Mutual stereotypes of younger and older adults and their relation with self-concept and self-esteem

In this study younger and older persons were compared with regard to their stereotypes about both age groups, their self-concept and self-esteem. We examined the relation between age and stereotypes about younger and older adults, the relation between stereotypes about one's own age group and self-concepts, and the relation between self-concepts and self-esteem. Stereotypes and self-concepts were measured on two dimensions, warmth and competence. Twenty-eight younger adults (16-25 years) and 26 older adults (65-85 years) participated in this study. Both age groups perceived younger persons as more competent than older persons and older persons as more warm than younger persons. Older persons rate themselves higher than their in-group on competence and warmth. Younger respondents did the same, but on warmth only. A rating of the own person as more competent than the stereotype of their own age group, is related to self-esteem for older persons. Distancing oneself from negative stereotypes about one's own age group is an important key in maintaining high levels of self-esteem, but only in old age.     

Wederzijdse stereotypen van jongeren en ouderen en hun relatie met zelfbeeld en zelfwaardering

Mutual stereotypes of younger and older adults and their relation with self-concept and self-esteem In this study younger and older persons were compared with regard to their stereotypes about both age groups, their self-concept and self-esteem. We examined the relation between age and stereotypes about younger and older adults, the relation between stereotypes about one’s own age group and self-concepts, and the relation between self-concepts and self-esteem. Stereotypes and self-concepts were measured on two dimensions, warmth and competence. Twenty-eight younger adults (16-25 years) and 26 older adults (65-85 years) participated in this study. Both age groups perceived younger persons as more competent than older persons and older persons as more warm than younger persons. Older persons rate themselves higher than their in-group on competence and warmth. Younger respondents did the same, but on warmth only. A rating of the own person as more competent than the stereotype of their own age group, is related to self-esteem for older persons. Distancing oneself from negative stereotypes about one’s own age group is an important key in maintaining high levels of self-esteem, but only in old age.     

鄂温克族与鄂伦春族的群体遗传学研究(续)

本次调查采印了645名鄂温克族和424名鄂伦春族中、小学生和部分牧民、猎民的指纹和掌纹。观察了各型指纹出现率、指纹总嵴数、atd角和掌褶纹等指标。 1.各型指纹出现率 弓(A)、尺侧箕(L~u)、桡侧箕(L~r)和斗(W)的出现频率见表11。额左旗和陈旗鄂温克人中斗多于箕,与汉族相似。有些指纹型在某个手指上较为多见,在汉族中斗在环指     

Epidemiological characteristic of viral hepatitis C in large industrial city settings

Prevalence of hepatitis C between different groups of population of Irkutsk is described and leading role (73.3%) of injection drug use as a risk factor has been shown. It has been established that persons with alcoholism and unemployed persons are additional groups of risk of HCV-infection.     

A critique of the principle of ‘respect for autonomy’, grounded in African thought

I give an account how the principle of ‘respect for autonomy’ dominates the field of bioethics, and how it came to triumph over its competitors, ‘respect for persons’ and ‘respect for free power of choice’. I argue that ‘respect for autonomy’ is unsatisfactory as a basic principle of bioethics because it is grounded in too individualistic a worldview, citing concerns of African theorists and other communitarians who claim that the principle fails to acknowledge the fundamental importance of understanding persons within the nexus of their communal relationships. I defend the claim that ‘respect for persons’ is a more appropriate principle, as it is able to acknowledge both individual decision making and the essential relationality of persons. I acknowledge that my preference for ‘respect for persons’ is problematic because of the important debate around the definition of ‘personhood’ in bioethics discourse. Relying on Thaddeus Metz's conception of moral status, I propose a relational definition of personhood that distinguishes between persons with agency and persons without agency, arguing that we have different moral obligations to these distinct categories of persons. I claim that this conception of personhood is better able to accommodate our moral intuitions than conventional approaches, and that it is able to do so without being speciesist or question‐begging.     

Influenza Infectious Dose May Explain the High Mortality of the Second and Third Wave of 1918–1919 Influenza Pandemic

Background

It is widely accepted that the shift in case-fatality rate between waves during the 1918 influenza pandemic was due to a genetic change in the virus. In animal models, the infectious dose of influenza A virus was associated to the severity of disease which lead us to propose a new hypothesis. We propose that the increase in the case-fatality rate can be explained by the dynamics of disease and by a dose-dependent response mediated by the number of simultaneous contacts a susceptible person has with infectious ones.

Methods

We used a compartment model with seasonality, waning of immunity and a Holling type II function, to model simultaneous contacts between a susceptible person and infectious ones. In the model, infected persons having mild or severe illness depend both on the proportion of infectious persons in the population and on the level of simultaneous contacts between a susceptible and infectious persons. We further allowed for a high or low rate of waning immunity and volunteer isolation at different times of the epidemic.

Results

In all scenarios, case-fatality rate was low during the first wave (Spring) due to a decrease in the effective reproduction number. The case-fatality rate in the second wave (Autumn) depended on the ratio between the number of severe cases to the number of mild cases since, for each 1000 mild infections only 4 deaths occurred whereas for 1000 severe infections there were 20 deaths. A third wave (late Winter) was dependent on the rate for waning immunity or on the introduction of new susceptible persons in the community. If a group of persons became voluntarily isolated and returned to the community some days latter, new waves occurred. For a fixed number of infected persons the overall case-fatality rate decreased as the number of waves increased. This is explained by the lower proportion of infectious individuals in each wave that prevented an increase in the number of severe infections and thus of the case-fatality rate.

Conclusion

The increase on the proportion of infectious persons as a proxy for the increase of the infectious dose a susceptible person is exposed, as the epidemic develops, can explain the shift in case-fatality rate between waves during the 1918 influenza pandemic.     

Comparison between a shortened TRH-TSH test and thyroid suppression test in the diagnosis of hyperthyroidosis]

In a selected group of fifty-one persons suspected to be hyperthyroid the comparison between a shortened variant of TRH-TSH stimulation test and thyroid suppression test was made. In patients whose other functional tests gave no univocal results, the agreement between suppressibility of radioiodine uptake and TSH response in 90,2% of cases could be established. High degree of correlation between both parameters (coefficient V = 0.791) permits to regard these tests as practically equivaluablein giving evidence of dysregulation between pituitary and thyroid gland. In persons with TSH-dependent thyroid function, however, no correlation between numerical values of radioiodine uptake and TSH concentrations after stimulations was found.     

Older adults have unstable gait kinematics during weight transfer

The present article investigates gait stability of healthy older persons during weight transfer. Ten healthy older persons and ten younger persons walked 10 min each on a treadmill at 3 different gait speeds. The intra-stride change in gait stability was defined by the local divergence exponent λ(t) estimated by a newly developed method. The intra-stride changes in λ(t) during weight transfer were identified by separating each stride into a single and double support phase. The intra-stride changes in λ(t) were also compared to changes in the variation of the gait kinematics, i.e., SD(t). The healthy older persons walked at the same preferred walking speed as the younger persons. However, they exhibited significantly larger λ(t) (p<0.001) during weight transfer in the double support phase. Local divergence was closely related to intra-stride changes in SD(t) of the feet in the anterior-posterior direction. Furthermore, a high correlation was found between local divergence and the variation in step length and step width for both older (R>0.67, p<0.05) and younger persons (R>0.67, p<0.05). The present results indicate that the gait kinematics of older adults are more dynamical unstable during the weight transfer compared to younger persons. Furthermore, a close relationship exists between intra-stride changes in dynamical stability and variation in step length and step width. Further work will validate the results of the present study using real-life perturbations of the gait kinematics of both younger and older adults.     

The assessment of competence in cognitively impaired elderly persons: a closer look at the vignette method

This article focuses on the assessment of competence of elderly persons both with and without cognitive impairment. In total 113 patients of a geriatric clinic were interviewed. Competence was assessed by using two clinical vignettes, representing respectively a hypothetical treatment situation with mild consequences (endoscopy) and one with severe consequences (operation for colon cancer). Competence was evaluated using the following standards: the ability to evidence a choice, the ability to understand a situation, the ability to reason about a choice, and the ability to appreciate a situation. In the vignette with mild consequences, elderly persons with cognitive impairment performed significantly worse on understanding, reasoning and appreciation than elderly persons without cognitive impairment. In the vignette with severe consequences, elderly persons with cognitive impairment performed significantly worse only on understanding as compared to elderly persons without cognitive impairment. No differences were found for reasoning and appreciation between the cognitively impaired and non-impaired elderly persons. We conclude that competence is less limited by cognitive impairment when assessed in a treatment situation with severe consequences. Therefore, the use of hypothetical vignettes should be carefully reconsidered.     

Water-borne Mycobacterium xenopi--a possible cause of pulmonary mycobacteriosis in man

In the years 1980-1983 M. xenopi was isolated from the sputum of 37 persons, 30 of them living in the agglomeration of the regional town in the region of Northern Bohemia with 1,175,000 inhabitants. Only 7 of these 30 had manifestation of pulmonary disease. M. xenopi was found repeatedly in the sputum in 5 patients out of 7 affected and in 2 out of 23 persons who showed no signs of a disease. The prevalence was in males between the age of 52-67 years. All of them suffered from other diseases, as chronic bronchitis, TB healed after lobectomy, lung cancer, fibrotic lung lesions, diabetes mellitus, gastric ulcer healed by resection, chronic alcoholism. Investigations were made for detection of the source of infection. Bacteriological examinations of cold and warm tap water in flats of 9 persons with M. xenopi in their sputa were carried out, as well as cold and warm tap water from flats of 2 healthy persons. M. xenopi was found in tap water of 5 persons with M. xenopi in their sputum and in one of the two healthy persons. In the water of one household we found M. kansasii. We came to the conclusion, that transmission carried out in susceptible persons is most probably due to aerosol during washing and showering with water, containing these mycobacteria.     

‘Children are the food sent by God’: culinary imagery and the making of persons in the Cameroon Grassfields

The article explores aspects of personhood as these emerge through rites of passage and culinary imagery in Batié, an eastern Grassfields polity in west Cameroon. Food appears as a gendered medium which, by being exchanged, cooked, and ingested by persons – and by collectives perceived as persons – has the power to transform others (persons and collectives) and make them act. Persons and collectives are revealed, at the different stages of their ceremonial journey, as the outcome of similar processes – exchange, cooking, and ingestion of food – occurring each time on different scales, and thus displaying fractal properties. Introducing a split between agent and (cause of) agency, the article finally suggests that agents’ successive (ritual) transformations are the result of their own actions as well as the actions of (‘individual’ or ‘collective’) others upon them.     

Clinical significance of oxidation and acetylation genetic polymorphism in patients with hyperthyreosis

INTRODUCTION: The relationship between genetically determined polymorphic oxidation and acetylation and susceptibility to some disease was aroused much interest. The aim of our study was to evaluate whether patients with hyperthyreosis differ from healthy persons in their ability to oxidize sparteine and acetylate sulphadimidine as model drugs. Oxidation and acetylation were estimated in 48 patients with hiperthyreosis. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The control group consisted of 160 healthy volunteers for comparison of oxidation phenotype and 60 healthy volunteers for comparison of acetylation phenotype. The phenotyping of oxidation revealed two distinct populations among 40 patients with hyperthyreosis: 38 persons (95%) were extensive metabolizers (EM) of sparteine and 2 persons (5%) was poor metabolizers (PM). In 160 healthy persons (91.2%) were EM and 14 persons (8.8%) were PM. The difference between frequency distribution of PM and EM in healthy persons and in patients with hyperthyreosis was not statistically significant. RESULTS: The phenotyping of acetylation showed among 48 patients with hyperthyreosis 8 persons (13%) were rapid acetylators (RA) and 40 persons (87%) were slow acetylators (SA). In 60 healthy volunteers the phenotype of rapid acetylation was observed in 31 persons (51%) and slow acetylation in 29 persons (49%). Relative risk (odds ratio) of development of thyroid diseases was 5.34 times higher for SA in comparison to RA. The prevalence of SA among patients with hyperthyreosis in comparison to healthy volunteers was statistically significant (p < 0.0002). CONCLUSIONS: The results of our study may suggest that slow acetylation phenotype is associated with increased risk of the development of hyperthyreosis.     

A worldwide assessment of the frequency of suicide, suicide attempts, or psychiatric hospitalization after predictive testing for Huntington disease

Prior to the implementation of predictive-testing programs for Huntington disease (HD), significant concern was raised concerning the likelihood of catastrophic events (CEs), particularly in those persons receiving an increased-risk result. We have investigated the frequency of CEs-that is, suicide, suicide attempt, and psychiatric hospitalization-after an HD predictive-testing result, through questionnaires sent to predictive-testing centers worldwide. A total of 44 persons (0.97%) in a cohort of 4,527 test participants had a CE: 5 successful suicides, 21 suicide attempts, and 18 hospitalizations for psychiatric reasons. All persons committing suicide had signs of HD, whereas 11 (52.4%) of 21 persons attempting suicide and 8 (44.4%) of 18 who had a psychiatric hospitalization were symptomatic. A total of 11 (84.6%) of 13 asymptomatic persons who experienced a CE during the first year after HD predictive testing received an increased-risk result. Factors associated with an increased risk of a CE included (a) a psychiatric history 相似文献   

The dynamics of activation processes in persons with different ability to recognize speech emotional expressions

The frequency-amplitude characteristics of the brain electrical activity were studied in two groups of subjects: (1) with high and (2) with low indexes of "emotional ear" (the ability to successfully recognize emotions in speech). Comparison of EEG power characteristics between the two groups of subjects permitted the authors to make a conclusion that the persons with lower indexes of "emotional ear" had a much higher EEG activation level as compared to the persons with higher "emotional ear" indexes. A different dynamics of the cortical activation was also observed in the process of recognition of emotions by alpha-rhythm amplitude. It was shown that the persons with higher indexes of recognition had higher alpha-rhythm amplitude, whereas the persons who were less successful in recognition of speech emotions had a contrary tendency: the amplitude on the alpha band decreased in the process of the experiment.     

Circadian rhythms of blood components in dementia senilis

In eleven patients with dementia senilis circadian rhythms of hematocrit, hemoglobin, erythrocytes, leukocytes, serum iron and transferrin were studied by means of the cosinor method. An evident circadian rhythm was observed for all blood components, except leukocytes. There were no significant differences between patients with dementia senilis and healthy aged persons as far as hematocrit, hemoglobin, erythrocytes, and leukocytes are concerned. Acrophase for serum iron and transferrin occurs a little earlier and mesor is lower than in healthy aged persons.     

Relationship between subjective assessment of oral health and medical expenses in community-dwelling elderly persons

doi: 10.1111/j.1741‐2358.2011.00459.x
Relationship between subjective assessment of oral health and medical expenses in community‐dwelling elderly persons Objectives: The increasing medical expenses of elderly persons in Japan’s rapidly ageing society have become a major concern. It is therefore important to elucidate the factors associated with such escalation. Here, we focused on the relationship between subjective self‐assessment of oral health, as an index of general health, and medical expenses (excluding dental repair) under the hypothesis that oral health contributes to general medical expenses. Several studies have shown that oral health status is correlated with general health status among elderly persons. We speculated that oral health status might show a relation with medical costs among elderly persons. However, few studies have investigated this relationship to date. Materials and Methods: Participants were 259 elderly subjects (range: 65–84 years; 120 men, 139 women) residing independently. Subjective assessment of oral health was evaluated by their responses (‘Good’, ‘Not good’ and ‘Not at all good’) on a survey questionnaire. The correlation between subjective assessment of oral health and medical expenditure was analysed using Spearman’s rank method, the Mann–Whitney U‐test and the Kruskal–Wallis test. Medical expenses were used as the dependent variable in multinomial logistic regression analysis with background and intraoral factors as independent variables. Results: A slight yet statistically significant correlation was observed between subjective assessment of oral health and outpatient treatment fees. Conclusion: The findings revealed that subjective assessment of oral health is significantly and independently related to the medical expenses of community‐dwelling elderly persons after adjusting for social background, living environment and physical factors.     

Multivariate analysis for the understanding of typical diabetic hemostasis criteria. 1: Plasma markers]

In 309 patients investigations were made into the functions of blood coagulation with special consideration of numerous metabolic criteria. They referred to 111 healthy control persons and 198 patients with diabetes mellitus, 67 of them being of type I and 131 of type II. From a variety of metabolic characteristics and haemostasis optimal criteria were determined by means of the statistical method of multivariance analysis, which enables a distinction to be made between diabetics of type I, type II and healthy persons. Among those 13 characteristics detected as optimal amount there were thrombin time, thrombin coagulase time as parameter of haemostasis both before and after venous congestion, reptilase time prior to venous congestion and fibrinogen concentration after it. Thus, these coagulation factors indicate a different behaviour in both types of diabetes and in healthy control persons.     

Access and Use of Medical Care among Obese Persons

The prevalence of obesity and severe obesity is growing rapidly, along with obesity‐related comorbidities and mortality. Given the increased health risks associated with obesity, it is vital that obese persons have adequate access to, and make consistent use of, medical care services. Assuming obese persons have access to medical care that is comparable to non‐obese persons, one would expect to observe greater use of medical services among obese persons. In this article we briefly review empirical evidence of the access to and use of medical care among obese persons. Although certain subgroups that tend to have disproportionately high prevalences of obesity (i.e., low socioeconomic status, minority groups) have reduced access to care, no studies have specifically examined whether or not obese persons have the same access to health care as do their lean counterparts. With respect to use of health care services, however, obesity has been consistently linked with greater rates of utilization and increased health care expenditures. Both the increased use and cost appear to be largely a function of treating obesity‐associated comorbidities such as diabetes and hypertension. We conclude that, although it is clear that obesity is associated with both greater use and cost of medical care, the relationship between obesity and access to medical care has not been determined.     

Poliomyelitis and parenteral injections; a review of recent literature

Data presented in the literature as to the relationship of poliomyelitis and recent prior injections include several aspects. the coincidence of paralysis in the same site as a recent injection has been considered the most definitive evidence. The fact of an inordinately large number of cases of paralysis of an arm where a recent previous antigen injection was recorded offered less specific corroboration. The larger number of cases among persons who had had an injection in the month preceding onset than among persons with injections in more distant months was noted. This observation was supported when similar information was obtained in a comparison of injection histories for persons who had the disease with the histories of persons who did not have it. The interval between injection and onset among persons who had the disease within a month of injection suggested something other than chance relationship. There is limited information indicating increased severity of paralysis in the injected limb. Evidence is divided on whether or not there is more paralytic disease among patients with recent injections. Similarly, the evidence is no more than suggestive with regard to increased severity of spinal paralytic disease. The mechanism or nature of such a phenomenon is unexplained. However, as Anderson and Skaar said, "considerable attention must be attached to the fact of uniformity of results in a series of independent observations even though each may be small."