Plastic surgery in gynaecology: Factors affecting women’s decision to undergo labiaplasty. Mind the risk of body dysmorphic disorder: A review

ABSTRACT

Aesthetic surgery of the female genitalia is on the rise. Many procedures are performed. Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) is a psychiatric disorder and often goes unrecognized in plastic surgery. This review examines actual knowledge of plastic surgery in gynecology, knowledge of motivational factors of women, and BDD. We carried out a systematic electronic search. We used a combination of relevant keywords to construct the search strategy. Included studies were systematic reviews or primary studies published 1990–2017 and containing information about BDD. Reviewers independently assessed study eligibility, extracted data, and assessed quality, undertaking narrative synthesis. The research revealed a variety of plastic procedures available and why women consider undergoing labia reduction surgery.     

Suicide and happiness: Seven tests of the connection

Indirectly, this paper examines the empirical connections between suicide and happiness by looking at the connection of each with seven standard demographic characteristics. They are sex, age, race, parental status, marital status, religiosity and employed status. These seven are chosen because a lot of data are available. We then examine the relationship of these same seven variables to suicide. Our findings indicate that marital status, religiosity and employment status have a (predicted) similar effect on suicide and happiness. Parenthood has an unclear relationship with suicide and happiness. Finally, sex, age and race have dissimilar effects on suicide and happiness. On the basis of this admittedly preliminary analysis, it would be impossible to conclude that happiness and suicide are closely (if inversely) related. First, there is the chance that suicides or happiness levels have been systematically misreported. Second, there may be a problem with our lumping together happiness and satisfaction. Third, there may be a problem with the seven particular independent variables we examined. Had we examined a different seven (or seventy) we might have drawn a different conclusion. In particular, we might have done better with comparative (or cognitive) variables derived from multiple discrepancies theory (MDT), than with demographic ones. In the end, the connection between happiness and suicide is far from certain. More research is needed.     

Retail entrepreneurial values in a bicultural community: Cultural and economic contentions and negotiation

Economic activity is universal yet the objectives of entrepreneurship are culture-specific in that the entrepreneur cannot be separated from the cultural context. The purpose of this research was to understand the structural differences between the Old Order Amish and their non-Amish counterpart as they conduct entrepreneurial activity in a bi-cultural rural setting. Eleven months of field research uncovered distinct differences between the two groups with regard to three conceptual themes: responsibility, cooperation and competition, and success. Amish entrepreneurs often find themselves in a state of negotiation between contradictory values of their own cultural system and those of the dominant world. The economic behavior of non-Amish entrepreneurs, on the other hand, is steeped in notions of individual gain found in the free market system. In an increasingly multicultural world, understanding the role of culture in economic life becomes critical if cultural groups are to conduct business in the same marketplace.     

Assessment of problem behaviour by foster parents and their foster children

This study investigates the level of agreement between foster parents and foster children about problem behaviour and how this is associated with the breakdown of a foster care placement. The study took a sample of foster parents and their foster children (n= 60), who were aged 11–17 years, and analysed the severity of problem behaviour displayed by the foster children within 3 months of placement in the foster family and a year and a half later. The level of agreement was established with the intra‐class correlation coefficient, which represents both the differences in scores and the differences in ranking. This coefficient shows that there is a statistically significant difference in the level of agreement on the Internalizing Problems scale of the Child Behaviour Checklist between the placements that broke down and those that continued. The level of agreement is associated with the severity score, which in turn is associated with the outcome of the foster care placement. To avoid placement breakdown, problem behaviour should also be assessed from the perspective of the foster child.     

High dimensional extension of the growth curve model and its application in genetics

Recent advances in technology have allowed researchers to collect large scale complex biological data, simultaneously, often in matrix format. In genomic studies, for instance, measurements from tens to hundreds of thousands of genes are taken from individuals across several experimental groups. In time course microarray experiments, gene expression is measured at several time points for each individual across the whole genome resulting in a high-dimensional matrix for each gene. In such experiments, researchers are faced with high-dimensional longitudinal data. Unfortunately, traditional methods for longitudinal data are not appropriate for high-dimensional situations. In this paper, we use the growth curve model and introduce test useful for high-dimensional longitudinal data and evaluate its performance using simulations. We also show how our approach can be used to filter genes in time course genomic experiments. We illustrate this using publicly available genomic data, involving experiments comparing normal human lung tissue with vanadium pentoxide treated human lung tissue, designed with the aim of understanding the susceptibility of individuals working in petro-chemical factories to airway re-modelling. Using our method, we were able to filter out 1053 (about 5 %) genes as non-noise genes from a pool of  22,277. Although our focus is on hypothesis testing, we also provided modified maximum likelihood estimator for the mean parameter of the growth curve model and assessed its performance through bias and mean squared error.     

A Systematic Review of Interventions for Elder Abuse

The purpose of this study was to use rigorous systematic review methods to summarize the effectiveness of interventions for elder abuse. Only eight studies met our inclusion criteria. Evidence regarding the recurrence of abuse following intervention was limited, but the interventions for which this outcome was reported failed to reduce, and may have even increased, the likelihood of recurrence. Elder abuse interventions had no significant effect on case resolution and at-risk caregiver outcomes, and had mixed results regarding professional knowledge and behavior related to elder abuse. The included studies had important methodological limitations that limit our ability to draw conclusions about the effectiveness of these interventions.     

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum

Table of Contents

Forthcoming in Sociological Forum     

The originality of Tibullus' Marathus elegies

As far we can judge from the extant literature, Tibullus' three Marathus elegies are among the most sophisticated poetry of male same-sex desire and love composed in the ancient Greco-Roman world. These poems belong to a long and well-established tradition of male homoerotic poetry that goes back to the Greeks of the Archaic Age and was given new impetus centuries later in Roman literature. In this tradition, Tibullus' Marathus elegies stand out for their qualities of irony, dramatic engagement, and psychological finesse.