Wonen in Houwerzijl:vind je heil in Houwerzijl!

Deze managementsamenvatting omschrijft kort en bondig het onderzoek naar de woonomgeving van Houwerzijl. Deze samenvatting is bedoeld om de hoofdlijnen van het onderzoek weer te geven, voor het totale onderzoek wordt u doorverwezen naar het onderzoeksrapport ‘Wonen in Houwerzijl’. De doelstelling is het advies geven voor mogelijke aanpassingen ten aanzien van de leefomgeving. De probleemstelling en tevens de onderzoeksvraag van dit onderzoek luidt: ‘Wat vinden de inwoners van Houwerzijl van de kwaliteit van hun leefomgeving en hoe zien zij dit in 2020?’ Deze onderzoeksvraag is verder verdeeld in twee deelvragen, die de woonmotieven en de kwaliteit van de woningen onderzoeken. Studentonderzoek in het kader van het thema Werklandschappen

Regulatory Approaches to Managing Skilled Migration: Indonesian Nurses in Japan

This article examines the Japan–Indonesia Economic Partnership Agreement, an agreement that has allowed Japan to supplement its local healthcare workforce while continuing to sidestep the thorny issue of labour and immigration policy reform and Indonesia to increase its skilled workers’ access to the Japanese labour market at a time when it was making a concerted effort to reorient migrant labour flows away from informal sector occupations. Despite the programme’s many problems, it has contributed to the use of trade agreements as a mechanism for regulating labour migration, and so to the normalisation of migrant labour as a tradable commodity rather than a discrete area of policy-making, with all the attendant risks that normalisation brings

Regional and seasonal flight speeds of soaring migrants and the role of weather conditions at hourly and daily scales

Given that soaring birds travel faster with supportive winds or in good thermal soaring conditions, we expect weather conditions en route of migration to explain commonly observed regional and seasonal patterns in the performance of soaring migrants. We used GPS-loggers to track 13 honey buzzards and four Montagu's harriers for two to six migrations each. We determined how tailwinds, crosswinds, boundary layer height (a proxy for thermal convection) and precipitation affected hourly speeds, daily distances and daily mean speeds with linear regression models. Honey buzzards mostly travel by soaring while Montagu's harriers supplement soaring with flapping. Therefore, we expect that performance of harriers will be less affected by weather than for buzzards. Weather conditions explained between 30 and 50% of variation in migration performance of both species. Tailwind had the largest effect on hourly speeds, daily mean speeds and daily travel distances. Honey buzzards travelled significantly faster and farther, and Montagu's harriers non-significantly faster, under better convective conditions. Honey buzzards travelled at slower speeds and shorter distances in crosswinds, whereas harriers maintained high speeds in crosswinds. Weather conditions varied between regions and seasons, and this variation accounted for nearly all regional and seasonal variation in flight performance. Hourly performance was higher than predicted at times when we suspect birds had switched to intermittent or continuous flapping flight, for example during sea-crossings. The daily travel distance of Montagu's harriers was determined to a significant extent by their daily travel time, which differed between regions, possibly also due to weather conditions. We conclude with the implications of our work for studies on migration phenology and we suggest an important role for high-resolution telemetry in understanding migratory behavior across entire migratory journeys

Sex ratio comparisons between nestlings and dead embryos of the Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus

Sex ratios that differ from unity have been reported for several bird species, but are poorly understood. Skewed sex ratios may originate at ovulation (primary sex ratio) or arise through differential mortality between the sexes (secondary sex ratio). To estimate the primary sex ratio from nestlings is difficult because in some nests not all the offspring can be sexed. Both when including and excluding such nests, there is a risk of overestimating the proportion of the better-surviving sex. Here we sexed dead Sparrowhawk embryos to determine whether unhatched eggs affect primary sex ratio estimates that are based on nestling data. In nests in which embryo mortality occurred, there was up to a 9% discrepancy in the primary sex ratio estimates based on nestlings alone compared to nestlings and dead embryos together. There was no evidence that these differences were based on sex-specific causes of mortality of embryo

Sex ratio comparisons between nestlings and dead embryos of the Sparrowhawk Accipiter nisus

Sex ratios that differ from unity have been reported for several bird species, but are poorly understood. Skewed sex ratios may originate at ovulation (primary sex ratio) or arise through differential mortality between the sexes (secondary sex ratio). To estimate the primary sex ratio from nestlings is difficult because in some nests not all the offspring can be sexed. Both when including and excluding such nests, there is a risk of overestimating the proportion of the better-surviving sex. Here we sexed dead Sparrowhawk embryos to determine whether unhatched eggs affect primary sex ratio estimates that are based on nestling data. In nests in which embryo mortality occurred, there was up to a 9% discrepancy in the primary sex ratio estimates based on nestlings alone compared to nestlings and dead embryos together. There was no evidence that these differences were based on sex-specific causes of mortality of embryo

Toward Targeted ECT: The Interdependence of Predictors of Treatment Response in Depression Further Explained

Objective: Several clinical variables assumed to be predictive of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) outcome in major depressive disorder show substantial interrelations. The current study tries to disentangle this interdependence to distill the most important predictors of treatment success to help improve patient-treatment matching.Methods: We constructed a conceptual framework of interdependence capturing age, episode duration, and treatment resistance, all variables associated with ECT outcome, and the clinical symptoms of what we coin core depression, ie, depression with psychomotor agitation, retardation, psychotic features, or a combination of the three. The model was validated in a sample of 73 patients with a major depressive episode according to DSM-5 treated twice weekly with ECT (August 2015-January 2018) using path analyses, with the size and direction of all direct and indirect paths being estimated using structural equation modeling. Reduction in Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) scores during treatment was the ECT outcome measure.Results: The baseline presence of psychomotor agitation, retardation, and/or psychotic symptoms strongly correlated with beneficial ECT outcome (z = 0.84 [SE = 0.17]; P < .001), and the association between age and the effect of ECT appears to be mediated by their presence (z = 0.53 [SE = 0.18]; P = .004). There was no direct correlation between age and ECT response (P = .479), but there was for episode duration and ECT outcome (z = -0.38 [SE = 0.08]; P < .001).Conclusions: ECT is a very effective treatment option for severe depressive disorder, especially for patients suffering from severe depression characterized by the presence of psychomotor agitation, psychomotor retardation, psychotic symptoms, or a combination of these 3 features, with the chance of a beneficial outcome being reduced in patients with a longer episode duration. Age may heretofore have been given too much weight in ECT decision making.Stress-related psychiatric disorders across the life spa

Detection of the Pro664-Leu mutation in the low-density lipoprotein receptor and its relation to lipoprotein(a) levels in patients with familial hypercholesterolemia of Dutch ancestry from The Netherlands and Canada

From a large cohort of hyperlipidemic patients, who attended the Lipid Research Clinic in Amsterdam, The Netherlands and in Vancouver, Canada, 915 consecutive patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) of Dutch descent, were selected. This group of FH patients was screened for the presence of a cytosine to thymidine nucleotide substitution in exon 14 of the LDL-receptor gene, in order to determine the frequency of this mutation in patients of Dutch descent and to investigate the relationship between the mutation and the level of lipoprotein(a). The mutation was detected in seven individuals. All patients with this mutation shared the same haplotype, which is suggestive of an ancient mutation. The index patients and a large kindred with this mutation were further analyzed at the biochemical and clinical level. Except for total and LDL-cholesterol, there was no statistically significant difference in biochemical parameters between family members with and without FH. In contrast to previous reports, there was no difference in plasma levels of lipoprotein(a) between patients with the mutation in exon 14 and unaffected individual