Comparison of weight in middle age, weight at 18 years, and weight change between, in predicting subsequent 14 year mortality and coronary events: Caerphilly Prospective Study

Objective-The prevalence of obesity is increasing in many European countries and in the United States. This report examines the mortality and morbidity associated with being overweight and obese in the Caerphilly Prospective Study and the relative effects of weight in middle age and self reported weight at 18 years.

Ethnic Segregation, Moral Panics and Social Class: A Comparative Study of the Experiences and Perspectives of Working Class and Middle Class Children in Belfast

This paper begins by describing the moral panics that have tended to emerge sporadically in Northern Ireland over the last few years with regard to young people’s involvement in sectarian violence in Belfast. Within this, while these young people have been cast in the traditional role of folk devils, the paper will show how younger children also tend to be explicitly identified and named in an ambiguous way through such moral panics; playing a deviant role as participators, and sometimes instigators, of sectarian violence but also carrying the symbolic responsibility of representing Belfast’s future. It will be shown that it is because of this ambiguous position that it is adults rather than the children themselves that tend to be held responsible for their actions; either as rioters using the children as political pawns or as parents guilty of neglect. With this as a starting point the paper then explores the perspectives and experiences of two groups of 10-11 year old children living in Belfast and the impact of these moral panics on them. One group of children, living in affluent middle class areas were found to be appropriating and re-working these broader moral panics into more general discourses of derision that tended to pathologize working class children and communities more generally. For the other group of children, living in economically deprived areas with high levels of sectarian tensions and violence, their experiences of such violence and their participation in it are discussed. It will be shown that for these children, the broader moral panics that exist tend to have the effect of reinforcing the processes that tend to segregate and exclude them.

Meta-analysis of the influence of experimental design on effect size in peer tutoring outcomes in elementary, middle and high school settings.

A meta-analysis was undertaken on a form of cooperative learning, peer tutoring. The effects of experimental design on outcomes were explored, as measured by Effect Size (ES). 185 studies were included in the meta-analysis. Highest ES were reported for quasi-experimental studies. ES reduced as experimental design moved from single pre-test factor matched, to multiple-factor matched randomized controlled trials. ES reduced when designs used standardised, rather than self-designed measures, The implications for future meta-analyses and research in cooperative learning are explored.

Prognostic role of lemur tyrosine kinase-3 germline polymorphisms in adjuvant gastric cancer in Japan and the United States

Lemur tyrosine kinase-3 (LMTK3) was recently identified as an estrogen receptor (ER)-α modulator related to endocrine therapy resistance, and its polymorphisms rs9989661 (T>C) T/T genotype and rs8108419 (G>A) G/G or A/G genotype predicted improved outcomes in breast cancer. Because different predominant ER distributions link to breast and gastric cancer and little is known of the prognostic role of LMTK3 in gastric cancer, this study was carried out to clarify the prognostic role of these polymorphisms in gastric cancer. One-hundred and sixty-nine Japanese and 137 U.S. patients with localized gastric adenocarcinoma were enrolled. Genomic DNA was extracted from blood or tissue, and all samples were analyzed by PCR-based direct DNA sequencing. Overall, these polymorphisms were not associated with survival in both cohorts. When gender was considered, in multivariate analysis, harboring rs9989661 T/T genotype was associated with disease-free survival [HR, 4.37; 95% confidence interval (CI), 2.08-9.18; P < 0.0001] and overall survival (OS; HR, 3.69; 95% CI, 1.65-8.24; P = 0.0014) in the Japanese males and time to recurrence (HR, 7.29; 95% CI, 1.07-49.80; P = 0.043) in the U.S. females. Meanwhile, harboring rs8108419 G/G genotype was associated with OS in the Japanese females (HR, 3.04; 95% CI, 1.08-8.56; P = 0.035) and the U.S. males (HR, 3.39; 95% CI, 1.31-8.80; P = 0.012). The prognostic role of these polymorphisms may be negative in gastric cancer. These findings suggest that the estrogen pathway may play a prognostic role in patients with gastric cancer but this may be dependent on the regional differences both in physiology and genetic alterations of gastric cancer.