Alcohol outlets near schools in a midsize Romanian city : prevalence and characteristics

Objective: alcohol availability is one of the strongest predictors of adolescent alcohol use, and subsequent harm. Alcohol outlets near schools are an important indicator of three types of availability related to adolescent alcohol use; physical (number), economic (price), and legal (compliance with age limits).\ud \ud Method: two teams with trained students (16 and 17 years old) visited all 37 schools in a 200,000 inhabitant Romanian city (Pitesti). On the spot all alcohol outlets were visited and data was collected on outlet characteristics and visitors. Also, by conducting mystery shopping purchase attempts by the researchers, compliance on the age limits for alcohol sales was tested.\ud \ud Results: a total of 40 outlets were found within a 250 meter distance around 23 schools. Alcohol turns out to be cheap, and commercial alcohol brand signs are dominantly visible. With respect to compliance with the 18-year-old Romanian age limit for alcohol sales, only eight (20%) outlets refused to sell alcohol to under aged decoy customers.\ud \ud Conclusion: adolescent alcohol availability is high on the physical, economic and legal aspect. Pitesti is the first city in\ud Romania where an international alcohol prevention project has started to reduce alcohol related consequences. This project\ud involves all relevant stakeholders, and the first new legislation on this subject had been implemented

Rock-magnetic properties of TRM carrying baked and molten rocks straddling burnt coal seams

The subsurface spontaneous combustion of coal seams in Xinjiang (NW China) during Pleistocene to recent times produced large areas of thermally altered sedimentary rocks with large magnetic moments. The natural remanent magnetization (NRM) and thermoremanent magnetization (TRM) intensities and low-field susceptibilities of such combustion-metamorphic rocks range from 0.1 to 10 A/m and 100 × 10^(-4) to 1000 × 10^(-4) SI, respectively, which is two to three orders of magnitude higher than values typical of their sedimentary protoliths. The dominant magnetic carriers in the burnt rocks appear to include relatively pure forms of magnetite, maghemite and hematite as well as more complex spinel phases. These magnetic phases mainly occur as fine pseudo-single-domain (PSD) particles. Conspicuous is the presence of pure metallic iron (aFe) in some samples. This highly magnetic phase is inferred to appear as more or less elongated super paramagnetic and single-domain (SD) inclusions in host silicate phases, which prevent them from oxidizing. The SD aFe particles can carry a highly stable remanence, having remanent coercivities ranging 70-140mT. The ARM and IRM stability of all burnt rock samples to alternating fields is shown to be relatively high; median destructive fields, B(1/2)A and B(1/2)I, respectively, range of 25-46 and ~20-30mT for dominant spinel-bearing samples, 34-36 and 47-53mT for maghemite-hematite-bearing samples, and 48-89 and 64-84mT for metallic iron-bearing samples. Consequently, burnt rocks are high-quality geomagnetic field recorders. Their very nature makes them useful for paleointensity determinations, although age determination is a limiting factor. Furthermore, remanence intensities and susceptibilities of these magnetically enhanced rocks are sufficient to produce observable magnetic anomalies. This property illustrates the potential to delineate the areal extent and depth of (extinct) coal fires with magnetic exploration. Such information is necessary to refine estimates of hazardous CO2 emission and furthers our understanding of natural coal fires

Compliance with age limits for the sales of alcoholic beverages in Romania. Designing and evaluating a three year campaign

The availability of alcohol in general is the most important predictor of alcohol consumption and alcohol abuse in adolescents. Alcohol availability can divided into economic (alcohol prices and discounts), physical (number of alcohol outlets, opening hours), legal (age limits on drinking and purchasing alcohol) and social availability (at home availability, parental behavior and parenting style). When protecting youth from alcohol use, the legal availability is the strongest instrument.Of course, when legislation states that alcohol is not allowed to be sold to people under a certain age, both on-premise (e.g., bars) and off-premise (e.g.,supermarkets) alcohol outlet personnel should be trained and enforced in complying with legal age limits. In order to explore baseline compliance to this legislation a mystery shopping study was conducted in a Romanian city. Under ages and trained students tried to buy alcohol in to explore to what extent alcohol sellers comply with this legal age limits. This compliance level turned out to be 0%. Within the alcohol project, therefore, it was decided to develop a campaign in which the importance of this age limit was communicated. After this campaign, again compliance was measured. Compliance was improved in the on-premise (bars) outlets only. Despite that the results on compliance with the age limit in practice were not strong directly after the campaign, both elements from that intervention and the research method can be used in other Romanian cities to improve and measure compliance with age limits on the sales of alcohol

General psychopathology factor and unresolved-disorganized attachment uniquely correlated to white matter integrity using diffusion tensor imaging

Multivariate analysis of psychological dat

Abnormalities of white matter integrity in the corpus callosum of adolescents with PTSD after childhood sexual abuse: a DTI study

This study seeks to determine whether white matter integrity in the brain differs between adolescents with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to childhood sexual abuse (CSA) and matched healthy adolescents and whether there is a relationship between white matter integrity and symptom severity in the patient group. Using 3T diffusion tensor imaging, we examined fractional anisotropy (FA) in a group of adolescents with CSA-related PTSD (n = 20) and matched healthy controls (n = 20), in a region of interest consisting of the bilateral uncinate fasciculus (UF), the genu, splenium and body of the corpus callosum (CC), and the bilateral cingulum. In addition, we performed an exploratory whole brain analysis. Trauma symptomatology was measured with the Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children (TSCC) to enable correlational analyses between FA differences and trauma symptomatology. The PTSD group had significantly lower FA values in the genu, midbody and splenium of the CC in comparison with controls (p Multivariate analysis of psychological dat

KNMG meldcode kindermishandeling en huiselijk geweld. Online 22 november 2018. Mede-auteur als lid artsencoalitie vanuit NVvP. https://www.knmg.nl/actualiteit-opinie/nieuws/nieuwsbericht/nieuwe-knmg-meldcode-kindermishandeling-en-huiselijk-geweld-per-1-januari-2019-verplicht.htm

New methods for child psychiatric diagnosis and treatment outcome evaluatio

Van Hoof, MJ, Van Kamp IL, Landsmeer-Beker, EA, Boer, F. (2015). Dbc kindermishandeling moet er snel komen. Medisch Contact,45 (5 November), 2158-2160

New methods for child psychiatric diagnosis and treatment outcome evaluatio

Van Hoof, MJ (2014). Het Gehechtheidsbiografisch interview onderscheidt adolescenten met seksueel misbruik van adolescenten met depressie en controles. TOPGGz symposium S39.6 “ Motivatie van patiënten met een 3e lijns (topklinische) zorgvraag”, Voorjaarscongres NVvP 10 april 2014 te Maastricht. www.nvvp.net

New methods for child psychiatric diagnosis and treatment outcome evaluatio