Search

Fragility fractures, those fractures which result from low level trauma, have a large and growing socio-economic cost in countries with aging populations. Bone-density-based assessment techniques are vital for identifying populations that are at higher risk of fracture, but do not have high sensitivity when it comes to identifying individuals who will go on to have their first fragility fracture. We are developing Spatially Offset Raman Spectroscopy (SORS) as a tool for retrieving chemical information from bone non-invasively in vivo. Unlike X-ray-based techniques SORS can retrieve chemical information from both the mineral and protein phases of the bone. This may enable better discrimination between those who will or will not go on to have a fragility fracture because both phases contribute to bone's mechanical properties. In this study we analyse excised bone with Raman spectroscopy and multivariate analysis, and then attempt to look for similar Raman signals in vivo using SORS. We show in the excised work that on average, bone fragments from the necks of fractured femora are more mineralised (by 5-10%) than (cadaveric) non-fractured controls, but the mineralisation distributions of the two cohorts are largely overlapped. In our in vivo measurements, we observe similar, but as yet statistically underpowered, differences. After the SORS data (the first SORS measurements reported of healthy and diseased human cohorts), we identify methodological developments which will be used to improve the statistical significance of future experiments and may eventually lead to more sensitive prediction of fragility fractures. © 2015 The Authors. Journal of Raman Spectroscopy Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Objectives The objective was to compare the rates of antimicrobial susceptibility in strains of Escherichia coli isolated from uncomplicated cystitis cases presenting to the emergency department (ED) of a tertiary care center to those reported on that institution's hospital-wide antibiogram. The hypothesis was that cases of uncomplicated cystitis presenting to the ED will exhibit higher antimicrobial susceptibility than is reported by the hospital-wide antibiogram. Methods A retrospective chart review of patients who were diagnosed with uncomplicated cystitis in the ED of a large, academic tertiary care center was conducted. Due to an error in the implementation of a new electronic medical record system at this institution in 2009, all urine samples with any abnormality were reflexively sent for culture. The authors were then able to review and record the antibiotic susceptibility patterns of all cultures that grew E. coli. Exclusion criteria included fever, subsequent hospital admission, treatment of suspected pyelonephritis, receiving current cystitis treatment, male sex, indwelling catheters, recent surgery or hospitalization, or asymptomatic for cystitis. Culture isolate antimicrobial susceptibility was then compared with the hospital-wide antibiogram of the same period. Empiric treatment regimens were also recorded as secondary data. Results Greater susceptibility to trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole (TMP-SMX; 80% vs. 71%), cefazolin (97% vs. 87%), and ciprofloxacin (89% vs. 73%) was found in our population than was published in the hospital antibiogram. These differences were shown to be statistically significant using Fisher's exact test (p

Here I respond to four critics of my book, What Is a Person?, seeking to find areas of common ground and crucial disagreement. Most importantly, I explore the question of whether all human knowledge is conceptually mediated, acknowledging that, no, indeed, there are likely forms of experiential knowledge that are purely and directly acquired without conceptual mediation.

A wide-held assumption is that increased religiousness is associated with stronger perceptions of a conflict between religion and science. This article examines this assumption using four distinct questions asked on the third wave of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR). Results indicate a variety of viewpoints for constructing the relationship between science and religion, rather than a simple conflict-compatibility continuum. Further, findings suggest that increased religiousness among emerging adults is associated with a stronger agreement in science and religion’s compatibility, rather than conflict. Incorporating New Age or non-Western spiritual tradition and a strict adherence to fundamentalist Christian doctrine are associated with complex configurations of beliefs on the relationship between religion and science. Collectively, the findings among emerging adults contradict traditional assumptions about how religious experiences influence beliefs, suggesting that such social factors may influence beliefs and attitudes uniquely at different points in the lifecourse or across generations. More broadly, the findings speak to the ongoing debate about the extent to which differing social experiences may produce consistent or discordant sets of beliefs and values, and in turn how particular configurations may impact strategies of action across a range of life domains.

Previous research on charitable giving has identified a significant relationship between political conservatism and greater financial giving to charitable causes. Yet that research has not adequately explored the important role of religion in that relationship, nor differences in financial giving targets (i.e., religious congregations, noncongregational religious organizations, and nonreligious organizations). Support for competing theories concerning political ideology, religious practice, and charitable financial giving is assessed using data from the Panel Study on American Ethnicity and Religion (PS-ARE). For both religious and nonreligious giving, the effect of political ideology is completely mediated by participation in religious and civic practices. These findings support recent arguments on “practice theory” in cultural sociology and suggest that it is less the effect of ideology than of active participation in religious, political, and community organizations that explains Americans’ financial giving to religious and nonreligious organizations.

How might the social scientific study of religion (SSSR) benefit from adjusting some of its journal article publishing standards and practices ? This article builds onfive presuppositions about the purpose and nature of good sociology in order to advance five specific proposals for changes in how we write, review, and make use of journal articles in the field. Those proposals concern the publishing of descriptive empirical research notes, meta-analysis review essays, detailed methodological information, arguments about causation, and analytical emphases on the substantive power of variables rather than mere statistical significance. The purpose and expected result of these proposed publishing adjustments is to increase the quality, value, and cumulative nature of the scholarship produced in the SSSR.

Over the past two decades, watershed restoration has dramatically increased internationally. California has been at the forefront, allocating billions of dollars to restoration activities through legislation and voter-approved bonds. Yet, the implications of restoration remain ambiguous because there has been little examination of restoration accomplishments and almost no analysis of the political context of restoration. This article addresses these gaps, utilizing a case study of the Russian River basin in Northern California. We identify trends that shed light on both the ecological and the political implications of restoration at a basin scale by examining a database of 787 restoration projects implemented in the Russian River basin since the early 1980s. Although a total of over $47 million has been spent on restoration in the basin, dominant forms of restoration are limited in scope to small-scale projects that focus on technical solutions to site-specific problems. The majority of restoration efforts are devoted to road repair, riparian stabilization, and in-stream structures, accounting for 62% of all projects. These types of projects do not address the broader social drivers of watershed change such as land and water uses. We suggest that restoration can become more effective by addressing the entire watershed as a combination of social and ecological forces that interact to produce watershed conditions.

American sociology has long documented and theorized persistent inequalities between religious communities in the United States; in addition, socioeconomic inequalities between religious groups have played an important role in many sociological theories about religion and society. Since the publication of numerous important works published in the mid-20th century, however, the social stratification of American religion has been a curiously understudied topic. This research note is an attempt to update our descriptive knowledge about socioeconomic inequalities between American religious groups. Using General Social Survey data to track educational, income, and job status inequality over a 16-year period, from the early 1980s to the late 1990s, we find that socioeconomic inequality in the American religious system has been quite persistent and stable, suggesting that significant mobility within this system in the mid-20th century may be declining, thus producing a more stable system of stratification.

A large body of empirical studies shows that religion often serves as a factor promoting positive, healthy outcomes in the lives of American adolescents. This research note reports findings of one test of a “network closure” explanation of these religious effects. It uses the national Survey of Parents and Youth (1998–1999) data to examine the relationship between religious participation and five measures of network closure. The findings support the hypothesis that participation in American religious congregations increases network closure between the parents of youth and their children's friends, their children's friends' parents, and their children's teachers.

A large body of empirical studies shows that religion often serves as a factor promoting positive, healthy outcomes in the lives of American adolescents. Yet existing theoretical explanations for these religious effects remain largely disjointed and fragmented. This article attempts to formulate a more systematic, integrated, and coherent account of religion’s constructive influence in the lives of American youth, suggesting nine key factors (moral directives, spiritual experiences, role models, community and leadership skills, coping skills, cultural capital, social capital, network closure, and extra-community links) that cluster around three key dimensions of influence (moral order, learned competencies, and social and organizational ties). Several decades of social scientific studies have shown that religion is often a factor in the lives of American adolescents, influencing their attitudes and behaviors in ways that are commonly viewed as positive and constructive. Across a number of areas of concern, various measures of religiosity are typically associated with a variety of healthy, desirable outcomes. This article is an attempt to theorize systematically why religion might have such an influence in the lives of American adolescents. Within the relevant bodies of literature, individual publications normally suggest causal mechanisms explaining their particular findings. Altogether, these many studies are very helpful, but as a whole they present the contemporary researcher with a disjointed and fragmented account for religious influences in the lives of American teenagers. In the following pages, I attempt to synthesize some of what we know from these and other informative studies into a more coherent, systematic account of how and why religion exerts significant positive effects on American youth.

Sociologists know surprisingly little about the religious lives of adolescents in the United States. This article begins to redress that unfortunate lack of knowledge by examining descriptive findings on adolescent religious participation from three recent, reputable national surveys of American youth. We present descriptive statistics on three fundamental aspects of youth religious participation: religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and involvement in church youth groups. We also examine the influences of gender, race, age, and region on these religious outcomes. This descriptive inquiry should help to heighten broader understanding of and to lay down a baseline of essential information about American adolescent religious participation. Further research is needed to investigate the social influence of different kinds of religiosity on various outcomes in the lives of American youth. We know relatively little about the religious lives of American adolescents. The vast majority of research in the sociology of religion in the United States focuses on American adults, ages 18 and older. And few scholars of American adolescents in other fields pay close attention to youth’s religious lives. As a result, our social scientific knowledge of the religious affiliations, practices, beliefs, experiences, and attitudes of American youth is impoverished. 1 This is a problem for many reasons. American adolescents between the ages of 10‐19 represent about 14 percent of all Americans (adolescents ages 10‐24 represent 21 percent), an ageminority population deserving scholarly attention as much as any other group. Indeed, American adolescents may deserve extra scholarly attention by sociologists of religion. Adolescence represents a crucial developmental transition from childhood to adulthood and so can disclose a tremendous amount of knowledge about religious socialization and change in the life course. Adolescents are a population that many religious organizations, both congregations and parachurch ministries, particularly target in order to exert influence in their lives. Adolescence and young adulthood is also the life stage when religious conversion is most likely to take place. Adolescence furthermore provides a unique opportunity to study religious influences on family relationships and dynamics, peer interactions, risk behaviors, and many other outcome variables. Finally, adolescence provides an ideal baseline stage for longitudinal research on religious influences in people’s lives.

Peruvian liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez’s massive work, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ, should not be read as a defensive or retreating move for liberation theology in the face of two decades of opposition. Rather, it is best understood as a creative and strategic counteroffensive to advance liberation theology in terms that the Vatican can only find difficult to counter. Nevertheless, liberation theology struggles with the difficulty of intellectually justifying itself on nondependency and non-Marxist grounds. In any case, the struggle for the work of liberation in Latin America continues.

Research on volunteering behavior has consistently found a positive relationship between religion and volunteering. Using a sample of churchgoing Protestants (N=1,738)from the Religious Identity and Influence Survey we examine the specific influences of religiosity, religious identity, religious socialization, and religious social networks on local volunteer activity in church programs and non-church organizations, as well as general volunteering tendencies. These influences are presented within the theoretical framework of religious capital. Logistic regression techniques were applied to determine the strength of the contribution of these influences while accounting for basic background factors. Findings suggest that churchgoing Protestants are influenced by all measures to some degree, but religiosity (specifically participation in church activities) remains the strongest influence. Significant religious influences overall are most pronounced within the context of church-related volunteering which suggests that churchgoing Protestants exhibit a strong sense of community identity through their local churches. A discussion of these results and their implications for volunteering follows.