Sewanee: The University of the South

About: Sewanee: The University of the South is a education organization based out in Sewanee, Tennessee, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Species richness. The organization has 8995 authors who have published 14790 publications receiving 320138 citations. The organization is also known as: Sewanee & The University of the South.

Physical and nonphysical partner abuse and other risk factors for low birth weight among full term and preterm babies: a multiethnic case-control study.

Abstract: This study sought to determine the risk of low birth weight from intimate partner abuse. The case-control design was used in a purposively ethnically stratified multisite sample of 1,004 women interviewed during the 72 hours after delivery between 1991 and 1996. Abuse was determined by the Index of Spouse Abuse and a modification of the Abuse Assessment Screen. Separate analyses were conducted for 252 full term and 326 preterm infants. The final multiple logistic regression models were constructed to determine relative risk for low birth weight after controlling for other complications of pregnancy. Physical and nonphysical abuse as determined by the Index of Spouse Abuse were both significant risk factors for low birth weight for the full term infants but not the preterm infants on a bivariate level. However, the risk estimates decreased in significance in the adjusted models. Although today's short delivery stays make it difficult to assess for abuse, it is necessary to screen for domestic violence at delivery, especially for women who may not have obtained prenatal care. The unadjusted significant risk for low birth weight that became nonsignificant when adjusted suggests that other abuse-related maternal health problems (notably low weight gain and poor obstetric history) are confounders (or mediators) that help to explain the relation between abuse and low birth weight in full term infants.

Measuring the functional redundancy of biological communities: a quantitative guide

Abstract: Summary The preservation of ecosystem processes under ongoing biotic erosion requires that some species within affected communities perform similar functions, a property that is usually defined as functional redundancy. Although functional redundancy has recently become a relevant part of ecological research, so far there is no agreement on its measurement. The scope of this work is thus to propose a consistent framework based on functional dissimilarities among species for summarizing different facets of functional redundancy. The behaviour of the proposed measures is illustrated with one small artificial data set, together with actual examples on the species functional turnover along successional gradients. We believe this new framework provides an important contribution for the clarification and quantification of key metrics of community redundancy and vulnerability. The method, for which we provide a simple r function called ‘uniqueness’, further allows summarizing the functional contribution of single species to the overall redundancy of any type of biological community.