Applying historical GIS beyond the academy: four use cases for the Great Britain HGIS
Total funding for the Great Britain Historical GIS now totals over $US 3.5m., but obtaining this funding required us to demonstrate that the results would benefit an audience beyond academic history. This chapter describes how we have worked with four other groups to meet their needs: health researchers, archivists, government environmental agencies and companies selling advice to the property sector. The main focus is on the reasons for the collaboration, with details of the actual research provided mainly via references. The case studies presented here are of course all drawn from the experience of one project, but that experience is quite diverse, and each case study ends with some more general lessons.
Lost landscapes of the market gardeners : a qualitative historical GIS examination of the demise of the Chinese and Japanese market gardening industries in the north and central Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, 1910s-1950s
............................................................................................................................. ii PREFACE ................................................................................................................................ iv TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................................... v LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................................. viii LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................. ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ....................................................................................................... xi DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................... xiii CHAPTER
Breastfeeding and Atherosclerosis: Intima-Media Thickness and Plaques at 65-Year Follow-Up of the Boyd Orr Cohort
Objectives—The impact of breastfeeding in infancy on cardiovascular disease risk is uncertain. We related breastfeeding in infancy to atherosclerosis in adulthood. Methods and Results—A historic cohort study based on a 65-year follow-up of the Carnegie (Boyd Orr) survey of diet and health in prewar Britain, 1937 to 1939. A total of 732 eligible cohort members living in or around Aberdeen, Bristol, Dundee, Wisbech, and London were invited for follow-up examinations in 2002, and 405 (55%) participated. In models controlling for age and sex, breastfeeding was inversely associated with common carotid intima-media thickness (IMT; difference −0.03 mm; 95% CI, −0.07 to 0.01), bifurcation IMT (difference −0.19 mm; 95% CI, −0.37 to −0.01), carotid plaque (odds ratio [OR], 0.52; 95% CI, 0.29 to 0.92), and femoral plaque (OR, 0.54; 95% CI, 0.26 to 1.12), compared with bottle-feeding. Controlling for socioeconomic variables in childhood and adulthood, smoking and alcohol made little difference to effect estimates. Controlling for factors potentially on the causal pathway (blood pressure, adiposity, cholesterol, insulin resistance, and C-reactive protein) made little difference to observed associations. Conclusions—Breastfeeding may be associated with a reduced risk of atherosclerosis in later life. Measurement error and power considerations limit the extent to which conclusions about the mechanisms underlying this relationship can be made.