Impairments in psychological functioning in refugees and asylum seekers

© 2024 The Author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Refugees are at increased risk for developing psychological impairments due to stressors in the pre-, peri- and post-migration periods. There is limited knowledge on how everyday functioning is affected by migration experience. In a secondary analysis of a study in a sample of refugees and asylum seekers, it was examined how aspects of psychological functioning were differentially affected. 1,101 eligible refugees and asylum seekers in Europe and Türkiye were included in a cross-sectional analysis. Gender, age, education, number of relatives and children living nearby, as well as indicators for depressive and posttraumatic symptoms, quality of life, psychological well-being and functioning, and lifetime potentially traumatic events were assessed. Correlations and multiple regression models with World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule 2.0 (WHODAS 2.0) 12-item version’s total and six subdomains’ scores (‘mobility’, ‘life activities’, ‘cognition’, ‘participation’, ‘self-care’, ‘getting along’) as dependent variables were calculated. Tests for multicollinearity and Bonferroni correction were applied. Participants reported highest levels of impairment in ‘mobility’ and ‘participation’, followed by ‘life activities’ and ‘cognition’. Depression and posttraumatic symptoms were independently associated with overall psychological functioning and all subdomains. History of violence and abuse seemed to predict higher impairment in ‘participation’, while past events of being close to death were associated with fewer issues with ‘self-care’. Impairment in psychological functioning in asylum seekers and refugees was related to current psychological symptoms. Mobility and participation issues may explain difficulties arising after resettlement in integration and exchange with host communities in new contexts.Peer reviewe

Overview and status of EXCLAIM, the experiment for cryogenic large-aperture intensity mapping

The EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping (EXCLAIM) is a balloon-borne far-infrared telescope that will survey star formation history over cosmological time scales to improve our understanding of why the star formation rate declined at redshift z < 2, despite continued clustering of dark matter. Specifically,EXCLAIM will map the emission of redshifted carbon monoxide and singly-ionized carbon lines in windows over a redshift range 0 < z < 3.5, following an innovative approach known as intensity mapping. Intensity mapping measures the statistics of brightness fluctuations of cumulative line emissions instead of detecting individual galaxies, thus enabling a blind, complete census of the emitting gas. To detect this emission unambiguously, EXCLAIM will cross-correlate with a spectroscopic galaxy catalog. The EXCLAIM mission uses a cryogenic design to cool the telescope optics to approximately 1.7 K. The telescope features a 90-cm primary mirror to probe spatial scales on the sky from the linear regime up to shot noise-dominated scales. The telescope optical elements couple to six {\mu}-Spec spectrometer modules, operating over a 420-540 GHz frequency band with a spectral resolution of 512 and featuring microwave kinetic inductance detectors. A Radio Frequency System-on-Chip (RFSoC) reads out the detectors in the baseline design. The cryogenic telescope and the sensitive detectors allow EXCLAIM to reach high sensitivity in spectral windows of low emission in the upper atmosphere. Here, an overview of the mission design and development status since the start of the EXCLAIM project in early 2019 is presented.Comment: SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1912.0711

Experiment for cryogenic large-aperture intensity mapping: instrument design

The experiment for cryogenic large-aperture intensity mapping (EXCLAIM) is a balloon-borne telescope designed to survey star formation in windows from the present to z  =  3.5. During this time, the rate of star formation dropped dramatically, while dark matter continued to cluster. EXCLAIM maps the redshifted emission of singly ionized carbon lines and carbon monoxide using intensity mapping, which permits a blind and complete survey of emitting gas through statistics of cumulative brightness fluctuations. EXCLAIM achieves high sensitivity using a cryogenic telescope coupled to six integrated spectrometers employing kinetic inductance detectors covering 420 to 540 GHz with spectral resolving power R  =  512 and angular resolution ≈4  arc min. The spectral resolving power and cryogenic telescope allow the survey to access dark windows in the spectrum of emission from the upper atmosphere. EXCLAIM will survey 305  deg2 in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Stripe 82 field from a conventional balloon flight in 2023. EXCLAIM will also map several galactic fields to study carbon monoxide and neutral carbon emission as tracers of molecular gas. We summarize the design phase of the mission

Tongeschlecht, Teiltonkennungsmechanismen und Lateralit\ue4t

Zu Beginn der Arbeit standen die Fragen: -) Welches Ton-Material ben\uf6tigt man, um Moll von Dur unterscheiden zu k\uf6nnen? -) Schwingen bei der Unterscheidung von Moll und Dur automatisch emotionelle Bewertungen mit? Hat dieses Diskriminations-Verm\uf6gen einen direkten Bezug zum Bereich der Lateralit\ue4t?F\ufcr die nun folgenden Versuche wurden daher Dreikl\ue4nge herangezogen, deren Teiltonzusammensetzungen ver\ue4ndert wurden.Die Hypothesen lauteten:-) Die Teiltonkonstellationen der Terz des jeweiligen Dreiklangs und die ver\ue4nderten Akkord-Versionen erlauben es, den typischen Charakter des Tongeschlechts zu erkennen und dadurch Dur von Moll zu unterscheiden. -) Linksohrig dargebotene Akkorde werden gr\uf6 fere und den typischen Charakteren der beiden Tongeschlechter entsprechendere Beurteilungs-Unterschiede zur Folge haben als rechtsohrig dargebotene.Die Auswertung erfolgte mit Hilfe einer multivariaten Varianzanalyse mit Messwiederholung auf allen drei Faktoren.Die ambivalenten Ergebnisse lassen zwar darauf schlie fen, dass die Teilt\uf6ne der Terz f\ufcr das Unterscheiden von Dur und Moll und das Erkennen der damit verbundenen typischen Eigenschaften wie ?fr\uf6hlich? oder ?traurig? offenbar schon zust\ue4ndig sind, dass es aber nicht die f\ufcr diese Arbeit ver\ue4nderten Teiltonkonstellationen, sondern die Teiltonkonstellationen der ganz normalen Moll- bzw. Dur-Akkorde sind, die am deutlichsten die Unterschiede erkennen lassen. Ob die Teiltonkonstellationen, die den gr\uf6 ften Unterschied zwischen Dur und Moll erkennen lassen, sich aus psycholphysiologischen Gr\ufcnden herausgebildet haben oder ob ihr Werden auf einen Lernprozess der abendl\ue4ndischen Kultur beruht, wird die weitere Forschung zeigen.At the beginning the following questions were up for debate:-) What ist the minimum of sound material one needs to distinguish differences of musical modes?-) Are there specific emotions automatically generated while listening to music in minor and major mode?-) Ist there a relation between the ability for distinguishing differences of mode and laterality?In the following experiments the partial-tone-structure of triads was modified with a computer program. The following hypotheses have been established.-) The partial-tone-structure of the triads third enables the test subjects to recognize the typical major/minor-character and to distinguish differences of mode.-) There is a left-ear-advantage in distinguishing differences of major-minor-mode.For the statistical evaluaion a MANOVA with repeated measures was used.The ambivalent results show the coherence of the structure of the triads partial tones with the ability to distinguish differences of mode and their typical emotional characters.But it was the partial-tone-structure of normal triads and not the modified partial-tone-structure, which showed best results in distinguishing differences of mode.Whether these special partial-tone-structures were the results of the psychophysiological genesis of human brains nature or of a learning process of music listeners in occidental culture, further research would have to explore.von Peter WehleGraz, Univ., Diss., 2012Zsfassung in dt. und engl. Sprach

Romana lingua - vulgare illustre - italiano. Kategorisierungen der Muttersprache in Italian

Frank-Job B. Romana lingua - vulgare illustre - italiano. Kategorisierungen der Muttersprache in Italian. In: Grimm RR, Koch P, Stehl T, Wehle W, eds. Italianità. Ein literarisches, sprachliches und kulturelles Identitätsmuster. Tübingen: Gunter Narr; 2003: 15-37

Mechanical Compressibility of the Glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GPI) Anchor Backbone Governed by Independent Glycosidic Linkages

About 1% of the human proteome is anchored to the outer leaflet of cell membranes via a class of glycolipids called GPI anchors. In spite of their ubiquity, experimental information about the conformational dynamics of these glycolipids is rather limited. Here, we use a variety of computer simulation techniques to elucidate the conformational flexibility of the Man-α(1→2)-Man-α(1→6)-Man-α(1→4)-GlcNAc-α-OMe tetrasaccharide backbone <b>2</b> that is an essential and invariant part of all GPI-anchors. In addition to the complete tetrasaccharide structure, all disaccharide and trisaccharide subunits of the GPI backbone have been studied as independent moieties. The extended free energy landscape as a function of the corresponding dihedral angles has been determined for each glycosidic linkage relevant for the conformational preferences of the tetrasaccharide backbone (Man-α(1→2)-Man, Man-α(1→6)­Man and Man-α(1→4)-GlcNAc). We compared the free energy landscapes obtained for the same glycosidic linkage within different oligosaccharides. This comparison reveals that the conformational properties of a linkage are primarily determined by its two connecting carbohydrate moieties, just as in the corresponding disaccharide. Furthermore, we can show that the torsions of the different glycosidic linkages within the GPI tetrasaccharide can be considered as statistically independent degrees of freedom. Using this insight, we are able to map the atomistic description to an effective, reduced model and study the response of the tetrasaccharide <b>2</b> to external forces. Even though the backbone assumes essentially a single, extended conformation in the absence of mechanical stress, it can be easily bent by forces of physiological magnitude