Decarbonization of energy production is key in today's societies and nuclear energy holds an essential place in this prospect. Besides heavy-duty electricity production, other industrial and communal needs could be served by integrating novel nuclear energy production systems, among which are low-power nuclear devices, like small modular reactors (SMRs). The ELSMOR (towards European Licensing of Small Modular Reactors) European project addresses this topic as an answer to the Horizon 2020 Euratom NFRP-2018-3 call.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Neurosarcoidosis (NS) is a systemic inflammatory granulomatous disease affecting of patients with sarcoidosis. Its diagnosis is difficult as there is no specific test for it. Because of its rarity, the management of NS has so far only been described in case series and short retrospective cohorts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigher adult child educational attainment may benefit older parents' psychosocial well-being in later life. This may be particularly important in low- and middle-income countries, where recent generations have experienced comparatively large increases in educational attainment. We used data from the 2012 Mexican Health and Aging Study, a nationally representative study of adults aged ≥50 years and leveraged the exogenous variation in adult child education induced by Mexico's compulsory schooling law passed in 1993.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Neurosarcoidosis is a rare manifestation of sarcoidosis with heterogeneous presentations. Patient management is challenging due to the current lack of knowledge about the long-term disease course.
Objective: To identify specific disease courses of neurosarcoidosis according to the clinical and paraclinical presentations at onset.
A partial loss of effectiveness of deep brain stimulation of the ventral intermediate nucleus of the thalamus (VIM) has been reported in some patients with essential tremor (ET), possibly due to habituation to permanent stimulation. This study focused on the evolution of VIM local-field potentials (LFPs) data over time to assess the long-term feasibility of closed-loop therapy based on thalamic activity. We performed recordings of thalamic LFPs in 10 patients with severe ET using the ACTIVA™ PC + S (Medtronic plc.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Low birthweight and preterm birth are associated with an increased risk of neonatal death and chronic conditions across the life course. Reducing these adverse birth outcomes is a global public health priority and requires strategies to improve health care during pregnancy. We aimed to assess the effect of a Swiss health policy expansion fully covering illness-related costs during pregnancy on health outcomes in newborn babies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To assess primary impact of selective Licensing (SL), an area-based intervention in the private rented housing market, on individual self-reported anxiety and neighbourhood mental health (MHI-Mental Healthcare Index) and secondary impacts on antisocial behaviour (ASB), population turnover and self-reported well-being.
Design: Difference-in-difference (DiD) was used to evaluate effects of SL schemes initiated 2012-2018. 921 intervention areas (lower super output areas) were matched 3:1 using propensity scores derived from sociodemographic and housing variables (N=3.
Background: Parental leave policies have been hypothesized to benefit mothers' mental health. We assessed the impact of a 6-week extension of parental leave in Denmark on maternal mental health.
Methods: We linked individual-level data from Danish national registries on maternal sociodemographic characteristics and psychiatric diagnoses.
A growing body of research suggests that adult child educational attainment benefits older parents' cognitive outcomes via financial (e.g., direct monetary transfers) and nonfinancial (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn this commentary, invited for the 100th anniversary of the Journal, we discuss the addition of randomized experiments, along with natural experiments that emulate randomized trials using observational data, as designs in the social epidemiologist's toolbox. These approaches transform the way we define and ask questions about social exposures. They compel us to ask questions about how well-defined interventions change a social exposure that might lead to changes in health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is growing evidence that adult child educational attainment is associated with older parents' physical health and longevity. Scholars have hypothesized that these associations may be driven by health-behavior pathways, whereby adult children with more education may share information about healthy lifestyles, role-model healthier behaviors, and/or have more economic resources to support leisure-based physical activity or the purchase of healthy foods for older parents. However, this relationship has not been comprehensively evaluated with methods capable of addressing the confounding bias expected for observational studies on this topic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: The UK private rental housing market has poorer quality housing compared with other sectors and is subjected to calls for better regulation. Poor quality housing poses risks to mental and physical health, and housing improvement can potentially benefit health and well-being. Local authorities have powers to implement selective licencing (SL) schemes in specific localities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Neurological involvement occurs in 5 to 15% of patients with sarcoidosis. It rarely represents the sole manifestation of the disease, a condition called isolated neurosarcoidosis.
Objectives: To describe patients with definite isolated central neurosarcoidosis.
The basal ganglia (BG) encompass a set of archaic structures of the vertebrate brain that have evolved relatively little during the phylogenetic process. From an anatomic point of view, they are widely distributed throughout brain from the telencephalon to the mesencephalon. The fact that they have been preserved through evolution suggests that they may play a critical role in behavioral monitoring.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To determine whether the terrorist attacks occurring in Paris on November 2015 have changed benzodiazepine use in the French population.
Design: Interrupted time series analysis.
Setting: National population-based cohort.
Antipoverty policies have the potential to improve mental health. We conducted a randomized trial (Paycheck Plus Health Study Randomized Controlled Trial, New York, New York) to investigate whether a 4-fold increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income Americans without dependent children would reduce psychological distress relative to the current federal credit. Between 2013 and 2014, a total of 5,968 participants were recruited; 2,997 were randomly assigned to the treatment group and 2,971 were assigned to the control group.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAntipoverty policies may hold promise as tools to improve health and reduce mortality rates among low-income Americans. We examined the health effects of the New York City Paycheck Plus randomized controlled trial. Paycheck Plus tests the impact of a potential fourfold increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit for low-income Americans without dependent children.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Policy Points Social policies might not only improve economic well-being, but also health. Health policy experts have therefore advocated for investments in social policies both to improve population health and potentially reduce health system costs. Since the 1960s, a large number of social policies have been experimentally evaluated in the United States.
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