A threshold probability value of ‘p≤0.05’ is commonly used in clinical investigations to indicate statistical significance. To allow clinicians to better understand evidence generated by research ...studies, this review defines the p value, summarizes the historical origins of the p value approach to hypothesis testing, describes various applications of p≤0.05 in the context of clinical research and discusses the emergence of p≤5×10−8 and other values as thresholds for genomic statistical analyses. Corresponding issues include a conceptual approach of evaluating whether data do not conform to a null hypothesis (ie, no exposure–outcome association). Importantly, and in the historical context of when p≤0.05 was first proposed, the 1-in-20 chance of a false-positive inference (ie, falsely concluding the existence of an exposure–outcome association) was offered only as a suggestion. In current usage, however, p≤0.05 is often misunderstood as a rigid threshold, sometimes with a misguided ‘win’ (p≤0.05) or ‘lose’ (p>0.05) approach. Also, in contemporary genomic studies, a threshold of p≤10−8 has been endorsed as a boundary for statistical significance when analyzing numerous genetic comparisons for each participant. A value of p≤0.05, or other thresholds, should not be employed reflexively to determine whether a clinical research investigation is trustworthy from a scientific perspective. Rather, and in parallel with conceptual issues of validity and generalizability, quantitative results should be interpreted using a combined assessment of strength of association, p values, CIs, and sample size.
ABSTRACT
Multispecies ethnographic projects are venturing “beyond the human” (Kohn 2013), but how far can they go and remain anthropological? The answer depends on whether such projects align with ...the surge of ethological research on animal cultures. Based on my fieldwork on wild horses in Galicia, Spain, I make a case for an ethologically informed ethnography that extends cultural analysis to other social species. In this project, I used ethological techniques of direct observation but analyzed the results using Erving Goffman's concepts of face, footing, and civil inattention. My analysis inverts Clifford Geertz's classic study of the Balinese cockfight by making horse sociality the center of analysis, rather than regarding these animals as representations of human status concerns. I argue that this approach can be usefully applied across the range of taxa that evince culture, particularly those caught up in conservation efforts. In developing this claim, I draw on ethnoprimatologists’ efforts to synthesize multispecies ethnography with ethological methods and perspectives. multispecies ethnography, animal cultures, ethology
RESUMEN
Los proyectos etnográficos de multispecies se están aventurando “más allá de lo humano” (Kohn 2013), sin embargo, ¿qué tan lejos pueden llegar y permanecer antropológicos? La respuesta depende de sí tales proyectos se alinean con el aumento de investigación etológica en culturas animales. Basado en mi trabajo de campo sobre caballos salvajes en Galicia, España, argumento a favor de una etnografía informada etológicamente que extiende el análisis cultural a otras especies sociales. En este proyecto, usé técnicas etológicas de observación directa, pero analicé los resultados utilizando los conceptos de Erving Goffman acerca de la autoimagen, el alineamiento de la comunicación y la inatención civil. Mi análisis invierte el estudio clásico de Clifford Geertz de la pelea de gallos balineses al hacer la sociabilidad de los caballos el centro del análisis, en vez de mirar estos animales como representaciones de preocupaciones del estatus humano. Argumento que esta aproximación puede ser aplicada útilmente a través del rango de taxones que evidencian cultura, particularmente aquellos envueltos en esfuerzos de conservación. En el desarrollo de esta afirmación, me baso en los esfuerzos de los etnoprimatólogos para sintetizar la etnografía de multiespecies con métodos y perspectivas etológicas. etnografía de multiespecies, culturas animales, etología
Several risk scores in acute coronary syndromes are available, but few models exist for stable coronary artery disease to guide decision-making and prognosis. A multivariate model was developed using ...23 baseline candidate variables from the Clinical Outcomes Utilizing Revascularization and Aggressive Drug Therapy EvaluationTrial (n = 2,287 patients). Discrimination of the model was evaluated by the concordance c-index. The procedure was validated using 100 random half samples. We identified 9 independent predictors of death or myocardial infarction (MI) during a 5-year follow-up. The following predictors and points contributing to the risk score were: heart failure (3), number of diseased coronary arteries (1 for each vessel), diabetes (1), age (1 for each 15 years ≥ age 45), previous revascularization (1), current smoking (1), female (1), previous MI (1), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (1: 31 to 40 mg/dL; 2: <30 mg/dL). The risk tool had a potential range from 0 to 15, corresponding to 5-year event rates of 5.8% to 56%. C-indices ranged from 0.67 for the full data set to 0.62 for the validating subsamples. Respective observed versus predicted 5-year event rates for 3 predefined risk strata revealed: 30% had a low-risk score of 0 to 3 (9.3% vs 9.3%, or 1.9%/year); 59% had an intermediate-risk score of 4-6 (18.0% vs 18.1%, or 3.6%/year); and 11% had a high-risk score of 7-11 (36% vs 36.5%, or 7.2%/year). This stable coronary artery disease risk score permitted a prognostic assessment of 5-year probability of death or MI with an approximate 4-fold range in event rates from the lowest (9.3%) to the highest (36%) terciles, thus enabling better clinical practice decisions that allow physicians to tailor the intensity of treatment to the level of risk.
Current controversies in the field of genetics are provoking a reassessment of claims that race is socially constructed. Drawing upon Bruno Latour's model of how to analyse scientific controversy, ...this article argues that race is 'gaining in reality' in such a way that renders claims about its social construction tenuous and uncertain. Such claims can be seen as failing in two key regards. The first relates to changes in the way genetics is practised and promoted, which are undermining the stability of fundamental assertions that there is 'no biological basis for race' or that 'race does not exist'. The second involves the confusion of analytical domains in making assertions about race. This problem stems from investing genetics research with hopes that it would reveal the 'truth' about race. This confidence has led to equating the 'cultural' with 'bias', while ignoring the cultural dynamics which shape race. Subsequently, I argue for making a domain claim for the primacy of cultural analysis that does not simply dismiss the possible relevance of biology or genetics to racial issues.
We are in a transitional moment in our national conversation on race. "Despite optimistic predictions that Barack Obama's election would signal the end of race as an issue in America, the ...race-related news stories just keep coming. Race remains a political and polarizing issue, and the sprawling, unwieldy, and often maddening means we have developed to discuss and evaluate what counts as "racial" can be frustrating. InWhat Can You Say?, John Hartigan Jr. examines a watershed year of news stories, taking these events as a way to understand American culture and challenge our existing notions of what is racial-or not.
The book follows race stories that have made news headlines-including Don Imus's remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team, protests in Jena, Louisiana, and Barack Obama's presidential campaign-to trace the shifting contours of mainstream U.S. public discussions of race as they incorporate new voices, words, and images. Focused on the underlying dynamics of American culture that shape this conversation, this book aims to make us more fluent in assessing the stories we consume about race.
Advancing our conversation on race hinges on recognizing and challenging the cultural conventions governing the ways we speak about and recognize race. In drawing attention to this curious cultural artifact, our national conversation on race, Hartigan ultimately offers a way to to understand race in the totality of American culture, as a constantly evolving debate. As this book demonstrates, the conversation is far from over.
Plants as ethnographic subjects Hartigan, John
Anthropology today,
April 2019, 2019-04-00, 20190401, Volume:
35, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Plants can be intriguing, challenging ethnographic subjects. Plants are communicative, agential and social. Engaging them ethnographically possibly expands the scope and relevance of ethnographic ...methods and theorizing. The phenotypic plasticity of plants makes them strikingly attuned to ethnographic concerns with place and its constitutions; they also actively constitute place through niche construction. There are various intellectual resources available for this kind of engagement through the long‐established disciplines of phytosociology and botany, which, like ethnography, is a field‐based practice.
This article examines the place of botanical gardens in the public sphere, historically and currently analyzing the variety of cultural dynamics shaping these locales. Botanical gardens are complex ...cultural sites where multispecies relations are cultivated and managed. These sites typically combine scientific inquiry with conservation efforts and public attractions. Botanical gardens in Spain offer a distinctive perspective on these locations because of their regional orientations, histories of empire, and distinctive research programs. Located in Spain's three largest cities—Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia—these gardens provide an opportunity to think about multispecies relations that unfold in institutional settings located in dense urban zones. This article theorizes multispecies publics as distinctive cultural assemblages that distinctly align humans and nonhumans in relations of care. These publics combine deep historical roots with considerable current transformative potential for reimagining urban space and the nation.
This article confronts the cultural limitation of critical race work in the United States by examining genomic practices at two national institutes in Mexico —one focused on people and aimed at ...sampling "the Mexican genome," the other focused on plant biodiversity and "razas de maíz" or races of corn. The human genome project emphasizes admixture in ways that seem to confound claims about the racialization of genomics research in the United States; the biodiversity project highlights the broad extent to which "race" is also about nonhumans. Taken together, these projects suggest a greater breadth and depth to racial thinking than is typically considered in U.S.-based accounts. Grasping this wider scope to race involves, first, foregoing a strict delineation of the social and the biological and, secondly, recognizing that uses of race on nonhumans indicate that racial thinking entails profound questions concerning the nature of species. "Razas de maíz" suggest that racial thinking is both older and more deeply engrained than the modernforms with which we have been most concerned; it may well derive from processes of domestication that are quite ancient and encompass a range of contradictory, complex ideas and practices concerning the relations of humans and nonhumans.
Turupukllay is a popular form of bullfighting in Peru that unfolds over several days. Social analysis of turupukllay has largely focused on the symbolic dimension of its most sensational form, Yawar ...Fiesta, in which a condor is affixed to the back of the bull. But regarding these animals merely as symbols results in a limited sense of “play,” particularly given how turupukllay encompasses the bull as a life‐form. Based on fieldwork in Andagua, Peru, we argue that playing with the bull is more extensive: turupukllay can be seen as playing with tauromaquia broadly—the art, life, and regulation of Spanish‐style bullfighting. In Andagua, turupukllay plays with the bull through local breeding practices that physically transform it while also engaging in an ongoing burlesque of the formal features in tauromaquia. This version of turupukllay highlights an ongoing historical dynamic at play in the wide popularity of corrida de toros in Peru.
Resumen
El turupukllay es una forma popular de toreo en Perú que se desarrolla durante varios días. Su análisis social se ha centrado en gran medida en la dimensión simbólica de su forma más sensacional, la Yawar fiesta, en la que se coloca un cóndor en el lomo del toro. Pero considerar a estos animales solo desde lo simbólico limita el “juego”, pues el turupukllay comprende al toro como ser viviente. Con base en el trabajo de campo en Andagua, Perú, argumentamos que jugar con el toro es más extenso: el turupukllay puede entenderse como jugar con la tauromaquia en general, el arte, la vida y la regulación de la tauromaquia española. En Andagua, el turupukllay juega con el toro a través de prácticas de cría locales que lo transforman físicamente mientras se involucra al mismo tiempo en una continua parodia de las características formales de la tauromaquia. Esta versión del turupukllay destaca la dinámica histórica en juego en la gran popularidad de la corrida de toros en Perú.
Turupukllay, Yawar fiesta, Andes, José Arguedas, lenguaje bovino, castas
AKI affects approximately 2%-7% of hospitalized patients and >35% of critically ill patients. Survival after AKI may be described as having an acute phase (including an initial hyperacute component) ...followed by a convalescent phase, which may itself have early and late components.
Data from the Veterans Affairs/National Institutes of Health Acute Renal Failure Trial Network (ATN) study was used to model mortality risk among patients with dialysis-requiring AKI. This study assumed that the mortality hazard can be described by a piecewise log-linear function with change points. Using an average likelihood method, the authors tested for the number of change points in a piecewise log-linear hazard model. The maximum likelihood approach to locate the change point(s) was then adopted, and associated parameters and standard errors were estimated.
There were 1124 ATN participants with follow-up to 1 year. The mortality hazard of AKI decreased over time with inflections in the rate of decrease at days 4, 42, and 148, with the sharpest change at day 42. The daily rate of decline in the log of the hazard for death was 0.220 over the first 4 days, 0.046 between day 4 and day 42, 0.017 between day 42 and day 148, and 0.003 between day 148 and day 365.
There appear to be two major phases of mortality risk after AKI: an early phase extending over the first 6 weeks and a late phase from 6 weeks to 1 year. Within the first 42 days, this can be further divided into hyperacute (days 1-4) and acute (days 4-42) phases. After 42 days, there appear to be early (days 42-148) and late (after day 148) convalescent phases. These findings may help to inform the design of AKI clinical trials and assist critical care physicians in prognostic stratification.
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