When animals explore a novel environment, they often aggregate in groups rather than staying isolated to reduce the risks of predation. This effect is known as ‘safety in numbers’ and has been widely reported in terrestrial and aquatic species. Jellyfish are often found to be clustered in the same areas in seas and oceans. Here, we asked whether one reason for such behavior might be the tendency to actively join other conspecifics when encountering novel environments. We observed moon jellyfish (Aurelia spp.) in a free-choice test measuring the proportion of time spent near conspecifics when they are inserted into an unfamiliar environment. We found evidence that jellyfish detect the presence of other conspecifics and use this information to actively direct their behavior in a given direction. Contrary to what was expected by the ‘safety in numbers’ effect, moon jellyfish have significantly distanced themselves from their social companions throughout the whole observation period. This result suggests that, although moon jellyfish are commonly observed in large aggregates in nature due to various environmental factors, they may exhibit limited social behavior in unfamiliar environments.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10071-025-02023-3.

With ever increasing complexity in clinical studies and development programmes, clear and informative reporting of safety data is now more important than ever. The medical writer has a key role in guiding the team on the best approach for communicating the key safety findings. This article reviews strategies the writer can use when developing clinical study report safety sections and the Common Technical Document Module 2.7.4 Summary of Clinical Safety.

Abstract Applied behavior analysis is a quantitative field. We calculate frequency of responses per minute, percentage of incorrect and correct responses, percentage of agreement across raters on a regular basis. The safety in numbers can be comfortable—they are clear and objective. However, numbers do not provide the whole picture of a person’s experience. Qualitative approaches provide valuable insights into the lived experience of people. Yet, undertaking qualitative approaches can be scary for those of us in a quantitative field. The subjective data and findings can be extremely challenging to navigate. There is also the matter of feeling like an imposter or a fraud. In this personal narrative inquiry, I tell my story of embracing qualitative approaches as a behavior analyst, the challenges and the surprising discoveries of the depths this data could help us reach. The relevance of qualitative approaches lies in understanding how various qualitative methods and approaches can enhance our understanding of lived experience. Some points about qualitative research are drawn out for context, and my personal experience is explored to show the journey, joys, and challenges of discovering and embracing qualitative research as a behavior analyst.

Background:Resident workload can significantly influence resident education, resident well-being, and patient care. Components of workload include duty hours and patient census, though their roles within the complexities of workload and subsequent effects remain underexplored. This scoping review aims to investigate how patient census impacts patient outcomes.Methods:Our scoping review searched multiple databases in April 2022 using a query framework that captured articles reporting the effect of inpatient service census on patient outcomes. English-language studies conducted in the United States were included. Three authors independently screened results, followed by full-text review. The data extracted contained study characteristics, characterization of census, patient outcomes, and intervention utilization.Results:Thirteen articles met the inclusion criteria. The majority of articles (92.3%) were published after 2003, the time of the initial Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education duty hour restrictions mandate. All studies were conducted in internal medicine programs. Most commonly studied outcomes were readmission, length of stay, mortality, quality and safety measures, and patient satisfaction. Five studies performed an intervention to optimize census, which included adding residents to the team and implementing census caps. The overall paucity and heterogeneity of the present literature led to variable findings on how census affects patient outcomes.Conclusions:There remains an incomplete understanding of the impact of patient census on patient outcomes and its role in workload, particularly among surgical specialties. Further efforts are needed to characterize the complexities of workload, compare differences in workload between surgical and nonsurgical specialties, and evaluate its impact on resident education, resident well-being, and patient care.

Road Safety is one of the critical issues globally Nepal, with rapid unplanned urbanization and growing road networks, has seen a tremendous rise in road casualties in road accidents. This study is an attempt to reveal the existing road safety situations of Nepal. Using the national dataset gathered by Nepal Government, this study examines the evolving road safety challenges of Nepal, focusing on vulnerable road users (VRUs) and systemic gaps. Using multi-year crash data from 2001 to 2024 and statistical analyses, it reveals that motorcycles account for over 50% of traffic crashes with young and middle-aged male drivers facing the highest fatality rates. Similarly, correlation analyses and severity index show that the vulnerability associated with two and three-wheelers is prevalent with instability and limited inbuilt safety features, whereas male above 25 years consistently followed by children below 6 years age are VRUs in Nepal. Early licensing, limited driver training and weak enforcement contribute to high crash involvement among youth. Pillion riders especially female remain at high risk due to low helmet use and lack of regulation. Child fatalities, proportionally lower than other groups, are linked to preventable conditions such as unsafe pedestrian zones and poor protective measures. The outdated transportation acts, absence of spatial crash data and poor local enforcement hinder targeted interventions. Furthermore, lack of proper road design and construction standards and practices, no road safety audit and safety inspection, little-to-zero communication campaigns on road safety, implementation gaps on road safety actions plans with adequate budget and institutional arrangement have exacerbated the road incidents in the country.

Research demonstrates a positive correlation between experiencing adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and negative outcomes in emerging adulthood. However, relatively little research has examined the potential effects of ACEs on a common experience in emerging adulthood: dating and establishing romantic relationships. This is especially true for troubled relationships. We extend this literature by examining a potential mechanism that might moderate the association between ACEs and intimate partner violence (IPV): family social capital. A large body of research establishes family social capital as a protective factor for positive child and youth development. We expand this research by examining how studying family systems might inform efforts to prevent IPV. However, the information, obligations, norms, and connections that make up family social capital may have more tenuous relationships with intimate partner violence, especially for people who have experienced ACEs. We developed a model to analyze this interaction using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). Add Health is a nationally representative study from the United States that initially sampled 20,745 adolescents in Wave 1. We use demographic and data from Wave 1 and IPV measures from Wave 3 data when respondents are in emerging adulthood (ages 18–26) (n = 15,701). We examine whether family social capital is associated with exposure to IPV, as well as whether family social capital can moderate the relationship between experiencing ACEs and exposure to IPV. Our results suggest some protective effects of family social capital on the emergence of IPV for both maternal and paternal social capital, but that family social capital does not fully moderate the damaging effects of ACEs.

Abstract This article examines the qualitative research methods employed to conduct fieldwork on a hard-to-reach and vulnerable population in Burma between June 2017 and December 2019. The study focuses on interviewing democracy activists, many of whom were former political prisoners, to investigate the motivations of “first movers”—individuals who initiate high-risk dissent in authoritarian regimes without the safety of numbers or the guarantee of support. The study employed a narrative-driven grounded theory approach to explore the question: In the high-risk environment of authoritarian regimes, why do some people dissent while others do not? While the substantive findings and theory will be discussed in a forthcoming publication, this article focuses on the research design encompassing data collection strategies, case selection, scope conditions, ethics, sampling methods (including a combination of purposive and snowball sampling), elicitation techniques, triangulation in qualitative analysis, and the critical importance of analytic reflexivity and researcher positionality. Key methodological decisions are synthesized into a qualitative research design checklist, providing a practical framework for scholars investigating similarly complex and sensitive topics. By sharing the challenges, strategies, and lessons learned, this article aims to contribute to the growing body of literature on qualitative methods for researching hard-to-reach populations and politically sensitive questions.

ABSTRACTThe literature on corruption, grounded in the principal‐agent framework, has long promoted transparency as a tool to reduce misconduct by improving oversight. Yet standard models assume that transparency either deters wrongdoing or, at worst, has no effect—they do not account for the possibility that it could increase corruption. This paper adopts an agent‐centered perspective, arguing that in settings with weak accountability, transparency influences outcomes only through its effects on bureaucrats, and may backfire by altering their beliefs about the risks of engaging in corruption. I test this argument in Vietnam, a single‐party regime with weak accountability mechanisms. Using data from 2011 to 2016 on citizen‐reported bribery across districts, I show that when province‐level transparency reports signal higher levels of corruption than local officials may have previously perceived, wrongdoing increases in the following year. The findings are consistent with a mechanism in which new information lowers the perceived risks associated with corrupt behavior. I rule out alternative explanations, including statistical reversion and citizen‐driven reporting effects, and show that the effects are strongest in areas where bureaucrats are more likely to be exposed to the information. These findings contribute to a growing literature that reconsiders the theoretical assumptions behind transparency reforms and identifies the conditions under which they may backfire.

The ‘Safety in Numbers’ (SIN) phenomenon suggests that pedestrian presence enhances the safety conditions of a street or an intersection. The inverse relationship, which we call ‘Numbers in Safety’ (NIS), hypothesises that safer streets attract more pedestrians. This study tests the relationship using a panel regression analysis on six years (2014-2019) of data from 21 intersections in the Melbourne CBD. We find a consistent negative correlation between the changes in safety from the previous year and the current number of pedestrians, supporting the NIS hypothesis. An increase of one pedestrian fatal or serious injury crash at an intersection leads to nearly 139,000 fewer pedestrians in the following year.

Investigating bicycle crash frequency, severity, and safety in numbers at signalized intersections in Utah using crowdsourced data

BackgroundEcological studies hypothesise a ‘safety in numbers’ (SiN) effect whereby road safety for bicycles and other micromobility users improves as their numbers increase, due to behavioural changes of motorists. Causal...

This study examines how and why base of the pyramid (BOP) political consumers make inequitable voting choices by herding their votes. A two-phase mixed-methods approach was adopted, using in-depth interviews and surveys, and structural equation modeling of the quantitative data. We conclude that, in the BOP political environment, dominated by vulnerability and coercion, the typical mechanism (i.e., developed economies) for voter choice based more on attitude→intention→behavior is altered to information→­coercion→attitude→herd behavior→intention. This study explains how BOP voters’ behavior is different in the context of developing economies, expanding our understanding of political consumption behavior in developing and underdeveloped democracies. The findings have significant implications for how parties and other stakeholders in developing economies might better serve their electorates. The study helps policymakers to adopt more appropriate strategies to protect BOP voters, especially from coercion, and thereby encourage voters to make less constrained choices when voting.

Safety in Numbers: Towards More Comprehensive Approaches to Difficult Risks

Safety in numbers.

How does street environment affect pedestrian crash risks? A link-level analysis using street view image-based pedestrian exposure measurement

Predation threat is a major driver of behavior in many prey species. Animals can recognize their relative risk of predation based on cues in the environment, including visual and/or chemical cues released by a predator or from its prey. When threat of predation is high, prey often respond by altering their behavior to reduce their probability of detection and/or capture. Here, we test how a clonal fish, the Amazon molly (Poecilia formosa), behaviorally responds to predation cues. We measured aggressive and social behaviors both under 'risk', where chemical cues from predatory fish and injured conspecifics were present, and control contexts (no risk cues present). We predicted that mollies would exhibit reduced aggression towards a simulated intruder and increased sociability under risk contexts as aggression might increase their visibility to a predator and shoaling should decrease their chance of capture through the dilution effect. As predicted, we found that Amazon mollies spent more time with a conspecific when risk cues were present, however they did not reduce their aggression. This highlights the general result of the 'safety in numbers' behavioral response that many small shoaling species exhibit, including these clonal fish, which suggests that mollies may view this response as a more effective anti-predator response compared to limiting their detectability by reducing aggressive conspecific interactions.

Safety-in-Numbers for route choice of bicycle trips: A choice experiment approach for commuters

Evolution of delayed dispersal with group size effect and population dynamics

Bluelined goatfish (Upeneichthys lineatus) rapidly change their body colour from a white horizontally banded pattern to a seemingly more conspicuous vertically banded red pattern, often when foraging. Given the apparent conspicuousness of the pattern to a range of observers, it seems unlikely that this colour change is used for camouflage and instead may be used for communication/signalling. Goatfish often drive multispecies associations, and it is possible that goatfish use this colour change as a foraging success signal to facilitate cooperation, increase food acquisition, and reduce predation risk through a 'safety in numbers' strategy. Using a novel approach, we deployed 3D model goatfish in different colour morphs-white without bands, white with black vertical bands, and white with red vertical bands-to determine whether the red colouration is an important component of the signal or if it is only the vertical banding pattern, regardless of colour, that fish respond to as an indicator of foraging success. Use of remote underwater video allowed us to obtain information without the influence of human observers on the communities and behaviours of other fish in response to these different colours exhibited by goatfish. We found that conspecifics were more abundant around the black- and red-banded model fish when compared with the white models. Conspecifics were also more likely to forage around the models than to pass or show attraction, but this was unaffected by model colour. No difference in the abundance and behaviour of associated heterospecifics around the different models was observed, perhaps due to the static nature of the models. Some species did, however, spend more time around the red- and black-banded fish, which suggests the change in colour may indicate benefits in addition to food resources. Overall, the results suggest that the body colour/pattern of U. lineatus is likely a signalling tool but further work is required to explore the benefits to both conspecifics and heterospecifics and to further determine the behavioural functions of rapid colour change in U. lineatus.

IntroductionEscaping predation is essential for species survival, but prey must effectively match their response to the perceived threat imposed by a predator. For social animals, one mechanism to reduce risk of predation is living in larger group sizes, which dilutes each individual's risk of capture. When a predator attacks, individuals from a range of taxa (e.g., fishes, sharks, and amphibians) perform an escape response, to evade the attack.MethodsUsing the schooling coral reef damselfish Chromis viridis, we assess if there is an optimal group size that maximizes both individual escape response performance as well as group cohesion and coordination following a simulated predator attack, comparing schools composed of four, eight, and sixteen fish. The escape response was assessed through simulated predator attacks, measuring escape latency, kinematics (average turning rate, and distance covered), and group dynamics (school cohesion and coordination). The experiments were conducted with varying group sizes to analyze the impact on escape performance and group behavior.ResultsWe found that fish in various group sizes exhibited no difference in their reaction timing to a simulated predator attack (i.e., escape latency), but larger groups exhibited slower kinematics (i.e., lower average turning rate and shorter distance covered during the escape response), potentially because larger groups perceived the predator attack as less risky due to safety in numbers. Both school cohesion and coordination (as measured through alignment and nearest neighbor distance, respectively) declined in the 100 ms after the predator's attack. While there was no impact of group size on alignment, larger group sizes exhibited closer nearest neighbor distances at all times.DiscussionThe findings suggest that larger group sizes in schooling coral reef fish may lead to energy conservation by displaying less costly behavioral responses to predator threats. This potential energy saving could be attributed to a higher threshold of perceived threat required to trigger a rapid escape response in larger groups. The study emphasizes the intricate interplay between individual and collective behaviors in response to predation and sheds light on the nuanced dynamics of group living in the face of predation.