Individual Aspects of Health — The Individual Longitudinal Health Profile and Index

Author(s):  
G. Z. Williams
Author(s):  
Maria Kaczmarek ◽  

The aim of the paper is to draw a health profile of a past human population—the Graeco-Roman inhabitants of a harbor city at the site of Marina el-Alamein on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt—and to study levels of adaptation of this population to the environment in which it lived. The author presents her methodology: the conceptual framework, skeletal inventory and scoring procedures, the uses her data to discuss in detail the paleodemography (demographic population structure and patterns of mortality) and physiological stress (disruption of growth and maturation), which can be defined as a physical disruption resulting from unhealthy environmental conditions with deleterious effect on both the individual and population level. Life expectancy was found to be at 39.1 years for males and 33.4 years for women. Based on skeletal growth of the most vulnerable subgroups of the population, infants and children, The people who were buried in the tombs of Marina el-Alamein lived a stressful life in an impoverished environment and their diet was inadequate. Overall dental health was very poor, significantly more so among women, and the high rates of arthritis and degenerative diseases of the spine and the major joints were suggestive of heavy workloads in life.


1998 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. M. Krabbe ◽  
Gouke J. Bonsel

The authors conducted an experiment to determine whether the sequence of presentation of states in a health profile would affect the valuations assigned to them. The empirical task was part of a large standardized experiment involving 104 students. Thirteen health states were valued using two variations of the time-tradeoff method. At the group level, a small but distinct overall effect of the sequence of the tradeoffs was detected after accounting for discounting effects. The respondents were not preference-indifferent concerning the sequence of health states presented. Detailed analysis at the individual level indicated that the overall sequence effect was attributable to two groups of respondents who were sensitive to the sequence of events. One small group, referred to as “best-things-first” respondents, preferred the best years first; the other group, classified as “happy-end” respondents, preferred the reverse sequence. The majority of the respondents, however, were indifferent to the sequence. These results suggest that 1) in valuation experiments involving the time-tradeoff method and 2) in applying valuation results to the evaluation of real-life health consequences, a varying lifetime health profile may not be regarded as simply a chain of independent separately valued and discounted QALY periods. Even elementary valuation tasks cannot safely assume ignorance of prognosis, as the additive utility independence assumption of the QALY model does not hold. The sequence effect at least supplements the conventional general time-preference concept, and specific strategies are suggested to disentangle quantitatively the sequence effect and the time-preference effect.


Author(s):  
Maria Kristiansen ◽  
Aziz Sheikh

Human happiness and well-being are, to a large extent, dependent upon the health of the individual. Similarly, healthy populations are an important prerequisite for societal progress and prosperity (Marmot et al., 2010; World Health Organization, 2015). In order to maximise individual and societal well-being, it is important that the health of all members and sections – that is, irrespective of age, sex/gender, disability, ethnicity, faith or any other protected characteristic – is maximised. A growing body of evidence, however, points to substantial, persistent differences in health outcomes between different ethnic and religious groups. In this chapter, we discuss the health profile of Muslims living in Scotland, outline some of the factors shaping health among this diverse group and consider ways of addressing the healthcare needs of Muslims within the context of Scottish healthcare services.


JAMA ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 195 (12) ◽  
pp. 1036-1037 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Rubin
Keyword(s):  

Author(s):  
C.N. Sun

The present study demonstrates the ultrastructure of the gingival epithelium of the pig tail monkey (Macaca nemestrina). Specimens were taken from lingual and facial gingival surfaces and fixed in Dalton's chrome osmium solution (pH 7.6) for 1 hr, dehydrated, and then embedded in Epon 812.Tonofibrils are variable in number and structure according to the different region or location of the gingival epithelial cells, the main orientation of which is parallel to the long axis of the cells. The cytoplasm of the basal epithelial cells contains a great number of tonofilaments and numerous mitochondria. The basement membrane is 300 to 400 A thick. In the cells of stratum spinosum, the tonofibrils are densely packed and increased in number (fig. 1 and 3). They seem to take on a somewhat concentric arrangement around the nucleus. The filaments may occur scattered as thin fibrils in the cytoplasm or they may be arranged in bundles of different thickness. The filaments have a diameter about 50 A. In the stratum granulosum, the cells gradually become flatted, the tonofibrils are usually thin, and the individual tonofilaments are clearly distinguishable (fig. 2). The mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum are seldom seen in these superficial cell layers.


Author(s):  
Anthony J. Godfrey

Aldehyde-fixed chick retina was embedded in a water-containing resin of glutaraldehyde and urea, without dehydration. The loss of lipids and other soluble tissue components, which is severe in routine methods involving dehydration, was thereby minimized. Osmium tetroxide post-fixation was not used, lessening the amount of protein denaturation which occurred. Ultrathin sections were stained with 1, uranyl acetate and lead citrate, 2, silicotungstic acid, or 3, osmium vapor, prior to electron microscope examination of visual cell outer segment ultrastructure, at magnifications up to 800,000.Sections stained with uranyl acetate and lead citrate (Fig. 1) showed that the individual disc membranes consisted of a central lipid core about 78Å thick in which dark-staining 40Å masses appeared to be embedded from either side.


Author(s):  
Anthony A. Paparo ◽  
Judith A. Murphy

The purpose of this study was to localize the red neuronal pigment in Mytilus edulis and examine its role in the control of lateral ciliary activity in the gill. The visceral ganglia (Vg) in the central nervous system show an over al red pigmentation. Most red pigments examined in squash preps and cryostat sec tions were localized in the neuronal cell bodies and proximal axon regions. Unstained cryostat sections showed highly localized patches of this pigment scattered throughout the cells in the form of dense granular masses about 5-7 um in diameter, with the individual granules ranging from 0.6-1.3 um in diame ter. Tissue stained with Gomori's method for Fe showed bright blue granular masses of about the same size and structure as previously seen in unstained cryostat sections.Thick section microanalysis (Fig.l) confirmed both the localization and presence of Fe in the nerve cell. These nerve cells of the Vg share with other pigmented photosensitive cells the common cytostructural feature of localization of absorbing molecules in intracellular organelles where they are tightly ordered in fine substructures.


Author(s):  
William W. Thomson ◽  
Elizabeth S. Swanson

The oxidant air pollutants, ozone and peroxyacetyl nitrate, are produced in the atmosphere through the interaction of light with nitrogen oxides and gaseous hydrocarbons. These oxidants are phytotoxicants and are known to deleteriously affect plant growth, physiology, and biochemistry. In many instances they induce changes which lead to the death of cells, tissues, organs, and frequently the entire plant. The most obvious damage and biochemical changes are generally observed with leaves.Electron microscopic examination of leaves from bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) and cotton (Gossipyum hirsutum L.) fumigated for .5 to 2 hours with 0.3 -1 ppm of the individual oxidants revealed that changes in the ultrastructure of the cells occurred in a sequential fashion with time following the fumigation period. Although occasional cells showed severe damage immediately after fumigation, the most obvious change was an enhanced clarity of the cell membranes.


Author(s):  
D. E. Becker

An efficient, robust, and widely-applicable technique is presented for computational synthesis of high-resolution, wide-area images of a specimen from a series of overlapping partial views. This technique can also be used to combine the results of various forms of image analysis, such as segmentation, automated cell counting, deblurring, and neuron tracing, to generate representations that are equivalent to processing the large wide-area image, rather than the individual partial views. This can be a first step towards quantitation of the higher-level tissue architecture. The computational approach overcomes mechanical limitations, such as hysterisis and backlash, of microscope stages. It also automates a procedure that is currently done manually. One application is the high-resolution visualization and/or quantitation of large batches of specimens that are much wider than the field of view of the microscope.The automated montage synthesis begins by computing a concise set of landmark points for each partial view. The type of landmarks used can vary greatly depending on the images of interest. In many cases, image analysis performed on each data set can provide useful landmarks. Even when no such “natural” landmarks are available, image processing can often provide useful landmarks.


Author(s):  
B. Carragher ◽  
M. Whittaker

Techniques for three-dimensional reconstruction of macromolecular complexes from electron micrographs have been successfully used for many years. These include methods which take advantage of the natural symmetry properties of the structure (for example helical or icosahedral) as well as those that use single axis or other tilting geometries to reconstruct from a set of projection images. These techniques have traditionally relied on a very experienced operator to manually perform the often numerous and time consuming steps required to obtain the final reconstruction. While the guidance and oversight of an experienced and critical operator will always be an essential component of these techniques, recent advances in computer technology, microprocessor controlled microscopes and the availability of high quality CCD cameras have provided the means to automate many of the individual steps.During the acquisition of data automation provides benefits not only in terms of convenience and time saving but also in circumstances where manual procedures limit the quality of the final reconstruction.


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