The appreciation of peer support can vary from one country to another due to the cultural and relational differences. This study explores what perceptions French adolescents and young adults (AYAs) ...in post-treatment for cancer have of the place of sick peers during their treatment and what can make barriers to meet them.
A semistructured interview has been proposed 6 months after the end of cancer treatments. A thematic analysis has been conducted to highlight the major themes and subthemes identified through the participants' discourses.
Twelve AYAs (mean age 23 y.o., standard deviation = 2.8; min = 19; max = 26) from two French cancer centers were interviewed. Five major themes were identified, but only two were presented in this article: the place of peers and the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic on AYA facilities. AYA peers with cancer major theme demonstrated that meeting sick peers has benefits (e.g., identification, understanding, support, feeling of normalcy) but also has disadvantages (e.g., negative emotional influence). The benefits of peer-to-peer meetings seem to outweigh the disadvantages. Nevertheless, AYAs can face social barriers to this kind of relationship (e.g., fatigue, need to focus on oneself, confrontation to cancer and negative events, feeling of unnatural meeting). Finally, patients' encounters and the normal functioning of AYA facilities have been hampered by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Even if AYA services systematically suggest a meeting with other sick peers, it is important to reiterate this proposal since the needs can evolve over time. It can also be interesting to propose places of life outside the hospital to make the encounters more comfortable and natural for AYAs. Clinical Trial Registration number: NCT03964116.
The School of Medicine offers study counseling. In particular, the School of Medicine has many required courses, and it is important to respond to students with learning difficulties. It is necessary ...to discuss a new approach to learning counseling for such students, considering the prevention of COVID-19 infection, but online learning counseling has not been discussed so far. In the future, flexible selection and response based on an understanding of the advantages and disadvantages of online learning counseling will be required. To overcome this challenge, this paper examines the practice of online learning counseling at the University's School of Medicine in the Corona Disaster. The practice could be characterized by seven advantages behavioral understanding, physical condition consideration, continuity, confidentiality, sharing, immediacy, and convenience and two challenges grasping reactions and interruptions. Subsequently, it was presented new possibilities for online learning counseling by examining the content related to learning.
Biodiesel is an alternative biofuel that can replace diesel oil without requiring modifications to the engine and advantageously produces cleaner emissions. Biodiesel can be produced through ...transesterification process between oil or fat and alcohol to form esters and glycerol. The transesterification can be carried out with or without a catalyst. The catalyzed production of biodiesel can be performed by using homogeneous, heterogeneous and enzyme. Meanwhile, non-catalytic transesterification with supercritical alcohol provides a new way of producing biodiesel. Microwave and ultrasound assisted transesterification significantly can reduce reaction time as well as improve product yields. Another process, a plasma technology is promising for biodiesel synthesis from vegetable oils due to very short reaction time, no soap formation and no glycerol as a by-product. This paper reviews briefly the technologies on transesterification reaction for biodiesel production using homogeneous, heterogeneous, and enzyme catalysts, as well as advanced methods (supercritical, microwave, ultrasonic, and plasma technology). Advantages and disadvantages of each method were described comprehensively.
Federal financial aid policies for higher education may be classified based on their “for-purchase” and “post-purchase” natures. The former include grants, loans, and workstudy and intend to help ...students finance or afford college attendance, persistence, and graduation. Post-purchase policies are designed to minimize financial burdens associated with having invested in college attendance and are granted as tax incentives/expenditures. One of these expenditures is the IRS’s Student Loan Interest Deduction (SLID)—which offers up to $2500 as an adjustment for taxable income based on having paid interest on student loans and has an annual cost of $12.81 billion—about 45.7% of the Pell grant cost. Despite this high cost, SLID has remained virtually unstudied. Accordingly, the study’s purpose is to assess how (in)effective SLID may be in reaching lower-income taxpayers. To address this purpose, we relied on an innovative analytic framework “multilevel modelling with spatial interaction effects” that allowed controlling for contextual and systemic observed and unobserved factors that may both affect college participation and may be related with SLID disbursements over and above income prospects. Data sources included the IRS, ACS, FBI, IPEDS, and the NPSAS:2015–2016. Findings revealed that SLID is regressive at the top, wealthier taxpayers and students attending more expensive colleges realize higher tax benefits than lower income taxpayers and students. Indeed, 75% of community college students were found to not be eligible to receive SLID—data and replication code (
https://cutt.ly/COyfdKC
) are provided. Is this the best use of this multibillion tax incentive? Is SLID designed to exclude the poorest, neediest students? A policy similar to Education Credits, focused on outstanding debt rather than on interest, that targets below-poverty line students with up to $5000 in debt, would represent a true commitment, and better use of public funds, to close socioeconomic gaps, by helping those more prone to default.
Do socioeconomic differences in health status increase as people age, reflecting cumulative advantage or disadvantage in health trajectories? Life course research hypothesises that cumulative ...advantage/disadvantage (CAD) is an important underlying social process that shape inequalities as people age. The objective of this study is to examine whether health trajectories are diverging as people age across socioeconomic positions (education, employment status and income). In a random sample of 3,665 respondents living in Switzerland (Swiss Household Panel 2004‐2011), trajectories of self‐rated health, body mass index, depression and medicated functioning were examined with multilevel regression models. The results showed that employment status and income were associated with diverging health trajectories among men; however, only a few associations supported the CAD hypothesis. Education was rarely associated with diverging health trajectories. In conclusion, little evidence was found to support the CAD model.
Self-rated health (SRH) trajectories tend to decline over a lifetime. Moreover, the Cumulative Advantage and Disadvantage (CAD) model indicates that SRH trajectories are known to consistently diverge ...along socioeconomic positions (SEP) over the life course. However, studies of working adults to consider the influence of work and family conflict (WFC) on SRH trajectories are scarce. We test the CAD model and hypothesise that SRH trajectories diverge over time according to socioeconomic positions and WFC trajectories accentuate this divergence. Using longitudinal data from the Swiss Household Panel (N = 2327 working respondents surveyed from 2004 to 2010), we first examine trajectories of SRH and potential divergence over time across age, gender, SEP and family status using latent growth curve analysis. Second, we assess changes in SRH trajectories in relation to changes in WFC trajectories and divergence in SRH trajectories according to gender, SEP and family status using parallel latent growth curve analysis. Three measures of WFC are used: exhaustion after work, difficulty disconnecting from work, and work interference in private family obligations. The results show that SRH trajectories slowly decline over time and that the rate of change is not influenced by age, gender or SEP, a result which does not support the CAD model. SRH trajectories are significantly correlated with exhaustion after work trajectories but not the other two WFC measures. When exhaustion after work trajectories are taken into account, SRH trajectories of higher educated people decline slower compared to less educated people, supporting the CAD hypothesis.
•In Switzerland, self-rated health slowly declines over the life course.•Rate of change in health trajectories is not influenced by gender or SES status.•Work and family accentuate educational inequalities in health trajectories.
Research has established the importance of early socioeconomic advantage and disadvantage for understanding later life outcomes, but less is known about change in the relationship between ...socioeconomic status (SES) and child development within the period of early childhood. Competing hypotheses drawn from the literature posited: (1) a stable SES-development relationship, (2) a stronger relationship in infancy than at older ages, and (3) a stronger relationship at school entry than at younger ages. Using the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Birth Cohort (2001-2007), we followed 8600 children from infancy through kindergarten entry to model change over time in the relationship between socioeconomic status and cognitive and behavioral development. The unexpected main finding was that the relationships between three socioeconomic measures (household income, assets, and maternal educational attainment) strengthened from infancy through age 4 or 41/2, then weakened slightly until the start of kindergarten. Indirect evidence suggested preschool education as one possible explanation. We argue for researchers to expand the school transition concept to include the now widespread prekindergarten year, as well as for attention to psychological and physiological developmental factors that may shape the relationship between SES and cognitive and behavioral development throughout early childhood. Copyright Elsevier Ltd.
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