Perceived discrimination and health-related quality of life among Arabs and Jews in Israel: A population-based survey

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Studies have shown that perceived discrimination may be associated with impaired health. The aim of this study was to assess the levels of perceived discrimination on the basis of origin and ethnicity and measure the association with health in three population groups in Israel: non-immigrant Jews, immigrants from the former Soviet Union, and Arabs.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cross sectional random telephone survey was performed in 2006 covering 1,004 Israelis aged 35-65; of these, 404 were non-immigrant Jews, 200 were immigrants from the former Soviet Union and 400 were Arabs, the final number for regression analysis was 952. Respondents were asked about their perceived experiences with discrimination in seven different areas. Quality of life, both physical and mental were measured by the Short Form 12.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Perceived discrimination on the basis of origin was highest among immigrants. About 30% of immigrants and 20% of Arabs reported feeling discriminated against in areas such as education and employment. After adjusting for socioeconomic variables, discrimination was associated with poor physical health among non-immigrant Jews (OR = 0.42, CI = 0.19, 0.91) and immigrants (OR = 0.51, CI = 0.27, 0.94), but not among Arabs. Poor mental health was significantly associated with discrimination only among non-immigrant Jews (OR = 0.42, CI = 0.18, 0.96).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Perceived discrimination seemed high in both minority populations in Israel (Arabs and immigrants) and needs to be addressed as such. However, discrimination was associated with physical health only among Jews (non-immigrants and immigrants), and not among Arabs. These results may be due to measurement artifacts or may be a true phenomenon, further research is needed to ascertain the results.</p

BNSClim meteorological part (Version 2)

This is the Baltic and North Sea Climatology (BNSC) for the Baltic Sea and the North Sea in the range 47 ° N to 66 ° N and 15 ° W to 30 ° E. It is the follow-up project to the KNSC climatology. The climatology was first made available to the public in March 2018 by ICDC and is published here in a slightly revised version 2. It contains the monthly averages of mean air pressure at sea level, and air temperature, and dew point temperature at 2 meter height. It is available on a 1 ° x 1 ° grid for the period from 1950 to 2015. For the calculation of the mean values, all available quality-controlled data of the DWD (German Meteorological Service) of ship observations and buoy measurements were taken into account during this period. Additional dew point values were calculated from relative humidity and air temperature if available. Climatologies were calculated for the WMO standard periods 1951-1980, 1961-1990, 1971-2000 and 1981-2010 (monthly mean values). As a prerequisite for the calculation of the 30-year-climatology, at least 25 out of 30 (five-sixths) valid monthly means had to be present in the respective grid box. For the long-term climatology from 1950 to 2015, at least four-fifths valid monthly means had to be available. Two methods were used (in combination) to calculate the monthly averages, to account for the small number of measurements per grid box and their uneven spatial and temporal distribution: 1. For parameters with a detectable annual cycle in the data (air temperature, dew point temperature), a 2nd order polynomial was fitted to the data to reduce the variation within a month and reduce the uncertainty of the calculated averages. In addition, for the mean value of air temperature, the daily temperature cycle was removed from the data. In the case of air pressure, which has no annual cycle, in version 2 per month and grid box no data gaps longer than 14 days were allowed for the calculation of a monthly mean and standard deviation. This method differs from KNSC and BNSC version 1, where mean and standard deviation were calculated from 6-day windows means. 2. If the number of observations fell below a certain threshold, which was 20 observations per grid box and month for the air temperature as well as for the dew point temperature, and 500 per box and month for the air pressure, data from the adjacent boxes was used for the calculation. The neighbouring boxes were used in two steps (the nearest 8 boxes, and if the number was still below the threshold, the next sourrounding 16 boxes) to calculate the mean value of the center box. Thus, the spatial resolution of the parameters is reduced at certain points and, instead of 1 ° x 1 °, if neighboring values are taken into account, data from an area of 5 ° x 5 ° can also be considered, which are then averaged into a grid box value. This was especially used for air pressure, where the 24 values of the neighboring boxes were included in the averaging for most grid boxes. The mean value, the number of measurements, the standard deviation and the number of grid boxes used to calculate the mean values are available as parameters in the products. The calculated monthly and annual means were allocated to the centers of the grid boxes: Latitudes: 47.5, 48.5, ... Longitudes: -14.5, -13.5, … In order to remove any existing values over land, a land-sea mask was used, which is also provided in 1 ° x 1 ° resolution. In this version 2 of the BNSC, a slightly different database was used, than for the KNSC, which resulted in small changes (less than 1 K) in the means and standard deviations of the 2-meter air temperature and dew point temperature. The changes in mean sea level pressure values and the associated standard deviations are in the range of a few hPa, compared to the KNSC. The parameter names and units have been adjusted to meet the CF 1.6 standard

LATTICE-DYNAMICS OF ALKALI-METALS

72117918

BNSClim hydrographic part (Version 1.1)

This is version v1.1 of the hydrographic part of the "Baltic and North Sea Climatology (BNSC)". It turned out that the original hydrographic data product of the BNSC (BNSClim hydrographic part (Version 1.0)) was erroneous. The errors occurred by accidentally reading obsolete files in two of the intermediate steps of the production procedure. By this, the basis of observations was altered. This happened after the quality control and interpolation of the observations on standard depths, in the step where the observations are sorted into the chosen grid (this affects temperature and salinity) and in the following step, the correction of the temporal sampling error (this affects only salinity). These errors were corrected in this Version 1.1. The parameters provided are water temperature and salinity on 105 depth levels. The data product comprises the time period from 1873-2015 and is based on more than one million observational profiles, which were obtained from several different data sources in the region of the Baltic, the North Sea and adjacent areas of the North Atlantic Ocean (15°W-30°E, 47°N-66°N). Intersection of observational data from different data sources is avoided and the in situ data were objected to an elaborate automatic quality control to identify erroneous observations that would bias the data product. Additionally, a correction of the temporal sampling error was applied to minimize the impact of the temporal distribution of the observations on the created temporal mean fields. The data product consists of gridded mean fields of water temperature and salinity. The spatial resolution is 0.25° in meridional and zonal direction. The depth levels are irregularly distributed: for the depth interval from 0 to 50m the distance between the single depth levels is 5m. Below 50m, the distance increases progressively by 1m to the last depth level of 4985m. The dimensions of the data product are 180*76*105 (longitude, latitude, depth). The BNSC climatology consists, on the one hand, of time series of monthly and annual mean values of the hydrographic parameters as fields of box averages. Grid boxes that show no observations are left empty. Based on these time series, decadal monthly mean fields are created for the decades 1956-1965, 1966-1975, 1976-1985, 1986-1995, 1996-2005, 2006-2015 as another part of the data product. Again, gaps remain in observational data-void regions. The third part of the data product results from above mentioned decadal mean fields: horizontally interpolated fields by application of the method of objective analysis. Consequently, this subset does not contain gaps. Available parameters: box averages: monthly and annual mean, resp. standard deviation, number of observations decadal box averages: decadal monthly mean, resp. standard deviation, mean year, standard deviation to mean year, number of years decadal interpolated mean: interpolated monthly mean, absolute median deviation, number of bins, first guess, relative interpolation error, mean year, mean distance The products and a description of the differences between v1.0 and v1.1 are publicly available at the ICDC portal ( https://icdc.cen.uni-hamburg.de/1/daten/ocean/bnsc/