Mediamusic (E-Journal)
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Militarizing Antimilitarism?:Exploring the Gendered Representation of Military Service in German Recruitment Videos on Social Media
No full textThis paper analyses the gendered representation of military service in the German YouTube series Die Rekruten (DR) – a popular web series produced by the German Armed Forces for recruiting purposes, which accompanies twelve navy recruits during their basic training. It is situated within research on masculinity, the military, and military recruiting. The article supplements current scholarship by studying a previously neglected case that is of particular interest due to Germany’s anti-militarist culture, which should make military recruiting and military public relations more difficult. The paper asks, how is military service represented in DR, what are its discursive effects, and what role does masculinity play in this process? We find support for recent feminist research on military masculinity/ies (including in military recruiting) that emphasizes ambiguity and contradiction. What distinguishes the construction of military masculinity in DR from, for example, US or British recruiting ads is its markedly civil character. This not only increases the military’s appeal for a more diverse audience but it also increases the legitimacy of the military and its activities by concealing the violence that has for the past two decades been a very real part of what the German Armed Forces (also) do
Thinking about the ethical dimension.:The life and choices of Rosie Glaser
No full textResponding to concerns about Dutch students’ citizenship education, Huijgen, Holthuis, Nijmeijer and van den Brand set out to design online materials to help students understand the decisions and dilemmas faced by past actors. They focused on the life and actions of Rosie Glaser (1914-2000), a Dutch Holocaust survivor, using Dancing with the Enemy, her nephew Paul Glaser’s account ofher life during the war years. They present design principles for their online materials about Rosie, which focus on encouraging students to contextualise her actions and the mactions of others, and to make connections with contexts of action in the present. They explore teachers’ mperceptions of the materials and of the qualities of their students’ learning, and the experience of collaborating, in one case across borders, to engage students’ contextualised reflection.<br/
Effects of Community-based Exercise Prehabilitation for Patients Scheduled for Colorectal Surgery With High Risk for Postoperative Complications:Results of a Randomized Clinical Trial
No full textOBJECTIVE: To assess the effects of a 3-week community-based exercise program on 30-day postoperative complications in high-risk patients scheduled for elective colorectal resection for (pre)malignancy.SUMMARY BACKGROUND DATA: Patients with a low preoperative aerobic fitness undergoing colorectal surgery have an increased risk of postoperative complications. It remains, however, to be demonstrated whether prehabilitation in these patients reduces postoperative complications.METHODS: This 2-center, prospective, single-blinded randomized clinical trial was carried out in 2 large teaching hospitals in the Netherlands. Patients (≥60 years) with colorectal (pre)malignancy scheduled for elective colorectal resection and with a score ≤7 metabolic equivalents on the veterans-specific activity questionnaire were randomly assigned to the prehabilitation group or the usual care group by using block-stratified randomization. An oxygen uptake at the ventilatory anaerobic threshold <11 mL/kg/min at the baseline cardiopulmonary exercise test was the final inclusion criterion. Inclusion was based on a power analysis. Patients in the prehabilitation group participated in a personalized 3-week (3 sessions per week, nine sessions in total) supervised exercise program given in community physical therapy practices before colorectal resection. Patients in the reference group received usual care. The primary outcome was the number of patients with one or more complications within 30 days of surgery, graded according to the Clavien-Dindo classification. Data were analyzed on an intention-to-treat basis.RESULTS: Between February 2014 and December 2018, 57 patients [30 males and 27 females; mean age 73.6 years (standard deviation 6.1), range 61-88 years] were randomized to either prehabilitation (n = 28) or usual care (n = 29). The rate of postoperative complications was lower in the prehabilitation group (n = 12, 42.9%) than in the usual care group (n = 21, 72.4%, relative risk 0.59, 95% confidence interval 0.37-0.96, P = 0.024).CONCLUSIONS: Exercise prehabilitation reduced postoperative complications in high-risk patients scheduled to undergo elective colon resection for (pre)malignancy. Prehabilitation should be considered as usual care in high-risk patients scheduled for elective colon, and probably also rectal, surgery.</p
Manual therapists' beliefs and use of spinal thrust joint manipulation
No full textIntroduction: Thrust Joint Manipulation (TJM) is a widely used intervention in spinal care, however there are differences in its use between countries and spinal regions. This survey analyzes the frequency of use of TJM, examines the thoughts about the effectiveness of, and the perceptions of Dutch certified manual therapists regarding safety, comfort, use and barriers related to the application of spinal TJM techniques.Method: The 19-question e-survey was based on a similar survey in the U.S. Since the Netherlands has a separate professional standard for the upper cervical spine, questions enabled differentiation between upper- and mid/lower cervical spine. The survey was launched during a national manual therapy congress and distributed via social media (April-July 2018). Descriptive analyses, MANOVA and qualitative analyses were used.Results: From the 211 responses, 150 were male, with a mean age of 44.9 (+/- 11.2) years, a mean clinical experience of 12.8 (+/- 9.6) years as manual therapist, 87% had a master's degree and 97% worked in a private practice. Except for the upper cervical spine, more than 80% of the participants felt that TJM was safe, were comfortable performing TJM. Overall >80% of participants perform additional screening prior to TJM. Concerns about safety is the greatest barrier for upper cervical TJM.Discussion: Findings indicate that overall Dutch manual therapists believe TJM to be safe and effective and are comfortable performing them, except for the upper cervical spine, where concerns exist regarding safety and acquiring written informed consent.</p
Clientelism in Northeast Brazil:Brokerage within and outside electoral times
No full textIn scholarship on informal politics in Brazil, clientelism is a well-studied phenomenon. While studies of clientelism generally concentrate on elections, campaigning and vote buying, clientelist practices and their impact extend well beyond this temporal and thematic focus. This article develops an approach that builds on theories of brokerage in anthropology and social network studies. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in low-income neighbourhoods in Recife, Brazil, it shows how clientelism is based on informal exchanges both within and outside election periods. Through a study of community leaders, their projects and their search for resources, the article advances a more comprehensive understanding of how clientelism works as a social mechanism in the ordering of life in these neighbourhoods.</p
Subgrouping children and adolescents with disruptive behaviors:symptom profiles and the role of callous-unemotional traits
No full textDisruptive behavior during childhood and adolescence is heterogeneous and associated with several psychiatric disorders. The identification of more homogeneous subgroups might help identify different underlying pathways and tailor treatment strategies. Children and adolescents (aged 8-18) with disruptive behaviors (N = 121) and healthy controls (N = 100) were included in a European multi-center cognition and brain imaging study. They were assessed via a battery of standardized semi-structured interviews and questionnaires. K-means cluster-model analysis was carried out to identify subgroups within the group with disruptive behaviors, based on clinical symptom profiles, callous-unemotional (CU) traits, and proactive and reactive aggression. The resulting subgroups were then compared to healthy controls with regard to these clinical variables. Three distinct subgroups were found within the group with disruptive behaviors. The High CU Traits subgroup presented elevated scores for CU traits, proactive aggression and conduct disorder (CD) symptoms, as well as a higher proportion of comorbidities (CD + oppositional defiant disorder + attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The ADHD and Affective Dysregulation subgroup showed elevated scores for internalizing and ADHD symptoms, as well as a higher proportion of females. The Low Severity subgroup had relatively low levels of psychopathology and aggressive behavior compared to the other two subgroups. The High CU Traits subgroup displayed more antisocial behaviors than the Low Severity subgroup, but did not differ when compared to the ADHD and Affective Dysregulation subgroup. All three subgroups differed significantly from the healthy controls in all the variables analyzed. The present study extends previous findings on subgrouping children and adolescents with disruptive behaviors using a multidimensional approach and describes levels of anxiety, affective problems, ADHD, proactive aggression and CU traits as key factors that differentiate conclusively between subgroups.</p
Subcortical volumes across the lifespan:Data from 18,605 healthy individuals aged 3-90 years
No full textAge has a major effect on brain volume. However, the normative studies available are constrained by small sample sizes, restricted age coverage and significant methodological variability. These limitations introduce inconsistencies and may obscure or distort the lifespan trajectories of brain morphometry. In response, we capitalized on the resources of the Enhancing Neuroimaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis (ENIGMA) Consortium to examine age-related trajectories inferred from cross-sectional measures of the ventricles, the basal ganglia (caudate, putamen, pallidum, and nucleus accumbens), the thalamus, hippocampus and amygdala using magnetic resonance imaging data obtained from 18,605 individuals aged 3-90 years. All subcortical structure volumes were at their maximum value early in life. The volume of the basal ganglia showed a monotonic negative association with age thereafter; there was no significant association between age and the volumes of the thalamus, amygdala and the hippocampus (with some degree of decline in thalamus) until the sixth decade of life after which they also showed a steep negative association with age. The lateral ventricles showed continuous enlargement throughout the lifespan. Age was positively associated with inter-individual variability in the hippocampus and amygdala and the lateral ventricles. These results were robust to potential confounders and could be used to examine the functional significance of deviations from typical age-related morphometric patterns.</p
The AGE reader:a non-invasive method to assess long term tissue damage
No full textAIMS: Advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) are sugar modified adducts which arise during non-enzymatic glycoxidative stress. These compounds may become systemically elevated in disease states, and accumulate in tissue, especially on long-lived proteins. AGEs have been implicated in various acute, and chronic diseases, stressing the need for reliable and comprehensive measuring techniques. Measurement of AGEs in tissue such as skin requires skin biopsies, which is an invasive procedure. The AGE Reader has been developed to assess skin autofluorescence (SAF) non-invasively by the fluorescent properties of several AGEs.RESULTS/CONCLUSION: Various studies have shown that SAF is a useful marker of disease processes associated with oxidative stress. It is prospectively associated with development of cardiovascular events in patients with diabetes, renal or cardiovascular disease, and it predicts diabetes, cardiovascular disease and mortality in the general population. However, when measuring SAF in individual subjects, several factors may limit the reliability of the measurement, and hamper its use as a systemic biomarker for AGEs. These include endogenous factors present in the skin that absorb emission light such as melanin in dark-skinned subjects, but also factors that lead to temporal changes in SAF such as acute diseases and strenuous physical exercise associated with glycoxidative stress. Also, exogenous factors could potentially influence SAF levels inadvertently such as nutrition, and for example the application of skin care products. This review will give an overview of the AGE Reader functionality and the intrinsic, and exogenous factors which potentially influence the SAF assessment in individual subjects.</p
Store sales evaluation and prediction using spatial panel data models of sales components
No full textThis paper sets out a general framework for store sales evaluation and prediction. The sales of a retail chain with multiple stores are first decomposed into five components, and then each component is explained by store, competitor and consumer characteristics using random effects models for components observable at the store level and spatial error random effects models for components observable at the zip code level. We use spatial panel data over four years for estimation and a subsequent year for evaluating one-year-ahead predictions. Set against a benchmark model that explains total sales directly, the prediction error of our framework is reduced by 34% for existing stores during the sample period, by 5% for existing stores one year ahead and by 26% for new stores.</p
Measurement Properties of the Work Ability Score in Sick-Listed Workers with Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain
No full textPurpose Chronic musculoskeletal pain can have a major impact on ability to work. The work ability score is a commonly used single-item question to assess work ability but has not been fully validated yet. The aim of the present study was to evaluate test-retest reliability, agreement, construct validity, and responsiveness of the work ability score among sick-listed workers with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Methods Data of sick-listed workers with chronic musculoskeletal pain was routinely collected at seven rehabilitation centres in the Netherlands. Assessments included a set of questionnaires, administered at admission and discharge from a fifteen-week vocational rehabilitation program. Test-retest reliability was determined with the intraclass correlation coefficient. For agreement, the standard error of measurement and smallest detectable changes were calculated. Construct validity was assessed by testing hypotheses regarding Spearman rank correlation coefficient. Area under the curve obtained from the receiver operating characteristic curve and minimal clinically important change were determined for the total sample and work ability score baseline tertile groups to assess responsiveness. Results In total, 34 workers were analyzed for reliability and agreement, 1291 workers for construct validity, and 590 responded to the responsiveness questionnaire. Reliability reached an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.89; 95% CI 0.77-0.94, a standard error of measurement of 0.69 points, and the smallest detectable change of 1.92 points. For construct validity, six of the seven predefined hypotheses were not refuted. The area under the curve was 0.76 (95% CI 0.71-0.81) allowing for discrimination between stable and improved workers, with a minimal clinically important change of 2.0 points for the total sample. Conclusion The work ability score showed good measurement properties among sick-listed workers with chronic musculoskeletal pain.</p