Is 8:30 a.m. Still Too Early to Start School? A 10:00 a.m. School Start Time Improves Health and Performance of Students Aged 13-16.

While many studies have shown the benefits of later school starts, including better student attendance, higher test scores, and improved sleep duration, few have used starting times later than 9:00 a.m. Here we report on the implementation and impact of a 10 a.m. school start time for 13 to 16-year-old students. A 4-year observational study using a before-after-before (A-B-A) design was carried out in an English state-funded high school. School start times were changed from 8:50 a.m. in study year 0, to 10 a.m. in years 1-2, and then back to 8:50 a.m. in year 3. Measures of student health (absence due to illness) and academic performance (national examination results) were used for all students. Implementing a 10 a.m. start saw a decrease in student illness after 2 years of over 50% (p < 0.0005 and effect size: Cohen's d = 1.07), and reverting to an 8:50 a.m. start reversed this improvement, leading to an increase of 30% in student illness (p < 0.0005 and Cohen's d = 0.47). The 10:00 a.m. start was associated with a 12% increase in the value-added number of students making good academic progress (in standard national examinations) that was significant (<0.0005) and equivalent to 20% of the national benchmark. These results show that changing to a 10:00 a.m. high school start time can greatly reduce illness and improve academic performance. Implementing school start times later than 8:30 a.m., which may address the circadian delay in adolescents' sleep rhythms more effectively for evening chronotypes, appears to have few costs and substantial benefits

International Social Survey Programme: Social Inequality I - ISSP 1987

The International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a continuous programme of cross-national collaboration running annual surveys on topics important for the social sciences. The programme started in 1984 with four founding members - Australia, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States – and has now grown to almost 50 member countries from all over the world. As the surveys are designed for replication, they can be used for both, cross-national and cross-time comparisons. Each ISSP module focuses on a specific topic, which is repeated in regular time intervals. Please, consult the documentation for details on how the national ISSP surveys are fielded. The present study focuses on questions about social inequality.Most important reasons for social advancement (scale); judgement on equal opportunities in the Federal Republic; attitude to the necessity for significant wage differences; attitude to social differences (scale); estimated gross income of selected occupational groups and personal ideas about a fair gross income for these occupational groups; attitude to the country´s income differences and to various duties of the welfare state (scale); judgement on the current tax burden for different income classes; attitude to a higher tax burden for higher income groups; judgement on strength of contrasts or conflicts between various social groups in the country; self-assessment of social class (scale and 5-layer class division); social origins; time worked each week; position as a superior; union membership; employment and occupation of spouse; sex as well as month and year of birth of all members of the household; party preference.Das International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) ist ein länderübergreifendes, fortlaufendes Umfrageprogramm, das jährlich Erhebungen zu Themen durchführt, die für die Sozialwissenschaften wichtig sind. Das Programm begann 1984 mit vier Gründungsmitgliedern - Australien, Deutschland, Großbritannien und den Vereinigten Staaten - und ist inzwischen auf fast 50 Mitgliedsländer aus aller Welt angewachsen. Da die Umfragen auf Replikationen ausgelegt sind, können die Daten sowohl für länder- als auch für zeitübergreifende Vergleiche genutzt werden. Jedes ISSP-Modul konzentriert sich auf ein bestimmtes Thema, das in regelmäßigen Zeitabständen wiederholt wird. Details zur Durchführung der nationalen ISSP-Umfragen entnehmen Sie bitte der Dokumentation. Die vorliegende Studie konzentriert sich auf Fragen zu sozialer Ungleichheit.Wichtigste Gründe für sozialen Aufstieg (Skala); Beurteilung der Chancengleichheit in der Bundesrepublik; Einstellung zur Notwendigkeit größerer Unterschiede in der Entlohnung; Einstellung zu sozialen Unterschieden (Skala); geschätzte Bruttoeinkommen ausgewählter Berufsgruppen und eigene Vorstellungen über einen gerechten Bruttoverdienst für diese Berufssparten; Einstellung zu den Einkommensunterschieden im Lande und zu verschiedenen Aufgaben des Sozialstaats (Skala); Beurteilung der derzeitigen Steuerbelastung für unterschiedliche Einkommensklassen; Einstellung zu einer höheren Steuerlast für höhere Einkommensgruppen; Beurteilung der Stärke von Gegensätzen bzw. Konflikten zwischen verschiedenen sozialen Gruppen im Lande; Selbsteinschätzung der sozialen Schichtzugehörigkeit (Skalometer und 5-stufige Schichteinteilung); soziale Herkunft; Wochenarbeitszeit; Stellung als Vorgesetzter; Gewerkschaftsmitgliedschaft; Erwerbstätigkeit und Beruf des Ehepartners; Geschlecht sowie Geburtsmonat und Geburtsjahr aller Haushaltsmitglieder; Parteipräferenz

Transcriptomic evidence of immune activation in macroscopically normal-appearing and scarred lung tissues in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis

•Macroscopically normal tissue in IPF patients is profoundly involved in the disease.•Immune activation is overt in normal-appearing and scarred tissue in IPF lungs.•Differences between normal-appearing and scarred tissue involve mostly epithelium. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a fatal lung disease manifested by overtly scarred peripheral and basilar regions and more normal-appearing central lung areas. Lung tissues from macroscopically normal-appearing (IPFn) and scarred (IPFs) areas of explanted IPF lungs were analyzed by RNASeq and compared with healthy control (HC) lung tissues. There were profound transcriptomic changes in IPFn compared with HC tissues, which included elevated expression of numerous immune-, inflammation-, and extracellular matrix-related mRNAs, and these changes were similar to those observed with IPFs compared to HC. Comparing IPFn directly to IPFs, elevated expression of epithelial mucociliary mRNAs was observed in the IPFs tissues. Thus, despite the known geographic tissue heterogeneity in IPF, the entire lung is actively involved in the disease process, and demonstrates pronounced elevated expression of numerous immune-related genes. Differences between normal-appearing and scarred tissues may thus be driven by deranged epithelial homeostasis or possibly non-transcriptomic factors