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14 hrs ago


Saturday Night Seder (SNS) was broadcast online on 11 April 2020 as a public celebration of Passover and as a benefit for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation. Part seder, part telethon, and part Broadway theatrical performance, SNS was the first online event to create a national Jewish communal gathering space in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and has since been viewed over 1.5 million times. This article examines SNS as a uniquely situated manifestation of COVID-19, and draws attention to the various affordances engendered by SNS for Jewish gathering, learning, and exchange. It draws upon interviews with members of the production team, featured participants, and expert informants, as well as viewer responses from Twitter and YouTube a dataset that includes 2000 tweets and over 1800 YouTube comments. Collectively, these data suggest that cultural arts productions such as SNS have afforded an expansive network of online Jewish conversations during COVID-19, and have invited a broad audience of Jews and non-Jews into dialogue over Jewish themes and content.The current paper focuses on the circumstances that have led to the high COVID-19 infection rates amongst the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel. The current study utilizes a qualitative design and is based on in-depth interviews, email correspondence and online records of 25 ultra-Orthodox individuals who either tested positive for COVID-19 or had contact with a verified COVID-19 patient. The data were analyzed through identification of main themes and an interpretation of their meanings. The findings showed that a wide range of causes led to the high infection rate, including aspects that derive from a structural element, a religious element and a social-ideological element-all of which are directly or indirectly connected to religion. These findings demonstrate the central role of religion in health outcomes among the ultra-Orthodox community in general and during pandemics in particular, and they shed light on the central role of religion in health outcomes among closed-religious communities. The findings further reveal the importance of cooperation between the state authorities and the religious ones, and of providing culturally adapted health service solutions in the fight against COVID-19 and promoting health more generally. Study limitations are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided.The self-isolation and social distancing associated with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic added a new dimension to a multifaceted and transnational secular Yiddish social landscape. The widespread use of digital communication technologies facilitated new forms of virtual participation in a heterotopic Yiddishland via lectures, concerts, classes and conversation groups. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/bsj-4-116.html This study examines engagement with secular Yiddish mediated by digital technologies during the early lockdowns and restrictions from March to May 2020. link2 It investigates the expansion of a cybervernacular mode of Yiddish in a virtual secular Yiddishland encompassing learners, speakers, activists and performers worldwide, and the roles that secular Yiddish social spaces played for their participants during the crisis.This article looks at the first 50 years of the Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry and finds that much of its subject matter remained constant. However, there have been significant changes in perspectives. Two cases in point are the perspectives on the impact of intermarriage and on the relationship of American Jewry with Israel. A number of the reasons for the changes in perspectives are suggested.Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates of all major cancers, with pancreatic cystic lesions accounting for one in three pancreatic surgeries. The current gold-standard for diagnosis of pancreatic cyst malignancy is based on the endoscopic ultrasound guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) procedure, which suffers from a low accuracy in detecting malignancy. Here we present the design and two-photon polymerization based fabrication of refractive and reflective non-contact probes, capable of rapid surveillance of the entire internal cyst surface-an advance over the contact probe we recently developed that allowed, for the first time, reliable evaluation of pancreatic cyst malignant potential in vivo. We employed a novel two-photon polymerization technique, which allows direct laser-writing to an accuracy of tens of nanometers, to fit the probe within the 540 micrometer internal diameter EUS-FNA needle. The newly constructed probes show excellent separation of the illumination and collection beams, essential for proper operation of the spatial gating method. These probes can be used clinically to perform rapid "optical biopsy", ultimately eliminating unnecessary pancreatic surgeries on benign cysts and dangerous delays in surgical removal of malignant cysts, improving patient prognosis and quality of life.Children with autism situated in lower income families often receive intensive educational interventions as their primary form of treatment, due to financial barriers for community interventions. However, the continuity of care can be disrupted by school transitions. The quality of social relationships during the transition to a new school among parents, school staff and community providers, called the team-around-the-child (TAC), can potentially buffer a child with autism from the adverse effects caused by care disruptions. Qualities of social relationships, including trust and collaborative problem solving, can be measured using social network analysis. This study investigates if two different types of TAC relationships, defined as (1) the level of trust among team members and (2) the degree of collaborative problem solving among team members, are associated with perceived successful transitions for children with autism from lower income families. Findings suggested that TAC trust is significantly associated with the outcome of transition success for children with autism immediately post-transition.The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has been affecting the world, causing severe pneumonia and acute respiratory syndrome, leading people to death. Therefore, the search for anti-SARS-CoV-2 compounds is pivotal for public health. Natural products may present sources of bioactive compounds; among them, flavonoids are known in literature for their antiviral activity. Siparuna species are used in Brazilian folk medicine for the treatment of colds and flu. This work describes the isolation of 3,3',4'-tri-O-methyl-quercetin, 3,7,3',4'-tetra-O-methyl-quercetin (retusin), and 3,7-di-O-methyl-kaempferol (kumatakenin) from the dichloromethane extract of leaves of Siparuna cristata (Poepp. & Endl.) A.DC., Siparunaceae, using high-speed countercurrent chromatography in addition to the investigation of their inhibitory effect against SARS-CoV-2 viral replication. Retusin and kumatakenin inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication in Vero E6 and Calu-3 cells, with a selective index greater than lopinavir/ritonavir and chloroquine, used as control. Flavonoids and their derivatives may stand for target compounds to be tested in future clinical trials to enrich the drug arsenal against coronavirus infections.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43450-021-00162-5.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43450-021-00162-5.Rates of harmful alcohol use are high among justice-involved individuals and may contribute to violent recidivism. Robust treatments for alcohol-related violence in criminal justice systems are thus a public health priority. In this analysis of existing randomized controlled trial data (N = 105), we examined the impact of a brief motivational intervention (BMI) for harmful substance use on violent recidivism among individuals in a pretrial jail diversion program. Results indicated that, after controlling for violence history, the intervention's impact on violent recidivism was moderated by baseline harmful alcohol use. Specifically, among people with severe alcohol problems at baseline, the BMI + standard care group had less violent recidivism at a 1-year follow-up than participants randomized to standard care alone. This finding was unchanged when we accounted for psychopathic traits. Our study provides preliminary evidence that a BMI may be useful for decreasing violent recidivism among heavy drinkers in criminal justice systems.The left ventricle of the heart is a fundamental structure in the human cardiac system that pumps oxygenated blood into the systemic circulation. link3 Several valvular conditions can cause the aortic and mitral valves associated with the left ventricle to become severely diseased and require replacement. However, the clinical outcomes of such operations, specifically the postoperative ventricular hemodynamics of replacing both valves, are not well understood. This work uses computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) to develop an improved understanding of this effect by modeling a left ventricle with the aortic and mitral valves replaced with bioprostheses. We use a hybrid Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian/immersogeometric framework to accommodate the analysis of cardiac hemodynamics and heart valve structural mechanics in a moving fluid domain. The motion of the endocardium is obtained from a cardiac biomechanics simulation and provided as an input to the proposed numerical framework. The results from the simulations in this work indicate that the replacement of the native mitral valve with a tri-radially symmetric bioprosthesis dramatically changes the ventricular hemodynamics. Most significantly, the vortical motion in the left ventricle is found to reverse direction after mitral valve replacement. This study demonstrates that the proposed computational FSI framework is capable of simulating complex multiphysics problems and can provide an in-depth understanding of the cardiac mechanics.This paper is concerned with the interplay between statistical asymmetry and spectral methods. Suppose we are interested in estimating a rank-1 and symmetric matrix M ⋆ ∈ ℝ n × n , yet only a randomly perturbed version M is observed. The noise matrix M - M ⋆ is composed of independent (but not necessarily homoscedastic) entries and is, therefore, not symmetric in general. This might arise if, for example, we have two independent samples for each entry of M ⋆ and arrange them in an asymmetric fashion. The aim is to estimate the leading eigenvalue and the leading eigenvector of M ⋆. We demonstrate that the leading eigenvalue of the data matrix M can be O ( n ) times more accurate (up to some log factor) than its (unadjusted) leading singular value of M in eigenvalue estimation. Moreover, the eigen-decomposition approach is fully adaptive to heteroscedasticity of noise, without the need of any prior knowledge about the noise distributions. In a nutshell, this curious phenomenon arises since the statistical asymmetry automatically mitigates the bias of the eigenvalue approach, thus eliminating the need of careful bias correction. Additionally, we develop appealing non-asymptotic eigenvector perturbation bounds; in particular, we are able to bound the perterbation of any linear function of the leading eigenvector of M (e.g. entrywise eigenvector perturbation). We also provide partial theory for the more general rank-r case. The takeaway message is this arranging the data samples in an asymmetric manner and performing eigen-decomposition could sometimes be quite beneficial.

10/04/2024


However, they also suffer from obvious limitations identified in this editorial overview paper and require substantial improvement in order to understand the changes in economic behavior and functioning of food supply chains induced by the pandemic.The callus cultures of Fagonia indica could prove as factories for the production of important phytochemicals when triggered through different types of stress. In this study, we initiated callus cultures from healthy stem explants in the presence of iron-doped zinc oxide nanoparticles (Fe-ZnO-NPs). We performed experiments with the callus cultures of F. indica to determine the impact of Fe-ZnO-NPs in concentrations (15.62-250 µg/mL) on biomass accumulation, production of important phenolic and flavonoids, and antioxidative potential. Our results showed that maximum callus biomass [Fresh weight (FW) = 13.6 g and Dry weight (DW) = 0.58 ± 0.01] was produced on day 40 when the media was supplemented with 250 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs. Similarly, maximum total phenolic content (268.36 μg GAE/g of DW) was observed in 40 days old callus added with 125 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs. Maximum total flavonoid content (78.56 μg QE/g of DW) was recorded in 20 days old callus grown in 62.5 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs containing media. Maximum total antioxidant capacity (390.74 µg AAE/g of DW) was recorded in 40 days old callus with 125 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs treated cultures, respectively. Similarly, the highest free radical scavenging activity (93.02%) was observed in callus derived from media having 15.62 µg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs. The antioxidant potential was observed to have positive correlation with TPC (r = 0.44). HPLC analysis showed that Fe-ZnO-NPs produced compounds (e.g., Epigallocatechin gallate) that were either absent or in lesser quantities in the control group. These results showed that Fe-ZnO-NPs elicitors could increase the biomass and activate secondary metabolism in F. indica cells.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11240-021-02123-1.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11240-021-02123-1.Children comprise a significant share of immigrants around the world, yet scholarship has largely treated children as adult-like or adult-following actors in migration. We explore how the early life course and parents' migration structured children's migration from Mexico to the United States from 2002 to 2005, using the Mexican Family Life Survey, national survey data from Mexico that tracked 854 migrants, including 375 children, to the United States. We find that while parents' migration decisions matter at all ages, young children who migrate are nearly always accompanied by their parents, whereas the minority of adolescents are. Primary school-aged children and accompanied adolescents migrate in response to community violence and barriers to education, suggesting that their migration reflects concerns about where it is best to raise children. Adolescents who migrate without their parents do so in response to economic factors, much like adults; however, adolescents also respond to youth community migration prevalence, suggesting that youth-specific norms of migration frame their decision-making. The results show how the early life course structures three distinct profiles of child migration complete dependents, children whose location choices reflect concerns about schools and safety, and near independents. More generally, the determinants and process of migration shift as parental oversight declines and social structures beyond the family-community violence, access to education, youth norms, gender, and labor markets-emerge as important.The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective, we examine a potentially vital relationship between corporate conduct and pro-social behavior demanding sacrifice from individuals. Drawing on Weber (Economy and society an outline of interpretive sociology. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978 (Translation of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 1922)), we theorize that organizations in a community legitimize personal social conduct in three ways-by serving as role models, imparting norms and values, and routinizing forms of interaction. We study the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) behavior by local firms and the social distancing (SD) of citizens in US counties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a core ethical outcome. We argue and find that the residents of communities in which firms exhibit higher levels of CSR engaged in more SD during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true when firms were (a) long-established, (b) isomorphic in their CSR, and (c) major employers and vendors. Moreover, CSR relating to the treatment of employees as well as positive and negative extremes in CSR bore especially strong relationships with SD. Implications are drawn for the study of business ethics, as modeled by CSR, as a force for ethical personal behavior and public health in communities.The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism.In the digital era, we witness the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to solve problems, while improving productivity and efficiency. Yet, inevitably costs are involved with delegating power to algorithmically based systems, some of whose workings are opaque and unobservable and thus termed the "black box". Central to understanding the "black box" is to acknowledge that the algorithm is not mendaciously undertaking this action; it is simply using the recombination afforded to scaled computable machine learning algorithms. But an algorithm with arbitrary precision can easily reconstruct those characteristics and make life-changing decisions, particularly in financial services (credit scoring, risk assessment, etc.), and it could be difficult to reconstruct, if this was done in a fair manner reflecting the values of society. If we permit AI to make life-changing decisions, what are the opportunity costs, data trade-offs, and implications for social, economic, technical, legal, and environmental systems? We find that over 160 ethical AI principles exist, advocating organisations to act responsibly to avoid causing digital societal harms. This maelstrom of guidance, none of which is compulsory, serves to confuse, as opposed to guide. We need to think carefully about how we implement these algorithms, the delegation of decisions and data usage, in the absence of human oversight and AI governance. The paper seeks to harmonise and align approaches, illustrating the opportunities and threats of AI, while raising awareness of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) as a potential collaborative mechanism to demystify governance complexity and to establish an equitable digital society.In March 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, American synagogues locked their doors. This required emergency planning for Passover observances, and then gradually less panicked planning for subsequent liturgies. Based primarily on the experiences of three Boston-area synagogues, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox, and interviews with their rabbis, this article compares the liturgical responses of Jews in these three movements, offering explanations for their different approaches. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/AS703026.html It also briefly traces, where appropriate, their resumption of services over the summer and their plans for the fall holy days.Research on system justification theory suggests that justifying the societal status quo decreases negative emotions, leading to less collective action. In this investigation, we propose that the degree to which negative emotions mediate the link between system justification and collective action may depend upon whether individuals tend to suppress the expression of their negative emotions. We tested this hypothesis in the diverse socio-political contexts of Turkey, Israel, and the U.S. In one correlational study (Study 1) and three experimental studies (Studies 2-4), we observed that the link between system justification and willingness to participate in collective action through anger (Studies 1-2 and 4) and guilt (Study 3) was moderated by expressive suppression. We found that negative emotions mediated the association between system justification and collective action among those who suppress the expression of their emotions less frequently, but not those who use expressive suppression more frequently. These findings suggest that emotion regulation may undermine, rather than facilitate, efforts to engage in collective action even among people who are low in system justification.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11031-021-09883-5.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11031-021-09883-5.The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has raised consumer concerns about health. By employing 306 online questionnaires, we identify COVID-19's effect on online organic agriculture product consumption and rural health tourism intention based on stimulus-organism-response theory and event system theory by incorporating risk information disclosure of COVID-19 as the moderating variable and health consciousness and risk perception as the mediating variables. These findings suggest that considering the impact of COVID-19 can help focus the production and online sales of organic agricultural products, the establishment and improvement of rural health facilities, and the marketing of rural health tourism.The novel 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has infected over 141 million people worldwide since April 20, 2021. More than 200 countries around the world have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Screening for COVID-19, we use fast and inexpensive images from computed tomography (CT) scans. In this paper, ResNet-50, VGG-16, convolutional neural network (CNN), convolutional auto-encoder neural network (CAENN), and machine learning (ML) methods are proposed for classifying Chest CT Images of COVID-19. The dataset consists of 1252 CT scans that are positive and 1230 CT scans that are negative for COVID-19 virus. The proposed models have priority over the other models that there is no need of pre-trained networks and data augmentation for them. The classification accuracies of ResNet-50, VGG-16, CNN, and CAENN were obtained 92.24%, 94.07%, 93.84%, and 93.04% respectively. Among ML classifiers, the nearest neighbor (NN) had the highest performance with an accuracy of 94%.

09/18/2024


During the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain ranked 1st in number of infected health workers. Despite the fact that up to 75% of them were women, psychological interventions to prevent distress usually lacked a gender perspective and a biopsychosocial approach. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way doctors approach palliative and end-of-life care, which has undoubtedly affected the mental health of patients, families, and health care professionals. Given these circumstances, doctors working on the front line are vulnerable to moral injury and compassion fatigue. This is a reflection of 2 junior doctors experiencing firsthand demands of caring for patients during the outbreak. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Holocaust survivors in Israel and abroad appear to be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 because of their early life history, advanced age, and associated health conditions. And although some survivors may experience retraumatization because of the pandemic, others appear to be especially resilient. We encourage a strength-based approach when working with survivors to foster resilience and effective coping in this uncertain time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Amid the global outbreak of COVID-19, resilience is likely to be one of the many possible outcomes. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/ly2880070.html Studies pertaining to resilience following potentially traumatic events including disease outbreak have shown that the vast majority of individuals are resilient, and that outcomes depend on a combination of resilience factors including exposure severity, individual differences, family context, and community characteristics. To better understand psychological dysfunction and resilience during the global outbreak of COVID-19, researchers are encouraged to investigate long-term patterns of mental health rather than cross-sectional prevalence rates, adopt prospective designs and analyses, integrate multiple risk and resilience factors to enhance outcome prediction, and consider the importance of flexibility as the situation unfolds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).By the end of March 2020, Spain was one of the countries most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This commentary provides an initial picture of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 outbreak during its initial stage in Spain. Data of 3055 participants aged 18-88 years old were collected over a week (March 17th-24th 2020) using an online forms platform. Participants provided information regarding sociodemographic data and completed the Spanish version of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, which assesses psychological distress caused by a traumatic life event in terms of three symptomatic responses (avoidance, intrusion, and hyperarousal). Results revealed that 36.6% of participants showed psychological distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Avoidance was the most prevalent symptom in the total sample and for all genders studied. The psychological impact was consistently higher for young people, and for women compared to men. Our data confirm the great psychological toll that the COVID-19 crisis took on the Spanish general population during the first week of confinement. Women and young people seem particularly vulnerable to the negative psychological impact of the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Objective Masculinity ideologies have been associated with negative mental health outcomes. However, little is known regarding the link between masculinity ideologies and posttraumatic stress (PTS). This review aims to provide insight into this association by synthesizing available empirical research. Method The databases Web of Science, PsycINFO, and PubPsych were systematically searched for quantitative studies published up to 2018 in English language reporting on the association between masculinity ideologies and PTS. link2 Results were narratively reviewed and synthesized in a multilevel meta-analysis. Results Eleven studies were included in the narrative review, while 10 studies provided effect sizes that were included in the meta-analysis. Samples mainly consisted of male veterans. The weighted mean effect size of the association between masculinity ideologies and PTS was r = .22. Studies including a clearly identifiable sample of trauma survivors reported a significantly smaller association than studies that did not specify the occurrence of a traumatic event. link3 A narrative review of results showed that masculinity ideologies prescribing restrictive emotionality were more strongly associated with PTS relative to other masculine norms. Findings were limited regarding the influence of race and gender. Conclusions The results suggest that interventions aimed at trauma survivors may benefit from addressing deficits in emotion regulation resulting from masculinity ideologies. However, more research is needed to understand how masculinity ideologies and PTS interact with conditions such as trauma type, gender, or race. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting some important sources of health disparities that assail our society's most vulnerable people, particularly undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. The focus of this commentary is on uncovering those sources of health disparities and making a call for action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Fear, anger and hopelessness were the most frequent traumatic emotional responses in the general public during the first stage of outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic (N = 1,000). The four most frequent categories of fear were determined (a) fear of the negative impact on household finances, (b) fear of the negative impact on the household finances of significant others, (c) fear of the unavailability of health care, and (d) fear of an insufficient food supply. The pessimistic communications used by the Czech mass media contributed to intensifying traumatic feelings, fears and psychological distress in the general public during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).The high numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths, economic difficulties, uncertainty about the future, as well as the approaches needed to contain the spread of the virus are all playing critical roles in the short and long-term social and psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inequities based on race and socioeconomic status influence the rates of infection and deaths and steps that are needed to achieve recovery. This commentary focuses on similarities and differences after other disasters and efforts being initiated to provide support and recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).This commentary describes the religiously innovative adaptations made to customary rituals by Jewish religious leaders to address issues of belonging and resilience during the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic quarantine. These adaptations included allowing religious prayer through a "balcony" minyan, conducting an online chavruta using video conferencing, and broadcasting the Passover ceremony. The approach shown here could contribute to future evidence-based research, conducted among different faiths, about the roles of both religious leadership and information and communications technology (ICT) in preserving one's sense of belonging and resilience in times of crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).This paper describes national-level mental health responses to COVID-19 in Lebanon. It then notes factors that have supported the mental health response, including how COVID-19 represents a window of opportunity to help strengthen the mental health system in Lebanon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Psychological aspects that accompany employment instability because of the COVID-19 quarantine (lockdown) policy were investigated. Two hundred ninety-three Israeli participants completed a Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire, a Distress Thermometer, and a Perceived Stress Scale. People placed on furlough (unpaid leave of absence) by their employers demonstrated significantly higher distress (M = 5.34) than those who were unemployed prior to the pandemic (M = 3.79). The implications and coping modes with these results are detailed herein. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Religious leaders are at risk of psychological trauma and moral injury during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article highlights potentially traumatic or morally injurious experiences for religious leaders and provides evidence-based recommendations for mitigating their impact. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).In responding to the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), health-care workers have been exposed to a range of traumatic experiences, including the management of ventilators; provision of treatment; and issues with access to and the use of personal protective equipment. In this commentary, we use recent research on military decision-making to outline the damaging psychological effects of experiences that violate deeply held values. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).In this commentary, I argue that the mental health impact of COVID-19 will show substantial variation across individuals, contexts, and time. Further, one key contributor to this variation will be the proximal and long-term impact of COVID-19 on the social environment. In addition to the mental health costs of the pandemic, it is likely that a subset of people will experience improved social and mental health functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).COVID-19 and related efforts to mitigate its spread have dramatically transformed the structure and predictability of modern childhood, resulting in growing concerns children may be particularly vulnerable to serious mental health consequences. Worldwide stay-at-home directives and emergency changes in healthcare policy and reimbursement have smoothed the trail for broad implementation of technology-based remote mental health services for children. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is particularly well-positioned to address some of the most pressing child and parental needs that arise during stressful times, and telehealth formats of PCIT, such as Internet-delivered PCIT (iPCIT), have already been supported in controlled trials. This commentary explores PCIT implementation during the COVID-19 public health crisis and the challenges encountered in the move toward Internet-delivered services. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Children's educational outcomes are strongly correlated with their parents' educational attainment. This finding is often attributed to the family environment-assuming, for instance, that parents' behavior and resources affect their children's educational outcomes. However, such inferences of a causal role of the family environment depend on the largely untested assumption that such relationships do not simply reflect genes shared between parent and child. We examine this assumption with an adoptee design in full-population cohorts from Danish administrative data. We test whether parental education predicts children's educational outcomes in both biological and adopted children, looking at four components of the child's educational development (I) the child's conscientiousness during compulsory schooling, (II) academic performance in those same years, (III) enrollment in academically challenging high schools, and (IV) graduation success. Parental education was a substantial predictor of each of these child outcomes in the full population.

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14 hrs ago


Saturday Night Seder (SNS) was broadcast online on 11 April 2020 as a public celebration of Passover and as a benefit for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Foundation. Part seder, part telethon, and part Broadway theatrical performance, SNS was the first online event to create a national Jewish communal gathering space in the context of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) and has since been viewed over 1.5 million times. This article examines SNS as a uniquely situated manifestation of COVID-19, and draws attention to the various affordances engendered by SNS for Jewish gathering, learning, and exchange. It draws upon interviews with members of the production team, featured participants, and expert informants, as well as viewer responses from Twitter and YouTube a dataset that includes 2000 tweets and over 1800 YouTube comments. Collectively, these data suggest that cultural arts productions such as SNS have afforded an expansive network of online Jewish conversations during COVID-19, and have invited a broad audience of Jews and non-Jews into dialogue over Jewish themes and content.The current paper focuses on the circumstances that have led to the high COVID-19 infection rates amongst the ultra-Orthodox population in Israel. The current study utilizes a qualitative design and is based on in-depth interviews, email correspondence and online records of 25 ultra-Orthodox individuals who either tested positive for COVID-19 or had contact with a verified COVID-19 patient. The data were analyzed through identification of main themes and an interpretation of their meanings. The findings showed that a wide range of causes led to the high infection rate, including aspects that derive from a structural element, a religious element and a social-ideological element-all of which are directly or indirectly connected to religion. These findings demonstrate the central role of religion in health outcomes among the ultra-Orthodox community in general and during pandemics in particular, and they shed light on the central role of religion in health outcomes among closed-religious communities. The findings further reveal the importance of cooperation between the state authorities and the religious ones, and of providing culturally adapted health service solutions in the fight against COVID-19 and promoting health more generally. Study limitations are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided.The self-isolation and social distancing associated with the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic added a new dimension to a multifaceted and transnational secular Yiddish social landscape. The widespread use of digital communication technologies facilitated new forms of virtual participation in a heterotopic Yiddishland via lectures, concerts, classes and conversation groups. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/bsj-4-116.html This study examines engagement with secular Yiddish mediated by digital technologies during the early lockdowns and restrictions from March to May 2020. link2 It investigates the expansion of a cybervernacular mode of Yiddish in a virtual secular Yiddishland encompassing learners, speakers, activists and performers worldwide, and the roles that secular Yiddish social spaces played for their participants during the crisis.This article looks at the first 50 years of the Association for the Sociological Study of Jewry and finds that much of its subject matter remained constant. However, there have been significant changes in perspectives. Two cases in point are the perspectives on the impact of intermarriage and on the relationship of American Jewry with Israel. A number of the reasons for the changes in perspectives are suggested.Pancreatic cancer has one of the worst survival rates of all major cancers, with pancreatic cystic lesions accounting for one in three pancreatic surgeries. The current gold-standard for diagnosis of pancreatic cyst malignancy is based on the endoscopic ultrasound guided fine-needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) procedure, which suffers from a low accuracy in detecting malignancy. Here we present the design and two-photon polymerization based fabrication of refractive and reflective non-contact probes, capable of rapid surveillance of the entire internal cyst surface-an advance over the contact probe we recently developed that allowed, for the first time, reliable evaluation of pancreatic cyst malignant potential in vivo. We employed a novel two-photon polymerization technique, which allows direct laser-writing to an accuracy of tens of nanometers, to fit the probe within the 540 micrometer internal diameter EUS-FNA needle. The newly constructed probes show excellent separation of the illumination and collection beams, essential for proper operation of the spatial gating method. These probes can be used clinically to perform rapid "optical biopsy", ultimately eliminating unnecessary pancreatic surgeries on benign cysts and dangerous delays in surgical removal of malignant cysts, improving patient prognosis and quality of life.Children with autism situated in lower income families often receive intensive educational interventions as their primary form of treatment, due to financial barriers for community interventions. However, the continuity of care can be disrupted by school transitions. The quality of social relationships during the transition to a new school among parents, school staff and community providers, called the team-around-the-child (TAC), can potentially buffer a child with autism from the adverse effects caused by care disruptions. Qualities of social relationships, including trust and collaborative problem solving, can be measured using social network analysis. This study investigates if two different types of TAC relationships, defined as (1) the level of trust among team members and (2) the degree of collaborative problem solving among team members, are associated with perceived successful transitions for children with autism from lower income families. Findings suggested that TAC trust is significantly associated with the outcome of transition success for children with autism immediately post-transition.The novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has been affecting the world, causing severe pneumonia and acute respiratory syndrome, leading people to death. Therefore, the search for anti-SARS-CoV-2 compounds is pivotal for public health. Natural products may present sources of bioactive compounds; among them, flavonoids are known in literature for their antiviral activity. Siparuna species are used in Brazilian folk medicine for the treatment of colds and flu. This work describes the isolation of 3,3',4'-tri-O-methyl-quercetin, 3,7,3',4'-tetra-O-methyl-quercetin (retusin), and 3,7-di-O-methyl-kaempferol (kumatakenin) from the dichloromethane extract of leaves of Siparuna cristata (Poepp. & Endl.) A.DC., Siparunaceae, using high-speed countercurrent chromatography in addition to the investigation of their inhibitory effect against SARS-CoV-2 viral replication. Retusin and kumatakenin inhibited SARS-CoV-2 replication in Vero E6 and Calu-3 cells, with a selective index greater than lopinavir/ritonavir and chloroquine, used as control. Flavonoids and their derivatives may stand for target compounds to be tested in future clinical trials to enrich the drug arsenal against coronavirus infections.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43450-021-00162-5.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43450-021-00162-5.Rates of harmful alcohol use are high among justice-involved individuals and may contribute to violent recidivism. Robust treatments for alcohol-related violence in criminal justice systems are thus a public health priority. In this analysis of existing randomized controlled trial data (N = 105), we examined the impact of a brief motivational intervention (BMI) for harmful substance use on violent recidivism among individuals in a pretrial jail diversion program. Results indicated that, after controlling for violence history, the intervention's impact on violent recidivism was moderated by baseline harmful alcohol use. Specifically, among people with severe alcohol problems at baseline, the BMI + standard care group had less violent recidivism at a 1-year follow-up than participants randomized to standard care alone. This finding was unchanged when we accounted for psychopathic traits. Our study provides preliminary evidence that a BMI may be useful for decreasing violent recidivism among heavy drinkers in criminal justice systems.The left ventricle of the heart is a fundamental structure in the human cardiac system that pumps oxygenated blood into the systemic circulation. link3 Several valvular conditions can cause the aortic and mitral valves associated with the left ventricle to become severely diseased and require replacement. However, the clinical outcomes of such operations, specifically the postoperative ventricular hemodynamics of replacing both valves, are not well understood. This work uses computational fluid-structure interaction (FSI) to develop an improved understanding of this effect by modeling a left ventricle with the aortic and mitral valves replaced with bioprostheses. We use a hybrid Arbitrary Lagrangian-Eulerian/immersogeometric framework to accommodate the analysis of cardiac hemodynamics and heart valve structural mechanics in a moving fluid domain. The motion of the endocardium is obtained from a cardiac biomechanics simulation and provided as an input to the proposed numerical framework. The results from the simulations in this work indicate that the replacement of the native mitral valve with a tri-radially symmetric bioprosthesis dramatically changes the ventricular hemodynamics. Most significantly, the vortical motion in the left ventricle is found to reverse direction after mitral valve replacement. This study demonstrates that the proposed computational FSI framework is capable of simulating complex multiphysics problems and can provide an in-depth understanding of the cardiac mechanics.This paper is concerned with the interplay between statistical asymmetry and spectral methods. Suppose we are interested in estimating a rank-1 and symmetric matrix M ⋆ ∈ ℝ n × n , yet only a randomly perturbed version M is observed. The noise matrix M - M ⋆ is composed of independent (but not necessarily homoscedastic) entries and is, therefore, not symmetric in general. This might arise if, for example, we have two independent samples for each entry of M ⋆ and arrange them in an asymmetric fashion. The aim is to estimate the leading eigenvalue and the leading eigenvector of M ⋆. We demonstrate that the leading eigenvalue of the data matrix M can be O ( n ) times more accurate (up to some log factor) than its (unadjusted) leading singular value of M in eigenvalue estimation. Moreover, the eigen-decomposition approach is fully adaptive to heteroscedasticity of noise, without the need of any prior knowledge about the noise distributions. In a nutshell, this curious phenomenon arises since the statistical asymmetry automatically mitigates the bias of the eigenvalue approach, thus eliminating the need of careful bias correction. Additionally, we develop appealing non-asymptotic eigenvector perturbation bounds; in particular, we are able to bound the perterbation of any linear function of the leading eigenvector of M (e.g. entrywise eigenvector perturbation). We also provide partial theory for the more general rank-r case. The takeaway message is this arranging the data samples in an asymmetric manner and performing eigen-decomposition could sometimes be quite beneficial.

10/04/2024


However, they also suffer from obvious limitations identified in this editorial overview paper and require substantial improvement in order to understand the changes in economic behavior and functioning of food supply chains induced by the pandemic.The callus cultures of Fagonia indica could prove as factories for the production of important phytochemicals when triggered through different types of stress. In this study, we initiated callus cultures from healthy stem explants in the presence of iron-doped zinc oxide nanoparticles (Fe-ZnO-NPs). We performed experiments with the callus cultures of F. indica to determine the impact of Fe-ZnO-NPs in concentrations (15.62-250 µg/mL) on biomass accumulation, production of important phenolic and flavonoids, and antioxidative potential. Our results showed that maximum callus biomass [Fresh weight (FW) = 13.6 g and Dry weight (DW) = 0.58 ± 0.01] was produced on day 40 when the media was supplemented with 250 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs. Similarly, maximum total phenolic content (268.36 μg GAE/g of DW) was observed in 40 days old callus added with 125 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs. Maximum total flavonoid content (78.56 μg QE/g of DW) was recorded in 20 days old callus grown in 62.5 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs containing media. Maximum total antioxidant capacity (390.74 µg AAE/g of DW) was recorded in 40 days old callus with 125 μg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs treated cultures, respectively. Similarly, the highest free radical scavenging activity (93.02%) was observed in callus derived from media having 15.62 µg/mL Fe-ZnO-NPs. The antioxidant potential was observed to have positive correlation with TPC (r = 0.44). HPLC analysis showed that Fe-ZnO-NPs produced compounds (e.g., Epigallocatechin gallate) that were either absent or in lesser quantities in the control group. These results showed that Fe-ZnO-NPs elicitors could increase the biomass and activate secondary metabolism in F. indica cells.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11240-021-02123-1.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11240-021-02123-1.Children comprise a significant share of immigrants around the world, yet scholarship has largely treated children as adult-like or adult-following actors in migration. We explore how the early life course and parents' migration structured children's migration from Mexico to the United States from 2002 to 2005, using the Mexican Family Life Survey, national survey data from Mexico that tracked 854 migrants, including 375 children, to the United States. We find that while parents' migration decisions matter at all ages, young children who migrate are nearly always accompanied by their parents, whereas the minority of adolescents are. Primary school-aged children and accompanied adolescents migrate in response to community violence and barriers to education, suggesting that their migration reflects concerns about where it is best to raise children. Adolescents who migrate without their parents do so in response to economic factors, much like adults; however, adolescents also respond to youth community migration prevalence, suggesting that youth-specific norms of migration frame their decision-making. The results show how the early life course structures three distinct profiles of child migration complete dependents, children whose location choices reflect concerns about schools and safety, and near independents. More generally, the determinants and process of migration shift as parental oversight declines and social structures beyond the family-community violence, access to education, youth norms, gender, and labor markets-emerge as important.The literature on the interplay between geographic communities and organizations has largely ignored the role of individual residents. In adopting a meso-perspective, we examine a potentially vital relationship between corporate conduct and pro-social behavior demanding sacrifice from individuals. Drawing on Weber (Economy and society an outline of interpretive sociology. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1978 (Translation of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Grundriss der verstehenden Soziologie, 1922)), we theorize that organizations in a community legitimize personal social conduct in three ways-by serving as role models, imparting norms and values, and routinizing forms of interaction. We study the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) behavior by local firms and the social distancing (SD) of citizens in US counties during the Covid-19 pandemic, a core ethical outcome. We argue and find that the residents of communities in which firms exhibit higher levels of CSR engaged in more SD during the Covid-19 pandemic. This was true when firms were (a) long-established, (b) isomorphic in their CSR, and (c) major employers and vendors. Moreover, CSR relating to the treatment of employees as well as positive and negative extremes in CSR bore especially strong relationships with SD. Implications are drawn for the study of business ethics, as modeled by CSR, as a force for ethical personal behavior and public health in communities.The normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism.In the digital era, we witness the increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) to solve problems, while improving productivity and efficiency. Yet, inevitably costs are involved with delegating power to algorithmically based systems, some of whose workings are opaque and unobservable and thus termed the "black box". Central to understanding the "black box" is to acknowledge that the algorithm is not mendaciously undertaking this action; it is simply using the recombination afforded to scaled computable machine learning algorithms. But an algorithm with arbitrary precision can easily reconstruct those characteristics and make life-changing decisions, particularly in financial services (credit scoring, risk assessment, etc.), and it could be difficult to reconstruct, if this was done in a fair manner reflecting the values of society. If we permit AI to make life-changing decisions, what are the opportunity costs, data trade-offs, and implications for social, economic, technical, legal, and environmental systems? We find that over 160 ethical AI principles exist, advocating organisations to act responsibly to avoid causing digital societal harms. This maelstrom of guidance, none of which is compulsory, serves to confuse, as opposed to guide. We need to think carefully about how we implement these algorithms, the delegation of decisions and data usage, in the absence of human oversight and AI governance. The paper seeks to harmonise and align approaches, illustrating the opportunities and threats of AI, while raising awareness of Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR) as a potential collaborative mechanism to demystify governance complexity and to establish an equitable digital society.In March 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, American synagogues locked their doors. This required emergency planning for Passover observances, and then gradually less panicked planning for subsequent liturgies. Based primarily on the experiences of three Boston-area synagogues, Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox, and interviews with their rabbis, this article compares the liturgical responses of Jews in these three movements, offering explanations for their different approaches. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/AS703026.html It also briefly traces, where appropriate, their resumption of services over the summer and their plans for the fall holy days.Research on system justification theory suggests that justifying the societal status quo decreases negative emotions, leading to less collective action. In this investigation, we propose that the degree to which negative emotions mediate the link between system justification and collective action may depend upon whether individuals tend to suppress the expression of their negative emotions. We tested this hypothesis in the diverse socio-political contexts of Turkey, Israel, and the U.S. In one correlational study (Study 1) and three experimental studies (Studies 2-4), we observed that the link between system justification and willingness to participate in collective action through anger (Studies 1-2 and 4) and guilt (Study 3) was moderated by expressive suppression. We found that negative emotions mediated the association between system justification and collective action among those who suppress the expression of their emotions less frequently, but not those who use expressive suppression more frequently. These findings suggest that emotion regulation may undermine, rather than facilitate, efforts to engage in collective action even among people who are low in system justification.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11031-021-09883-5.
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11031-021-09883-5.The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak has raised consumer concerns about health. By employing 306 online questionnaires, we identify COVID-19's effect on online organic agriculture product consumption and rural health tourism intention based on stimulus-organism-response theory and event system theory by incorporating risk information disclosure of COVID-19 as the moderating variable and health consciousness and risk perception as the mediating variables. These findings suggest that considering the impact of COVID-19 can help focus the production and online sales of organic agricultural products, the establishment and improvement of rural health facilities, and the marketing of rural health tourism.The novel 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has infected over 141 million people worldwide since April 20, 2021. More than 200 countries around the world have been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Screening for COVID-19, we use fast and inexpensive images from computed tomography (CT) scans. In this paper, ResNet-50, VGG-16, convolutional neural network (CNN), convolutional auto-encoder neural network (CAENN), and machine learning (ML) methods are proposed for classifying Chest CT Images of COVID-19. The dataset consists of 1252 CT scans that are positive and 1230 CT scans that are negative for COVID-19 virus. The proposed models have priority over the other models that there is no need of pre-trained networks and data augmentation for them. The classification accuracies of ResNet-50, VGG-16, CNN, and CAENN were obtained 92.24%, 94.07%, 93.84%, and 93.04% respectively. Among ML classifiers, the nearest neighbor (NN) had the highest performance with an accuracy of 94%.

09/18/2024


During the COVID-19 pandemic, Spain ranked 1st in number of infected health workers. Despite the fact that up to 75% of them were women, psychological interventions to prevent distress usually lacked a gender perspective and a biopsychosocial approach. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the way doctors approach palliative and end-of-life care, which has undoubtedly affected the mental health of patients, families, and health care professionals. Given these circumstances, doctors working on the front line are vulnerable to moral injury and compassion fatigue. This is a reflection of 2 junior doctors experiencing firsthand demands of caring for patients during the outbreak. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Holocaust survivors in Israel and abroad appear to be especially vulnerable to COVID-19 because of their early life history, advanced age, and associated health conditions. And although some survivors may experience retraumatization because of the pandemic, others appear to be especially resilient. We encourage a strength-based approach when working with survivors to foster resilience and effective coping in this uncertain time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Amid the global outbreak of COVID-19, resilience is likely to be one of the many possible outcomes. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/ly2880070.html Studies pertaining to resilience following potentially traumatic events including disease outbreak have shown that the vast majority of individuals are resilient, and that outcomes depend on a combination of resilience factors including exposure severity, individual differences, family context, and community characteristics. To better understand psychological dysfunction and resilience during the global outbreak of COVID-19, researchers are encouraged to investigate long-term patterns of mental health rather than cross-sectional prevalence rates, adopt prospective designs and analyses, integrate multiple risk and resilience factors to enhance outcome prediction, and consider the importance of flexibility as the situation unfolds. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).By the end of March 2020, Spain was one of the countries most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This commentary provides an initial picture of the psychological impact of the COVID-19 outbreak during its initial stage in Spain. Data of 3055 participants aged 18-88 years old were collected over a week (March 17th-24th 2020) using an online forms platform. Participants provided information regarding sociodemographic data and completed the Spanish version of the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, which assesses psychological distress caused by a traumatic life event in terms of three symptomatic responses (avoidance, intrusion, and hyperarousal). Results revealed that 36.6% of participants showed psychological distress due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Avoidance was the most prevalent symptom in the total sample and for all genders studied. The psychological impact was consistently higher for young people, and for women compared to men. Our data confirm the great psychological toll that the COVID-19 crisis took on the Spanish general population during the first week of confinement. Women and young people seem particularly vulnerable to the negative psychological impact of the pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Objective Masculinity ideologies have been associated with negative mental health outcomes. However, little is known regarding the link between masculinity ideologies and posttraumatic stress (PTS). This review aims to provide insight into this association by synthesizing available empirical research. Method The databases Web of Science, PsycINFO, and PubPsych were systematically searched for quantitative studies published up to 2018 in English language reporting on the association between masculinity ideologies and PTS. link2 Results were narratively reviewed and synthesized in a multilevel meta-analysis. Results Eleven studies were included in the narrative review, while 10 studies provided effect sizes that were included in the meta-analysis. Samples mainly consisted of male veterans. The weighted mean effect size of the association between masculinity ideologies and PTS was r = .22. Studies including a clearly identifiable sample of trauma survivors reported a significantly smaller association than studies that did not specify the occurrence of a traumatic event. link3 A narrative review of results showed that masculinity ideologies prescribing restrictive emotionality were more strongly associated with PTS relative to other masculine norms. Findings were limited regarding the influence of race and gender. Conclusions The results suggest that interventions aimed at trauma survivors may benefit from addressing deficits in emotion regulation resulting from masculinity ideologies. However, more research is needed to understand how masculinity ideologies and PTS interact with conditions such as trauma type, gender, or race. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting some important sources of health disparities that assail our society's most vulnerable people, particularly undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers. The focus of this commentary is on uncovering those sources of health disparities and making a call for action. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Fear, anger and hopelessness were the most frequent traumatic emotional responses in the general public during the first stage of outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in the Czech Republic (N = 1,000). The four most frequent categories of fear were determined (a) fear of the negative impact on household finances, (b) fear of the negative impact on the household finances of significant others, (c) fear of the unavailability of health care, and (d) fear of an insufficient food supply. The pessimistic communications used by the Czech mass media contributed to intensifying traumatic feelings, fears and psychological distress in the general public during the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).The high numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths, economic difficulties, uncertainty about the future, as well as the approaches needed to contain the spread of the virus are all playing critical roles in the short and long-term social and psychological impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Inequities based on race and socioeconomic status influence the rates of infection and deaths and steps that are needed to achieve recovery. This commentary focuses on similarities and differences after other disasters and efforts being initiated to provide support and recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).This commentary describes the religiously innovative adaptations made to customary rituals by Jewish religious leaders to address issues of belonging and resilience during the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic quarantine. These adaptations included allowing religious prayer through a "balcony" minyan, conducting an online chavruta using video conferencing, and broadcasting the Passover ceremony. The approach shown here could contribute to future evidence-based research, conducted among different faiths, about the roles of both religious leadership and information and communications technology (ICT) in preserving one's sense of belonging and resilience in times of crisis. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).This paper describes national-level mental health responses to COVID-19 in Lebanon. It then notes factors that have supported the mental health response, including how COVID-19 represents a window of opportunity to help strengthen the mental health system in Lebanon. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Psychological aspects that accompany employment instability because of the COVID-19 quarantine (lockdown) policy were investigated. Two hundred ninety-three Israeli participants completed a Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire, a Distress Thermometer, and a Perceived Stress Scale. People placed on furlough (unpaid leave of absence) by their employers demonstrated significantly higher distress (M = 5.34) than those who were unemployed prior to the pandemic (M = 3.79). The implications and coping modes with these results are detailed herein. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Religious leaders are at risk of psychological trauma and moral injury during the COVID-19 pandemic. This article highlights potentially traumatic or morally injurious experiences for religious leaders and provides evidence-based recommendations for mitigating their impact. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).In responding to the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), health-care workers have been exposed to a range of traumatic experiences, including the management of ventilators; provision of treatment; and issues with access to and the use of personal protective equipment. In this commentary, we use recent research on military decision-making to outline the damaging psychological effects of experiences that violate deeply held values. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).In this commentary, I argue that the mental health impact of COVID-19 will show substantial variation across individuals, contexts, and time. Further, one key contributor to this variation will be the proximal and long-term impact of COVID-19 on the social environment. In addition to the mental health costs of the pandemic, it is likely that a subset of people will experience improved social and mental health functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).COVID-19 and related efforts to mitigate its spread have dramatically transformed the structure and predictability of modern childhood, resulting in growing concerns children may be particularly vulnerable to serious mental health consequences. Worldwide stay-at-home directives and emergency changes in healthcare policy and reimbursement have smoothed the trail for broad implementation of technology-based remote mental health services for children. Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is particularly well-positioned to address some of the most pressing child and parental needs that arise during stressful times, and telehealth formats of PCIT, such as Internet-delivered PCIT (iPCIT), have already been supported in controlled trials. This commentary explores PCIT implementation during the COVID-19 public health crisis and the challenges encountered in the move toward Internet-delivered services. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Children's educational outcomes are strongly correlated with their parents' educational attainment. This finding is often attributed to the family environment-assuming, for instance, that parents' behavior and resources affect their children's educational outcomes. However, such inferences of a causal role of the family environment depend on the largely untested assumption that such relationships do not simply reflect genes shared between parent and child. We examine this assumption with an adoptee design in full-population cohorts from Danish administrative data. We test whether parental education predicts children's educational outcomes in both biological and adopted children, looking at four components of the child's educational development (I) the child's conscientiousness during compulsory schooling, (II) academic performance in those same years, (III) enrollment in academically challenging high schools, and (IV) graduation success. Parental education was a substantial predictor of each of these child outcomes in the full population.

08/31/2024


Despite the virulence and high fatality of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), no specific antiviral treatment exists until the current moment. Natural agents with immune-promoting potentials such as bee products are being explored as possible treatments. Bee honey and propolis are rich in bioactive compounds that express strong antimicrobial, bactericidal, antiviral, anti-inflammatory, immunomodulatory, and antioxidant activities. This review examined the literature for the anti-COVID-19 effects of bee honey and propolis, with the aim of optimizing the use of these handy products as prophylactic or adjuvant treatments for people infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2). Molecular simulations show that flavonoids in propolis and honey (e.g., rutin, naringin, caffeic acid phenyl ester, luteolin, and artepillin C) may inhibit viral spike fusion in host cells, viral-host interactions that trigger the cytokine storm, and viral replication. Similar to the potent antiviral drug remdesivir, rutin, propolis ethanolic extract, and propolis liposomes inhibited non-structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro, and these compounds along with naringin inhibited SARS-CoV-2 infection in Vero E6 cells. Propolis extracts delivered by nanocarriers exhibit better antiviral effects against SARS-CoV-2 than ethanolic extracts. In line, hospitalized COVID-19 patients receiving green Brazilian propolis or a combination of honey and Nigella sativa exhibited earlier viral clearance, symptom recovery, discharge from the hospital as well as less mortality than counterparts receiving standard care alone. Thus, the use of bee products as an adjuvant treatment for COVID-19 may produce beneficial effects. Implications for treatment outcomes and issues to be considered in future studies are discussed.Cytarabine is a pyrimidine nucleoside analog, commonly used in multiagent chemotherapy regimens for the treatment of leukemia and lymphoma, as well as for neoplastic meningitis. Ara-C-based chemotherapy regimens can induce a suboptimal clinical outcome in a fraction of patients. Several studies suggest that the individual variability in clinical response to Leukemia & Lymphoma treatments among patients, underlying either Ara-C mechanism resistance or toxicity, appears to be associated with the intracellular accumulation and retention of Ara-CTP due to genetic variants related to metabolic enzymes. Herein, we reported (a) the latest Pharmacogenomics biomarkers associated with the response to cytarabine and (b) the new drug formulations with optimized pharmacokinetics. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/unc0638.html The purpose of this review is to provide readers with detailed and comprehensive information on the effects of Ara-C-based therapies, from biological to clinical practice, maintaining high the interest of both researcher and clinical hematologist. This review could help clinicians in predicting the response to cytarabine-based treatments.Fibrinolytic factors like plasminogen, tissue-type plasminogen activator (tPA), and urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) dissolve clots. Though mere extracellular-matrix-degrading enzymes, fibrinolytic factors interfere with many processes during primary cancer growth and metastasis. Their many receptors give them access to cellular functions that tumor cells have widely exploited to promote tumor cell survival, growth, and metastatic abilities. They give cancer cells tools to ensure their own survival by interfering with the signaling pathways involved in senescence, anoikis, and autophagy. They can also directly promote primary tumor growth and metastasis, and endow tumor cells with mechanisms to evade myelosuppression, thus acquiring drug resistance. In this review, recent studies on the role fibrinolytic factors play in metastasis and controlling cell-death-associated processes are presented, along with studies that describe how cancer cells have exploited plasminogen receptors to escape myelosuppression.Application of LC-MS/MS-based molecular networking indicated the ethanol extract of octocoral Asterospicularia laurae is a potential source for the discovery of new xenicane derivatives. A natural product investigation of this soft coral resulted in the isolation of four new xenicane diterpenoids, asterolaurins O‒R (1‒4), together with six known compounds, xeniolide-A (5), isoxeniolide-A (6), xeniolide-B (7), 7,8-epoxyxeniolide-B (8), 7,8-oxido-isoxeniolide-A (9), and 9-hydroxyxeniolide-F (10). The structures of isolated compounds were characterized by employing spectroscopic analyses, including 2D-NMR (COSY, HMQC, HMBC, and NOESY) and high-resolution electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (HRESIMS). Asterolaurin O is the first case of brominated tricarbocyclic type floridicin in the family Xeniidae. Concerning bioactivity, the cytotoxic activity of those isolates was evaluated. As a result, compounds 1 and 2 demonstrated a selective cytotoxic effect against the MCF-7 cell line at IC50 of 14.7 and 25.1 μM, respectively.Urinary incontinence (UI) is a significant social problem. According to the World Health Organization, UI affects as much as 30% of premenopausal women and 60% of postmenopausal women. Urinary incontinence can lead to certain problems that negatively affect a woman's sex life. They result from the fact that certain processes take place in the body during intercourse. As a result of orgasm, the intra-abdominal pressure increases, which in women with urinary incontinence can cause an uncontrolled leakage of urine. The discomfort that this causes, in turn, lowers sexual attractiveness, as well as causes embarrassment. The study involved 50 patients hospitalized in the period from February to May 2019 at the Gynecology Department of the Independent Public Healthcare Center of the Ministry of the Interior and Administration in Wrocław. All patients underwent surgical treatment of stress urinary incontinence using the transobturator tape (TOT) method. To assess sexuality, the international standardized Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) questionnaire. Analysis of the results obtained from the FSFI questionnaire shows that the operation significantly affects the reduction in pain sensation during intercourse, a reduction in the sensation of sexual arousal, and a worsening vaginal wetness. Stress urinary incontinence significantly affects women's sex life.This article presents an empirical study on the institutional audiovisual mediatization of social sustainability made by the eighteen religious denominations officially recognized in Romania during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic onset. Research is undertaken based on the mediatization theories. Specifically, it highlights and discusses the conditions for producing the meaning of social sustainability as a result of religious mediatization during the months of March, April and May 2020, a period with strong religious connotations since it involved the dates of the major annual feasts celebrated by the three majority monotheistic religions, i.e., the Christian Easter, the Muslim Ramadan and the Jewish Passover. As a result, we noticed that the production of meaning in terms of social sustainability was simultaneously anchored in the accumulation of four contextual "social worlds" (a) that of social transformation induced by mediatization, (b) that of the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that is neither social, economic, or environmental, but with consequences on the three levels of reality mentioned above, (c) that of spirituality during the time of the great monotheistic religious feasts and (d) that of the national culture of Romania, statistically the most religious country of the European Union.Diabetic neuropathy is one of the most common complications of diabetes. This complication is peripheral neuropathy with predominant sensory impairment, and its symptoms begin with hyperesthesia and pain and gradually become hypoesthesia with the loss of nerve fibers. In some cases, lower limb amputation occurs when hypoalgesia makes it impossible to be aware of trauma or mechanical stimuli. On the other hand, up to 50% of these complications are asymptomatic and tend to delay early detection. Therefore, sensitive and reliable biomarkers for diabetic neuropathy are needed for an early diagnosis of this condition. This review focuses on systemic biomarkers that may be useful at this time. It also describes research on the relationship between target gene polymorphisms and pathological conditions. Finally, we also introduce current information on regenerative therapy, which is expected to be a therapeutic approach when the pathological condition has progressed and nerve degeneration has been completed.In this paper, ultraviolet (UV)-induced nanoparticle colloid jet machining is proposed to achieve ultrasmooth surface polishing by using the interaction between nanoparticles and the workpiece surface under the action of the ultraviolet field and the hydrodynamic pressure field. In the process of UV-induced nanoparticle colloid jet machining, the effects of photocatalysis on the interaction between nanoparticles and the workpiece surface need to be further studied in order to better understand the polishing process. This paper presents the interaction between TiO2 nanoparticles and a Si workpiece surface with and without ultraviolet irradiation. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) were applied to investigate the differences in the interaction of TiO2 nanoparticles with Si workpieces. The SEM and XPS results indicate that the photocatalysis of UV light can promote the interaction between TiO2 nanoparticles and a Si surface by creating more interfacial reaction active centers between the TiO2 nanoparticles and the Si workpiece. The FT-IR and XPS spectra show that TiO2 nanoparticles are chemically bonded to the Si workpiece by oxygen-bridging atoms in Ti-O-Si bonds. Due to the effects of photocatalysis, UV-induced nanoparticle colloid jet machining has a higher polishing efficiency than nanoparticle colloid jet machining with the same polishing parameters.The phosphorylation of serine 10 in histone 3 (p-S10H3) has recently been demonstrated to participate in spinal nociceptive processing. However, superficial dorsal horn (SDH) neurons involved in p-S10H3-mediated nociception have not been fully characterized. In the present work, we combined immunohistochemistry, in situ hybridization with the retrograde labeling of projection neurons to reveal the subset of dorsal horn neurons presenting an elevated level of p-S10H3 in response to noxious heat (60 °C), causing burn injury. Projection neurons only represented a small percentage (5%) of p-S10H3-positive cells, while the greater part of them belonged to excitatory SDH interneurons. The combined immunolabeling of p-S10H3 with markers of already established interneuronal classes of the SDH revealed that the largest subset of neurons with burn injury-induced p-S10H3 expression was dynorphin immunopositive in mice. Furthermore, the majority of p-S10H3-expressing dynorphinergic neurons proved to be excitatory, as they lacked Pax-2 and showed Lmx1b-immunopositivity. Thus, we showed that neurochemically heterogeneous SDH neurons exhibit the upregulation of p-S10H3 shortly after noxious heat-induced burn injury and consequential tissue damage, and that a dedicated subset of excitatory dynorphinergic neurons is likely a key player in the development of central sensitization via the p-S10H3 mediated pathway.

Week in Review 4-22-24 - Happy Passover, State of World Affairs, Chess Studies
[Apr 21, 2024]
(5 hours)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bcarlFcYPE

Introduction - Recap & Links20:30. The Past Hypothesis 24:00. Nathan Cofnas, JQ & HereditarianismIsrael War Update30:00. Harvard Kennedy School s...

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