Ethnic density in school classes and adolescent mental health

OBJECTIVE: The present study set out to examine the association between ethnic composition of school classes and prevalence of internalising and externalising problem behaviour among ethnic minority and majority students. METHODS: Data were derived from the Dutch 2002 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey, a nationally representative cross-sectional study with a total of 5,730 adolescents, aged 11–18 and attending secondary school, of which 931 belong to ethnic minority groups. The data were analysed using a multilevel regression model. RESULTS: The study revealed that, after taking individual characteristics like age, gender, educational level and family affluence into account, ethnic minority students on average report higher levels of externalising but not internalising problems. Ethnic density on the level of school classes modified this difference, as a negative association between the proportion ethnic minority students in class and externalising problem behaviour was found, but only for ethnic minority students. No effect of ethnic composition was found with respect to internalising problem behaviour. CONCLUSION: The data revealed that ethnic minority students report higher levels of externalising problem behaviour, but only in classes with a minority of ethnic minority students and not in classes with a culturally diverse composition. This points towards a possible beneficial effect of a more culturally diverse environment for minority students. Majority students appeared to be insensitive for the ethnic density effect. Future studies should investigate the role of the ethnic composition of the school class more in-depth

Проблемы феминизма в творчестве О.А. Шапир

В статье анализируются феминистические идеи О. Шапир, изложенные в публицистических, литературно-критических статьях, воплощенные в женских образах художественных призведений.У статті аналізуються феміністичні ідеї О. Шапір, викладені в публіцистиці, в літературно-критичних статтях, втілені в жіночих образах художніх творів.The given article dwells upon the feministic ideas of O. Shapir represented in publicistics and literary criticism and embodied in female characters of her worle

Сучасна лексикографія як об’єкт лінгвістики

У статті проаналізовано сучасні праці теоретичної лексикографії, розглянуто погляди науковців на дефініцію терміна “лексикографія”.The article gives the analysis of contemporary works on theoretical lexicography and rewiews the approaches of different scientists to the term “lexicography”

Effects of nanoparticles on murine macrophages

Metallic nanoparticles are more and more widely used in an increasing number of applications. Consequently, they are more and more present in the environment, and the risk that they may represent for human health must be evaluated. This requires to increase our knowledge of the cellular responses to nanoparticles. In this context, macrophages appear as an attractive system. They play a major role in eliminating foreign matter, e.g. pathogens or infectious agents, by phagocytosis and inflammatory responses, and are thus highly likely to react to nanoparticles. We have decided to study their responses to nanoparticles by a combination of classical and wide-scope approaches such as proteomics. The long term goal of this study is the better understanding of the responses of macrophages to nanoparticles, and thus to help to assess their possible impact on human health. We chose as a model system bone marrow-derived macrophages and studied the effect of commonly used nanoparticles such as TiO2 and Cu. Classical responses of macrophage were characterized and proteomic approaches based on 2D gels of whole cell extracts were used. Preliminary proteomic data resulting from whole cell extracts showed different effects for TiO2-NPs and Cu-NPs. Modifications of the expression of several proteins involved in different pathways such as, for example, signal transduction, endosome-lysosome pathway, Krebs cycle, oxidative stress response have been underscored. These first results validate our proteomics approach and open a new wide field of investigation for NPs impact on macrophagesComment: Nanosafe2010: International Conference on Safe Production and Use of Nanomaterials 16-18 November 2010, Grenoble, France, Grenoble : France (2010

Gene induction during differentiation of human monocytes into dendritic cells: an integrated study at the RNA and protein levels

Changes in gene expression occurring during differentiation of human monocytes into dendritic cells were studied at the RNA and protein levels. These studies showed the induction of several gene classes corresponding to various biological functions. These functions encompass antigen processing and presentation, cytoskeleton, cell signalling and signal transduction, but also an increase in mitochondrial function and in the protein synthesis machinery, including some, but not all, chaperones. These changes put in perspective the events occurring during this differentiation process. On a more technical point, it appears that the studies carried out at the RNA and protein levels are highly complementary.Comment: website publisher: http://www.springerlink.com/content/ha0d2c351qhjhjdm

Establishment of proteome reference maps for somatic and zygotic embryos of Cyclamen persicum mill.

Comprehensive proteomic characterizations were performed aiming to create proteome reference maps for somatic and zygotic embryos of Cyclamen persicum. Separation by two dimensional isoelectric focusing - sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis led to a resolution of more than 800 protein spots for each tissue. Approximately 70% of the spots likewise appeared in both zygotic and in somatic embryo's protein fractions. However, differential gel electrophoresis analyses revealed pronounced differences in abundances for the majority of proteins present in both tissues. MS analyses for 300 reproducible spots in total (263 of the zygotic embryos' protein fraction and 37 spots appearing specifically in the somatic embryos' proteome) led to identification of 261 proteins, 35 of which were specific or highly abundant in gels of the somatic embryo's tissue. Most identified proteins were found to be involved in glycolysis or gluconeogenesis and stress response pathways

Mild psychotic experiences among ethnic minority and majority adolescents and the role of ethnic density

Despite evidence of the increased risk of psychotic disorders among ethnic minority adults, little is known about the effect of ethnic minority status to mild psychotic experiences among adolescents. This study investigated mild psychotic experiences in ethnic minority and majority adolescents in a Dutch representative general population sample, and tested the ethnic density effect in the classroom.The CAPE was used to assess mild psychotic experiences among Dutch (n = 3,606) and non-Western ethnic minority pupils (n = 769).Ethnic minority adolescents showed higher levels of grandiosity and delusions than their ethnic majority peers, whereas no differences were found for hallucinations, paranormal beliefs and paranoia between both groups of adolescents. The ethnic density effect was partly confirmed for the ethnic majority: a decrease of ethnic majority pupils in class increased their feelings of paranoia.Because only some dimensions of mild psychotic experiences were affected by ethnic minority status or the interaction between ethnic minority status and ethnic class composition, our findings emphasize that mild psychotic experiences are multifactorial in origin, with different underlying processes.</p

The relationship between mental disorders and actual and desired subjective social status

Mental disorders are associated with lower subjective social status (SSS), but a more nuanced understanding of this relationship is needed. We examined the influence of disorder age of onset and recency on SSS and studied whether mental disorders are also associated with the discrepancy between actual and desired SSS.Method Data are from the baseline and second wave of the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study-2 (NEMESIS-2). Mental disorders were assessed with the Composite International Diagnostic Interview (CIDI 3.0), while both actual and desired SSS were assessed with a ten-rung ladder. Linear regression was used to examine the association between mental disorders and SSS.Results Of 5303 participants, 2237 had a lifetime mental disorder at baseline. These participants reported significantly lower actual SSS (6.28) at follow-up than healthy participants (6.66, B = -0.38 [95% CI -0.48 to -0.27], p < 0.001) and a significantly greater actual-desired SSS discrepancy (1.14 v. 1.05 after controlling for actual SSS, B = 0.09 [0.01-0.17], p = 0.024). Lower age of onset of the first mental disorder was marginally significantly associated with lower actual SSS (B = 0.006 [0.000-0.012], p = 0.046). More recent disorders were also associated with lower actual SSS (B = 0.015 [0.005-0.026], p = 0.005), such that participants whose disorder remitted a ≥6 years before baseline were statistically indistinguishable from healthy participants.Conclusions Lifetime mental disorders are associated with lower actual SSS and a slightly greater discrepancy between actual and desired SSS. However, people with mental disorders in (long-term) remission have a similar social status as healthy participants

Тактика лечения эректильной дисфункции у мужчин без партнерши

Обосновывается актуальность проблемы оказания помощи мужчинам с эректильной дисфункцией, не имеющим сексуальной партнерши. Описаны предложенные автором подходы к коррекции нарушения сексуального здоровья мужчин и лечебные тактики.The importance of the issue of rendering the aid to the men with erectile dysfunction who do not have a female partner is substantiated. The author describes the original approaches to correction of the sexual health in the men and therapeutic tactics

Stability Analysis of Galerkin/Runge-Kutta Navier-Stokes Discretisations on Unstructured Grids

This paper presents a timestep stability analysis for a class of discretisations applied to the linearised form of the Navier-Stokes equations on a 3D domain with periodic boundary conditions. Using a suitable definition of the `perturbation energy' it is shown that the energy is monotonically decreasing for both the original p.d.e. and the semi-discrete system of o.d.e.'s arising from a Galerkin discretisation on a tetrahedral grid. Using recent theoretical results concerning algebraic and generalised stability, sufficient stability limits are obtained for both global and local timesteps for fully discrete algorithms using Runge-Kutta time integration