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As societies become increasingly diverse, mental health professionals need instruments for assessing emotional, behavioral, and social problems in terms of constructs that are supported within and across societies. Building on decades of research findings, multisample alignment confirmatory factor analyses tested an empirically based 8-syndrome model on parent ratings across 30 societies and youth self-ratings across 19 societies. The Child Behavior Checklist for Ages 6-18 and Youth Self-Report for Ages 11-18 were used to measure syndromes descriptively designated as Anxious/Depressed, Withdrawn/Depressed, Somatic Complaints, Social Problems, Thought Problems, Attention Problems, Rule-Breaking Behavior, and Aggressive Behavior. For both parent ratings (N = 61,703) and self-ratings (N = 29,486), results supported aggregation of problem items into 8 first-order syndromes for all societies (configural invariance), plus the invariance of item loadings (metric invariance) across the majority of societies. Supported across many societies in both parent and self-ratings, the 8 syndromes offer a parsimonious phenotypic taxonomy with clearly operationalized assessment criteria. Mental health professionals in many societies can use the 8 syndromes to assess children and youths for clinical, training, and scientific purposes.

Background Heart rate variability HRV differs by the type and stage of the disease, by age, by environment, and so on. Criteria for normal, moderately changed and pathologic values of HRV lack for routine clinical work with different groups of cardiac patients.Methods Twelve time and frequency domain HRV variables were analysed from 24-h Holter ECG monitoring in 2578 ( ) consecutive patients of both sexes 57% male aged 15-91 ( ) mean 54" 13 years. Fifty-nine per cent of the patients were hospital out-patients, 15% came from the cardiac unit of an internal medicine department and 26% were undergoing stationary cardiac rehabilitation. Arrhythmias of aetiology other than coronary artery disease predominate in out-patients and coronary artery disease in in-patients. Limits of moderately and pathologically changed values were determined according to biostatistical principles.Results HRV differed by the age, sex and type of patients ( ) MANOVA P -0.001 . Heart rate and all HRV measures decreased with age. Females had a higher heart rate but more pronounced vagally modulated activity than males. Out-patients had better HRV than in-patients. The cut-off level for a ( pathologic standard deviation of the normal R -R interval a ) measure of overall HRV ranged from 75 ms in female out-patients to 44 ms in male patients from the cardiac unit. Different cut-points for 12 HRV measures were obtained for 12 sub-groups of patients. ConclusionIn view of the HRV differences between different cardiac patients, different limits of normal and decreased HRV are proposed for daily practice.

Parameters of Malécot's isolation-by-distance model are estimated for biological (anthropometric head and body dimensions, morphometric dimensions of metacarpal bones, quantitative and qualitative dermatoglyphic traits, and physiological/cardiorespiratory/variables) and linguistic distances and migrational kinship on the island of Korcula and the Peljesac peninsula in Middle Dalmatia, Croatia, Yugoslavia. Resulting parameters and the fit of the model are compared, for both regions, as well as with results of similar analysis in other parts of the world. The fit of the model is highly significant for migrational kinship and linguistic distances and less so for biological traits. Differences between these two populations, which live under basically similar ecological conditions, are explained by variation in biological and sociocultural history.