Multiple Subcategories Research Articles

Incorporating client perspectives: moving towards digital outcome measurement in pediatric speech-language pathology

ABSTRACT Caregivers’ needs and preferences regarding outcome measurement in pediatric speech-language pathology are not well-understood, but are critical to the development and implementation of meaningful clinical tools. This project engaged caregivers of preschoolers with speech, language and communication needs to understand their views on the potential for, and their preferences surrounding a digital version of one participation-focused outcome measure called the Focus on the Outcomes of Communication Under Six (FOCUS-34). Fifteen caregivers of preschoolers who were receiving services in a large health system participated in one of four 30–60-minute virtual focus groups or one of three individual interviews. Caregivers shared their perceptions of whether and how a digital FOCUS-34 may improve their service experience, and their preferred features and formats to make it useful. An inductive content analysis was used to identify relevant categories that described caregivers’ perspectives. Data were sorted into two categories: (1) caregivers believe a digital solution would improve their service experience, and (2) caregivers want a user-friendly digital FOCUS-34 to measure and give feedback on intervention outcomes. Multiple sub-categories were also identified, which further described caregivers’ views on how a digital measure would improve the feasibility of outcome measurement, family engagement in services, and transparent communication with providers. Sub-categories also outlined caregivers’ preferences for the features and functions of a digital measure and their suggested considerations for developers of the digital tool. Results provide new insight into caregivers’ perspectives on digital outcome measurement and will inform efforts to improve the utility of the FOCUS-34 for families.

A Typology of Psychological Mechanisms Underlying Prosocial Decisions

This theoretical article summarizes the various psychological and motivational processes that underlie prosocial decision-making. To this aim, we propose a novel way to organize and synthesize research related to emotions, thoughts, and beliefs (i.e., psychological mechanisms) that motivate or demotivate human prosociality. This is done with a new typology including four overarching interrelated categories, each encompassing multiple subcategories: (a) emotions; (b) moral principles; (c) anticipated impact; and (d) anticipated personal consequences. We highlight differences and commonalities to other influential frameworks and showcase how the proposed typology can help researchers and practitioners better differentiate and understand the diverse psychological mechanisms that underlie human prosociality.

A Comparison of Throwing Arm Kinetics and Ball Velocity in High School Pitchers With Overall Fast and Overall Slow Cumulative Joint and Segment Velocities

Background: Individual maximum joint and segment angular velocities have shown positive associations with throwing arm kinetics and ball velocity in baseball pitchers. Purpose: To observe how cumulative maximum joint and segment angular velocities, irrespective of sequence, affect ball velocity and throwing arm kinetics in high school pitchers. Study Design: Descriptive laboratory study. Methods: High school (n = 55) pitchers threw 8 to 12 fastball pitches while being evaluated with 3-dimensional motion capture (480 Hz). Maximum joint and segment angular velocities (lead knee extension, pelvis rotation, trunk rotation, shoulder internal rotation, and forearm pronation) were calculated for each pitcher. Pitchers were classified as overall fast, overall slow, or high velocity for each joint or segment velocity subcategory, or as population, with any pitcher eligible to be included in multiple subcategories. Kinematic and kinetic parameters were compared among the various subgroups using t tests with post hoc regressions and multivariable regression models created to predict throwing arm kinetics and ball velocity, respectively. Results: The lead knee extension and pelvis rotation velocity subgroups achieved significantly higher normalized elbow varus torque (P = .016) and elbow flexion torque (P = .018) compared with population, with equivalent ball velocity (P = .118). For every 1-SD increase in maximum pelvis rotation velocity (87 deg/s), the normalized elbow distractive force increased by 4.7% body weight (BW) (B = 0.054; β = 0.290; P = .013). The overall fast group was older (mean ± standard deviation, 16.9 ± 1.4 vs 15.4 ± 0.9 years; P = .007), had 8.9-mph faster ball velocity (32.7 ± 3.1 vs 28.7 ± 2.3 m/s; P = .002), and had significantly higher shoulder internal rotation torque (63.1 ± 17.4 vs 43.6 ± 12.0 Nm; P = .005), elbow varus torque (61.8 ± 16.4 vs 41.6 ± 11.4 Nm; P = .002), and elbow flexion torque (46.4 ± 12.0 vs 29.5 ± 6.8 Nm; P < .001) compared with the overall slow group. A multiregression model for ball velocity based on maximum joint and segment angular velocities and anthropometrics predicted 53.0% of variance. Conclusion: High school pitchers with higher maximum joint and segment velocities, irrespective of sequence, demonstrated older age and faster ball velocity at the cost of increased throwing shoulder and elbow kinetics. Clinical Relevance: Pitchers and coaching staff should consider this trade-off between faster ball velocity and increasing throwing arm kinetics, an established risk factor for elbow injury.

An Analysis of Intrapitch Variation in Joint and Segment Velocities With Throwing Arm Kinetics in High School and Professional Baseball Pitchers

Background: Improper sequencing order of maximal joint and segment velocities has been identified as an important predictor for both throwing arm kinetics and ball velocity. Purpose: To investigate the intrapitcher variation of maximal segment velocities and the relationship to throwing arm kinetics and ball velocity in high school (HS) and professional (PRO) pitchers. Study Design: Descriptive laboratory study. Methods: HS (n = 59) and PRO (n = 338) pitchers, instructed to throw 8 to 12 fastball pitches, were evaluated with 3-dimensional motion capture (480 Hz). Maximal joint and segment velocities were calculated for each pitch, and the standard deviation of the maxima was calculated per pitcher. These standard deviations were used to classify pitchers as “low variance” or “high variance” for each segmental velocity subgroup, “overall low variance” or “overall high variance” based on cumulative segment velocity variation, or “population,” with any pitcher eligible to be included in multiple subcategories. Maximal velocities and throwing arm kinetics were compared among the various subgroups. Results: The HS low-variance shoulder internal rotation velocity subgroup (4949 ± 642 deg/s) had significantly lower maximal shoulder internal rotation velocity compared with HS population (5774 ± 1057 deg/s) (P < .001); similar findings were observed for PROs (5269 ± 835 vs 5824 ± 1076 deg/s; P < .001), as well as lower shoulder superior force compared with the PRO population (14.8% ± 8.8% vs 17.8% ± 8.8% body weight; P = .001). The PRO low-variance lead knee extension velocity subgroup had significantly lower maximal lead knee extension velocity (216 ± 135 vs 258 ± 125 deg/s; P = .001) and shoulder distractive force (111.5% ± 14.4% vs 115.6% ± 15.9% body weight; P = .003) compared with the PRO population. The PRO overall low-variance subgroup had significantly lower shoulder distractive force (111.8% ± 14.1% vs 119.6% ± 15.5% body weight; P = .008) and elbow anterior force (40.6% ± 5.0% vs 43.6% ± 6.2% body weight; P = .008) compared with the PRO overall high-variance subgroup. Conclusion: HS and PRO pitchers with low variance for joint and segment velocities achieved significantly lower maximal velocities in the subgroup of interest, while preserving ball velocity. PRO pitchers with overall low variance among multiple maximal joint and segment velocities demonstrated decreased shoulder distractive and elbow anterior force. Clinical Relevance: PRO pitchers with low intrapitch variation in maximal joint and segment velocities may be viewed as kinetically conservative throwers. These pitchers with similarly maintained mechanics between pitches may have an increasingly regimented form that preserves kinetic forces about the throwing arm. The opposite may be true for PRO pitchers with increased variability in segmental velocities during their pitching motion, as they showed increased throwing arm kinetics including shoulder distractive and elbow anterior force compared with the overall low-variance group, theoretically increasing their risk of injury.

Reporting of Complications in Rhinoplasty Randomized Controlled Trials: An Analysis Using the CONSORT Extension for Harms Checklist.

This study aimed to assess the completeness of adverse event (AE) reporting in randomized control trials (RCTs) focused on rhinoplasty, using the Consolidated Standards for Reporting (CONSORT) Extension for Harms checklist. A cross-sectional design was employed to review RCTs related to rhinoplasty published between January 1, 2005, and January 28, 2022. The study analyzed clinical trials on rhinoplasty retrieved from PubMed. We performed a comprehension search on PubMed, blind and duplicate screening, and data extraction. Adherence to the 18 recommendations of the CONSORT Extension for Harms was evaluated, with 1 point assigned for each adhered item. Percent adherence was calculated based on the 18 points, taking into account the multiple subcategories within some recommendations. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize adherence-including frequencies, percentages, and 95% confidence intervals. Our search returned 240 articles, of which 56 met inclusion criteria. No RCTs adhered to all 18 CONSORT Extension for Harms items. Twenty-six (26/56, 46.4%) adhered to ≥50% of the items, and 30 (30/56, 53.6%) adhered to ≥33.3% of the items. Seven (7/56, 12.5%) RCTs adhered to no items. Across all RCTs, the average number of CONSORT-Harms items adhered to was 7.2 (7.2/18, 40.0%). The most adhered to item was item 10.Discussion balanced with regard to efficacy and AEs (80.4%, [70.0-90.8]). This study highlights the inadequacy of AE reporting in rhinoplasty RCTs according to CONSORT-Harms guidelines. Urgent efforts are required to bridge this reporting gap and enhance transparency in surgical research, ultimately safeguarding patient well-being.

SIM-OFE: Structure Information Mining and Object-Aware Feature Enhancement for Fine-Grained Visual Categorization.

Fine-grained visual categorization (FGVC) aims to distinguish visual objects from multiple subcategories of the coarse-grained category. Subtle inter-class differences among various subcategories make the FGVC task more challenging. Existing methods primarily focus on learning salient visual patterns while ignoring how to capture the object's internal structure, causing difficulty in obtaining complete discriminative regions within the object to limit FGVC performance. To address the above issue, we propose a Structure Information Mining and Object-aware Feature Enhancement (SIM-OFE) method for fine-grained visual categorization, which explores the visual object's internal structure composition and appearance traits. Concretely, we first propose a simple yet effective hybrid perception attention module for locating visual objects based on global-scope and local-scope significance analyses. Then, a structure information mining module is proposed to model the distribution and context relation of critical regions within the object, highlighting the whole object and discriminative regions for distinguishing subtle differences. Finally, an object-aware feature enhancement module is proposed to combine global-scope and local-scope discriminative features in an attentive coupling way for powerful visual representations in fine-grained recognition. Extensive experiments on three FGVC benchmark datasets demonstrate that our proposed SIM-OFE method can achieve state-of-the-art performance.

Text classification algorithm of tourist attractions subcategories with modified TF-IDF and Word2Vec.

Text classification, as an important research area of text mining, can quickly and effectively extract valuable information to address the challenges of organizing and managing large-scale text data in the era of big data. Currently, the related research on text classification tends to focus on the application in fields such as information filtering, information retrieval, public opinion monitoring, and library and information, with few studies applying text classification methods to the field of tourist attractions. In light of this, a corpus of tourist attraction description texts is constructed using web crawler technology in this paper. We propose a novel text representation method that combines Word2Vec word embeddings with TF-IDF-CRF-POS weighting, optimizing traditional TF-IDF by incorporating total relative term frequency, category discriminability, and part-of-speech information. Subsequently, the proposed algorithm respectively combines seven commonly used classifiers (DT, SVM, LR, NB, MLP, RF, and KNN), known for their good performance, to achieve multi-class text classification for six subcategories of national A-level tourist attractions. The effectiveness and superiority of this algorithm are validated by comparing the overall performance, specific category performance, and model stability against several commonly used text representation methods. The results demonstrate that the newly proposed algorithm achieves higher accuracy and F1-measure on this type of professional dataset, and even outperforms the high-performance BERT classification model currently favored by the industry. Acc, marco-F1, and mirco-F1 values are respectively 2.29%, 5.55%, and 2.90% higher. Moreover, the algorithm can identify rare categories in the imbalanced dataset and exhibit better stability across datasets of different sizes. Overall, the algorithm presented in this paper exhibits superior classification performance and robustness. In addition, the conclusions obtained by the predicted value and the true value are consistent, indicating that this algorithm is practical. The professional domain text dataset used in this paper poses higher challenges due to its complexity (uneven text length, relatively imbalanced categories), and a high degree of similarity between categories. However, this proposed algorithm can efficiently implement the classification of multiple subcategories of this type of text set, which is a beneficial exploration of the application research of complex Chinese text datasets in specific fields, and provides a useful reference for the vector expression and classification of text datasets with similar content.

Unpacking micro-CSR through a computational literature review: An identity heterogeneity view of internal stakeholders

The role of individuals in corporate social responsibility (CSR), or micro-CSR, has garnered increasing scholarly attention. This emphasis of this research is on internal stakeholders (i.e., employees) who design, implement, and structure CSR activities. While theoretically internal stakeholders contain multiple sub-categories of employees (e.g., top management, middle-level managers, or lower-level employees), extant micro-CSR literature has taken a homogenous view of internal stakeholders – that is, it ignores the critical hierarchical and socio-psychological differences among employees. To provide a comprehensive view of micro-CSR scholarship, we employ a novel computational literature review design to analyse the abstracts of 461 research articles published between 1970 and 2021. Our further in-depth analysis of 190 representative papers unravels how micro-CSR research is fragmented and clustered across four sub-fields within management sciences – organisational behaviour, human resource management, corporate governance, and leadership. Building on an identity heterogeneity view of internal stakeholders, we propose a comprehensive research agenda to advance micro-CSR research.

Perception Analysis of Indian TV Reality Shows: Perspective of Viewers

Newspapers, popular magazines, radio, and television are examples of mass media that influence and reach enormous audiences. Television is a significant and powerful medium for mass communication. People are facilitated by television's moving pictures, which also demand attention and ultimately impact people's attitudes and actions. Audiences today prefer watching live reality shows to watching dramatic, emotionally charged television. Research of the perception analysis of Indian TV Reality programmes The Perspective of the Viewers is offered in order to comprehend the common opinions of the audiences regarding the impact of Reality TV shows on Society and their viewership. Non-fiction and fiction are the There are two primary categories of television material, each of which has multiple subcategories. Reality programmes are presented as entertainment content in the non-fiction genre, as opposed to enacted fictional events. The road to fame and fortune may be made easier by taking part in TV shows. Via Television Rating Points (TRP) and support across multiple social media platforms, controversies can reach a big audience. Channels can use viewer’s emotions in both beneficial and harmful ways. Many viewers do not understand the producers intent. The authenticity of reality TV shows has been a topic of discussion. Hence, in the current study, an effort has been made to understand how viewers view the programming elements employed in TV shows. A study was conducted in India among people between the ages of 16 and 50. As viewers frequently engage in them, get more enjoyment from the content, and enjoy them, it proves that reality television shows have a substantial impact on society.

Characteristics of goal-setting tools in adult rehabilitation: A scoping review

Objectives This scoping review aims to map the literature on goal-setting tools in adult rehabilitation, exploring their characteristics, target users and supporting evidence to inform practice and future research in this area. Methods We completed a comprehensive search of four databases to identify relevant articles on tools for goal setting in rehabilitation. We followed Arkey and O’Malley's scoping review process to guide article selection, data extraction and data analysis. Results We identified a total of 165 studies that reported on 55 different goal-setting tools, including tools for goal selection and goal documentation (n = 31), goal setting and intervention planning (n = 15), and for measuring the quality of the goal-setting process (n = 9). Over half of the tools were primarily designed for use in rehabilitation of physical disabilities (n = 32). Some tools fell under multiple sub-categories based on their characteristics as follows: 22 framework tools, 12 interview tools, 9 outcome measurement tools for goal achievement, 6 outcome measurement tools for goal quality and 25 documentation tools. The majority of goal-setting instruments targeted goals at the level of activity and participation (n = 51) and aimed to facilitate a client-centred or shared decision-making approach to rehabilitation planning (n = 46). Conclusions This study provides a comprehensive overview of existing goal-setting tools, highlighting their characteristics, target users and identified needs. These findings can enhance practitioners’ awareness of the range of goal-setting tools available and can enable more effective utilization of these tools in clinical practice. Further research should investigate how clinicians can combine multiple tools to deliver goal setting.

1288 Animated Patient Information Videos to Enhance Understanding of Free Functional Muscle Transfer Surgery for Dynamic Treatment of Facial Palsy

Abstract Aim Facial palsy affects approximately 25-30 per 100,000 people a year causing physical and psychological symptoms including facial asymmetry, a lack of facial expression, oral incompetence, difficulties in articulation and reduced quality of life. The treatment of choice for many patients is free functional muscle transfer (FFMT), a highly complex surgery. Due to the complexity, patients’ ability to understand and retain information during traditional consultations poses a barrier to truly informed consent. Our study aims to utilise animated patient videos and integrated messaging platform to improve patients’ understanding of FFMT surgery, its potential complications, and recovery period. Method We developed a new electronic adjunct for patients undergoing FFMT surgery to complement the traditional consent process. The platform employs narrated animations and secure integrated messaging service for patients to directly communicate with their surgeon. A multilingual narrative script, suitable for all ages, complements the animations outlining the details of FFMT surgery in multiple subcategories including scar placement, wound care and signs to identify complications. Results We will present a series of patient information videos from 7 subcategories covering all portions of FFMT surgery, demonstrate the ease of use of the messaging platform and summarise the feedback collected. Conclusions We have successfully developed an electronic patient information platform to support the traditional informed consent process for FFMT as a treatment of facial palsy which increases patients’ understanding and engagement. Patients can review every step of their journey, from first entering the hospital until the end of rehabilitation, at their own pace, and as frequently as required.

Resilience of Living Streets in Small and Medium-Sized Towns: A Grounded Theory Study of Yixing, China

In the context of the global fine-grained urban renewal initiative, living streets closely related to people’s lives have become a hot topic. This study provides a comprehensive framework for addressing prominent issues such as the limited adaptability and inability to accommodate development in living streets. It explores the value and design innovation points of incorporating resilience concepts in the renewal of living streets. Taking the living streets in Yixing, Jiangsu Province, as an example, the grounded theory approach was employed to conduct in-depth interviews and three-level coding of the data to systematically elucidate the influencing factors and implementation paths of resilience in living streets. The study reveals that the resilient development of living streets is influenced and constrained by six factors: positive values, demand factors, spatial environment, contextual factors, operation and management, and resilience characteristics. Each of these six main dimensions encompasses multiple subcategories and the factors influencing living streets’ resilience through different mechanisms. Building upon the guidance-demand-design-context-operation pathway model for enhancing the resilience of living streets in small and medium-sized towns in the Jiangnan region, the study proposes new perspectives such as correct orientation, adaptability to change, and a balance between rigidity and flexibility tailored explicitly to the enhancement of resilience in living streets. These novel perspectives contribute to the theoretical research achievements on the resilience development of living streets in small and medium-sized towns in the Jiangnan region of China to a certain extent. Furthermore, these findings hold significant implications for attaining SDG11, which emphasizes sustainable urban development.

‘How Can I Love You if You Don’t Let Me Do this?’ Evaluating the Effects of the Red Pill Seduction Community Experienced by Intimate Partners

ABSTRACT The Red Pill (TRP) is an online antifeminist seduction community, which encourages its members to employ their beliefs and manipulation strategies in offline relationships. Though previous studies have evaluated online TRP communities and their discourse, this study represents the first investigation of the impacts of TRP practices on intimate partners engaged in physical, offline relationships with TRP men. Six in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with women who had formerly been romantic partners with TRP men. Analysis revealed four primary themes: (1) technology use, (2) maltreatment, (3) social beliefs, and (4) long-term effects, each with multiple subcategories. TRP was used by male partners both as a basis for controlling many elements of participants’ lives, as well as a basis for their own beliefs about gender, sexuality, and politics. Despite differences in ages, lengths of relationships, and geographic locations of participants, commonalities were found in their experiences of various forms of maltreatment. As a result, participants expressed high levels of ongoing mistrust toward dating and other men. Findings suggest that TRP exists as a form of intimate partner violence spreading via the internet while masking as a seduction or self-help system, and that its risks are not limited to online spaces. Results may inform future research in order to generate greater awareness and potential prevention strategies for TRP-affected populations.

A Survey on Seismic Sensor based Target Detection, Localization, Identification, and Activity Recognition

Current sensor technologies facilitate device-free and non-invasive monitoring of target activities and infrastructures to ensure a safe and inhabitable environment. Device-free techniques for sensing the surrounding environment are an emerging area of research where a target does not need to carry or attach any device to provide information about its motion or the surrounding environment. Consequently, there has been an increasing interest in device-free sensing. Seismic sensors are extremely effective tools for gathering target motion information. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of the seismic sensor-based device-free sensing process and highlight the key techniques within the research field. We classify the existing literature into three categories, viz., (i) target detection, (ii) target localization, and (iii) target identification, and activity recognition. The techniques in each category are divided into multiple subcategories in a structured manner to comprehensively discuss the details. We also discuss the challenges associated with contemporary cutting-edge research and suggest potential solutions.

Granularity-aware distillation and structure modeling region proposal network for fine-grained image classification

Fine-grained visual classification (FGVC) aims to identify objects belonging to multiple sub-categories of the same super-category. The key to solving fine-grained classification problems is to learn discriminative visual feature representation with only subtle differences. Although previous work based on refined feature learning has made great progress, however, high-level semantic features often lack key information for fine-grained visual object nuances. How to efficiently integrate semantic information of different granularities from classification networks is a critical. In this paper, we propose Granularity-aware Distillation and Structure Modeling region Proposal Network(GDSMP-Net). Our solution integrates multi-granularity hierarchical information through a multi-granularity fusion learning strategy to enhance feature representation. In view of the inherent challenges of large intra-class differences in FGVC, a cross-layer self-distillation regularization is proposed to to strengthen the connection between high-level semantics and low-level semantics for robust multi-granularity feature learning. On this basis, we use a weakly supervised method to generate local branches, and the collaborative learning of discriminative semantics and structural semantics based on local regions, facilitating model to perceive contextual information to capture structural interactions between local semantics. Comprehensive experiments show that our method achieves state-of-the-art performance on four widely-used challenging datasets.(CUB-200-2011, Stanford Cars, FGVC-Aircraft and NA-birds).

Cultural barriers and facilitators for transformative nursing curriculum transformation

Successful transformative nursing curriculum implementation can be sustained when the contextual culture is considered. However, implementing a transformative curriculum is met with macro-level challenges with implications for the nursing profession and particularly nursing education. Macro-level challenges include the 4th industrial revolution, socio-political, economic, health trends, and cultural aspects. Inadvertently, culture seems to be an unexplored phenomenon regarding its influence on transformative nursing curriculum implementation. Therefore, the study was aimed at exploring congruency between Basotho culture and transformative nursing curriculum implementation. The intended objectives for this study were to identify the similarities between the Basotho culture and the student-centred approach, and also to establish the related stumbling blocks that impede CBC implementation.A qualitative explorative interpretative approach was used, and a Kawa model was adopted and adapted from clinical use to a data collection tool. The Kawa model uses a river metaphor to explore individuals’ socio-cultural interaction with society and the environmental factors which influence their life flow, therefore likened to educational flow. The adopted Kawa constructs are the ‘river flow’, ‘riverbanks’, ‘rocks, ‘driftwoods’ and ‘spaces’. The sample comprised 14 purposively selected nurse educators. Aligned with Kawa constructs, findings showed multiple subcategories and two themes, namely: ‘power’ and ‘cultural vitality’. The identified cultural barriers and facilitative aspects could be applied during transformative nursing curriculum implementation. Further research is recommended to co-construct a culturally conducive continuous professional development framework to support nurse educators to sustain a transformative nursing curriculum.

Mid-frequency song and low-frequency calls of sei whales in the Falkland Islands.

Although sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis) are distributed throughout the globe, their behaviour and vocal repertoire are poorly described. We used passive acoustic monitoring to describe the vocal behaviour of sei whales in the Falkland Islands, between December 2018 and April 2019. We isolated more than 2000 low-frequency calls for manual classification, of which 510 calls with high signal-to-noise ratio were quantitatively measured. Five categories of stereotyped call types in the 15-230 Hz range were described, some with multiple subcategories. These included some similar to previously described calls (e.g. downsweeps), but others that were novel in acoustic structure and frequency band. In the mid-frequency range, we documented a highly stereotyped, hierarchically structured and rhythmically repetitive song display. Songs were arranged in phrases with a structure composed of repetitive sub-phrases, and a diverse variety of sounds in the 1-5 kHz range. Singing commenced in late February, despite the presence of whales and calls since early December, and continued through April. These acoustic properties and behavioural characteristics indicate that this is likely a male breeding display similar to songs and singing of other balaenopterids. This is the first detailed description of a song display for sei whales, highlighting the importance of the Falkland Islands.

Aggression in a western Amazonian colonial spider, Philoponella republicana (Araneae: Uloboridae)

Group-living spiders are rare, and can be divided into multiple subcategories based on their tolerance of group mates. While social spiders are cooperative, colonial spiders are often antagonistic towards conspecifics. We examined colony dynamics in a colonial species, Philoponella republicana (Simon, 1891), focusing on aggressive behaviors to further understand this understudied species. We studied whether web region, sex ratio, web size, or spider size affected aggression. We also tested whether colony members discriminate against conspecific intruders, since this behavior, known as group closure, is prevalent in many other group-living animals but had not yet been tested in colonial spiders. Colony mates were often aggressive due to competition for limited resources, such as mates and orb webs, yet several characteristics of this species may reduce these competitive forces. First, female-biased secondary sex ratios appear to reduce male-male and female-male competition. Moreover, although some individuals defended orb webs, other areas in the communal web were not defended. Philoponella republicana also did not exhibit group closure. Our results further confirm that aggression between males decreases in colonies with more female-biased secondary sex ratios, and larger individuals correlate with a higher frequency of aggressive interactions. Moreover, we raise new questions concerning the evolutionary pressures that shape coloniality in spiders.

Long COVID Symptomatology After 12 Months and Its Impact on Quality of Life According to Initial Coronavirus Disease 2019 Disease Severity.

Background“Long COVID” is characterized by a variety of symptoms and an important burden for affected people. Our objective was to describe long COVID symptomatology according to initial coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) severity.MethodsPredi-COVID cohort study participants, recruited at the time of acute COVID-19 infection, completed a detailed 12-month symptom and quality of life questionnaire. Frequencies and co-occurrences of symptoms were assessed.ResultsAmong the 289 participants who fully completed the 12-month questionnaire, 59.5% reported at least 1 symptom, with a median of 6 symptoms. Participants with an initial moderate or severe acute illness declared more frequently 1 or more symptoms (82.6% vs 38.6%, P < .001) and had on average 6.8 more symptoms (95% confidence interval, 4.18–9.38) than initially asymptomatic participants who developed symptoms after the acute infection. Overall, 12.5% of the participants could not envisage coping with their symptoms in the long term. Frequently reported symptoms, such as neurological and cardiovascular symptoms, but also less frequent ones such as gastrointestinal symptoms, tended to cluster.ConclusionsFrequencies and burden of symptoms present 12 months after acute COVID-19 infection increased with the severity of the acute illness. Long COVID likely consists of multiple subcategories rather than a single entity. This work will contribute to the better understanding of long COVID and to the definition of precision health strategies.Clinical Trials RegistrationNCT04380987.

Short- and long-term evaluation of disease-specific symptoms and quality of life following uterine artery embolization of fibroids

BackgroundThe purpose of this study is to evaluate uterine artery embolization (UAE) for the management of symptomatic uterine leiomyomas regarding changes in quality of life after treatment in a large patient collective. This study retrospectively analyzed prospectively acquired standardized questionnaires of patients treated with UAE. Clinical success was evaluated before and after embolization. Patients were stratified into short- (≤ 7 months) and long-term (> 7 months) follow-up groups depending on the time of completion of the post-interventional questionnaire. Uterine leiomyomas were furthermore divided into small (< 10 cm) and large (≥ 10 cm) tumors based on the diameter of the dominant fibroid.ResultsA total of 245 patients were included into the final data analysis. The Kaplan–Meier analysis showed a cumulative clinical success rate of 75.8% after 70 months until the end of follow-up (9.9 years). All questionnaire subscales showed a highly significant clinical improvement from baseline to short- and long-term follow-up (p < 0.001). Patients with small fibroids showed a significantly better response to UAE in multiple subcategories of the questionnaire than patients with fibroids ≥ 10 cm who had a twofold higher probability of re-intervention in the Cox-regression model.ConclusionsUAE is an effective treatment method for symptomatic fibroids that leads to quick relief of fibroid-related symptoms with marked improvement of quality of life and is associated with a low risk for re-interventions. Patients with small fibroids tend to show a better response to UAE compared to patients with large fibroids.Trial registration Charité institutional review board, EA4/167/20. Registered 27 November 2020—Retrospectively registered. https://ethikkommission.charite.de/