Individual Propensity Research Articles

Long-term effect of tocilizumab on mortality, readmissions, persistent symptoms and lung function in SARS-CoV-2 patients 1 year after hospital discharge: A matched cohort study

BackgroundTocilizumab is presumed to be an effective and safe treatment for severe SARS-Cov-2, but its usefulness has not been investigated yet for long-term outcomes. This study aimed to evaluate the influence of tocilizumab on mortality in patients with SARS-CoV-2 throughout the year following discharge. MethodsA retrospective observational analysis was performed on electronic medical records of patients with SARS-CoV2 who were discharged from our hospital after surviving the first wave in March-April 2020. Logistic regression was used to analyse the effect of tocilizumab on mortality, as the main outcome, and propensity-score analysis to further validate their effect. Secondary outcomes were readmissions, persistent symptoms and lung function evolution. Patients were selected by matching their individual propensity for receiving therapy with tocilizumab, conditional on their demographic and clinical variables. ResultsA total of 405 patients were included in the mortality study (33.6 % were treated with tocilizumab) and 390 were included in the assessment of persistent symptoms. After propensity-score analysis, no association between tocilizumab use and 1-year overall mortality was found (HR= 2.05, 95 % CI: 0.21–19.98). No differences regarding persistent symptoms (OR= 1.01 95 %CI 0.57–1.79), nor lung function parameters (forced vital capacity: coefficient -0.16 95 %CI -0.45 to 0.14) were found throughout the year follow-up between control and tocilizumab group. ConclusionsThe administration of tocilizumab in patients with SARS-CoV-2 did not show any effect on long-term mortality. Identically, no association were found regarding readmissions, persistent symptoms or lung function evolution and tocilizumab administration in our cohort of patients after 1 year follow-up.

Масаи опознают мужчин-альтруистов по внешнему облику

<p>In this experimental study, we continue investigating an association between facial morphology and individual psychological characteristics. The study was conducted in the population of Maasai (Ngorongoro, Tanzania) in two stages during field trips in 2016 and 2021. At the first stage, we collected anthropological photo portraits from 305 individuals (123 women and 182 men) and interviewed them to identify the propensity to help others. Six generalized morphed portraits of Maasai (men and women) were created based on individual propensity to help. At the second stage of the study, portraits were presented to 200 Maasai, men and women from the same population. The portraits were evaluated according to the degree of expression of four qualities: physical strength, proneness to help others, a "good friend", and self-confidence. The results of the study revealed that representatives of the same population are able to distinguish altruistic men by their facial shape. Men who were prone to provide assistance to others were perceived as physically stronger. No such association was found for female portraits. The results are interpreted from the standpoint of evolutionary psychology.</p>

United we stand? Organizational groups and spinoff mortality in the context of academic entrepreneurship

We study failures between 1993 and 2017 in the complete population of 1731 English and Scottish university spinoffs founded since 1977. We borrow and expand the concept of density dependence from organizational ecology to theorize that a spinoff's propensity to fail is affected by the number of spinoffs active not only in the aggregate population but also within its parent university's portfolio. We contribute to organizational theory, demonstrating the importance of organizational groups that form within larger populations on individual organizations' propensity to fail. We contribute to literature on academic entrepreneurship showing that, for most universities, spinoff portfolio growth can lower associated spinoffs' failure rates, but that such effects need to be juxtaposed to the aggregate population's finite capacity to support an expanding number of spinoffs.

Telomere length links with physiological phenotype and breeding patterns in a long-lived seabird

Abstract Telomere length (TL) is known to covary with a suite of physiological traits involved in energy balances that may influence breeding success. Thus, TL may be an indicator of individual quality, influencing mate choice and breeding strategies. In the Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster), a long-lived seabird, we investigated in a total of 72 pairs whether TL may indicate the individual physiological phenotype by examining how it relates to mitochondrial DNA copy number (mtDNAcn) and corticosterone (CORT) levels. Then, we tested if TL is associated with mating patterns by looking for covariation with skin coloration (a condition-dependent sexual trait), whether there is assortative mating by TL, and if the degree of TL similarity between partners influences an individual’s likelihood of changing mates between reproductive seasons. Because environmental conditions can have important effects on the condition and reproductive strategies of individuals, the study was performed in 2 colonies with contrasting breeding conditions. We found that TL was positively related to mtDNAcn (but not CORT levels), suggesting that individuals with shorter telomeres may have a reduced mitochondrial density. TL was reflected in sexual coloration, but only in the colony with good breeding conditions. There was positive assortative mating by TL; however, the degree of assortative mating was unrelated to the probability of mate change, which greatly varied between the 2 colonies. Our results suggest that TL is associated with the physiological phenotype of individuals and their breeding patterns. Importantly, contrasting environmental conditions influenced the link between TL and sexual coloration and the propensity of individuals to change mate, highlighting the importance of environmental variation on mating patterns.

Overclaiming. An international investigation using PISA data

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the phenomena of overclaiming – the propensity for individuals to claim more knowledge about an issue or topic than they really (or could possibly) do. Using Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data from nine Anglophone countries and over 40,000 young people, we examine teenagers’ propensity to claim knowledge of three mathematics constructs that do not really exist. We find substantial differences in young people’s tendency to overclaim across countries, genders, and socio-economic groups. Those who are most likely to overclaim are also found to exhibit high levels of overconfidence and believe they work hard, persevere at tasks, and are popular amongst their peers. Together this provides important new insight into overclaiming, how this differs across groups, and how it relates to other psychological constructs.

Psychological Well-being and Ethical Decision-making of Accountants with the Mediating Role of Individual Risk-taking Propensity: A Case Study of Accountants of Kashi Companies in Yazd Province

Psychological Well-being and Ethical Decision-making of Accountants with the Mediating Role of Individual Risk-taking Propensity: A Case Study of Accountants of Kashi Companies in Yazd Province

Appellate Review of Child Sexual Abuse Convictions: The Importance of Character Evidence.

This study examined the role of character evidence and other issues in criminal appeals of child sexual abuse (CSA) convictions. Character evidence includes uncharged acts and character witnesses who testify to another's reputation or opinion and is offered to prove an individual's propensities. Examining 168 appellate court opinions reviewing CSA convictions between 2005 and 2015 in Maricopa County, Arizona, we found that when specific types of evidence were at issue, they were most often character evidence issues (49%). However, appellate courts virtually never reversed convictions (n = 5), and when defendants did obtain relief, the reduction in charges or in sentences was minor. Of the small number of opinions that were published (n = 4), all focused on character evidence, including the single case reviewed by the Arizona Supreme Court. However, close examination of the published cases suggested they effected only modest change.

Neural underpinnings of processing combinatorial unstated meaning and the influence of individual cognitive style.

We investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of combinatorial unstated meaning. Sentences like "Charles jumped for 5 minutes." engender an iterative meaning that is not explicitly stated but enriched by comprehenders beyond simple composition. Comprehending unstated meaning involves meaning contextualization-integrative meaning search in sentential-discourse context. Meanwhile, people differ in how they process information with varying context sensitivity. We hypothesized that unstated meaning processing would vary with individual socio-cognitive propensity indexed by the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ), accompanied by differential cortical engagements. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined the processing of sentences with unstated iterative meaning in typically-developed individuals and found an engagement of the fronto-parietal network, including the left pars triangularis (L.PT), right intraparietal (R.IPS), and parieto-occipital sulcus (R.POS). We suggest that the L.PT subserves a contextual meaning search, while the R.IPS/POS supports enriching unstated iteration in consideration of event durations and interval lengths. Moreover, the activation level of these regions negatively correlated with AQ. Higher AQ ties to lower L.PT activation, likely reflecting weaker context sensitivity, along with lower IPS activation, likely reflecting weaker computation of events' numerical-temporal specifications. These suggest that the L.PT and R.IPS/POS support the processing of combinatorial unstated meaning, with the activation level modulated by individual cognitive styles.

A new method for analyzing clinical trials in depression based on individual propensity to respond to placebo estimated using artificial intelligence

One of the major reasons for trial failures in major depressive disorders (MDD) is the presence of unpredictable levels of placebo response as the individual baseline propensity to respond to placebo is not adequately controlled by the current randomization and statistical methodologies.The individual propensity to respond to any treatment or intervention assessed at baseline was considered as a major non-specific prognostic and confounding effect. The objective of this paper was to apply the propensity score methodology to control for potential imbalance at baseline in the propensity to respond to placebo in clinical trials in MDD.Individual propensity was estimated using artificial intelligence (AI) applied to observations collected in two pre-randomization occasions.Cases study are presented using data from two randomized, placebo-controlled trials to evaluate the efficacy of paroxetine in MDD. AI models were used to estimate the individual propensity probability to show a treatment non-specific placebo effect.The inverse of the estimated probability was used as weight in the mixed-effects analysis to assess treatment effect. The comparison of the results obtained with and without propensity weight indicated that the weighted analysis provided an estimate of treatment effect and effect size significantly larger than the conventional analysis.

Local food availability and nonbreeding carry-over effects affect breeding propensity and success of a tundra-nesting predator, the Long-tailed Jaeger

Abstract Reproduction of long-distance migrants can be affected by local conditions on the breeding grounds as well as those encountered during the nonbreeding season through carry-over effects. We show that this is true in Long-tailed Jaegers (Stercorarius longicaudus) because individuals that spent less time flying at sea during winter had a high breeding propensity and a reduced pre-laying interval, but breeding propensity and nesting success were also positively associated with food abundance at the breeding site. This seabird switches from a marine to a terrestrial lifestyle to breed in summer in the Arctic, where it primarily feeds on lemmings. We monitored jaeger reproduction and lemming densities on Bylot Island in the Canadian Arctic for 16 years, and we used geolocator to study annual movements. We assessed whether movement parameters (travel distance, migration duration, phenology, and number of flying bouts inferred by saltwater immersions) during the nonbreeding season affected the breeding propensity, phenology, and success of individuals. We also examined whether cyclic lemming fluctuations influenced Long-tailed Jaeger reproduction and whether nesting success affected the phenology of their outbound migration. We found that increased time spent flying during winter and early arrival at the breeding site reduced breeding propensity. Moreover, spending less time flying during winter shortened the pre-laying period, and advancing laying date increased nesting success. Birds may thus face a trade-off to minimize the relative costs associated with arriving too early and breeding too late. Local food availability had a strong effect on reproduction because breeding propensity and nesting success increased sharply with lemming abundance. Failed breeders advanced their outbound migration by 10 days on average compared to successful ones, but migration duration was similar. Therefore, the unpredictability of the highly seasonal Arctic environment, especially fluctuating food abundance, appears to be a strong driver of reproduction that can modulate the strength of carry-over effects.

Personalized dynamic network models of the human brain as a future tool for planning and optimizing epilepsy therapy.

Epilepsy is a common neurological disorder, with one third of patients not responding to currently available antiepileptic drugs. The proportion of pharmacoresistant epilepsies has remained unchanged for many decades. To cure epilepsy and control seizures requires a paradigm shift in the development of new approaches to epilepsy diagnosis and treatment. Contemporary medicine has benefited from the exponential growth of computational modeling, and the application of network dynamics theory to understanding and treating human brain disorders. In epilepsy, the introduction of these approaches has led to personalized epileptic network modeling that can explore the patient's seizure genesis and predict the functional impact of resection on its individual network's propensity to seize. The application of the dynamic systems approach to neurostimulation therapy of epilepsy allows designing stimulation strategies that consider the patient's seizure dynamics and long-term fluctuations in the stability of their epileptic networks. In this article, we review, in a nontechnical fashion suitable for a broad neuroscientific audience, recent progress in personalized dynamic brain network modeling that is shaping the future approach to the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy.

Prevalence and Impact of Vitamin D Deficiency Among Individuals Diagnosed with Chronic Liver Disease

Introduction: Chronic liver disease is characterized by multi-nutrient deficiency. The propensity for individuals to have vitamin D insufficiency is greater in comparison to other essential minerals. Fibrosis results in a decline in the liver's ability to perform synthetic functions ultimately leading to lack of vitamin D due to poor activation caused by drop in proteins binding the vitamin. The situation is exacerbated by the decrease in productivity and the presence of nutritional deficiencies. Materials and Methods: The present descriptive research was carried out in the Department of Medicine at DHQ Teaching Hospital Haripur spanning from 1st January 2022 to 31st December 2022. The study population consisted of individuals between the ages of 40 and 70 years who were diagnosed with chronic liver disease. The concentration of vitamin D was assessed in blood samples obtained from patients at the hospital laboratory. The established threshold for identifying vitamin D insufficiency is a blood vitamin D level below 30 nmol/L. Data analysis was performed using statistical software SPSS version 24. Results: The age of the patients ranged from 40 to 70 years. The mean age of the patients was 53.40 years with standard deviation 12.194. Age wise distribution revealed 60.1% patients (n = 89) in the age group 40-55 years and 39.9% participants (n = 59) had age 56-70 years. The number of male participants were 94 (63.5%). Vitamin deficiency was observed in 64.9% patients (n = 96). The association of vitamin D deficiency with disease duration, child class and gender were statistically significant (p < 0.05). Conclusion: The potential association between vitamin D insufficiency and the extent of liver function impairment, degree of fibrosis, and susceptibility to infection consequences suggests that it may serve as a valuable prognostic indicator and diagnostic tool. Additional research is required to thoroughly assess and substantiate the significance of vitamin D in the context of liver cirrhosis. This necessitates the undertaking of extensive prospective cohort studies and randomized trials. Keywords: Vitamin D deficiency, Chronic Liver Disease (CLD)

It starts from home? Explaining environmentally responsible resource and waste management

Resource and waste management are indispensable to environmentally conscious action and a large part of EU Green politics. Little is known about factors affecting individual propensity for resource and waste management. The article examines the effects of environmental concerns, perceptions of climate change, preferences for EU integration, and media exposure (traditional and new) on the propensity to save resources and waste management employing a representative sample of 904 respondents in the Czech Republic. Methodologically we rely on principal component analysis, correlations, and a set of ordinal regression analyses. The results suggest that environmental and climate concerns increase the propensity to save resources and separate waste. The preferences for EU integration and media exposure were unrelated to saving resources and waste management, except exposure to online news, which negatively affected the environmentally motivated reduction of unnecessary car trips. The results imply immense consequences on the conceptual and policy-making levels. On the conceptual level the results suggest, that the mass media stopped to fulfill its developmental and persuasive functions, as generally people do not relate their pro-environmental behavior to the mass media exposure. From the policy-making perspective the mass media proves to be a poor resource for the pro-environmental actions as in case of social networks the role of mass media on waste management proved negative. We also suggest that saving resources and waste management stopped to be a topic of political and media influence but transferred to the domain of personal values and economic decisions.

Honesty-humility predicts humanitarian prosocial behavior via social connectedness: A parallel mediation examining connectedness to community, nation, humanity, and nature.

Abundant psychological research demonstrates bivariate relationships between individual prosocial propensity, intrinsic connectedness to various social domains, and the enactment of prosocial behavior. More recently, "connectedness" has been positioned as a necessary domain-specific motivator for enacting prosocial propensity in relevant domains of concern. Our study offers novel contributions to this theory by examining the role of connectedness in driving prosocial behavior within a humanitarian domain in which behavior is enacted in the interest of the global community. Additionally, our research uniquely considers connectedness to multiple social domains concurrently, in order to disentangle any covariance that may be impacting research findings. A parallel mediation model with four mediators (connectedness to community, nation, humanity, and nature) was applied to better understand the effect of prosocial propensity (honesty-humility) on humanitarian prosocial behavior. The cross-sectional survey was completed by 715 Australian adults, and support was found for mediation via each of the mediators. Specifically, connectedness to community, to humanity, and to nature each positively affected the relationship between prosocial propensity and prosocial behavior, with the largest effect via connectedness to humanity. Contrastingly, connectedness to nation negatively mediated this relationship, despite being positively correlated with these constructs. These findings highlight the individual difference underpinnings of humanitarian prosocial behaviors and the role of connection to relevant domains in behavior actualization. Fostering connectedness to humanity remains desirable to promote global prosocial outcomes, with future research needed on the interplay between these related levels of connectedness and between connectedness to one's nation and global humanitarian engagement.

Analytic cognitive style is inversely related to meat consumption

The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) is a widely used measure of individual propensity to rely on analytic thinking. This measure is consistently related to decision-making tasks, beliefs and real-life decision outcomes and also inversely related to conformist and mindless decision making. Drawing from previous studies showing that food choices are related to cognitive style, we hypothesised that an analytic cognitive style would be inversely related to meat consumption and beliefs supporting meat eating. In two highly powered studies (total N = 7283), we investigated the relationship between the CRT and meat consumption and associated beliefs, controlling for relevant demographics. Our results showed that a higher CRT score predicted self-identification as vegetarian, exclusion of meat and fish from diet and lower belief that meat consumption is normal and necessary for health (study 1). This link remained when need for cognition and self-esteem were introduced as concurrent predictors (study 2). Despite a small observed effect size, these results confirm the relevance of the CRT for investigating consequential decision making and habits.

How public trust and healthcare quality relate to blood donation behavior: Cross-cultural evidence.

Blood donors are indispensable for enabling a myriad of medical procedures and treatments. We examined how public trust in the healthcare system and healthcare quality relate to individuals' likelihood of donating blood, using survey data from representative samples of 28 European countries (N = 27,868). Our preregistered analyses revealed that country-level public trust, but not healthcare quality, predicted individual propensity to donate blood. Notably, public trust decreased over time in many countries, while healthcare quality increased. Our results highlight the role of subjective perceptions of the healthcare system, rather than the objective state of healthcare, for blood donation behavior in Europe.

Arrested development: relative school entry age and arrests during the teenage and young adult years

ABSTRACT A large literature documents that there are significant academic and non-academic differences between the youngest and oldest students in a school cohort. This paper investigates if being the youngest in a cohort has any impact on an individual's propensity to commit crime by utilizing a data set that contains over 4 million arrest records spanning a 20-year period in California. While I find no persistent effect on the probability of arrest, the youngest students in a cohort have a higher risk of arrest for certain offenses at age 14, corresponding to the age when they would transition to high school.

It’s All about Timing: Captive Targeting through Mobile Ads

How would consumers respond to mobile ads in spatially and temporally bounded captive environments? We theorize that consumers who are forced to wait are likely to perceive an abundance of time and ultimately become more responsive to mobile ads. To test our theory, we conducted three studies following a multimethod approach. In Study 1, a large-scale field study (n = 66,473), we found a relationship between captivity and receptiveness to mobile ads in transit. In Study 2, a lab experiment, we extended our findings by revealing that time perception mediated the relationship between captivity and intention to click on mobile ads. Last, in Study 3, we tested boredom and individual propensities to use time efficiently as underlying mediating and moderating conditions for captivity’s effect. Overall, the results have implications for advertising practitioners and researchers examining context-based mobile targeting.

Edge-centric functional network predicts risk propensity in economic decision-making: evidence from a resting-state fMRI study.

Despite node-centric studies revealing an association between resting-state functional connectivity and individual risk propensity, the prediction of future risk decisions remains undetermined. Herein, we applied a recently emerging edge-centric method, the edge community similarity network (ECSN), to alternatively describe the community structure of resting-state brain activity and to probe its contribution to predicting risk propensity during gambling. Results demonstrated that inter-individual variability of risk decisions correlates with the inter-subnetwork couplings spanning the visual network (VN) and default mode network (DMN), cingulo-opercular task control network, and sensory/somatomotor hand network (SSHN). Particularly, participants who have higher community similarity of these subnetworks during the resting state tend to choose riskier and higher yielding bets. And in contrast to low-risk propensity participants, those who behave high-risky show stronger couplings spanning the VN and SSHN/DMN. Eventually, based on the resting-state ECSN properties, the risk rate during the gambling task is effectively predicted by the multivariable linear regression model at the individual level. These findings provide new insights into the neural substrates of the inter-individual variability in risk propensity and new neuroimaging metrics to predict individual risk decisions in advance.

Factors Influencing Information Adoption From Social Media About COVID-19 by Saudi Citizens.

Social networking sites comprise an open world where anyone can share different types of information. During the Covid-19 pandemic, people's social isolation made social media particularly important, and it has emerged as an important platform for sharing health information. The credibility of the information, however, is questionable. Therefore, this study aims to understand attitudes towards using social media as an information source among social media users in Saudi Arabia. Specifically, it seeks to examine the propensity of individuals towards using health information from social media platforms and whether individuals demographic factors (such as gender) impact information adoption. Based on using an online questionnaire incorporating a novel vignette design to measure participants’ perceptions of information sources on social media platforms. The findings revealed that there is a high use of social media platforms among the Saudi population and that verified accounts on social media platforms, same gender and nationality positively affect the propensity towards adopting information.