Mortality associated with diabetes mellitus in comparison with history of cardiovascular disease in older women.

Current treatment guidelines consider diabetes to be equivalent to existing cardiovascular disease (CVD), but few data exist about the relative importance of these risk factors for total and CVD mortality in older women.We studied 9704 women aged >= 65 years enrolled in a prospective cohort study (Study of Osteoporotic Fracture) during a mean follow-up of 13 years and compared all-cause and CVD mortality among non-diabetic women without and with history of CVD at baseline and diabetic women without and with history of CVD. Diabetes mellitus and CVD were defined as self-report of physician diagnoses. Cause of death was adjudicated from death certificates and medical records when available. Ascertainment of vital status was 99% complete. Multivariate Cox hazard models adjusted for age, smoking, physical activity, systolic blood pressure, waist girth and education were used to compare mortality among the four groups with non-diabetic women without CVD as the referent group. At baseline mean age was 71.7 } 5.3 years, 7.0% reported diabetes mellitus and 14.5% reported prior CVD. 4257 women died during follow-up, 36.6% were attributed to CVD. Compared to non-diabetic women without prior CVD, the risk of CVD mortality was elevated among both non-diabetic women with CVD (HR = 1.82, 95% CI: 1.60-2.07, P <0.001) and diabetic women without prior CVD (HR = 2.24, CI: 1.87-2.69, P <0.001). CVD mortality was highest among diabetic women with CVD (HR = 3.41, CI: 2.61-4.45, P <0.001). Compared to non-diabetic women with CVD, diabetic women without prior CVD had a significantly higher adjusted HR for total and CVD mortality (P < 0.001 and P <0.05 respectively). Older diabetic women without prior CVD have a higher risk of all-cause and CVD mortality compared to nondiabetic women with pre-existing CVD. For older women, these data support the equivalence of prior CVD and diabetes mellitus in current guidelines for the prevention of CVD in primary care.

Non-native English-speaking English language teachers: history and research

Although the majority of English language teachers worldwide are non-native English speakers, no research was conducted on these teachers until recently. After the pioneering work of Robert Phillipson in 1992 and Peter Medgyes in 1994, nearly a decade had to elapse for more research to emerge on the issues relating to non-native English teachers. The publication in 1999 of George Braine's book Nonnative educators in English language teaching appears to have encouraged a number of graduate students and scholars to research this issue, with topics ranging from teachers' perceptions of their own identity to students' views and aspects of teacher education. This article compiles, classifies, and examines research conducted in the last two decades on this topic, placing a special emphasis on World Englishes concerns, methods of investigation, and areas in need of further attention.

Spatially varying selection shapes life history clines among populations of Drosophila melanogaster from sub-Saharan Africa.

Clines in life history traits, presumably driven by spatially varying selection, are widespread. Major latitudinal clines have been observed, for example, in Drosophila melanogaster, an ancestrally tropical insect from Africa that has colonized temperate habitats on multiple continents. Yet, how geographic factors other than latitude, such as altitude or longitude, affect life history in this species remains poorly understood. Moreover, most previous work has been performed on derived European, American and Australian populations, but whether life history also varies predictably with geography in the ancestral Afro-tropical range has not been investigated systematically. Here, we have examined life history variation among populations of D. melanogaster from sub-Saharan Africa. Viability and reproductive diapause did not vary with geography, but body size increased with altitude, latitude and longitude. Early fecundity covaried positively with altitude and latitude, whereas lifespan showed the opposite trend. Examination of genetic variance-covariance matrices revealed geographic differentiation also in trade-off structure, and QST -FST analysis showed that life history differentiation among populations is likely shaped by selection. Together, our results suggest that geographic and/or climatic factors drive adaptive phenotypic differentiation among ancestral African populations and confirm the widely held notion that latitude and altitude represent parallel gradients.

Performance of parental history for the targeted screening of hypertension in children.

OBJECTIVES: Several guidelines recommend universal screening for hypertension in childhood and adolescence. Targeted screening to children with parental history of hypertension could be a more efficient strategy than universal screening. Therefore, we assessed the association between parental history of hypertension and hypertension in children, and estimated the sensitivity, specificity, negative, and positive predictive values of parental history of hypertension for hypertension in children. METHODS: The present study was a school-based cross-sectional study including 5207 children aged 10-14 years from all public 6th grade classes in the Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Children had hypertension if they had sustained elevated blood pressure over three separate visits. RESULTS: In children, the prevalence of hypertension was 2.2%. Some 8.5% of mothers and 12.9% of fathers reported to be hypertensive. Maternal history of hypertension (odds ratio 2.0, 95% confidence interval 1.2-3.3) and paternal history of hypertension (odds ratio 2.2, 95% confidence interval 1.4-3.6) were independent risk factors for hypertension in children. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of parental history of hypertension for the identification of hypertension in children was low (from 4% for both parents' positive history up to 41% for at least one parent's positive history). Positive predictive values were also low (between 4 and 5%). CONCLUSION: Children with hypertensive parents were at higher risk of hypertension. Nevertheless, parental history of hypertension helped only marginally to identify hypertension in offspring. Targeting screening only toward children with a parental history of hypertension may not be a substantially better strategy to identify hypertension in children compared with universal screening.

Old Women, Young Souls: History as a Living Matter

The passionate and deceptive life stories of the protagonists in Angela Carter’s Wise Children (1990) and Rose Tremain’s The Cupboard (1984), women in their seventies and eighties, are entangled with historical events that influenced England, Europe and the rest of the world. In these novels, Angela Carter and Rose Tremain challenge not only notions of ageing by presenting elder protagonists who are lively and strong, but also the idea of history as unique, true and unquestionable by conferring on them the status of story and historytellers.

The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics

La reseña presenta el libro que K. Allan ha editado, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Linguistics (2013), en la colección de la Oxford University Press sobre Lingüística. En la obra participan más de treinta especialistas, que tratan de la historia en Occidente y, en menor medida, en Oriente. Los ámbitos de estudio respetan un orden tradicional: el sonido, la sintaxis y el significado y, como relativa novedad, la lingüística aplicada. Un interés complementario de la obra es su articulacíón en la amplia colección de manuales de lingüística.