Tomasz Kossowski

The detection of areas in Poland with an increased prevalence of isolated cleft lip with or without cleft palate

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES It is difficult to identify the environmental factors which together influence the occurrence of congenital malformations. It could be helpful to define the geographic location of the areas with an increased prevalence of such malformations. The aim of this study is to define if there are regions in Poland where the prevalence of isolated cleft lip, with or without a cleft palate (CL±P), is increased, and to present a method for searching for such areas. MATERIALS AND METHODS The analysis included the whole area of Poland monitored in 2007-2008 by the Polish Register of Congenital Malformations (PRCM). The area was divided into 3,045 census regions. The number of children with CL±P in those years was 514, and the size of the reference population (live births) was 802,372. Two methods were used for the detection of clusters with an increased prevalence of isolated CL±P: the LISA analysis and Kulldorffs scan statistic, and described in detail. RESULTS The prevalence of isolated CL±P and the smoothed prevalence were calculated for every community. The results of the LISA and Kulldorffs analyses were consistent. Both methods located the sites with an increased prevalence of isolated CL±P. The lack of statistical significance of clusters indicated by Kulldorffs statistic, and the significance of clusters detected with the use of the LISA method, indicated the existence of clusters with an only slightly increased prevalence of isolated CL±P. CONCLUSIONS The study shows the usefulness of the LISA and Kulldorffs spatial analyses in epidemiological studies, including the etiology of congenital malformations. Because the two methods work in different ways, good results can be obtained when they are used together.

The Application Of Local Indicators For Categorical Data (LICD) In The Spatial Analysis Of Economic Development

Abstract The paper makes an attempt to apply local indicators for categorical data (LICD) in the spatial analysis of economic development. The first part discusses the tests which examine spatial autocorrelation for categorical data. The second part presents a two-stage empirical study covering 66 Polish NUTS 3 regions. Firstly, we identify classes of regions presenting different economic development levels using taxonomic methods of multivariate data analysis. Secondly, we apply a join-count test to examine spatial dependencies between regions. It examines the tendency to form the spatial clusters. The global test indicates general spatial interactions between regions, while local tests give detailed results separately for each region. The global test detects spatial clustering of economically poor regions but is statistically insignificant as regards well-developed regions. Thus, the local tests are also applied. They indicate the occurrence of five spatial clusters and three outliers in Poland. There are three clusters of wealth. Their development is based on a diffusion impact of regional economic centres. The areas of eastern and north western Poland include clusters of poverty. The first one is impeded by the presense of three indiviual growth centres, while the second one is out of range of diffusion influence of bigger agglomerations.

Diversification of Farming Systems in Poland in the Years 2006-2009

Diversification of Farming Systems in Poland in the Years 2006-2009 The use of methods based on the Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve in studies of the spatial structure of agriculture offers a great possibility of presenting changes in it and assessing their causes. They provided a basis for a research on changes in the farming systems employed in Polish agriculture over the years 2006-2009. The results confirm there to be a further diversification of this sector of the economy, and even if slower than in the previous years, it shows agriculture to keep adapting to natural and economic conditions.

Analysis of the labour market in metropolitan areas: A spatial filtering approach.

Analysis of the Labour Market in Metropolitan Areas: A Spatial Filtering Approach The power of todays computers allows us to perform computation on massive quantities of data on the one hand and produces enormous amounts of analysis output on the other, as noted by Griffith in his 2003 book. Besides, visualisation and spatial filtering (the core of considerations in Griffiths book) have a chance to be widely used in research practice, especially in geosciences and, more precisely, for georeferenced data. Following the idea proposed by Patuelli et al. (2006, 2009), we analysed the labour market in Poland, focusing on metropolitan areas and their surroundings. The analysis was performed on a data set for the unemployment rate in the 2,478 Polish communes. We took into account spatial autocorrelation and used spatial filtering techniques to construct components of an orthogonal map pattern. As shown in Tiefelsdorf & Griffith (2007), the spatial filtering techniques could be employed in both, parametric and semi-parametric approaches. In this paper we adopted a parametric one.