Terms Of Causes Research Articles

Profitability crisis and the erosion of popular prosperity: The Canadian economy, 1947–1991

The recession that began in Canada and the United States in 1990 and eventually engulfed most of the developed capitalist world was notable in three major respects: it produced one of the most severe international economic contractions since the Second World War; it brought an end to one of the most long-lasting - if peculiar - economic expansions in the history of world capitalism; and, unlike previous recessions of the past twenty five years, it resisted tendentious and simplistic explanation in terms of causes (such as the mid-1970s increase in oil prices) that could be defined as exogenous to the normal dynamics of capitalist accumulation.

Evidence for success in health promotion: suggestions for improvement.

This paper argues that health promotion needs to develop an approach to evaluation and effectiveness that values qualitative methodologies. It posits the idea that qualitative research could learn from the experience of quantitative researchers and promote more useful ways of measuring effectiveness by the use of intermediate and indirect indicators. It refers to a European-wide project designed to gather information on the effectiveness of health promotion interventions. This project discovered that there was a need for an instrument that allowed qualitative intervention methodologies to be assessed in the same way as quantitative methods.

Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia vaccines: the need for improvements

Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia (CBPP) vaccines are routinely used only in Africa. The vaccines are usually produced from one of two strains (T1/44 and KH3J), each of which has a streptomycin-resistant variant. The necessity for a 'master seed strain' is evident. At least one manufacturer in Africa produces a broth culture vaccine, while others produce a freeze-dried product. A standardised manufacturing protocol needs to be developed, together with in-process and final product quality control procedures. Some CBPP vaccine manufacturing procedures do not allow sufficient leeway for the execution of typical quality control practices. For example, it is difficult to perform batch testing on broth culture vaccine, as the vaccine is produced in its final container. Quality control test results from the Pan African Veterinary Vaccine Centre (PANVAC) are analysed in terms of causes of batch failure and indicators for process development. Taking potency as an example, most vaccine batches tested by PANVAC pass only at the limit of the OIE minimum requirement of 10(7) colony-forming units per dose. To improve the titre of the vaccine, it will be necessary to modify the manufacturing process, either by increasing mycoplasma yield during the culture phase or by minimising losses during downstream processes, especially freeze-drying. Data on inactivated vaccines are scarce. Duration of the immunity achieved with live CBPP vaccines is relatively short, in comparison with other live vaccines. Data may be required on the molecular basis of virulence and immunogenicity, as well as on the molecular immunology of CBPP, to enable the development of improved vaccines.

Insulin resistance and lipoprotein metabolism.

Dyslipidaemia in insulin resistance comprises elevated plasma triglycerides, decreased HDL, a preponderance of small, dense LDL and increased postprandial lipaemia. In terms of cause and effect, small, dense LDL, alimentary hyperlipidaemia and changes in HDL are consequences of elevated triglycerides. These abnormalities can become frequent if triglycerides exceed a threshold value of approximately 1.5 mmol/l. Therefore, it is mandatory to maintain plasma triglycerides as low as possible in noninsulin-dependent diabetic and insulin-resistant individuals to prevent the potentially atherogenic and metabolic consequences of hypertriglyceridaemia.

Amputees in a hospital of the International Committee of the Red Cross

The object of this study is to describe the treatment of patients with an amputation in terms of causes and distribution of injuries, mortality and drain on surgical resources. A group of patients with war injuries, who did not undergo an amputation (1796) and a group of war-injured patients with an amputation (245) were analysed retrospectively. All these patients were treated in the hospital for Afghan war wounded of the International Committee of the Red Cross. The most common amputation was below-knee amputation (BKA). In more than 90 per cent of the patients a BKA was the result of a mine explosion. About 80 per cent of amputations of the lower limb were caused by antipersonnel mines. The upper limb amputations were mainly caused by mines or by fragments. War-injured patients with an amputation face more serious problems than non-amputated patients. Their mortality is higher, they stay longer in the hospital, the risk of infection is higher, they need more blood and they undergo more surgical interventions. The high percentage of non-combatants stresses the need to give civilians better protection against the indiscriminate use of mines.

Considering Social Effects in Control System Design – A Summary

Automation that is appropriate for application in realistically complex sociotechnical domains should be based on an integrated understanding of the technical, human, organizational, ecologic, economic and even cultural attributes of the application. Moreover, it is the engineer's responsibility to consider the direct and indirect effects of the automation technology being used. In order to integrate comprehensive sets of requirements into system planning and design, one must understand them in terms of causes and effects, dependencies and contradicitons, and short-und long-term effects. Integration is, therefore, a question of balancing different valuesA design philosophy is advocated which aims at developing the means whereby people in complex systems can achieve the operational objectives for which they are responsible: people are in chargeThe key questions for man-machine interface, control room and team design is, then, how to support operators so that they can be in charge successfullyInnovative design concepts, principles and methods will be summarized. Encouraging experiences show how such approaches lead to better overall system performance. Much research on open questions remains to be done, though

Poor Women in Psychological Research

For the most part, theory and empirical study in the psychology of women have failed to recognize many distinctions among women. Indeed, the focus of feminist theory and research has been directed to the explication of women's essential experience of gender, as if this could be separated from the confounds of class and race. This presentation raises the issue of the diversity among poor women, the need to disentangle ethnicity and class, and the limitation of adopting a middle-class White perspective. In addition to racism, other possible causes of exclusion are explored. Silencing of poor women is also discussed in terms of causes and impact on the discipline of psychology. We have not provided sufficient mechanisms to allow diverse groups of women to tell their own stories; instead, we have felt comfortable in making assumptions and drawing parallels that may be inappropriate and incorrect. Suggestions for achieving feminist goals are provided.

Stability and change in decision makers' perceptions of the firm's environment: An empirical study of causal attribution by a top management team

This paper deals with causal perceptions of the firm and its relations to the environment in the case of Swedish Telecom during a period of turbulent changes in the telecommunications industry. The question to be answered is to what extent decision makers' perceptions have changed over time in terms of three dimensions of the firm's environment derived from open system theory. The analysis of the management's cognitive maps extracted from documents produced by the management at different points in time indicates the following: (a) the system of variables used by the management to deal with the environment has become increasingly interconnected in indirect ways over time, i.e. more interconnected in terms of indirect causal links between variables, (b) links between variables in the environment, rather than links between internal and external variables, have become more important over time, and (c) the system of variables, when broken down into subsystems of variables that behave similarly in terms of causes and effects, has developed towards more interconnections between subsystems and less interconnections within subsystems.

運転員教育システムにおける質問応答文出力処理方式の概念設計

It is necessary to develop an interface with easy communication for the practical use of an operator educational system. This paper describes the concept of the "answer output processing method" which makes the communication easy using the characteristics of the operator educational system. The main features of the method are as follows:(1) The prototype of the operator educational system is provided with educational materials which are expressed in terms of cause and effect relationships of events. Answer generating functions are introduced to infer the relationships easily during the questionanswer process.(2) It is easy to provide the materials of the educational unit optimally adapted to the degree of achievement which is already included in the prototype and is also easy to change the level of the materials based on the questionary history which is newly introduced for recording the question-answer performed everywhere in the learning process.

An Interactional Approach to Creativity

Traditionally creativity is viewed in an intrapsychic framework: creative persons are seen in isolation and creativity is considered to consist primarily of subjective processes occurring within such people. Creativity is usually explained in linear terms of cause and effect, ignoring the social space which implies other people, relationships and interactions. This traditional approach has resulted in a largely fragmented, diversified, contentious and idiosyncratic field of research. The author, by contrast, works in an interpsychic framework, in terms of which people are continually engaged in relationships and interaction, and creativity as a form of behaviour is motivated interpersonally. Creativity is explained in terms of the circular processes occurring among people through interaction and mutual influencing of behaviour. An interactional definition and a theoretical model of creativity are postulated, offering a more holistic perspective on the phenomenon as a continuous quality involving person, process, product and environment. Such an interactional conception of creativity transcends scientific and professional boundaries as well as the diversity of human activities, actions, responses and products; it also allows for the spirit of the times and cultural and other social variations. Thus there is a shift from an intrapsychic explanatory model to a more pragmatic interpsychic observational model of creativity.

The use of a complete surface profile description to investigate the cause and effect of surface features

Until recently, the assessment of a complete surface profile, in terms of both roughness and waviness characteristics, has been restricted by both instrumental and computational limitations. This has meant that previous descriptions of surface texture could not fully recognize the functional aspects of surface interactions. Similarly they were limited in identifying the machining conditions necessary to obtain the optimum surface characteristics for a specific functional application. This paper reviews a complete and unified surface profile characterization scheme developed by the authors. The approach identifies the random and periodic elements of the surface profile naturally, as opposed to the traditional techniques which attempt to relate roughness and waviness to assignable causes at an early stage of assessment. This leads to a more flexible and comprehensive characterization. To improve the understanding of the functional evolution of a surface, a study is presented which aims to establish the surface conditions necessary to obtaine a desired functional performance. These characteristics are then related to manufacture so that the ideal machining characteristics can be established. It is therefore shown that a greater understanding of the machined surface can be obtained in terms of causes and effects, in a way that links manufacture to function via the characterization scheme.

Sequence stratigraphy: Eustasy or tectonic imprint?

Sequence stratigraphy is viewed by many geologists as the expression in the stratigraphic record of the history of sea level changes. Sequence boundaries are its most distinctive elements and are used for global correlations. Until now, correlations between unconformities and postulated lowerings of sea level have been seen primarily in terms of cause and effect relationships, the postulated fall providing an explanation for the presence of an unconformity. They have not been truly perceived in terms of stratigraphic correlations which would imply the establishment of synchrony between the cause and the effect. To decipher the presence of a global sea level signal in the stratigraphic record, the synchrony of sea level related unconformities in widely separated basins must be established, which can be achieved by comparing the degree of overlap between hiatuses in different stratigraphic sections. Outcrop sections, wells, and the deep‐sea record reveal an apparently worldwide unconformity(ies) across the lower/middle Eocene boundary, characterized by intensive reworking and/or relatively rapid shallowing in some areas (e.g., Cyrenaica, NE Libya; California; Egypt). The lower‐middle Eocene intervals in sections on the North Atlantic margins have been correlated through magnetobiostratigraphy, and the durations of the hiatuses have been precisely determined. This record is compared with that in sections in other basins where shallowing and intensive reworking occur. This study shows that there are two groups of unconformities and associated hiatuses around the lower/middle Eocene boundary. The older hiatuses, in the latest early Eocene, are generally short, even on the shelf (∼1 m.y.); the younger hiatuses, in the early middle Eocene, are somewhat longer (>2 m.y.). The stratigraphic record around the lower/middle Eocene boundary suggests that there may be two mechanisms acting simultaneously to produce unconformities. Unconformities of a given age on the shelf may result from a global fall in sea level, while their stratigraphically correlative unconformities on the slope and rise may result from tectonic instability. Unconformities related to the third‐order cycles in sea level changes in Vail's model primarily may reflect tectonoeustasy.

Heart research efforts aim at fairness to women in terms of causes, care of cardiac disorders

Heart research efforts aim at fairness to women in terms of causes, care of cardiac disorders

Impact of Intrauterine Growth Retardation and Body Proportionality on Fetal and Neonatal Outcome

Previous prognostic studies of infants with intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) have not adequately considered the heterogeneity of IUGR in terms of cause, severity, and body proportionality and have been prone to misclassification of IUGR because of errors in estimation of gestational age. Based on a cohort of 8719 infants with early-ultrasound-validated gestational ages and indexes of body proportionality standardized for birth weight, the consequences of severity and cause-specific IUGR and proportionality for fetal and neonatal morbidity and mortality were assessed. With progressive severity of IUGR, there were significant (all P less than .001) linear trends for increasing risks of stillbirth, fetal distress (abnormal electronic fetal heart tracings)O during parturition, neonatal hypoglycemia (minimum plasma glucose less than 40 mg/dL), hypocalcemia (minimum Ca less than 7 mg/dL), polycythemia (maximum capillary hemoglobin greater than or equal to 21 g/dL), severe depression at birth (manual ventilation greater than 3 minutes), 1-minute and 5-minute Apgar scores less than or equal to 6, 1-minute Apgar score less than or equal to 3, and in-hospital death. These trends persisted for the more common outcomes even after restriction to term (37 to 42 weeks) births. There was no convincing evidence that outcome among infants with a given degree of growth retardation varied as a function of cause of that growth retardation. Among infants with IUGR, increased length-for-weight had significant crude associations with hypoglycemia and polycythemia, but these associations disappeared after adjustment for severity of growth retardation and gestational age.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Pathogenesis and changes in the aetiology of arterio-venous fistulae

There has been a marked shift in the causes of arterio-venous fistulae. Gunshot and stab wounds used to be the most frequent cause but iatrogenic fistulae, especially those arising as a result of reconstructive skeletal operations or following diagnostic and therapeutic procedures, are now becoming increasingly common. If morphological vascular changes have not yet occurred and cardiac volume overloading has not led to permanent damage, a recently established arterio-venous fistula can be easily corrected by resection and oversewing of the artery and vein. The special cases of arterio-venous fistulae arising as a result of catheter procedures in the groin have to be identified in terms of cause and morphology in order to facilitate early surgical correction.

Thinking Globally in Post-Mao China

For the first time in modern history, China has become an active, if somewhat still elusive, member of the global system. With this momentous transformation comes myriads of new linkages, new contexts, new demands, new opportunities and new costs and consequences for China/global interaction. Proceeding from the premise that what China does or does not do becomes part of the global problem or part of the global solution, the article seeks to situate post-Mao China in the global/local problematique. The article advances the concept of global learning as a way of exploring diachronic changes and shifts in Chinese global thinking. Global learning is conceptualized as a two-way interactive linkage process in which domestic actors' restructuring of their cognitive maps and the changing global reality mediated by positive participatory experience in the global system become reciprocal in terms of cause and effect, constituting mutually essential parts of the same global/local process. Global learning is applied as a guide to examining Chinese global policy in three issue areas - global peace; global development; and global human rights. Global learning is also suggested as a possible bridge linking Chinese global policy and global policy studies. The paper concludes that some changes and shifts in Chinese global thinking have occurred and explains them as interest-driven adaptive readjustments to the dual logic of modernization imperative and of the world situation. From a post-Tiananmen perspective, the paper also critically evaluates the nature and scope of Chinese global learning as well as its new possibilities and old limitations.

Sex differentials in premature death among professionals, Part I.

Differences in mortality according to marital status and sex in early-age death among U.S. professionals are examined. "A reversal of the sex differential in mortality appears in the 1968-72 death rates of white Wisconsin professionals.... Substantially more professional women were not married, and this differential in the distribution of marital status accounted for 37.8 per cent of the women's deaths. The results linking marital status and mortality are discussed in terms of Durkheim's concepts of social integration and anomie, and are related to recent empirical studies connecting marriage and parenthood with health and mortality. Part II will further analyse the data in terms of cause of death and occupational variables."

The Discourse of Pious Science

The ArgumentThis paper, an attempt at an institutional history of ideas, compares patterns of reproduction of scientific knowledge in Catholic and Protestant educational institutions. Franciscus Eschinardus'Cursus Physico-Mathematicusand Jean-Robert Chouet'sSyntagma Physicumare examined for the strategies which allow for accommodation of new contents and new practices within traditional institutional frameworks. The texts manifest two different styles of inquiry about nature, each adapted to the peculiar constraints implied by its environment. The interpretative drive of Eschinardus and a whole group of “modern astronomers” is here seen as pushing beyond the traditional task of “saving the phenomena,” towards celestial hermeneutics which is thoroughly experimental and mathematical. In spite of the insistence on physical interpretation of celestial phenomena, Eschinardus' astronomical discourse is yet constrained by a complex game of intellectual-political considerations. Commitment to the Thomistic organization of knowledge, which sets a boundary between a science of motion (physica) and the “geometry of heavens” (mathematical astronomy), suppresses any impulse to ask about the mechanical causes of celestial appearances. The Copernican cosmology is thus rejected qua an attempt to cross this guarded boundary. Chouet in Geneva, by contrast, frees himself from these constraints on the organization of natural knowledge. By strictly separating philosophy from theology, he can combine physics and astronomy, favor a Copernican cosmology and adopt a Cartesian mechanistic worldview. Moreover, unlike the Jesuit Eschinardus, Chouet seeks toexplainnatural phenomena in terms of causes, rather than justinterpretthem. Yet he does so within a philosophical discourse largely scholastic in nature, which best suits the conservative institutional framework in which he teaches. Whereas the Jesuit Eschinardus employs a new type of discourse without severing his links with the traditional Thomistic worldview, the Calvinist Chouet adopts a new Cartesian worldview and adapts it to a largely traditional type of discourse.

A framework to understand human action

This paper consists in an analysis of two explanatory models of human behaviour which play a prominent role in the contemporary literature on human action. The first model - the causalist - aims at explaining action in terms of causes and general laws. The second model - the intentionalist - explains human action in terms of intentions and practical syllogism. The difficulties of both models are presented and in the last part of the essay we propose one alternative model, based on the notion of retroduction.

7 - Trends in Induced Legal Abortion Morbidity and Mortality

Abortion mortality in the USA experienced an eight-fold decline between 1972 and 1981, with the greatest decline occurring after 1975. The risk for all groups of women declined, but the decline was greater for some groups than for others. When both changing risk for a given characteristic and changing prevalence of that characteristic were examined, it appears that the declining mortality rates are largely due to a downward shift in the gestational ages at which abortions are obtained and the increased use of D&E for abortions at 12 gestational weeks or later. Although morbidity data analogous to the mortality data are not available, analysis of morbidity trends from three large multicentre prospective studies between 1970 and 1978 suggests that morbidity may not have declined quite as rapidly as mortality. The morbidity data, as well as giving information on cause-specific abortion mortality in the USA, showing dramatic declines for such causes as infection and pulmonary embolus, suggest that improved medical management of complications has contributed to declining abortion mortality in the USA.Mortality from induced legal abortion declined 8-fold in the US between 1972 and 1981. This decline is attributable to improvements in the safety of the procedure, changes in the characteristics of women undergoing abortion, and improved recognition and management of complications. A total of 175 legal abortion deaths were reported in the 1972-81 period, making abortion mortality 1/7 that of childbearing mortality. Older age, minority race, and increased gestational age at the time of abortion are associated with an increased risk of abortion mortality; however, women in these categories now comprise a declining proportion of total abortions. The most significant of the changes contributing to decreased mortality has been the changing gestational age at the time of abortion and shifts in the methods of abortion after 12 gestational weeks. During the 1972-81 period, the percentage of abortions performed at 8 weeks' gestation or earlier increased from 34% to 51% while the percentage of procedures performed at 13 weeks or later fell from 18% to 10%. The greatest declines in terms of causes of abortion mortality have been registered for infection and pulmonary embolus. Although systematic morbidity data are lacking, it appears that the gestation week-specific decline in major complications may not have been as great as for mortality.