Daily physical activities and sports in adult survivors of childhood cancer and healthy controls: a population-based questionnaire survey.

BACKGROUND: Healthy lifestyle including sufficient physical activity may mitigate or prevent adverse long-term effects of childhood cancer. We described daily physical activities and sports in childhood cancer survivors and controls, and assessed determinants of both activity patterns. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: The Swiss Childhood Cancer Survivor Study is a questionnaire survey including all children diagnosed with cancer 1976-2003 at age 0-15 years, registered in the Swiss Childhood Cancer Registry, who survived ≥5 years and reached adulthood (≥20 years). Controls came from the population-based Swiss Health Survey. We compared the two populations and determined risk factors for both outcomes in separate multivariable logistic regression models. The sample included 1058 survivors and 5593 controls (response rates 78% and 66%). Sufficient daily physical activities were reported by 52% (n = 521) of survivors and 37% (n = 2069) of controls (p<0.001). In contrast, 62% (n = 640) of survivors and 65% (n = 3635) of controls reported engaging in sports (p = 0.067). Risk factors for insufficient daily activities in both populations were: older age (OR for ≥35 years: 1.5, 95CI 1.2-2.0), female gender (OR 1.6, 95CI 1.3-1.9), French/Italian Speaking (OR 1.4, 95CI 1.1-1.7), and higher education (OR for university education: 2.0, 95CI 1.5-2.6). Risk factors for no sports were: being a survivor (OR 1.3, 95CI 1.1-1.6), older age (OR for ≥35 years: 1.4, 95CI 1.1-1.8), migration background (OR 1.5, 95CI 1.3-1.8), French/Italian speaking (OR 1.4, 95CI 1.2-1.7), lower education (OR for compulsory schooling only: 1.6, 95CI 1.2-2.2), being married (OR 1.7, 95CI 1.5-2.0), having children (OR 1.3, 95CI 1.4-1.9), obesity (OR 2.4, 95CI 1.7-3.3), and smoking (OR 1.7, 95CI 1.5-2.1). Type of diagnosis was only associated with sports. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Physical activity levels in survivors were lower than recommended, but comparable to controls and mainly determined by socio-demographic and cultural factors. Strategies to improve physical activity levels could be similar as for the general population.

Validation de la version française du questionnaire I7 d'impulsivité. Influence de la personnalité, du sexe et de la religion = Validation of the french version of the eysenck's impulsiveness questionnaire (I7). Influence of personality, gender, and religion

L'objectif de cette étude est de vérifier la validité interne de la version française du questionnaire d'impulsivité d'Eysenck (I7), traduite par Dupont et al., sur un échantillon d'étudiants suisses (n = 220). Dans leur questionnaire, Eysenck et Eysenck proposent trois échelles : les deux premières évaluant deux composantes distinctes de l'impulsivité (l'Impulsivité caractérisant les individus qui agissent sans penser, sans être conscients des risques associés à leurs actions, et la Recherche d'aventure caractérisant les individus qui agissent en étant conscients, et en tenant compte des risques associés à leurs actions), et la troisième servant de « distracteur » (l'Empathie caractérisant les individus qui ont la faculté de s'identifier à l'autre). La structure à trois facteurs de l'instrument a été confirmée par notre analyse factorielle en composantes principales. La solution factorielle retenue n'explique toutefois qu'une faible proportion de la variance (21.9 %). L'homogénéité interne des échelles, mesurée à l'aide d'alphas de Cronbach, est acceptable pour l'échelle d'Impulsivité (.78) et de Recherche d'aventure (.71), mais elle est, en revanche, faible pour l'échelle d'Empathie (.62). Les échelles de l'I7 d'Eysenck entretiennent des corrélations cohérentes avec les cinq grandes dimensions de la personnalité mesurées par le NEO PI-R. L'Impulsivité est associée négativement à la dimension Conscience (r = - .32), alors que la Recherche d'aventures est associée positivement à la dimension Extraversion (r = .33). Le sexe a un impact sur les échelles Recherche d'aventure et Empathie. Les qualités métrologiques de la version française du questionnaire d'impulsivité d'Eysenck (I7) sont satisfaisantes, mais l'estimation d'autres indices de validité, comme la fidélité test-retest et la validité convergente, devrait être réalisée.

The joint influence of gender and amount of smoking on weight gain one year after smoking cessation.

Weight gain is often associated with smoking cessation and may discourage smokers from quitting. This study estimated the weight gained one year after smoking cessation and examined the risk factors associated with weight gain in order to identify socio-demographic groups at higher risk of increased weight after quitting. We analyzed data from 750 adults in two randomized controlled studies that included smokers motivated to quit and found a gradient in weight gain according to the actual duration of abstinence during follow-up. Subjects who were abstinent for at least 40 weeks gained 4.6 kg (SD = 3.8) on average, compared to 1.2 kg (SD = 2.6) for those who were abstinent less than 20 weeks during the 1-year follow-up. Considering the duration of abstinence as an exposure variable, we found an age effect and a significant interaction between sex and the amount of smoking before quitting: younger subjects gained more weight than older subjects; among light smokers, men gained more weight on average than women one year after quitting, while the opposite was observed among heavy smokers. Young women smoking heavily at baseline had the highest risk of weight gain after quitting.

Holy harlots : authority, gender, and the body in medieval English hagiography

This doctoral dissertation aims at describing the representation of holy harlots (Mary Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Pelagia, Thai's, Afra of Augsburg) in medieval English hagiography. These saints are unique representatives that combine both extremes of the feminine in the medieval imaginaire: she is both, as a saint, the Virgin Mary, the pure and virtuous woman, and, in her past as a prostitute, Eve, the evil female tempter who led all mankind to destruction. The initial question of this thesis is how did hagiographers negotiate the representation of a formerly sinful, sexually active, long- living woman as an authoritative saint? This thesis aims at finding elements of answer to this question, investigating the intersections between gender and authority in the saints' lives of repentant prostitutes in all the vernaculars of medieval England: Old English, Anglo-Norman, and Middle English. It posits that the portrayal of holy harlots' authority and gender is dependent upon social, religious and literary shifts during the medieval period. My contention is that the harlot's gender portrayal changes over the course of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, due notably to the rise of affective piety and the important influence of the romance genre over hagiography. In Anglo-Saxon England, the harlot's gender changes with the saint's conversion: a woman beforehand, her gender is portrayed after her repentance as ambiguous in order for her to become a saint. Her authority derives from her own sanctity in this case. From the twelfth century onward, however, the harlot, now often turned into a beautiful and landed romance lady, is more and more represented as a woman throughout her life, and becomes after her conversion a Bride of Christ. In this way, the dangerously free woman who roamed the streets and prostituted her body becomes less threatening after her conversion, being (re-)inscribed within the male dominated institution of marriage. She now draws her authoritative stance from her gendered intimacy with Christ: although she submits to Christ as his bride, she also gains greater authority than before by way of her privileged relationship with the Savior.

Validation of the French version of the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC): Influence of gender and age on personality traits from 8 to 12 years

The study was designed to investigate the psychometric properties of the French version and the cross-language replicability of the Hierarchical Personality Inventory for Children (HiPIC). The HiPIC is an instrument aimed at assessing the five dimensions of the Five-Factor Model for Children. Subjects were 552 children aged between 8 and 12 years, rated by one or both parents. At the domain level, reliability ranged from .83 to .93 and at the facet level, reliability ranged from .69 to .89. Differences between genders were congruent with those found in the Dutch sample. Girls scored higher on Benevolence and Conscientiousness. Age was negatively correlated with Extraversion and Imagination. For girls, we also observed a decrease of Emotional Stability. A series of exploratory factor analyses confirmed the overall five-factor structure for girls and boys. Targeted factor analyses and congruence coefficients revealed high cross-language replicability at the domain and at the facet levels. The results showed that the French version of the HiPIC is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing personality with children and has a particularly high cross-language replicability.

Gender and weight shape brain dynamics during food viewing.

Hemodynamic imaging results have associated both gender and body weight to variation in brain responses to food-related information. However, the spatio-temporal brain dynamics of gender-related and weight-wise modulations in food discrimination still remain to be elucidated. We analyzed visual evoked potentials (VEPs) while normal-weighted men (n = 12) and women (n = 12) categorized photographs of energy-dense foods and non-food kitchen utensils. VEP analyses showed that food categorization is influenced by gender as early as 170 ms after image onset. Moreover, the female VEP pattern to food categorization co-varied with participants' body weight. Estimations of the neural generator activity over the time interval of VEP modulations (i.e. by means of a distributed linear inverse solution [LAURA]) revealed alterations in prefrontal and temporo-parietal source activity as a function of image category and participants' gender. However, only neural source activity for female responses during food viewing was negatively correlated with body-mass index (BMI) over the respective time interval. Women showed decreased neural source activity particularly in ventral prefrontal brain regions when viewing food, but not non-food objects, while no such associations were apparent in male responses to food and non-food viewing. Our study thus indicates that gender influences are already apparent during initial stages of food-related object categorization, with small variations in body weight modulating electrophysiological responses especially in women and in brain areas implicated in food reward valuation and intake control. These findings extend recent reports on prefrontal reward and control circuit responsiveness to food cues and the potential role of this reactivity pattern in the susceptibility to weight gain.

Transitions in partnership and parental status, gender, and political and civic participation

Participation research has documented the effect of partner and parenthood status, thereby ignoring the dynamic aspect of status changes. Based on theoretical insights on changes in political resources and interest, this study looks at partnership and parenthood as dynamic characteristics. Using data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP), it examines to what extent important life-cycle transitions in partnership and parental status influence various forms of political and civic participation and whether they affect men and women's participation differently. Our regression analyses reveal that particularly the entry into separation or divorce is a main key point driving change in political and civic participation. Its effect is also highly gendered. Following separation, women participate less in voting, whereas men's participation rates are not affected in a negative way. Separation even increases men's level of anticipated activism. Children entering or leaving the household do not seem to represent key points of change in political and civic participation of the couple. Yet, the transition to having school-aged children significantly increases some types of participation, at least for women.

Hyperactivity and attention problems in a Swiss sample of school-aged children: effects of school achievement, child gender, and informants.

OBJECTIVE: The sensitivity and tolerance regarding ADHD symptoms obviously differ from one culture to another and according to the informants (parents, teachers, or children). This stimulates the comparison of data across informants and countries. METHOD: Parents and teachers of more than 1,000 school-aged Swiss children (5 to 17 years old) fill in Conners's questionnaires on ADHD. Children who are older than 10 years old also fill in a self-report questionnaire. Results are compared to data from a North American sample. RESULTS: Swiss parents and teachers tend to report more ADHD symptoms than American parents and teachers as far as the oldest groups of children are concerned. Interactions are evidenced between school achievement, child gender, and informants. A relatively low rate of agreement between informants is found. CONCLUSION: These results strengthen the importance to take into account all informants in the pediatric and the child psychiatry clinic, as well as in the epidemiological studies.

Gender and attachment representations in the preschool years: comparisons between five countries

Bowlby proposed that the individual's social experiences, as early as in infancy, contribute to the construction of Internal Working Models (IWMs) of attachment, which will later guide the individual's expectations and behaviors in close relationships all along his or her life. The qualitative, individual characteristics of these models reflect the specificity of the individual's early experiences with attachment figures. The attachment literature globally shows that the qualities of IWMs are neither gender specific nor cultural specific. Procedures to evaluate IWMs in adulthood have been well established, based on narrative accounts of childhood experiences. Narrative procedures at earlier ages (e.g., in the preschool years) have been proposed, such as Bretherton's Attachment Story Completion Task (ASCT), to evaluate attachment representations. More than 500 ASCT narratives of preschoolers, coming from five different countries, have been collected, in the perspective of examining possible interactions between gender and culture regarding attachment representations. A specific Q-Sort coding procedure (CCH) has been used to evaluate several dimensions of the narratives. Girls' narratives appeared as systematically more secure than those of same-age boys, whatever their culture. The magnitude of gender differences, however, varied between countries. Taylor's model of gender-specific responses to stress and Harwood's and Posada's hypothesis on inter-cultural differences regarding caregiving are evoked to understand the differences across gender and countries.

The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic : Gender and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Taking as its point of departure recent insights about the performative¦nature of genre, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic¦challenges the critical tendency to accept at face value that gothic¦literature is mainly about fear. Instead, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet¦argues that the American Gothic, and gothic literature in general,¦is also about judgment: how to judge and what happens when¦judgment is confronted with situations that defy its limits.¦Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Gilman, and James all shared a concern¦with the political and ideological debates of their time, but tended¦to approach these debates indirectly. Thus, Monnet suggests, while¦slavery and race are not the explicit subject matter of antebellum¦works by Poe and Hawthorne, they nevertheless permeate it through¦suggestive analogies and tacit references. Similarly, Melville, Gilman,¦and James use the gothic to explore the categories of gender and¦sexuality that were being renegotiated during the latter half of the¦century. Focusing on The Fall of the House of Usher, The Marble¦Faun, Pierre, The Turn of the Screw, and The Yellow Wallpaper,¦Monnet brings to bear minor texts by the same authors that further¦enrich her innovative readings of these canonical works. At the same¦time, her study persuasively argues that the Gothic's endurance¦and ubiquity are in large part related to its being uniquely adapted¦to rehearse questions about judgment and justice that continue to¦fascinate and disturb.

Differences in aerobic fitness and lifestyle characteristics in preschoolers according to their weight status and sports club participation.

Objective: This study assesses differences in adiposity, aerobic fitness, and lifestyle characteristics in preschoolers according to their weight status and sports club (SC) participation. Method: As part of the Ballabeina study, 600 randomly selected preschoolers (mean age 5.1 ± 0.6 years; 50.2% girls) were analyzed. Body composition was measured by bioelectrical impedance, aerobic fitness by the 20-meter shuttle run test, and physical activity by accelerometers. Eating habits, media use, and SC participation were assessed by questionnaires. Results: Overweight children (Swiss national percentiles) and children not participating in SC had both lower aerobic fitness and higher % body fat compared to their respective counterparts (all p ≤ 0.028). In addition, children not participating in SC were less physically active, had more media use, and ate less healthy compared to children participating in SC (all p ≤ 0.023). Controlling for parental sociocultural determinants attenuated differences in % body fat, in physical activity, and in eating habits. Conclusion: Aerobic fitness differs both according to weight status and SC participation in preschoolers. Furthermore, in view of the many differences in lifestyle behaviors, SC participation at this age could represent a more discriminatory indicator of healthy lifestyle characteristics than weight status.