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Low Birth-weight Paradox
{{Short description, Statistical quirk of babies' birth weights The low birth-weight paradox is an apparently paradoxical observation relating to the birth weights and mortality rate of children born to tobacco smoking mothers. Low birth-weight children born to smoking mothers have a ''lower'' infant mortality rate than the low birth weight children of non-smokers. It is an example of Simpson's paradox. History Traditionally, babies weighing less than a certain amount (which varies between countries) have been classified as having ''low birth weight''. In a given population, low birth weight babies have a significantly higher mortality rate than others; thus, populations with a higher rate of low birth weights typically also have higher rates of child mortality than other populations. Based on prior research, the children of smoking mothers are more likely to be of low birth weight than children of non-smoking mothers. Thus, by extension the child mortality rate should be higher a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paradox
A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictory or a logically unacceptable conclusion. A paradox usually involves contradictory-yet-interrelated elements that exist simultaneously and persist over time. They result in "persistent contradiction between interdependent elements" leading to a lasting "unity of opposites". In logic, many paradoxes exist that are known to be invalid arguments, yet are nevertheless valuable in promoting critical thinking, while other paradoxes have revealed errors in definitions that were assumed to be rigorous, and have caused axioms of mathematics and logic to be re-examined. One example is Russell's paradox, which questions whether a "list of all lists that do not contain themselves" would include itself, and showed that attempts to found set theory on the identification ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorado
Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is the eighth most extensive and 21st most populous U.S. state. The 2020 United States census enumerated the population of Colorado at 5,773,714, an increase of 14.80% since the 2010 United States census. The region has been inhabited by Native Americans and their ancestors for at least 13,500 years and possibly much longer. The eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains was a major migration route for early peoples who spread throughout the Americas. "''Colorado''" is the Spanish adjective meaning "ruddy", the color of the Fountain Formation outcroppings found up and down the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28, 1861, and on August 1, 1876, U.S. President Ulyss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Demography
Demography () is the statistics, statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and Population dynamics, dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as education, nationality, religion, and ethnicity. Educational institutions usually treat demography as a field of sociology, though there are a number of independent demography departments. These methods have primarily been developed to study human populations, but are extended to a variety of areas where researchers want to know how populations of Social actions, social actors can change across time through processes of birth, death, and Human migration, migration. In the context of human biological populations, demographic analysis uses Public records, administrative records to develop an independent Approximation, estimate of the population. Demographic analysis estimates are often considered a reliable stan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the field of study concentrated on pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. As a medical specialty, obstetrics is combined with gynecology under the discipline known as obstetrics and gynecology (OB/GYN), which is a surgical field. Main areas Prenatal care Prenatal care is important in screening for various complications of pregnancy. This includes routine office visits with physical exams and routine lab tests along with telehealth care for women with low-risk pregnancies: Image:Ultrasound_image_of_a_fetus.jpg, 3D ultrasound of fetus (about 14 weeks gestational age) Image:Sucking his thumb and waving.jpg, Fetus at 17 weeks Image:3dultrasound 20 weeks.jpg, Fetus at 20 weeks First trimester Routine tests in the first trimester of pregnancy generally include: * Complete blood count * Blood type ** Rh-negative antenatal patients should receive RhoGAM at 28 weeks to prevent Rh disease. * Indirect Coombs test (AGT) to assess risk of hemolytic dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Statistical Paradoxes
Statistics (from German: ''Statistik'', "description of a state, a country") is the discipline that concerns the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data. In applying statistics to a scientific, industrial, or social problem, it is conventional to begin with a statistical population or a statistical model to be studied. Populations can be diverse groups of people or objects such as "all people living in a country" or "every atom composing a crystal". Statistics deals with every aspect of data, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.Dodge, Y. (2006) ''The Oxford Dictionary of Statistical Terms'', Oxford University Press. When census data cannot be collected, statisticians collect data by developing specific experiment designs and survey samples. Representative sampling assures that inferences and conclusions can reasonably extend from the sample to the population as a whole. An expe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Smoker's Paradox
Tobacco use has predominantly negative effects on human health and concern about health effects of tobacco has a long history. Research has focused primarily on cigarette smoking. Tobacco smoke contains more than 70 chemicals that cause cancer. Tobacco also contains nicotine, which is a highly addictive psychoactive drug. When tobacco is smoked, nicotine causes physical and psychological dependency. Cigarettes sold in underdeveloped countries tend to have higher tar content, and are less likely to be filtered, potentially increasing vulnerability to tobacco smoking–related disease in these regions. Tobacco use is the single greatest cause of preventable death globally. As many as half of people who use tobacco die from complications of tobacco use. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that each year tobacco causes about 6 million deaths (about 10% of all deaths) with 600,000 of these occurring in non-smokers due to second-hand smoke. Tobacco is estimated to h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexican Paradox
The Mexican paradox is the observation that Mexicans exhibit a surprisingly low incidence of low birth weight (especially foreign-born Mexican mothers), contrary to what would be expected from their socioeconomic status (SES). This appears as an outlier in graphs correlating SES with low-birth-weight rates. The medical causes of lower rates of low birth weights among birthing Mexican mothers has been called into question. The Hispanic paradox refers to the same phenomenon observed across the populations of South and Central America, where Mexicans remain the healthier. Description The results of a study showed that the mean birth weight of Mexican-American babies was 3.34 kg (7.37 lbs), while that of non-Hispanic White babies was 3.39 kg (7.48 lbs.). This finding re-emphasized the independence of mean birth weight and LBW. This however did not refute the discrepancies in LBW for Mexicans. The study also showed that the overall preterm birth rate was higher amon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epidemiologic Methods
The science of epidemiology has matured significantly from the times of Hippocrates, Semmelweis and John Snow. The techniques for gathering and analyzing epidemiological data vary depending on the type of disease being monitored but each study will have overarching similarities. Outline of the process of an epidemiological study # Establish that a problem exists #* Full epidemiological studies are expensive and laborious undertakings. Before any study is started, a case must be made for the importance of the research. # Confirm the homogeneity of the events #* Any conclusions drawn from inhomogeneous cases will be suspicious. All events or occurrences of the disease must be true cases of the disease. # Collect all the events #* It is important to collect as much information as possible about each event in order to inspect a large number of possible risk factors. The events may be collected from varied methods of epidemiological study or from censuses or hospital records. #* The even ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epidemiology
Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution (who, when, and where), patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population. It is a cornerstone of public health, and shapes policy decisions and evidence-based practice by identifying risk factors for disease and targets for preventive healthcare. Epidemiologists help with study design, collection, and statistical analysis of data, amend interpretation and dissemination of results (including peer review and occasional systematic review). Epidemiology has helped develop methodology used in clinical research, public health studies, and, to a lesser extent, basic research in the biological sciences. Major areas of epidemiological study include disease causation, transmission, outbreak investigation, disease surveillance, environmental epidemiology, forensic epidemiology, occupational epidemiology, screening, biomonitoring, and comparisons of treatment effects such as in clinical trials. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Confounding
In statistics, a confounder (also confounding variable, confounding factor, extraneous determinant or lurking variable) is a variable that influences both the dependent variable and independent variable, causing a spurious association. Confounding is a causal concept, and as such, cannot be described in terms of correlations or associations.Pearl, J., (2009). Simpson's Paradox, Confounding, and Collapsibility In ''Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference'' (2nd ed.). New York : Cambridge University Press. The existence of confounders is an important quantitative explanation why correlation does not imply causation. Confounds are threats to internal validity. Definition Confounding is defined in terms of the data generating model. Let ''X'' be some independent variable, and ''Y'' some dependent variable. To estimate the effect of ''X'' on ''Y'', the statistician must suppress the effects of extraneous variables that influence both ''X'' and ''Y''. We say that ''X'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frequency Distribution
In statistics, the frequency (or absolute frequency) of an event i is the number n_i of times the observation has occurred/recorded in an experiment or study. These frequencies are often depicted graphically or in tabular form. Types The cumulative frequency is the total of the absolute frequencies of all events at or below a certain point in an ordered list of events. The (or empirical probability) of an event is the absolute frequency normalized by the total number of events: : f_i = \frac = \frac. The values of f_i for all events i can be plotted to produce a frequency distribution. In the case when n_i = 0 for certain i, pseudocounts can be added. Depicting frequency distributions A frequency distribution shows us a summarized grouping of data divided into mutually exclusive classes and the number of occurrences in a class. It is a way of showing unorganized data notably to show results of an election, income of people for a certain region, sales of a product within ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Birth Weight
Birth weight is the body weight of a baby at its birth. The average birth weight in babies of European descent is , with the normative range between . On average, babies of South Asian and Chinese descent weigh about . As far as low birth weight prevalence rates changing over time, there has been a slight decrease from 7.9% (1970) to 6.8% (1980), then a slight increase to 8.3% (2006), to the current levels of 8.2% (2016). The prevalence of low birth weights has trended slightly upward from 2012 to the present. There have been numerous studies that have attempted, with varying degrees of success, to show links between birth weight and later-life conditions, including diabetes, obesity, tobacco smoking, and intelligence. Low birth weight is associated with neonatal infection and infant mortality. Abnormalities *A low birth weight can be caused either by a preterm birth (low gestational age at birth) or of the infant being small for gestational age (slow prenatal growth rate), or a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
