? Multivariate analyses show that among women, but not men, perceptions of workplace gender discrimination are negatively associated with poor mental health, and perceptions of sexual harassment are associated with poor physical health. Among men and women, perceptions of multiple forms of mistreatment are associated with worse mental health. Gender discrimination partially explains the gender gap in self-reported mental health.

Unequally distributed psychological assets: are there social disparities in optimism, life satisfaction, and positive affect?

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Boehm, Julia K; Chen, Ying; Williams, David R; Ryff, Carol; Kubzansky, Laura D

2015-01-01

Socioeconomic status is associated with health disparities, but underlying psychosocial mechanisms have not been fully identified. Dispositional optimism may be a psychosocial process linking socioeconomic status with health. We hypothesized that lower optimism would be associated with greater social disadvantage and poorer social mobility. We also investigated whether life satisfaction and positive affect showed similar patterns. Participants from the Midlife in the United States study self-reported their optimism, satisfaction, positive affect, and socioeconomic status (gender, race/ethnicity, education, occupational class and prestige, income). Social disparities in optimism were evident. Optimistic individuals tended to be white and highly educated, had an educated parent, belonged to higher occupational classes with more prestige, and had higher incomes. Findings were generally similar for satisfaction, but not positive affect. Greater optimism and satisfaction were also associated with educational achievement across generations. Optimism and life satisfaction are consistently linked with socioeconomic advantage and may be one conduit by which social disparities influence health.

Despite Increased Insurance Coverage, Nonwhite Sexual Minorities Still Experience Disparities In Access To Care.

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Hsieh, Ning; Ruther, Matt

2017-10-01

Previous studies suggest that members of sexual minority groups have poorer access to health services than heterosexuals. However, few studies have examined how sexual orientation interacts with gender and race to affect health care experience. Moreover, little is known about the role in health care disparities played by economic strains such as unemployment and poverty, which may result from prejudice and discrimination based on sexual orientation. Using data for 2013-15 from the National Health Interview Survey, we found that most members of sexual minority groups no longer have higher uninsurance rates than heterosexuals, but many continue to experience poorer access to high-quality care. Gay nonwhite men, bisexual white women, and bisexual and lesbian nonwhite women are disadvantaged in multiple aspects of access, compared to straight white men. Only some of these disparities are attributable to economic factors, which implies that noneconomic barriers to care are substantial. Our results suggest that the intersection of multiple social identities can reveal important gaps in health care experience. Making culturally sensitive services available may be key to closing the gaps. Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.

The Great American Recession and forgone healthcare: Do widened disparities between African-Americans and Whites remain?

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Jasmine L Travers

Full Text Available During the Great Recession in America, African-Americans opted to forgo healthcare more than other racial/ethnic groups. It is not understood whether disparities in forgone care returned to pre-recession levels. Understanding healthcare utilization patterns is important for informing subsequent efforts to decrease healthcare disparities. Therefore, we examined changes in racial disparities in forgone care before, during, and after the Great Recession.Data were pooled from the 2006-2013 National Health Interview Survey. Forgone medical, mental, and prescription care due to affordability were assessed among African-Americans and Whites. Time periods were classified as: pre-recession (May 2006-November 2007, early recession (December 2007-November 2008, late recession (December 2008-May 2010 and post-recession (June 2010-December 2013. Multivariable logistic regressions of race, interacted with time periods, were used to identify disparities in forgone care controlling for other demographics, health insurance coverage, and having a usual place for medical care across time periods. Adjusted Wald tests were performed to identify significant changes in disparities across time periods.The sample consisted of 110,746 adults. African-Americans were more likely to forgo medical care during the post- recession compared to Whites (OR = 1.16, CI = 1.06, 1.26; changes in foregone medical care disparities were significant in that they increased in the post-recession period compared to the pre-recession (OR = 1.17, CI = 1.08, 1.28 and OR = 0.89, CI = 0.77, 1.04, respectively, adjusted Wald Test p-value < 0.01. No changes in disparities were seen in prescription and mental forgone care.A persistent increase in forgone medical care disparities existed among African-Americans compared to Whites post-Great Recession and may be a result of outstanding issues related to healthcare access, cost, and quality. While health insurance is an important component of access

Bipartite life cycle of coral reef fishes promotes increasing shape disparity of the head skeleton during ontogeny: an example from damselfishes (Pomacentridae

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Vandewalle Pierre

2011-03-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Quantitative studies of the variation of disparity during ontogeny exhibited by the radiation of coral reef fishes are lacking. Such studies dealing with the variation of disparity, i.e. the diversity of organic form, over ontogeny could be a first step in detecting evolutionary mechanisms in these fishes. The damselfishes (Pomacentridae have a bipartite life-cycle, as do the majority of demersal coral reef fishes. During their pelagic dispersion phase, all larvae feed on planktonic prey. On the other hand, juveniles and adults associated with the coral reef environment show a higher diversity of diets. Using geometric morphometrics, we study the ontogenetic dynamic of shape disparity of different head skeletal units (neurocranium, suspensorium and opercle, mandible and premaxilla in this fish family. We expected that larvae of different species might be relatively similar in shapes. Alternatively, specialization may become notable even in the juvenile and adult phase. Results The disparity levels increase significantly throughout ontogeny for each skeletal unit. At settlement, all larval shapes are already species-specific. Damselfishes show high levels of ontogenetic allometry during their post-settlement growth. The divergence of allometric patterns largely explains the changes in patterns and levels of shape disparity over ontogeny. The rate of shape change and the length of ontogenetic trajectories seem to be less variable among species. We also show that the high levels of shape disparity at the adult stage are correlated to a higher level of ecological and functional diversity in this stage. Conclusion Diversification throughout ontogeny of damselfishes results from the interaction among several developmental novelties enhancing disparity. The bipartite life-cycle of damselfishes exemplifies a case where the variation of environmental factors, i.e. the transition from the more homogeneous oceanic environment to the

Bipartite life cycle of coral reef fishes promotes increasing shape disparity of the head skeleton during ontogeny: an example from damselfishes (Pomacentridae)

Science.gov (United States)

2011-01-01

Background Quantitative studies of the variation of disparity during ontogeny exhibited by the radiation of coral reef fishes are lacking. Such studies dealing with the variation of disparity, i.e. the diversity of organic form, over ontogeny could be a first step in detecting evolutionary mechanisms in these fishes. The damselfishes (Pomacentridae) have a bipartite life-cycle, as do the majority of demersal coral reef fishes. During their pelagic dispersion phase, all larvae feed on planktonic prey. On the other hand, juveniles and adults associated with the coral reef environment show a higher diversity of diets. Using geometric morphometrics, we study the ontogenetic dynamic of shape disparity of different head skeletal units (neurocranium, suspensorium and opercle, mandible and premaxilla) in this fish family. We expected that larvae of different species might be relatively similar in shapes. Alternatively, specialization may become notable even in the juvenile and adult phase. Results The disparity levels increase significantly throughout ontogeny for each skeletal unit. At settlement, all larval shapes are already species-specific. Damselfishes show high levels of ontogenetic allometry during their post-settlement growth. The divergence of allometric patterns largely explains the changes in patterns and levels of shape disparity over ontogeny. The rate of shape change and the length of ontogenetic trajectories seem to be less variable among species. We also show that the high levels of shape disparity at the adult stage are correlated to a higher level of ecological and functional diversity in this stage. Conclusion Diversification throughout ontogeny of damselfishes results from the interaction among several developmental novelties enhancing disparity. The bipartite life-cycle of damselfishes exemplifies a case where the variation of environmental factors, i.e. the transition from the more homogeneous oceanic environment to the coral reef offering a wide

Disseminating Health Disparities Education Through Tele-Learning

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LaSonya Knowles

2008-08-01

Full Text Available Twenty years of research demonstrate that there are wide disparities in health throughout America. Health disparities are differences in the incidence, prevalence, mortality, and burden of diseases and other adverse health conditions that exist when specific population subgroups are compared. Health Disparities in America: Working Toward Social Justice is a course instructed every fall by Dr. Lovell Jones, director of The Center for Research on Minority Health (CRMH at UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. The CRMH has created a course that examines the social and societal factors that are fundamental in creating disparities in health. Students from 10 different academic programs and institutions participate in this course. The course is unique in the aspect that various, diverse speakers whom are experts in their field of study instruct each class. This health disparities course is conducted at one of three different academic institutions in the Houston area and broadcast via satellite to various academic institutions by means of teleeducation. Tele-education is defined as a mode of instruction utilizing different forms of media such as video, audio technology tools and computers. Video and audio technologies involve the transmission of interface between learners and instructors, either interactive or non-interactive. Tele-education technologies have an important role to play in addressing the dissemination of health disparities education. The purpose of this program is to determine the feasibility of tele-education as a mode of instruction to introduce the multi-disciplinary components of health disparities. Our findings suggest that tele-education is a useful tool in imparting health disparities education.

78 FR 13508 - Interpreting Nondiscrimination Requirements of Executive Order 11246 With Respect to Systemic...

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2013-02-28

... distinct theories of discrimination under Title VII: Individual disparate treatment, ``pattern or practice... for presenting evidence and satisfying the burden of proof under each theory, they consistently hold...)(3). As an incentive to encourage contractors to use the analytical procedures contained in the...

Diversity of palatal rugae patterns and their reliability in sex discrimination in a South Indian population

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Sai Madhavi Nallamilli

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Introduction and Aims: Array of palatal rugae in the realm of forensic odontology has been constantly explored owing to their individual uniqueness and resistance to postmortem procedures, while their scope in sex determination and racial profiling remains understated. In this context, the present study aimed to record the diversity of palatal rugae patterns in a South Indian population. Materials and Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among people who reported to the outpatient department of a dental institution. Sample comprised a total of 200 subjects divided into two groups of 100 each, based upon gender. Impressions of anterior maxilla were made of all the study subjects and casts obtained subsequently. Outline of palatal rugae pattern was traced on these models and the data computed. Z test and unpaired t-test were used for statistical analysis and the probability value calculated. In addition, logistic regression analysis was performed to estimate the accuracy of sex allocation. Results: The shape of rugae exhibited highly significant sex difference in the curved type, which was found to be higher in males, and in the wavy type which was higher in females, enabling sex differentiation using palatal rugae patterns. Logistic regression analysis predicted high power of sex allocation for males rather than females in the study population. Conclusion: This study highlighted the uniqueness and greater sex discrimination potential of curved shape of palatal rugae in categorizing males of South Indian population, substantiating their use in the identification of deceased, by relating the antemortem and postmortem dental records.

Age- and Gender-related Disparities in Primary Percutaneous Coronary Interventions for Acute ST-segment elevation Myocardial Infarction.

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Thomas Pilgrim

Full Text Available Previous analyses reported age- and gender-related differences in the provision of cardiac care. The objective of the study was to compare circadian disparities in the delivery of primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI for acute myocardial infarction (AMI according to the patient's age and gender.We investigated patients included into the Acute Myocardial Infarction in Switzerland (AMIS registry presenting to one of 11 centers in Switzerland providing primary PCI around the clock, and stratified patients according to gender and age.A total of 4723 patients presented with AMI between 2005 and 2010; 1319 (28% were women and 2172 (54% were ≥65 years of age. More than 90% of patients 90 minutes was found in elderly males (adj HR 1.66 (95% CI 1.40-1.95, p<0.001 and females (adj HR 1.57 (95% CI 1.27-1.93, p<0.001, as well as in females <65 years (adj HR 1.47 (95% CI 1.13-1.91, p = 0.004 as compared to males <65 years of age, with significant differences in circadian patterns during on- and off-duty hours.In a cohort of patients with AMI in Switzerland, we observed discrimination of elderly patients and females in the circadian provision of primary PCI.

Sexuality-related work discrimination and its association with the health of sexual minority emerging and young adult men in the Detroit Metro Area.

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Bauermeister, José A; Meanley, Steven; Hickok, Andrew; Pingel, Emily; Vanhemert, William; Loveluck, Jimena

2014-03-01

Discrimination has been linked to negative health outcomes among minority populations. The increasing evidence regarding health disparities among sexual minorities has underscored the importance of addressing sexuality discrimination as a public health issue. We conducted a web-based survey between May and September of 2012 in order to obtain a diverse sample of young men who have sex with men (ages 18-29; N = 397; 83% gay; 49% Black, 27% White, 15% Latino) living in the Detroit Metro Area (Michigan, USA). Using multivariate regression models, we examined the association between overall health (self-rated health, days in prior month when their physical or mental health was not good, limited functionality) and experiences of sexuality-based work discrimination. Fifteen percent reported at least one experience of sexuality-based work discrimination in the prior year. Recent workplace discrimination was associated with poorer self-rated health, a greater number of days when health was not good, and more functional limitation. We discuss the importance of addressing sexuality-related discrimination as a public health problem and propose multilevel intervention strategies to address these discriminatory practices.

Health disparities through a psychological lens.

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Adler, Nancy E

2009-11-01

There is growing concern in the United States about avoidable, unjust differences in health associated with sociodemographic characteristics, such as socioeconomic status and race/ethnicity. This concern has sparked research to identify how disparities develop and how they can be reduced. Studies showing that disparities occur at all levels of socioeconomic status, not simply at the very bottom, suggest that psychosocial factors play an important role. The author discusses both content and process issues in psychological research on disparities. Copyright 2009 by the American Psychological Association

Dynamic Development of Regional Disparity in Mainland China: An Experimental Study Based on a Multidimensional Index

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Peng Bin

2016-12-01

Full Text Available This paper stems from the previous wisdom to investigate the transitional dynamics of regional disparity in China during the period 1998–2010. This is the very first time that 30 Chinese regions have been benchmarked according to a multidimensional index based on a stochastic kernel density. The multidimensional index contains five domains to capture the socioeconomic development: macroeconomic conditions, science and innovation, environmental sustainability, human capital, and public facilities. This experimental study reveals the existence of a three-peak pattern of convergence during 1998–2010, and improves the understanding of the evolution of regional disparity in China in terms of the comprehensive socioeconomic development.

Evaluating stereoscopic displays: both efficiency measures and perceived workload sensitive to manipulations in binocular disparity

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van Beurden, Maurice H. P. H.; Ijsselsteijn, Wijnand A.; de Kort, Yvonne A. W.

2011-03-01

Stereoscopic displays are known to offer a number of key advantages in visualizing complex 3D structures or datasets. The large majority of studies that focus on evaluating stereoscopic displays for professional applications use completion time and/or the percentage of correct answers to measure potential performance advantages. However, completion time and accuracy may not fully reflect all the benefits of stereoscopic displays. In this paper, we argue that perceived workload is an additional valuable indicator reflecting the extent to which users can benefit from using stereoscopic displays. We performed an experiment in which participants were asked to perform a visual path-tracing task within a convoluted 3D wireframe structure, varying in level of complexity of the visualised structure and level of disparity of the visualisation. The results showed that an optimal performance (completion time, accuracy and workload), depend both on task difficulty and disparity level. Stereoscopic disparity revealed a faster and more accurate task performance, whereas we observed a trend that performance on difficult tasks stands to benefit more from higher levels of disparity than performance on easy tasks. Perceived workload (as measured using the NASA-TLX) showed a similar response pattern, providing evidence that perceived workload is sensitive to variations in disparity as well as task difficulty. This suggests that perceived workload could be a useful concept, in addition to standard performance indicators, in characterising and measuring human performance advantages when using stereoscopic displays.

Exhaustive Search of Elemental Combinations for Geochemical Discrimination of Tsunami deposits

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Kuwatani, T.; Nagata, K.; Okada, M.; Watanabe, T.; Ogawa, Y.; Tsuchiya, N.

2013-12-01

Tsunami deposits are important for assessment of tsunami hazard. Many diagnostic signatures and identification criteria for past tsunami deposits are proposed, including geomorphological, stratigraphical, sedimentological, archaeological, anthropological, macro- and micropalaeontological evidences. However identification is still difficult because their properties depend on local and temporal situations of deposition and its subsequent weathering and diagenesis. Here, we focus geochemical discrimination of tsunami deposits using bulk chemical compositions. Geochemical discrimination is now recognized as an useful proxy, especially in the case that other proxies cannot be used. Precise discrimination is expected if we select appropriate combination of elements, since some of elements might have characteristic patterns distinguishing tsunami deposits from other sediments. In this study, we try to establish the criteria for the discrimination of 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami deposits and their background marine sedimentary rocks, using two powerful methodologies of information science: one is a support vector machine (SVM) classifier which is used for determining the appropriate decision plane which divides unknown samples into tsunami deposits and non-tsunami sediments in compositional space, where basis vector is composition of each element, and the other is a cross validation (CV) technique which is used for evaluate the discrimination performance of the SVM for each combination of elements use for discrimination. Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a supervised clustering method, which developed in the machine learning and pattern recognition from the 1990s (Vapnik, 1998). It classifies unknown high-dimensional input vector data into several groups by decision function called as maximal margin hyperplane. The maximal margin hyperplane is determined based on training data sets, which are composed of known input vectors and output labels, and it is not only the farthest from

Perceived distress tolerance accounts for the covariance between discrimination experiences and anxiety symptoms among sexual minority adults.

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Reitzel, Lorraine R; Smith, Nathan Grant; Obasi, Ezemenari M; Forney, Margot; Leventhal, Adam M

2017-05-01

Sexual orientation-related discrimination experiences have been implicated in elevated rates of anxiety symptoms within sexual minority groups. Theory suggests that chronic discrimination experiences may dampen the ability to tolerate distress, increasing vulnerability for anxiety. This study examined the role of distress tolerance, or the capacity to withstand negative emotions, as a construct underlying associations between discriminatory experiences and anxiety among sexual minority adults. Participants (N=119;M age =36.4±14.8; 50% cisgender male, 31% cisgender female, 19% transgender; 37% non-Latino white) were recruited from Houston, Texas. Measures administered included the Heterosexist Harassment, Rejection, and Discrimination Scale (discrimination experiences), Distress Tolerance Scale (distress tolerance), and the State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety (anxiety). The association of discrimination experiences and anxiety through distress tolerance was assessed using covariate-adjusted mediation modeling. Results indicated that sexual orientation-related discrimination experiences were significantly and positively associated with anxiety and that this association was mediated through lower distress tolerance. Significant indirect effects were specific to cognitive (versus somatic) anxiety symptoms. Results suggest that distress tolerance may be an explanatory mechanism in the association between discriminatory experiences and cognitive symptoms of anxiety and a potentially relevant target within clinical interventions to address anxiety-related health disparities among sexual minority adults. However, more sophisticated designs are needed to delineate causal associations. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Do wealth disparities contribute to health disparities within racial/ethnic groups?

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Pollack, Craig Evan; Cubbin, Catherine; Sania, Ayesha; Hayward, Mark; Vallone, Donna; Flaherty, Brian; Braveman, Paula A

2013-05-01

Though wide disparities in wealth have been documented across racial/ethnic groups, it is largely unknown whether differences in wealth are associated with health disparities within racial/ethnic groups. Data from the Survey of Consumer Finances (2004, ages 25-64) and the Health and Retirement Survey (2004, ages 50+), containing a wide range of assets and debts variables, were used to calculate net worth (a standard measure of wealth). Among non-Hispanic black, Hispanic and non-Hispanic white populations, we tested whether wealth was associated with self-reported poor/fair health status after accounting for income and education. Except among the younger Hispanic population, net worth was significantly associated with poor/fair health status within each racial/ethnic group in both data sets. Adding net worth attenuated the association between education and poor/fair health (in all racial/ethnic groups) and between income and poor/fair health (except among older Hispanics). The results add to the literature indicating the importance of including measures of wealth in health research for what they may reveal about disparities not only between but also within different racial/ethnic groups.

Odor Discrimination in Drosophila: From Neural Population Codes to Behavior

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Parnas, Moshe; Lin, Andrew C.; Huetteroth, Wolf; Miesenböck, Gero

2013-01-01

Summary Taking advantage of the well-characterized olfactory system of Drosophila, we derive a simple quantitative relationship between patterns of odorant receptor activation, the resulting internal representations of odors, and odor discrimination. Second-order excitatory and inhibitory projection neurons (ePNs and iPNs) convey olfactory information to the lateral horn, a brain region implicated in innate odor-driven behaviors. We show that the distance between ePN activity patterns is the main determinant of a fly’s spontaneous discrimination behavior. Manipulations that silence subsets of ePNs have graded behavioral consequences, and effect sizes are predicted by changes in ePN distances. ePN distances predict only innate, not learned, behavior because the latter engages the mushroom body, which enables differentiated responses to even very similar odors. Inhibition from iPNs, which scales with olfactory stimulus strength, enhances innate discrimination of closely related odors, by imposing a high-pass filter on transmitter release from ePN terminals that increases the distance between odor representations. PMID:24012006

Population changes, racial/ethnic disparities, and birth outcomes in Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina.

Science.gov (United States)

Harville, Emily W; Tran, Tri; Xiong, Xu; Buekens, Pierre

2010-09-01

To examine how the demographic and other population changes affected birth and obstetric outcomes in Louisiana, and the effect of the hurricane on racial disparities in these outcomes. Vital statistics data were used to compare the incidence of low birth weight (LBW) (birth (PTB) (37 weeks' gestation), cesarean section, and inadequate prenatal care (as measured by the Kotelchuck index), in the 2 years after Katrina compared to the 2 years before, for the state as a whole, region 1 (the area around New Orleans), and Orleans Parish (New Orleans). Logistic models were used to adjust for covariates. After adjustment, rates of LBW rose for the state, but preterm birth did not. In region 1 and Orleans Parish, rates of LBW and PTB remained constant or fell. These patterns were all strongest in African American women. Rates of cesarean section and inadequate prenatal care rose. Racial disparities in birth outcomes remained constant or were reduced. Although risk of LBW/PTB remained higher in African Americans, the storm does not appear to have exacerbated health disparities, nor did population shifts explain the changes in birth and obstetric outcomes.

Spatial discrimination and visual discrimination

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Haagensen, Annika M. J.; Grand, Nanna; Klastrup, Signe

2013-01-01

Two methods investigating learning and memory in juvenile Gottingen minipigs were evaluated for potential use in preclinical toxicity testing. Twelve minipigs were tested using a spatial hole-board discrimination test including a learning phase and two memory phases. Five minipigs were tested...... in a visual discrimination test. The juvenile minipigs were able to learn the spatial hole-board discrimination test and showed improved working and reference memory during the learning phase. Performance in the memory phases was affected by the retention intervals, but the minipigs were able to remember...... the concept of the test in both memory phases. Working memory and reference memory were significantly improved in the last trials of the memory phases. In the visual discrimination test, the minipigs learned to discriminate between the three figures presented to them within 9-14 sessions. For the memory test...

The Great American Recession and forgone healthcare: Do widened disparities between African-Americans and Whites remain?

Science.gov (United States)

Travers, Jasmine L; Cohen, Catherine C; Dick, Andrew W; Stone, Patricia W

2017-01-01

During the Great Recession in America, African-Americans opted to forgo healthcare more than other racial/ethnic groups. It is not understood whether disparities in forgone care returned to pre-recession levels. Understanding healthcare utilization patterns is important for informing subsequent efforts to decrease healthcare disparities. Therefore, we examined changes in racial disparities in forgone care before, during, and after the Great Recession. Data were pooled from the 2006-2013 National Health Interview Survey. Forgone medical, mental, and prescription care due to affordability were assessed among African-Americans and Whites. Time periods were classified as: pre-recession (May 2006-November 2007), early recession (December 2007-November 2008), late recession (December 2008-May 2010) and post-recession (June 2010-December 2013). Multivariable logistic regressions of race, interacted with time periods, were used to identify disparities in forgone care controlling for other demographics, health insurance coverage, and having a usual place for medical care across time periods. Adjusted Wald tests were performed to identify significant changes in disparities across time periods. The sample consisted of 110,746 adults. African-Americans were more likely to forgo medical care during the post- recession compared to Whites (OR = 1.16, CI = 1.06, 1.26); changes in foregone medical care disparities were significant in that they increased in the post-recession period compared to the pre-recession (OR = 1.17, CI = 1.08, 1.28 and OR = 0.89, CI = 0.77, 1.04, respectively, adjusted Wald Test p-value Great Recession and may be a result of outstanding issues related to healthcare access, cost, and quality. While health insurance is an important component of access to care, it alone should not be expected to remove these disparities due to other financial constraints. Additional strategies are necessary to close remaining gaps in care widened by the Great Recession.

Philanthropy and disparities: progress, challenges, and unfinished business.

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Mitchell, Faith; Sessions, Kathryn

2011-10-01

Philanthropy has invested millions of dollars to reduce disparities in health care and improve minority health. Grants to strengthen providers' cultural competence, diversify health professions, and collect data have improved understanding of and spurred action on disparities. The persistence of disparities in spite of these advances has shifted philanthropic attention toward strategies to change social, economic, and environmental conditions. We argue that these evolving perspectives, along with earlier groundwork, present new opportunities for funders, especially in combination with progress toward universal health coverage. This article looks at how philanthropy has addressed health disparities over the past decade, with a focus on accomplishments, the work remaining to be done, and how funders can help advance the disparities agenda.

Environmental Health Disparities in Housing

Science.gov (United States)

2011-01-01

The physical infrastructure and housing make human interaction possible and provide shelter. How well that infrastructure performs and which groups it serves have important implications for social equity and health. Populations in inadequate housing are more likely to have environmental diseases and injuries. Substantial disparities in housing have remained largely unchanged. Approximately 2.6 million (7.5%) non-Hispanic Blacks and 5.9 million Whites (2.8%) live in substandard housing. Segregation, lack of housing mobility, and homelessness are all associated with adverse health outcomes. Yet the experience with childhood lead poisoning in the United States has shown that housing-related disparities can be reduced. Effective interventions should be implemented to reduce environmental health disparities related to housing. PMID:21551378

Dominant color and texture feature extraction for banknote discrimination

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Junmin; Fan, Yangyu; Li, Ning

2017-07-01

Banknote discrimination with image recognition technology is significant in many applications. The traditional methods based on image recognition only recognize the banknote denomination without discriminating the counterfeit banknote. To solve this problem, we propose a systematical banknote discrimination approach with the dominant color and texture features. After capturing the visible and infrared images of the test banknote, we first implement the tilt correction based on the principal component analysis (PCA) algorithm. Second, we extract the dominant color feature of the visible banknote image to recognize the denomination. Third, we propose an adaptively weighted local binary pattern with "delta" tolerance algorithm to extract the texture features of the infrared banknote image. At last, we discriminate the genuine or counterfeit banknote by comparing the texture features between the test banknote and the benchmark banknote. The proposed approach is tested using 14,000 banknotes of six different denominations from Chinese yuan (CNY). The experimental results show 100% accuracy for denomination recognition and 99.92% accuracy for counterfeit banknote discrimination.

Disparity in cancer care: a Canadian perspective

OpenAIRE

Ahmed, S.; Shahid, R.K.

2012-01-01

Canada is facing cancer crisis. Cancer has become the leading cause of death in Canada. Despite recent advances in cancer management and research, growing disparities in cancer care have been noticed, especially in socio-economically disadvantaged groups and under-served communities. With the rising incidence of cancer and the increasing numbers of minorities and of social disparities in general, and without appropriate interventions, cancer care disparities will become only more pronounced. ...

REGIONAL DISPARITIES – HISTORICAL CULTURAL INFLUENCES AND

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

MARIA OŢIL

2015-08-01

Full Text Available In recent decades, the issue of regional disparities has become a highly debated topic, knowledge regarding regional disparities being a matter of political priority as their persistence hinders the appropriate integration process. On the other hand, emphasis was put on integration through the process of EU enlargement, thus highlighting other issues related to the nature and size of disparities. Regional disparities regarding development and the living standards of the population have long been the concern of all Member States. In the case of Romania, recently admitted into the European structures, registering large backlogs to economically developed countries, the intense mobilization of internal and external factors of economic growth in order to reduce and eliminate disparities compared to other countries, represents a clear necessity. The "European Union" (EU project is of an unprecedented complexity and scale because it involves a plurality of states, which are culturally and economically heterogeneous. Moreover, these economic and cultural differences exist even within the states. Hence, there is also the central idea of the Union, regarding unity in diversity. In Romania the local, regional communities have a strong identity, but still evolving. Taking into account Romania's objective of successfully integrating into European structures, and the principles of democratic decision-making requires that regional development should aim at reducing economic and social disparities based on a notable involvement of the local, regional communities. Based on these facts, the paper aims to present the current regional (and intra-regional disparities in Romania with regard to a number of synthetic indicators of capital, of labor and of outcomes. The persistence in time of these economic disparities can be explained by considering the cultural legacies – represented by norms, values, institutions, that impact on how people interact, communicate

Rural Urban Disparity in and around Surabaya Region, Indonesia

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Vely Kukinul Siswanto

2014-12-01

Full Text Available A shift in development towards the outskirts of urban areas changes the characteristics of the region and can ultimately lead to urban disparities in economic and social terms. The current study has tried to divide the study area covers the areas of surrounding Surabaya as urban, peri urban and rural areas with reference to three time periods (2008, 2009 and 2010 and shows that the typology in the study area changes each year. Furthermore, based on the theil index analysis, using a number of pre-prosperous household for social disparity and per capita GDP (Gross Domestic Product for economic disparity shows that urban and peri urban areas have medium and high level of social and economic disparity compare with rural area which have low levels of disparity. Through multivariate correlation analysis can be seen that the health center distance, electricity and water users effecting the social disparity. Moreover, the financial, industrial, electricity, trade, construction, transportation, agriculture, and mining sector's productivity have a significant relationship with the economic disparity. Health facilities, water and electricity improvement strategies to be followed for reducing the social disparity. Electricity improvement, water, services sector, transportation infrastructure, and industrial development to reduce the economic disparity.

Global stereo matching algorithm based on disparity range estimation

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Li, Jing; Zhao, Hong; Gu, Feifei

2017-09-01

The global stereo matching algorithms are of high accuracy for the estimation of disparity map, but the time-consuming in the optimization process still faces a curse, especially for the image pairs with high resolution and large baseline setting. To improve the computational efficiency of the global algorithms, a disparity range estimation scheme for the global stereo matching is proposed to estimate the disparity map of rectified stereo images in this paper. The projective geometry in a parallel binocular stereo vision is investigated to reveal a relationship between two disparities at each pixel in the rectified stereo images with different baselines, which can be used to quickly obtain a predicted disparity map in a long baseline setting estimated by that in the small one. Then, the drastically reduced disparity ranges at each pixel under a long baseline setting can be determined by the predicted disparity map. Furthermore, the disparity range estimation scheme is introduced into the graph cuts with expansion moves to estimate the precise disparity map, which can greatly save the cost of computing without loss of accuracy in the stereo matching, especially for the dense global stereo matching, compared to the traditional algorithm. Experimental results with the Middlebury stereo datasets are presented to demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the proposed algorithm.

Discrimination and Anti-discrimination in Denmark

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Olsen, Tore Vincents

The purpose of this report is to describe and analyse Danish anti-discrimination legislation and the debate about discrimination in Denmark in order to identify present and future legal challenges. The main focus is the implementation of the EU anti-discrimination directives in Danish law...

Changes in experiences with discrimination across pregnancy and postpartum: age differences and consequences for mental health.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenthal, Lisa; Earnshaw, Valerie A; Lewis, Tené T; Reid, Allecia E; Lewis, Jessica B; Stasko, Emily C; Tobin, Jonathan N; Ickovics, Jeannette R

2015-04-01

We aimed to contribute to growing research and theory suggesting the importance of examining patterns of change over time and critical life periods to fully understand the effects of discrimination on health, with a focus on the period of pregnancy and postpartum and mental health outcomes. We used hierarchical linear modeling to examine changes across pregnancy and postpartum in everyday discrimination and the resulting consequences for mental health among predominantly Black and Latina, socioeconomically disadvantaged young women who were receiving prenatal care in New York City. Patterns of change in experiences with discrimination varied according to age. Among the youngest participants, discrimination increased from the second to third trimesters and then decreased to lower than the baseline level by 1 year postpartum; among the oldest participants, discrimination decreased from the second trimester to 6 months postpartum and then returned to the baseline level by 1 year postpartum. Within-subjects changes in discrimination over time predicted changes in depressive and anxiety symptoms at subsequent points. Discrimination more strongly predicted anxiety symptoms among participants reporting food insecurity. Our results support a life course approach to understanding the impact of experiences with discrimination on health and when to intervene.

Health Disparities Calculator (HD*Calc) - SEER Software

Science.gov (United States)

Statistical software that generates summary measures to evaluate and monitor health disparities. Users can import SEER data or other population-based health data to calculate 11 disparity measurements.

The association between racial and gender discrimination and body mass index among residents living in lower-income housing.

Science.gov (United States)

Shelton, Rachel C; Puleo, Elaine; Bennett, Gary G; McNeill, Lorna H; Sorensen, Glorian; Emmons, Karen M

2009-01-01

Research on the association between self-reported racial or gender discrimination and body mass index (BMI) has been limited and inconclusive to date, particularly among lower-income populations. The aim of the current study was to examine the association between self-reported racial and gender discrimination and BMI among a sample of adult residents living in 12 urban lower-income housing sites in Boston, Masschusetts (USA). Baseline survey data were collected among 1,307 (weighted N = 1907) study participants. For analyses, linear regression models with a cluster design were conducted using SUDAAN and SAS statistical software. Our sample was predominately Black (weighted n = 956) and Hispanic (weighted n = 857), and female (weighted n = 1420), with a mean age of 49.3 (SE: .40) and mean BMI of 30.2 kg m(-2) (SE: .19). Nearly 47% of participants reported ever experiencing racial discrimination, and 24.8% reported ever experiencing gender discrimination. In bivariate and multivariable linear regression models, no main effect association was found between either racial or gender discrimination and BMI. While our findings suggest that self-reported discrimination is not a key determinant of BMI among lower-income housing residents, these results should be considered in light of study limitations. Future researchers may want to investigate this association among other relevant samples, and other social contextual and cultural factors should be explored to understand how they contribute to disparities.

Gender violence: transgender experiences with violence and discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Lombardi, E L; Wilchins, R A; Priesing, D; Malouf, D

2001-01-01

There is a pervasive pattern of discrimination and prejudice against transgendered people within society. Both economic discrimination and experiencing violence could be the result of a larger social climate that severely sanctions people for not conforming to society's norms concerning gender; as such, both would be strongly associated with each other. Questionnaires were distributed to people either through events or through volunteers, and made available upon the World Wide Web. A sample of 402 cases was collected over the span of 12 months (April 1996-April 1997). We found that over half the people within this sample experienced some form of harassment or violence within their lifetime, with a quarter experiencing a violent incident. Further investigation found that experiencing economic discrimination because one is transgendered had the strongest association with experiencing a transgender related violent incident. Economic discrimination was related to transgendered people's experience with violence. Therefore, both hate crimes legislation and employment protections are needed for transgendered individuals.

Energy price disparity and public welfare

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Templet, P.H.

2001-01-01

The differences in the price of energy to economic sectors are linked to a number of system parameters and to public welfare. There are large disparities in energy prices within states when comparing residential and industrial prices although neoclassical economics predicts one price in markets. The large disparities between the two sectors across states negatively affects the efficiency of resource allocation, creates subsidies for those getting the cheap energy and results in unequal access to energy. These in turn lead to inefficient partitioning of energy between products and waste, higher pollution, leakage of wealth and poorer energy use efficiency, i.e. high energy intensity. States with large energy price disparities between sectors have statistically higher poverty, lower incomes, more pollution and use more energy but with less efficiency. Higher energy price disparities also result in higher throughput per unit of output thus reducing the chances for sustainability and lower public welfare. 31 refs

Neural correlates supporting sensory discrimination after left hemisphere stroke

Science.gov (United States)

Borstad, Alexandra; Schmalbrock, Petra; Choi, Seongjin; Nichols-Larsen, Deborah S.

2012-01-01

Background Nearly half of stroke patients have impaired sensory discrimination, however, the neural structures that support post-stroke sensory function have not been described. Objectives 1) To evaluate the role of the primary somatosensory (S1) cortex in post-stroke sensory discrimination and 2) To determine the relationship between post-stroke sensory discrimination and structural integrity of the sensory component of the superior thalamic radiation (sSTR). Methods 10 healthy adults and 10 individuals with left hemisphere stroke participated. Stroke participants completed sensory discrimination testing. An fMRI was conducted during right, impaired hand sensory discrimination. Fractional anisotropy and volume of the sSTR were quantified using diffusion tensor tractography. Results Sensory discrimination was impaired in 60% of participants with left stroke. Peak activation in the left (S1) did not correlate with sensory discrimination ability, rather a more distributed pattern of activation was evident in post-stroke subjects with a positive correlation between peak activation in the parietal cortex and discrimination ability (r=.70, p=.023). The only brain region in which stroke participants had significantly different cortical activation than control participants was the precuneus. Region of interest analysis of the precuneus across stroke participants revealed a positive correlation between peak activation and sensory discrimination ability (r=.77, p=.008). The L/R ratio of sSTR fractional anisotropy also correlated with right hand sensory discrimination (r=.69, p=.027). Conclusions Precuneus cortex, distributed parietal lobe activity, and microstructure of the sSTR support sensory discrimination after left hemisphere stroke. PMID:22592076

Ties that bind: community attachment and the experience of discrimination among Black men who have sex with men.

Science.gov (United States)

Van Sluytman, Laurens; Spikes, Pilgrim; Nandi, Vijay; Van Tieu, Hong; Frye, Victoria; Patterson, Jocelyn; Koblin, Beryl

2015-01-01

In the USA, the impact of psychological distress may be greater for Black men who have sex with men given that they may experience both racial discrimination in society at large and discrimination due to sexual orientation within Black communities. Attachments to community members may play a role in addressing psychological distress for members of this vulnerable population. This analysis is based on 312 Black men who have sex with men recruited for a behavioural intervention trial in New York City. Analyses were conducted using bivariate and multivariable logistic regression to examine the relationship of discrimination and community attachment to psychological distress. Most participants (63%) reported exposure to both discrimination due to race and sexual orientation. However, a majority of participants (89%) also reported racial and/or sexual orientation community attachment. Psychological distress was significant and negatively associated with older age (40 years and above), being a high school graduate and having racial and/or sexual orientation community attachments. Psychological distress was significantly and positively associated with being HIV-positive and experiencing both racial and sexual orientation discrimination. Similar results were found in the multivariable model. Susceptibility to disparate psychological distress outcomes must be understood in relation to social membership, including its particular norms, structures and ecological milieu.

Luminance, Colour, Viewpoint and Border Enhanced Disparity Energy Model.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jaime A Martins

Full Text Available The visual cortex is able to extract disparity information through the use of binocular cells. This process is reflected by the Disparity Energy Model, which describes the role and functioning of simple and complex binocular neuron populations, and how they are able to extract disparity. This model uses explicit cell parameters to mathematically determine preferred cell disparities, like spatial frequencies, orientations, binocular phases and receptive field positions. However, the brain cannot access such explicit cell parameters; it must rely on cell responses. In this article, we implemented a trained binocular neuronal population, which encodes disparity information implicitly. This allows the population to learn how to decode disparities, in a similar way to how our visual system could have developed this ability during evolution. At the same time, responses of monocular simple and complex cells can also encode line and edge information, which is useful for refining disparities at object borders. The brain should then be able, starting from a low-level disparity draft, to integrate all information, including colour and viewpoint perspective, in order to propagate better estimates to higher cortical areas.

Prevalence of Overweight and Obesity among Children and Adolescents in Shandong, China: Urban-Rural Disparity.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Ying-Xiu; Wang, Zhao-Xia; Zhao, Jin-Shan; Chu, Zun-Hua

2016-08-01

The pattern of urban-rural disparity in childhood obesity varies across countries. The present study examined the change trend of urban-rural disparity in childhood overweight and obesity from 1985 to 2014 in Shandong, China. Data for this study were obtained from four cross-sectional surveys of school children carried out in 1985, 1995, 2005 and 2014 in Shandong Province, China. In this study, 39 943 students aged 7-18 years were included (14 458 in 1985, 7198 in 1995, 8568 in 2005 and 9719 in 2014). Height and weight of all subjects were measured; body mass index (BMI) was calculated from their height and weight. The BMI cutoff points recommended by the International Obesity Task Force were used to define overweight and obesity. The prevalence of overweight and obesity was increasing continuously both in urban and rural areas over the past 29 years (1985-2014). The prevalence of combined overweight and obesity was significantly higher in urban than in rural children and adolescents in 1985, 1995 and 2005 (p overweight and obesity was observed in rural areas after 2005; as a result, the urban-rural disparity was getting narrower, and no significant urban-rural disparity was observed in 2014 (p > 0.05). The change trend of urban-rural disparity should be concerned in the future; policies and interventions focused on childhood overweight and obesity should pay attention to rural areas. © The Author [2016]. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Health Disparities in Veterans: A Map of the Evidence.

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Kondo, Karli; Low, Allison; Everson, Teresa; Gordon, Christine D; Veazie, Stephanie; Lozier, Crystal C; Freeman, Michele; Motu'apuaka, Makalapua; Mendelson, Aaron; Friesen, Mark; Paynter, Robin; Friesen, Caroline; Anderson, Johanna; Boundy, Erin; Saha, Somnath; Quiñones, Ana; Kansagara, Devan

2017-09-01

Goals for improving the quality of care for all Veterans and eliminating health disparities are outlined in the Veterans Health Administration Blueprint for Excellence, but the degree to which disparities in utilization, health outcomes, and quality of care affect Veterans is not well understood. To characterize the research on health care disparities in the Veterans Health Administration by means of a map of the evidence. We conducted a systematic search for research studies published from 2006 to February 2016 in MEDLINE and other data sources. We included studies of Veteran populations that examined disparities in 3 outcome categories: utilization, quality of health care, and patient health. We abstracted data on study design, setting, population, clinical area, outcomes, mediators, and presence of disparity for each outcome category. We grouped the data by population characteristics including race, disability status, mental illness, demographics (age, era of service, rural location, and distance from care), sex identity, socioeconomic status, and homelessness, and created maps illustrating the evidence. We reviewed 4249 citations and abstracted data from 351 studies which met inclusion criteria. Studies examining disparities by race/ethnicity comprised by far the vast majority of the literature, followed by studies examining disparities by sex, and mental health condition. Very few studies examined disparities related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender identity or homelessness. Disparities findings vary widely by population and outcome. Our evidence maps provide a "lay of the land" and identify important gaps in knowledge about health disparities experienced by different Veteran populations.

MIDAS: Regionally linear multivariate discriminative statistical mapping.

Science.gov (United States)

Varol, Erdem; Sotiras, Aristeidis; Davatzikos, Christos

2018-07-01

Statistical parametric maps formed via voxel-wise mass-univariate tests, such as the general linear model, are commonly used to test hypotheses about regionally specific effects in neuroimaging cross-sectional studies where each subject is represented by a single image. Despite being informative, these techniques remain limited as they ignore multivariate relationships in the data. Most importantly, the commonly employed local Gaussian smoothing, which is important for accounting for registration errors and making the data follow Gaussian distributions, is usually chosen in an ad hoc fashion. Thus, it is often suboptimal for the task of detecting group differences and correlations with non-imaging variables. Information mapping techniques, such as searchlight, which use pattern classifiers to exploit multivariate information and obtain more powerful statistical maps, have become increasingly popular in recent years. However, existing methods may lead to important interpretation errors in practice (i.e., misidentifying a cluster as informative, or failing to detect truly informative voxels), while often being computationally expensive. To address these issues, we introduce a novel efficient multivariate statistical framework for cross-sectional studies, termed MIDAS, seeking highly sensitive and specific voxel-wise brain maps, while leveraging the power of regional discriminant analysis. In MIDAS, locally linear discriminative learning is applied to estimate the pattern that best discriminates between two groups, or predicts a variable of interest. This pattern is equivalent to local filtering by an optimal kernel whose coefficients are the weights of the linear discriminant. By composing information from all neighborhoods that contain a given voxel, MIDAS produces a statistic that collectively reflects the contribution of the voxel to the regional classifiers as well as the discriminative power of the classifiers. Critically, MIDAS efficiently assesses the

Intergenerational Consequences: Women's Experiences of Discrimination in Pregnancy Predict Infant Social-Emotional Development at 6 Months and 1 Year.

Science.gov (United States)

Rosenthal, Lisa; Earnshaw, Valerie A; Moore, Joan M; Ferguson, Darrah N; Lewis, Tené T; Reid, Allecia E; Lewis, Jessica B; Stasko, Emily C; Tobin, Jonathan N; Ickovics, Jeannette R

2018-04-01

Racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in infant development in the United States have lifelong consequences. Discrimination predicts poorer health and academic outcomes. This study explored for the first time intergenerational consequences of women's experiences of discrimination reported during pregnancy for their infants' social-emotional development in the first year of life. Data come from a longitudinal study with predominantly Black and Latina, socioeconomically disadvantaged, urban young women (N = 704, Mage = 18.53) across pregnancy through 1 year postpartum. Women were recruited from community hospitals and health centers in a Northeastern US city. Linear regression analyses examined whether women's experiences of everyday discrimination reported during pregnancy predicted social-emotional development outcomes among their infants at 6 months and 1 year of age, controlling for potentially confounding medical and sociodemographic factors. Path analyses tested if pregnancy distress, anxiety, or depressive symptoms mediated significant associations. Everyday discrimination reported during pregnancy prospectively predicted greater inhibition/separation problems and greater negative emotionality, but did not predict attention skills or positive emotionality, at 6 months and 1 year. Depressive symptoms mediated the association of discrimination with negative emotionality at 6 months, and pregnancy distress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms mediated the association of discrimination with negative emotionality at 1 year. Findings support that there are intergenerational consequences of discrimination, extending past findings to infant social-emotional development outcomes in the first year of life. It may be important to address discrimination before and during pregnancy and enhance support to mothers and infants exposed to discrimination to promote health equity across the life span.

Disparity modifications and the emotional effects of stereoscopic images

Science.gov (United States)

Kawai, Takashi; Atsuta, Daiki; Tomiyama, Yuya; Kim, Sanghyun; Morikawa, Hiroyuki; Mitsuya, Reiko; Häkkinen, Jukka

2014-03-01

This paper describes a study that focuses on disparity changes in emotional scenes of stereoscopic (3D) images, in which an examination of the effects on pleasant and arousal was carried out by adding binocular disparity to 2D images that evoke specific emotions, and applying disparity modification based on the disparity analysis of famous 3D movies. From the results of the experiment, for pleasant, a significant difference was found only for the main effect of the emotions. On the other hand, for arousal, there was a trend of increasing the evaluation values in the order 2D condition, 3D condition and 3D condition applied the disparity modification for happiness, surprise, and fear. This suggests the possibility that binocular disparity and the modification affect arousal.

Assimilation and emerging health disparities among new generations of U.S. children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Erin Hamilton

2011-12-01

Full Text Available This article shows that the prevalence of four common child health conditions increases across generations (from first-generation immigrant children to second-generation U.S.-born children of immigrants to third-and-higher-generation children within each of four major U.S. racial/ethnic groups. In the third-plus generation, black and Hispanic children have higher rates of nearly all conditions. Health care, socioeconomic status, parents' health, social support, and neighborhood conditions influence child health and help explain third-and-higher-generation racial/ethnic disparities. However, these factors do not explain the generational pattern. The generational pattern may reflect cohort changes, selective ethnic attrition, unhealthy assimilation, or changing responses to survey questions among immigrant groups.

The intersection of disability and healthcare disparities: a conceptual framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Meade, Michelle A; Mahmoudi, Elham; Lee, Shoou-Yih

2015-01-01

This article provides a conceptual framework for understanding healthcare disparities experienced by individuals with disabilities. While health disparities are the result of factors deeply rooted in culture, life style, socioeconomic status, and accessibility of resources, healthcare disparities are a subset of health disparities that reflect differences in access to and quality of healthcare and can be viewed as the inability of the healthcare system to adequately address the needs of specific population groups. This article uses a narrative method to identify and critique the main conceptual frameworks that have been used in analyzing disparities in healthcare access and quality, and evaluating those frameworks in the context of healthcare for individuals with disabilities. Specific models that are examined include the Aday and Anderson Model, the Grossman Utility Model, the Institute of Medicine (IOM)'s models of Access to Healthcare Services and Healthcare Disparities, and the Cultural Competency model. While existing frameworks advance understandings of disparities in healthcare access and quality, they fall short when applied to individuals with disabilities. Specific deficits include a lack of attention to cultural and contextual factors (Aday and Andersen framework), unrealistic assumptions regarding equal access to resources (Grossman's utility model), lack of recognition or inclusion of concepts of structural accessibility (IOM model of Healthcare Disparities) and exclusive emphasis on supply side of the healthcare equation to improve healthcare disparities (Cultural Competency model). In response to identified gaps in the literature and short-comings of current conceptualizations, an integrated model of disability and healthcare disparities is put forth. We analyzed models of access to care and disparities in healthcare to be able to have an integrated and cohesive conceptual framework that could potentially address issues related to access to

Language Patterns Discriminate Mild Depression From Normal Sadness and Euthymic State.

Science.gov (United States)

Smirnova, Daria; Cumming, Paul; Sloeva, Elena; Kuvshinova, Natalia; Romanov, Dmitry; Nosachev, Gennadii

2018-01-01

Deviations from typical word use have been previously reported in clinical depression, but language patterns of mild depression (MD), as distinct from normal sadness (NS) and euthymic state, are unknown. In this study, we aimed to apply the linguistic approach as an additional diagnostic key for understanding clinical variability along the continuum of affective states. We studied 402 written reports from 124 Russian-speaking patients and 77 healthy controls (HC), including 35 cases of NS, using hand-coding procedures. The focus of our psycholinguistic methods was on lexico-semantic [e.g., rhetorical figures (metaphors, similes)], syntactic [e.g., predominant sentence type (single-clause and multi-clause)], and lexico-grammatical [e.g., pronouns (indefinite, personal)] variables. Statistical evaluations included Cohen's kappa for inter-rater reliability measures, a non-parametric approach (Mann-Whitney U -test and Pearson chi-square test), one-way ANOVA for between-group differences, Spearman's and point-biserial correlations to analyze relationships between linguistic and gender variables, discriminant analysis (Wilks' λ) of linguistic variables in relation to the affective diagnostic types, all using SPSS-22 (significant, p  language, single-clause sentences domination over multi-clause, atypical word order, increased use of personal and indefinite pronouns, and verb use in continuous/imperfective and past tenses. In NS, as compared with HC, we found greater use of lexical repetitions, omission of words, and verbs in continuous and present tenses. MD was significantly differentiated from NS and euthymic state by linguistic variables [98.6%; Wilks' λ(40) = 0.009; p  language use distinguishing depression from NS and euthymic state, which points to a potential role of linguistic indicators in diagnosing affective states.

Temporal Trends and Changing Racial/ethnic Disparities in Alcohol Problems: Results from the 2000 to 2010 National Alcohol Surveys.

Science.gov (United States)

Zemore, Sarah E; Karriker-Jaffe, Katherine J; Mulia, Nina

2013-09-28

Economic conditions and drinking norms have been in considerable flux over the past 10 years. Accordingly, research is needed to evaluate both overall trends in alcohol problems during this period and whether changes within racial/ethnic groups have affected racial/ethnic disparities. We used 3 cross-sectional waves of National Alcohol Survey data (2000, 2005, and 2010) to examine a) temporal trends in alcohol dependence and consequences overall and by race/ethnicity, and b) the effects of temporal changes on racial/ethnic disparities. Analyses involved bivariate tests and multivariate negative binomial regressions testing the effects of race/ethnicity, survey year, and their interaction on problem measures. Both women and men overall showed significant increases in dependence symptoms in 2010 (vs. 2000); women also reported increases in alcohol-related consequences in 2010 (vs. 2000). (Problem rates were equivalent across 2005 and 2000.) However, increases in problems were most dramatic among Whites, and dependence symptoms actually decreased among Latinos of both genders in 2010. Consequently, the long-standing disparity in dependence between Latino and White men was substantially reduced in 2010. Post-hoc analyses suggested that changes in drinking norms at least partially drove increased problem rates among Whites. Results constitute an important contribution to the literature on racial/ethnic disparities in alcohol problems. Findings are not inconsistent with the macroeconomic literature suggesting increases in alcohol problems during economic recession, but the pattern of effects across race/ethnicity and findings regarding norms together suggest, at the least, a revised understanding of how recessions affect drinking patterns and problems.

Why the WTA - WTP disparity matters

Science.gov (United States)

Brown Thomas C.; Gregory R.

1999-01-01

The disparity between willingness to pay (WTP) and willingness to accept compensation (WTA) has been demonstrated repeatedly. Because using WTP estimates of value where a WTA estimate is appropriate tends to undervalue environmental assets, this issue is important to environmental managers. We summarize reasons for the disparity and then discuss some of the...

34 CFR 222.162 - What disparity standard must a State meet in order to be certified and how are disparities in...

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... 34 Education 1 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false What disparity standard must a State meet in order to be certified and how are disparities in current expenditures or revenues per pupil measured? 222.162... of the Act § 222.162 What disparity standard must a State meet in order to be certified and how are...

Reduced Disparities in Birth Rates Among Teens

Science.gov (United States)

... Teens Winnable Battles Social Media at CDC Reduced Disparities in Birth Rates among Teens Aged 15–19 ... Pregnancy Prevention Community-Wide Initiative. National Rates and Disparities Nationally, the teen birth rate (number of births ...

Mental illness and employment discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Stuart, Heather

2006-09-01

Work is a major determinant of mental health and a socially integrating force. To be excluded from the workforce creates material deprivation, erodes self-confidence, creates a sense of isolation and marginalization and is a key risk factor for mental disability. This review summarizes recent evidence pertaining to employment-related stigma and discrimination experienced by people with mental disabilities. A broad understanding of the stigmatization process is adopted, which includes cognitive, attitudinal, behavioural and structural disadvantages. Stigma is both a proximate and a distal cause of employment inequity for people with a mental disability who experience direct discrimination because of prejudicial attitudes from employers and workmates and indirect discrimination owing to historical patterns of disadvantage, structural disincentives against competitive employment and generalized policy neglect. Against this background, modern mental health rehabilitation models and legislative philosophies, which focus on citizenship rights and full social participation, are to be welcomed. Yet, recent findings demonstrate that the legislation remains vulnerable to the very prejudicial attitudes they are intended to abate. Research conducted during the past year continues to highlight multiple attitudinal and structural barriers that prevent people with mental disabilities from becoming active participants in the competitive labour market.

A Persistent Disparity: Smoking in Rural Sexual and Gender Minorities.

Science.gov (United States)

Bennett, Keisa; McElroy, Jane A; Johnson, Andrew O; Munk, Niki; Everett, Kevin D

2015-03-01

Sexual and gender minorities (SGM) smoke cigarettes at higher rates than the general population. Historically, research in SGM health issues was conducted in urban populations and recent population-based studies seldom have sufficient SGM participants to distinguish urban from rural. Given that rural populations also tend to have a smoking disparity, and that many SGM live in rural areas, it is vitally important to understand the intersection of rural residence, SGM identity, and smoking. This study analyzes the patterns of smoking in urban and rural SGM in a large sample. We conducted an analysis of 4280 adult participants in the Out, Proud, and Healthy project with complete data on SGM status, smoking status, and zip code. Surveys were conducted at 6 Missouri Pride Festivals and online in 2012. Analysis involved descriptive and bivariate methods, and multivariable logistic regression. We used GIS mapping to demonstrate the dispersion of rural SGM participants. SGM had higher smoking proportion than the non-SGM recruited from these settings. In the multivariable model, SGM identity conferred 1.35 times the odds of being a current smoker when controlled for covariates. Rural residence was not independently significant, demonstrating the persistence of the smoking disparity in rural SGM. Mapping revealed widespread distribution of SGM in rural areas. The SGM smoking disparity persists among rural SGM. These communities would benefit from continued research into interventions targeting both SGM and rural tobacco control measures. Recruitment at Pride Festivals may provide a venue for reaching rural SGM for intervention.

Identifying health disparities across the tobacco continuum.

Science.gov (United States)

Fagan, Pebbles; Moolchan, Eric T; Lawrence, Deirdre; Fernander, Anita; Ponder, Paris K

2007-10-01

Few frameworks have addressed work-force diversity, inequities and inequalities as part of a comprehensive approach to eliminating tobacco-related health disparities. This paper summarizes the literature and describes the known disparities that exist along the tobacco disease continuum for minority racial and ethnic groups, those living in poverty, those with low education and blue-collar and service workers. The paper also discusses how work-force diversity, inequities in research practice and knowledge allocation and inequalities in access to and quality of health care are fundamental to addressing disparities in health. We examined the available scientific literature and existing public health reports to identify disparities across the tobacco disease continuum by minority racial/ethnic group, poverty status, education level and occupation. Results indicate that differences in risk indicators along the tobacco disease continuum do not explain fully tobacco-related cancer consequences among some minority racial/ethnic groups, particularly among the aggregate groups, blacks/African Americans and American Indians/Alaska Natives. The lack of within-race/ethnic group data and its interactions with socio-economic factors across the life-span contribute to the inconsistency we observe in the disease causal paradigm. More comprehensive models are needed to understand the relationships among disparities, social context, diversity, inequalities and inequities. A systematic approach will also help researchers, practitioners, advocates and policy makers determine critical points for interventions, the types of studies and programs needed and integrative approaches needed to eliminate tobacco-related disparities.

Social determinants and sexually transmitted disease disparities.

Science.gov (United States)

Hogben, Matthew; Leichliter, Jami S

2008-12-01

Social determinants of health play an important role in sexually transmitted disease (STD) transmission and acquisition; consequently, racial and ethnic disparities among social determinants are influences upon disparities in STD rates. In this narrative review, we outline a general model showing the relationship between social determinants and STD outcomes, mediated by epidemiologic context. We then review 4 specific social determinants relevant to STD disparities: segregation, health care, socioeconomics and correctional experiences, followed by 2 facets of the resultant epidemiologic context: core areas and sexual networks. This review shows that disparities exist among the social determinants and that they are related to each other, as well as to core areas, sexual networks, and STD rates. Finally, we discuss the implications of our review for STD prevention and control with particular attention to STD program collaboration and service integration.

Discriminative Multi-View Interactive Image Re-Ranking.

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Jun; Xu, Chang; Yang, Wankou; Sun, Changyin; Tao, Dacheng

2017-07-01

Given an unreliable visual patterns and insufficient query information, content-based image retrieval is often suboptimal and requires image re-ranking using auxiliary information. In this paper, we propose a discriminative multi-view interactive image re-ranking (DMINTIR), which integrates user relevance feedback capturing users' intentions and multiple features that sufficiently describe the images. In DMINTIR, heterogeneous property features are incorporated in the multi-view learning scheme to exploit their complementarities. In addition, a discriminatively learned weight vector is obtained to reassign updated scores and target images for re-ranking. Compared with other multi-view learning techniques, our scheme not only generates a compact representation in the latent space from the redundant multi-view features but also maximally preserves the discriminative information in feature encoding by the large-margin principle. Furthermore, the generalization error bound of the proposed algorithm is theoretically analyzed and shown to be improved by the interactions between the latent space and discriminant function learning. Experimental results on two benchmark data sets demonstrate that our approach boosts baseline retrieval quality and is competitive with the other state-of-the-art re-ranking strategies.

The contagious nature of imprisonment: an agent-based model to explain racial disparities in incarceration rates.

Science.gov (United States)

Lum, Kristian; Swarup, Samarth; Eubank, Stephen; Hawdon, James

2014-09-06

We build an agent-based model of incarceration based on the susceptible-infected-suspectible (SIS) model of infectious disease propagation. Our central hypothesis is that the observed racial disparities in incarceration rates between Black and White Americans can be explained as the result of differential sentencing between the two demographic groups. We demonstrate that if incarceration can be spread through a social influence network, then even relatively small differences in sentencing can result in large disparities in incarceration rates. Controlling for effects of transmissibility, susceptibility and influence network structure, our model reproduces the observed large disparities in incarceration rates given the differences in sentence lengths for White and Black drug offenders in the USA without extensive parameter tuning. We further establish the suitability of the SIS model as applied to incarceration by demonstrating that the observed structural patterns of recidivism are an emergent property of the model. In fact, our model shows a remarkably close correspondence with California incarceration data. This work advances efforts to combine the theories and methods of epidemiology and criminology.

Investigating the relationship between socially-assigned ethnicity, racial discrimination and health advantage in New Zealand.

Science.gov (United States)

Cormack, Donna M; Harris, Ricci B; Stanley, James

2013-01-01

While evidence of the contribution of racial discrimination to ethnic health disparities has increased significantly, there has been less research examining relationships between ascribed racial/ethnic categories and health. It has been hypothesized that in racially-stratified societies being assigned as belonging to the dominant racial/ethnic group may be associated with health advantage. This study aimed to investigate associations between socially-assigned ethnicity, self-identified ethnicity, and health, and to consider the role of self-reported experience of racial discrimination in any relationships between socially-assigned ethnicity and health. The study used data from the 2006/07 New Zealand Health Survey (n = 12,488), a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of adults 15 years and over. Racial discrimination was measured as reported individual-level experiences across five domains. Health outcome measures examined were self-reported general health and psychological distress. The study identified varying levels of agreement between participants' self-identified and socially-assigned ethnicities. Individuals who reported both self-identifying and being socially-assigned as always belonging to the dominant European grouping tended to have more socioeconomic advantage and experience less racial discrimination. This group also had the highest odds of reporting optimal self-rated health and lower mean levels of psychological distress. These differences were attenuated in models adjusting for socioeconomic measures and individual-level racial discrimination. The results suggest health advantage accrues to individuals who self-identify and are socially-assigned as belonging to the dominant European ethnic grouping in New Zealand, operating in part through socioeconomic advantage and lower exposure to individual-level racial discrimination. This is consistent with the broader evidence of the negative impacts of racism on health and ethnic inequalities

Changes in perceived weight discrimination among Americans, 1995-1996 through 2004-2006.

Science.gov (United States)

Andreyeva, Tatiana; Puhl, Rebecca M; Brownell, Kelly D

2008-05-01

Little is known about the prevalence and patterns of weight discrimination in the United States. This study examined the trends in perceived weight/height discrimination among a nationally representative sample of adults aged 35-74 years, comparing experiences of discrimination based on race, age, and gender. Data were from the two waves of the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS), a survey of community-based English-speaking adults initially in 1995-1996 and a follow-up in 2004- 2006. Reported experiences of weight/height discrimination included a variety of settings in major lifetime events and interpersonal relationships. The prevalence of weight/height discrimination increased from 7% in 1995-1996 to 12% in 2004-2006, affecting all population groups but the elderly. This growth is unlikely to be explained by changes in obesity rates. Weight/height discrimination is highly prevalent in American society and increasing at disturbing rates. Its prevalence is relatively close to reported rates of race and age discrimination, but virtually no legal or social sanctions against weight discrimination exist.

Which came first, people or pollution? Assessing the disparate siting and post-siting demographic change hypotheses of environmental injustice

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mohai, Paul; Saha, Robin

2015-01-01

Although a large body of quantitative environmental justice research exists, only a handful of studies have examined the processes by which racial and socioeconomic disparities in the location of polluting industrial facilities can occur. These studies have had mixed results, we contend, principally because of methodological differences, that is, the use of the unit-hazard coincidence method as compared to distance-based methods. This study is the first national-level environmental justice study to conduct longitudinal analyses using distance-based methods. Our purposes are to: (1) determine whether disparate siting, post-siting demographic change, or a combination of the two created present-day disparities; (2) test related explanations; and (3) determine whether the application of distance-based methods helps resolve the inconsistent findings of previous research. We used a national database of commercial hazardous waste facilities sited from 1966 to 1995 and examined the demographic composition of host neighborhoods around the time of siting and demographic changes that occurred after siting. We found strong evidence of disparate siting for facilities sited in all time periods. Although we found some evidence of post-siting demographic changes, they were mostly a continuation of changes that occurred in the decade or two prior to siting, suggesting that neighborhood transition serves to attract noxious facilities rather than the facilities themselves attracting people of color and low income populations. Our findings help resolve inconsistencies among the longitudinal studies and builds on the evidence from other subnational studies that used distance-based methods. We conclude that racial discrimination and sociopolitical explanations (i.e., the proposition that siting decisions follow the ‘path of least resistance’) best explain present-day inequities. (letter)

Visiting Black Patients: Racial Disparities in Security Standby Requests.

Science.gov (United States)

Green, Carmen R; McCullough, Wayne R; Hawley, Jamie D

2018-02-01

Structural inequalities exist within healthcare. Racial disparities in hospital security standby requests (SSRs) have not been previously explored. We speculated hospital SSRs varied based upon race with black patients and their visitors negatively impacted. An 8-year retrospective study of hospital security dispatch information was performed. Data were analyzed to determine demographic information, and service location patterns for SSRs involving patients and their visitors. The race of the patient's visitors was imputed using the patient's race. The observed and expected (using hospital census data) number of patients impacted by SSRs was compared. Descriptive statistics were computed. Categorical data were analyzed using chi-square or Fisher exact test statistic. A p patients who were white (N = 642; 63%), female (56%), or patient's race. Although Black patients represent 12% of the hospital population, they and their visitors were more than twice as likely (p patients (N = 106; 10%) combined (p patients and their visitors. It also introduces the concept of "security intervention errors in healthcare environments." New metrics and continuous quality improvement initiatives are needed to understand and eliminate racial/ethnic based disparities in SSRs. Copyright © 2018 National Medical Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Health Psychology special series on health disparities

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kazak, A.E.; Bosch, J.; Klonoff, E.A.

2012-01-01

With the initiation of this new ongoing special series in Health Psychology on health disparities, we will publish articles that highlight ways in which health psychology can contribute to understanding and ameliorating these disparities. We welcome articles for this new special series and

Differential discriminator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Dukhanov, V.I.; Mazurov, I.B.

1981-01-01

A principal flowsheet of a differential discriminator intended for operation in a spectrometric circuit with statistical time distribution of pulses is described. The differential discriminator includes four integrated discriminators and a channel of piled-up signal rejection. The presence of the rejection channel enables the discriminator to operate effectively at loads of 14x10 3 pulse/s. The temperature instability of the discrimination thresholds equals 250 μV/ 0 C. The discrimination level changes within 0.1-5 V, the level shift constitutes 0.5% for the filling ratio of 1:10. The rejection coefficient is not less than 90%. Alpha spectrum of the 228 Th source is presented to evaluate the discriminator operation with the rejector. The rejector provides 50 ns time resolution

Structural Discrimination

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Thorsen, Mira Skadegård

discrimination as two ways of articulating particular, opaque forms of racial discrimination that occur in everyday Danish (and other) contexts, and have therefore become normalized. I present and discuss discrimination as it surfaces in data from my empirical studies of discrimination in Danish contexts...

Running rescues a fear-based contextual discrimination deficit in aged mice

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Melody V. Wu

2015-08-01

Full Text Available Normal aging and exercise exert extensive, often opposing, effects on the dentate gyrus (DG of the hippocampus altering volume, synaptic function, and behaviors. The DG is especially important for behaviors requiring pattern separation—a cognitive process that enables animals to differentiate between highly similar contextual experiences. To determine how age and exercise modulate pattern separation in an aversive setting, young, aged, and aged mice provided with a running wheel were assayed on a fear-based contextual discrimination task. Aged mice showed a profound impairment in contextual discrimination compared to young animals. Voluntary exercise rescued this deficit to such an extent that behavioral pattern separation of aged-run mice was now similar to young animals. Running also resulted in a significant increase in the number of immature neurons with tertiary dendrites in aged mice. Despite this, neurogenesis levels in aged-run mice were still considerably lower than in young animals. Thus, mechanisms other than DG neurogenesis likely play significant roles in improving behavioral pattern separation elicited by exercise in aged animals.

Rural Health Disparities

Science.gov (United States)

... in the Delta Region for specific data. U.S. – Mexico Border While life expectancy in many counties of ... documents the successes, challenges, and relevant information for planning. ... on rural/urban disparities see What sources cover health behaviors and ...

Challenges for Multilevel Health Disparities Research in a Transdisciplinary Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Holmes, John H.; Lehman, Amy; Hade, Erinn; Ferketich, Amy K.; Sarah, Gehlert; Rauscher, Garth H.; Abrams, Judith; Bird, Chloe E.

2008-01-01

Numerous factors play a part in health disparities. Although health disparities are manifested at the level of the individual, other contexts should be considered when investigating the associations of disparities with clinical outcomes. These contexts include families, neighborhoods, social organizations, and healthcare facilities. This paper reports on health disparities research as a multilevel research domain from the perspective of a large national initiative. The Centers for Population Health and Health Disparities (CPHHD) program was established by the NIH to examine the highly dimensional, complex nature of disparities and their effects on health. Because of its inherently transdisciplinary nature, the CPHHD program provides a unique environment in which to perform multilevel health disparities research. During the course of the program, the CPHHD centers have experienced challenges specific to this type of research. The challenges were categorized along three axes: sources of subjects and data, data characteristics, and multilevel analysis and interpretation. The CPHHDs collectively offer a unique example of how these challenges are met; just as importantly, they reveal a broad range of issues that health disparities researchers should consider as they pursue transdisciplinary investigations in this domain, particularly in the context of a large team science initiative. PMID:18619398

Beneath the Numbers: A Review of Gender Disparities in Undergraduate Education across Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Disciplines

Science.gov (United States)

Eddy, Sarah L.; Brownell, Sara E.

2016-01-01

This focused collection explores inequalities in the experiences of women in physics. Yet, it is important for researchers to also be aware of and draw insights from common patterns in the experiences of women across science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. Here, we review studies on gender disparities across college…

Discrimination of Motor Imagery-Induced EEG Patterns in Patients with Complete Spinal Cord Injury

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

G. Pfurtscheller

2009-01-01

Full Text Available EEG-based discrimination between different motor imagery states has been subject of a number of studies in healthy subjects. We investigated the EEG of 15 patients with complete spinal cord injury during imagined right hand, left hand, and feet movements. In detail we studied pair-wise discrimination functions between the 3 types of motor imagery. The following classification accuracies (mean ± SD were obtained: left versus right hand 65.03% ± 8.52, left hand versus feet 68.19% ± 11.08, and right hand versus feet 65.05% ± 9.25. In 5 out of 8 paralegic patients, the discrimination accuracy was greater than 70% but in only 1 out of 7 tetraplagic patients. The present findings provide evidence that in the majority of paraplegic patients an EEG-based BCI could achieve satisfied results. In tetraplegic patients, however, it is expected that extensive training-sessions are necessary to achieve a good BCI performance at least in some subjects.

Perspectives of Orthopedic Surgeons on Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Care.

Science.gov (United States)

Adelani, Muyibat A; O'Connor, Mary I

2017-08-01

Racial/ethnic disparities in healthcare, including orthopedics, have been extensively documented. However, the level of knowledge among orthopedic surgeons regarding racial/ethnic disparities is unknown. The purpose of this study is to determine the views of orthopedic surgeons on (1) the extent of racial/ethnic disparities in orthopedic care, (2) patient and system factors that may contribute, and (3) the potential role of orthopedic surgeons in the reduction of disparities. Three hundred five members of the American Orthopaedic Association completed a survey to assess their knowledge of racial/ethnic disparities and their perceptions about the underlying causes. Twelve percent of respondents believe that patients often receive different care based on race/ethnicity in healthcare in general, while 9 % believe that differences exist in orthopedic care in general, 3 % believe that differences exist within their hospitals/clinics, and 1 % reported differences in their own practices. Despite this, 68 % acknowledge that there is evidence of disparities in orthopedic care. Fifty-one percent believe that a lack of insurance significantly contributes to disparities. Thirty-five percent believe that diversification of the orthopedic workforce would be a "very effective" strategy in addressing disparities, while 25 % percent believe that research would be "very effective" and 24 % believe that surgeon education would be "very effective." Awareness regarding racial/ethnic disparities in musculoskeletal care is low among orthopedic surgeons. Additionally, respondents were more likely to acknowledge disparities within the practices of others than their own. Increased diversity, research, and education may help improve knowledge of this problem.

Global health disparities: crisis in the diaspora.

Science.gov (United States)

Cox, Raymond L.

2004-01-01

The United States spends more than the rest of the world on healthcare. In 2000, the U.S. health bill was 1.3 trillion dollars, 14.5% of its gross domestic product. Yet, according to the WHO World Health Report 2000, the United States ranked 37th of 191 member nations in overall health system performance. Racial/ethnic disparities in health outcomes are the most obvious examples of an unbalanced healthcare system. This presentation will examine health disparities in the United States and reveal how health disparities among and within countries affect the health and well-being of the African Diaspora. PMID:15101675

Organizational downsizing and age discrimination litigation: the influence of personnel practices and statistical evidence on litigation outcomes.

Science.gov (United States)

Wingate, Peter H; Thornton, George C; McIntyre, Kelly S; Frame, Jennifer H

2003-02-01

The present study examined relationships between reduction-in-force (RIF) personnel practices, presentation of statistical evidence, and litigation outcomes. Policy capturing methods were utilized to analyze the components of 115 federal district court opinions involving age discrimination disparate treatment allegations and organizational downsizing. Univariate analyses revealed meaningful links between RIF personnel practices, use of statistical evidence, and judicial verdict. The defendant organization was awarded summary judgment in 73% of the claims included in the study. Judicial decisions in favor of the defendant organization were found to be significantly related to such variables as formal performance appraisal systems, termination decision review within the organization, methods of employee assessment and selection for termination, and the presence of a concrete layoff policy. The use of statistical evidence in ADEA disparate treatment litigation was investigated and found to be a potentially persuasive type of indirect evidence. Legal, personnel, and evidentiary ramifications are reviewed, and a framework of downsizing mechanics emphasizing legal defensibility is presented.

Gender and regional disparities of tuberculosis in Hunan, China.

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Mengshi; Kwaku, Abuaku Benjamin; Chen, Youfang; Huang, Xin; Tan, Hongzhuan; Wen, Shi Wu

2014-04-27

Major efforts have been made to improve the health care system in Hunan province, China. The aims of this study were to assess whether and to what extent these efforts have impacted on gender and regional disparities of Tuberculosis (TB) incidence in recent years, especially for less developed areas. We obtained data from the 2005-2009 China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention (CISDCP)to conduct this study in Hunan province. Counties within the province were divided into four regions according to quartiles based on the 2007 per capita GDP. Index of Disparity (ID) and Relative Index of Inequality (RII) were used to measure the disparities of TB incidence in relation to gender and region. Bootstrap technique was used to increase the precision. The average annual incidence of TB was 111.75 per 100,000 in males and 43.44 per 100 000 in females in Hunan. The gender disparity was stable, with ID from 42.34 in 2005 to 43.92 in 2009. For regional disparity, ID, RII (mean) and RII (ratio) decreased significantly from 2005 to 2009 in males (P China, regional disparity in relation to incidence of TB decreased significantly, but the gender disparity remains in the Hunan province.

Stigma and Racial/Ethnic HIV Disparities: Moving toward Resilience

Science.gov (United States)

Earnshaw, Valerie A.; Bogart, Laura M.; Dovidio, John F.; Williams, David R.

2013-01-01

Prior research suggests that stigma plays a role in racial/ethnic health disparities. However, there is limited understanding about the mechanisms by which stigma contributes to HIV-related disparities in risk, incidence and screening, treatment, and survival and what can be done to reduce the impact of stigma on these disparities. We introduce…

RACIAL DISPARITIES IN HEALTH

Science.gov (United States)

Sternthal, Michelle J.; Slopen, Natalie; Williams, David R.

2017-01-01

Despite the widespread assumption that racial differences in stress exist and that stress is a key mediator linking racial status to poor health, relatively few studies have explicitly examined this premise. We examine the distribution of stress across racial groups and the role of stress vulnerability and exposure in explaining racial differences in health in a community sample of Black, Hispanic, and White adults, employing a modeling strategy that accounts for the correlation between types of stressors and the accumulation of stressors in the prediction of health outcomes. We find significant racial differences in overall and cumulative exposure to eight stress domains. Blacks exhibit a higher prevalence and greater clustering of high stress scores than Whites. American-born Hispanics show prevalence rates and patterns of accumulation of stressors comparable to Blacks, while foreign-born Hispanics have stress profiles similar to Whites. Multiple stressors correlate with poor physical and mental health, with financial and relationship stressors exhibiting the largest and most consistent effects. Though we find no support for the stress-vulnerability hypothesis, the stress-exposure hypothesis does account for some racial health disparities. We discuss implications for future research and policy.

Simple and conditional visual discrimination with wheel running as reinforcement in rats.

Science.gov (United States)

Iversen, I H

1998-09-01

Three experiments explored whether access to wheel running is sufficient as reinforcement to establish and maintain simple and conditional visual discriminations in nondeprived rats. In Experiment 1, 2 rats learned to press a lit key to produce access to running; responding was virtually absent when the key was dark, but latencies to respond were longer than for customary food and water reinforcers. Increases in the intertrial interval did not improve the discrimination performance. In Experiment 2, 3 rats acquired a go-left/go-right discrimination with a trial-initiating response and reached an accuracy that exceeded 80%; when two keys showed a steady light, pressing the left key produced access to running whereas pressing the right key produced access to running when both keys showed blinking light. Latencies to respond to the lights shortened when the trial-initiation response was introduced and became much shorter than in Experiment 1. In Experiment 3, 1 rat acquired a conditional discrimination task (matching to sample) with steady versus blinking lights at an accuracy exceeding 80%. A trial-initiation response allowed self-paced trials as in Experiment 2. When the rat was exposed to the task for 19 successive 24-hr periods with access to food and water, the discrimination performance settled in a typical circadian pattern and peak accuracy exceeded 90%. When the trial-initiation response was under extinction, without access to running, the circadian activity pattern determined the time of spontaneous recovery. The experiments demonstrate that wheel-running reinforcement can be used to establish and maintain simple and conditional visual discriminations in nondeprived rats.

Discrimination, Affirmative Action and Women Academics: A Case Study of the University of New England.

Science.gov (United States)

Davies, Bronwyn

1982-01-01

Sex discrimination in employment is analyzed based on definitions developed through antidiscrimination legislation in Australia. Experiences at one university are used to illustrate how discrimination manifests and perpetuates itself in a cycle of attitudes, acts, and outcomes. Substantial data on employment patterns and practices are presented.…

A quantitative measurement of binocular color fusion limit for different disparities

Science.gov (United States)

Chen, Zaiqing; Shi, Junsheng; Tai, Yonghan; Huang, Xiaoqiao; Yun, Lijun; Zhang, Chao

2018-01-01

Color asymmetry is a common phenomenon in stereoscopic display system, which can cause visual fatigue or visual discomfort. When the color difference between the left and right eyes exceeds a threshold value, named binocular color fusion limit, color rivalry is said to occur. The most important information brought by stereoscopic displays is the depth perception produced by the disparity. As the stereo pair stimuli are presented separately to both eyes with disparities and those two monocular stimuli differ in color but share an iso-luminance polarity, it is possible for stereopsis and color rivalry to coexist. In this paper, we conducted an experiment to measure the color fusion limit for different disparity levels. In particular, it examines how the magnitude and sign of disparity affect the binocular color fusion limit that yields a fused, stable stereoscopic percept. The binocular color fusion limit was measured at five levels of disparities: 0, +/-60, +/-120 arc minutes for a sample color point which was selected from the 1976 CIE u'v' chromaticity diagram. The experimental results showed that fusion limit for the sample point varied with the level and sign of disparity. It was an interesting result that the fusion limit increased as the disparity decreases at crossed disparity direction (sign -), but there is almost no big change at uncrossed disparity direction (sign +). We found that color fusion was more difficult to achieve at the crossed disparity direction than at the uncrossed disparity direction.

Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Mental Health Care Utilization among U.S. College Students: Applying the Institution of Medicine Definition of Health Care Disparities.

Science.gov (United States)

Hunt, Justin B; Eisenberg, Daniel; Lu, Liya; Gathright, Molly

2015-10-01

The authors apply the Institute of Medicine's definition of health care disparities to college students. The analysis pools data from the first two waves of the Healthy Minds Study, a multicampus survey of students' mental health (N = 13,028). A probit model was used for any past-year service utilization, and group differences in health status were adjusted by transforming the entire distribution for each minority population to approximate the white distribution. Disparities existed between whites and all minority groups. Compared to other approaches, the predicted service disparities were greater because this method included the effects of mediating SES variables. Health care disparities persist in the college setting despite improved access and nearly universal insurance coverage. Our findings emphasize the importance of investigating potential sources of disparities beyond geography and coverage.

Mnemonic discrimination relates to perforant path integrity: An ultra-high resolution diffusion tensor imaging study.

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Bennett, Ilana J; Stark, Craig E L

2016-03-01

Pattern separation describes the orthogonalization of similar inputs into unique, non-overlapping representations. This computational process is thought to serve memory by reducing interference and to be mediated by the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus. Using ultra-high in-plane resolution diffusion tensor imaging (hrDTI) in older adults, we previously demonstrated that integrity of the perforant path, which provides input to the dentate gyrus from entorhinal cortex, was associated with mnemonic discrimination, a behavioral outcome designed to load on pattern separation. The current hrDTI study assessed the specificity of this perforant path integrity-mnemonic discrimination relationship relative to other cognitive constructs (identified using a factor analysis) and white matter tracts (hippocampal cingulum, fornix, corpus callosum) in 112 healthy adults (20-87 years). Results revealed age-related declines in integrity of the perforant path and other medial temporal lobe (MTL) tracts (hippocampal cingulum, fornix). Controlling for global effects of brain aging, perforant path integrity related only to the factor that captured mnemonic discrimination performance. Comparable integrity-mnemonic discrimination relationships were also observed for the hippocampal cingulum and fornix. Thus, whereas perforant path integrity specifically relates to mnemonic discrimination, mnemonic discrimination may be mediated by a broader MTL network. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Decomposing Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Influenza Vaccination among the Elderly

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Yoo, Byung-Kwang; Hasebe, Takuya; Szilagyi, Peter G.

2015-01-01

While persistent racial/ethnic disparities in influenza vaccination have been reported among the elderly, characteristics contributing to disparities are poorly understood. This study aimed to assess characteristics associated with racial/ethnic disparities in influenza vaccination using a nonlinear Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method. We performed cross-sectional multivariable logistic regression analyses for which the dependent variable was self-reported receipt of influenza vaccine during the 2010–2011 season among community dwelling non-Hispanic African-American (AA), non-Hispanic White (W), English-speaking Hispanic (EH) and Spanish-speaking Hispanic (SH) elderly, enrolled in the 2011 Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS) (un-weighted/weighted N= 6,095/19.2million). Using the nonlinear Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method, we assessed the relative contribution of seventeen covariates—including socio-demographic characteristics, health status, insurance, access, preference regarding healthcare, and geographic regions —to disparities in influenza vaccination. Unadjusted racial/ethnic disparities in influenza vaccination were 14.1 percentage points (pp) (W-AA disparity, p.8). The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition method estimated that the unadjusted W-AA and W-SH disparities in vaccination could be reduced by only 45% even if AA and SH groups become equivalent to Whites in all covariates in multivariable regression models. The remaining 55% of disparities were attributed to (a) racial/ethnic differences in the estimated coefficients (e.g., odds ratios) in the regression models and (b) characteristics not included in the regression models. Our analysis found that only about 45% of racial/ethnic disparities in influenza vaccination among the elderly could be reduced by equalizing recognized characteristics among racial/ethnic groups. Future studies are needed to identify additional modifiable characteristics causing disparities in influenza vaccination. PMID

Examining Workplace Discrimination in a Discrimination-Free Environment

OpenAIRE

Braxton, Shawn Lamont

2010-01-01

Examining Workplace Discrimination in a Discrimination-Free Environment Shawn L. Braxton Abstract The purpose of this study is to explore how racial and gender discrimination is reproduced in concrete workplace settings even when anti-discrimination policies are present, and to understand the various reactions utilized by those who commonly experience it. I have selected a particular medical center, henceforth referred to by a pseudonym, â The Bliley Medical Centerâ as my case ...

Epidemiology, Policy, and Racial/Ethnic Minority Health Disparities

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Carter-Pokras, Olivia; Offutt-Powell, Tabatha; Kaufman, Jay S.; Giles, Wayne; Mays, Vickie

2013-01-01

Purpose Epidemiologists have long contributed to policy efforts to address health disparities. Three examples illustrate how epidemiologists have addressed health disparities in the U.S. and abroad through a “social determinants of health” lens. Methods To identify examples of how epidemiologic research has been applied to reduce health disparities, we queried epidemiologists engaged in disparities research in the U.S., Canada, and New Zealand, and drew upon the scientific literature. Results Resulting examples covered a wide range of topic areas. Three areas selected for their contributions to policy were: 1) epidemiology's role in definition and measurement, 2) the study of housing and asthma, and 3) the study of food policy strategies to reduce health disparities. While epidemiologic research has done much to define and quantify health inequalities, it has generally been less successful at producing evidence that would identify targets for health equity intervention. Epidemiologists have a role to play in measurement and basic surveillance, etiologic research, intervention research, and evaluation research. However, our training and funding sources generally place greatest emphasis on surveillance and etiologic research. Conclusions: The complexity of health disparities requires better training for epidemiologists to effectively work in multidisciplinary teams. Together we can evaluate contextual and multilevel contributions to disease and study intervention programs in order to gain better insights into evidenced-based health equity strategies. PMID:22626003

Discrimination between biological interfaces and crystal-packing contacts

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Yuko Tsuchiya

2008-11-01

Full Text Available Yuko Tsuchiya1, Haruki Nakamura2, Kengo Kinoshita1,31Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, 4-6-1 Shirokanedai, Minatoku, Tokyo, 108-8639, Japan; 2Institute for Protein Research, Osaka University, 3-2 Yamadaoka, Suita, Osaka, 565-0871, Japan; 3Bioinformatics Research and Development, JST, 4-1-8 Honcho, Kawaguchi, Saitama, 332-0012, JapanAbstract: A discrimination method between biologically relevant interfaces and artificial crystal-packing contacts in crystal structures was constructed. The method evaluates protein-protein interfaces in terms of complementarities for hydrophobicity, electrostatic potential and shape on the protein surfaces, and chooses the most probable biological interfaces among all possible contacts in the crystal. The method uses a discriminator named as “COMP”, which is a linear combination of the complementarities for the above three surface features and does not correlate with the contact area. The discrimination of homo-dimer interfaces from symmetry-related crystal-packing contacts based on the COMP value achieved the modest success rate. Subsequent detailed review of the discrimination results raised the success rate to about 88.8%. In addition, our discrimination method yielded some clues for understanding the interaction patterns in several examples in the PDB. Thus, the COMP discriminator can also be used as an indicator of the “biological-ness” of protein-protein interfaces.Keywords: protein-protein interaction, complementarity analysis, homo-dimer interface, crystal-packing contact, biological interfaces

Modeling minority stress effects on homelessness and health disparities among young men who have sex with men.

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Bruce, Douglas; Stall, Ron; Fata, Aimee; Campbell, Richard T

2014-06-01

Sexual minority youth are more likely to experience homelessness, and homeless sexual minority youth report greater risk for mental health and substance abuse symptoms than homeless heterosexual youth, yet few studies have assessed determinants that help explain the disparities. Minority stress theory proposes that physical and mental health disparities among sexual minority populations may be explained by the stress produced by living in heterosexist social environments characterized by stigma and discrimination directed toward sexual minority persons. We used data from a sample of 200 young men who have sex with men (YMSM) (38 % African American, 26.5 % Latino/Hispanic, 23.5 % White, 12 % multiracial/other) to develop an exploratory path model measuring the effects of experience and internalization of sexual orientation stigma on depression and substance use via being kicked out of home due to sexual orientation and current homelessness. Direct significant paths were found from experience of sexual orientation-related stigma to internalization of sexual orientation-related stigma, having been kicked out of one's home, experiencing homelessness during the past year, and major depressive symptoms during the past week. Having been kicked out of one's home had a direct significant effect on experiencing homelessness during the past 12 months and on daily marijuana use. Internalization of sexual orientation-related stigma and experiencing homelessness during the past 12 months partially mediated the direct effect of experience of sexual orientation-related stigma on major depressive symptoms. Our empirical testing of the effects of minority stress on health of YMSM advances minority stress theory as a framework for investigating health disparities among this population.

Racial Disparities in Palliative Care for Prostate Cancer

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2016-01-01

1 | P a g e Award Number: W81XWH-10-1-0802 TITLE: " Racial Disparities in Palliative Care for Prostate Cancer." PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Alfred I...CONTRACT NUMBER W81XWH-10-1-0802 " Racial Disparities in Palliative Care for Prostate Cancer." 5b. GRANT NUMBER PC094372 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER...developed the tools/methods for working with SEER-Medicare. We plan to use analytic approaches and methods to explore racial disparities in the use of

Exploring Discrimination and Mental Health Disparities Faced By Black Sexual Minority Women Using a Minority Stress Framework

OpenAIRE

Calabrese, Sarah K.; Meyer, Ilan H.; Overstreet, Nicole M.; Haile, Rahwa; Hansen, Nathan B.

2014-01-01

Black sexual minority women are triply marginalized due to their race, gender, and sexual orientation. We compared three dimensions of discrimination—frequency (regularity of occurrences), scope (number of types of discriminatory acts experienced), and number of bases (number of social statuses to which discrimination was attributed)—and self-reported mental health (depressive symptoms, psychological well-being, and social well-being) between 64 Black sexual minority women and each of two gro...

Gender Differences in the Relationship between Discrimination and Substance Use Disorder among Latinos

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Ornelas, India J.; Hong, Seunghye

2013-01-01

Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study collected in 2002–2003 (N=2,554), we assessed the adjusted odds of lifetime substance use disorder (SUD) associated with report of both unfair treatment and racial/ethnic discrimination. Among men, SUD was increased for those reporting low, moderate, and high levels of unfair treatment compared to those reporting no unfair treatment and patterns were similar for racial/ethnic discrimination. Among women, only those reporting high levels of unfair treatment were at increased risk of lifetime SUD and no associations were observed between racial/ethnic discrimination and lifetime SUD. Future research should examine the role discrimination plays in the development of substance misuse among Latinos. PMID:22950437

Disparities in Disability by Educational Attainment Across US States.

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Montez, Jennifer Karas; Zajacova, Anna; Hayward, Mark D

2017-07-01

To examine how disparities in adult disability by educational attainment vary across US states. We used the nationally representative data of more than 6 million adults aged 45 to 89 years in the 2010-2014 American Community Survey. We defined disability as difficulty with activities of daily living. We categorized education as low (less than high school), mid (high school or some college), or high (bachelor's or higher). We estimated age-standardized disability prevalence by educational attainment and state. We assessed whether the variation in disability across states occurs primarily among low-educated adults and whether it reflects the socioeconomic resources of low-educated adults and their surrounding contexts. Disparities in disability by education vary markedly across states-from a 20 percentage point disparity in Massachusetts to a 12-point disparity in Wyoming. Disparities vary across states mainly because the prevalence of disability among low-educated adults varies across states. Personal and contextual socioeconomic resources of low-educated adults account for 29% of the variation. Efforts to reduce disparities in disability by education should consider state and local strategies that reduce poverty among low-educated adults and their surrounding contexts.

Explaining Racial Disparities in Infant Health in Brazil

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Nyarko, Kwame A.; Lopez-Camelo, Jorge; Castilla, Eduardo E.

2015-01-01

Objectives. We sought to quantify how socioeconomic, health care, demographic, and geographic effects explain racial disparities in low birth weight (LBW) and preterm birth (PTB) rates in Brazil. Methods. We employed a sample of 8949 infants born between 1995 and 2009 in 15 cities and 7 provinces in Brazil. We focused on disparities in LBW (Public policies to improve children’s health should target prenatal care and geographic location differences to reduce health disparities between infants of African and European ancestries in Brazil. PMID:26313046

An Approach to Integrating Health Disparities within Undergraduate Biomedical Engineering Education.

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Vazquez, Maribel; Marte, Otto; Barba, Joseph; Hubbard, Karen

2017-11-01

Health disparities are preventable differences in the incidence, prevalence and burden of disease among communities targeted by gender, geographic location, ethnicity and/or socio-economic status. While biomedical research has identified partial origin(s) of divergent burden and impact of disease, the innovation needed to eradicate health disparities in the United States requires unique engagement from biomedical engineers. Increasing awareness of the prevalence and consequences of health disparities is particularly attractive to today's undergraduates, who have undauntedly challenged paradigms believed to foster inequality. Here, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at The City College of New York (CCNY) has leveraged its historical mission of access-and-excellence to integrate the study of health disparities into undergraduate BME curricula. This article describes our novel approach in a multiyear study that: (i) Integrated health disparities modules at all levels of the required undergraduate BME curriculum; (ii) Developed opportunities to include impacts of health disparities into undergraduate BME research projects and mentored High School summer STEM training; and (iii) Established health disparities-based challenges as BME capstone design and/or independent entrepreneurship projects. Results illustrate the rising awareness of health disparities among the youngest BMEs-to-be, as well as abundant undergraduate desire to integrate health disparities within BME education and training.

Pitch ranking, electrode discrimination, and physiological spread-of-excitation using Cochlear's dual-electrode mode.

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Goehring, Jenny L; Neff, Donna L; Baudhuin, Jacquelyn L; Hughes, Michelle L

2014-08-01

This study compared pitch ranking, electrode discrimination, and electrically evoked compound action potential (ECAP) spatial excitation patterns for adjacent physical electrodes (PEs) and the corresponding dual electrodes (DEs) for newer-generation Cochlear devices (Cochlear Ltd., Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia). The first goal was to determine whether pitch ranking and electrode discrimination yield similar outcomes for PEs and DEs. The second goal was to determine if the amount of spatial separation among ECAP excitation patterns (separation index, Σ) between adjacent PEs and the PE-DE pairs can predict performance on the psychophysical tasks. Using non-adaptive procedures, 13 subjects completed pitch ranking and electrode discrimination for adjacent PEs and the corresponding PE-DE pairs (DE versus each flanking PE) from the basal, middle, and apical electrode regions. Analysis of d' scores indicated that pitch-ranking and electrode-discrimination scores were not significantly different, but rather produced similar levels of performance. As expected, accuracy was significantly better for the PE-PE comparison than either PE-DE comparison. Correlations of the psychophysical versus ECAP Σ measures were positive; however, not all test/region correlations were significant across the array. Thus, the ECAP separation index is not sensitive enough to predict performance on behavioral tasks of pitch ranking or electrode discrimination for adjacent PEs or corresponding DEs.

Racial/Ethnic Pay Disparities among Registered Nurses (RNs) in U.S. Hospitals: An Econometric Regression Decomposition.

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Moore, Jean; Continelli, Tracey

2016-04-01

To detect the presence of racial and ethnic pay disparities between minority and white hospital RNs using a national sample. The National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses, 2008, which is representative at both the state and national level. Cross-sectional data were analyzed using multivariate regression and regression decomposition. Differences between groups were decomposed into differences in the possession of characteristics and differences in the value of the same characteristic between different groups, the latter being a commonly used measure of wage discrimination. As the majority of minority hospital RNs are employed within the most densely populated (central) counties of metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs), only hospital RNs employed in the central counties of MSAs were selected. Regression decomposition found that black and Hispanic RNs earned less than whites and Asians, while Asian RNs earned more than white RNs. The majority of pay variation between white RNs, versus Asian, black, or Hispanic RNs was due to unexplained differences in the value of the same characteristic between groups. Differences in earnings between underrepresented and overrepresented hospital RNs is suggestive of discrimination. © Health Research and Educational Trust.

A reaction-diffusion model to capture disparity selectivity in primary visual cortex.

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Mohammed Sultan Mohiuddin Siddiqui

Full Text Available Decades of experimental studies are available on disparity selective cells in visual cortex of macaque and cat. Recently, local disparity map for iso-orientation sites for near-vertical edge preference is reported in area 18 of cat visual cortex. No experiment is yet reported on complete disparity map in V1. Disparity map for layer IV in V1 can provide insight into how disparity selective complex cell receptive field is organized from simple cell subunits. Though substantial amounts of experimental data on disparity selective cells is available, no model on receptive field development of such cells or disparity map development exists in literature. We model disparity selectivity in layer IV of cat V1 using a reaction-diffusion two-eye paradigm. In this model, the wiring between LGN and cortical layer IV is determined by resource an LGN cell has for supporting connections to cortical cells and competition for target space in layer IV. While competing for target space, the same type of LGN cells, irrespective of whether it belongs to left-eye-specific or right-eye-specific LGN layer, cooperate with each other while trying to push off the other type. Our model captures realistic 2D disparity selective simple cell receptive fields, their response properties and disparity map along with orientation and ocular dominance maps. There is lack of correlation between ocular dominance and disparity selectivity at the cell population level. At the map level, disparity selectivity topography is not random but weakly clustered for similar preferred disparities. This is similar to the experimental result reported for macaque. The details of weakly clustered disparity selectivity map in V1 indicate two types of complex cell receptive field organization.

Discrimination or Unobserved Differences in Characteristics?-An Empirical Study on Wage Inequality

OpenAIRE

Fang, Zheng; Sakellariou, Chris

2015-01-01

We apply the discrimination search model with wage-tenure contracts to NLSY79 data to study race/gender wage inequality with a focus on distinguishing unobserved productivity differences from discrimination in the labor market and also simulating the pattern of wage dynamics. Our findings suggest that the productivity differential between black and white workers is 3% of white worker productivity while productivity differences between men and women are estimated to be 3% of male productivity....

NEIGHBOURHOOD POVERTY, PERCEIVED DISCRIMINATION AND CENTRAL ADIPOSITY IN THE USA: INDEPENDENT ASSOCIATIONS IN A REPEATED MEASURES ANALYSIS.

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Kwarteng, Jamila L; Schulz, Amy J; Mentz, Graciela B; Israel, Barbara A; Shanks, Trina R; Perkins, Denise White

2016-11-01

This study examines the independent effects of neighbourhood context (i.e. neighbourhood poverty) and exposure to perceived discrimination in shaping risk of obesity over time. Weighted three-level hierarchical linear regression models for a continuous outcome were used to assess the independent effects of neighbourhood poverty and perceived discrimination on obesity over time in a sample of 157 non-Hispanic Black, non-Hispanic White and Hispanic adults in Detroit, USA, in 2002/2003 and 2007/2008. Independent associations were found between neighbourhood poverty and perceived discrimination with central adiposity over time. Residents of neighbourhoods with high concentrations of poverty were more likely to show increases in central adiposity compared with those in neighbourhoods with lower concentrations of poverty. In models adjusted for BMI, neighbourhood poverty at baseline was associated with a greater change in central adiposity among participants who lived in neighbourhoods in the second (B=3.79, p=0.025) and third (B=3.73, p=0.024) poverty quartiles, compared with those in the lowest poverty neighbourhoods. The results from models that included both neighbourhood poverty and perceived discrimination showed that both were associated with increased risk of increased central adiposity over time. Residents of neighbourhoods in the second (B=9.58, ppoverty were more likely to show greater increases in central adiposity over time, compared with those in the lowest poverty quartile, with mean discrimination at baseline independently and positively associated with increases in central adiposity over time (B=2.36, p=0.020). The results suggest that neighbourhood poverty and perceived discrimination are independently associated with a heightened risk of increase in central adiposity over time. Efforts to address persistent disparities in central adiposity in the USA should include strategies to reduce high concentrations of neighbourhood poverty as well as

Evolution of extreme body size disparity in monitor lizards (Varanus).

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Collar, David C; Schulte, James A; Losos, Jonathan B

2011-09-01

Many features of species' biology, including life history, physiology, morphology, and ecology are tightly linked to body size. Investigation into the causes of size divergence is therefore critical to understanding the factors shaping phenotypic diversity within clades. In this study, we examined size evolution in monitor lizards (Varanus), a clade that includes the largest extant lizard species, the Komodo dragon (V. komodoensis), as well as diminutive species that are nearly four orders of magnitude smaller in adult body mass. We demonstrate that the remarkable body size disparity of this clade is a consequence of different selective demands imposed by three major habitat use patterns-arboreality, terrestriality, and rock-dwelling. We reconstructed phylogenetic relationships and ancestral habitat use and applied model selection to determine that the best-fitting evolutionary models for species' adult size are those that infer oppositely directed adaptive evolution associated with terrestriality and rock-dwelling, with terrestrial lineages evolving extremely large size and rock-dwellers becoming very small. We also show that habitat use affects the evolution of several ecologically important morphological traits independently of body size divergence. These results suggest that habitat use exerts a strong, multidimensional influence on the evolution of morphological size and shape disparity in monitor lizards. © 2011 The Author(s).

Differential effects of visual context on pattern discrimination by pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens).

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Kelly, Debbie M; Cook, Robert G

2003-06-01

Three experiment examined the role of contextual information during line orientation and line position discriminations by pigeons (Columba livia) and humans (Homo sapiens). Experiment 1 tested pigeons' performance with these stimuli in a target localization task using texture displays. Experiments 2 and 3 tested pigeons and humans, respectively, with small and large variations of these stimuli in a same-different task. Humans showed a configural superiority effect when tested with displays constructed from large elements but not when tested with the smaller, more densely packed texture displays. The pigeons, in contrast, exhibited a configural inferiority effect when required to discriminate line orientation, regardless of stimulus size. These contrasting results suggest a species difference in the perceptionand use of features and contextual information in the discrimination of line information.

Discrimination and substance use disorders among Latinos: the role of gender, nativity, and ethnicity.

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Otiniano Verissimo, Angie Denisse; Grella, Christine E; Amaro, Hortensia; Gee, Gilbert C

2014-08-01

We examined the relationship between discrimination and substance use disorders among a diverse sample of Latinos. We also investigated whether the relationship between discrimination and substance use disorders varied by gender, nativity, and ethnicity. Our analyses focused on 6294 Latinos who participated in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions from 2004 to 2005. We used multinomial logistic regression to examine the association between discrimination and substance use disorders. Discrimination was significantly associated with increased odds of alcohol and drug use disorders among Latinos. However, the relationship between discrimination and substance use disorders varied by gender, nativity, and ethnicity. Discrimination was associated with increased odds of alcohol and drug use disorders for certain groups, such as women, US-born Latinos, and Mexicans, but this relationship did not follow the same pattern for other subgroups. It is important to determine which subgroups among Latinos may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of discrimination to address their needs.

Racial and ethnic disparities in antidepressant drug use.

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Chen, Jie; Rizzo, John A

2008-12-01

Little is known about racial and ethnic disparities in health care utilization, expenditures and drug choice in the antidepressant market. This study investigates factors associated with the racial and ethnic disparities in antidepressant drug use. We seek to determine the extent to which disparities reflect differences in observable population characteristics versus heterogeneity across racial and ethnic groups. Among the population characteristics, we are interested in identifying which factors are most important in accounting for racial and ethnic disparities in antidepressant drug use. Using Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) data from 1996-2003, we have an available sample of 10,416 Caucasian, 1,089 African American and 1,539 Hispanic antidepressant drug users aged 18 to 64 years. We estimate individual out-of-pocket payments, total prescription drug expenditures, drug utilization, the probability of taking generic versus brand name antidepressants, and the share of drugs that are older types of antidepressants (e.g., TCAs and MAOIs) for these individuals during a calendar year. Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition techniques are employed to determine the extent to which disparities reflect differences in observable population characteristics versus unobserved heterogeneity across racial and ethnic groups. Caucasians have the highest antidepressant drug expenditures and utilization. African-Americans have the lowest drug expenditures and Hispanics have the lowest drug utilization. Relative to Caucasians and Hispanics, African-Americans are more likely to purchase generics and use a higher share of older drugs (e.g., TCAs and MAOIs). Differences in observable characteristics explain most of the racial/ethnic differences in these outcomes, with the exception of drug utilization. Differences in health insurance and education levels are particularly important factors in explaining disparities. In contrast, differences in drug utilization largely reflect unobserved

Vector disparity sensor with vergence control for active vision systems.

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Barranco, Francisco; Diaz, Javier; Gibaldi, Agostino; Sabatini, Silvio P; Ros, Eduardo

2012-01-01

This paper presents an architecture for computing vector disparity for active vision systems as used on robotics applications. The control of the vergence angle of a binocular system allows us to efficiently explore dynamic environments, but requires a generalization of the disparity computation with respect to a static camera setup, where the disparity is strictly 1-D after the image rectification. The interaction between vision and motor control allows us to develop an active sensor that achieves high accuracy of the disparity computation around the fixation point, and fast reaction time for the vergence control. In this contribution, we address the development of a real-time architecture for vector disparity computation using an FPGA device. We implement the disparity unit and the control module for vergence, version, and tilt to determine the fixation point. In addition, two on-chip different alternatives for the vector disparity engines are discussed based on the luminance (gradient-based) and phase information of the binocular images. The multiscale versions of these engines are able to estimate the vector disparity up to 32 fps on VGA resolution images with very good accuracy as shown using benchmark sequences with known ground-truth. The performances in terms of frame-rate, resource utilization, and accuracy of the presented approaches are discussed. On the basis of these results, our study indicates that the gradient-based approach leads to the best trade-off choice for the integration with the active vision system.

Temporal Integration of Auditory Stimulation and Binocular Disparity Signals

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Marina Zannoli

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Several studies using visual objects defined by luminance have reported that the auditory event must be presented 30 to 40 ms after the visual stimulus to perceive audiovisual synchrony. In the present study, we used visual objects defined only by their binocular disparity. We measured the optimal latency between visual and auditory stimuli for the perception of synchrony using a method introduced by Moutoussis & Zeki (1997. Visual stimuli were defined either by luminance and disparity or by disparity only. They moved either back and forth between 6 and 12 arcmin or from left to right at a constant disparity of 9 arcmin. This visual modulation was presented together with an amplitude-modulated 500 Hz tone. Both modulations were sinusoidal (frequency: 0.7 Hz. We found no difference between 2D and 3D motion for luminance stimuli: a 40 ms auditory lag was necessary for perceived synchrony. Surprisingly, even though stereopsis is often thought to be slow, we found a similar optimal latency in the disparity 3D motion condition (55 ms. However, when participants had to judge simultaneity for disparity 2D motion stimuli, it led to larger latencies (170 ms, suggesting that stereo motion detectors are poorly suited to track 2D motion.

Interpersonal discrimination and markers of adiposity in longitudinal studies: a systematic review.

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Bernardo, C de O; Bastos, J L; González-Chica, D A; Peres, M A; Paradies, Y C

2017-09-01

While the impact of interpersonal discrimination on mental health is well established, its effects on physical health outcomes have not been fully elucidated. This study systematically reviewed the literature on the prospective association between interpersonal discrimination and markers of adiposity. Medline, Web of Science, Scopus, PsycInfo, SciELO, LILACS, Google Scholar, Capes/Brazil and ProQuest databases were used to retrieve relevant information in November 2016. The results from the 10 studies that met the inclusion criteria support an association between interpersonal self-reported discrimination and the outcomes. In general, the most consistent findings were for weight and body mass index (BMI) among women, i.e. high levels of self-reported discrimination were related to increased weight and BMI. Waist circumference (WC) showed a similar pattern of association with discrimination, in a positive direction, but an inverted U-shaped association was also found. Despite a few inverse associations between discrimination and markers of adiposity, none of the associations were statistically significant. Overall, markers of adiposity were consistently associated with discrimination, mainly through direct and nonlinear associations. This review provides evidence that self-reported discrimination can play an important role in weight, BMI and WC changes. © 2017 World Obesity Federation.

Why should we investigate the morphological disparity of plant clades?

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Oyston, Jack W; Hughes, Martin; Gerber, Sylvain; Wills, Matthew A

2016-04-01

Disparity refers to the morphological variation in a sample of taxa, and is distinct from diversity or taxonomic richness. Diversity and disparity are fundamentally decoupled; many groups attain high levels of disparity early in their evolution, while diversity is still comparatively low. Diversity may subsequently increase even in the face of static or declining disparity by increasingly fine sub-division of morphological 'design' space (morphospace). Many animal clades reached high levels of disparity early in their evolution, but there have been few comparable studies of plant clades, despite their profound ecological and evolutionary importance. This study offers a prospective and some preliminary macroevolutionary analyses. Classical morphometric methods are most suitable when there is reasonable conservation of form, but lose traction where morphological differences become greater (e.g. in comparisons across higher taxa). Discrete character matrices offer one means to compare a greater diversity of forms. This study explores morphospaces derived from eight discrete data sets for major plant clades, and discusses their macroevolutionary implications. Most of the plant clades in this study show initial, high levels of disparity that approach or attain the maximum levels reached subsequently. These plant clades are characterized by an initial phase of evolution during which most regions of their empirical morphospaces are colonized. Angiosperms, palms, pines and ferns show remarkably little variation in disparity through time. Conifers furnish the most marked exception, appearing at relatively low disparity in the latest Carboniferous, before expanding incrementally with the radiation of successive, tightly clustered constituent sub-clades. Many cladistic data sets can be repurposed for investigating the morphological disparity of plant clades through time, and offer insights that are complementary to more focused morphometric studies. The unique structural and

The combined effects of genetic risk and perceived discrimination on blood pressure among African Americans in the Jackson Heart Study.

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Taylor, Jacquelyn Y; Sun, Yan V; Barcelona de Mendoza, Veronica; Ifatunji, Mosi; Rafferty, Jane; Fox, Ervin R; Musani, Solomon K; Sims, Mario; Jackson, James S

2017-10-01

Both genomics and environmental stressors play a significant role in increases in blood pressure (BP). In an attempt to further explain the hypertension (HTN) disparity among African Americans (AA), both genetic underpinnings (selected candidate genes) and stress due to perceived racial discrimination (as reported in the literature) have independently been linked to increased BP among AAs. Although Gene x Environment interactions on BP have been examined, the environmental component of these investigations has focused more on lifestyle behaviors such as smoking, diet, and physical activity, and less on psychosocial stressors such as perceived discrimination.The present study uses candidate gene analyses to identify the relationship between Everyday Discrimination (ED) and Major Life Discrimination (MLD) with increases in systolic BP (SBP) and diastolic BP (DBP) among AA in the Jackson Heart Study. Multiple linear regression models reveal no association between discrimination and BP after adjusting for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), antihypertensive medication use, and current smoking status.Subsequent candidate gene analysis identified 5 SNPs (rs7602215, rs3771724, rs1006502, rs1791926, and rs2258119) that interacted with perceived discrimination and SBP, and 3 SNPs (rs2034454, rs7602215, and rs3771724) that interacted with perceived discrimination and DBP. Most notably, there was a significant SNP × discrimination interaction for 2 SNPs on the SLC4A5 gene: rs3771724 (MLD: SBP P = .034, DBP P = .031; ED: DBP: P = .016) and rs1006502 (MLD: SBP P = .034, DBP P = .030; ED: DBP P = .015).This study supports the idea that SNP × discrimination interactions combine to influence clinically relevant traits such as BP. Replication with similar epidemiological samples is required to ascertain the role of genes and psychosocial stressors in the development and expression of high BP in this understudied population.

Investigating the relationship between socially-assigned ethnicity, racial discrimination and health advantage in New Zealand.

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Donna M Cormack

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: While evidence of the contribution of racial discrimination to ethnic health disparities has increased significantly, there has been less research examining relationships between ascribed racial/ethnic categories and health. It has been hypothesized that in racially-stratified societies being assigned as belonging to the dominant racial/ethnic group may be associated with health advantage. This study aimed to investigate associations between socially-assigned ethnicity, self-identified ethnicity, and health, and to consider the role of self-reported experience of racial discrimination in any relationships between socially-assigned ethnicity and health. METHODS: The study used data from the 2006/07 New Zealand Health Survey (n = 12,488, a nationally representative cross-sectional survey of adults 15 years and over. Racial discrimination was measured as reported individual-level experiences across five domains. Health outcome measures examined were self-reported general health and psychological distress. RESULTS: The study identified varying levels of agreement between participants' self-identified and socially-assigned ethnicities. Individuals who reported both self-identifying and being socially-assigned as always belonging to the dominant European grouping tended to have more socioeconomic advantage and experience less racial discrimination. This group also had the highest odds of reporting optimal self-rated health and lower mean levels of psychological distress. These differences were attenuated in models adjusting for socioeconomic measures and individual-level racial discrimination. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest health advantage accrues to individuals who self-identify and are socially-assigned as belonging to the dominant European ethnic grouping in New Zealand, operating in part through socioeconomic advantage and lower exposure to individual-level racial discrimination. This is consistent with the broader evidence of the

78 FR 35837 - National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Research Endowments

Science.gov (United States)

2013-06-14

... disparities research to close the disparity gap in the burden of illness and death experienced by racial and... Number NIH-2007-0931] RIN 0925-AA61 National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Research... disparities research and other health disparities research. DATES: Comments must be received on or before...

Recurrent connectivity can account for the dynamics of disparity processing in V1

Science.gov (United States)

Samonds, Jason M.; Potetz, Brian R.; Tyler, Christopher W.; Lee, Tai Sing

2013-01-01

Disparity tuning measured in the primary visual cortex (V1) is described well by the disparity energy model, but not all aspects of disparity tuning are fully explained by the model. Such deviations from the disparity energy model provide us with insight into how network interactions may play a role in disparity processing and help to solve the stereo correspondence problem. Here, we propose a neuronal circuit model with recurrent connections that provides a simple account of the observed deviations. The model is based on recurrent connections inferred from neurophysiological observations on spike timing correlations, and is in good accord with existing data on disparity tuning dynamics. We further performed two additional experiments to test predictions of the model. First, we increased the size of stimuli to drive more neurons and provide a stronger recurrent input. Our model predicted sharper disparity tuning for larger stimuli. Second, we displayed anti-correlated stereograms, where dots of opposite luminance polarity are matched between the left- and right-eye images and result in inverted disparity tuning in the disparity energy model. In this case, our model predicted reduced sharpening and strength of inverted disparity tuning. For both experiments, the dynamics of disparity tuning observed from the neurophysiological recordings in macaque V1 matched model simulation predictions. Overall, the results of this study support the notion that, while the disparity energy model provides a primary account of disparity tuning in V1 neurons, neural disparity processing in V1 neurons is refined by recurrent interactions among elements in the neural circuit. PMID:23407952

Reinforcement shapes clines in female mate discrimination in Drosophila subquinaria

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Bewick, Emily R.; Dyer, Kelly A.

2014-01-01

Reinforcement of species boundaries may alter mate recognition in a way that also affects patterns of mate preference among conspecific populations. In the fly Drosophila subquinaria, females sympatric with the closely related species D. recens reject mating with heterospecific males as well as with conspecific males from allopatric populations. Here, we assess geographic variation in behavioral isolation within and among populations of D. subquinaria and use cline theory to understand patterns of selection on reinforced discrimination and its consequences for sexual isolation within species. We find that selection has fixed rejection of D. recens males in sympatry, while significant genetic variation in this behavior occurs within allopatric populations. In conspecific matings sexual isolation is also asymmetric and stronger in populations that are sympatric with D. recens. The clines in behavioral discrimination within and between species are similar in shape and are maintained by strong selection in the face of gene flow, and we show that some of their genetic basis may be either shared or linked. Thus, while reinforcement can drive extremely strong phenotypic divergence, the long-term consequences for incipient speciation depend on gene flow, genetic linkage of discrimination traits, and the cost of these behaviors in allopatry. PMID:25163510

Integrating intersectionality and biomedicine in health disparities research.

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Kelly, Ursula A

2009-01-01

Persisting health disparities have lead to calls for an increase in health research to address them. Biomedical scientists call for research that stratifies individual indicators associated with health disparities, for example, ethnicity. Feminist social scientists recommend feminist intersectionality research. Intersectionality is the multiplicative effect of inequalities experienced by nondominant marginalized groups, for example, ethnic minorities, women, and the poor. The elimination of health disparities necessitates integration of both paradigms in health research. This study provides a practical application of the integration of biomedical and feminist intersectionality paradigms in nursing research, using a psychiatric intervention study with battered Latino women as an example.

How discrimination and stress affects self-esteem among Dominican immigrant women: an exploratory study.

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Panchanadeswaran, Subadra; Dawson, Beverly Araujo

2011-01-01

Understanding the factors that contribute to the health disparities among racial and ethnic minorities in the United States is very important given the growing Latina population. Although researchers have investigated the health and mental health status among Latinas, the relationship between mental health and self-esteem has not been given a lot of attention. Given that self-esteem is a proxy for mental health status, investigations exploring the factors that can negatively affect self-esteem are needed. Therefore, the current study examined the influence of discrimination and stress on self-esteem among Dominican immigrant women. A cross-sectional study was undertaken among 235 immigrant Dominican women in New York City. Women (age 18-49 years) and in the United States for fewer than 20 years were more likely to report experiencing discrimination compared to women older than age 50 years and in the United States for more than 20 years. After controlling for age, time in the United States, educational level, and income, high levels of discrimination (-0.09, p < 0.01) and stress (-0.69, p < 0.001) were significantly associated with reduced self-esteem. Interventions with Latino/a populations, especially women, need to acknowledge their individual evaluations of the discriminatory and stressful experiences that negatively influence their self-esteem and subsequently their mental health status.

Cancer Health Disparities Research: Where have we been and where should we go?

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Scarlett Lin Gomez, PhD, MPH, is Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and a member of the Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of California, San Francisco. She is also Director of the Greater Bay Area Cancer Registry, a part of the California Cancer Registry and the NCI Surveillance Epidemiology End Results (SEER) Program. Her research focuses primarily on cancer health disparities and aims to understand the multilevel drivers of those disparities. She has contributed surveillance data regarding cancer incidence and outcome patterns and trends for distinct Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander and Hispanic ethnic groups, as well as cancer patterns by nativity status and neighborhood characteristics. She developed the California Neighborhoods Data System, a compilation of small-area level data on social and built environment characteristics, and has used these data in more than a dozen funded studies to evaluate the impact of social and built neighborhood environment factors on disease outcomes. Since 1996, Dr. Lin Gomez has received many honors and awards, including being named Author of the Year in 2010 by the American Journal of Public Health, the Above and Beyond Excellence Award in 2012 and the Mentoring Award in 2014, both by the Cancer Prevention Institute of California. She completed her education in epidemiology with an MPH at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and her PhD at Stanford.

The Impact of Discrimination on the Mental Health of Trans*Female Youth and the Protective Effect of Parental Support.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, Erin C; Chen, Yea-Hung; Arayasirikul, Sean; Raymond, H Fisher; McFarland, Willi

2016-10-01

Significant health disparities exist for transgender female (trans*female) youth. We assessed differences in mental health outcomes based on exposure to discrimination among transgender female youth in the San Francisco Bay Area aged 16-24 years. Youth were recruited using a combination of respondent driven sampling with online and social media methods. Logistic regression models were used to estimate odds ratios for the mental health outcomes, comparing levels of discrimination and levels of resiliency promoting protective factors among sexually active youth in the sample (N = 216). High transgender-based discrimination was significantly associated with greater odds of PTSD (AOR, 2.6; 95 % CI 1.4-5.0), depression (AOR, 2.6; 95 % CI 1.2-5.9), and stress related to suicidal thoughts (AOR 7.7, 95 % CI 2.3-35.2). High racial discrimination was significantly associated with greater odds of psychological stress (AOR 3.6; 95 % CI 1.2-10.8), PTSD (AOR 2.1; 95 % CI 1.1-4.2) and stress related to suicidal thoughts (AOR 4.3, 95 % CI 1.5-13.3). Parental closeness was related to significantly lower odds of all four mental health outcomes measured, and intrinsic resiliency positively reduced risk for psychological stress, PTSD, and stress related to suicidal thoughts. Transgender and racial discrimination may have deleterious effects on the mental health of trans*female youth. Interventions that address individual and intersectional discrimination and build resources for resiliency and parental closeness may have success in preventing mental health disorders in this underserved population.

Weighted Discriminative Dictionary Learning based on Low-rank Representation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chang, Heyou; Zheng, Hao

2017-01-01

Low-rank representation has been widely used in the field of pattern classification, especially when both training and testing images are corrupted with large noise. Dictionary plays an important role in low-rank representation. With respect to the semantic dictionary, the optimal representation matrix should be block-diagonal. However, traditional low-rank representation based dictionary learning methods cannot effectively exploit the discriminative information between data and dictionary. To address this problem, this paper proposed weighted discriminative dictionary learning based on low-rank representation, where a weighted representation regularization term is constructed. The regularization associates label information of both training samples and dictionary atoms, and encourages to generate a discriminative representation with class-wise block-diagonal structure, which can further improve the classification performance where both training and testing images are corrupted with large noise. Experimental results demonstrate advantages of the proposed method over the state-of-the-art methods. (paper)

Potential improvement of Lymantria dispar L. management by quercetin

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Perić-Mataruga Vesna

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Lymantria dispar, a polyphagous insect pest, copes with a wide variety of host-specific allelochemicals. Glutathione S-transferases (GST are important for catalyzing detoxification in L. dispar. Larval mortality, GST activity in midgut tissue and mass of L. dispar with different trophic adaptations (originating from two forests with a suitable host, Quercus robur, and an unsuitable host, Robinia pseudoacacia, differed after feeding on quercetin supplemented diets (2% or 5% w/w. Quercetin inhibited GST most potently in oak forest larvae that were less adapted to flavonoids in their diet. The larvicidal effect of quercetin on L. dispar larvae depended on the host-use history. We believe this is important in strategies for sustainable control of insect pests. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 173027

[Discrimination at the workplace among immigrants in Italy].

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Salvatore, M A; Baglio, G; Cacciani, Laura; Spagnolo, A; Rosano, A

2012-01-01

Discrimination at the workplace can be considered a risk factor for immigrants' health. In this study we compared the occurrence of episodes of arrogance or discrimination perceived at the workplace between documented immigrants coming from countries with high migration pressure and Italians, and evaluated the role of selected risk factors among immigrants. Using data from the 2007 Labour Force Survey conducted by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, adjusted odds ratios (ORs) for socio-demographic and occupational variables were estimated among a nationally representative sample of 61,214 employed persons aged 15 years or more. The occurrence of perceived arrogance or discrimination was higher among immigrant compared to Italian males for all geographical areas of origin considered. Adjusted ORs were 4.6 (95% CI: 3.6-5.8) for Africans, 3.4 (95% CI: 2.5-4.6) for Asians, 2.1 (95% CI :1.6-2.8) for Eastern Europeans, and 2.0 (95% CI: 1.0-3.7) for Latin Americans. Among male immigrants a higher occurrence of arrogance or discrimination was found for construction and other industrial workers and for those residing in central-southern regions of Italy. Among female workers only Latin Americans and Africans showed a higher occurrence of perceived arrogance or discrimination compared to Italians: adjusted ORs were respectively 3.9 (95% CI: 2.6-5.7) and 2.6 (95% CI:1.5-4.5). Female immigrants with a medium-to-high level of education or a highly skilled job, and those residing in the central-southern regions of ltaly perceived the highest occurrence of arrogance or discrimination. The study highlighted the need for policies to protect the wellbeing of immigrants that seem to be particularly exposed to patterns of discrimination at the workplace.

Health behavior disparities: a universal trend or a peculiarity for the developed countries?

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Andreeva, Tatiana

2011-05-01

Full Text Available BACKGROUND. It is generally recognized that those poorer and less educated are more likely to have unhealthy behaviors. These disparities by socio-economic status (SES are observed with regards to different behaviors known to influence health outcomes in terms of diseases and deaths. However, this consistent pattern was found in population-wide studies in developed countries, while in certain demographic groups it was not seen. So the objective was to check if the SES-behavior association pattern was present in available data collected in Ukraine.METHODS. For current study, all available datasets were considered if they included data on SES, education, and gender. Outcomes were measurements of health behaviors including use of psychoactive substances, food consumption, and physical activity.RESULTS. Prevalence of many health behaviors differs in men and women in Ukraine. More men than women use legal and illegal drugs. With regard to education and SES, Ukrainian data reveals either absence of association found in developed countries or its inverted pattern: till recently, women with university education were more likely to smoke than those less educated; teenagers from more affluent families use alcohol more likely than those from poorer ones.CONCLUSION. Inconsistency of SES-behavior association patterns in Ukraine with those seen in the West may be due to a different perception of health behaviors in people who grew up in the former Soviet Union. Behaviors pertinent to men were considered rather masculine and risky than those health-related. We theorize that the revealed absence of SES-behavior association may be because the behaviors are not perceived as those related to health which is an important resource for life. If a behavior is not known as a ‘health behavior’, the society is less likely to stratify with regard to its practicing. So, if the hypothesis is correct, there may be more disparities in younger cohorts than in older ones

Editorial: 2nd Special Issue on behavior change, health, and health disparities.

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Higgins, Stephen T

2015-11-01

This Special Issue of Preventive Medicine (PM) is the 2nd that we have organized on behavior change, health, and health disparities. This is a topic of fundamental importance to improving population health in the U.S. and other industrialized countries that are trying to more effectively manage chronic health conditions. There is broad scientific consensus that personal behavior patterns such as cigarette smoking, other substance abuse, and physical inactivity/obesity are among the most important modifiable causes of chronic disease and its adverse impacts on population health. As such behavior change needs to be a key component of improving population health. There is also broad agreement that while these problems extend across socioeconomic strata, they are overrepresented among more economically disadvantaged populations and contribute directly to the growing problem of health disparities. Hence, behavior change represents an essential step in curtailing that unsettling problem as well. In this 2nd Special Issue, we devote considerable space to the current U.S. prescription opioid addiction epidemic, a crisis that was not addressed in the prior Special Issue. We also continue to devote attention to the two largest contributors to preventable disease and premature death, cigarette smoking and physical inactivity/obesity as well as risks of co-occurrence of these unhealthy behavior patterns. Across each of these topics we included contributions from highly accomplished policy makers and scientists to acquaint readers with recent accomplishments as well as remaining knowledge gaps and challenges to effectively managing these important chronic health problems. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

HYDRA: Revealing heterogeneity of imaging and genetic patterns through a multiple max-margin discriminative analysis framework.

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Varol, Erdem; Sotiras, Aristeidis; Davatzikos, Christos

2017-01-15

Multivariate pattern analysis techniques have been increasingly used over the past decade to derive highly sensitive and specific biomarkers of diseases on an individual basis. The driving assumption behind the vast majority of the existing methodologies is that a single imaging pattern can distinguish between healthy and diseased populations, or between two subgroups of patients (e.g., progressors vs. non-progressors). This assumption effectively ignores the ample evidence for the heterogeneous nature of brain diseases. Neurodegenerative, neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders are largely characterized by high clinical heterogeneity, which likely stems in part from underlying neuroanatomical heterogeneity of various pathologies. Detecting and characterizing heterogeneity may deepen our understanding of disease mechanisms and lead to patient-specific treatments. However, few approaches tackle disease subtype discovery in a principled machine learning framework. To address this challenge, we present a novel non-linear learning algorithm for simultaneous binary classification and subtype identification, termed HYDRA (Heterogeneity through Discriminative Analysis). Neuroanatomical subtypes are effectively captured by multiple linear hyperplanes, which form a convex polytope that separates two groups (e.g., healthy controls from pathologic samples); each face of this polytope effectively defines a disease subtype. We validated HYDRA on simulated and clinical data. In the latter case, we applied the proposed method independently to the imaging and genetic datasets of the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI 1) study. The imaging dataset consisted of T1-weighted volumetric magnetic resonance images of 123 AD patients and 177 controls. The genetic dataset consisted of single nucleotide polymorphism information of 103 AD patients and 139 controls. We identified 3 reproducible subtypes of atrophy in AD relative to controls: (1) diffuse and extensive

Stereo Disparity through Cost Aggregation with Guided Filter

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Pauline Tan

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Estimating the depth, or equivalently the disparity, of a stereo scene is a challenging problem in computer vision. The method proposed by Rhemann et al. in 2011 is based on a filtering of the cost volume, which gives for each pixel and for each hypothesized disparity a cost derived from pixel-by-pixel comparison. The filtering is performed by the guided filter proposed by He et al. in 2010. It computes a weighted local average of the costs. The weights are such that similar pixels tend to have similar costs. Eventually, a winner-take-all strategy selects the disparity with the minimal cost for each pixel. Non-consistent labels according to left-right consistency are rejected; a densification step can then be launched to fill the disparity map. The method can be used to solve other labeling problems (optical flow, segmentation but this article focuses on the stereo matching problem.

Differences between pregnant women with secure and fearful attachment patterns with respect to transition to motherhood

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Hanak Nataša

2010-01-01

Full Text Available This study investigated the possibility of discerning differences between attachment patterns of pregnant women in some mental processes during the transition to motherhood. Participants were 335 primiparae, examined between 20 and 32 weeks of pregnancy. The revised version of Questionnaire for Attachment Assessment (UPIPAV-R was used for the assessment of seven attachment dimensions. Cluster analysis, k means method, was employed for determining the general attachment pattern of the participants. Four clusters were identified: secure, fearful, preoccupied and dismissing. Maternal prenatal attachment, her anxieties about the prospective maternal role and her possibly dysfunctional expectations about the role of the child in her private and family life were assessed using scales developed for the purpose of the research. The hypothesis about differences of attachment patterns in examined mental processes of preparation for motherhood was confirmed by the results of discriminant analysis. All dimensions of maternal prenatal attachment are central for discriminating secure from fearful attachment pattern. All dimensions of possibly dysfunctional expectations are central for discriminating preoccupied from dismissing attachment patterns. Anxiety related to loss of freedom and no self-realization in the mother role has significant contribution to discriminating secure from fearful attachment pattern. The other two dimensions of anxiety, related to the 'difficult baby' and incompetence in mother role, are important for discriminating dismissing from preoccupied attachment patterns. .

Disparity Disambiguation by Fusion of Signal and Symbolic-Level Information

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ralli, J.; Diaz, J.; Ros, E.

2012-01-01

We describe a method for resolving ambiguities in low-level disparity calculations in a stereo-vision scheme by using a recurrent mechanism that we call signal-symbol loop. Due to the local nature of low-level processing it is not always possible to estimate the correct disparity values produced...... at this level. Symbolic abstraction of the signal produces robust, high confidence, multimodal image features which can be used to interpret the scene more accurately and therefore disambiguate low-level interpretations by biasing the correct disparity. The fusion process is capable of producing more accurate...... dense disparity maps than the low- and symbolic-level algorithms can produce independently. Therefore we describe an efficient fusion scheme that allows symbolic- and low-level cues to complement each other, resulting in a more accurate and dense disparity representation of the scene....

Literacy and Health Disparities

Science.gov (United States)

Prins, Esther; Mooney, Angela

2014-01-01

This chapter explores the relationship between literacy and health disparities, focusing on the concept of health literacy. Recommendations are provided for ways to bridge the health literacy gap for learners in adult basic education and family literacy programs.

Intra-individual gait patterns across different time-scales as revealed by means of a supervised learning model using kernel-based discriminant regression.

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Fabian Horst

Full Text Available Traditionally, gait analysis has been centered on the idea of average behavior and normality. On one hand, clinical diagnoses and therapeutic interventions typically assume that average gait patterns remain constant over time. On the other hand, it is well known that all our movements are accompanied by a certain amount of variability, which does not allow us to make two identical steps. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the intra-individual gait patterns across different time-scales (i.e., tens-of-mins, tens-of-hours.Nine healthy subjects performed 15 gait trials at a self-selected speed on 6 sessions within one day (duration between two subsequent sessions from 10 to 90 mins. For each trial, time-continuous ground reaction forces and lower body joint angles were measured. A supervised learning model using a kernel-based discriminant regression was applied for classifying sessions within individual gait patterns.Discernable characteristics of intra-individual gait patterns could be distinguished between repeated sessions by classification rates of 67.8 ± 8.8% and 86.3 ± 7.9% for the six-session-classification of ground reaction forces and lower body joint angles, respectively. Furthermore, the one-on-one-classification showed that increasing classification rates go along with increasing time durations between two sessions and indicate that changes of gait patterns appear at different time-scales.Discernable characteristics between repeated sessions indicate continuous intrinsic changes in intra-individual gait patterns and suggest a predominant role of deterministic processes in human motor control and learning. Natural changes of gait patterns without any externally induced injury or intervention may reflect continuous adaptations of the motor system over several time-scales. Accordingly, the modelling of walking by means of average gait patterns that are assumed to be near constant over time needs to be reconsidered in the

Intra-individual gait patterns across different time-scales as revealed by means of a supervised learning model using kernel-based discriminant regression.

Science.gov (United States)

Horst, Fabian; Eekhoff, Alexander; Newell, Karl M; Schöllhorn, Wolfgang I

2017-01-01

Traditionally, gait analysis has been centered on the idea of average behavior and normality. On one hand, clinical diagnoses and therapeutic interventions typically assume that average gait patterns remain constant over time. On the other hand, it is well known that all our movements are accompanied by a certain amount of variability, which does not allow us to make two identical steps. The purpose of this study was to examine changes in the intra-individual gait patterns across different time-scales (i.e., tens-of-mins, tens-of-hours). Nine healthy subjects performed 15 gait trials at a self-selected speed on 6 sessions within one day (duration between two subsequent sessions from 10 to 90 mins). For each trial, time-continuous ground reaction forces and lower body joint angles were measured. A supervised learning model using a kernel-based discriminant regression was applied for classifying sessions within individual gait patterns. Discernable characteristics of intra-individual gait patterns could be distinguished between repeated sessions by classification rates of 67.8 ± 8.8% and 86.3 ± 7.9% for the six-session-classification of ground reaction forces and lower body joint angles, respectively. Furthermore, the one-on-one-classification showed that increasing classification rates go along with increasing time durations between two sessions and indicate that changes of gait patterns appear at different time-scales. Discernable characteristics between repeated sessions indicate continuous intrinsic changes in intra-individual gait patterns and suggest a predominant role of deterministic processes in human motor control and learning. Natural changes of gait patterns without any externally induced injury or intervention may reflect continuous adaptations of the motor system over several time-scales. Accordingly, the modelling of walking by means of average gait patterns that are assumed to be near constant over time needs to be reconsidered in the context of

The association between racial disparity in income and reported sexually transmitted infections.

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Owusu-Edusei, Kwame; Chesson, Harrell W; Leichliter, Jami S; Kent, Charlotte K; Aral, Sevgi O

2013-05-01

We examined the association between racial disparity in income and reported race-specific county-level bacterial sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the United States focusing on disparities between Blacks and Whites. Data are from the US 2000 decennial census. We defined 2 race-income county groups (high and low race-income disparity) on the basis of the difference between Black and White median household incomes. We used 2 approaches to examine disparities in STI rates across the groups. In the first approach, we computed and compared race-specific STI rates for the groups. In the second approach, we used spatial regression analyses to control for potential confounders. Consistent with the STI literature, chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis rates for Blacks were substantially higher than were those for Whites. We also found that racial disparities in income were associated with racial disparities in chlamydia and gonorrhea rates and, to a lesser degree, syphilis rates. Racial disparities in household income may be a more important determinant of racial disparities in reported STI morbidity than are absolute levels of household income.

Pulse duration discriminator

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kosakovskij, L.F.

1980-01-01

Basic circuits of a discriminator for discrimination of pulses with the duration greater than the preset one, and of a multifunctional discriminator allowing to discriminate pulses with the duration greater (tsub(p)>tsub(s)) and lesser (tsub(p) tsub(s) and with the duration tsub(p) [ru

Regional Relative Price Disparities and Their Driving Forces

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Eu Joon Chang

2017-09-01

Full Text Available This paper studies the long-run behavior of relative price dispersion among cities in Korea with a special emphasis on heterogeneous transitional patterns of price level dynamics. Formal statistical tests indicate considerable evidence for rejecting the null of relative price level convergence among the majority of cities over the sample period of 1985-2015. The analysis of gravity model suggests that the effect of transportation costs on intercity price level differentials is limited, while other socioeconomic factors, such as income, input factor prices, demographic structure, and housing price growth, play key roles in accounting for persistent regional price level disparities. Individual price levels are found to be better explained by a multiple-component model, and the deviations from PPP may be attributed to distinct stochastic common trends that are characterized by income and demographic structure.

CDC Health Disparities and Inequalities Report--U.S. 2013

Science.gov (United States)

... Women's Health Health Literacy Health Equity CDC Health Disparities & Inequalities Report (CHDIR) Recommend on Facebook Tweet Share ... 2011 Report More Information CDC Releases Second Health Disparities & Inequalities Report - United States, 2013 CDC and its ...

Rapid Discrimination for Traditional Complex Herbal Medicines from Different Parts, Collection Time, and Origins Using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography and Near-Infrared Spectral Fingerprints with Aid of Pattern Recognition Methods

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Haiyan Fu

2015-01-01

Full Text Available As an effective method, the fingerprint technique, which emphasized the whole compositions of samples, has already been used in various fields, especially in identifying and assessing the quality of herbal medicines. High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC and near-infrared (NIR, with their unique characteristics of reliability, versatility, precision, and simple measurement, played an important role among all the fingerprint techniques. In this paper, a supervised pattern recognition method based on PLSDA algorithm by HPLC and NIR has been established to identify the information of Hibiscus mutabilis L. and Berberidis radix, two common kinds of herbal medicines. By comparing component analysis (PCA, linear discriminant analysis (LDA, and particularly partial least squares discriminant analysis (PLSDA with different fingerprint preprocessing of NIR spectra variables, PLSDA model showed perfect functions on the analysis of samples as well as chromatograms. Most important, this pattern recognition method by HPLC and NIR can be used to identify different collection parts, collection time, and different origins or various species belonging to the same genera of herbal medicines which proved to be a promising approach for the identification of complex information of herbal medicines.

Proteomic comparison of Entamoeba histolytica and Entamoeba dispar and the role of E. histolytica alcohol dehydrogenase 3 in virulence.

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Paul H Davis

Full Text Available The protozoan intestinal parasite Entamoeba histolytica infects millions of people worldwide and is capable of causing amebic dysentery and amebic liver abscess. The closely related species Entamoeba dispar colonizes many more individuals, but this organism does not induce disease. To identify molecular differences between these two organisms that may account for their differential ability to cause disease in humans, we used two-dimensional gel-based (DIGE proteomic analysis to compare whole cell lysates of E. histolytica and E. dispar. We observed 141 spots expressed at a substantially (>5-fold higher level in E. histolytica HM-1:IMSS than E. dispar and 189 spots showing the opposite pattern. Strikingly, 3 of 4 proteins consistently identified as different at a greater than 5-fold level between E. histolytica HM-1:IMSS and E. dispar were identical to proteins recently identified as differentially expressed between E. histolytica HM-1:IMSS and the reduced virulence strain E. histolytica Rahman. One of these was E. histolytica alcohol dehydrogenase 3 (EhADH3. We found that E. histolytica possesses a higher level of NADP-dependent alcohol dehydrogenase activity than E. dispar and that some EhADH3 can be localized to the surface of E. histolytica. Episomal overexpression of EhADH3 in E. histolytica trophozoites resulted in only subtle phenotypic differences in E. histolytica virulence in animal models of amebic colitis and amebic liver abscess, making it difficult to directly link EhADH3 levels to virulence differences between E. histolytica and less-pathogenic Entamoeba.

A comparative study on gender disparity in nutritional status in children under five years in rural and urban communities of Assam, India

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Farha Yesmin

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Under nutrition is a serious public health problem among children in the developing countries. Though the importance of girl child has been stressed time and again, yet a wide level of disparity still exists, whether implicit or explicit, in nutrition and child care both in the rural and urban areas.  Different underlying factors are responsible for this disparity. Rationale: Girls face discrimination from the moment she is born. The UNICEF intergenerational cycle of malnutrition stresses on the fact that the problem of malnutrition spans generation and is a vicious cycle. Though the importance of girl child has been stressed time and again, yet a wide level of disparity still exists. Therefore this study is conducted to document the gender disparity in nutritional status and compare rural and urban differences. Objective: 1.To compare the gender disparity in nutritional status in children aged 0-5 years in rural and urban areas.2.To assess the different socio-demographic factors influencing the gender disparity. Materials and Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in Kamrup Rural and Kamrup Urban using a pre-tested schedule from August 2013-July 2014.A total of 400 children were examined and their mother’s interviewed. Data was entered into MS-Excel spread sheets for analysis. The statistical analyses were done using SPSS version 16 software. Percentages and Chi square tests were used to analyze epidemiological variables. Results: The prevalence of underweight, stunting and wasting in rural area was 31%, 29%, 15.5% respectively whereas in urban it was 39.5%, 36% and 24.5% respectively. In rural area, male child were 32% underweight, 28% stunted and 19% wasted compared to female who were 30% underweight, 30% stunted and 12% wasted. In urban area 48% of female child were underweight, 39% stunted and 27% wasted compared to 31%, 33% and 22% in male child respectively. A significant higher proportion of

A comparative study on gender disparity in nutritional status in children under five years in rural and urban communities of Assam, India

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Farha Yesmin

2014-12-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Under nutrition is a serious public health problem among children in the developing countries. Though the importance of girl child has been stressed time and again, yet a wide level of disparity still exists, whether implicit or explicit, in nutrition and child care both in the rural and urban areas.  Different underlying factors are responsible for this disparity. Rationale: Girls face discrimination from the moment she is born. The UNICEF intergenerational cycle of malnutrition stresses on the fact that the problem of malnutrition spans generation and is a vicious cycle. Though the importance of girl child has been stressed time and again, yet a wide level of disparity still exists. Therefore this study is conducted to document the gender disparity in nutritional status and compare rural and urban differences. Objective: 1.To compare the gender disparity in nutritional status in children aged 0-5 years in rural and urban areas.2.To assess the different socio-demographic factors influencing the gender disparity. Materials and Methods: A community based cross-sectional study was conducted in Kamrup Rural and Kamrup Urban using a pre-tested schedule from August 2013-July 2014.A total of 400 children were examined and their mother’s interviewed. Data was entered into MS-Excel spread sheets for analysis. The statistical analyses were done using SPSS version 16 software. Percentages and Chi square tests were used to analyze epidemiological variables. Results: The prevalence of underweight, stunting and wasting in rural area was 31%, 29%, 15.5% respectively whereas in urban it was 39.5%, 36% and 24.5% respectively. In rural area, male child were 32% underweight, 28% stunted and 19% wasted compared to female who were 30% underweight, 30% stunted and 12% wasted. In urban area 48% of female child were underweight, 39% stunted and 27% wasted compared to 31%, 33% and 22% in male child respectively. A significant higher proportion of

Gender Disparity in Education Enrollment in Pakistan

OpenAIRE

Shakil Quayes; Richard David Ramsey

2015-01-01

The paper examines the determinants of school enrollment in Pakistan. The likelihood of school enrollment is estimated using separate logistic regression models for three different age groups. The empirical results indicate severe gender disparity in school enrollment across all age groups, particularly among the older age groups. Although the rate of school enrollment is positively associated with household income, the gender disparity actually deteriorates with an increase in household inco...

Mind the gap: race/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in obesity.

Science.gov (United States)

Krueger, Patrick M; Reither, Eric N

2015-11-01

Race/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) disparities in obesity are substantial and may widen in the future. We review nine potential mechanisms that recent research has used to explain obesity disparities. Those nine mechanisms fall into three broad groups-health behaviors, biological factors, and the social environment-which incorporate both proximate and upstream determinants of obesity disparities. Efforts to reduce the prevalence of obesity in the US population and to close race/ethnic and SES disparities in obesity will likely require the use of multifaceted interventions that target multiple mechanisms simultaneously. Unfortunately, relatively few of the mechanisms reviewed herein have been tested in an intervention framework.

Nicotine as a discriminative stimulus for ethanol use.

Science.gov (United States)

Ginsburg, Brett C; Levy, Simon A; Lamb, R J

2018-01-01

Abused drugs reinforce behavior; i.e., they increase the probability of the behavior preceding their administration. Abused drugs can also act as discriminative stimuli; i.e., they can set the occasion for responding reinforced by another event. Thus, one abused drug could come to set the occasion for the use of another and this functional relationship may play a role in polysubstance abuse, where common patterns of use could result in this relationship. Here we establish nicotine (0.4mg/kg, ip 5-min pre-session) as a discriminative stimulus for behavior reinforced by ethanol (0.1ml 8% w/v po, versus food) and determine the ability of nicotine (0.02-0.4mg/kg), varenicline (0.1-3.0mg/kg), and ethanol (250 and 500mg/kg) to control responding for ethanol. We compare these results to those from rats where nicotine signaled food was available (and ethanol was not). Nicotine came to function as a discriminative stimulus. Nicotine and varenicline produced dose-dependent increases in responding on the nicotine-appropriate lever while ethanol produced responding on the vehicle-appropriate lever. Whether this responding occurred on the lever that produced ethanol or food access depended on the training condition. These results demonstrate that a drug can come to set the occasion for use of another and suggest that this behavioral mechanism could play an important role in the maintenance of and recovery from polysubstance abuse, depending on the pattern of use. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Discrimination of English and French Orthographic Patterns by Biliterate Children

Science.gov (United States)

Jared, Debra; Cormier, Pierre; Levy, Betty Ann; Wade-Woolley, Lesly

2013-01-01

We investigated whether young English-French biliterate children can distinguish between English and French orthographic patterns. Children in French immersion programs were asked to play a dictionary game when they were in Grade 2 and again when they were in Grade 3. They were shown pseudowords that contained either an English spelling pattern or…

Human listeners provide insights into echo features used by dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) to discriminate among objects.

Science.gov (United States)

Delong, Caroline M; Au, Whitlow W L; Harley, Heidi E; Roitblat, Herbert L; Pytka, Lisa

2007-08-01

Echolocating bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) discriminate between objects on the basis of the echoes reflected by the objects. However, it is not clear which echo features are important for object discrimination. To gain insight into the salient features, the authors had a dolphin perform a match-to-sample task and then presented human listeners with echoes from the same objects used in the dolphin's task. In 2 experiments, human listeners performed as well or better than the dolphin at discriminating objects, and they reported the salient acoustic cues. The error patterns of the humans and the dolphin were compared to determine which acoustic features were likely to have been used by the dolphin. The results indicate that the dolphin did not appear to use overall echo amplitude, but that it attended to the pattern of changes in the echoes across different object orientations. Human listeners can quickly identify salient combinations of echo features that permit object discrimination, which can be used to generate hypotheses that can be tested using dolphins as subjects.

Geographic disparity in kidney transplantation under KAS.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhou, Sheng; Massie, Allan B; Luo, Xun; Ruck, Jessica M; Chow, Eric K H; Bowring, Mary G; Bae, Sunjae; Segev, Dorry L; Gentry, Sommer E

2017-12-12

The Kidney Allocation System fundamentally altered kidney allocation, causing a substantial increase in regional and national sharing that we hypothesized might impact geographic disparities. We measured geographic disparity in deceased donor kidney transplant (DDKT) rate under KAS (6/1/2015-12/1/2016), and compared that with pre-KAS (6/1/2013-12/3/2014). We modeled DSA-level DDKT rates with multilevel Poisson regression, adjusting for allocation factors under KAS. Using the model we calculated a novel, improved metric of geographic disparity: the median incidence rate ratio (MIRR) of transplant rate, a measure of DSA-level variation that accounts for patient casemix and is robust to outlier values. Under KAS, MIRR was 1.75 1.81 1.86 for adults, meaning that similar candidates across different DSAs have a median 1.81-fold difference in DDKT rate. The impact of geography was greater than the impact of factors emphasized by KAS: having an EPTS score ≤20% was associated with a 1.40-fold increase (IRR =  1.35 1.40 1.45 , P geographic disparities with KAS (P = .3). Despite extensive changes to kidney allocation under KAS, geography remains a primary determinant of access to DDKT. © 2017 The American Society of Transplantation and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons.

Determinants of health disparities between Italian regions

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Giannoni Margherita

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Among European countries, Italy is one of the countries where regional health disparities contribute substantially to socioeconomic health disparities. In this paper, we report on regional differences in self-reported poor health and explore possible determinants at the individual and regional levels in Italy. Methods We use data from the "Indagine Multiscopo sulle Famiglie", a survey of aspects of everyday life in the Italian population, to estimate multilevel logistic regressions that model poor self-reported health as a function of individual and regional socioeconomic factors. Next we use the causal step approach to test if living conditions, healthcare characteristics, social isolation, and health behaviors at the regional level mediate the relationship between regional socioeconomic factors and self-rated health. Results We find that residents living in regions with more poverty, more unemployment, and more income inequality are more likely to report poor health and that poor living conditions and private share of healthcare expenditures at the regional level mediate socioeconomic disparities in self-rated health among Italian regions. Conclusion The implications are that regional contexts matter and that regional policies in Italy have the potential to reduce health disparities by implementing interventions aimed at improving living conditions and access to quality healthcare.

Employment and Wage Disparities for Nurses With Activity Limitations.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilson, Barbara L; Butler, Richard J; Butler, Matthew J

2016-11-01

No studies quantify the labor market disparities between nurses with and without activity difficulties (physical impairment or disability). We explore disparate treatment of nurses with activity difficulties at three margins of the labor market: the ability to get a job, the relative wage rate offered once a nurse has a job, and the annual hours of work given that wage rate. Key variables from the American Community Survey (ACS) were analyzed, including basic demographic information, wages, hours of work, and employment status of registered nurses from 2006 to 2014. Although there is relatively little disparity in hourly wages, there is enormous disparity in the disabled's employment and hours of work opportunities, and hence a moderate amount of disparity in annual wages. This has significant implications for the nursing labor force, particularly as the nursing workforce continues to age and physical limitations or disabilities increase by 15-fold from 25 to 65 years of age.  Physical or psychological difficulties increase sharply over the course of a nurse's career, and employers must heighten efforts to facilitate an aging workforce and provide appropriate job accommodations for nurses with activity limitations. © 2016 Sigma Theta Tau International.

Development tendencies of regional disparities in the Slovak Republic

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Klamár Radoslav

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Presented paper deals with the issues of regional development and regional disparities in Slovakia in the years 2001-2014. Levelling respectively increase of regional disparities was evaluated through a set of 13 socio-economic indicators (gross birth rate, average monthly wage, monthly labour costs per employee, employment rate, unemployment rate, net monthly income and expenses per capita, completed dwellings, creation of GDP, labour productivity per employee in industry and construction, number of organizations focused on generating profit and number of freelancers which were used in the territorial units at the level of self-governing regions of the Slovak Republic (NUTS III level. In terms of the evaluation and comparison of regional disparities were used the Gini coefficient and the coefficient of variation for mutual comparison and validation of divergent or convergent tendencies of regional disparities in Slovakia.

Blur Clarified: A review and Synthesis of Blur Discrimination

Science.gov (United States)

Watson, Andrew B.; Ahumada, Albert J.

2011-01-01

Blur is an important attribute of human spatial vision, and sensitivity to blur has been the subject of considerable experimental research and theoretical modeling. Often these models have invoked specialized concepts or mechanisms, such as intrinsic blur, multiple channels, or blur estimation units. In this paper we review the several experimental studies of blur discrimination and find they are in broad empirical agreement. But contrary to previous modeling efforts, we find that the essential features of blur discrimination are fully accounted for by a visible contrast energy model (ViCE), in which two spatial patterns are distinguished when the integrated difference between their masked local contrast energy responses reaches a threshold value.

An ultraviolet floral polymorphism associated with life history drives pollinator discrimination in Mimulus guttatus.

Science.gov (United States)

Peterson, Megan L; Miller, Timothy J; Kay, Kathleen M

2015-03-01

• Ultraviolet (UV) floral patterns are common in angiosperms and mediate pollinator attraction, efficiency, and constancy. UV patterns may vary within species, yet are cryptic to human observers. Thus, few studies have explicitly described the distribution or ecological significance of intraspecific variation in UV floral patterning. Here, we describe the geographic distribution and pattern of inheritance of a UV polymorphism in the model plant species Mimulus guttatus (Phrymaceae). We then test whether naturally occurring UV phenotypes influence pollinator interactions within M. guttatus.• We document UV patterns in 18 annual and 19 perennial populations and test whether UV pattern is associated with life history. To examine the pattern of inheritance, we conducted crosses within and between UV phenotypes. Finally, we tested whether bee pollinators discriminate among naturally occurring UV phenotypes in two settings: wild bee communities and captive Bombus impatiens.• Within M. guttatus, perennial populations exhibit a small bulls-eye pattern, whereas a bilaterally symmetric runway pattern occurs mainly in annual populations. Inheritance of UV patterning is consistent with a single-locus Mendelian model in which the runway phenotype is dominant. Bee pollinators discriminate against unfamiliar UV patterns in both natural and controlled settings.• We describe a widespread UV polymorphism associated with life history divergence within Mimulus guttatus. UV pattern influences pollinator visitation and should be considered when estimating reproductive barriers between life history ecotypes. This work develops a new system to investigate the ecology and evolution of UV floral patterning in a species with extensive genomic resources. © 2015 Botanical Society of America, Inc.

Black-white preterm birth disparity: a marker of inequality

Science.gov (United States)

Purpose. The racial disparity in preterrn birth (PTB) is a persistent feature of perinatal epidemiology, inconsistently modeled in the literature. Rather than include race as an explanatory variable, or employ race-stratified models, we sought to directly model the PTB disparity ...

Gender Differences in the Relationship between Discrimination and Substance Use Disorder among Latinos

OpenAIRE

Ornelas, India J.; Hong, Seunghye

2012-01-01

Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study collected in 2002–2003 (N=2,554), we assessed the adjusted odds of lifetime substance use disorder (SUD) associated with report of both unfair treatment and racial/ethnic discrimination. Among men, SUD was increased for those reporting low, moderate, and high levels of unfair treatment compared to those reporting no unfair treatment and patterns were similar for racial/ethnic discrimination. Among women, only those reporting high le...

Perceived discrimination and chronic health in adults from nine ethnic subgroups in the USA.

Science.gov (United States)

Carlisle, Shauna K

2015-01-01

This comparative analysis examines the association between chronic cardiovascular, respiratory and pain conditions, race, ethnicity, nativity, length of residency, and perceived discrimination among three racial and nine ethnic subgroups of Asian Americans (Vietnamese, Filipino, and Chinese), Latino-American (Cuban, Portuguese, and Mexican), and Afro-Caribbean American (Haitian, Jamaican, and Trinidadian/Tobagonian) respondents. Analysis used weighted Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys-merged data from the National Latino and Asian American Study and the National Survey of American Life. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine which groups within the model were more likely to report perceived discrimination effects. Afro-Caribbean subgroups were more likely to report perceived discrimination than Asian American and Latino-American subgroups were. Logistic regression revealed a significant positive association with perceived discrimination and chronic pain only for Latino-American respondents. Significant differences in reports of perceived discrimination emerged by race and ethnicity. Caribbean respondents were more likely to report high levels of perceived discrimination; however, they showed fewer significant associations related to chronic health conditions compared to Asian Americans and Latino-Americans. Examination of perceived discrimination across ethnic subgroups reveals large variations in the relationship between chronic health and discrimination by race and ethnicity. Examining perceived discrimination by ethnicity may reveal more complex chronic health patterns masked by broader racial groupings.

Effects of chronic iTBS-rTMS and enriched environment on visual cortex early critical period and visual pattern discrimination in dark-reared rats.

Science.gov (United States)

Castillo-Padilla, Diana V; Funke, Klaus

2016-01-01

Early cortical critical period resembles a state of enhanced neuronal plasticity enabling the establishment of specific neuronal connections during first sensory experience. Visual performance with regard to pattern discrimination is impaired if the cortex is deprived from visual input during the critical period. We wondered how unspecific activation of the visual cortex before closure of the critical period using repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) could affect the critical period and the visual performance of the experimental animals. Would it cause premature closure of the plastic state and thus worsen experience-dependent visual performance, or would it be able to preserve plasticity? Effects of intermittent theta-burst stimulation (iTBS) were compared with those of an enriched environment (EE) during dark-rearing (DR) from birth. Rats dark-reared in a standard cage showed poor improvement in a visual pattern discrimination task, while rats housed in EE or treated with iTBS showed a performance indistinguishable from rats reared in normal light/dark cycle. The behavioral effects were accompanied by correlated changes in the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and atypical PKC (PKCζ/PKMζ), two factors controlling stabilization of synaptic potentiation. It appears that not only nonvisual sensory activity and exercise but also cortical activation induced by rTMS has the potential to alleviate the effects of DR on cortical development, most likely due to stimulation of BDNF synthesis and release. As we showed previously, iTBS reduced the expression of parvalbumin in inhibitory cortical interneurons, indicating that modulation of the activity of fast-spiking interneurons contributes to the observed effects of iTBS. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Quantifying explainable discrimination and removing illegal discrimination in automated decision making

KAUST Repository

Kamiran, Faisal

2012-11-18

Recently, the following discrimination-aware classification problem was introduced. Historical data used for supervised learning may contain discrimination, for instance, with respect to gender. The question addressed by discrimination-aware techniques is, given sensitive attribute, how to train discrimination-free classifiers on such historical data that are discriminative, with respect to the given sensitive attribute. Existing techniques that deal with this problem aim at removing all discrimination and do not take into account that part of the discrimination may be explainable by other attributes. For example, in a job application, the education level of a job candidate could be such an explainable attribute. If the data contain many highly educated male candidates and only few highly educated women, a difference in acceptance rates between woman and man does not necessarily reflect gender discrimination, as it could be explained by the different levels of education. Even though selecting on education level would result in more males being accepted, a difference with respect to such a criterion would not be considered to be undesirable, nor illegal. Current state-of-the-art techniques, however, do not take such gender-neutral explanations into account and tend to overreact and actually start reverse discriminating, as we will show in this paper. Therefore, we introduce and analyze the refined notion of conditional non-discrimination in classifier design. We show that some of the differences in decisions across the sensitive groups can be explainable and are hence tolerable. Therefore, we develop methodology for quantifying the explainable discrimination and algorithmic techniques for removing the illegal discrimination when one or more attributes are considered as explanatory. Experimental evaluation on synthetic and real-world classification datasets demonstrates that the new techniques are superior to the old ones in this new context, as they succeed in

Perceived Discrimination in LGBTIQ Discourse: A Typology of Verbal Discrimination

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sol Rojas Lizana

2014-08-01

Full Text Available New within the field of Discourse Analysis, Perceived Discrimination (PD is the study of discourse that focuses on the perspective of the victims of discrimination. This article explores the experiences of verbal discrimination as reported by eighteen LGBTIQ participants during semi-structured, co-constructed interviews. Data were classified in order to develop a taxonomy of discrimination based on Mellor’s (2003, 2004. This taxonomy foregrounds two types of discrimination: verbal and behavioural. In this paper, I exemplify the forms of verbal discrimination encountered and offer an analysis of the discourse used in the construction of the experiences and of the effects reported. The results show that verbal discrimination is an overt phenomenon and that participants are stressed by the ever present possibility of facing it. Verbal discrimination is mainly triggered by a perceived transgression to the normalised standards of people’s behaviour, movements and look in a heterosexist society. It presents three subtypes: name calling, abuse and remarks. These subtypes are described through the analysis of keywords, effects and expressions (such as faggot, gay, dyke, queer, the pronoun ‘it’, religious comments and other remarks. The type of discrimination used was associated with the level of acquaintance perpetrators have with the experiencers; that is, name calling was used by people unknown to the victims while abuse and remarks by acquaintances and family members. Participants resorted to several discursive strategies to convey their intentions. They used mitigation strategies when wanting to minimize the experience, hedging and repetition were used for emphasis, and to convey urgency and pervasiveness. Metaphorical expressions related to internal or external injuries were also used to express the powerful effect of verbal discrimination on people.

Ecological momentary assessment of daily discrimination experiences and nicotine, alcohol, and drug use among sexual and gender minority individuals.

Science.gov (United States)

Livingston, Nicholas A; Flentje, Annesa; Heck, Nicholas C; Szalda-Petree, Allen; Cochran, Bryan N

2017-12-01

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) individuals experience elevated rates of minority stress, which has been linked to higher rates of nicotine and substance use. Research on this disparity to date is largely predicated on methodology that is insensitive to within day SGM-based discrimination experiences, or their relation to momentary nicotine and substance use risk. We address this knowledge gap in the current study using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Fifty SGM individuals, between 18 and 45 years of age, were recruited from an inland northwestern university, regardless of their nicotine or substance use history, and invited to participate in an EMA study. Each were prompted to provide data, six times daily (between 10:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.) for 14 days, regarding SGM-based discrimination, other forms of mistreatment, and nicotine, drug, and alcohol use since their last prompt. Discrimination experiences that occurred since individuals' last measurement prompt were associated with greater odds of nicotine and substance use during the same measurement window. Substance use was also more likely to occur in relation to discrimination reported two measurements prior in lagged models. Relative to other forms of mistreatment, discrimination effects were consistently larger in magnitude and became stronger throughout the day/evening. This study adds to existing minority stress research by highlighting the both immediate and delayed correlates of daily SGM-based discrimination experiences. These results also contribute to our understanding of daily stress processes and provide insight into ways we might mitigate these effects using real-time monitoring and intervention technology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Gender disparities in health care.

Science.gov (United States)

Kent, Jennifer A; Patel, Vinisha; Varela, Natalie A

2012-01-01

The existence of disparities in delivery of health care has been the subject of increased empirical study in recent years. Some studies have suggested that disparities between men and women exist in the diagnoses and treatment of health conditions, and as a result measures have been taken to identify these differences. This article uses several examples to illustrate health care gender bias in medicine. These examples include surgery, peripheral artery disease, cardiovascular disease, critical care, and cardiovascular risk factors. Additionally, we discuss reasons why these issues still occur, trends in health care that may address these issues, and the need for acknowledgement of the current system's inequities in order to provide unbiased care for women in the future. © 2012 Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Mind the Gap: Race\\Ethnic and Socioeconomic Disparities in Obesity

OpenAIRE

Krueger, Patrick M.; Reither, Eric N.

2015-01-01

Race/ethnic and socioeconomic status (SES) disparities in obesity are substantial and may widen in the future. We review seven potential mechanisms that recent research has used to explain obesity disparities. Those seven mechanisms fall into three broad groups—health behaviors, biological and developmental factors, and the social environment—which incorporate both proximate and upstream determinants of obesity disparities. Efforts to reduce the prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population an...

Examining the Gap: Compensation Disparities between Male and Female Physician Assistants.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, Noël; Cawley, James F; McCall, Timothy C

Compensation disparities between men and women have been problematic for decades, and there is considerable evidence that the gap cannot be entirely explained by nongender factors. The current study examined the compensation gap in the physician assistant (PA) profession. Compensation data from 2014 was collected by the American Academy of PAs in 2015. Practice variables, including experience, specialty, and hours worked, were controlled for in an ordinary least-squares sequential regression model to examine whether there remained a disparity in total compensation. In addition, the absolute disparity in compensation was compared with historical data collected by American Academy of PAs over the previous 1.5 decades. Without controlling for practice variables, a total compensation disparity of $16,052 existed between men and women in the PA profession. Even after PA practice variables were controlled for, a total compensation disparity of $9,695 remained between men and women (95% confidence interval, $8,438-$10,952). A 17-year trend indicates the absolute disparity between men and women has not lessened, although the disparity as a percent of male compensation has decreased in recent years. There remain challenges to ensuring pay equality in the PA profession. Even when compensation-relevant factors such as experience, hours worked, specialty, postgraduate training, region, and call are controlled for, there is still a substantial gender disparity in PA compensation. Remedies that may address this pay inequality include raising awareness of compensation disparities, teaching effective negotiation skills, assisting employers as they develop equitable compensation plans, having less reliance on past salary in position negotiation, and professional associations advocating for policies that support equal wages and opportunities, regardless of personal characteristics. Copyright © 2017 Jacobs Institute of Women's Health. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Rate-distortion analysis of steganography for conveying stereovision disparity maps

Science.gov (United States)

Umeda, Toshiyuki; Batolomeu, Ana B. D. T.; Francob, Filipe A. L.; Delannay, Damien; Macq, Benoit M. M.

2004-06-01

3-D images transmission in a way which is compliant with traditional 2-D representations can be done through the embedding of disparity maps within the 2-D signal. This approach enables the transmission of stereoscopic video sequences or images on traditional analogue TV channels (PAL or NTSC) or printed photographic images. The aim of this work is to study the achievable performances of such a technique. The embedding of disparity maps has to be seen as a global rate-distortion problem. The embedding capacity through steganography is determined by the transmission channel noise and by the bearable distortion on the watermarked image. The distortion of the 3-D image displayed as two stereo views depends on the rate allocated to the complementary information required to build those two views from one reference 2-D image. Results from the works on the scalar Costa scheme are used to optimize the embedding of the disparity map compressed bit stream into the reference image. A method for computing the optimal trade off between the disparity map distortion and embedding distortion as a function of the channel impairments is proposed. The goal is to get a similar distortion on the left (the reference image) and the right (the disparity compensated image) images. We show that in typical situations the embedding of 2 bits/pixels in the left image, while the disparity map is compressed at 1 bit per pixel leads to a good trade-off. The disparity map is encoded with a strong error correcting code, including synchronisation bits.

Partnering health disparities research with quality improvement science in pediatrics.

Science.gov (United States)

Lion, K Casey; Raphael, Jean L

2015-02-01

Disparities in pediatric health care quality are well described in the literature, yet practical approaches to decreasing them remain elusive. Quality improvement (QI) approaches are appealing for addressing disparities because they offer a set of strategies by which to target modifiable aspects of care delivery and a method for tailoring or changing an intervention over time based on data monitoring. However, few examples in the literature exist of QI interventions successfully decreasing disparities, particularly in pediatrics, due to well-described challenges in developing, implementing, and studying QI with vulnerable populations or in underresourced settings. In addition, QI interventions aimed at improving quality overall may not improve disparities, and in some cases, may worsen them if there is greater uptake or effectiveness of the intervention among the population with better outcomes at baseline. In this article, the authors review some of the challenges faced by researchers and frontline clinicians seeking to use QI to address health disparities and propose an agenda for moving the field forward. Specifically, they propose that those designing and implementing disparities-focused QI interventions reconsider comparator groups, use more rigorous evaluation methods, carefully consider the evidence for particular interventions and the context in which they were developed, directly engage the social determinants of health, and leverage community resources to build collaborative networks and engage community members. Ultimately, new partnerships between communities, providers serving vulnerable populations, and QI researchers will be required for QI interventions to achieve their potential related to health care disparity reduction. Copyright © 2015 by the American Academy of Pediatrics.

Psychiatrists' attitudes toward and awareness about racial disparities in mental health care.

Science.gov (United States)

Mallinger, Julie B; Lamberti, J Steven

2010-02-01

Psychiatrists may perpetuate racial-ethnic disparities in health care through racially biased, albeit unconscious, behaviors. Changing these behaviors requires that physicians accept that racial-ethnic disparities exist and accept their own contributions to disparities. The purposes of this study were to assess psychiatrists' awareness of racial disparities in mental health care, to evaluate the extent to which psychiatrists believe they contribute to disparities, and to determine psychiatrists' interest in participating in disparities-reduction programs. A random sample of psychiatrists, identified through the American Psychiatric Association's member directory, was invited to complete the online survey. The survey was also distributed to psychiatrists at a national professional conference. Of the 374 respondents, most said they were not familiar or only a little familiar with the literature on racial disparities. Respondents tended to believe that race has a moderate influence on quality of psychiatric care but that race is more influential in others' practices than in their own practices. One-fourth had participated in any type of disparities-reduction program within the past year, and approximately one-half were interested in participating in such a program. Psychiatrists may not recognize the pervasiveness of racial inequality in psychiatric care, and they may attribute racially biased thinking to others but not to themselves. Interventions to eliminate racial-ethnic disparities should focus on revealing and modifying unconscious biases. Lack of physician interest may be one barrier to such interventions.

Race-Based Health Disparities and the Digital Divide: Implications for Nursing Practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Price, Zula

2015-12-01

Knowledge of the sources of race-based health disparities could improve nursing practice and education in minority underserved communities. This purpose of this paper was to consider if Black-nonBlack health disparities were at least in part explained by Black-nonBlack disparities in access to Internet-based health information. With data on the U.S. adult population from the 2012 General Social Survey, the parameters of a health production function in which computer usage as an input was estimated. It was found that while there are Black-nonBlack disparities in health, once computer usage was accounted for, Black-nonBlack health disparities disappeared. This suggests nursing and health interventions that improve Internet access for Black patients in underserved communities could improve the health of Black Americans and close the racial health disparities gap. These findings complement recent nursing researchfindings that suggest closing Black-nonBlack disparities in computer access, the "digital divide," can render nursing practice more effective in providing care to minority and underserved communities.

Pulse-width discriminators

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Budyashov, Yu.G.; Grebenyuk, V.M.; Zinov, V.G.

1978-01-01

A pulse duration discriminator is described which is intended for processing signals from multilayer scintillators. The basic elements of the scintillator are: an input gate, a current generator, an integrating capacitor, a Schmidt trigger and an anticoincidence circuit. The basic circuit of the discriminator and its time diagrams explaining its operating are given. The discriminator is based on microcircuits. Pulse duration discrimination threshold changes continuously from 20 to 100 ns, while its amplitude threshold changes within 20 to 100 mV. The temperature instability of discrimination thresholds (both in pulse width and in amplitude) is better than 0.1 per cent/deg C

Lossless Compression of Stereo Disparity Maps for 3D

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Zamarin, Marco; Forchhammer, Søren

2012-01-01

Efficient compression of disparity data is important for accurate view synthesis purposes in multi-view communication systems based on the “texture plus depth” format, including the stereo case. In this paper a novel technique for lossless compression of stereo disparity images is presented...

Using temporal seeding to constrain the disparity search range in stereo matching

CSIR Research Space (South Africa)

Ndhlovu, T

2011-11-01

Full Text Available for reusing computed disparity estimates on features in a stereo image sequence to constrain the disparity search range. Features are detected on a left image and their disparity estimates are computed using a local-matching algorithm. The features...

Modifications of Surface Wave Discrimination Filter Based on the Polarization Properties

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kutlu, Y. A.; Sayil, N.

2007-01-01

The polarization properties of Love and Rayleigh waves are utilized to design Surface Wave Discrimination Filter. Filtering process for a selected window length and moving interval is that the amplitudes at each frequency on vertical, radial and transverse components are weighted according to how closely the theoretical three-dimensional particle motion pattern. In this study, weighted functions have been modified for epicenteral distances smaller than about 2200 km to corresponding with angular distribution of polarization parameters obtained from computed synthetic seismograms. Modified Surface Wave Discrimination Filter has been tested on synthetic seismograms and digital three-components broadband records at Trabzon earthquake station

Foreword: Big Data and Its Application in Health Disparities Research.

Science.gov (United States)

Onukwugha, Eberechukwu; Duru, O Kenrik; Peprah, Emmanuel

2017-01-01

The articles presented in this special issue advance the conversation by describing the current efforts, findings and concerns related to Big Data and health disparities. They offer important recommendations and perspectives to consider when designing systems that can usefully leverage Big Data to reduce health disparities. We hope that ongoing Big Data efforts can build on these contributions to advance the conversation, address our embedded assumptions, and identify levers for action to reduce health care disparities.

Optimal Fisher Discriminant Ratio for an Arbitrary Spatial Light Modulator

Science.gov (United States)

Juday, Richard D.

1999-01-01

Optimizing the Fisher ratio is well established in statistical pattern recognition as a means of discriminating between classes. I show how to optimize that ratio for optical correlation intensity by choice of filter on an arbitrary spatial light modulator (SLM). I include the case of additive noise of known power spectral density.

A Computational Discriminability Analysis on Twin Fingerprints

Science.gov (United States)

Liu, Yu; Srihari, Sargur N.

Sharing similar genetic traits makes the investigation of twins an important study in forensics and biometrics. Fingerprints are one of the most commonly found types of forensic evidence. The similarity between twins’ prints is critical establish to the reliability of fingerprint identification. We present a quantitative analysis of the discriminability of twin fingerprints on a new data set (227 pairs of identical twins and fraternal twins) recently collected from a twin population using both level 1 and level 2 features. Although the patterns of minutiae among twins are more similar than in the general population, the similarity of fingerprints of twins is significantly different from that between genuine prints of the same finger. Twins fingerprints are discriminable with a 1.5%~1.7% higher EER than non-twins. And identical twins can be distinguished by examine fingerprint with a slightly higher error rate than fraternal twins.

Unequal before the Law : Measuring Legal Gender Disparities across the World

OpenAIRE

Iqbal, Sarah; Islam, Asif; Ramalho, Rita; Sakhonchik, Alena

2016-01-01

Several economies have laws that treat women differently from men. This study explores the degree of such legal gender disparities across 167 economies around the world. This is achieved by constructing a simple measure of legal gender disparities to evaluate how countries perform. The average number of overall legal gender disparities across 167 economies is 17, ranging from a minimum of ...

Racial/ethnic disparity in obesity among US youth, 1999-2013.

Science.gov (United States)

An, Ruopeng

2015-11-04

One fundamental goal in the Healthy People 2020 is to achieve health equity and eliminate disparities. To examine the annual trends in racial/ethnic disparity in obesity among US youth from 1999 to 2013. Nationally representative sample of 108,811 students in grades 9th-12th from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) 1999-2013 surveys. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated based on self-reported height and weight. Obesity in youth is defined as BMI at or above 95th sex- and age-specific percentile of the 2000 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts. Multiple logistic regressions were conducted to estimate the annual prevalence of obesity by race/ethnicity, adjusted for gender and age group and accounted for the YRBSS survey design. Between-group variance (BGV) was used to measure absolute racial/ethnic disparity in obesity, and the mean log deviation (MLD) and the Theil Index (T) were used to measure relative racial/ethnic disparity in obesity, weighted by corresponding racial/ethnic population size. The obesity prevalence among non-Hispanic Whites, non-Hispanic African Americans, non-Hispanic other race or multi-race, and Hispanic increased from 10.05%, 12.31%, 10.25%, and 13.24% in 1999 to 13.14%, 15.76%, 10.87%, and 15.20% in 2013, respectively. Both absolute and relative racial/ethnic disparity in obesity increased initially since 1999 but then steadily declined starting from mid-2000s back to around its original level by 2013. The obesity epidemic in youth is marked by salient and persistent disparity pertaining to race/ethnicity. No improvement on racial/ethnic disparity in obesity among American youth was observed during 1999-2013.

Automated, high accuracy classification of Parkinsonian disorders: a pattern recognition approach.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andre F Marquand

Full Text Available Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP, multiple system atrophy (MSA and idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD can be clinically indistinguishable, especially in the early stages, despite distinct patterns of molecular pathology. Structural neuroimaging holds promise for providing objective biomarkers for discriminating these diseases at the single subject level but all studies to date have reported incomplete separation of disease groups. In this study, we employed multi-class pattern recognition to assess the value of anatomical patterns derived from a widely available structural neuroimaging sequence for automated classification of these disorders. To achieve this, 17 patients with PSP, 14 with IPD and 19 with MSA were scanned using structural MRI along with 19 healthy controls (HCs. An advanced probabilistic pattern recognition approach was employed to evaluate the diagnostic value of several pre-defined anatomical patterns for discriminating the disorders, including: (i a subcortical motor network; (ii each of its component regions and (iii the whole brain. All disease groups could be discriminated simultaneously with high accuracy using the subcortical motor network. The region providing the most accurate predictions overall was the midbrain/brainstem, which discriminated all disease groups from one another and from HCs. The subcortical network also produced more accurate predictions than the whole brain and all of its constituent regions. PSP was accurately predicted from the midbrain/brainstem, cerebellum and all basal ganglia compartments; MSA from the midbrain/brainstem and cerebellum and IPD from the midbrain/brainstem only. This study demonstrates that automated analysis of structural MRI can accurately predict diagnosis in individual patients with Parkinsonian disorders, and identifies distinct patterns of regional atrophy particularly useful for this process.

Racial/Ethnic Contrasts in the Relationships between Physical Disability, Perceived Discrimination, and Depressive Symptoms.

Science.gov (United States)

Kilpatrick, Quentin K; Taylor, John

2018-02-13

The systematic deprivation of equal access to valued opportunities has greatly harmed the disadvantaged. Discrimination, whether it is based on gender, race, sexual orientation, or physical health exacts a high toll. This is especially true with respect to the role of race and equality in the USA today. This paper attempts to evaluate the significance of perceived discrimination among a multiethnic sample of physically disabled and non-disabled study participants. We employ survey data from a community-based multiethnic sample of study participants to assess whether physical disability increases perceptions of discrimination across racial/ethnic groups. Additionally, we assess whether physical disability impacts the relationship between discrimination and depressive symptoms and whether this relationship is consistent across race/ethnicity. Descriptive and multivariate analyses indicate that disabled whites and Hispanics report higher levels of discrimination than their non-disabled counterparts. However, this pattern was not observed among black respondents who report high levels of discrimination regardless of their disability status. OLS models indicate that among Hispanics, physical disability moderates the relationship between discrimination and depressive symptoms. Among black and white study participants, physical disability does not moderate this relationship. Taken together, the results demonstrate the continuing significance of race as a source of discrimination and a health risk.

Male/Female Salary Disparity for Professors of Educational Administration.

Science.gov (United States)

Pounder, Diana G.

The earnings gap between male and female workers across all occupational groups has been well documented; full-time women workers earn, on average, approximately 65 percent of men's salaries. Although male/female salary disparity is largest across occupational groups, salary disparity within occupational groups still prevails. For example, the…

Increased Mental Health Treatment Financing, Community-Based Organization's Treatment Programs, and Latino-White Children's Financing Disparities.

Science.gov (United States)

Snowden, Lonnie R; Wallace, Neal; Cordell, Kate; Graaf, Genevieve

2017-09-01

Latino child populations are large and growing, and they present considerable unmet need for mental health treatment. Poverty, lack of health insurance, limited English proficiency, stigma, undocumented status, and inhospitable programming are among many factors that contribute to Latino-White mental health treatment disparities. Lower treatment expenditures serve as an important marker of Latino children's low rates of mental health treatment and limited participation once enrolled in services. We investigated whether total Latino-White expenditure disparities declined when autonomous, county-level mental health plans receive funds free of customary cost-sharing charges, especially when they capitalized on cultural and language-sensitive mental health treatment programs as vehicles to receive and spend treatment funds. Using Whites as benchmark, we considered expenditure pattern disparities favoring Whites over Latinos and, in a smaller number of counties, Latinos over Whites. Using segmented regression for interrupted time series on county level treatment systems observed over 64 quarters, we analyzed Medi-Cal paid claims for per-user total expenditures for mental health services delivered to children and youth (under 18 years of age) during a study period covering July 1, 1991 through June 30, 2007. Settlement-mandated Medicaid's Early Periodic Screening, Diagnosis and Treatment (EPSDT) expenditure increases began in the third quarter of 1995. Terms were introduced to assess immediate and long term inequality reduction as well as the role of culture and language-sensitive community-based programs. Settlement-mandated increased EPSDT treatment funding was associated with more spending on Whites relative to Latinos unless plans arranged for cultural and language-sensitive mental health treatment programs. However, having programs served more to prevent expenditure disparities from growing than to reduce disparities. EPSDT expanded funding increased proportional

75 FR 29357 - National Center on Minority and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meeting

Science.gov (United States)

2010-05-25

... and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meeting Pursuant to section 10(d) of the Federal Advisory... and Health Disparities Special NCMHD Health Disparities Research on Minority and Underserved... Health and Health Disparities, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 800, Bethesda, MD 20892. (301) 594-8696...

Hard and soft age discrimination: the dual nature of workplace discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Stypinska, Justyna; Turek, Konrad

2017-03-01

The paper concentrates on the problem of age discrimination in the labour market and the way it can be conceptualised and measured in a multi-disciplinary way. The approach proposed here combines two understandings of age discrimination-a sociological and legal one, what allows for a fuller and expanded understanding of ageism in the workplace. At the heart of the study is a survey carried out in Poland with a sample of 1000 men and women aged 45-65 years. The study takes a deeper and innovative look into the issue of age discrimination in employment. Confirmatory factor analysis with WLSMV estimation and logistic regressions were used to test the hypotheses. The study shows that age discrimination in labour market can take on different forms: hard and soft, where the hard type of age discrimination mirrors the legally prohibited types of behaviours and those which relate to the actual decisions of employers which can impact on the employee's career development. The soft discrimination corresponds with those occurrences, which are not inscribed in the legal system per se, are occurring predominantly in the interpersonal sphere, but can nevertheless have negative consequences. Soft discrimination was experienced more often (28.6% of respondents) than hard discrimination (15.7%) with higher occurrences among women, persons in precarious job situation or residents of urban areas. The role of education was not confirmed to influence the levels of perceived age discrimination.

Quantifying explainable discrimination and removing illegal discrimination in automated decision making

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kamiran, F.; Zliobaite, I.; Calders, T.G.K.

2013-01-01

Recently, the following discrimination-aware classification problem was introduced. Historical data used for supervised learning may contain discrimination, for instance, with respect to gender. The question addressed by discrimination-aware techniques is, given sensitive attribute, how to train

Optogenetic conditioning of paradigm and pattern discrimination in the rat somatosensory system.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kenta Abe

Full Text Available The rodent whisker-barrel cortical system is a model for studying somatosensory discrimination at high spatiotemporal precision. Here, we applied optogenetics to produce somatosensory inputs in the whisker area using one of transgenic rat lines, W-TChR2V4, which expresses channelrhodopsin-2 (ChR2 in the mechanoreceptive nerve endings around whisker follicles. An awake W-TChR2V4 rat was head-fixed and irradiated by blue LED light on the whisker area with a paradigm conditioned with a reward. The Go task was designed so the rat is allowed to receive a reward, when it licked the nozzle within 5 s after photostimulation. The No-go task was designed so as the rat has to withhold licking for at least 5 s to obtain a reward after photostimulation. The Go-task conditioning was established within 1 hr of training with a reduction in the reaction time and increase of the success rate. To investigate the relationship between the spatiotemporal pattern of sensory inputs and the behavioral output, we designed a multi-optical fiber system that irradiates the whisker area at 9 spots in a 3×3 matrix. Although the Go-task conditioning was established using synchronous irradiation of 9 spots, the success rate was decreased with an increase of the reaction time for the asynchronous irradiation. After conditioning to the Go task, the rat responded to the blue LED flash irradiated on the barrel cortex, where many neurons also express ChR2, or photostimulation of the contralateral whisker area with a similar reaction time and success rate. Synchronous activation of the peripheral mechanoreceptive nerves is suggested to drive a neural circuit in the somatosensory cortex that efficiently couples with the decision. Our optogenetic system would enable the precise evaluation of the psychophysical values, such as the reaction time and success rate, to gain some insight into the brain mechanisms underlying conditioned behaviors.

Finer discrimination of brain activation with local multivariate distance

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

无

2007-01-01

The organization of human brain function is diverse on different spatial scales.Various cognitive states are alwavs represented as distinct activity patterns across the specific brain region on fine scales.Conventional univariate analysis of functional MRI data seeks to determine how a particular cognitive state is encoded in brain activity by analyzing each voxel separately without considering the fine-scale patterns information contained in the local brain regions.In this paper,a local multivariate distance mapping(LMDM)technique is proposed to detect the brain activation and to map the fine-scale brain activity patterns.LMDM directly represents the local brain activity with the patterns across multiple voxels rather than individual voxels,and it employs the multivariate distance between different patterns to discriminate the brain state on fine scales.Experiments with simulated and real fMRI data demonstrate that LMDM technique can dramatically increase the sensitivity of the detection for the fine-scale brain activity pettems which contain the subtle information of the experimental conditions.

76 FR 63310 - National Center On Minority and Health Disparities Notice of Closed Meetings

Science.gov (United States)

2011-10-12

... and Health Disparities Notice of Closed Meetings Pursuant to section 10(d) of the Federal Advisory... and Health Disparities Special Emphasis Panel; NIMHD Health Disparities Research (R01). Date: November... Disparities, National Institutes of Health, 6707 Democracy Blvd., MSC. 5465, Suite 800, Bethesda, MD 20892...

Reaction Time and Self-Report Psychopathological Assessment: Convergent and Discriminant Validity.

Science.gov (United States)

Holden, Ronald R.; Fekken, G. Cynthia

The processing of incoming psychological information along the network, or schemata, of self-knowledge was studied to determine the convergent and discriminant validity of the patterns of schemata-specific response latencies. Fifty-three female and 52 male university students completed the Basic Personality Inventory (BPI). BPI scales assess…

Disparities in abortion experience and access to safe abortion ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

In Ghana, abortion mortality constitutes 11% of maternal mortality. Empirical studies on possible disparities in abortion experience and access to safe abortion services are however lacking. Based on a retrospective survey of 1,370 women aged 15-49 years in two districts in Ghana, this paper examines disparities in ...

Influence of Background Patterns in the Reverse Perspective Illusion

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Takefumi Hayashi

2011-05-01

Full Text Available The reverse perspective (RP illusion is classified as a motion illusion due to inverted depth perception, similar to the Mach book and hollow mask illusions. Distortional motion of a rigid object surface is observed when an observer moves in front of the object which has a texture pattern giving inverted perspective cues (RP object. In this research, we studied the influence of the background pattern of the RP objects on the strength of the illusion. To perform quantitative evaluation, a stereo computer-graphics technique was used. Computer generated right- and left-eye images of an RP object were shown separately to the subjects' eyes through a haploscope. Using a computer key board, they adjusted the binocular disparity of the stereo images so that depth inversion due to the surface texture occurs. We evaluated the strength of the illusion by the critical value of the disparity and found that the background texture is an important factor determining the strength of the RP illusion. Especially, the texture in the horizontal direction creates stronger depth inversion effect compared to the vertical pattern. Using our experimental system, the influences of various pictorial cues on the RP illusion can be studied quantitatively.

Examples of Cancer Health Disparities

Science.gov (United States)

... and the bacterium H. pylori (stomach cancer) in immigrant countries of origin contributes to these disparities. ( ACS ) ... Cancer.gov en español Multimedia Publications Site Map Digital Standards for NCI Websites POLICIES Accessibility Comment Policy ...

Socio-economic disparities in health system responsiveness in India.

Science.gov (United States)

Malhotra, Chetna; Do, Young Kyung

2013-03-01

To assess the magnitude of socio-economic disparities in health system responsiveness in India after correcting for potential reporting heterogeneity by socio-economic characteristics (education and wealth). Data from Wave 1 of the Study on Global Ageing and Adult Health (2007-2008) involving six Indian states were used. Seven health system responsiveness domains were considered for a respondent's last visit to an outpatient service in 12 months: prompt attention, dignity, clarity of information, autonomy, confidentiality, choice and quality of basic amenities. Hierarchical ordered probit models (correcting for reporting heterogeneity through anchoring vignettes) were used to assess the association of socio-economic characteristics with the seven responsiveness domains, controlling for age, gender and area of residence. Stratified analysis was also conducted among users of public and private health facilities. Our statistical models accounting for reporting heterogeneity revealed socio-economic disparities in all health system responsiveness domains. Estimates suggested that individuals from the lowest wealth group, for example, were less likely than individuals from the highest wealth group to report 'very good' on the dignity domain by 8% points (10% vs 18%). Stratified analysis showed that such disparities existed among users of both public and private health facilities. Socio-economic disparities exist in health system responsiveness in India, irrespective of the type of health facility used. Policy efforts to monitor and improve these disparities are required at the health system level.

Handling conditional discrimination

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zliobaite, I.; Kamiran, F.; Calders, T.G.K.

2011-01-01

Historical data used for supervised learning may contain discrimination. We study how to train classifiers on such data, so that they are discrimination free with respect to a given sensitive attribute, e.g., gender. Existing techniques that deal with this problem aim at removing all discrimination

Ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland: A field experiment.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Annamaria Öblom

Full Text Available Ethnic and gender discrimination in a variety of markets has been documented in several populations. We conducted an online field experiment to examine ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland. We sent 1459 inquiries regarding 800 apartments. We compared responses to standardized apartment inquiries including fictive Arabic-sounding, Finnish-sounding or Swedish-sounding female or male names. We found evidence of discrimination against Arabic-sounding names and male names. Inquiries including Arabic-sounding male names had the lowest probability of receiving a response, receiving a response to about 16% of the inquiries made, while Finnish-sounding female names received a response to 42% of the inquires. We did not find any evidence of the landlord's gender being associated with the discrimination pattern. The findings suggest that both ethnic and gender discrimination occur in the private rental housing market in Finland.

Ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland: A field experiment.

Science.gov (United States)

Öblom, Annamaria; Antfolk, Jan

2017-01-01

Ethnic and gender discrimination in a variety of markets has been documented in several populations. We conducted an online field experiment to examine ethnic and gender discrimination in the private rental housing market in Finland. We sent 1459 inquiries regarding 800 apartments. We compared responses to standardized apartment inquiries including fictive Arabic-sounding, Finnish-sounding or Swedish-sounding female or male names. We found evidence of discrimination against Arabic-sounding names and male names. Inquiries including Arabic-sounding male names had the lowest probability of receiving a response, receiving a response to about 16% of the inquiries made, while Finnish-sounding female names received a response to 42% of the inquires. We did not find any evidence of the landlord's gender being associated with the discrimination pattern. The findings suggest that both ethnic and gender discrimination occur in the private rental housing market in Finland.

Racial and ethnic disparities in U.S. cancer screening rates

Science.gov (United States)

The percentage of U.S. citizens screened for cancer remains below national targets, with significant disparities among racial and ethnic populations, according to the first federal study to identify cancer screening disparities among Asian and Hispanic gr

Analysis of correlation structure in Lymantria dispar L. larvae from locally adapted populations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mrdaković Marija

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The influence of allelochemical stress and population origin on the patterns of phenotypic and genetic correlations among life history traits and digestive enzyme activities were investigated in larvae of the gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar L.; Lepidoptera: Lymantriidae. Thirty-two full-sib families from oak (suitable host plant, Quercus population, and twenty-six full-sib families from locust-tree (unsuitable host plant, Robinia population forests were reared on an artificial diet, with or without a 5% tannic acid supplement. Comparison of correlation matrices revealed significant similarity between the two populations in the structure of phenotypic and genetic correlations of life history traits and of digestive enzyme activities. The patterns of correlations of the examined traits, within each of the two locally adapted populations and in the presence of allelochemical stress, remained stabile despite the different selection pressures that mold these traits. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 173027

Individual Difference Factors in the Learning and Transfer of Patterning Discriminations

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Elisa Maes

2017-07-01

Full Text Available In an associative patterning task, some people seem to focus more on learning an overarching rule, whereas others seem to focus on acquiring specific relations between the stimuli and outcomes involved. Building on earlier work, we further investigated which cognitive factors are involved in feature- vs. rule-based learning and generalization. To this end, we measured participants' tendency to generalize according to the rule of opposites after training on negative and positive patterning problems (i.e., A+/B+/AB− and C−/D−/CD+, their tendency to attend to global aspects or local details of stimuli, their systemizing disposition and their score on the Raven intelligence test. Our results suggest that while intelligence might have some influence on patterning learning and generalization, visual processing style and systemizing disposition do not. We discuss our findings in the light of previous observations on patterning.

January Monthly Spotlight: Cervical Health and Cervical Cancer Disparities

Science.gov (United States)

In January, CRCHD joins the nation in raising awareness for Cervical Health and Cervical Cancer Disparities. This month we share a special focus on NCI/CRCHD research programs that are trying to reduce cervical cancer disparities in underserved communities and the people who are spreading the word about the importance of early detection.

Limiter discriminator detection of M-ary FSK signals

Science.gov (United States)

Fonseka, John P.

1990-10-01

The performance of limiter discriminator detection of M-ary FSK signals is analyzed at arbitrary modulation indices. It is shown that the error rate performance of limiter discriminator detection can be significantly improved by increasing the modulation index above 1/M. The optimum modulation index that minimizes the overall error probability is determined for the cases M = 2, 4 and 8. The analysis is carried out for wideband and bandlimited channels with Gaussian and second-order Butterworth filters. It is shown that the optimum modulation index depends on the signal/noise ratio (SNR), in a wideband channel, and on both SNR and time-bandwidth product in a bandlimited channel. Finally, it is shown that the optimum sampling instance in presence of a nonzero phase IF filter can be approximately determined by using only the worst case symbol pattern.

The Effects of Hurricane Katrina on Food Access Disparities in New Orleans

Science.gov (United States)

Bodor, J. Nicholas; Rice, Janet C.; Swalm, Chris M.; Hutchinson, Paul L.

2011-01-01

Disparities in neighborhood food access are well documented, but little research exists on how shocks influence such disparities. We examined neighborhood food access in New Orleans at 3 time points: before Hurricane Katrina (2004–2005), in 2007, and in 2009. We combined existing directories with on-the-ground verification and geographic information system mapping to assess supermarket counts in the entire city. Existing disparities for African American neighborhoods worsened after the storm. Although improvements have been made, by 2009 disparities were no better than prestorm levels. PMID:21233432

Social Status Correlates of Reporting Racial Discrimination and Gender Discrimination among Racially Diverse Women

OpenAIRE

Ro, Annie E.; Choi, Kyung-Hee

2009-01-01

The growing body of research on discrimination and health indicates a deleterious effect of discrimination on various health outcomes. However, less is known about the sociodemographic correlates of reporting racial discrimination and gender discrimination among racially diverse women. We examined the associations of social status characteristics with lifetime experiences of racial discrimination and gender discrimination using a racially-diverse sample of 754 women attending family planning ...

Discrimination Increases Suicidal Ideation in Black Adolescents Regardless of Ethnicity and Gender

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Shervin Assari

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Background: Discrimination is a common experience for Blacks across various developmental periods. Although much is known about the effect of discrimination on suicidal ideation of adults, less is known about the same association in Black youth. Aim: We examined the association between discrimination and suicidal ideation in a national sample of Black youth. We also explored gender and ethnic differences in this association. Methods: We used data from the National Survey of American Life-Adolescents (NSAL-A, 2003–2004. In total, 1170 Black adolescents entered the study. This number was composed of 810 African American and 360 Caribbean Black youth (aged 13 to 17 years. Demographic and socioeconomic factors were controls, perceived discrimination was the predictor, and lifetime suicidal ideation was the outcome. Logistic regression was used to test the association between perceived discrimination and suicidal ideation in the pooled sample, as well as based on ethnicity and gender. Results: In the pooled sample of Black youth, higher perceived discrimination was associated with higher odds of suicidal ideation (Odds Ratio (OR = 1.09; 95% Confidence Interval (CI = 1.02−1.17. This association was significant net of age, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. We did not find interactions between perceived discrimination and ethnicity or gender on suicidal ideation. Perceived discrimination was associated with suicidal ideation in African Americans (CI = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.01−1.17 and Caribbean Blacks (CI = 1.16; 95% CI = 1.03−1.32, males (CI = 1.11; 95% CI = 1.00−1.25, and females (CI = 1.08; 95% CI = 1.00−1.16. Conclusion: Discrimination jeopardizes the mental health of Black youth. In a universal pattern, discrimination is associated with suicidal ideation in Black youth. More research is needed on this topic.

Discrimination Increases Suicidal Ideation in Black Adolescents Regardless of Ethnicity and Gender.

Science.gov (United States)

Assari, Shervin; Moghani Lankarani, Maryam; Caldwell, Cleopatra Howard

2017-11-06

Discrimination is a common experience for Blacks across various developmental periods. Although much is known about the effect of discrimination on suicidal ideation of adults, less is known about the same association in Black youth. We examined the association between discrimination and suicidal ideation in a national sample of Black youth. We also explored gender and ethnic differences in this association. We used data from the National Survey of American Life-Adolescents (NSAL-A), 2003-2004. In total, 1170 Black adolescents entered the study. This number was composed of 810 African American and 360 Caribbean Black youth (aged 13 to 17 years). Demographic and socioeconomic factors were controls, perceived discrimination was the predictor, and lifetime suicidal ideation was the outcome. Logistic regression was used to test the association between perceived discrimination and suicidal ideation in the pooled sample, as well as based on ethnicity and gender. In the pooled sample of Black youth, higher perceived discrimination was associated with higher odds of suicidal ideation (Odds Ratio (OR) = 1.09; 95% Confidence Interval (CI) = 1.02-1.17). This association was significant net of age, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status. We did not find interactions between perceived discrimination and ethnicity or gender on suicidal ideation. Perceived discrimination was associated with suicidal ideation in African Americans (CI = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.01-1.17) and Caribbean Blacks (CI = 1.16; 95% CI = 1.03-1.32), males (CI = 1.11; 95% CI = 1.00-1.25), and females (CI = 1.08; 95% CI = 1.00-1.16). Discrimination jeopardizes the mental health of Black youth. In a universal pattern, discrimination is associated with suicidal ideation in Black youth. More research is needed on this topic.

ECONOMIC CRISIS AND ECONOMIC DISPARITIES IN EUROPEAN UNION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rodica CRUDU

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The impact of the economic and financial crisis is still being felt. It started as an acute crisis of the banking system, but then quickly affected the real economy, causing a substantial slump in business investment, household demand and output. The current economic crisis has affected almost all European countries but the countries of the European south and the former eastern socialist republics have suffered the most. The objective in this paper is to quantify economic disparities as expressed by several growth indicators, such as GDP per capita, employment/unemployment rates, labour productivity rates and use them to compare the economic performances before and after the crisis. EU took several measures to recover from the economic crisis. Nevertheless, its ability to adjust to widely diverse national and local contexts that have been impacted differently by the effects of the crisis, and to support the different patterns of economic growth that will result from it, is yet to be seen.

Racial discrimination, gender discrimination, and substance abuse among Latina/os nationwide.

Science.gov (United States)

Otiniano Verissimo, Angie Denisse; Gee, Gilbert C; Ford, Chandra L; Iguchi, Martin Y

2014-01-01

This study investigates the relationship between discrimination and substance abuse among Latina/os, and further examines whether this relationship differs by gender and type of discrimination. Analyses focus on the Latina/o respondents (n = 1,039 men; n = 1,273 women) from the National Latino and Asian American Study carried out from 2002-2003. Outcomes were alcohol abuse and drug abuse measured using DSM-IV definitions and criteria. Additional covariates included immigrant characteristics and demographics. Analyses were completed using gender-stratified multinomial logistic regression. Men reported more discrimination (39.6% vs. 30.3%) and had higher prevalence of alcohol abuse (16.5% vs. 4.5%) and drug abuse (9.5% vs. 2.3%) than women. Discrimination was significantly associated with increased risk of alcohol abuse for women and increased risk of drug abuse for men. Men and women also varied in the types of discrimination (e.g., racial vs. gender) reported, and in the associations between these types of discrimination and substance abuse. These data indicate that discrimination is associated with different substance abuse outcomes between genders. Future research should consider the mechanisms that explain these differences.

Effect of Medicaid Managed Care on racial disparities in health care access.

Science.gov (United States)

Cook, Benjamin Lê

2007-02-01

To evaluate the impact of Medicaid Managed Care (MMC) on racial disparities in access to care consistent with the Institute of Medicine (IOM) definition of racial disparity, which excludes differences stemming from health status but includes socioeconomic status (SES)-mediated differences. Secondary data from the Adult Samples of the 1997-2001 National Health Interview Survey, metropolitan statistical area (MSA)-level Medicaid Health Maintenance Organization (MHMO) market share from the 1997 to 2001 InterStudy MSA Trend Dataset, and MSA characteristics from the 1997 to 2001 Area Resource File. I estimate multivariate regression models to compare racial disparities in doctor visits, emergency room (ER) use, and having a usual source of care between enrollees in MMC and Medicaid Fee-for-Service (FFS) plans. To contend with potential selection bias, I use a difference-in-difference analytical strategy and assess the impact of greater MHMO market share at the MSA level on Medicaid enrollees' access measures. To implement the IOM definition of racial disparity, I adjust for health status but not SES factors using a novel method to transform the distribution of health status for minority populations to approximate the white health status distribution. MMC enrollment is associated with lowered disparities in having any doctor visit in the last year for blacks, and in having any usual source of care for both blacks and Hispanics. Increasing Medicaid HMO market share lowered disparities in having any doctor visits in the last year for both blacks and Hispanics. Although disparities in most other measures were not much affected, black-white ER use disparities exist among MMC enrollees and in areas of high MHMO market share. MMC programs' reduction of some disparities suggests that recent shifts in Medicaid policy toward managed care plans have benefited minority enrollees. Future research should investigate whether black-white disparities in ER use within MMC groups

Optical Pattern Recognition

Science.gov (United States)

Yu, Francis T. S.; Jutamulia, Suganda

2008-10-01

Contributors; Preface; 1. Pattern recognition with optics Francis T. S. Yu and Don A. Gregory; 2. Hybrid neural networks for nonlinear pattern recognition Taiwei Lu; 3. Wavelets, optics, and pattern recognition Yao Li and Yunglong Sheng; 4. Applications of the fractional Fourier transform to optical pattern recognition David Mendlovic, Zeev Zalesky and Haldum M. Oxaktas; 5. Optical implementation of mathematical morphology Tien-Hsin Chao; 6. Nonlinear optical correlators with improved discrimination capability for object location and recognition Leonid P. Yaroslavsky; 7. Distortion-invariant quadratic filters Gregory Gheen; 8. Composite filter synthesis as applied to pattern recognition Shizhou Yin and Guowen Lu; 9. Iterative procedures in electro-optical pattern recognition Joseph Shamir; 10. Optoelectronic hybrid system for three-dimensional object pattern recognition Guoguang Mu, Mingzhe Lu and Ying Sun; 11. Applications of photrefractive devices in optical pattern recognition Ziangyang Yang; 12. Optical pattern recognition with microlasers Eung-Gi Paek; 13. Optical properties and applications of bacteriorhodopsin Q. Wang Song and Yu-He Zhang; 14. Liquid-crystal spatial light modulators Aris Tanone and Suganda Jutamulia; 15. Representations of fully complex functions on real-time spatial light modulators Robert W. Cohn and Laurence G. Hassbrook; Index.

Prioritizing health disparities in medical education to improve care

Science.gov (United States)

Awosogba, Temitope; Betancourt, Joseph R.; Conyers, F. Garrett; Estapé, Estela S.; Francois, Fritz; Gard, Sabrina J.; Kaufman, Arthur; Lunn, Mitchell R.; Nivet, Marc A.; Oppenheim, Joel D.; Pomeroy, Claire; Yeung, Howa

2015-01-01

Despite yearly advances in life-saving and preventive medicine, as well as strategic approaches by governmental and social agencies and groups, significant disparities remain in health, health quality, and access to health care within the United States. The determinants of these disparities include baseline health status, race and ethnicity, culture, gender identity and expression, socioeconomic status, region or geography, sexual orientation, and age. In order to renew the commitment of the medical community to address health disparities, particularly at the medical school level, we must remind ourselves of the roles of doctors and medical schools as the gatekeepers and the value setters for medicine. Within those roles are responsibilities toward the social mission of working to eliminate health disparities. This effort will require partnerships with communities as well as with academic centers to actively develop and to implement diversity and inclusion strategies. Besides improving the diversity of trainees in the pipeline, access to health care can be improved, and awareness can be raised regarding population-based health inequalities. PMID:23659676

Prioritizing health disparities in medical education to improve care.

Science.gov (United States)

Awosogba, Temitope; Betancourt, Joseph R; Conyers, F Garrett; Estapé, Estela S; Francois, Fritz; Gard, Sabrina J; Kaufman, Arthur; Lunn, Mitchell R; Nivet, Marc A; Oppenheim, Joel D; Pomeroy, Claire; Yeung, Howa

2013-05-01

Despite yearly advances in life-saving and preventive medicine, as well as strategic approaches by governmental and social agencies and groups, significant disparities remain in health, health quality, and access to health care within the United States. The determinants of these disparities include baseline health status, race and ethnicity, culture, gender identity and expression, socioeconomic status, region or geography, sexual orientation, and age. In order to renew the commitment of the medical community to address health disparities, particularly at the medical school level, we must remind ourselves of the roles of doctors and medical schools as the gatekeepers and the value setters for medicine. Within those roles are responsibilities toward the social mission of working to eliminate health disparities. This effort will require partnerships with communities as well as with academic centers to actively develop and to implement diversity and inclusion strategies. Besides improving the diversity of trainees in the pipeline, access to health care can be improved, and awareness can be raised regarding population-based health inequalities. © 2013 New York Academy of Sciences.

LABOR DISCRIMINATION IN BULGARIA

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vyara Slavyanska

2017-03-01

Full Text Available Labor discrimination is a phenomenon with very serious social and economic consequences, which has increased actuality and importance in Bulgaria nowadays. Because of the high price of discrimination, building effective anti-discrimination legislation occupies a special place in the policy of the European Union. Despite the European directives, the presence of anti-discrimination legislation and the broadly declared anti-discrimination inclinations in our country, these are absolutely not enough for providing environment of equality, with a climate of respect and tolerance to the differences. It turns out that certain groups are definitely victims of labor discrimination. In this connection the present article consecutively identifies these groups, as well as the reasons for their discrimination, underlining the necessity and benefits of the integration of the different.

Racial Disparities in Access to Care Under Conditions of Universal Coverage.

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Siddiqi, Arjumand A; Wang, Susan; Quinn, Kelly; Nguyen, Quynh C; Christy, Antony Dennis

2016-02-01

Racial disparities in access to regular health care have been reported in the U.S., but little is known about the extent of disparities in societies with universal coverage. To investigate the extent of racial disparities in access to care under conditions of universal coverage by observing the association between race and regular access to a doctor in Canada. Racial disparities in access to a regular doctor were calculated using the largest available source of nationally representative data in Canada--the Canadian Community Health Survey. Surveys from 2000-2010 were analyzed in 2014. Multinomial regression analyses predicted odds of having a regular doctor for each racial group compared to whites. Analyses were stratified by immigrant status--Canadian-born versus shorter-term immigrant versus longer-term immigrants--and controlled for sociodemographics and self-rated health. Racial disparities in Canada, a country with universal coverage, were far more muted than those previously reported in the U.S. Only among longer-term Latin American immigrants (OR=1.90, 95% CI=1.45, 2.08) and Canadian-born Aboriginals (OR=1.34, 95% CI=1.22, 1.47) were significant disparities noted. Among shorter-term immigrants, all Asians were more likely than whites, and among longer-term immigrants, South Asians were more like than whites, to have a regular doctor. Universal coverage may have a major impact on reducing racial disparities in access to health care, although among some subgroups, other factors may also play a role above and beyond health insurance. Copyright © 2016 American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Discrimination against teenagers in the mall environment: a case from Ankara, Turkey.

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Mugan, Guliz; Erkip, Feyzan

2009-01-01

Teenagers spend much of their leisure time at shopping malls which is a result of factors such as parental constraints due to the incivility of the streets, financial dependence, and limited financial resources. Migros, a shopping mall in Ankara was chosen as the site for this research with the main purpose of studying discrimination patterns against teenagers in the mall environment. The research was carried out through observation and in-depth interviews with 104 teenagers. Results indicate that, although they have some complaints, most of the teenagers do not perceive discrimination in the mall, unlike their foreign counterparts.

Identity threat at work: how social identity threat and situational cues contribute to racial and ethnic disparities in the workplace.

Science.gov (United States)

Emerson, Katherine T U; Murphy, Mary C

2014-10-01

Significant disparities remain between racial and ethnic minorities' and Whites' experiences of American workplaces. Traditional prejudice and discrimination approaches explain these gaps in hiring, promotion, satisfaction, and well-being by pointing to the prejudice of people within organizations such as peers, managers, and executives. Grounded in social identity threat theory, this theoretical review instead argues that particular situational cues-often communicated by well-meaning, largely unprejudiced employees and managers-signal to stigmatized groups whether their identity is threatened and devalued or respected and affirmed. First, we provide an overview of how identity threat shapes the psychological processes of racial and ethnic minorities by heightening vigilance to certain situational cues in the workplace. Next, we outline several of these cues and their role in creating and sustaining perceptions of identity threat (or safety). Finally, we provide empirically grounded suggestions that organizations may use to increase identity safety among their employees of color. Taken together, the research demonstrates how situational cues contribute to disparate psychological experiences for racial and ethnic minorities at work, and suggests that by altering threatening cues, organizations may create more equitable, respectful, and inclusive environments where all people may thrive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

The efficient neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination with small active volume scintillation detector

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Phan Van Chuan; Nguyen Duc Hoa; Nguyen Xuan Hai; Nguyen Ngoc Anh; Tuong Thi Thu Huong; Nguyen Nhi Dien; Pham Dinh Khang

2016-01-01

A small detector with EJ-301 liquid scintillation was manufactured for the study on the neutron-gamma pulse shape discrimination. In this research, four algorithms, including Threshold crossing time (TCT), Pulse gradient analysis (PGA), Charge comparison method (CCM), and Correlation pattern recognition (CPR) were developed and compared in terms of their discrimination effectiveness between neutrons and gamma rays. The figures of merits (FOMs) obtained for 100 ÷ 2000 keVee (keV energy electron equivalent) neutron energy range show the charge comparison method was the most efficient of the four algorithms. (author)

Discriminative analysis of Parkinson's disease based on whole-brain functional connectivity.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yongbin Chen

Full Text Available Recently, there has been an increasing emphasis on applications of pattern recognition and neuroimaging techniques in the effective and accurate diagnosis of psychiatric or neurological disorders. In the present study, we investigated the whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity patterns of Parkinson's disease (PD, which are expected to provide additional information for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of this disease. First, we computed the functional connectivity between each pair of 116 regions of interest derived from a prior atlas. The most discriminative features based on Kendall tau correlation coefficient were then selected. A support vector machine classifier was employed to classify 21 PD patients with 26 demographically matched healthy controls. This method achieved a classification accuracy of 93.62% using leave-one-out cross-validation, with a sensitivity of 90.47% and a specificity of 96.15%. The majority of the most discriminative functional connections were located within or across the default mode, cingulo-opercular and frontal-parietal networks and the cerebellum. These disease-related resting-state network alterations might play important roles in the pathophysiology of this disease. Our results suggest that analyses of whole-brain resting-state functional connectivity patterns have the potential to improve the clinical diagnosis and treatment evaluation of PD.

Memory as discrimination: what distraction reveals.

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Beaman, C Philip; Hanczakowski, Maciej; Hodgetts, Helen M; Marsh, John E; Jones, Dylan M

2013-11-01

Recalling information involves the process of discriminating between relevant and irrelevant information stored in memory. Not infrequently, the relevant information needs to be selected from among a series of related possibilities. This is likely to be particularly problematic when the irrelevant possibilities not only are temporally or contextually appropriate, but also overlap semantically with the target or targets. Here, we investigate the extent to which purely perceptual features that discriminate between irrelevant and target material can be used to overcome the negative impact of contextual and semantic relatedness. Adopting a distraction paradigm, it is demonstrated that when distractors are interleaved with targets presented either visually (Experiment 1) or auditorily (Experiment 2), a within-modality semantic distraction effect occurs; semantically related distractors impact upon recall more than do unrelated distractors. In the semantically related condition, the number of intrusions in recall is reduced, while the number of correctly recalled targets is simultaneously increased by the presence of perceptual cues to relevance (color features in Experiment 1 or speaker's gender in Experiment 2). However, as is demonstrated in Experiment 3, even presenting semantically related distractors in a language and a sensory modality (spoken Welsh) distinct from that of the targets (visual English) is insufficient to eliminate false recalls completely or to restore correct recall to levels seen with unrelated distractors . Together, the study shows how semantic and nonsemantic discriminability shape patterns of both erroneous and correct recall.

Comparing gender discrimination and inequality in indie and traditional publishing.

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Weinberg, Dana B; Kapelner, Adam

2018-01-01

In traditional publishing, female authors' titles command nearly half (45%) the price of male authors' and are underrepresented in more prestigious genres, and books are published by publishing houses, which determined whose books get published, subject classification, and retail price. In the last decade, the growth of digital technologies and sales platforms have enabled unprecedented numbers of authors to bypass publishers to publish and sell books. The rise of indie publishing (aka self-publishing) reflects the growth of the "gig" economy, where the influence of firms has diminished and workers are exposed more directly to external markets. Encompassing the traditional and the gig economy, the book industry illuminates how the gig economy may disrupt, replicate, or transform the gender discrimination mechanisms and inequality found in the traditional economy. In a natural experiment spanning from 2002 to 2012 and including over two million book titles, we compare discrimination mechanisms and inequality in indie and traditional publishing. We find that indie publishing, though more egalitarian, largely replicates traditional publishing's gender discrimination patterns, showing an unequal distribution of male and female authors by genre (allocative discrimination), devaluation of genres written predominantly by female authors (valuative discrimination), and lower prices within genres for books by female authors (within-job discrimination). However, these discrimination mechanisms are associated with far less price inequality in indie, only 7%, in large part due to the smaller and lower range of prices in indie publishing compared to traditional publishing. We conclude that, with greater freedom, workers in the gig economy may be inclined to greater equality but will largely replicate existing labor market segmentation and the lower valuation of female-typical work and of female workers. Nonetheless, price setting for work may be more similar for workers in the

Set discrimination of quantum states

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Shengyu; Ying Mingsheng

2002-01-01

We introduce a notion of set discrimination, which is an interesting extension of quantum state discrimination. A state is secretly chosen from a number of quantum states, which are partitioned into some disjoint sets. A set discrimination is required to identify which set the given state belongs to. Several essential problems are addressed in this paper, including the condition of perfect set discrimination, unambiguous set discrimination, and in the latter case, the efficiency of the discrimination. This generalizes some important results on quantum state discrimination in the literature. A combination of state and set discrimination and the efficiency are also studied

Racial/ethnic and gender differences in the association between self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination and inflammation in the CARDIA cohort of 4 US communities.

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Cunningham, Timothy J; Seeman, Teresa E; Kawachi, Ichiro; Gortmaker, Steven L; Jacobs, David R; Kiefe, Catarina I; Berkman, Lisa F

2012-09-01

Inflammation is etiologically implicated in cardiometabolic diseases for which there are known racial/ethnic disparities. Prior studies suggest there may be an association between self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination and inflammation, particularly C-reactive protein (CRP). It is not known whether that association is influenced by race/ethnicity and gender. In separate hierarchical linear models with time-varying covariates, we examined that association among 901 Black women, 614 Black men, 958 White women, and 863 White men in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study in four US communities. Self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination were ascertained in 1992-93 and 2000-01. Inflammation was measured as log-transformed CRP in those years and 2005-06. All analyses were adjusted for blood pressure, plasma total cholesterol, triglycerides, homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (HOMA-IR), age, education, and community. Our findings extend prior research by suggesting that, broadly speaking, self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination are associated with inflammation; however, this association is complex and varies for Black and White women and men. Black women reporting 1 or 2 experiences of discrimination had higher levels of CRP compared to Black women reporting no experiences of discrimination (β = 0.141, SE = 0.062, P women reporting 3 or more experiences of discrimination and not independent of modifiable risks (smoking and obesity) in the final model. White women reporting 3 or more experiences of discrimination had significantly higher levels of CRP compared to White women reporting no experiences of discrimination independent of modifiable risks in the final model (β = 0.300, SE = 0.113, P discrimination and CRP was not statistically significant among Black and White men reporting 1 or 2 experiences of discrimination. Further research in other populations is needed

Discrimination and delusional ideation.

Science.gov (United States)

Janssen, I; Hanssen, M; Bak, M; Bijl, R V; de Graaf, R; Vollebergh, W; McKenzie, K; van Os, J

2003-01-01

In the UK and The Netherlands, people with high rates of psychosis are chronically exposed to discrimination. To test whether perceived discrimination is associated longitudinally with onset of psychosis. A 3-year prospective study of cohorts with no history of psychosis and differential rates of reported discrimination on the basis of age, gender, disability, appearance, skin colour or ethnicity and sexual orientation was conducted in the Dutch general population (n=4076). The main outcome was onset of psychotic symptoms (delusions and hallucinations). The rate of delusional ideation was 0.5% (n=19) in those who did not report discrimination, 0.9% (n=4) in those who reported discrimination in one domain, and 2.7% (n=3) in those who reported discrimination in more than one domain (exact P=0.027). This association remained after adjustment for possible confounders. No association was found between baseline discrimination and onset of hallucinatory experiences. Perceived discrimination may induce delusional ideation and thus contribute to the high observed rates of psychotic disorder in exposed minority populations.

Depression in Racial and Ethnic Minorities: the Impact of Nativity and Discrimination.

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Budhwani, Henna; Hearld, Kristine Ria; Chavez-Yenter, Daniel

2015-03-01

This research examines factors associated with lifetime major depressive disorder in racial and ethnic minorities residing in the USA, with an emphasis on the impact of nativity, discrimination, and health lifestyle behaviors. The Healthy Migrant Effect and Health Lifestyle Theory were used to inform the design of this project. The use of these frameworks not only provides insightful results but also expands their application in mental health disparities research. Logistic regression models were implemented to examine risk factors associated with lifetime major depressive disorder, comparing immigrants to their American-born counterparts as well as to American-born Whites. Data were derived from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (n = 17,249). Support was found for the hypothesis that certain immigrants, specifically Asian and Afro-Caribbean, have lower odds of depression as compared their non-immigrant counterparts. Although, Hispanic immigrants directionally had lower odds of depression, this finding was not statistically significant. Furthermore, engaging in excessive alcohol consumption was associated with higher rates of depression (odds ratio (OR) = 2.09, p < 0.001), and the effect of discrimination on depression was found to be significant, even when controlling for demographics. Of all racial and ethnic groups, foreign-born Afro-Caribbeans had the lowest rate of depression at 7 % followed by foreign-born Asians at 8 %.

Abnormal hubs of white matter networks in the frontal-parieto circuit contribute to depression discrimination via pattern classification.

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Qin, Jiaolong; Wei, Maobin; Liu, Haiyan; Chen, Jianhuai; Yan, Rui; Hua, Lingling; Zhao, Ke; Yao, Zhijian; Lu, Qing

2014-12-01

Previous studies had explored the diagnostic and prognostic value of the structural neuroimaging data of MDD and treated the whole brain voxels, the fractional anisotropy and the structural connectivity as classification features. To our best knowledge, no study examined the potential diagnostic value of the hubs of anatomical brain networks in MDD. The purpose of the current study was to provide an exploratory examination of the potential diagnostic and prognostic values of hubs of white matter brain networks in MDD discrimination and the corresponding impaired hub pattern via a multi-pattern analysis. We constructed white matter brain networks from 29 depressions and 30 healthy controls based on diffusion tensor imaging data, calculated nodal measures and identified hubs. Using these measures as features, two types of feature architectures were established, one only included hubs (HUB) and the other contained both hubs and non hubs. The support vector machine classifiers with Gaussian radial basis kernel were used after the feature selection. Moreover, the relative contribution of the features was estimated by means of the consensus features. Our results presented that the hubs (including the bilateral dorsolateral part of superior frontal gyrus, the left middle frontal gyrus, the bilateral middle temporal gyrus, and the bilateral inferior temporal gyrus) played an important role in distinguishing the depressions from healthy controls with the best accuracy of 83.05%. Moreover, most of the HUB consensus features located in the frontal-parieto circuit. These findings provided evidence that the hubs could be served as valuable potential diagnostic measure for MDD, and the hub-concentrated lesion distribution of MDD was primarily anchored within the frontal-parieto circuit. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Gender disparities in completing school education in India: Analyzing regional variations

OpenAIRE

Husain, Zakir

2010-01-01

Is gender disparity greater in North India? This paper seeks to answer this question by examining gender differences in probability of completing school education across regions in India. A Gender Disparity Index is calculated using National Sample Survey Organization unit level data from the 61st Round and regional variations in this index analyzed to examine the hypothesis that gender disparity is greater in the North, comparative to the rest of India. This is followed by an econometric exe...

Contribution of screening and survival differences to racial disparities in colorectal cancer rates

Science.gov (United States)

Lansdorp-Vogelaar, Iris; Kuntz, Karen M.; Knudsen, Amy B.; van Ballegooijen, Marjolein; Zauber, Ann G.; Jemal, Ahmedin

2012-01-01

Background Considerable disparities exist in colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence and mortality rates between blacks and whites in the US. We estimated how much of these disparities could be explained by differences in CRC screening and stage-specific relative CRC survival. Methods We used the MISCAN-Colon microsimulation model to estimate CRC incidence and mortality rates in blacks aged 50 years and older from 1975 to 2007 assuming they had: 1) the same trends in screening rates as whites instead of observed screening rates (incidence and mortality); and 2) the same trends in stage-specific relative CRC survival rates as whites instead of observed (mortality only); and 3) a combination of both. The racial disparities in CRC incidence and mortality rates attributable to differences in screening and/or stage-specific relative CRC survival were then calculated by comparing rates from these scenarios to the observed black rates. Results Differences in screening account for 42% of disparity in CRC incidence and 19% of disparity in CRC mortality between blacks and whites. 36% of the disparity in CRC mortality could be attributed to differences in stage-specific relative CRC survival. Together screening and survival explained a little over 50% of the disparity in CRC mortality between blacks and whites. Conclusion Differences in screening and relative CRC survival are responsible for a considerable proportion of the observed disparities in CRC incidence and mortality rates between blacks and whites. Impact Enabling blacks to achieve equal access to care as whites could substantially reduce the racial disparities in CRC burden. PMID:22514249

Variable disparity-motion estimation based fast three-view video coding

Science.gov (United States)

Bae, Kyung-Hoon; Kim, Seung-Cheol; Hwang, Yong Seok; Kim, Eun-Soo

2009-02-01

In this paper, variable disparity-motion estimation (VDME) based 3-view video coding is proposed. In the encoding, key-frame coding (KFC) based motion estimation and variable disparity estimation (VDE) for effectively fast three-view video encoding are processed. These proposed algorithms enhance the performance of 3-D video encoding/decoding system in terms of accuracy of disparity estimation and computational overhead. From some experiments, stereo sequences of 'Pot Plant' and 'IVO', it is shown that the proposed algorithm's PSNRs is 37.66 and 40.55 dB, and the processing time is 0.139 and 0.124 sec/frame, respectively.

75 FR 66114 - National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meeting

Science.gov (United States)

2010-10-27

... Health and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meeting Pursuant to section 10(d) of the Federal Advisory... and Health Disparities Special Emphasis Panel; NCMHD Health Disparities Research on Minority and... Review Officer, National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, 6707 Democracy Boulevard...

75 FR 12766 - National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meetings

Science.gov (United States)

2010-03-17

... Health and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meetings Pursuant to section 10(d) of the Federal... and Health Disparities Special Emphasis Panel Loan Repayment Program for Health Disparities Research... Review, National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 800...

The Effects of Static and Dynamic Visual Representations as Aids for Primary School Children in Tasks of Auditory Discrimination of Sound Patterns. An Intervention-based Study.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jesus Tejada

2018-02-01

Full Text Available It has been proposed that non-conventional presentations of visual information could be very useful as a scaffolding strategy in the learning of Western music notation. As a result, this study has attempted to determine if there is any effect of static and dynamic presentation modes of visual information in the recognition of sound patterns. An intervention-based quasi-experimental design was adopted with two groups of fifth-grade students in a Spanish city. Students did tasks involving discrimination, auditory recognition and symbolic association of the sound patterns with non-musical representations, either static images (S group, or dynamic images (D group. The results showed neither statistically significant differences in the scores of D and S, nor influence of the covariates on the dependent variable, although statistically significant intra-group differences were found for both groups. This suggests that both types of graphic formats could be effective as digital learning mediators in the learning of Western musical notation.

Place of birth effects on self-reported discrimination: Variations by type of discrimination.

Science.gov (United States)

Brondolo, Elizabeth; Rahim, Reanne; Grimaldi, Stephanie; Ashraf, Amina; Bui, Nini; Schwartz, Joseph

2015-11-01

Researchers have suggested that perceptions of discrimination may vary depending on place of birth and the length of time spent living in the U.S., variables related to acculturation. However, the existing literature provides a mixed picture, with data suggesting that the effects of acculturation on perceptions of discrimination vary by race and other sociodemographic factors. This study evaluated the role of place of birth (POB: defined as U.S.-born vs. foreign-born), age at immigration, and length of residence in the U.S. on self-reported discrimination in a sample of urban-dwelling Asian and Black adults (n= 1454). Analyses examined POB effects on different types of discrimination including race-related stigmatization, exclusion, threat, and workplace discrimination. Sociodemographic variables (including age, gender, employment status and education level) were tested as potential moderators of the relationship between POB and discrimination. The results revealed a significant main effect for POB on discrimination, with U.S.-born individuals reporting significantly more discrimination than foreign-born individuals, although the effect was reduced when sociodemographic variables were controlled. Across the sample, POB effects were seen only for race-related stigmatization and exclusion, not for threat and workplace discrimination. With the exception of limited effects for gender, sociodemographic variables did not moderate these effects. Younger age at immigration and greater years of residence in the U.S. were also positively associated with higher levels of perceived discrimination. These findings suggest increasing acculturation may shape the experience and perception of racial and ethnic discrimination.

Place of birth effects on self-reported discrimination: Variations by type of discrimination

Science.gov (United States)

Brondolo, Elizabeth; Rahim, Reanne; Grimaldi, Stephanie; Ashraf, Amina; Bui, Nini; Schwartz, Joseph

2016-01-01

Researchers have suggested that perceptions of discrimination may vary depending on place of birth and the length of time spent living in the U.S., variables related to acculturation. However, the existing literature provides a mixed picture, with data suggesting that the effects of acculturation on perceptions of discrimination vary by race and other sociodemographic factors. This study evaluated the role of place of birth (POB: defined as U.S.-born vs. foreign-born), age at immigration, and length of residence in the U.S. on self-reported discrimination in a sample of urban-dwelling Asian and Black adults (n= 1454). Analyses examined POB effects on different types of discrimination including race-related stigmatization, exclusion, threat, and workplace discrimination. Sociodemographic variables (including age, gender, employment status and education level) were tested as potential moderators of the relationship between POB and discrimination. The results revealed a significant main effect for POB on discrimination, with U.S.-born individuals reporting significantly more discrimination than foreign-born individuals, although the effect was reduced when sociodemographic variables were controlled. Across the sample, POB effects were seen only for race-related stigmatization and exclusion, not for threat and workplace discrimination. With the exception of limited effects for gender, sociodemographic variables did not moderate these effects. Younger age at immigration and greater years of residence in the U.S. were also positively associated with higher levels of perceived discrimination. These findings suggest increasing acculturation may shape the experience and perception of racial and ethnic discrimination. PMID:27647943

Racial disparities in the use of outpatient mastectomy.

Science.gov (United States)

Salasky, Vanessa; Yang, Rachel L; Datta, Jashodeep; Graves, Holly L; Cintolo, Jessica A; Meise, Chelsey; Karakousis, Giorgos C; Czerniecki, Brian J; Kelz, Rachel R

2014-01-01

Racial disparities exist within many domains of cancer care. This study was designed to identify differences in the use of outpatient mastectomy (OM) based on patient race. We identified patients in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Participant Use File (during the years 2007-2010) who underwent a mastectomy. The association between mastectomy setting, patient race, patient age, American Society of Anesthesiology physical status classification, functional status, mastectomy type, and hospital teaching status was determined using the chi-square test. A multivariable logistic regression analysis was developed to assess the relative odds of undergoing OM by race, with adjustment for potential confounders. We identified 47,318 patients enrolled in the American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program Participant Use File who underwent a mastectomy during the study time frame. More than half (62.6%) of mastectomies were performed in the outpatient setting. All racial minorities had lower rates of OM, with 63.8% of white patients; 59.1% of black patients; 57.4% of Asian, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander patients; and 43.9% of American Indian or Alaska Native patients undergoing OM (P black patients, American Indian or Alaska Native patients, and those of unknown race were all less likely to undergo OM (odds ratio [OR], 0.86; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.80-0.93; OR, 0.55; 95% CI, 0.41-0.72; and OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.64-0.76, respectively) compared with white patients. Disparities exist in the use of OM among racial minorities. Further studies are needed to identify the role of cultural preferences, physician attitudes, and insurer encouragements that may influence these patterns of use. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Disparities in criminal court referrals to drug treatment and prison for minority men.

Science.gov (United States)

Nicosia, Nancy; Macdonald, John M; Arkes, Jeremy

2013-06-01

We investigated the extent to which racial/ethnic disparities in prison and diversion to drug treatment were explained by current arrest and criminal history characteristics among drug-involved offenders, and whether those disparities decreased after California's Proposition 36, which mandated first- and second-time nonviolent drug offenders drug treatment instead of prison. We analyzed administrative data on approximately 170,000 drug-involved arrests in California between 1995 and 2005. We examined odds ratios from logistic regressions for prison and diversion across racial/ethnic groups before and after Proposition 36. We found significant disparities in prison and diversion for Blacks and Hispanics relative to Whites. These disparities decreased after controlling for current arrest and criminal history characteristics for Blacks. Proposition 36 was also associated with a reduction in disparities, but more so for Hispanics than Blacks. Disparities in prison and diversion to drug treatment among drug-involved offenders affect hundreds of thousands of citizens and might reinforce imbalances in criminal justice and health outcomes. Our study indicated that standardized criminal justice policies that improved access to drug treatment might contribute to alleviating some share of these disparities.

Feminist intersectionality: bringing social justice to health disparities research.

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Rogers, Jamie; Kelly, Ursula A

2011-05-01

The principles of autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice are well established ethical principles in health research. Of these principles, justice has received less attention by health researchers. The purpose of this article is to broaden the discussion of health research ethics, particularly the ethical principle of justice, to include societal considerations--who and what are studied and why?--and to critique current applications of ethical principles within this broader view. We will use a feminist intersectional approach in the context of health disparities research to firmly establish inseparable links between health research ethics, social action, and social justice. The aim is to provide an ethical approach to health disparities research that simultaneously describes and seeks to eliminate health disparities. © The Author(s) 2011

75 FR 9421 - National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meeting

Science.gov (United States)

2010-03-02

... Health and Health Disparities; Notice of Closed Meeting Pursuant to section 10(d) of the Federal Advisory... and Health Disparities Special Emphasis Panel; Loan Repayment Program for Health Disparities Research..., National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, 6707 Democracy Boulevard, Suite 800, Bethesda...

Solving Disparities Through Payment And Delivery System Reform: A Program To Achieve Health Equity.

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DeMeester, Rachel H; Xu, Lucy J; Nocon, Robert S; Cook, Scott C; Ducas, Andrea M; Chin, Marshall H

2017-06-01

Payment systems generally do not directly encourage or support the reduction of health disparities. In 2013 the Finding Answers: Solving Disparities through Payment and Delivery System Reform program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sought to understand how alternative payment models might intentionally incorporate a disparities-reduction component to promote health equity. A qualitative analysis of forty proposals to the program revealed that applicants generally did not link payment reform tightly to disparities reduction. Most proposed general pay-for-performance, global payment, or shared savings plans, combined with multicomponent system interventions. None of the applicants proposed making any financial payments contingent on having successfully reduced disparities. Most applicants did not address how they would optimize providers' intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to reduce disparities. A better understanding of how payment and care delivery models might be designed and implemented to reduce health disparities is essential. Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.

Disparities in children’s vocabulary and height in relation to household wealth and parental schooling: A longitudinal study in four low- and middle-income countries

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sarah A. Reynolds

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Children from low socio-economic status (SES households often demonstrate worse growth and developmental outcomes than wealthier children, in part because poor children face a broader range of risk factors. It is difficult to characterize the trajectories of SES disparities in low- and middle-income countries because longitudinal data are infrequently available. We analyze measures of children’s linear growth (height at ages 1, 5, 8 and 12y and receptive language (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test at ages 5, 8 and 12y in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam in relation to household SES, measured by parental schooling or household assets. We calculate children’s percentile ranks within the distributions of height-for-age z-scores and of age- and language-standardized receptive vocabulary scores. We find that children in the top quartile of household SES are taller and have better language performance than children in the bottom quartile; differences in vocabulary scores between children with high and low SES are larger than differences in the height measure. For height, disparities in SES are present by age 1y and persist as children age. For vocabulary, SES disparities also emerge early in life, but patterns are not consistent across age; for example, SES disparities are constant over time in India, widen between 5 and 12y in Ethiopia, and narrow in this age range in Vietnam and Peru. Household characteristics (such as mother’s height, age, and ethnicity, and community fixed effects explain most of the disparities in height and around half of the disparities in vocabulary. We also find evidence that SES disparities in height and language development may not be fixed over time, suggesting opportunities for policy and programs to address these gaps early in life.

Translating Research into Policy: Reducing Breast Cancer Disparities in Illinois

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Dr. Carol Ferrans is internationally recognized for her work in disparities in health care and quality of life outcomes. She has a distinguished record of research that includes major grants funded by three institutes of the National Institutes of Health (National Cancer Institute, National Institute for Minority Health and Health Disparities, and National Institute for Nursing Research).    Dr. Ferrans’ work has been instrumental in reducing the disparity in breast cancer mortality Chicago, which at its peak was among the worst in the nation.  Efforts led by Dr. Ferrans and colleagues led directly to statewide legislation, to address the multifaceted causes of black/white disparity in deaths from breast cancer.  She was one of the founders of the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force (MCBCTF), leading the team focusing on barriers to mammography screening, to identify reasons for the growing disparity in breast cancer mortality. Their findings (citing Ferrans’ research and others) and recommendations for action were translated directly into the Illinois Reducing Breast Cancer Disparities Act and two additional laws strengthening the Act.  These laws and other statewide efforts have improved access to screening and quality of mammography throughout the Illinois. In addition, Dr. Ferrans and her team identified cultural beliefs contributing to later stage diagnosis of breast cancer in African American and Latino women in Chicago, and most importantly, showed that these beliefs can be changed.  They reached more than 8,000 African American women in Chicago with a short film on DVD, which was effective in changing beliefs and promoting screening.  Her team’s published findings were cited by the American Cancer Society in their guidelines for breast cancer screening.  The Chicago black/white disparity in breast cancer deaths has decreased by 35% since the MCBCTF first released its report, according to data from the Illinois Department of Public

Gender Discrimination in Death Reportage: Reconnoitering Disparities through a Comparative Analysis of Male and Female Paid Obituaries of Pakistani English Newspapers

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Chaudhry, Sajid M.; Christopher, Anne A.; Krishnasamy, Hariharan A/L N.

2014-01-01

The study examines the issue of gender discrimination in the post death scenario of obituarial discourse. It aims to identify the way Pakistani newspaper obituaries recognize and project males and females after their deaths. A total of 601 paid obituaries published in a year's time span in Pakistani English newspapers were evaluated for the…

Perceived Discrimination, Social Support, and Quality of Life in Gender Dysphoria.

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Başar, Koray; Öz, Gökhan; Karakaya, Jale

2016-07-01

Transgender individuals experience discrimination in all domains of their personal and social life. Discrimination is believed to be associated with worse quality of life (QoL). To investigate the relation between QoL and perceived levels of discrimination and social support in individuals with gender dysphoria (GD). Individuals with GD who attended a psychiatry clinic from January 2012 through December 2014 were recruited. Demographic, social, and medical transition features were collected with standardized forms. Self-report measurements of QoL (Turkish version of the World Health Organization's Quality of Life-BREF) that included physical, psychological, social, and environmental domains, perceived discrimination with personal and group subscales (Perceived Discrimination Scale [PDS]), and social support (Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support) were completed. Ninety-four participants (76.6% trans men) adequately completed the study measurements. Regression models with each QoL domain score as a dependent variable indicated a significant predictor value of personal PDS in social and environmental QoL. Social support from family was associated with better QoL in psychological QoL, whereas perceived support from friends significantly predicted all other domains of QoL. There was a tendency for group PDS to be rated higher than personal PDS, suggesting personal vs group discrimination discrepancy. However, group PDS was not found to be a predictor of QoL in the multivariate model. Perceived personal discrimination and social support from different sources predicted domains of QoL with a non-uniform pattern in individuals with GD. Social support and discrimination were found to have opposing contributions to QoL in GD. The present findings emphasize the necessity of addressing discrimination and social support in clinical work with GD. Moreover, strategies to improve and strengthen friend and family support for individuals with GD should be explored by

A Defense of the Reagan Administration's Civil Rights Policies: An Interview with Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, William Bradford Reynolds.

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New Perspectives, 1984

1984-01-01

The Assistant Attorney General asserts that it is wrong and naive to equate discrimination with economic disparity and to say that because there is an economic disparity between Whites and Blacks, it is due to discrimination against the latter group. (Author/GC)

Can universal coverage eliminate health disparities? Reversal of disparate injury outcomes in elderly insured minorities.

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Ramirez, Michelle; Chang, David C; Rogers, Selwyn O; Yu, Peter T; Easterlin, Molly; Coimbra, Raul; Kobayashi, Leslie

2013-06-15

Health outcome disparities in racial minorities are well documented. However, it is unknown whether such disparities exist among elderly injured patients. We hypothesized that such disparities might be reduced in the elderly owing to insurance coverage under Medicare. We investigated this issue by comparing the trauma outcomes in young and elderly patients in California. A retrospective analysis of the California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development hospital discharge database was performed for all publicly available years from 1995 to 2008. Trauma admissions were identified by International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision, primary diagnosis codes from 800 to 959, with certain exclusions. Multivariate analysis examined the adjusted risk of in-hospital mortality in young (<65 y) and elderly (≥65 y) patients, controlling for age, gender, injury severity as measured by the survival risk ratio, Charlson comorbidity index, insurance status, calendar year, and teaching hospital status. A total of 1,577,323 trauma patients were identified. Among the young patients, the adjusted odds ratio of death relative to non-Hispanic whites for blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and Native Americans/others was 1.2, 1.2, 0.90, and 0.78, respectively. The corresponding adjusted odds ratios of death for elderly patients were 0.78, 0.87, 0.92, and 0.61. Young black and Hispanic trauma patients had greater mortality risks relative to non-Hispanic white patients. Interestingly, elderly black and Hispanic patients had lower mortality risks compared with non-Hispanic whites. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Trust in physicians and racial disparities in HIV care.

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Saha, Somnath; Jacobs, Elizabeth A; Moore, Richard D; Beach, Mary Catherine

2010-07-01

Mistrust among African Americans is often considered a potential source of racial disparities in HIV care. We sought to determine whether greater trust in one's provider among African-American patients mitigates racial disparities. We analyzed data from 1,104 African-American and 201 white patients participating in a cohort study at an urban, academic HIV clinic between 2005 and 2008. African Americans expressed lower levels of trust in their providers than did white patients (8.9 vs. 9.4 on a 0-10 scale; p African Americans were also less likely than whites to be receiving antiretroviral therapy (ART) when eligible (85% vs. 92%; p = 0.02), to report complete ART adherence over the prior 3 days (83% vs. 89%; p = 0.005), and to have a suppressed viral load (40% vs. 47%; p = 0.04). Trust in one's provider was not associated with receiving ART or with viral suppression but was significantly associated with adherence. African Americans who expressed less than complete trust in their providers (0-9 of 10) had lower ART adherence than did whites (adjusted OR, 0.40; 95% CI, 0.25-0.66). For African Americans who expressed complete trust in their providers (10 of 10), the racial disparity in adherence was less prominent but still substantial (adjusted OR, 0.59; 95% CI, 0.36-0.95). Trust did not affect disparities in receipt of ART or viral suppression. Our findings suggest that enhancing trust in patient-provider relationships for African-American patients may help reduce disparities in ART adherence and the outcomes associated with improved adherence.

Effects of Pattern Matching, Pattern Discrimination, and Experience in the Development of Diagnostic Expertise.

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Papa, Frank; And Others

1990-01-01

In this study an artificial intelligence assessment tool used disease-by-feature frequency estimates to create disease prototypes for nine common causes of acute chest pain. The tool then used each subject's prototypes and a pattern-recognition-based decision-making mechanism to diagnose 18 myocardial infarction cases. (MLW)

Age-Related Racial Disparity in Suicide Rates Among U.S. Youth

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... May 30, 2018 Age-Related Racial Disparity in Youth Suicide Rates May 21, 2018 News by Year 2018 ... May 30, 2018 Age-Related Racial Disparity in Youth Suicide Rates May 21, 2018 News by Year 2018 ...

Using Public-Private Partnerships to Mitigate Disparities in Access to Genetic Services: Lessons from Wisconsin.

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Senier, Laura; Kearney, Matthew; Orne, Jason

This mixed-methods study reports on an outreach clinics program designed to deliver genetic services to medically underserved communities in Wisconsin. We show the geographic distribution, funding patterns, and utilization trends for outreach clinics over a 20-year period. Interviews with program planners and outreach clinic staff show how external and internal constraints limited the program's capacity. We compare clinic operations to the conceptual models guiding program design. Our findings show that state health officials had to scale back financial support for outreach clinic activities while healthcare providers faced increasing pressure from administrators to reduce investments in charity care. These external and internal constraints led to a decline in the overall number of patients served. We also find that redistribution of clinics to the Milwaukee area increased utilization among Hispanics but not among African-Americans. Our interviews suggest that these patterns may be a function of shortcomings embedded in the planning models. Planning models have three shortcomings. First, they do not identify the mitigation of health disparities as a specific goal. Second, they fail to acknowledge that partners face escalating profit-seeking mandates that may limit their capacity to provide charity services. Finally, they underemphasize the importance of seeking trusted partners, especially in working with communities that have been historically marginalized. There has been little discussion about equitably leveraging genetic advances that improve healthcare quality and efficacy. The role of State Health Agencies in mitigating disparities in access to genetic services has been largely ignored in the sociological literature.

Long Term Memory for Noise: Evidence of Robust Encoding of Very Short Temporal Acoustic Patterns.

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Viswanathan, Jayalakshmi; Rémy, Florence; Bacon-Macé, Nadège; Thorpe, Simon J

2016-01-01

Recent research has demonstrated that humans are able to implicitly encode and retain repeating patterns in meaningless auditory noise. Our study aimed at testing the robustness of long-term implicit recognition memory for these learned patterns. Participants performed a cyclic/non-cyclic discrimination task, during which they were presented with either 1-s cyclic noises (CNs) (the two halves of the noise were identical) or 1-s plain random noises (Ns). Among CNs and Ns presented once, target CNs were implicitly presented multiple times within a block, and implicit recognition of these target CNs was tested 4 weeks later using a similar cyclic/non-cyclic discrimination task. Furthermore, robustness of implicit recognition memory was tested by presenting participants with looped (shifting the origin) and scrambled (chopping sounds into 10- and 20-ms bits before shuffling) versions of the target CNs. We found that participants had robust implicit recognition memory for learned noise patterns after 4 weeks, right from the first presentation. Additionally, this memory was remarkably resistant to acoustic transformations, such as looping and scrambling of the sounds. Finally, implicit recognition of sounds was dependent on participant's discrimination performance during learning. Our findings suggest that meaningless temporal features as short as 10 ms can be implicitly stored in long-term auditory memory. Moreover, successful encoding and storage of such fine features may vary between participants, possibly depending on individual attention and auditory discrimination abilities. Significance Statement Meaningless auditory patterns could be implicitly encoded and stored in long-term memory.Acoustic transformations of learned meaningless patterns could be implicitly recognized after 4 weeks.Implicit long-term memories can be formed for meaningless auditory features as short as 10 ms.Successful encoding and long-term implicit recognition of meaningless patterns may

Asthma Management Disparities: A Photovoice Investigation with African American Youth

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Evans-Agnew, Robin

2016-01-01

Disparities in asthma management are a burden on African American youth. The objective of this study is to describe and compare the discourses of asthma management disparities (AMDs) in African American adolescents in Seattle to existing youth-related asthma policies in Washington State. Adolescents participated in a three-session photovoice…

Compositional symbol grounding for motor patterns.

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Greco, Alberto; Caneva, Claudio

2010-01-01

We developed a new experimental and simulative paradigm to study the establishing of compositional grounded representations for motor patterns. Participants learned to associate non-sense arm motor patterns, performed in three different hand postures, with non-sense words. There were two group conditions: in the first (compositional), each pattern was associated with a two-word (verb-adverb) sentence; in the second (holistic), each same pattern was associated with a unique word. Two experiments were performed. In the first, motor pattern recognition and naming were tested in the two conditions. Results showed that verbal compositionality had no role in recognition and that the main source of confusability in this task came from discriminating hand postures. As the naming task resulted too difficult, some changes in the learning procedure were implemented in the second experiment. In this experiment, the compositional group achieved better results in naming motor patterns especially for patterns where hand postures discrimination was relevant. In order to ascertain the differential effect, upon this result, of memory load and of systematic grounding, neural network simulations were also made. After a basic simulation that worked as a good model of subjects performance, in following simulations the number of stimuli (motor patterns and words) was increased and the systematic association between words and patterns was disrupted, while keeping the same number of words and syntax. Results showed that in both conditions the advantage for the compositional condition significantly increased. These simulations showed that the advantage for this condition may be more related to the systematicity rather than to the mere informational gain. All results are discussed in connection to the possible support of the hypothesis of a compositional motor representation and toward a more precise explanation of the factors that make compositional representations working.

Compositional symbol grounding for motor patterns

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Alberto eGreco

2010-11-01

Full Text Available We developed a new experimental and simulative paradigm to study the establishing of compositional grounded representations for motor patterns. Participants learned to associate nonsense arm motor patterns, performed in three different hand postures, with nonsense words. There were two group conditions: in the first (compositional, each pattern was associated with a two-word (verb-adverb sentence; in the second (holistic, each same pattern was associated with a unique word. Two experiments were performed. In the first, motor pattern recognition and naming were tested in the two conditions. Results showed that verbal compositionality had no role in recognition and that the main source of confusability in this task came from discriminating hand postures. As the naming task resulted too difficult, some changes in the learning procedure were implemented in the second experiment. In this experiment, the compositional group achieved better results in naming motor patterns especially for patterns where hand postures discrimination was relevant. In order to ascertain the differential effect, upon this result, of memory load and of systematic grounding, neural network simulations were also made. After a basic simulation that worked as a good model of subjects performance, in following simulations the number of stimuli (motor patterns and words was increased and the systematic association between words and patterns was disrupted, while keeping the same number of words and syntax. Results showed that in both conditions the advantage for the compositional condition significantly increased. These simulations showed that the advantage for this condition may be more related to the systematicity rather than to the mere informational gain. All results are discussed in connection to the possible support of the hypothesis of a compositional motor representation and towards a more precise explanation of the factors that make compositional representations working.

Socially-Tolerable Discrimination

OpenAIRE

Amegashie, J. Atsu

2008-01-01

History is replete with overt discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, citizenship, ethnicity, marital status, academic performance, health status, volume of market transactions, religion, sexual orientation, etc. However, these forms of discrimination are not equally tolerable. For example, discrimination based on immutable or prohibitively unalterable characteristics such as race, gender, or ethnicity is much less acceptable. Why? I develop a simple rent-seeking model of conflict w...

Social justice, health disparities, and culture in the care of the elderly.

Science.gov (United States)

Dilworth-Anderson, Peggye; Pierre, Geraldine; Hilliard, Tandrea S

2012-01-01

Older minority Americans experience worse health outcomes than their white counterparts, exhibiting the need for social justice in all areas of their health care. Justice, fairness, and equity are crucial to minimizing conditions that adversely affect the health of individuals and communities. In this paper, Alzheimer's disease (AD) is used as an example of a health care disparity among elderly Americans that requires social justice interventions. Cultural factors play a crucial role in AD screening, diagnosis, and access to care, and are often a barrier to support and equality for minority communities. The "conundrum of health disparities" refers to the interplay between disparity, social justice, and cultural interpretation, and encourages researchers to understand both (1) disparity caused by economic and structural barriers to access, treatment, and diagnosis, and (2) disparity due to cultural interpretation of disease, in order to effectively address health care issues and concerns among elderly Americans. © 2012 American Society of Law, Medicine & Ethics, Inc.

Organizational Change Management For Health Equity: Perspectives From The Disparities Leadership Program.

Science.gov (United States)

Betancourt, Joseph R; Tan-McGrory, Aswita; Kenst, Karey S; Phan, Thuy Hoai; Lopez, Lenny

2017-06-01

Leaders of health care organizations need to be prepared to improve quality and achieve equity in today's health care environment characterized by a focus on achieving value and addressing disparities in a diverse population. To help address this need, the Disparities Solutions Center at Massachusetts General Hospital launched the Disparities Leadership Program in 2007. The leadership program is an ongoing, year-long, executive education initiative that trains leaders from hospitals, health plans, and health centers to improve quality and eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care. Feedback from participating organizations demonstrates that health care leaders seem to possess knowledge about what disparities are and about what should be done to eliminate them. Data collection, performance measurement, and multifaceted interventions remain the tools of the trade. However, the barriers to success are lack of leadership buy-in, organizational prioritization, energy, and execution, which can be addressed through organizational change management strategies. Project HOPE—The People-to-People Health Foundation, Inc.