Search, save and share: family historians' engagement practices with digital platforms.

Alongside established heritage institutions, family historians are central figures in the ecosystem of digital heritage, both as contributors to and users of digitized historical sources. With that in mind, this research aims for a wide examination of family historians' engagement with the broader selection of available digital platforms, providing knowledge about how and why they choose to use one platform over another. This knowledge is important for the future development of sustainable digital platforms in the heritage sector. With a large variety of digitized source providers, many with free access platforms, Denmark and Danish family historians make an excellent case for this study. Through both a questionnaire and focus group interviews, using a grounded theory approach, this study has developed a model of engagement with digital platforms, referred to as a buffet model. This model illustrates how family historians pick and choose from a selection of digital platforms throughout their search and management of information as well as their community interaction. Moreover, through the lens of the Serious Leisure Perspective we find that family history is often a life-long leisure activity and family historians' usage of digital platforms support this finding.

Older rationales and other challenges in handling causes of death in historical individual-level databases: the case of Copenhagen, 1880-1881.

Large-scale historical databases featuring individual-level causes of death offer the potential for longitudinal studies of health and illnesses. There is, however, a risk that the transformation of the primary sources into 'data' may strip them of the very qualities required for proper medical historical analysis. Based on a pilot study of all 11,100 deaths registered in Copenhagen in 1880-1881, we identify, analyse and discuss the challenges of transcribing and coding cause of death sources into a database. The results will guide us in building Link-Lives, a database featuring close to all nine million Danish deaths from 1787 to 1968. The main challenge is how to accommodate different older medical rationales in one classification system. Our key finding is multi-coding with more than one version of the ICD system (e.g. ICD-1893 and ICD-10) can be used as a novel method to systematically handle historical causes of death over time.

Differences in Health: The Influence of Gender and Institutional Settings on Sickness Claims in Gothenburg, Sweden (1898-1950).

Sickness funds information has given conflicting evidence on the evolution of morbidity during the mortality decline. Evidence on increased morbidity has been explained by an actual increase of morbidity, a cultural inflation of morbidity or changing institutional settings, however, morbidity rates have also been shown to be stable over time when age composition of members is controlled for. Most previous studies have been confined to data on men; however, in an earlier article, Castenbrandt found large gender differences in historical sick leave by using national statistics on both men and women. To move forward, this article aims to analyse trends in sickness claims during the mortality decline in the early twentieth century using individual level data from Swedish sickness funds covering the period 1898-1950. Concretely, we investigate gender differences in sickness claims (incidence and duration) and how institutional settings (member composition and fund-specific regulations) affected the sick leave patterns.

Exploring the 'Healthy Migrant Paradox' in Sweden. A Cross Sectional Study Focused on Perinatal Outcomes.

Evidence shows that in some contexts immigrants have better health than natives in spite of coming from poorer socioeconomic contexts and of facing socioeconomic disadvantages in the host country. However, this is a country or origin- and outcome-specific phenomenon. This study compares different health outcomes derived from birthweight and gestational age among different migrant groups residing in Sweden. Cross-sectional study based on the Swedish Medical Birth Register for years 1987-1993. Multinomial regression models were performed to obtain crude and adjusted Odd Ratios and their 95 % Confidence Intervals. Overall, immigrants show a higher risk of LBW and preterm and a lower risk of macrosomia and post-term. Moreover, some groups performed worse than natives even in indicators at the two ends of the distribution. The healthy migrant paradox is also outcome-specific within different perinatal indicators and the selection explanation cannot fully account for this phenomenon.

¿Qué pasa en La Inclusa? The role of press scandals, doctors and public authorities in the evolution of La Inclusa de Madrid, 1890-1935

Traditionally, infants abandoned at foundling hospitals were identified as «bastards» and «children of vice» whose health, to all intents and purposes, reflected the moral sins of their parents and thus, led to unavoidable mortality. By late 19th century, several changes challenged that consideration: a growing emphasis on the importance of fighting infant mortality, the appearance of a new, medicalized, ideal of motherhood, the spread of new medical theories, the appearance of disciplines like Child Health, the construction of pediatric wards, and maternity hospitals. The consequences of these changes had their greatest impact at La Inclusa due to its location in the capital city, close to the decision-making centres and as focus of the interest of the national media. This article examines the role of the press and the medical profession in successively denouncing La Inclusa’s excess mortality during the period 1890-1935. By looking at daily press and medical publications, it sheds light on the uneven consequences of the press scandals denouncing foundlings’ extreme mortality in the period. The first scandal (1899-1900) faded without acknowledging any excess foundling mortality; the second (1918) was initiated by the doctors in charge but only produced some changes. The third scandal (1927) was instrumental in bringing about the changes that would turn a century-old institution in a state-of-the art medicalized centre and the change from debris of society to healthy children of foundlings. The effects of the press coverage were not restricted locally to foundlings in Madrid, and had a wider impact: by making the public aware of the dire situation of foundlings, they contributed to the development of legislation related to the fight against infant mortality and the control of mercenary breastfeeding (AU)

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The role of population origin and microenvironment in seedling emergence and early survival in Mediterranean maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton).

Understanding tree recruitment is needed to forecast future forest distribution. Many studies have reported the relevant ecological factors that affect recruitment success in trees, but the potential for genetic-based differences in recruitment has often been neglected. In this study, we established a semi-natural reciprocal sowing experiment to test for local adaptation and microenvironment effects (evaluated here by canopy cover) in the emergence and early survival of maritime pine (Pinus pinaster Aiton), an emblematic Mediterranean forest tree. A novel application of molecular markers was also developed to test for family selection and, thus, for potential genetic change over generations. Overall, we did not find evidence to support local adaptation at the recruitment stage in our semi-natural experiment. Moreover, only weak family selection (if any) was found, suggesting that in stressful environments with low survival, stochastic processes and among-year climate variability may drive recruitment. Nevertheless, our study revealed that, at early stages of recruitment, microenvironments may favor the population with the best adapted life strategy, irrespectively of its (local or non-local) origin. We also found that emergence time is a key factor for seedling survival in stressful Mediterranean environments. Our study highlights the complexity of the factors influencing the early stages of establishment of maritime pine and provides insights into possible management actions aimed at environmental change impact mitigation. In particular, we found that the high stochasticity of the recruitment process in stressful environments and the differences in population-specific adaptive strategies may difficult assisted migration schemes.

Too heavy, too late: investigating perinatal health outcomes in immigrants residing in Spain. A cross-sectional study (2009-2011).

BACKGROUND: Studies have shown that immigrants residing in Spain have lower risks of delivering low birthweight (LBW) and preterm babies despite their socioeconomic disadvantages (the healthy migrant paradox). However, less is known about other important perinatal outcomes derived from birth weight and gestational age such as macrosomia and post-term birth. This paper aims to compare the main indicators related to birth weight and gestational age (LBW, macrosomia, preterm and post-term) for immigrants and Spaniards. METHODS: Cross-sectional study based on the Spanish vital statistics for years 2009-2011. Multinomial regression models were performed to obtain crude and adjusted ORs and their 95% CIs. RESULTS: After adjusting for known confounders, compared with Spaniards, most immigrant groups show lower or not significantly different risks of delivering LBW (OR between 0.65 and 0.87) or, more exceptionally, preterm babies (between 0.75 and 0.93). However, most of them also show higher risks of delivering macrosomic (OR between 1.21 and 2.58) and post-term babies (OR between 1.11 and 1.50). Mothers from sub-Saharan Africa show a higher risk in all perinatal outcomes studied. CONCLUSIONS: The immigrant health paradox should be carefully assessed in comprehensive terms. Together with a predominantly lower risk of LBW, most immigrants have a higher risk of macrosomia, post-term and preterm births. These results have policy-making implications since studying the right tail of the birth weight and gestational age distributions implies considering a different set of risk factors.

Maternal education and perinatal outcomes among Spanish women residing in southern Spain (2001-2011).

Evidence suggests that educational differences in perinatal outcomes have increased in some countries (Eastern Europe) while remained stable in others (Scandinavian countries). However, less is known about the experience of Southern Europe. This study aims to evaluate the association between maternal education and perinatal outcomes derived from birthweight (low birthweight and macrosomia) and gestational age (pre-term and post-term births) among Spaniards living in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia during the period 2001-2011 (around 19 % of births in Spain); and to evaluate whether the educational differences narrowed or widened during that period, which includes both an economic boom (2001-2008) and the global economic crisis (2009-2011). This study uses the Andalusian Population Longitudinal Database and the Vital Statistics Data provided by the Spanish National Statistics Institute. We study live and singleton births of Spanish mothers who lived in Andalusia at the time of delivery (n = 404,951). ORs with 95 % confidence intervals (crude and adjusted) were estimated using multinomial regression models. A negative educational gradient is observed in all perinatal outcomes studied (i.e., the higher the educational status, the lower the risk of negative perinatal outcomes). However, when disaggregating the sample in two periods, the gradient is only statistically significant for pre-term birth during 2001-2008, while a full gradient is observed in all perinatal indicators in the period 2009-2011 with an increase in the educational inequalities in macrosomia and post-term. Further studies are needed in order to confirm whether there is a causal association between the widening of the educational differences in perinatal outcomes and the onset of the economic crisis in Spain, or the widening can be explained by other factors, such as changes in childbearing patterns and the composition of women accessing motherhood.

Releasing mother's burdens: child abandonment and retrieval in Madrid, 1890-1935.

In nineteenth-century Europe, the foundling hospital grew beyond its traditional purpose of mitigating the shame of unwed mothers by also permitting widows, widowers, and poor married couples to abandon their children there temporarily. In the Foundling Hospital of Madrid (FHM), this new short-term abandonment could be completely anonymous due to the implementation of a wheel­a device on the outside wall of the institution that could be turned to place a child inside­which remained open until 1929. The use of survival-analysis techniques to disentangle the determinants of retrieval in a discrete framework reveals important differences in the situations of the women who abandoned their children at the FHM, partly depending on whether they accessed it through the Maternity Hospital after giving birth or they accessed it directly. The evidence suggests that those who abandoned their children through the Maternity Hospital retrieved them only when they had attained a certain degree of economic stability, whereas those who abandoned otherwise did so just as soon as the immediate condition prompting the abandonment had improved.