Relationship Between Sarcopenia and Fracture Risks in Obese Postmenopausal Women

ABSTRACT

It is known that obesity is inversely correlated with fracture risk. It remains unclear if a low muscle mass (sarcopenia) modulates the relationship between obesity and bone mass density. Twenty-seven obese women were matched for total fat mass (± 0.5 kg) and age (± 4 yrs) and divided in 3 equal groups: class II sarcopenic, class I sarcopenic, and nonsarcopenic. Body composition (DXA) and dietary intake were measured. Our results suggest that obesity may offer some protection against osteoporosis, even in sarcopenic postmenopausal women. However, further studies are needed to examine the actual implication of these results on a clinical standpoint.     

The Generalized Birnbaum–Saunders Distribution and Its Theory,Methodology, and Application

In this paper, we discuss the class of generalized Birnbaum–Saunders distributions, which is a very flexible family suitable for modeling lifetime data as it allows for different degrees of kurtosis and asymmetry and unimodality as well as bimodality. We describe the theoretical developments on this model including properties, transformations and related distributions, lifetime analysis, and shape analysis. We also discuss methods of inference based on uncensored and censored data, diagnostics methods, goodness-of-fit tests, and random number generation algorithms for the generalized Birnbaum–Saunders model. Finally, we present some illustrative examples and show that this distribution fits the data better than the classical Birnbaum–Saunders model.     

Bayesian approach for meta - analysis of controlled clinical trials

A new method to perform meta - analysis of controlled clinical trials with binary response variable is developed using a Bayesian approach. It consists of three parts: (1) For each trial, the risk difference (the proportion of successes in the treated group minus the proportion of successes in the control group) is estimated; (2) The homogeneity of the risk difference among the different trials is tested; and (3) The hypothesis - the effect of the treatment for the homogeneous pool of trials is greater than or equal to a given fixed constant - is tested. The performance of the Bayesian procedure to test the homogeneity of the risk difference among trials is compared with the chi - square test proposed by DerSimonian and Laird (Controlled Clinical Trials 7, 177-188, 1986) by means of pseudo - random simulation. The conclusion was that the Bayes test is more reliable, either in its exact or asymptotic versions, since it makes fewer decision errors than the chi-square test. As an illustration, the Bayesian method is applied to data of chemotherapeutic prophylaxis of superficial bladder cancer.     

The corrected VIF (CVIF)

In this paper, we propose a new corrected variance inflation factor (VIF) measure to evaluate the impact of the correlation among the explanatory variables in the variance of the ordinary least squares estimators. We show that the real impact on variance can be overestimated by the traditional VIF when the explanatory variables contain no redundant information about the dependent variable and a corrected version of this multicollinearity indicator becomes necessary.     

Incentive compatibility and feasibility constraints in housing markets

We analyze centralized housing markets under the existence of feasibility constraints on the number of agents and objects involved in the exchanges. We focus on an incomplete information setting where only the information about how each agent ranks her endowment is private. We show that under non-degenerate ex-ante probability distributions over preference profiles, no rule satisfies the joint requirements of individual rationality, (constrained) efficiency, and ordinally Bayesian incentive compatibility.     

Perceptions of Stigmatization and Satisfaction with Services Received,Among Users of Social Welfare Services for the Child and the Family in 3 European Regions

A system of psychosocial indicators, based on atheoretical model describing stigma perceptions byusers and practitioners of social welfare services forchildren and their families, was tested in 3 Europeanregions: Catalonia (Spain), Wales and the Netherlands.Data collection from users included questions on theirsatisfaction with the professional providing theservice and on their involvement in decisions abouthim/her and his/her family. In the Catalan sample oneadditional item asked about satisfaction with theoverall support received.Multiple correspondence analysis showed a consistentpattern of answers for our construct stigmaperceptions, using our indicators system.Discriminant analysis showed that our model works withattributions as expected in 86,32% of cases.Surprisingly, in the discriminant analysis all thesatisfaction indicators were excluded by the stepwisemethod, showing no strong relation between stigmaperception related to a service, and satisfactionusing such a service.Such results suggest that service users clearlydiscriminate between the fact that a service isfunctioning in a stigmatizing way, and the fact theyare satisfied or not with the practitioner helpingthem, with services involving them in decisions, orwith the overall support received from welfareservices.     

从叙事的到超媒体的同一性——在游戏机时代解读狄尔泰和利科

近数十年来,叙事在人类生活及其文化创造中占据着显著的位置,以至我们可以说人类科学中出现了一种叙事转向。叙事同一性观念便是在这种转向中发展起来的。利科认为,叙事是通过不同媒介对人类认同的建构,他提出的“叙事同一性”观念可以归属狄尔泰“生命关联总体”概念的效果史。然而,利科的叙事同一性理论是一种单媒体的、单线性的理论,它无法应对超媒体叙事对叙事本体论及建构人类认同造成的冲击,为此必须加以修正、扩展,甚至转换。显然,狄尔泰对此给予了有益的提示。如今,一种可变的、超媒体的人类认同借助于嬉戏的同一性表达出来。不过,叙事同一性与嬉戏同一性并非势不两立,它们反倒促使我们认识到,我们面向过去或者面向未来的嬉戏是对人类生活的两种根本不同的表达。尽管互联网时代流动性成了健康的标准,这使我们拥有了一种异于传统的生活形式,但它仍旧是历史。