Cardiac MRI in Young Adults with Sedentary Lifestyle-Related Risks

Western society is characterized by a sedentary lifestyle combined with an unhealthy diet resulting in growing populations with overweight, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes. In older populations, it was demonstrated that these risk factors trigger cardiac adaptation. If cardiac adaptation already occurs at younger age, these changes could potentially overlap with findings on cardiac MRI that are suggestive of cardiomyopathy, complicating diagnosis and treatment. In a prospectively recruited study cohort of 311 young adults (18-45 years old, 49% male), the impact of the aforementioned risk factors on cardiac MRI outcomes was investigated. It was shown that overweight, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes cause alterations in wall mass, cardiac volumes and tissue characteristics. Therefore, reference values of cardiac outcomes have been reported for young risk populations to more reliably assess future MRI scans. Also, it was demonstrated that the body metric being used for indexation of body size has a significant impact. Furthermore, changes in ejection fraction were not found, whereas subtle wall motion abnormalities were present. With literature, the applicability of the tissue characteristics T2 (edema) and T2*-mapping (iron) was assessed for the differentiation of cardiac diseases, risk factors and healthy individuals. Further, it was demonstrated that aortic dimensions can be measured accurately with native imaging, thereby reducing potential health risks in especially risk populations. Lastly, a short-axis cardiac MRI contour-tracing protocol was validated which can be used to accurately assess morphology and function, and also to manually adjust automated tracings in a standardized fashion

Welfare state reform and in-work poverty in the Netherlands

This paper describes the development of in-work poverty in the Netherlands from 1996 until 2005 and examines whether in-work poverty is related to recent social security and welfare state reforms (a new ideology of an ‘activating welfare state’ and numerous policy measures to reduce the number of social benefit claimants and to promote work). Using large-scale administrative data (from the Dutch tax services) we found that the in-work poverty risk in the Netherlands was quite constant (fluctuating between 5.3 and 6.6 percent). We expected that because of the social security reforms more individuals with vulnerable labour market positions are pushed into the labour market but are nevertheless unable to escape from poverty. This would result in more working individuals below the poverty line. However, this is not the case. But even with a constant in-work poverty risk the number of working poor individuals increases over the years. As a result, there is a gradual shift within the Dutch poverty population from non-working to working poor. We conclude that in-work poverty – once the typical face of poverty in liberal welfare states such as the USA – also became a familiar phenomenon in the Netherlands. The majority of the Dutch working poor belongs to this category for only one year. However, a limited but significant number of individuals is working poor for three years or more. In-work poverty occurs relatively often after individuals experience a transition from social benefits (particularly social assistance) to work

A new step towards global tax harmonization and the struggle against tax avoidance: the pillar one and pillar two blueprint by the OESO.

Het artikel beschrijft en geeft op commentaar op enkele wereldwijd in OESO-verband aan de orde zijnde ontwikkelingen met betrekking tot de belastingheffing van internationaal actieve ondernemingen. De ontwikkelingen zijn onder twee zogenoemde pijlers gebracht. Pijler 1 betreft de toerekening van winst behaald door een onderneming die in meerdere landen actief is aan de onderdelen van die onderneming. Pijler 2 betreft een minimumwinstbelasting voor een onderneming die in meerdere landen actief is.The article deals with some new global developments concerning international taxation om business income. Pillar one gives new rules concerning the international attribution of income from business activities earned by groups that are doing business in several countries. Pillar two introduces a global minimum tax rate for companies

The silent transformation of the Dutch welfare state and the rise of in-work poverty

INTRODUCTION - Until recently, scholars argued that different welfare state regimes create different kinds of poverty. The typical face of poverty in liberal welfare states such as the USA is that of the working poor. The relatively large number of working poor in the USA is a consequence of the central characteristics of a liberal welfare state (Esping-Andersen, 1990). The combination of marginal social protection and low minimum wages creates a situation in which vulnerable people are often forced to work but remain poor (Jencks, 2005; Neubeck, 2006). On the other hand, because of the low wage levels in the USA, there is ample low-skilled and low-paid work available for those people who depend on this segment of the labour market. Such jobs are often lacking in the more developed welfare states of the European continent. As a result, there are many US citizens who work but are nevertheless poor. Moreover, working poor individuals often have to combine several low-paid jobs in order to make ends meet – a situation that has been vividly described in ethnographic studies about the American working poor (Ehrenreich, 2002; Newman, 1999; Venkatesh, 2006)

Asielmigratie en criminaliteit

Het vraagstuk van asielmigratie staat al jaren hoog op de politiek-maatschappelijke agenda. De mate van betrokkenheid van asielzoekers bij criminaliteit is onderwerp van een beladen discussie die desondanks, of wellicht juist daardoor, een degelijke empirische onderbouwing mist. Dat betreft eerst en vooral een betrouwbaar cijfermatig inzicht in de betrokkenheid van asielzoekers bij criminaliteit. Dat kan vervolgens als opmaat dienen voor nader onderzoek naar achterliggende verklaringen, oorzaken en omstandigheden. Voor Politie en Wetenschap was het aanleiding voor een meeromvattend drieluik naar zowel de aard en omvang als de achtergronden van betrokkenheid bij criminaliteit van drie groepen asielzoekers: asielzoekers in procedure, (ex-)asielzoekers die een formele status hebben verworven en 'illegalen': asielzoekers wier asielaanvraag is afgewezen. Dit deel van het drieluik geeft een overzicht van de aard en omvang van de criminaliteit onder in Nederland verblijvende asielmigranten (waaronder afgewezen asielzoekers, toegelaten asielzoekers en asielzoekers in de procedure). De studie is gebaseerd op de registraties van de Immigratie- en Naturalisatiedienst en de politie voor de periode 1995-2004. De onderzoekers geven niet alleen een gedegen cijfermatige beschrijving van de aangetroffen criminaliteitspatronen, maar gaan ook in op de vraag in hoeverre de verblijfsstatus van invloed is op betrokkenheid bij misdaad

The effect of caffeine on working memory load-­related brain activation in middle-­aged males

Klaassen, E. B., De Groot, R. H. M., Evers, E. A. T., Snel, J., Veerman, E. C. I., Ligtenberg, A. J. M., Jolles, J., & Veltman, D. J. (2013). The effect of caffeine on working memory load-related brain activation in middle-aged male. Neuropharmacology, 64, 160-167. doi:10.1016/j.neuropharm.2012.06.026Caffeine is commonly consumed in an effort to enhance cognitive performance. However, little is known about the usefulness of caffeine with regard to memory enhancement, with previous studies showing inconsistent effects on memory performance. We aimed to determine the effect of caffeine on working memory (WM) load-related activation during encoding, maintenance and retrieval phases of a WM maintenance task using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 20 healthy, male, habitual caffeine consumers aged 40 to 61 years were administered 100 mg of caffeine in a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover design. Participants were scanned in a non-withdrawn state following a workday during which caffeinated products were consumed according to individual normal use (range = 145 – 595 mg). Acute caffeine administration was associated with increased load-related activation compared to placebo in the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex during WM encoding, but decreased load-related activation in the left thalamus during WM maintenance. These findings are indicative of an effect of caffeine on the fronto-parietal network involved in the top-down cognitive control of WM processes during encoding and an effect on the prefrontal cortico-thalamic loop involved in the interaction between arousal and the top-down control of attention during maintenance. Therefore, the effects of caffeine on WM may be attributed to both a direct effect of caffeine on WM processes, as well as an indirect effect on WM via arousal modulation. Behavioral and fMRI results were more consistent with a detrimental effect of caffeine on WM at higher levels of WM load, than caffeine-related WM enhancement