Anabolic responses to resistance training in older men and women: a brief review

Resistance training has been shown to be the most effective exercise mode to induce anabolic adaptations in older men and women. Advances in imaging techniques and histochemistry have increased the ability to detect such changes, confirming the high level of adaptability that remains in aging skeletal muscle. This brief review presents a summary of the resistance-training studies that directly compare chronic anabolic responses to training in older (>60 years) men and women. Sixteen studies are summarized, most of which indicate similar relative anabolic responses between older men and women after resistance training. Relatively small sample sizes in most of the interventions limited their ability to detect significant sex differences and should be considered when interpreting these studies. Future research should incorporate larger sample sizes with multiple measurement time points for anabolic responses.     

On Loss Distributions from Installment-Repaid Loans

The banks have been accumulating huge data bases for many years and are increasingly turning to statistics to provide insight into customer behaviour, among other things. Credit risk is an important issue and certain stochastic models have been developed in recent years to describe and predict loan default. Two of the major models currently used in the industry are considered here, and various ways of extending their application to the case where a loan is repaid in installments are explored. The aspect of interest is the probability distribution of the total loss due to repayment default at some time. Thus, the loss distribution is determined by the distribution of times to default, here regarded as a discrete-time survival distribution. In particular, the probabilities of large losses are to be assessed for insurance purposes.     

全球自觉资本主义:从自觉的角度透视经济管理和经济责任

今天,日益增长的全球资本主义经济是一张复杂的动态的网络,这个网络由社会、文化以及反映我们个人和大众的意识的经济体制构成。随着意识创造并联结了所有事物这一观点被人们日渐认可,以及全球责任感的增强,资本主义经济体制可以切实地被改变,从而促进经济的长期繁荣。     

The Effect of Veteran Status on Mortality among Older Americans and its Pathways

This research examines excess mortality among American veterans age 70 years or older during a two-to-three year interval from 1993/94 to the end of 1995. Using a structural hazard rate model, we analyzed data on a sample of respondents age 70 or over from the Survey of Asset and Health Dynamics among the Oldest Old (AHEAD). We found that at age 70, older veterans have a slightly higher death rate than their nonveteran counterparts, implying a mortality crossover right before this age. Such excess mortality among veterans increases considerably with age, when other factors are held equal. The direct and indirect effects of veteran status on mortality by means of physical and mental health mostly perform in opposite directions, and such effects vary greatly in magnitude and direction as a function of age. The intervening effects of physical and mental health status decrease substantially with increasing age. Many of the mechanisms inherent in the excess mortality among older veterans are not captured by variations in their health status, especially among the oldest-old. A more extensive study on this topic is urgently needed.     

The role of public health improvements in health advances: The twentieth-century United States

Mortality rates in the United States fell more rapidly during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries than in any other period in American history. This decline coincided with an epidemiological transition and the disappearance of a mortality "penalty" associated with living in urban areas. There is little empirical evidence and much unresolved debate about what caused these improvements, however. In this article, we report the causal influence of clean water technologies--filtration and chlorination--on mortality in major cities during the early twentieth century. Plausibly exogenous variation in the timing and location of technology adoption was used to identify these effects, and the validity of this identifying assumption is examined in detail. We found that clean water was responsible for nearly half the total mortality reduction in major cities, three quarters of the infant mortality reduction, and nearly two thirds of the child mortality reduction. Rough calculations suggest that the social rate of return to these technologies was greater than 23 to 1, with a cost per person-year saved by clean water of about dollar 500 in 2003 dollars. Implications for developing countries are briefly considered.     

Online personal ads: community and sex, virtually

This study samples 200 personal advertisements from the online gay and lesbian global Web portal PlanetOut. This data, along with survey responses completed by advertisers included in the sample, are used to frame a discussion on the use of online gay and lesbian spaces and communities. Despite interacting in a global space, data showed that advertisers remained aware of their local identities. Differences between advertisers were most notable between gender and whether they logged on in a small or large town. Advertisers were interested in interacting locally, eager to move from online to offline communication, often-times not overly concerned with maintaining anonymity, and not interested in toying with multiple identities. Users of PlanetOut personals largely did not consider themselves part of a virtual gay and lesbian community even when they recognized the existence of a local geographically-based gay and lesbian community. However, the dynamic nature of online personal advertisements did allow for a new type of interactive advertisement that does differ from previous print forums.