This dissertation pools time-series and cross-section data among Canadian provinces to examine: (1) whether provincial welfare generosity (health, social services, and education expenditures), power resources and political parties (unions and left, centre, and right political parties), and political democracy (voter turnout and women in government) affects population health; (2) whether the effect of leftist politics channels through or combines with provincial welfare generosity to affect population health; and (3) whether provinces cluster into distinct political regimes which are predictive of population health. Data is retrieved from the Canadian Socio-Economic Information Management System (CANSIM) II Tables from 1976 to 2008 and Canadian Parliamentary Guides from various years. Population health is measured using total, male, and female age-standardized mortality rates. Estimation techniques include Prais-Winsten regressions with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE), a first-order autocorrelation correction model (AR1), and fixed unit effects. Hierarchical cluster analysis is used to identify how provinces cluster into distinct regimes. Primary findings are three-fold. First, provincial welfare generosity has a significant impact in lowering mortality rates, net of other factors, such as demographic and economic variables. Second, the political power of left and centre political parties and women in government have significant negative effects on mortality rates. Whereas left political parties and women in government combine with provincial welfare generosity to improve population health, the effect of centre political parties is channeled through provincial expenditures. Third, provinces cluster into three distinct regimes based on left political party power and women in government: 1) leftist (Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and Manitoba); 2) centre-left (Ontario and Quebec); and 3) conservative (Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland). Compared to the leftist regime, centre-left and conservative provinces have significantly higher mortality rates; however, provincial welfare generosity accounts for most of the observed inter-provincial differences in population health.

The epidemics of poverty and HIV/ AIDS, whether individually or when combined, pose major threats to development both in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. However, it is when these epidemics coexist that major devastation occurs. As such exploration of the relationship between these two epidemics has been the focal point of most research on either poverty or HIV/ AIDS. Through mainly the use of literature based research, studies have indicated how poverty and disease, most specifically HIV/ AIDS are related. Since most of these studies have been literature based, this has resulted in a lack of sufficient empirical evidence arguing for the existence of this poverty-HIV/ AIDS cycle. Providing such evidence forms the main objective of this study. This study uses data collected by the 1998 South African Demographic and Health Survey as well as existing literature on the link between poverty and disease. For purposes of this study, analysis is restricted to women in their reproductive ages (15-49) . The results indicate an increased risk of HIV infection among the poor due to poverty related characteristics of low education and low knowledge of the means of avoiding HIV infection as opposed to the non-p oor. Moreover the poor and the less educated people were found to be more likely to not use condoms than the non-poor. The results do not , however, provide reasons for these relations and as such further research is required. One possible explanation was financial dependence on their partners as it was found that women who received money from their partners as well as tho se who came from households where hunger was a common phenomenon were more likely to not use condoms because their partners disliked condoms than those who didn't receive any money from their partners. The results also hinted on the intricacy of the poverty-HIV/ AIDS relation whereby it was not only low socia-economic status that increased susceptibility to HIV infection but also high socio-economic status. This was indicated by the high odds of non-use of condoms due to low perceived risk of HIV infection among the non-poor and the White population (a race with the minority poor people). These results also hint at the prevailing stigmatization of HIV/ AIDS as a disease of the poor despite efforts by prevention programmes to destigrnatize this disease. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal,Durban, 2005.

Child nutrition has become a well accepted marker of a population's health. Consequently, in the past decades it has been common for health surveys to collect anthropometric measurements of children. Cross sectional data including that of demographic health surveys, therefore, provides a framework for analysis of progress in health of children in the developing world. Using data from the Zimbabwe Demographic Health Surveys (ZDHS) of 1988, 1994 and 1999, this dissertation describes the levels, patterns of distribution, and the changes in determinants of child malnutrition in Zimbabwe between 1988 and 1999. The study employed complimentary methodology by using both the quantitative as well as the qualitative data. Standardized anthropometric measures (weight and height/length of children 3-35 months) from ZDHS were converted into the three indices (weight-for-age, weight-for-height, and height-for-age) to measure patterns of child malnutrition using the Epi-Info software. In addition, the Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) was used for the descriptive statistics, bivariate analysis and regression models in the three cross-sectional data sets. Multiple linear regression models were used to analyze the effects of independent variables for child malnutrition in the year 1988, 1994 and 1999. The qualitative methodology was used to compliment and fill the gaps from the quantitative data. Focus group discussion indepth interviews were held with community stakeholders in two regions in Zimbabwe. It was observed that malnutrition patterns in Zimbabwe has slightly decreased between 1988 and 1994 before rising again in 1999 based on the current World Health Organization (WHO) standard. Stunting and underweight are more significant forms of malnutrition in Zimbabwe in all the survey years. The education of mothers, child age, had highly significant effects on the nutritional status of children, while other independent variable had varying significance over the years. Factors such as child's age, mother's education, and sources of water, and toilet facilities are important in explaining child malnutrition in Zimbabwe over the past years. The analysis of anthropometric data from demographic health surveys contributes a useful approach to evaluate and inform child health policy and interventions in the developing countries. The results also demonstrates how the second round and third round assessment of Demographic Health Survey anthropometry can add some advantages of longitudinal measurement to the cross sectional datasets. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

In the past, conifers have been the primary focus of population and conservation genetic studies in Pacific Northwest (PNW) trees. These studies have provided tremendous insight as to how genetic diversity varies across species ranges for these wind-pollinated and mostly wind-dispersed species. With this study of Pacific dogwood (Cornus nuttallii), a broadleaved, PNW species, which utilizes biological vectors for pollen and seed dispersal, we hope to broaden our understanding of tree evolutionary dynamics. Marker development for C. nuttallii found few useful polymorphisms. Of eight microsatellite markers (SSRs) developed from a closely related species, three were monomorphic, while the other five averaged only 4.4 alleles/locus. Furthermore, only a single base pair substitution was found in the rpl16 region of the chloroplast genome after sequencing 2,262 non-coding base pairs in 100 individuals. This lack of diversity, which was found to be ubiquitous throughout the range of C. nuttallii, suggests this species may have endured a prolonged bottleneck in a single glacial refugium prior to recolonization. The cpDNA phylogeographic pattern and a significant decline in both SSR allelic richness (r² = 0.42, p<0.01), and expected heterozygosity (r² = 0.51, p<0.01) support this theory. Low levels of population structure, documented in both chloroplast (D = 0.153) and nuclear genomes (FST = 0.071, RST = 0.036) may suggest high levels of contemporary gene flow between populations are also influencing current patterns of diversity. Despite variation being the precursor for adaptation, a comparison of QST (0.088 for first-year height and 0.113 for bud burst timing) with a refined FST estimate (0.053), indicated that C. nuttallii had either retained or recovered significant phenotypic variation for differential selection to act. Such uniformly low diversity raises the issue of how genetic conservation efforts should proceed with this and other species sharing a similar degree of genetic depauperateness. So that signs of decline may be detected, we suggest population monitoring, especially for those populations occurring at high elevations. Furthermore, we advocate the transfer of seeds from the nearest southern source, in the event that restorative efforts are required to assist this species to cope with the rapidly changing climate.

This dissertation pools time-series and cross-section data among Canadian provinces to examine: (1) whether provincial welfare generosity (health, social services, and education expenditures), power resources and political parties (unions and left, centre, and right political parties), and political democracy (voter turnout and women in government) affects population health; (2) whether the effect of leftist politics channels through or combines with provincial welfare generosity to affect population health; and (3) whether provinces cluster into distinct political regimes which are predictive of population health. Data is retrieved from the Canadian Socio-Economic Information Management System (CANSIM) II Tables from 1976 to 2008 and Canadian Parliamentary Guides from various years. Population health is measured using total, male, and female age-standardized mortality rates. Estimation techniques include Prais-Winsten regressions with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE), a first-order autocorrelation correction model (AR1), and fixed unit effects. Hierarchical cluster analysis is used to identify how provinces cluster into distinct regimes. Primary findings are three-fold. First, provincial welfare generosity has a significant impact in lowering mortality rates, net of other factors, such as demographic and economic variables. Second, the political power of left and centre political parties and women in government have significant negative effects on mortality rates. Whereas left political parties and women in government combine with provincial welfare generosity to improve population health, the effect of centre political parties is channeled through provincial expenditures. Third, provinces cluster into three distinct regimes based on left political party power and women in government: 1) leftist (Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and Manitoba); 2) centre-left (Ontario and Quebec); and 3) conservative (Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland). Compared to the leftist regime, centre-left and conservative provinces have significantly higher mortality rates; however, provincial welfare generosity accounts for most of the observed inter-provincial differences in population health.

No description available.

Identifying single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are involved in common and complex diseases, such as cancer, is a major challenge in current molecular epidemiology. Knowledge of such SNPs is expected to enable timely diagnosis, effective treatment, and, ultimately, prevention of human disease. However, the tremendous number of SNPs on the human genome, which is estimated at more than eleven million, poses challenges to obtain and analyze the information of all the SNPs. In this thesis we address the problem of selecting representative SNP markers for supporting effective disease-gene association studies. Our goal is to facilitate the genotyping and analysis procedure, associated with such studies, by providing effective prioritization methods for SNP markers based on both their allele information and functional significance. However, the problem of SNP selection has been proven to be NP-hard in general, and current selection methods impose certain restrictions and use heuristics for reducing the complexity of the problem. We thus aim to develop new heuristic algorithms and systems to advance the state-of-the-art, while relaxing the restrictions. To address this challenge, we formulate several SNP selection problems and present novel algorithms and a database system based on the two major SNP selection approaches: tag SNP selection and functional SNP selection. Furthermore, we describe an innovative approach to combine both tag SNP selection and functional SNP selection into one unified selection process. We demonstrate the improved performance of all the proposed methods using comparative studies. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2009-06-22 15:26:14.061

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.