Statistically Evaluating How Splinter Groups Emerge and Behave

There is limited understanding of how clinical reasoning is developed, maintained, and objectively assessed. Using the theoretical lens of deliberate practice, we explored physicians' views on clinical reasoning. We compared responses from internists (faculty) and internal medicine interns, to identify potential qualitative and/or quantitative differences in how clinical reasoning is developed and maintained. Participants' free-text comments regarding how clinical reasoning is developed, maintained, and objectively assessed were analyzed. Three investigators coded responses using a constant-comparative, grounded theory approach. We also compared the frequencies of each theme between the 2 groups. Twenty-two faculty and 17 interns participated in this study. Faculty and intern themes for how clinical reasoning is developed, maintained, and objectively assessed were similar, but quantitative and qualitative differences emerged. Interrater reliability of themes was high (overall kappa: 0.92; range: 0.88-0.98). Only experts (faculty) mentioned the value of teaching for development and maintenance of clinical reasoning. Interns focused on knowledge acquisition activities and use of online resources. Experts and intern participants both struggled with how to best measure clinical reasoning; direct observation was rarely mentioned as a strategy. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, we found quantitative and qualitative differences in participants' responses, which have implications for teaching and assessment of clinical reasoning. By capturing the types of activities and their relative frequencies within and between these groups, this work adds to the deliberate practice literature.

Less academic: Terrorist, rebel, and insurgent groups face myriad challenges. Between state repression and fears of infiltration and defeat, it is no surprise they are prone to infighting, instability, and division. And these divisions are meaningful: one led the Islamic State to break from Al Qaeda, and others have perpetually plagued the Irish Republican Army, Palestinian militants, and many more. This book analyzes how armed groups fracture and how splinter groups behave. It is the first to look inside these organizations and to understand the specific disagreements leading fractures to occur. It shows how disagreements are commonly driven by disputes over ideology, leadership, and strategy. Drawing on research from organizational studies to social psychology, and by leveraging analogies from business firms to religious sects, the book shows how these disputes uniquely shape the behavior and survivability of breakaway splinters. When motivated by single, shared disagreement, splinters tend to exhibit higher cohesion, clearer objectives, and greater survivability. And when motivated by strategy in particular, splinters typically attract the most hardline operatives and subsequently adopt increasingly lethal tactics and strategies. The book tests these claims comprehensively. Statistical analyses reveal a clear link between internal disagreements and splinter behavior across countries and over time. Case studies of republican militants in Northern Ireland, Basque militants in Spain, and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq then confirm these trends. As a result, this book demystifies a complex albeit common event with ramifications for counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, and understanding increasingly fragmented conflicts around the globe. More academic: Armed groups are tenuous organizations. They face difficult environments and uncertain challenges that make instability, division, and organizational fractures common. But when fractures occur, what explains how breakaway groups behave? Drawing on social and group dynamics that afflict everything from political parties to religious sects, this book shows how a splinter group’s trajectory is not predetermined, but is in fact shaped by its motivations for breaking away. Splinters emerging from a single, shared internal disagreement form with clear organizational objectives that attract a highly cohesive base of recruits. This lowers the odds of defection and infiltration, making it easier to decentralize operations and ultimately survive. Armed groups also break apart for a variety of reasons. Ideological, strategic, and leadership disputes each uniquely shape the goals and membership composition of breakaway groups. Strategic disagreements create the most radical splinters since they usually attract dissatisfied hardliners away from the parent. These claims are tested using a mixed-methods research design. Statistical analyses of a new data set reveal strong support for the theory across countries and over time, while in-depth case studies of republican militants in Northern Ireland, Basque militants in Spain, and the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq confirm the theory’s more specific implications. As a result, this book refocuses attention away from external dynamics, like state repression and conciliation, and towards internal dynamics that can better explain how armed groups fragment, operate, and survive.

PANDAS are known as the spectrum of autoimmune pathologies related to a previous or current infection by group A beta-hemolytic streptococcus (SBEGA), dealing with several neuropsychiatric manifestations that mainly affect pediatric age. The main features consist of behavioral disease or movement disease characterized by acute-onset, presenting especially through infant period or adolescence. Specific manifestations, occurring during the progression of the disease, are the presence of otorhinolaryngologic symptoms (ENT) and orofacial movement disorders associated with temporomandibular joint pain. We enrolled 130 children (5-15 years) with a clinical diagnosis of PANDAS between 2012 and 2018. Participants were assessed using ENT specific parameters, PSG to examine respiratory disorders and conventional audiological evaluation. Descriptive and comparative statistical analyses were performed with a control group of 51 healthy patients. The prevalence of ENT symptoms associated was significantly detected in 88 patients of 130 in Group A (relative frequency (%) 67.6; p=0.041) and in 51 patients of 130 in the control Group B (relative frequency (%) 39.2; p=0.063). In relation to prevalence of SDB, 54 subjects have presented nocturnal respiratory obstructive symptoms from mild to severe (relative frequency (%) 61.3; p=0.033) vs. 20 patients of Group B (relative frequency (%) 39.2; p=0.055). The obstructive severity average type was correlated to the consensual adenotonsillar development (size 3-4), (relative frequency (%) 45.4; p=0.047). The audiological deficits found were mostly of transmissive type with OME correlated and linked to the presence of occasional episodes of AOM. The four PANDAS patients who presented orobuccal dystonia (relative frequency (%) 4.54; p=0.091) achieved an improvement of the algic symptoms through the exercises of self-rehabilitation. Findings from our study show that respiratory diseases, characterizing a group of patients with pandas, are the direct consequences of the malformed or hypertrophic condition and suggesting in these conditions surgical therapy as an approaching tool.

Allograft and patient survival after sequential HSCT and kidney transplantation from the same donor-A multicenter analysis.

The currently dominant school of social mobility research has dug itself into a pit so deep and narrow that it has lost sight of what should undoubtedly be some of the principal themes in its field of investigation. Over the last twenty years social mobility researchers have developed increasingly impressive statistical methods, drawing on standardized questionnaires rather than in-depth inter viewing, for analysing one single issue, individual occupational mobility—and this mobility has been evaluated, essentially because of the difficulties in statistical analysis caused by the broken careers typical of women, primarily through the occupations of men.

Design creativity is an inherently complex and recursive cognitive process involving nonlinear transitions between distinct cognitive states. This experimental neurocognitive study provides empirical support for theoretical nonlinear and recursive models of design creativity by examining neurocognitive processes across design creativity cognitive states, including idea generation (IDG), idea evolution (IDE), rating process (IDR), and rest mode (RST). EEG signals were recorded during loosely controlled design creativity tasks, and 13 well-established features were extracted from recurrence quantification analysis (RQA). A feature selection pipeline identified the most significant features for distinguishing between the cognitive states. Statistical analyses of the features provided deeper insights into brain dynamics and confirmed the significance of the selected features, supported by EEG topography maps. The findings revealed distinct and complex recursive dynamics across cognitive states, primarily involving the frontal, parietal and central regions, offering novel insights complementary to prior EEG studies. We also classified the cognitive states using the selected significant features through six classification models: k-Nearest Neighbor, Support Vector Machine, Naïve Bayes, Multi-Layer Perceptron, Linear Discriminant Analysis and Random Forest. To ensure robust evaluation, we applied three cross-validation strategies – hold-out, k-fold and one-subject-out – and combined the classifiers using majority voting fusion. Classification results (10-fold cross-validation) demonstrated high performance, with an average accuracy (96.23%), kappa (93.56%), recall (96.58%), precision (98.08%), F1-score (97.29%) and specificity (98.43%). The study provides findings that are consistent with theoretical expectations. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the findings deepen understanding of recursive and nonlinear neural dynamics in design creativity cognition and guide future research.

Common wisdom holds that from the beginning women entered some academic fields such as the humani ties and avoided others for example physics or mathematics. Developments in Germany up to the 1930s contradict this assumption: In the natural sciences and mathematics, the percentage of female students was higher than the average percentage of female students in all other academic fields. What contributed to, what caused this unexpected distribu tion? How can we explain the discontinuities in the long term developments of female students' relative frequencies in specific academic subjects? Some answers to these ques tions are discussed in this study, containing results of a cur rent research project financed by the Deutsche Forschungs gemeinschaft. The basic assumptions refer to the theory of doing gender: This theory claims that what is characterized as typically male or female is historically variable and con structed according to specific cultural and social contexts. Thus essentialism is negated. The main data base of this project are educational statistics of German universities. Our statistical analyses (eg loglinear analysis) and data from other sources show interrelated effects of the development of girls' secondary schools, their preparations for university studies, chances on the labour market and social status on the subjects of study as well as on professional careers. New academic fields like social sciences and economics became gendered very quickly, resulting in segregation of careers Address all communications to Ilse Costas, Universit?t G?ttingen, Soziologisches Seminar, Platz der G?ttinger Sieben 3, D-37073 G?ttingen. Tel.: 0551 - 39-4802, E-mail: icostas@uni-g?ttingen.de. Der Aufsatz ist im Rahmen des von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft gef?rderten Projektes Kontinuit?t und Diskontinuit?t in der geschlechtlichen Normierung von Studien fachern, wissenschaftlichen Arbeitsgebieten und Karrieren in den Professionen - ein Projekt im DFG-Schwerpunkt Professionalisierung, Organisation und Geschlecht - entstanden.

Introduction. The choice of tactics for surgical correction of virilized genitalia in girls with the classic form of congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) remains a topical issue in pediatric surgery. The early one-stage feminization in severe forms of genital virilization, in case of urogenital sinus, is recommended by the international guidelines on CAH clinical practice (2018). One of the arguments for the early one-stage feminizing plasty is to prevent urinary tract infection. However, in experts’ opinion, it has a low level of evidence.Purpose. To find out a statistically significance risk of developing chronic inflammation in the bladder (CIB) in patients with persistent urogenital sinus due to CAH.Material and methods. The lower urinary tract was examined in two groups of girls with CAH having non-persistent urogenital sinus (UGS) (n=15) and persistent UGS (n=32). In both groups, cystoscopy was made which is highly specific and sensitive to diagnosing chronic inflammation in the bladder (CIB) which develops as a consequence of long-term disorders in urodynamics and long-term urinary tract infection. Statistical analysis was carried out by comparing 95% confidence interval (95% CI) for the relative frequency of CIB in groups with a population value and for testing the hypotheses on the coincidence of observed and population frequencies of binary trait values using the Chi square criterion (χ2).Results. The relative CIB frequency in the group with persistent UGS was 75%. As far as the point estimate of population value of the relative CIB frequency (0.1) was located outside the calculated 95% CI (0.581; 0.918) and the value of calculated χ2 criterion (148.7813) corresponded to r0.05 (0.000000), the difference between the obtained data and population values can be considered statistically significant.Conclusion. The conducted study confirms a high risk of developing CIB in patients with persistent UGS compared to population values what is backgrounded by the obtained statistical significance.

Editor’s Introduction Arien Mack the theme on which this issue focuses is one that unfortunately seems ever present and is becoming increasingly more virulent. If “never again” is the mantra that follows each epic and grotesque case of genocide, whether it is the Holocaust, the genocide in Rwanda or Armenia, or elsewhere, the lesson that we have learned is not “never again” but rather “again and again.” Xenophobia does not go away! In the United States and in Europe, particularly Poland and Hungary, in China and India, and almost everywhere else, there is a visible resurgence of hatred of “the other,” of those who are not “us.” In the United States we are witness to seemingly endless numbers of Black men killed by the police, an unjustifiable huge cohort of Black men withering away in prison, and a growing number of restrictions on voting rights aimed at disenfranchising Black voters, and all this despite the rise of Black Lives Matter. At the same time, we also are witness to continuing lethal attacks on synagogues, attesting to the ever-presence of antisemitism, despite “never again.” In Poland and Hungary, but elsewhere as well, we are witnessing an increasing number of cases of vicious antisemitic, anti-Muslim, and anti-LGBTQ acts, while around the world we are seeing growing acceptance of open aggression, repression, and physical and verbal racist attacks on Indigenous peoples, as well as on Muslims, Uyghurs, Kurds, Baha’i, Rohingya, and other religious and ethnic minorities. The reasons for this wave of xenophobia are undoubtedly multiple and complex, and addressing them will be correspondingly complex. We realize that a single journal issue cannot possibly provide a master theory to explain what is happening, but we hope that by [End Page vii] providing a set of case studies, through which our authors draw connections between the situation in their own home region and other, perhaps similar, cases, we can give our readers a prism through which to begin to draw their own conclusions. [End Page viii] Copyright © 2022 The New School

In the last years, the relieving activity of overflow structures in combined sewer systems was mainly determined by statistical analysis of rainfall data. Due to the rain lost on the surface of a drainage area and to the flow rétardation through the sewer network, the resulting runoff variation differs a lot from the rainfall variation. Therefore, the rainfall measurements of 4 rain gaging stations in Hamburg with a total of 67 recorded years and a rain gaging station in Berlin with 22 recorded years were used to carry out runoff simulations. First of all, a rainfall statistical analysis was performed with the measured rainfall data in order to determine the annual rainfall durations, depths and frequencies in relation to the average rain intensity. The annual overflow data from overflow structures (overflow weirs and overflow basins) of not prerelieved drainage areas were computed by means of a simplified runoff model. The so determined overflow data is considerably lower than the data of rainfall analysis. Hence, overflow data from overflow structures in combined sewer systems wouldn't be satisfying if they are derived from only statistical rainfall analysis. Recorded rainfall events should rather be transformed into runoff events and accordingly analysed. As there were only 5 rain gaging stations available, a generalization of the computed overflow data is still impossible. However, these overflow data seem to be on the whole plausible if compared with rainfall data which were performed in the past only during the summer months.

Liver transplantation for alcoholic hepatitis in the United States: Excellent outcomes with profound temporal and geographic variation in frequency.

The diet composition of the African clawless otter (Aonyx capensis) was studied by analyzing of 440 spraint samples collected during January, 2014 and December, 2015 in both dry and wet seasons from eight sites in and around Lake Tana, North West Ethiopia. Percentage frequency of occurrence and relative percentage frequency of diet items in the spraint samples were calculated.The statistical analysis was conducted using chi-square and one-way ANOVA tests.The number of diet categories per spraint ranged from 1 to 4 with a mean of 1.42 ± 0.591. Fish was the dominant prey item in all sites with an overall frequency of occurrence of 84.77% and a relative percentage frequency of 59.68%. Labeobarbus spp. was the most frequent fish prey (35.45%). Crabs were the second most frequent prey items with percentage frequency of 33.41% and a relative percentage frequency of 23.52%, while small mammals and birds were the least frequent dietary items with percentage frequency of 0.45 and 0.23%, respectively. Other identified diet items and the respective percentage frequency were plant matter (6.17%), insects (5.68%), amphibians (5%), mollusks (2.5%) and unidentified items (3.86%). Variation on fish and crab prey items were observed between seasons and sites, while no variation was observed for other prey items. The results suggested a dietary flexibility and shift in the African clawless otter from crabs to fish that can be explained by availability and accessibility. Key words: African clawless otter, Aonyx capensis, food items, Lake Tana.

The objectives of this article are to examine the relationships between several structural characteristics associated with modernity and the ratio of property crimes to homicides, and to develop a theoretical interpretation for such relationships. The proposed interpretation involves an application of Blau's general macrosociological theory. Blau's (1977) theory is concerned with the determinants of intergroup associations. The key to applying his theory to the phenomenon of crime lies in the conceptualization of property crimes as characteristically intergroup interactions, and homicides as ingroup interactions. Blau's theorems concerning the structural determinants of rates of intergroup associations in general can then be extended to account for the relative frequency of these two types of crime. Several specific hypotheses are derived from Blau's theory and are tested with cross-national data. The results are for the most part in accord with theoretical expectations. Moreover, the proposed interpretation for the relationship between modern social structures and the ratio of property crimes to homicides is more consistent with the full pattern of results than are some plausible alternative interpretations.

Topographic effects on flow path and surface water chemistry of the Llyn Brianne catchments in Wales

The paper presents preliminary studies and analysis of some properties of alphabets built on the basis of the broadband signal symbols. We study the broadband signal alphabets characters and separate broadband signal symbols. The subject of research includes research methods of synthesis and analysis for broadband radio signals. The synthesis method is formulated for orthogonal alphabets on the basis of signal broadband symbols. The analysis of some statistical characteristics of broadband symbols and messages is performed. It is shown that the distribution of amplitude values of mutually orthogonal signals and messages on their basis has the form of Gauss distribution. The parameter is determined that affects the correlation properties of alphabets of broadband signal symbols. The studies have shown that the characteristics of the correlation function depend on the relative frequency band occupied by the signal broadband symbols. We made estimation and comparison with the theoretical model of the error probability in the channel with additive white Gaussian noise while the use of signal broadband symbols. The simulation results agree with the theoretical expectations and do not exceed the theoretical limit of the error probability. The rate estimation of the information transfer by alphabets built on the basis of orthogonal signal broadband characters is performed. The rate estimation shows significant potential and opportunities of the information seal, especially, with the increase in the relative frequency band occupied by the broadband signal symbols.