This study evaluated mediating effects of the health status on the association between socio-economic status (SES) and medicine use. It was hypothesized that more privileged people show a reduced use ...of medicines, as compared with the underprivileged, because of their superior health status. It was further hypothesized that people may apply medication based on their type of health complaint (ill physical versus mental status).
Data were taken from the 2012 German Epidemiological Survey of Substance Abuse, a nationally representative cross-sectional study of n = 9084 individuals of the German general population aged 18–64 years.
Direct and indirect effects of SES on weekly use of analgesics and sedatives/hypnotics were examined by applying generalized structural equation modeling. Self-rated physical and mental health statuses were considered as potential mediators. SES was measured by using educational level as a proxy. All analyses were gender-stratified.
Among men, both physical and mental health mediated the path from SES to the use of analgesics and sedatives/hypnotics, respectively, with a stronger effect of physical health on analgesic use and mental health on sedative/hypnotic use. These effects were only partially found among women.
Social inequalities in health seem to have substantial impact on the prevalence of medicine use. Identification and elimination of the reasons for poor health among people of low SES may, therefore, not only help to reduce health inequalities directly. A decline in the use of medicines would also result in less side-effects and a reduced number of people with medicine-related misuse and addiction.
•Health status seems to play a mediating role between socio-economic status (SES) and medicine use.•Identication and elimination of reasons for poor health among low SES-groups may help to reduce health inequalities directly.•A decline in medicine use would results in less side-effects and less people with medicine-related misuse and addiction.
According to an ecological perspective in psychology and in line with social cognitive theory, smoking behaviour is determined by different social contexts (for example, peers, family and school) ...providing adolescents with important role models. This paper investigates the effects of personal characteristics as well as family, peer and school context variables on youth smoking behaviour. We hypothesize that school smoking policy variables predict adolescents' smoking in addition to other context variables. Data were obtained from a self-report survey administered to 3364 students in 40 secondary schools in Bavaria, Germany. For both younger (10-15 years) and older (16-21 years) students, strong associations were found between smoking behaviour and (i) smoking best friends and friends in general, (ii) other substance use and (iii) school performance. In the younger age group, the non-existence of smoking bans for students was associated with an increased risk of being smoker. For the older students, a positive association was found between the presence of smoking teachers on school grounds and smoking behaviour. Results are discussed considering methodological aspects and public health concerns.
The present study aims at developing and evaluating a non-sequential smoking cessa-ti-on programme for in-patient rehabilitation centres. The new programme challenges the standard phased approach ...with the stages motivation, quit day, stabilisation.
A prospective multi-centre study is conducted with quasi experimental control group design. The newly developed smoking cessation programme (intervention group, IG) is compared against the treatment-as-usual (control group, CG) of participating rehabilitation centres. Data from 850 smokers in 19 in-patient rehabilitation centres are analysed.
The process evaluation of the non-sequential programme shows good acceptance among trainers and patients and easy implementation in the rehabilitation setting. Abstinence rates at the end of treatment are comparable for the IG (19.1%) and the CG (17.9%). The amount of cigarettes smoked among remaining smokers also reduced to a comparable degree in both groups. Patients in the IG showed significant improvement with regard to stages of change and self-efficacy.
The non-sequential smoking cessation programme is accepted and can be implemented in an in-patient rehabilitation setting. With regard to major outcome criteria, the programme is comparable to treatment-as-usual. Secondary outcome criteria and satisfaction ratings favour the new programme. Due to a low-threshold access to smoking cessation, the non-sequential approach offers a structural advantage.
Aims
To estimate temporal trends in adolescents’ current cigarette, alcohol and cannabis use in Europe by gender and region, test for regional differences and evaluate regional convergence.
Design ...and Setting
Five waves of the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) from 28 countries between 1999 and 2015. Countries were grouped into five regions northern (NE), southern (SE), western (WE), eastern Europe (EE) and the Balkans (BK).
Participants
A total of 223 814 male and 211 712 female 15–16‐year‐old students.
Measurements
Daily cigarette use, weekly alcohol use, monthly heavy episodic drinking (HED) and monthly cannabis use. Linear and quadratic trends were tested using multi‐level mixed‐effects logistic regression; regional differences were tested using pairwise Wald tests; mean absolute differences (MD) of predicted prevalence were used for evaluating conversion.
Findings
Daily cigarette use among boys in EE showed a declining curvilinear trend, whereas in all other regions a declining linear trend was found. With the exception of BK, trends of weekly drinking decreased curvilinear in both genders in all regions. Among girls, trends in WE, EE and BK differed from trends in NE and SE. Monthly HED showed increasing curvilinear trends in all regions except in NE (both genders), WE and EE (boys each). In both genders, the trend in EE differed from the trend in SE. Trends of cannabis use increased in both genders in SE and BK; differences were found between the curvilinear trends in EE and BK. MD by substance and gender were generally somewhat stable over time.
Conclusions
Despite regional differences in prevalence of substance use among European adolescents from 1999 to 2015, trends showed remarkable similarities, with strong decreasing trends in cigarette use and moderate decreasing trends in alcohol use. Trends of cannabis use only increased in southern Europe and the Balkans. Trends across all substance use indicators suggest no regional convergence.
The spaceborne detection of volcanic ash clouds at infrared wavelengths helps to avoid regions with enhanced volcanic ash concentrations that pose a threat to aviation. Current volcanic ash data ...retrievals require detailed information on microphysical properties and the refractive index of volcanic ash, which are highly variable. Uncertainties in the latter currently limit the quality of volcanic ash nowcasts. Here, we introduce a novel method to calculate the complex refractive indices of volcanic ashes at wavelengths from 5 to 15 μm from measurements of their individual components based on generic petrological ash compositions. Thereby the refractive indices for volcanic glasses and bulk volcanic ashes of different chemical compositions are derived. The variability of the latter is mainly influenced by the silica content and the porosity and to a minor degree by the glass-to-crystals ratio. Calculating optical properties exhibits an equally large impact of bulk composition and grain size distribution, whereas particle shape is considered less important for particle sizes of the order 1 μm. Using these optical properties to determine brightness temperature differences between the 11 μm and 12 μm channels we show that the effect of ash composition is non-negligible for modern satellite instruments. Particularly, the dependence of the volcanic ash on the silica content (and to a much smaller extent on the glass-to-crystals ratio) is observable in its refractive index, its optical properties and the brightness temperature difference, indicating that composition might be retrievable to some degree by remote sensing methods.
Abstract Purpose The present article investigated individual and aggregated effects of cannabis-related perceptions and other cannabis-related indicators on 12-month cannabis use prevalence and ...frequency among 15–16 year olds using multilevel analysis across 32 European countries. Methods Data on cannabis use, perceptions of availability, risks and friends’ use as well as socio-demographic characteristics were taken from the 2007 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs. At the country level, aggregated measures of the perceptions were used. Data on cannabis price and 12-month cannabis use prevalence in the total population were taken from the World Drug Report. The analytical sample comprised 86,107 students (82.5% of the overall 2007 international database). Results Strong and persistent individual-level effects were identified for perceived availability, perceived harm, and the number of cannabis using friends. The effects on cannabis use prevalence and frequency were more pronounced than country-level effects. At the country level, aggregated perceived peer consumption and population prevalence were significant predictors, whereas price was not found to be related to both outcome variables. The association between perceived friends’ use and cannabis use was moderated by aggregated perceived availability. Conclusions Proximal influences related to the immediate social situation seem to be more strongly associated with cannabis use than do distal influences related to social contexts, emphasizing the importance of personal attitudes and perceptions in substance use behavior. Prevention programs may focus on informing adolescents about the potential risks of cannabis and on correcting misperceptions of social norms. Policy measures may target on reducing visibility of drug use.
Within the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 561 “Thermally highly loaded, porous and cooled multilayer systems for combined cycle power plants” open porous Ni‐based structures are developed for ...the requirements of an effusion cooling. A two‐dimensional cooling strategy for the walls of combustion chambers, that allows the outflow of the cooling medium over the complete wall area of the combustion chamber, could be realized by an open porous metallic foam structure. The challenge is to join the porous foam structure with the solid substrate material. Capacitor discharge welding and laser beam welding/‐brazing methods seems to be promising methods due to a minimum input of energy and, connected with this, a small joining zone.
.
The photoproduction of
and
mesons off carbon and niobium nuclei has been measured as a function of the meson momentum for incident photon energies of 1.2-2.9GeV at the electron accelerator ELSA. ...The mesons have been identified via the
and
decays, respectively, registered with the CBELSA/TAPS detector system. From the measured meson momentum distributions the momentum dependence of the transparency ratio has been determined for both mesons. Within a Glauber analysis the in-medium
and
widths and the corresponding absorption cross sections have been deduced as a function of the meson momentum. The results are compared to recent theoretical predictions for the in-medium
width and
-N absorption cross sections. The energy dependence of the imaginary part of the
- and
-nucleus optical potential has been extracted. The finer binning of the present data compared to the existing data allows a more reliable extrapolation towards the production threshold. The modulus of the imaginary part of the
-nucleus potential is found to be about three times smaller than recently determined values of the real part of the
-nucleus potential, which makes the
meson a suitable candidate for the search for meson-nucleus bound states. For the
meson, the modulus of the imaginary part near threshold is comparable to the modulus of the real part of the potential. As a consequence, only broad structures can be expected, which makes the observation of
mesic states very difficult experimentally.
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