Validation of the family health scale among heterosexual couples: a dyadic analysis

Background The Family Health Scale (FHS) is a recently validated comprehensive measure of family health for use in survey research with the potential to also be used as a clinical measure. However, previous research has only validated the FHS among one member of the family rather than multiple family members. The objective of the study was to examine the psychometric properties of the FHS long- and short-form among married and cohabitating partners (dyads). Method The sample for this study was comprised of 482 married or cohabitating heterosexual couples (dyads) who were parents of a child between the ages of 3–13, heterosexual, and living in the United States. Each member of the dyad completed a survey about his or her perception of family health, personal health, childhood experiences, and demographic characteristics. Confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were conducted to examine the factor structure. Unidimensional, correlational, and second-order factor structures were examined using responses from both partners. The relationships between family health with individual health and demographic covariates were also examined. Results Women and men reported their family health similarly. The unidimensional factor structure had the best fit for the FHS short-form while either the unidimensional model or the second-order model would be appropriate for the FHS long-form. Household income, individual member mental health, and childhood experiences were associated with family health in the expected direction. Conclusion The results demonstrate that the FHS is a valid and reliable family measure when examining family health among dyads including married and cohabitating heterosexual couples who have children.

Reward and aversion encoding in the lateral habenula for innate and learned behaviours

Throughout life, individuals experience a vast array of positive and aversive events that trigger adaptive behavioural responses. These events are often unpredicted and engage actions that are likely anchored on innate behavioural programs expressed by each individual member of virtually all animal species. In a second step, environmental cues, that are initially neutral, acquire value through the association with external sensory stimuli, and become instrumental to predict upcoming positive or negative events. This process ultimately prompts learned goal-directed actions allowing the pursuit of rewarding experience or the avoidance of a danger. Both innate and learned behavioural programs are evolutionarily conserved and fundamental for survival. Among the brain structures participating in the encoding of positive/negative stimuli and contributing to innate and learned behaviours is the epithalamic lateral habenula (LHb). The LHb provides top-down control of monoaminergic systems, responds to unexpected appetitive/aversive stimuli as well as external cues that predict the upcoming rewards or punishments. Accordingly, the LHb controls a number of behaviours that are innate (originating from unpredicted stimuli), and learned (stemming from predictive cues). In this review, we will discuss the progresses that rodent’s experimental work made in identifying how LHb activity governs these vital processes, and we will provide a view on how these findings integrate within a complex circuit connectivity.

Contemporary Theoretical Understandings About Education

Education is one of the basic phenomena of human existence. Looking through the history of civilization, man has always worked, discovering new knowledge and thus enriching the fund of knowledge and skills, understandings, beliefs, and attitudes passed on to younger generations. In this way, the continuous development and constant progress of humanity, science, technology, philosophy and art, human society, and man himself has been made possible. Education is the best form of prevention of sociopathological manifestations in all educational environments, intentional and functional. Positive educational influences in any educational environment depend on what each individual member of the community and society as a whole will be like. Quality, proper, and good upbringing is the best prevention of all aspects of sociopathological manifestations. The masculine gender in this chapter implies both male and female genders.

The European Union Enlargement in the Western Balkans

This chapter offers an analysis of the Western Balkans' thorny path towards joining the European Union (EU). The aim is to identify the key hurdles in the European enlargement in the Western Balkans as well as to suggest ways to deal with these hurdles. The chapter begins with a historical overview and proceeds to a discussion of the most persistent hurdles that still derail the EU enlargement process. After offering recommendations on how to overcome these roadblocks, the chapter provides an outlook. Looking ahead, there is still hope that the European dream of the Western Balkans will eventually turn into reality. The final outcome will be determined to a significant degree by the commitment of the candidate countries, the EU as a whole, but also the future position of the 27 member states. Although the new enlargement methodology can be seen as a step forward, individual member states can still hijack the enlargement process. This might prove to be the Achilles' heel of the entire EU enlargement project.

The problem of stage culture in amateur vocal-instrumental group

The purpose of the article. The aim of the article is to identify and reveal aspects of the development of amateur vocal art, the qualities of a musician and teacher who are aware of the values of artistic action and fully immerse, perceive, feel and immerse themselves in the content of works. The urgency of the problem is due to the fact that the training of future musicians and teachers should be based on their competence and awareness, which will lead to the quality professional training of amateurs in vocal and instrumental groups who will have fundamental abilities and master the art of seeing, creating and feeling. Methodology. Leading methods of research of this problem are methods of analysis, synthesis, comparison, and historical comparison, which will help to recognize the features and professional competencies and skills that make up the stage culture of an individual member of an amateur folk group, revealing issues from a broader paradigm to narrower and clearer understanding systems. Scientific novelty. The article reveals and substantiates the essence of the concept of "stage culture", current trends in vocational training, considers the theoretical foundations of this set of qualities, its impact on teaching and the gradual formation of structural components of the phenomenon, its relationship with amateur and folk vocal and instrumental teams; components of stage culture, ways of its formation in artists and its influence on folklore and folk art are revealed. Conclusions. The materials of the article are of the practical and theoretical value for students, future teachers, music teachers, artists, vocalists, and other artists who are engaged in professional and personal self-development and want to have such an integrated quality as stage culture that will significantly improve their abilities and skills. will contribute to the success of music and pedagogical work in schools and independent creative activity. Keywords: folk groups, musician, art, traditions, folklore, pop and stage sphere.

Germany’s Position Concerning the Nord Stream-2 Pipeline in the Context of the European Union’s Energy Security

The article analyzes the underlying foundations of Germany’s position regarding the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline, as well as the impact of this position on the European Union’s joint energy policy and energy security. Against the backdrop of the constantly growing energy consumption both globally and in EU specifically, supplies of energy sources are being increasingly used by exporters as an instrument of political influence. In this context, the Nord Stream-2 pipeline is regarded as such an instrument, primarily by Russia itself. On the other hand, Germany has been supporting the construction of the new Russian pipeline due to the need to ensure uninterrupted supply of cheap natural gas. The latter is of particular significance for the realization of Germany’s long-term energy transformation strategy. However, by sticking to such a position, Germany prioritizes its own political and economic interests over those of EU and individual Member States, which is contrary to one of the main principles of EU’s functioning, i.e., the principle of solidarity. With this in mind, it is reasonable to conclude that Germany is almost single-handedly defining the strategic direction of the entire EU’s energy policy without paying due attention to alternative suppliers and sources.

EU Legal Migration Policy: Are There Prospects for Progress or Is It at a Standstill?

The aim of the article is to attempt to identify the state of, and prospects for, the development of the common policy of the European Union regarding legal migration from third countries. The subject of interest is, above all, legal economic migration, which is crucial from the perspective of certain demographic processes taking place in the EU, the changes and needs of the Community’s labour market, and the challenges posed by the digital transformation. The adopted hypothesis assumes that, within the framework of EU migration and asylum policy, policy as regards legal economic migration is still an underdeveloped area and remains in the hands of individual Member States. Initiatives undertaken in this area remain overshadowed by the main focus of the common migration and asylum policy, namely the development of a common asylum system and the prevention of irregular migration. Policy regarding legal economic migration in the near future will mainly be created by Member States and play out on the domestic stage due to the lack of direct motivation for its development at the Community level. In this case, the strength of particular stakeholders’ interests is not balanced out by any direct and easily identifi able benefits to be gained from the adopted common solutions.

The importance of cohesion policy for the development of the railway system of the Republic of Croatia

Cohesion policy is one of the European Union’s policies, which provides Member States with the possibility of financial support under the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESI Funds) as well as with the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), to reduce disparities and encourage the development of less developed Member States. By funding through Cohesion policy funds, the European Union seeks to accomplish a prosperous economy by achieving appropriate European standards in the individual Member States. Cohesion policy emphasizes the development of transport and mobility, and in particular, the investment in key transport links and sections of international importance through the revitalization of railway infrastructure in line with European Union standards. The railway system of the Republic of Croatia has been under-invested for many years, which is why it has not followed the requirements and needs of the development of the transport market. Membership in the European Union has provided the Republic of Croatia with co-financing for the development of the railway system. This paper will analyse the current investments in the railway system and the development potentials that are planned to be achieved in the next programming period. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance of the Cohesion Policy of the European Union for the development of the railway system of the Republic of Croatia in the Programming period 2021-2027. The analysis aims to identify opportunities for further development of the railway system as the ‘cleanest’ transport industry, guided by the need to reduce harmful emissions following the European Green Deal by using funds from the European Structural and Investment Funds.

The definitive VAT system and its impact on tax collection

Value Added Tax (VAT) is a significant source of fiscal revenues in the EU. However, the VAT treatment of cross-border supplies enables large-scale tax frauds, such as the Missing Trader Intra-Community (MTIC), which takes each year billions of euros from Member States' public budgets. In 2016 a definitive VAT system was proposed by the European Commission to respond to the shortcomings of the current temporary system. This new system should reduce the possibilities of MTIC fraud for intra-community transactions through the collection of VAT by the supplier in the same way as for domestic transactions. The tax collection by the supplier would impact the administrative costs of the financial authorities. This paper contributes to the discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of the newly suggested system. The analysis focuses on the study of the change in administrative costs and VAT revenues for individual Member States and across the EU. The results are that after implementing the definitive VAT system, total administrative costs of the Member States would increase at least by EUR 107 million, whereas total VAT revenues would rise by EUR 40 billion. This indicates the overall positive impact of the definitive VAT system for the EU. However, individual Member States would not benefit equally. The net exporters, whose intra-community supplies exceed the intra-community acquisitions, would spend more than others for the collection of VAT in connection with the international trade of goods.

Metabolic analysis of a bacterial synthetic community from maize roots provides new mechanistic insights into microbiome stability

Stability is a desirable property for agricultural microbiomes, but there is a poor understanding of the mechanisms that mediate microbial community stability. Recently, a representative bacterial synthetic community from maize roots has been proposed as a model system to study microbiome stability (Niu 2017, PNAS, 114:E2450). This SynCom assembles stably when all seven members are present, but community diversity collapses without the keystone E. cloacae strain. The aim of this study was to assess the role of metabolites for the stability of this SynCom, by defining the metabolic niches occupied by each strain, as well as their cross-feeding phenotypes and B-vitamin dependencies. We show that the individual member strains occupy complementary metabolic niches, measured by the depletion of distinct metabolites in exometabolomic experiments, as well as contrasting growth phenotypes on diverse carbon substrates. Minimal medium experiments show that the established seven-member community comprises a mixture of prototrophic and auxotrophic strains. Correspondingly, experimental cross-feeding phenotypes showed that spent media harvested from the prototrophic strains can sustain growth of two auxotrophs. We suggest that the metabolic mechanisms exhibited by this SynCom could serve as design principles to inform the rational assembly of stable plant-associated microbial communities.