Housing, networks and money: A study of workers in St. Petersburg

This article examines housing in the Soviet and post-Soviet era drawing from interview material with fifty factory workers in St. Petersburg studied in 2000. While the Soviet era is often characterised by lack of choice, I argue that people were in fact able to influence their housing much more than is usually considered, although the choices available were certainly limited and action was tactical rather than strategic by nature (to borrow Michel de Certeau’s concepts). I argue that money was far more important than is usually acknowledged, and many respondents emphasised that they earned decent money and were able to purchase housing in the Soviet era. Networks played a role too, for instance in attempts to influence the authorities in charge of housing or to manipulate the rules of allocation. I also show that various steps in the Soviet family’s life course (e.g. marrying or having a child) were important in order to obtain housing. The post-Soviet era, in contrast, is characterised by lack of money and few opportunities to improve housing. For many respondents, then, it is the Soviet era that looks as an era that made action possible, whereas the opportunities to act have now been severely reduced. This, and not just pure nostalgia, explains why most respondents long for the Soviet times

El colectivo obrero ruso y la migración

El artículo analiza el colectivo de trabajadores rusos desde la perspectiva de la migración interna, un aspecto hasta ahora ignorado pero sin embargo importante puesto que la Unión Soviética y la Rusia contemporánea pueden ser consideradas como "sociedades de emigrantes". A partir de cuestionarios sobre redes y entrevistas temáticas con 38 trabajadores masculinos en la famosa factoría Kirov, en San Petersburgo, examinamos el grado en el que éstos recurren a sus compañeros de trabajo para socializarse, buscar ayuda y apoyo en la vida cotidiana. A pesar de los radicales cambios institucionales ocurridos, el colectivo de trabajadores tiene un impacto importante en la vida de los trabajadores y de los trabajadores migrantes en particular. Esto es explicado mediante un análisis del proceso de emigración en la era soviética. Careciendo de otros canales para adaptarse a la nueva vida en la metrópolis, las nuevas relaciones que los migrantes formaron en la ciudad estaban básicamente relacionadas con el lugar de trabajo. La importancia del lugar de trabajo parece ser un hallazgo trivial e inevitable pero argumentamos que esto no es así por dos cuestiones. Primero, las redes de los migrantes, incluso después de décadas de residencia en la ciudad están todavía marcadas por su pasado migratorio, no siendo obvio por qué esto tiene que ser así. Segundo, la migración por sí misma no lleva inevitablemente a que los compañeros de trabajo sean importantes, como queda ilustrado en el hecho que las redes de los migrantes finlandeses no se construyen alrededor del trabajo. Lo que es relevante no es por tanto la migración como abstracción sino las circunstancias del tipo de migración.The article analyses the Russian work collective from the perspective of internal migration, a hitherto neglected yet important aspect of studies of the work collective, given that the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia may be considered as 'societies of migrants'. Drawing on structured network questionnaires and thematic interviews with 38 male workers in the famous Kirov factory, St. Petersburg, we examine the extent to which the respondent turn to their coworkers for socialising, help and support in daily life. Despite the sweeping institutional changes brought by the transformation, the work collective continues to have an important impact in the daily life of workers, and migrant workers in particular. This is explained by an analysis of the Soviet-era migration process. Lacking other channels for adapting to the new life in the metropolis, the new ties that the migrants formed in the city were mostly related to their workplace. The importance of workplace-related ties may seem to be a trivial and inevitable finding, but we argue this is not so at least in two respects. First, the migrants' networks, even after decades of residence in the city, are still marked by the migratory background, but there is nothing obvious in that they should remain so. Second, migration per se does not inevitably lead to co-workers being important, as is illustrated by the fact that the networks of Finnish migrant workers are not built around work. What matters then is not migration as an abstraction but the circumstances of the type of migration

Tobacco Products, Periodontal Health and Education Level: Cohort Study from Sweden

Background: The aim of this study is to investigate if using tobacco products (including snuff, smoking tobacco and dual-using) associates with periodontal health, education level and mortality in a Swedish cohort, hypothesizing that tobacco products affect periodontal health, associate with lower education and increase the risk of death. Method: Study cohort of 1080 subjects aged 31–40 years (528 men, 552 women) was clinically examined and interviewed in 1985 and followed for mortality until 2015. Subjects were classified into two groups: “tobacco users” and “non-users”. Associations between periodontal health parameters, tobacco products, education level and age of death were analysed. SPSS was used for analyses. Results: Tobacco products, as well as education level associated, with poor periodontal health. Tobacco users and lower education was linked to higher plaque-, calculus- and gingival-index scores than non-users (

Autoimmune Diseases and Oral Health : 30-Year Follow-Up of a Swedish Cohort

Aim: Oral infections up-regulate a number of systemic inflammatory reactions that, in turn, play a role in the development of systemic diseases. We investigated the association between oral health and autoimmune diseases in a cohort of Swedish adults. Hypothesis was that poor oral health associates with incidence of autoimmune diseases. Materials and Methods: Overall 1676 subjects aged 30–40 years old from Stockholm County (Sweden) participated in this study in 1985. Subjects were randomly selected from the registry file of Stockholm region and were followed-up for 30 years. Their hospital and open health care admissions (World Health Organization ICD 9 and 10 codes) were recorded from the Swedish national health registers. The association between the diagnosed autoimmune disease and the oral health variables were statistically analyzed. Results: In all, 50 patients with autoimmune diagnoses were detected from the data. Plaque index was significantly higher in the autoimmune disease group (≥median 35 (70%) vs. under median 872 (54%), p = 0.030). No statistical difference was found in gingival index, calculus index, missing teeth, periodontal pockets, smoking or snuff use between patients with and without autoimmune disease. Conclusions: Our study hypothesis was partly confirmed. The result showed that subjects with a higher plaque index, marker of poor oral hygiene, were more likely to develop autoimmune diseases in 30 years.Suuperäiset tulehdukset, kuten parodontiitti, vaikuttaa koko kehon tulehdusasteeseen. Infektiot kehossa voivat laukaista autoimmuunisairauksia, joten tutkimuksemme tavoitteena oli selvittää, voiko parodontiitilla ja autoimmuunisairauksilla olla yhteyttä. Tutkimukseen osallistui 1676 satunnaisesti valittua tukholmalaista potilasta, joiden ikä oli 30-40 vuotta tutkimuksen aloitusvuonna 1985. Potilaille tehtiin suun perustutkimus sekä heidän terveystottumuksia, kuten tupakointia ja nuuskan käyttöä, kysyttiin. Potilaita seurattiin 30 vuotta, jona aikana heidän sairaalan ja avoterveydenhuollon ICD9 ja ICD10 koodit kirjattiin tutkimukseen. Kaikkiaan 50 potilaalla oli todettu autoimmuunisairaus ja heidän suunterveysparametreja verrattiin terveisiin potilaihin (n=1626). Merkittävänä tuloksena saimme, että autoimmuunisairailla potilailla oli korkeampi plakki-indeksi (plakin määrä) verrattuna terveisiin. Tilastollisesti merkitseviä eroja emme löytäneet ryhmien välillä hammaskivi-indeksin, ientulehdus-indeksin, puuttuvien hampaiden lukumäärän, syventyneiden ientaskujen, tupakoinnin tai nuuskaamisen suhteen. Tutkimuksemme hypoteesi toteutui kuitenkin siltä osin, että potilaille, joilla oli suurempi plakki-indeksi, ja siten huono suuhygienia, kehittyi 30-vuoden seurannassa todennäköisemmin autoimmuunisairaus

Nuorten itsetuhoisuuden syyt, ilmeneminen ja avun saannin odotukset vanhempien näkökulmasta

Nuorten itsetuhoisuus on moniulotteinen ilmiö, ja se koskettaa vähintään joka kymmenettä nuorta. Vanhemmille oman nuoren itsetuhoisuus aiheuttaa monenlaisia negatiivisia seurauksia, ja itsetuhoisten nuorten lailla myös vanhemmat tarvitsevat apua. Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli kuvata nuorten itsetuhoisuuden syitä, ilmenemistä sekä avun saannin odotuksia itsetuhoisten nuorten vanhempien näkökulmasta. Aineisto kerättiin äideiltä ja isiltä (n = 23) kirjoitelmina (n = 9), e-lomakevastauksina (n = 16) sekä haastatteluina (n = 4). Aineisto koostui osin samojen henkilöiden useista vastauksista. Aineisto analysoitiin induktiivisella sisällönanalyysilla. Vanhempien mukaan nuorten itsetuhoisuuden syyt liittyivät nuoreen, perheeseen ja ympäristöön sekä yhteiskuntaan. Vanhemmat kuvasivat monenlaisia syitä itsetuhoisuuteen, kuten nuoren kokemaa kaltoinkohtelua ja kiusaamista, vanhempien terveysongelmia sekä nuoreen kohdistuvia menestymisen paineita. Vanhempien mukaan itsetuhoisuus ilmeni itsetuhoisina tekoina, kuolemaan liittyvänä itsetuhoisuutena sekä nuoren huolestuttavana oireiluna. Kaiken kaikkiaan itsetuhoisuudella oli monia ilmenemismuotoja, mutta useimmiten siihen liittyi päihteiden vahingollista käyttämistä sekä itsensä viiltelemistä. Vanhempien avun saannin odotukset kohdentuivat avun tarvitsijoihin, apuun sekä avun tarjoajiin. Vanhemmat odottivat apua itselleen, itsetuhoiselle nuorelleen sekä perheelle ja läheisille. Apua halutaan enemmän kuin sitä saadaan, mikä asettaa ammattilaiset yhteiskunnan joka sektorilla suuren haasteen eteen

Decreased Aerobic Capacity in ANO5-Muscular Dystrophy

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Evaluation Challenges in the Validation of B7-H3 as Oral Tongue Cancer Prognosticator

B7-H3 was the only molecule identified with prognostic potential from a recent systematic review of the prognostic value of immune checkpoints in oral cancer. We aimed to validate this finding in a multicenter international cohort. We retrospectively retrieved 323 oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC) samples from three different countries (Brazil, Finland, and Norway) for immunostaining and scoring for B7-H3. We evaluated tumor immunogenicity by analyzing the amount of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and divided the tumors into immune hot and cold. To increase the reliability of the results, both digital and manual visual scoring were used. Survival curves were constructed based on the Kaplan-Meier method, and the Cox proportional hazard model was utilized for univariate and multivariate survival analysis. B7-H3 expression was not significantly associated with overall or disease-specific survival in the whole OTSCC cohort. When divided into immune hot and cold tumors, high B7-H3 expression was significantly associated with poor disease-specific and overall survival in the immune hot group, depending on the scoring method and the country of the cohort. This was achieved only in the univariate analysis. In conclusion, B7-H3 was a negative prognosticator for OTSCC patient survival in the subgroup of immune hot tumors, and was not validated as a prognosticator in the full cohort. Our findings suggest that the immune activity of the tumor should be considered when testing immune checkpoints as biomarkers.Peer reviewe