Older adult loneliness: myths and realities

The focus in this paper is on the social domain of quality of life, and more particularly loneliness. The empirical literature on older adult loneliness is reviewed, thereby challenging three often-held assumptions that figure prominently in public debates on loneliness. The first assumption that loneliness is a problem specifically for older people finds only partial support. Loneliness is common only among the very old. The second assumption is that people in individualistic societies are most lonely. Contrary to this belief, findings show that older adults in northern European countries tend to be less lonely than those in the more familialistic southern European countries. The scarce data on Central and Eastern Europe suggest a high prevalence of older adult loneliness in those countries. The third assumption that loneliness has increased over the past decades finds no support. Loneliness levels have decreased, albeit slightly. The review notes the persistence of ageist attitudes, and underscores the importance of considering people’s frame of reference and normative orientation in analyses of loneliness

Loneliness in urban neighbourhoods: an Anglo-Dutch comparison

Past studies in the UK and the Netherlands indicate that loneliness varies significantly according to characteristics of older people’s residential environment. This raises questions regarding potential neighbourhood influences on individuals’ social relationships in later life. This article examines neighbourhood influences on loneliness, using multiple classification analysis on comparable empirical data collected in the UK and the Netherlands. UK data arise from a survey of 501 people aged 60+ in deprived neighbourhoods of three English cities. Netherlands data derive from the NESTOR Living Arrangements and Social Network survey, with a sub-sample of 3,508 people aged 60+ drawn from a nationally representative sample of older people, living in 11 municipalities. Both surveys incorporated the 11-item De Jong Gierveld Loneliness Scale. In addition to neighbourhood characteristics and indicators of health and social embeddedness, a typology of eight groups of persons was developed that accounted for individuals’ age, sex, and partner status. While 13% of participants in the UK were severely lonely, the proportion in the Netherlands was just four per cent. Mean loneliness scores in the UK varied significantly between the neighbourhoods under investigation. Additionally, the evaluated quality of the residential neighbourhood accounted for a relatively large degree of variance in loneliness in both countries. Keywords Loneliness Urban neighbourhoods Cross-national comparison England The Netherland

The inheritance of resistance to bacterial leaf spot of lettuce caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. vitians in three lettuce cultivars

Lettuce yields can be reduced by the disease bacterial leaf spot (BLS) caused by the pathogen Xanthomonas campestris pv. vitians (Xcv) and host resistance is the most feasible method to reduce disease losses. The cultivars La Brillante, Pavane and Little Gem express an incompatible host–pathogen interaction as a hypersensitive response (HR) to California strains of Xcv resulting in resistance. Little was known about the inheritance of resistance; however, resistance to other lettuce pathogens is often determined by resistance gene candidates (RGCs) encoding nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NB-LRR) proteins. Therefore, we determined the inheritance of BLS resistance in the cultivars La Brillante, Little Gem and Pavane and mapped it relative to RGCs. The reaction to Xcv was analyzed in nine F(1), F(2) and recombinant inbred line populations of lettuce from HR×compatible or HR×HR crosses. The HR in La Brillante, Pavane and Little Gem is conditioned by single dominant genes, which are either allelic or closely linked genes. The resistance gene in La Brillante was designated Xanthomonas resistance 1 (Xar1) and mapped to lettuce linkage group 2. Xar1 is present in a genomic region that contains numerous NB-LRR encoding RGCs and functional pathogen resistance loci in the RGC2 family. The Xar1 gene confers a high level of BLS resistance in the greenhouse and field that can be introgressed into commercial lettuce cultivars to reduce BLS losses using molecular markers