Sex differences in mathematics and reading achievement are inversely related: within- and across-nation assessment of 10 years of PISA data

We analyzed one decade of data collected by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), including the mathematics and reading performance of nearly 1.5 million 15 year olds in 75 countries. Across nations, boys scored higher than girls in mathematics, but lower than girls in reading. The sex difference in reading was three times as large as in mathematics. There was considerable variation in the extent of the sex differences between nations. There are countries without a sex difference in mathematics performance, and in some countries girls scored higher than boys. Boys scored lower in reading in all nations in all four PISA assessments (2000, 2003, 2006, 2009). Contrary to several previous studies, we found no evidence that the sex differences were related to nations’ gender equality indicators. Further, paradoxically, sex differences in mathematics were consistently and strongly inversely correlated with sex differences in reading: Countries with a smaller sex difference in mathematics had a larger sex difference in reading and vice versa. We demonstrate that this was not merely a between-nation, but also a within-nation effect. This effect is related to relative changes in these sex differences across the performance continuum: We did not find a sex difference in mathematics among the lowest performing students, but this is where the sex difference in reading was largest. In contrast, the sex difference in mathematics was largest among the higher performing students, and this is where the sex difference in reading was smallest. The implication is that if policy makers decide that changes in these sex differences are desired, different approaches will be needed to achieve this for reading and mathematics. Interventions that focus on high-achieving girls in mathematics and on low achieving boys in reading are likely to yield the strongest educational benefits

Quality of life, functional outcome, and voice handicap index in partial laryngectomy patients for early glottic cancer

BACKGROUND: In this study, we aim to gather information about the quality of life issues, functional outcomes and voice problems facing early glottic cancer patients treated with the surgical techniques such as laryngofissure cordectomy, fronto-lateral laryngectomy, or cricohyoidopexi. In particular, consistency of life and voice quality issues with the laryngeal tissue excised during surgery is examined. In addition, the effects of arytenoidectomy to the life and voice quality are also studied. METHODS: 29 male patients were enrolled voluntarily in the study. The average age was 53.9 years. Three out of 10 patients with laryngofissure cordectomy also had arytenoidectomy. 11 patients had fronto-lateral laryngectomy with Tucker reconstruction, two of which also had arytenoidectomy. There were eight patients with cricohyoidopexi and bilateral functional neck dissection. Three of these patients also had arytenoidectomy. In bilateral functional neck dissection cases, spinal accessory nerve was preserved and level V of the neck was not dissected. None of the patients had neither radiotherapy nor voice therapy. Cordectomy patients never had a temporary tracheotomy or were connected to a feeding tube. Data was collected for 13 months for the cordectomy group, 14 months for fronto-lateral laryngectomy and cricohyoidopexi groups on average post-operatively. Statistical analysis in this study was carried out using the one-way analysis of variance, and the Post-Hoc group comparisons were made after Bonferroni and Scheffé-procedures. In order to determine the effects of arytenoidectomy, a regression analysis is carried out to see if there are statistical differences in answers given to the survey questions among patients who were arytenoidectomized during their surgeries. RESULTS: There was a statistically significant difference between cordectomy and cricohyoidopexi group in answers to the University of Washington- Quality of Life- Revised survey part 1. (p = 0). A statistically significant difference was also established between cordectomy and fronto-lateral laryngectomy groups, as well as between cordectomy and cricohyoidopexi groups in answers to the University of Washington- Quality of Life- Revised survey part 2. (p = 0,036 and p = 0.009, respectively). Cricohyoidopexi group has given the lowest scores and the cordectomy group has given the highest scores in three survey questions representing the quality of life, performances and new voices. These ranges are also consistent with the laryngeal tissue excised during surgery (cricohyoidopexi > fronto-lateral laryngectomy > cordectomy). There was no statistically significant difference between groups in Performance Status Scale for Head and Neck cancer patients instrument. The difference between the Voice Handicap Index and Voice Handicap Index (functional); Voice Handicap Index (physical) and Voice Handicap Index (emotional) scores in three patient groups was not significant either. All of the patients evaluated that their new voices have similar functional, physical and emotional impact on their life. Decanulation and oral feeding times of cricohyoidopexi and fronto-lateral laryngectomy patients are found to be significantly longer than cordectomy patients. Lastly, the removal of arytenoid does not have any significant adverse effects on the quality of life, the functional outcomes, or the quality of voice. CONCLUSION: In the present study, all patients with early glottic cancer, treated with different surgical technics reported fairly good quality of life outcomes, functional results and voice qualities. This study also finds that the removal of arytenoid does not have any adverse effects on the quality of life and voice from the patients' point of view

Mathematical Modelling of Optical Coherence Tomography

In this chapter a general mathematical model of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) is presented on the basis of the electromagnetic theory. OCT produces high resolution images of the inner structure of biological tissues. Images are obtained by measuring the time delay and the intensity of the backscattered light from the sample considering also the coherence properties of light. The scattering problem is considered for a weakly scattering medium located far enough from the detector. The inverse problem is to reconstruct the susceptibility of the medium given the measurements for different positions of the mirror. Different approaches are addressed depending on the different assumptions made about the optical properties of the sample. This procedure is applied to a full field OCT system and an extension to standard (time and frequency domain) OCT is briefly presented.Comment: 28 pages, 5 figures, book chapte

Fear and Courage in Children: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

This study further investigated the construct of courage in children. Children aged 8–13 years (n = 51) were interviewed about the most courageous action that they had ever performed during their life, and to retrospectively rate their level of fear and courage experienced during that event. On a separate occasion, children also completed the Courage Measure for Children (CM-C) as an index of children’s general level of personal courage, as well as scales for assessing anxiety symptoms and sensation seeking. Results indicated that almost all children (i.e., 94%) indicated that they had carried out a courageous action at some point during their life, although the levels of fear and courage associated with these acts varied considerably. Further, there was no relation between fear and courage reported for the courageous action, but these variables were significantly correlated with respectively anxiety symptoms and personal courage as indexed by the CM-C. Finally, a significant positive correlation was observed between sensation seeking and personal courage, indicating that children who are more thrill and adventure seeking are generally also more courageous. It is concluded that fear and courage in children are largely unrelated and not just two sides of the same coin. The implications of these results for the etiology and treatment of childhood anxiety problems are discussed

“You Might Belong in Gryffindor”: Children’s Courage and Its Relationships to Anxiety Symptoms, Big Five Personality Traits, and Sex Roles

This study describes a first exploration of the construct of courage in youths. Children aged 8–13 years were invited to report on the most courageous action that they had ever performed during their life. In addition, the Courage Measure for Children (CM-C) was construed as an index of children’s level of personal courage, and this scale was administered in two samples of school children (Ns being 168 and 159) along with a number of other questionnaires. Results indicated that children were familiar with the concept of courage as more than 70% reported to have carried out a courageous action during their life. In addition, self-reported courage as indexed by the CM-C was positively correlated with scores on a vignette measure of courage, parent ratings of children’s courage, extraversion, openness/intellect, and a masculine sex role, whereas a negative correlation was observed with anxiety symptoms. The implications of these findings and potential directions for future research are briefly discussed

Hip fracture risk assessment: Artificial neural network outperforms conditional logistic regression in an age- and sex-matched case control study

Copyright @ 2013 Tseng et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Background - Osteoporotic hip fractures with a significant morbidity and excess mortality among the elderly have imposed huge health and economic burdens on societies worldwide. In this age- and sex-matched case control study, we examined the risk factors of hip fractures and assessed the fracture risk by conditional logistic regression (CLR) and ensemble artificial neural network (ANN). The performances of these two classifiers were compared. Methods - The study population consisted of 217 pairs (149 women and 68 men) of fractures and controls with an age older than 60 years. All the participants were interviewed with the same standardized questionnaire including questions on 66 risk factors in 12 categories. Univariate CLR analysis was initially conducted to examine the unadjusted odds ratio of all potential risk factors. The significant risk factors were then tested by multivariate analyses. For fracture risk assessment, the participants were randomly divided into modeling and testing datasets for 10-fold cross validation analyses. The predicting models built by CLR and ANN in modeling datasets were applied to testing datasets for generalization study. The performances, including discrimination and calibration, were compared with non-parametric Wilcoxon tests. Results - In univariate CLR analyses, 16 variables achieved significant level, and six of them remained significant in multivariate analyses, including low T score, low BMI, low MMSE score, milk intake, walking difficulty, and significant fall at home. For discrimination, ANN outperformed CLR in both 16- and 6-variable analyses in modeling and testing datasets (p?<?0.005). For calibration, ANN outperformed CLR only in 16-variable analyses in modeling and testing datasets (p?=?0.013 and 0.047, respectively). Conclusions - The risk factors of hip fracture are more personal than environmental. With adequate model construction, ANN may outperform CLR in both discrimination and calibration. ANN seems to have not been developed to its full potential and efforts should be made to improve its performance.National Health Research Institutes in Taiwa

The interaction of caseload and usage in determining outcomes of unicompartmental knee arthroplasty: A meta-analysis

Background: Outcomes following UKA are variable and influenced by surgical caseload (UKA/year) and usage (percentage of primary knee arthroplasty that are UKA), which relates to indications. This meta-analysis assesses the relative importance of these factors. Methods: MEDLINE (Ovid), Embase (Ovid) and the Web of Science (ISI) were searched for consecutive series of minimally invasive cemented Phase 3 Oxford medial UKA. The primary outcome measure was revision-rate/100 observed component years (%pa). Series were divided into groups according to caseload and usage. Results 46studies, including 12,520 knees, were identified. The annual revision-rate varied from 0%pa to 4.35%pa, mean 1.21%pa (95%CI 0.97-1.47). In series with mean follow-up of ten-years or more the revision-rate was 0.63%pa (95%CI 0.46-0.83), which equates to a ten-year survival of 94% (95%CI 92%-95%). Aseptic loosening, lateral arthritis, bearing dislocation, and unexplained pain were the predominant failure mechanisms with revision for patello-femoral problems and polyethylene wear exceedingly rare (&lt;0.1%). Both increasing caseload (p=0.02) and usage (p&lt;0.001) were associated with decreasing revision-rate. The lowest revision-rates were achieved with a caseload &gt;24 UKA/year (0.88%pa, 95%CI 0.63-1.61) and usage &gt;30% (0.69%pa, 95%CI 0.50-0.90). Usage was more important than caseload: with high-usage (≥20%) the revision-rate was low, whether the caseload was high (&gt;12UKA/year) or low (≤12UKA/year), (0.94%pa (95%CI 0.69-1.23) and 0.85%pa (95%CI 0.65-1.08) respectively); whereas with low-usage (&lt;20%) the revision-rate was high, whether the caseload was high or low (1.58%pa, 95%CI 0.57- 3.05 and 1.76%pa, 95%CI 1.21-2.41). Conclusion: To achieve optimum results with mobile-bearing UKA surgeons, whether high or low-caseload, should adhere to the recommended indications such that ≥20%, or ideally &gt;30% of their knee replacements are UKA. If they do this then they can expect to achieve results similar to those of the long-term series, which all had high-usage (&gt;20%) and an average ten-year survival of 94%

Attachment styles and personal growth following romantic breakups: The mediating roles of distress, rumination, and tendency to rebound

© 2013 Marshall et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.The purpose of this research was to examine the associations of attachment anxiety and avoidance with personal growth following relationship dissolution, and to test breakup distress, rumination, and tendency to rebound with new partners as mediators of these associations. Study 1 (N = 411) and Study 2 (N = 465) measured attachment style, breakup distress, and personal growth; Study 2 additionally measured ruminative reflection, brooding, and proclivity to rebound with new partners. Structural equation modelling revealed in both studies that anxiety was indirectly associated with greater personal growth through heightened breakup distress, whereas avoidance was indirectly associated with lower personal growth through inhibited breakup distress. Study 2 further showed that the positive association of breakup distress with personal growth was accounted for by enhanced reflection and brooding, and that anxious individuals’ greater personal growth was also explained by their proclivity to rebound. These findings suggest that anxious individuals’ hyperactivated breakup distress may act as a catalyst for personal growth by promoting the cognitive processing of breakup-related thoughts and emotions, whereas avoidant individuals’ deactivated distress may inhibit personal growth by suppressing this cognitive work

Histone deacetylase adaptation in single ventricle heart disease and a young animal model of right ventricular hypertrophy.

BackgroundHistone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors are promising therapeutics for various forms of cardiac diseases. The purpose of this study was to assess cardiac HDAC catalytic activity and expression in children with single ventricle (SV) heart disease of right ventricular morphology, as well as in a rodent model of right ventricular hypertrophy (RVH).MethodsHomogenates of right ventricle (RV) explants from non-failing controls and children born with a SV were assayed for HDAC catalytic activity and HDAC isoform expression. Postnatal 1-day-old rat pups were placed in hypoxic conditions, and echocardiographic analysis, gene expression, HDAC catalytic activity, and isoform expression studies of the RV were performed.ResultsClass I, IIa, and IIb HDAC catalytic activity and protein expression were elevated in the hearts of children born with a SV. Hypoxic neonatal rats demonstrated RVH, abnormal gene expression, elevated class I and class IIb HDAC catalytic activity, and protein expression in the RV compared with those in the control.ConclusionsThese data suggest that myocardial HDAC adaptations occur in the SV heart and could represent a novel therapeutic target. Although further characterization of the hypoxic neonatal rat is needed, this animal model may be suitable for preclinical investigations of pediatric RV disease and could serve as a useful model for future mechanistic studies