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Standard Deviation Increase (standard + deviation_increase)
Selected AbstractsInflation, Inflation Variability, and CorruptionECONOMICS & POLITICS, Issue 1 2004Miguel Braun We present a model where agents can inflate the cost of goods needed to start an investment project and inflation variability increases monitoring costs. We show that inflation variability can lead to higher corruption and lower investment. We document a positive relationship between corruption and inflation variability in a sample of 75 countries. The effect is robust to the inclusion of country fixed effects, other controls, and 2SLS estimation. The results are economically significant: a one standard deviation increase in inflation variance from the median increases corruption by 12 percent of a standard deviation and reduces growth by 0.33 percentage points. Our paper highlights a new channel through which inflation reduces investment and growth, thus bridging the perception gap over the costs of inflation between economists and the public. We also find evidence that political competition reduces corruption and that corruption is pro-cyclical. [source] Schooling, cognitive ability and healthHEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 10 2005M. Christopher Auld Abstract A large literature documents a strong correlation between health and educational outcomes. In this paper we investigate the role of cognitive ability in the health-education nexus. Using NLSY data, we show that one standard deviation increase in cognitive ability is associated with roughly the same increase in health as two years of schooling and that cognitive ability accounts for roughly one quarter of the association between schooling and health. Both schooling and ability are strongly associated with health at low levels but less related or unrelated at high levels. Estimates treating schooling as endogenous to health suggest that much of the correlation between schooling and health is attributable to unobserved heterogeneity; the causal effect of schooling on health is large only for respondents with low levels of schooling and low cognitive ability. An implication is that policies which increase schooling will only increase health to the extent that they increase the education of poorly-educated individuals. Subsidies to college education, for example, are unlikely to increase population health. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Homocysteine Level and Cognitive Function in Patients with Arterial Disease: The Second Manifestations of ARTerial Disease StudyJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 4 2006Fleur van A. Raamt MD OBJECTIVES: To assess the relationship between total plasma homocysteine (tHcy) level and cognitive function in patients with manifest arterial disease. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Patients with symptomatic cerebrovascular disease, cardiovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, or abdominal aortic aneurysm included in the Second Manifestations of ARTerial disease study, a single-center, longitudinal study with an extensive screening program at baseline. PARTICIPANTS: Three hundred forty-five consecutively included patients, mean age 59. MEASUREMENTS: The patients underwent an extensive neuropsychological test. The cognitive domains assessed were memory, executive function, attention, and visuoperception and construction. Each raw score was transformed into standardized z-scores, and a sum score for global cognitive function was determined. Risk factors and vascular damage were measured in detail. RESULTS: Linear regression showed that elevated levels of tHcy were related to lower global cognitive function (,=,0.065, 95% confidence interval (CI)=,0.116 to ,0.013) and, more specifically, lower performance on memory (,=,0.078, 95% CI=,0.155 to ,0.002), attention (,=,0.079, 95% CI=,0.163 to ,0.005), and visuoperception and construction (,=,0.125, 95% CI=,0.236 to ,0.014) per standard deviation increase in tHcy (SD=6.4 mol/L), after adjustment for age, sex, educational level, extent of atherosclerosis, and location of vascular disease. Silent cerebral infarcts did not influence this relationship. CONCLUSION: A relationship was found between tHcy levels and cognitive function that was independent of extent and location of arterial disease. The results suggest that vascular mechanisms are not responsible for the relationship between tHcy and cognitive function. [source] Late-Life Depression is Associated with Arterial Stiffness: A Population-Based StudyJOURNAL OF AMERICAN GERIATRICS SOCIETY, Issue 8 2003Henning Tiemeier MD Objectives: To determine whether arterial stiffness is associated with depression in the elderly. Design: Population-based cross-sectional study. Setting: In Ommoord, a suburb of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Participants: Three thousand seven hundred four subjects of the Rotterdam Study aged 60 and older. Measurements: Arterial stiffness was assessed using the distensibility of the carotid artery and the carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity. All participants were screened for depressive symptoms with the Center for Epidemiologic Studies,Depression scale. Those with depressive symptoms had a psychiatric evaluation to establish a diagnosis of depressive disorders according to Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV) criteria. Results: Participants with increased arterial stiffness were more likely to have depressive symptoms. Odds ratios (ORs) for depressive symptoms were 1.24 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.01,1.52) per standard deviation decrease in carotid distensibility and 1.17 (95% CI = 1.00,1.38) per standard deviation increase in aortic pulse wave velocity. The association was stronger for depressive disorders meeting DSM-IV criteria (OR = 1.44, 95% CI = 1.03,2.03; OR = 1.48, 95% CI = 1.16,1.90, respectively). Control for atherosclerosis, as measured by the ankle-to-brachial index or presence of plaques in the carotid artery, did not change the associations. Conclusion: This study shows an association between arterial stiffness and depression in the elderly. The findings are compatible with the vascular depression hypothesis. These data suggest that arterial stiffness may partly cause the proposed relationship between vascular factors and depression. [source] Common genetic variants associated with plasma fibrin D-dimer concentration in older European- and African-American adultsJOURNAL OF THROMBOSIS AND HAEMOSTASIS, Issue 4 2008L. A. LANGE Summary.,Background and Objectives:,D-dimer is a hemostasis marker that reflects ongoing fibrin formation and degradation. There is significant inter-individual and inter-population variability in D-dimer concentration, but whether genetic factors underlie these differences is largely unknown. We hypothesized that common coagulation gene variants contribute to differences in circulating D-dimer concentration. Methods:,The setting was European-American (EA; n = 1858) and African-American (AA; n = 327) unrelated older adults from the Cardiovascular Health Study (CHS), in which we genotyped SNPs in 42 genes related to blood coagulation and fibrinolysis. Results:,Several fibrinogen gene polymorphisms, including the Thr312Ala A, chain variant and the FGG-10034 C/T variant, were associated with ,20% higher plasma D-dimer levels in EA (false discovery rate < 5% for covariate-adjusted model). There was also some evidence that a Pro41Leu variant of the PLAU gene encoding urinary plasminogen activator and non-coding polymorphism of the plasminogen activator inhibitor type 1 gene (SERPINE1) were associated with higher plasma D-dimer in EA. There were no significant associations between the studied coagulation or fibrinolysis gene SNPs and plasma D-dimer levels in the smaller AA sample. However, each standard deviation increase in European ancestry assessed by ancestry-informative gene markers was associated with ,10% lower mean D-dimer levels in AA. Conclusions:,Together, common coagulation/fibrinolysis gene SNPs explained only ,2% of the variance in plasma D-dimer levels in EA. These findings suggest that the association of D-dimer with risk of vascular outcomes may be mediated largely by environmental factors, other genes, and/or genetic interactions. [source] Neighbourhood deprivation and small-for-gestational-age term births in the United StatesPAEDIATRIC & PERINATAL EPIDEMIOLOGY, Issue 1 2009Irma T. Elo Summary Residential context has received increased attention as a possible contributing factor to race/ethnic and socio-economic disparities in birth outcomes in the United States. Utilising vital statistics birth record data, this study examined the association between neighbourhood deprivation and the risk of a term small-for-gestational-age (SGA) birth among non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks in eight geographical areas. An SGA birth was defined as a newborn weighing <10th percentile of the sex- and parity-specific birthweight distribution for a given gestational week. Multi-level random intercept logistic regression models were employed and statistical tests were performed to examine whether the association between neighbourhood deprivation and SGA varied by race/ethnicity and study site. The risk of term SGA was higher among non-Hispanic blacks (range 10.8,17.5%) than non-Hispanic whites (range 5.1,9.2%) in all areas and it was higher in cities than in suburban locations. In all areas, non-Hispanic blacks lived in more deprived neighbourhoods than non-Hispanic whites. However, the adjusted associations between neighbourhood deprivation and term SGA did not vary significantly by race/ethnicity or study site. The summary fully adjusted pooled odds ratios, indicating the effect of one standard deviation increase in the deprivation score, were 1.15 [95% CI 1.08, 1.22] for non-Hispanic whites and 1.09 [95% CI 1.05, 1.14] for non-Hispanic blacks. Thus, neighbourhood deprivation was weakly associated with term SGA among both non-Hispanic whites and non-Hispanic blacks. [source] Bureaucratic Decisions and the Composition of the Lower CourtsAMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 2 2003Brandice Canes-Wrone I delineate necessary conditions for the ideological composition of the federal courts to influence bureaucratic decisions independently of lawsuits and test for the relationship with data on the implementation of wetlands policy. Examining 18,331 decisions by the Army Corps of Engineers over whether to issue a permit for the development of wetlands between 1988 and 1996, I analyze whether these decisions were influenced by the composition of the appellate and district courts. The results indicate that judicial ideology significantly affects bureaucratic decision making. Specifically, a standard deviation increase in the liberalism of the lower courts decreases the probability that the Corps will grant a permit by 14%, which is comparable to the effects of long-recognized determinants of administrative behavior. [source] Retinal fractals and acute lacunar strokeANNALS OF NEUROLOGY, Issue 1 2010Ning Cheung MBBS This study aimed to determine whether retinal fractal dimension, a quantitative measure of microvascular branching complexity and density, is associated with lacunar stroke. A total of 392 patients presenting with acute ischemic stroke had retinal fractal dimension measured from digital photographs, and lacunar infarct ascertained from brain imaging. After adjusting for age, gender, and vascular risk factors, higher retinal fractal dimension (highest vs lowest quartile and per standard deviation increase) was independently and positively associated with lacunar stroke (odds ratio [OR], 4.27; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.49,12.17 and OR, 1.85; 95% CI, 1.20,2.84, respectively). Increased retinal microvascular complexity and density is associated with lacunar stroke. ANN NEUROL 2010;68:107,111 [source] | ||||||||||