West European Studies Research Articles

History of the Western European Russian Studies at the Faculty of Philology of Moscow State University in 1980–2020s.

The article reveals the role of E.Z. Tsybenko in the formation of systematic approach to the investigation of Western European Russian studies at the Philological Faculty of Moscow State University. In particular, it is noted that thanks to her creative efforts for more than forty years a comprehensive work was carried out on the basis of the “Russian Literature in Modern World” laboratory. As a result – a sufficient volume of information was collected, West European studies in its development undergone substantial analysis and were published.

West European Studies in Russian Literature of the Early 21st century

West European Studies in Russian Literature of the Early 21st century

Zakres i znaczenie terminu „policja” w literaturze politycznej schyłku Rzeczypospolitej szlacheckiej

The term “police” is derived from the Greek term “politei” which denotes an initial system of state. Since the 16 th century, particularly in the 17 th and 18 th centuries, it has functioned as the synonym of the term “administration”. In Poland, since the 18 th century, despite the lack of the reception of the assumptions of the West-European police studies, the term started to be used in that sense. Polish political writers, starting with Stanislaw Leszczynski and ending with the authors of the reform of the state’s political system presented at the Four-Year Sejm, made an attempt at defining the term “police”. The term was understood in a variety of ways, for most writers it meant state’s internal order but it also denoted service administration such as fire, construction, medical or traffic police, that is all services whose aim was to secure social prosperity and well-being. The scope of police tasks often included the judiciary system. The police issue was in the scope of interest of the writers supporting the reforms as well as of their opponents, of those who admired the republican system as well as of the advocates of the concept of a strong state following the example of absolute monarchies. However, a vast majority of Polish authors did not understand the term “police” as a means of strengthening the power of the state but as a means of reassuring good order, that is social security, peace and quiet.

O-26 - Prevalence and clinical presentation of ADHD in first nationwide epidemiological survey in poland

Introduction ADHD is one of the most frequent developmental disorders in childhood. Adults also suffer from symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Prevalence estimates of ADHD in adult community samples (5%) are based on American and West-European studies. Most of research though is concentrated on early ADHD symptoms. There are no sufficient data on clinical manifestation and scale of this problem in Poland. Objectives To assess prevalence (life and 12-month), access to psychiatric care and other clinical and sociodemographic aspects of ADHD in adult population in Poland (both contemporary and retrospective). The first Polish nationwide survey, Epidemiology of Mental Disorders and Access to Care (EZOP, Poland)” was included in the WHO's WMH. Aims The aim of this paper is to present collected data on ADHD in community sample. Methods Composite International Diagnostic Interview (cidi capi v.3.1) was administered in random sample of Poles aged 18–65 (n = 10000). Data was collected from November 2010 to March 2011 by trained Millward Brown SMG/KRC interviewers. Results Response rate is 50.4%. Prevalence estimated on the basis of retrospective reports in Screening Section is 2.2% for attention-deficit symptoms (2.5% for men and 1.9% for women) and 2.8% for hyperactivity symptoms (respectively 3.2% and 2.8%). Further analysis are in progress and detailed results will be known till December 2011. Conclusions Presented study will allow to introduce data on relation between intensity of early ADHD symptoms and it's later clinical manifestation. The identification of demographic factors influencing the course of the disorder and patterns of treatment will be possible.

Incidence and lifetime risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in a Southern European population

To calculate both the incidence rates and the lifetime risk (LTR) of dementia and Alzheimer's disease (AD). A two-phase case-finding procedure was implemented in a cohort of 4057 cognitively intact individuals 55+ years of age living in Zaragoza, Spain, and followed-up at 2.5 and 4.5 years. Age- and sex-specific incidence rates were calculated. A mortality-adjusted, multivariate model was used to document LTRs. The incidence rate of dementia continued to rise after the age of 90 years, but was slightly lower than in North and West European studies. Only a tendency for an increased LTR with age was observed. Thus, LTR was 19.7% for a 65-year-old woman and 20.4% at the age of 85 years, the corresponding figures for AD being 16.7% and 17.6%. The LTR of AD was higher in women and was about twice as high among illiterate individuals when compared with individuals with higher educational levels. The incidence rate of dementia in this Southern European city was slightly lower than in previous studies in North-West Europe. LTR of dementia and AD seems to be slightly increased with age. The association of illiteracy with higher LTR of AD is intriguing.

Facets of pharmacists recommendation on over-the-counter market in Romania

This study proposes to explore the valued aspects for persons who buy dietary supplemnets and whether pharmacists recommendation influence the buying decision and in what measure. The study is based on a initial qualitative research, followed by a quantitative research, both on pharmacists and consumers from the city of Iasi. The results differ to an extent from the findings in West European studies. Pharmacists recommendation is of subjective nature, influenced by the relation they have with the over-the-counter (OTC) producing company representative and by the trust they place in a brand or anither. From the viw of the customers, pharmacists recommendation has certain power in taking the decision to buy but it is not the most important aspect nor the only one taken into consideration. The reasearch identifies 6 important aspects for the customers when they buy OTC products and 4 aspects that the pahramacists take into account when recommending a producer od dietary supplements to the pacients.

In Memoriam: Henry H. H. Remak (1916–2009)

Henry H. H. Remak, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature, Germanic and West European Studies, passed away on February 12, 2009, at the age of 92, in Bloomington, Indiana, where he spent most of his professional life at Indiana University. Remak was one of the most visible and influential proponents of an American Germanistik that overcame its often narrow fixation on German Germanistik by creating a more cosmopolitan approach through cultural comparison, mainly by establishing, after World War II, Comparative Literature as a comprehensive field of study. It is hardly surprising that the obituaries for Henry Remak tend to mention his work for Comparative Literature first, his allegiance to German second. He was indeed a mover and shaker in the new discipline, traveling the world as an urbane, witty, and highly stimulating speaker, giving profile to the International Comparative Literature Association, contributing to a solid foundation of the field through methodological reflections and model interpretations, and being honored at his 70th birthday by a truly impressive Festschrift with contributions by international luminaries (Sensus Communis, 1986). It is my goal, writing in The German Quarterly, of which Henry was a book editor in the early 1 960s, to make sure that his substantial contributions to the transformation of American Germanistik axe equally well remembered. With other, mostly Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria, Henry Remak became instrumental in changing German from a rather self-contained, intellectually mostly conservative, philology-driven field. Marginalized by the two wars, American Germanistik was mainly interested in survival within the American academy. As a Jewish Berliner who had received a great bi-cultural education at the renowned Franzosisches Gymnasium (Abitur 1934), Henry studied in Bordeaux and Montpellier and in 1936 left for the U.S. (where his family was able to follow). After taking his Ph.D. in German in 1947 at the University of Chicago with a dissertation on Stendhal's German reception, he returned to the German Department at Indiana University, which remained, together with the Comparative Literature Department, his academic home for decades. Henry never left any doubt that German language and literature were also his intellectual home, confirming the belief that comparison needs grounding in one culture in order to prepare for the intricacies of other cultures and - as he always reminded his readers - to enable the process of analyzing different languages and textual structures itself. This was reflected in his unforgettably lively teaching of literature, where he made FrenchGerman literary relations a crucial ingrethent yet always concentrated on close readings of individual authors, elucidating the total import of a text as against using the text as an illustration of a particular theory or historical context. …

Przeciw konstrukcjonistom. Teoria „queer” i jej krytycy

The point of departure for the author is an observation that the queer theory in Polish humanities is either uncritically accepted or authoritatively rejected. None of these extremes perceives discussion which arose around the queer theory and the assumption which is at its basis of the social construction of sexuality in the West European and American studies. The article presented here attempts to show, sum up and put in order the accusations and doubts addressed to M. Foucault, J. Butler, and E.K. Sedgwick by researchers who are representatives of the essentialist standpoint (J. Boswell, R. Norton) or – on the grounds of queer theory – represent critical approach to its assumptions (D. Eribon, D. Halperin).

Prevaccination Distribution of Human Papillomavirus Types in Women Attending at Cervical Cancer Screening in Belgium

Before the introduction of vaccination against human papillomaviruses (HPV) as a new strategy of combating cervical cancer, it is required to describe the baseline prevalence of HPV infection as well as the distribution of the different HPV types in the population and among women with cervical lesions. Approximately 10,000 liquid cervical cell samples from women, resident of Flanders (North Belgium) and participating in cervical cancer screening, were assessed cytologically and virologically with a multiplex real-time PCR using primers targeting the E6/E7 genes of 16 HPV types. Correlations of HPV infection with age, geographic area, and occurrence of cytologic lesions were assessed. The prevalence of cytologic abnormalities was atypical squamous cells of undetermined significance (ASC-US), 1.6%; atypical glandular cells (AGC), 0.2%; low-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (LSIL), 2.6%; atypical squamous cells, HSIL cannot be excluded (ASC-H), 0.3%; and high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesion (HSIL), 1.2%. The frequency of high-risk HPV infections was 11% in women without cytologic abnormalities, 77% in ASC-US, 32% in AGC, 85% in LSIL, and 93% in ASC-H and HSIL. The prevalence of high-risk HPV infection was highest in women of ages 20 to 24 years (29%) and decreased progressively with age. The percentage of women with HSIL in the entire study population attributable to infection with a particular type (AR(pop) %) was highest for HPV16 (32%), followed by HPV31 (22%), HPV39 (11%), and HPV52 (11%). HPV18 was responsible for 7% of the HSIL lesions. Elimination of HPV16 and HPV18 is expected to reduce the prevalence of ASCUS with 24%, AGC with 19%, LSIL with 29%, ASC-H with 31% and HSIL with 37%. Compared to other West European studies, the prevalence of HPV infection was considerably higher in cytologically negative women but similar in women with cervical lesions. These differences could be due to the use of a PCR with high analytic sensitivity. These data are relevant for estimating the expected and theoretical levels of vaccine protection offered as vaccinated girls gradually age into the groups from which our observations stem. Further periodic laboratory-based surveys, including genotyping of cervical cell samples and linkage with vaccine registries, are an important resource to address pending questions of the effect of HPV vaccination. Research is warranted to disentangle the causal role of individual HPV types in case of multiple infections.

Informal Recruitment Methods and Disadvantages of Immigrants in the Swedish Labour Market

This paper examines the probability of success for different methods of finding employment in the Swedish labour market, in times of both economic growth and decline. Existing West European studies on hiring processes have not allowed researchers to examine the relationship between job contacts and wage income among various groups of immigrants. Since our dataset is sufficiently large, this article examines job-finding strategies and labour market outcomes for individuals within two large groups, immigrants and natives. By studying those who have been in their current jobs for one year or less, the paper investigates to what extent both natives and immigrants use their social networks to find a job, and how informal job-finding methods are related to the rate of return in the Swedish labour market for the job secured, in terms of hourly wage. The findings show that immigrants, compared to natives, are less likely to be able to find jobs through informal methods and that jobs found through informal methods do not pay as well for immigrants as for natives.

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

Mapping EU Studies: The Evolution from Boutique to Boom Field 1960-2001*

This article employs original data sets to map the development of EU studies since its inception and to assess that development within the broader context of trends in west European studies. Dissertation and article data are used to chart the contours of three eras of EC/EU studies that have unfolded since 1960. The article addresses the extent to which the transformation of EU studies from boutique to boom field since the 1990s has entailed diversification as well as expansion of the EU scholarly community – a geographic diffusion of expertise and training (accelerated on both sides of the Atlantic by substantial increases in funding for EU research), an increase in attention to EU issues by comparative politics specialists drawn to the study of‘an ever closer union', a proliferation of new topical subfields, an increase in the number of journals publishing significant articles on the EU, and a reshaping of the relationship between American and European scholars specializing in EU studies.

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

WWW virtual library: West European studies

Does Latin America Exist? (And is There a Confucian Culture?): A Global Analysis of Cross-Cultural Differences

Does Latin America exist?Latin American studies centers (like African, or Middle Eastern or West European studies centers) are based on the assumption that Latin America (and Africa, the Middle East, etc.) are more than arbitary geographic expressions: they define coherent cultural regions, having people with distinctive values and worldviews that make them think differently and behave differently from people of other cultures.The most powerful challenge to this view currently comes from the rational choice school, whose practitioners occasionally mention the importance of cultural differences but whose models almost always ignore them, implicitly assuming that in a given situation all people will make the same “rational” choices regardless of cultural perspectives. But if major differences exist between the worldviews and motivations of people in different cultural zones, a rational choice model that applies to the United States may not accurately describe the behavior of people in other cultures.The existence of meaningful cultural areas has been challenged on other grounds as well. Modernization theory focuses on the differences between “traditional” and “modern” societies, each of which are characterized by distinctive economic, political, social, and cultural institutions. This perspective tends to attribute any differences between Latin American and highly industrialized societies to differences in their levels of economic development: with economic development, these differences will tend to disappear. Differences between various “traditional” cultures tend to be ignored.The usefulness of “Latin America” as a meaningful cultural boundary could also be disputed on various other grounds.