Monitoring ethnic minorities in the Netherlands

Item does not contain fulltextThe article first summarises the history of ethnic minority policy in the Netherlands and the development of the ‘ethnic minority’ and ‘allochthonous’ categories, which are peculiar in comparative perspective in emphasising socio-economic disadvantage as a constitutive dimension of minority status and in setting the minority question within the broader Dutch political principle of ‘pillarisation’. The article then examines the use of statistics in public policy, in a context where the national census has been discontinued since 1971, focusing more specifically on the case of education, where major statistical efforts have been devoted to identifying patterns of disadvantage and integration. Finally, the article briefly examines current debates on the situation of ethnic minorities in the Netherlands in the context of growing questioning of established Dutch models of minority policy.13 p

Temporary diverting stoma in therapy-refractory luminal colonic Crohn's disease:an alternative to immediate colorectal resection?

AimCreation of a diverting stoma in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) can counteract luminal inflammation. The clinical utility of a diverting stoma with the prospect of restoration of gastrointestinal continuity warrants further investigation. The aim of this work was to evaluate the long-term effects of creation of a diverting stoma on the disease course in patients with luminal colonic CD.MethodIn this retrospective, multicentre cohort study we investigated the disease course of patients who received a diverting stoma in the biological era. Clinical characteristics, medication use and surgical course were assessed at the time of creation of the diverting stoma and during follow-up. The primary outcome was the rate of successful and lasting reestablishment of gastrointestinal continuity.ResultsThirty six patients with refractory luminal CD from four institutions underwent creation of a diverting stoma. Of the overall cohort, 20 (56%) patients had their gastrointestinal continuity reestablished after initial stoma creation and 14 (39%) who had their stoma reversed remained stoma-free during a median of 3.3 years follow-up (interquartile range 2.1–6.1 years). Absence of stoma reversal was associated with the presence of proctitis (p = 0.02). Colorectal resection after creation of a diverting stoma was performed in 28 (78%) patients, with 7 (19%) having a less extensive resection and 6 (17%) having a more extensive resection compared with the surgical plan before stoma creation.ConclusionA diverting stoma could potentially be an alternative to immediate definitive stoma placement in specific populations consisting of patients with luminal colonic CD, especially in the absence of proctitis

How STRANGE are your study animals?

A new framework for studies of animal behaviour will help to avoid sampling bias— ten years on from the call to widen the pool of human participants in psychology research beyond the WEIRD.Publisher PDFNon peer reviewe

Human hippocampal neurogenesis drops sharply in children to undetectable levels in adults.

New neurons continue to be generated in the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus of the adult mammalian hippocampus. This process has been linked to learning and memory, stress and exercise, and is thought to be altered in neurological disease. In humans, some studies have suggested that hundreds of new neurons are added to the adult dentate gyrus every day, whereas other studies find many fewer putative new neurons. Despite these discrepancies, it is generally believed that the adult human hippocampus continues to generate new neurons. Here we show that a defined population of progenitor cells does not coalesce in the subgranular zone during human fetal or postnatal development. We also find that the number of proliferating progenitors and young neurons in the dentate gyrus declines sharply during the first year of life and only a few isolated young neurons are observed by 7 and 13 years of age. In adult patients with epilepsy and healthy adults (18-77 years; n = 17 post-mortem samples from controls; n = 12 surgical resection samples from patients with epilepsy), young neurons were not detected in the dentate gyrus. In the monkey (Macaca mulatta) hippocampus, proliferation of neurons in the subgranular zone was found in early postnatal life, but this diminished during juvenile development as neurogenesis decreased. We conclude that recruitment of young neurons to the primate hippocampus decreases rapidly during the first years of life, and that neurogenesis in the dentate gyrus does not continue, or is extremely rare, in adult humans. The early decline in hippocampal neurogenesis raises questions about how the function of the dentate gyrus differs between humans and other species in which adult hippocampal neurogenesis is preserved

Time and Money: Substitutes in Real Terms and Complements in Satisfactions

Time and money are basic commodities in the utility function and are substitutes in real terms. To a certain extent, having time and money is a matter of either/or, depending on individual preferences and budget constraints. However, satisfaction with time and satisfaction with money are typically complements, i.e., individuals tend to be equally satisfied with both domains. In this paper, we provide an explanation for this apparent paradox through the analysis of the simultaneous determination of economic satisfaction and leisure satisfaction. We test some hypotheses, including the hypothesis that leisure satisfaction depends on both the quantity and quality of leisure-where quality is proxied by good intensiveness and social intensiveness. Our results show that both the quantity and the quality of leisure are important determinants of leisure satisfaction, and, since having money contributes to the quality of leisure, this explains the empirical findings of the satisfactions being complementary at the same time as the domains are substitutes. Interestingly, gender matters. Intra-household effects and especially individual characteristics are more pronounced for women than for men for both domain satisfactions. Additionally, good intensiveness is more important for men (e.g., housing conditions), whereas social intensiveness is more important for women (e.g., the presence of children and participation in leisure-time activities)

Happiness economics

There is enough evidence to be confident that individuals are able and willing to provide a meaningful answer when asked to value on a finite scale their satisfaction with their own lives, a question that psychologists have long and often posed to respondents of large questionnaires. Without taking its limitations and criticisms too lightly, some economists have been using thismeasure of self-reported satisfaction as a proxy for utility so as to contribute to a better understanding of individuals' tastes and hopefully behavior. By means of satisfaction questions we can elicit information on individual likes and dislikes over a large set of relevant issues, such as income, working status and job amenities, the risk of becoming unemployed, inflation, and health status. This information can be used to evaluate existing ideas from a new perspective, understand individual behavior, evaluate and design public policies, study poverty and inequality, and develop a preference based valuation method. In this article I first critically assess the pros and cons of using satisfaction variables, and then discuss its main applications

Financial Satisfaction and (in)formal Sector in a Transition Country

This paper examines the relationship between working in the formal or informal sector and self-reported individual financial satisfaction in a country in transition. It does so by allowing for individual heterogeneity in terms of perceived financial insecurity and tax morale. The empirical analysis uses a dataset for Albania, a country in transition. The method applied is the ‘self-administered questionnaire’, which combines personal contacts with written questionnaire. The results indicate that, for most individuals, working in the informal sector has negative effects on their self reported financial satisfaction. For some individuals, however, this effect is positive. The characteristic defining these two groups of individuals is their attitude towards the perceived financial insecurity related to not paying taxes. These findings have important implications, in particular for transition countries with large informal sectors. Given the involuntary participation in the informal sector in these countries, the majority of individuals working in this sector will remain financially dissatisfied as long as they have no other social safety net