People with schizophrenia are already known to suffer from worse health than the rest of the population and now a new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests that they may also be more at risk when they go into hospital for treatment. The researchers used data from 2002-2007 which covered 269,387 hospitalizations of people with schizophrenia and 37,092,651 hospitalizations of unaffected people. They found that patients with schizophrenia were more likely to have complications such as pressure sores, infections, blood infections, respiratory failure or pneumonia after surgery, deep vein thrombosis or pulmonary embolism. The researchers put the disparity down to the difficulties people with schizophrenia have in communicating with other people, the fact that nurses and doctors might ignore them if they complained and put this down to their mental-health problem, and the side effects of the drugs that people take for their schizophrenia.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

A recent article in the Irish Independent pointed to difficulties that primary schools in Ireland were having in attracting applicants for vacancies “Longer working hours, increased bureaucracy and poor rewards are thought to be the main causes of the poor take-up of jobs” it concluded. If so this is a serious problem. Interestingly, the Sunday Business Post recently carried an article suggesting that Irish public sector workers, including primary teachers, were comparatively well paid.
So what evidence do we have ? Growing Up in Ireland actually has some very good data on this and related issues. The principals in which the 9 year olds were pupils were asked about their stress levels. This is not a random sample of principals note: in schools where there are more than one study child then that principal will be counted more than once. But since these will tend to be in bigger schools this makes sense. So it should be reasonably representative of the population I think.
So what did they say? The graph below gives the responses and indicates fairly high stress levels. Almost 68% were “very” or “fairly” stressed.

The principals were also asked about job satisfaction. The results there suggest a different picture.Over 95% are “very” or “fairly” satisfied by their job. So based on this criterion, it would seem that our principals are not doing too badly and it is harder to understand why there might be recruitment difficulties. It may well be the case that it is particular types of school that are experiencing problems retaining or recruiting principals. It would be an interesting task to use this rich data source to explore what are the predictors of principals’ (& teachers’) job stress and satisfaction.

Having a longer education might not stop people’s brains decaying physically but it can help them to stave off symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. A team of researchers from England and Finland studied the donated brains of 872 people taking part in the Epidemiological Clinicopathological Studies in Europe (ECLIPSE) study. They found that – as was the case with previous studies – people who had been educated longer were less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. However, there was no difference in the changes in the brain associated with the condition between well-educated and less well-educated people suggesting that being better educated helps people deal with changes to the brain better rather than preventing them in the first place.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the title of this post.

The founder of our university is about to be made a saint.

Instruments, randomization, and learning about development

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Angus Deaton (Princeton University)
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• Angus S. Deaton

There is currently much debate about the effectiveness of foreign aid and about what kind of projects can engender economic development. There is skepticism about the ability of econometric analysis to resolve these issues, or of development agencies to learn from their own experience. In response, there is increasing use in development economics of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to accumulate credible knowledge of what works, without over-reliance on questionable theory or statistical methods. When RCTs are not possible, the proponents of these methods advocate quasi-randomization through instrumental variable (IV) techniques or natural experiments. I argue that many of these applications are unlikely to recover quantities that are useful for policy or understanding: two key issues are the misunderstanding of exogeneity, and the handling of heterogeneity. I illustrate from the literature on aid and growth. Actual randomization faces similar problems as does quasi-randomization, notwithstanding rhetoric to the contrary. I argue that experiments have no special ability to produce more credible knowledge than other methods, and that actual experiments are frequently subject to practical problems that undermine any claims to statistical or epistemic superiority. I illustrate using prominent experiments in development and elsewhere. As with IV methods, RCT-based evaluation of projects, without guidance from an understanding of underlying mechanisms, is unlikely to lead to scientific progress in the understanding of economic development. I welcome recent trends in development experimentation away from the evaluation of projects and towards the evaluation of theoretical mechanisms.

1. Adam Jaffe: Building Program Evaluation Into The Design Of Public Research Support Programs

2. NSF Survey of Federal Funds for Research and Development

3. Greg Mankiw discusses the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers’ “impossible job”: measuring how many jobs were created by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Here’s a link to the CEA document.

4. Marginal Revolution flags a recent paper by Weber and Castillo from Yahoo! Research: The Demographics of Web Search. “How does the web search behavior of ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ people differ? Do men and women tend to click on different results for the same query?”

5. David McWilliams on emigration out of Ireland: “The ESRI predicts that 120,000 will leave the country in the next 18 months, on top of the 100,000 who have already gone in the past 18 months.”

6. It was last year that the CSO reported that for the first time since 1995 more people left Ireland than moved here. That is, there was net outward migration.

7. Overall, the ESRI commentary warns that 200,000 people may be forced to emigrate between now and 2015 if unemployment does not abate.

8. In addition, a new Eurobarometer survey shows more than one fifth of Irish people are thinking of moving abroad for work. It also shows that 35% of Irish people feel employment prospects are better in other countries.

9. This Irish Times article states that current statistics show “Irish people are moving to both Canada and Australia in increasing numbers to escape the economic recession but are largely shunning traditional emigration routes to Britain and the US.”

10. A companion article by the same journalist (Jamie Smyth) considers whether time abroad could end up as permanent emigration: “…if the Irish economy does not rebound in the next few years and create job opportunities for the next generation of graduates and school-leavers it seems very likely that a year spent working abroad will lead to longer term and more permanent emigration.” To quote an old Pogues song, (hundreds of) thousands are “sailing”.

Optical illusions occur as a result of perception. Essentially, visual perception involves a three step process. 1) The eyes see 2)The information received is relayed to the brain 3)The mind reasons it all out.

Sometimes, though, what we see isn’t what’s really there. Below are three static, non-moving pictures from Mighty Optical Illusions. Take a look at how they “move” and “float” despite being fixed objects. This is a great lesson in learning how perception is not always an accurate experience. Gives new meaning to “seeing is believing”, doesn’t it?

For more on illusions link here

Rachel Davis from the radiologydegree.com website has compiled a very useful list of the Top 50 online resources for people looking after someone with Alzheimer’s disease. You can find Rachel’s list here

http://radiologydegree.com/top-50-online-resources-for-families-coping-with-alzheimer%E2%80%99s/

or by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Scientists know that the children of alcoholics are at a greater risk of developing mental-health problems but the effects of gender on this process are not really known. Researchers from Yale University used information from the National Epidemiological Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions to study 40,374 people with and without a history of paternal or maternal alcoholism. They found that the greatest risk was experienced by daughters whose mothers were alcoholics who were more likely to smoke and drink heavily and to suffer from mania and schizoid personality disorder.

You can find out more about this research by clicking on the link in the title of this post.

Researchers who read this blog should read the new voluntary code of conduct for researchers published recently by the European Science Foundation and reported on here