Migrant zkt toekomst: Gent op een keerpunt tussen oude en nieuwe migratie

Immigratie en diversiteit zijn vaak het onderwerp van passionele debatten. Maar hoe zit het nu met de sociale positie van de Turken en Marokkanen in de maatschappij? Leven ze eerder naast dan met de Belgen? En welke plaats nemen de ‘nieuwe’ migrantengroepen zoals de Bulgaren, Slowaken en Polen in? Dit boekt schetst een beeld van de levensomstandigheden van enerzijds Turken en Maghrebijnen en anderzijds Midden- en Oost-Europeanen in Gent. De auteurs analyseren met uniek cijfermateriaal de trends van het afgelopen decennium op het vlak van werken, wonen en huwen. Ze argumenteren dat we in de Belgische migratiegeschiedenis op een dubbel keerpunt zijn gekomen. Ten eerste stellen ze vast dat de Turkse en Maghrebijnse Gentenaars geleidelijk overgaan van gesloten ‘etnische enclaves’ naar een meer interactieve ‘etnische mozaïek’. De ruimtelijke segregatie van deze groepen neemt af in Gent, de Turkse enclave in de stad boet aan belang in, en een deel van de Turken trekt naar de meer welgestelde suburbane stadsrand. Tegelijkertijd daalt het aandeel Turkse en Marokkaanse immigratiehuwelijken spectaculair. Ten tweede stellen de auteurs vast dat de Polen, Slowaken en Bulgaren in Gent momenteel minder gesegregeerd leven dan tien jaar geleden. Niettemin ontstaat het potentieel voor een Bulgaarse enclavevorming. Bovendien zijn er grote sociaaleconomische verschillen tussen deze drie migrantengroepen. Dit boek brengt een genuanceerd verhaal over het reilen van zeilen van de ‘oude’ en ‘nieuwe’ migrantengroepen in Gent. Door zijn focus op structurele thema’s biedt het een alternatief voor de dominante ‘culturalistische’ kijk op etnische diversiteit. Het doorprikt hierdoor veel gangbare clichés over migranten zonder evenwel de kop in het zand te steken voor een aantal problemen

Praktijktesten bij banken: is de bankwaarborg wel gewaarborgd?

Voor veel huurders is het betalen van de huurwaarborg een zware last om te dragen. Banken hebben daarom in België sinds 2007 de wettelijke verplichting om via een bankwaarborg de huurwaarborg aan hun cliënten voor te schieten. Dit onderzoek ging via praktijktesten bij 549 bankkantoren in Vlaanderen na of banken al dan niet voldoen aan deze wettelijke verplichting. Bijna de helft van de banken komt deze wettelijke verplichting niet na. Circa een kwart van de bankkantoren gaat wel in op een vraag voor een bankwaarborg. De meeste banken rekenen wel hoge dossierkosten aan. De resultaten wijzen op ‘geïnstitutionaliseerde uitsluiting’ van de meest precaire huurders op de woningmarkt

Single (18-25j.) zkt. lief tgn. depressie?: de relatie tussen partnerstatus en mentale gezondheid bij jongvolwassenen

Young adults are feeling the pressure to have a steady relationship. Using data from ‘Young in Ghent’ (N = 735), this study examines whether (1) young adults (18-25 year) with a (cohabiting) partner also have a better mental health, and whether (2) there exist gender differences. Furthermore, (3) the deficit paradigm as a dominant explanation model is challenged by looking at the specific social support advantages of singles. The results show that there is only a positive association between relationship status and mental health among young women, but not among men. To a great extent, this association can be explained by differences in the perceived stress. Moreover, young adults who are single compensate the lack of social support from the partner by expecting more social support from their friends and parents. These complementary support is buffering the negative effect of the relationship status on depression among young women

Discrimibrux - Discriminatie door vastgoedmakelaars op de private huurwoningmarkt van het Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest

Deze studie onderzoekt het voorkomen van discriminatie door vastgoedmakelaars op de private huurmarkt in het Brussels Hoofdstedelijk Gewest door middel van praktijktesten en mystery shopping. Discriminatie verwijst in deze studie naar de nadelige en niet te rechtvaardigen behandeling van kandidaat-huurders omwille hun etnische afkomst, leeftijd, mentale of fysieke handicap, inkomensbron, gezinssamenstelling en gender. Deze discriminatiestudie is vrij uniek in Europa omwille van haar grootschaligheid op het vlak van het aantal uitgevoerde praktijktesten en mystery calls en het aantal onderzochte discriminatiegronden

Efficient cDNA cloning by direct phenotypic correction of a mutant human cell line (HPRT-) using an Epstein-Barr virus derived cDNA expression vector.

Human cells are, in general, poor recipients of foreign DNA, which has severely hampered the cloning of genes by direct phenotypic correction of deficient human cell lines after DNA mediated gene transfer. In this communication a methodology is presented which largely circumvents this problems. The method relies on the use of a recently developed episomal Epstein-Barr-virus-derived cDNA expression vector (Belt et al. (1989) Gene 84, 407-417). The cloning of hypoxanthine phosphoribosyltransferase (HPRT) cDNA, corresponding to a low abundant mRNA in wild type cells is used as a model system. Size fractionated poly (A)+ RNA from wild type cells, which resulted in an approximately 10 fold enrichment in HPRT mRNA, was used to construct a cDNA library of 25,000 independent clones in the pECV25 vector. An HPRT deficient human cell line was transfected and subsequently selected with hygromycin B for DNA uptake. In a small scale experiment only 7000 hygromycin BR transfectants were sufficient to isolate 2 independent HATR clones which were shown to replicate episomes harbouring HPRT cDNA. The first insert had a 5' untranslated region (UTR) and a 3' UTR perfectly in agreement with published data. The second cDNA clone harboured an unusually long 5' UTR and a shorter 3' UTR due to alternative polyadenylation of the HPRT transcript which has not been previously recognized

Peritumoral endothelial indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase expression is an early independent marker of disease relapse in colorectal cancer and is influenced by DNA mismatch repair profile

Targeting immune checkpoint molecules has become a major new strategy in the treatment of several cancers. Indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO)-inhibitors are a potential next-generation immunotherapy, currently investigated in multiple phase I-III trials. IDO is an intracellular immunosuppressive enzyme and its expression/ activity has been associated with worse prognosis in several cancers. The aim of this study was to investigate the expression pattern of IDO in colorectal cancer (CRC). In a cohort of 94 CRC patients, primary tumors (PTs) with corresponding tumor-draining lymph nodes (TDLNs, n = 93) and extranodal/distant metastases (n = 27) were retrospectively analyzed by immunohistochemical staining for IDO, CD8 and Foxp3. 45 MSS and 37 MSI-H tumors were selected to compare IDO expression, as these tumors are considered to have different immunogenicity. A highly consistent expression pattern of IDO was observed in the PT, TDLNs and metastases, indicating that immune resistance may be determined very early in the disease course. IDO was expressed both by tumoral cells and host endothelial cells and these expressions were highly correlated (p < 0.001). IDO expression was observed more frequently in the MSI-H subset compared with the MSS subset (43% vs 22% for tumoral expression (p = 0.042) and 38% vs 16% for endothelial expression (p = 0.021)). Endothelial IDO expression was demonstrated to be a negative prognostic marker for recurrence free survival independent of disease stage and DNA mismatch repair (MMR) status (HR 20.67, 95% CI: 3.05-139.94; p = 0.002). These findings indicate that endothelial IDO expression in primary CRC, in addition to the MMR profile, may be helpful in disease stratification.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Opportunities and limitations of large open biodiversity occurrence databases in the context of a Marine Ecosystem Assessment of the Southern Ocean

The Southern Ocean is a productive and biodiverse region, but it is also threatened by anthropogenic pressures. Protecting the Southern Ocean should start with well-informed Marine Ecosystem Assessments of the Southern Ocean (MEASO) being performed, a process that will require biodiversity data. In this context, open geospatial biodiversity databases such as OBIS and GBIF provide good avenues, through aggregated geo-referenced taxon locations. However, like most aggregated databases, these might suffer from sampling biases, which may hinder their usability for a MEASO. Here, we assess the quality and distribution of OBIS and GBIF data in the context of a MEASO. We found strong spatial, temporal and taxonomic biases in these data, with several biases likely emerging from the remoteness and inaccessibility of the Southern Ocean (e.g., lack of data in the dark and ice-covered winter, most data describing charismatic or well-known taxa, and most data along ship routes between research stations and neighboring continents). Our identification of sampling biases helps us provide practical recommendations for future data collection, mobilization, and analyses

Toward a new data standard for combined marine biological and environmental datasets - expanding OBIS beyond species occurrences

The Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) is the world's most comprehensive online, open-access database of marine species distributions. OBIS grows with millions of new species observations every year. Contributions come from a network of hundreds of institutions, projects and individuals with common goals: to build a scientific knowledge base that is open to the public for scientific discovery and exploration and to detect trends and changes that inform society as essential elements in conservation management and sustainable development. Until now, OBIS has focused solely on the collection of biogeographic data (the presence of marine species in space and time) and operated with optimized data flows, quality control procedures and data standards specifically targeted to these data. Based on requirements from the growing OBIS community to manage datasets that combine biological, physical and chemical measurements, the OBIS-ENV-DATA pilot project was launched to develop a proposed standard and guidelines to make sure these combined datasets can stay together and are not, as is often the case, split and sent to different repositories. The proposal in this paper allows for the management of sampling methodology, animal tracking and telemetry data, biological measurements (e.g., body length, percent live cover, ...) as well as environmental measurements such as nutrient concentrations, sediment characteristics or other abiotic parameters measured during sampling to characterize the environment from which biogeographic data was collected. The recommended practice builds on the Darwin Core Archive (DwC-A) standard and on practices adopted by the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). It consists of a DwC Event Core in combination with a DwC Occurrence Extension and a proposed enhancement to the DwC MeasurementOrFact Extension. This new structure enables the linkage of measurements or facts - quantitative and qualitative properties - to both sampling events and species occurrences, and includes additional fields for property standardization. We also embrace the use of the new parentEventID DwC term, which enables the creation of a sampling event hierarchy. We believe that the adoption of this recommended practice as a new data standard for managing and sharing biological and associated environmental datasets by IODE and the wider international scientific community would be key to improving the effectiveness of the knowledge base, and will enhance integration and management of critical data needed to understand ecological and biological processes in the ocean, and on land.Fil: De Pooter, Daphnis. Flanders Marine Institute; BélgicaFil: Appeltans, Ward. UNESCO-IOC; BélgicaFil: Bailly, Nicolas. Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, MedOBIS; GreciaFil: Bristol, Sky. United States Geological Survey; Estados UnidosFil: Deneudt, Klaas. Flanders Marine Institute; BélgicaFil: Eliezer, Menashè. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; ItaliaFil: Fujioka, Ei. University Of Duke. Nicholas School Of Environment. Duke Marine Lab; Estados UnidosFil: Giorgetti, Alessandra. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; ItaliaFil: Goldstein, Philip. University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, OBIS; Estados UnidosFil: Lewis, Mirtha Noemi. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico. Centro para el Estudio de Sistemas Marinos; ArgentinaFil: Lipizer, Marina. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; ItaliaFil: Mackay, Kevin. National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research; Nueva ZelandaFil: Marin, Maria Rosa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico; ArgentinaFil: Moncoiffé, Gwenaëlle. British Oceanographic Data Center; Reino UnidoFil: Nikolopoulou, Stamatina. Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, MedOBIS; GreciaFil: Provoost, Pieter. UNESCO-IOC; BélgicaFil: Rauch, Shannon. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; Estados UnidosFil: Roubicek, Andres. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; AustraliaFil: Torres, Carlos. Universidad Autonoma de Baja California Sur; MéxicoFil: van de Putte, Anton. Royal Belgian Institute for Natural Sciences; BélgicaFil: Vandepitte, Leen. Flanders Marine Institute; BélgicaFil: Vanhoorne, Bart. Flanders Marine Institute; BélgicaFil: Vinci, Mateo. Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica Sperimentale; ItaliaFil: Wambiji, Nina. Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute; KeniaFil: Watts, David. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere; AustraliaFil: Klein Salas, Eduardo. Universidad Simon Bolivar; VenezuelaFil: Hernandez, Francisco. Flanders Marine Institute; Bélgic