Educational Achievement of Immigrant Children in Western Countries: Origin, Destination, and Community Effects on Mathematical Performance

This paper explores the extent to which macro-level characteristics of destination countries, origin countries and immigrant communities can explain differences in the educational achievement of immigrant children. Using data from the 2003 PISA survey, we performed analyses on the mathematical performance of 7403 pupils with a background of immigration from 35 different origin countries in 13 Western countries of destination. Our cross-classified multilevel analyses show that cross-national and cross-group variance cannot be fully explained by compositional differences. Contextual properties of host countries, origin countries and communities also affect the educational performance of immigrant children. We show that the better educational performance of immigrant children in traditional immigrant receiving countries can be explained by strict immigration laws. We further find that the level of economic development of origin countries negatively affects immigrant children’s educational performance, and that children who have a background in more politically stable countries, perform better at school. Finally, we find that socioeconomic differences between immigrant communities and the native population and relative community size negatively affect immigrant children’s scholastic achievement.immigrant; educational achievement; cross-national comparison; PISA; origin country; destination country

Co-isolation of extracellular vesicles and high-density lipoproteins using density gradient ultracentrifugation

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) facilitate intercellular communication by carrying bioactive molecules such as proteins, messenger RNA, and micro (mi)RNAs. Recently, high-density lipoproteins (HDL) isolated from human plasma were also reported to transport miRNA to other cells. HDL, when isolated from human plasma, ranges in density between 1.063 and 1.21 g/mL, which grossly overlap with the reported density of EVs. Consequently, HDL and EV will be co-isolated when using density gradient ultracentrifugation. Thus, more stringent isolation/separation procedures of EV and HDL are essential to know their relative contribution to the pool of circulating bioactive molecules

Religion in Dutch society 2005. Documentation of a national survey on religious and secular attitudes and behaviour in 2005

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Random variables with completely independent subcollections

AbstractWe investigate the algebra and geometry of the independence conditions on discrete random variables in which we consider a collection of random variables and study the condition of independence of some subcollections. We interpret independence conditions as an ideal of algebraic relations. After a change of variables, this ideal is generated by generalized 2×2 minors of multi-way tables and linear forms. In particular, let Δ be a simplicial complex on some random variables and A be the table corresponding to the product of those random variables. If A is Δ-independent table then A can be written as the entrywise sum AI+A0 where AI is a completely independent table and A0 is identically 0 in its Δ-margins.We compute the isolated components of the original ideal, showing that there is only one component that could correspond to probability distributions, and relate the algebra and geometry of the main component to that of the Segre embedding. If Δ has fewer than three facets, we are able to compute generators for the main component, show that it is Cohen–Macaulay, and give a full primary decomposition of the original ideal