Political campaigns widely use fear speech to appraise historically salient identity-based differences and mobilize voters. Despite ample literature to support fear speech's effectiveness in mobilizing collective violence, empirical evidence exploring its nuances and mechanisms in electoral contexts is limited. The current study examines online fear speech used by competing political candidates in the pre-electoral period during the 2021 State Assembly Elections in West Bengal, India. Using qualitative content analysis, we coded 391 publicly available Facebook posts on the group and personal accounts of the candidates, during the 3 weeks leading up to the elections. The analysis focused on the types and intensity of fear speech, its use across constituencies and party candidates, and how existing communal and partisan threats were appraised using fear speech. Findings highlight the strategic use of violent vs. non-violent fear speech representing the socio-political history of the context and the cultural values represented by each party, and the affordances of social media as a platform for political and electoral campaigning and collective mobilization.

Systemic radionuclide therapy has become a cornerstone in the management of advanced gastro-entero-pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (GEP-NETs). Following the establishment of β-emitting peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) as an effective treatment for somatostatin receptor positive NETs, recent clinical and translational advances have substantially expanded its therapeutic scope. Several pivotal randomised trials published within the past 18 months justify a reassessment of radionuclide treatment strategies in GEP-NETs. Recently published results of randomised phase III trials support a broader and more strategic use of PRRT, such as in selected high-grade well differentiated NETs. Direct comparisons of PRRT and targeted therapies redefine therapeutic sequencing. Radiosensitising combinations and next-generation theranostic platforms, including alpha-emitting radionuclides, are entering late-phase development. Radionuclide therapy in GEP-NETs is transitioning from a late-line option toward a flexible, biology-driven treatment strategy with important implications for clinical practice.

Producing words during the semantic fluency task (e.g., "name all the animals you can in a minute") involves not only activating the relevant semantic representations but also being able to flexibly utilize phonological information to facilitate retrieval. However, the mechanisms by which individuals effectively use phonology as a latent cue during memory search remain understudied. In this study, we used a computational approach to examine the use of different lexical sources during memory search in two categorical domains (Animals and Foods) within the semantic fluency task. We captured the relative saliency of semantic and acoustic information by creating blended lexical representations obtained from two language models trained on text (word2vec) and speech (speech2vec). To examine process-level mechanisms, we implemented computational models based on optimal foraging principles to characterize transitions within and across clusters of related items. These models were evaluated within a sample of normal hearing children and a naturally occurring control group with limited early auditory and language experience-prelingually deaf children with cochlear implants. Overall, in domains where semantics and phonology were more highly correlated (i.e., Foods), greater use of phonology in within-cluster transitions was associated with better fluency performance for children with normal hearing. In contrast, though children with cochlear implants amplified acoustic structural information in these domains, they were less able to flexibly leverage phonological information to retrieve more items within clusters. Together, this work highlights how early linguistic experience shapes the ability to use semantic and phonological cues to navigate lexical space in a controlled, adaptive manner. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Strategic use of AI in product lines: Analysis of the role of AI-enabled process co-adaptation on environmental and operational performance.

This study examines translanguaging practices and their impact on student gratitude, mindset, and cognition in Southern Thai English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms. A survey was conducted with 565 secondary and high school students from private Islamic and public schools in Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat, where Pattani Malay (Yawi) is widely spoken. Findings show that strategic use of translanguaging significantly enhances student gratitude, confidence, and classroom engagement. Using both students’ first language and English helped clarify concepts and increase participation. While students generally displayed a growth mindset and motivation through peer success, public failure persisted, indicating a need for more supportive learning environments. The study highlights the benefits of asset-based, multilingual approaches and recommends policy reform, teacher training, and bilingual learning materials to better support multilingual learners in Thailand.

ABSTRACT This study examines the role of emotions in online political communication during the 2021 Czech general election campaign. We focus on differences between populist and non-populist parties and their different roles – as government or opposition actors. Using quantitative content analysis, we analysed 2,644 Facebook posts published by parliamentary political parties and their leaders one month before the election, focusing on the strategic use of different emotions and blame attribution in their communication. While existing research characterizes populist communication as highly emotional, our findings partly challenge this assumption. The results suggest that populist parties in government tend to moderate their rhetoric, particularly their use of negative emotions, such as fear and anger. The findings also indicate that opposition parties were more likely to use negative emotional appeal and blame attribution, whereas government actors relied more on enthusiasm and positive rhetoric. Our study contributes to the discussion on the strategic adaptation of populist parties’ communication when they assume a governmental position.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of sustainability virtual influencers (SVIs)’ source credibility on young female consumers’ pro-environmental motivations predicting to engagement with the SVI’s. Design/methodology/approach Combining source credibility and goal-framing theory, the study conducted an online scenario-based survey, collecting 366 responses via the Prolific platform after exposing participants to a stimulus of fictional SVI. The study conducted structural equation modeling analysis and mediation analysis using SPSS and Amos. Findings The study found that young female consumers are driven by different pro-environmental motivations when engaging with SVIs, which is particularly mediated by hedonic and normative goal motivations. Research limitations/implications The study found that young female consumers are driven by different pro-environmental motivations when responded to engagement with the SVI’s content, which is particularly mediated by hedonic and normative goal motivations. Practical implications The study examined the SVI’s qualities and underlying pro-environmental motivations of young female consumers, offering practical implications for the strategic use of SVIs in social media green marketing and sustainability awareness initiatives. Originality/value The present study bridges a gap by combining source credibility and goal-framing theory to examine motivational mechanisms underlying young female consumers’ engagement with the SVI.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) continues to pose asignificant clinical challenge with low survival rates. The updated 2025 guidelines emphasize the critical role of the chain of survival, optimized basic life support (BLS) and the strategic use of extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation (ECPR). Following the return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) the clinical course is predominantly shaped by the post-cardiac arrest syndrome (PCAS). Structured care within specialized centers and amultimodal timely neuroprognostication are essential to improve neurological outcomes and facilitate evidence-based decision-making regarding further treatment.

English language learning through mobile devices has significantly transformed educational practices over the past decade. With the increasing prevalence of smartphones and tablets, learners can access a wealth of resources that enhance their language acquisition process. This study investigates the impact of mobile-assisted English language education, focusing on seamless learning and the integration of multilingualism. Using a quantitative methodology, data were collected through questionnaires from 134 teachers and 190 students and analyzed using SPSS software. The findings reveal several important insights. Purposeful and strategic use of code-switching emerges as an effective pedagogical tool for enhancing second language learning in English classrooms. Additionally, integrating information and communication technologies into English language instruction positively impacts students' multilingualism and language acquisition. Furthermore, learners engaging with various forms of English demonstrate distinct language preferences and proficiencies, often shaped by regional sociocultural factors. The study's novelty lies in its exploration of multilingualism and code-switching in the learning process, emphasizing the importance of embracing linguistic diversity in educational settings and understanding its profound influence on language acquisition. Practical recommendations are provided to improve English language learning outcomes through mobile learning strategies.

In the quest to enhance medical consultation, our study introduces AI4Doctor, a sophisticated large-language model (LLM) tailored for the clinical domain. At the heart of AI4Doctor is an innovative integration strategy that synergizes distilled data extracted from electronic medical records (EMR) with empirical insights gathered from practicing physicians during the supervised fine-tuning. Although existing platforms offer informative responses, they fall short of replicating the nuanced decision-making processes of medical professionals, particularly in complex, integrative diagnostic scenarios. Motivated by the need to create a realistic medical practice environment, we propose that a combination of direct knowledge transfer from seasoned doctors and the strategic use of EMR can augment the abilities of LLM, enabling it to more closely mimic the clinical acumen of healthcare practitioners. To navigate the complexities of merging diverse instructional sources, we employ a curriculum learning approach during the fine-tuning process. Moreover, we advance our model's performance by developing a reward system that incentivizes the alignment of the LLM's outputs with the valuable attributes inherent in both doctors' expertise, including diagnostic priors, risk thresholds, and heuristic saliencies accumulated from practice and EMR data. This is achieved through a novel reinforcement-learning approach. Besides, we introduce a new benchmark involving a comparative evaluation. We utilize a subjective evaluation system wherein experts critically assess the responses from a professional perspective as well. Our research underscores the potential of this hybrid model to serve as a robust tool in medical consultations, bridging the gap between artificial intelligence and real-world clinical practice.

Children's ability to ask effective questions is central to self-directed learning and cognitive development. However, surprisingly little is known about how strategically efficient their spontaneous inquiries can be. Prior research has largely relied on tasks that either provide instructional scaffolds explicitly guiding children toward strategic questions, thereby boosting performance, or impose high cognitive demands that may hinder performance. These design features make it difficult to assess children's independent capacity for strategic inquiry. In this study, 90 children aged 5-7 and 30 adults played a 20-questions-style game in both concrete and abstract versions. The task was designed to minimize unnecessary complexity and instructional support, thereby reducing cognitive load. This approach allowed us to examine spontaneous, self-guided performance. The results revealed that, although efficiency increased with age, even 5-year-olds demonstrated near-optimal performance in the concrete condition. By age 7, children approached adultlike efficiency and flexibly adapted their strategies across contexts. Interestingly, strategic question use can be described as a function of the size of the hypothesis space, with a higher proportion of questions being strategic early in the search when many options remained and a lower proportion as the space narrowed. These findings offer novel insights into young children's information-seeking abilities, suggesting that when children are left to their own reasoning in settings that are cognitively accessible, efficient, and adaptive, questioning emerges spontaneously, earlier, and more robustly than previously documented. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

Colonial animals are theoretically expected to use social information to reduce uncertainty regarding food location and quality; however, few empirical studies have investigated how they acquire and when they rely on such information. Here, we simultaneously tracked 96-116 breeding Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae), corresponding to 35.6-43.0% of active breeders in a colony, across 653 foraging trips, and examined their movement decisions. We found that foraging site selection was most often predicted by individuals' own previous space use, but in 17.1% of trips, it was better predicted by incorporating the prior space use of conspecifics that departed the colony together. Notably, the simulation with random replacement tests indicated that group departure is a prerequisite for the effects of conspecifics on foraging site selection. Furthermore, penguins with unsuccessful prior trips, quantified as a reduced frequency of foraging dives, changed foraging sites more frequently than those with successful prior trips, relying more on the experiences of conspecifics. These findings suggest that group departure and travel facilitate social information acquisition, particularly for individuals that have recently been unsuccessful in foraging trips. Our study highlights the strategic use of social information and its potential benefits for foraging penguins.

Purpose This study seeks to explore the strategic use of social media by soccer teams in Ecuador with the explicit aim of securing and sustaining sponsorship relationships. Design/methodology/approach Guided by relationship marketing theory, which highlights the importance of trust, commitment, and engagement in building long-term relationships (Morgan and Hunt, 1994), this qualitative study employed in-depth, semi-structured interviews with Marketing Directors from professional soccer clubs in the top league in Ecuador. Findings The study found that Ecuadorian soccer clubs increasingly use social media, especially WhatsApp, TikTok and Instagram, to engage fans, attract sponsors and measure return on investment. Four key themes emerged: uneven digital ecosystem development, data-driven sponsorship valuation, authentic content alignment with brand values, and proactive trust and crisis management in sponsor relations. Research limitations/implications This study also contains several limitations. The analysis was based on qualitative interviews with a limited number of participants, and detailed quantitative and longitudinal data were not available. As an exploratory study, its findings are context-specific and should not be generalized across all Latin American markets. Practical implications The findings aim to provide best practices for leveraging social media to attract and retain sponsors. These insights will inform best practices for other clubs and leagues within Ecuador and the broader Latin American region. Originality/value This study reveals how Ecuador's deep soccer culture and social context shape digital strategies, with clubs using Instagram, TikTok and WhatsApp to attract and retain sponsors.

Engineering early immune resilience in islet transplantation.

The aviation industry is one of the fastest-growing service sectors, where customer satisfaction plays a vital role in determining service quality and operational success. Airports are service-oriented environments where passengers expect efficient assistance, clear communication, and a smooth travel experience. Customer service personnel act as the primary point of contact between passengers and airport operations, making their role essential in ensuring passenger satisfaction and operational efficiency (IATA, 2023). This study examines the operational challenges faced by customer service staff at IGI Airport Terminal 3 and their impact on passenger experience. The findings reveal that staff behavior, communication skills, responsiveness, and professionalism significantly influence passenger satisfaction. While technology has improved airport operations, passengers still value personal interaction and human support, especially during delays and travel-related issues (Halpern & Graham, 2021). The study concludes that continuous employee training, effective teamwork, improved communication, and the strategic use of technology can help overcome operational challenges and enhance service quality. Strengthening customer service operations can improve both passenger experience and overall airport performance (ACI, 2023). The study highlights the importance of customer service operations in enhancing passenger experience at IGI Airport Terminal 3. Passengers expect timely assistance, clear communication, and professional behavior from customer service staff throughout their journey. The study suggests that regular staff training, better workload management, and improved communication practices can help address operational challenges and contribute to higher levels of passenger satisfaction and service excellence (Mainardes, Alves, & Raposo, 2021; ACI, 2023).

ABSTRACT This article traces the evolution of local English and its relationship with Bangla, the national language, by examining textbooks from different curriculum regimes in Bangladesh. During the early years of independence, English teaching relied on textual resources produced in the Inner Circle. In 1986, when a new textbook for Years 11-12 was written by Bangladeshi authors, it was criticised by academics, leading to its withdrawal. However, such resistance to local English and textbooks started to disappear from the 1990s. English textbooks in the subsequent decades accommodated “Bangladeshi English”, although without official acknowledgement. Nonetheless, the books were English-only and did not include any texts in Bangla as input or instruction. This linguistic orthodoxy of English was put aside in the textbooks introduced in 2023 which included strategic use of Bangla within a competency-based curriculum. The present analysis documents the shift away from exogenous English, English-only, and linguistic purism to English-Bangla co-existence.

This study explores features of high-performance sport environments (HPSEs) that support athletes to thrive. Situated in the Danish elite sport context and informed by a holistic ecological approach, the study draws on semi-structured interviews with 13 stakeholders, including coaches, performance directors, sport managers, and sport psychologists, representing a range of Olympic and non-Olympic sports. The study is situated within a qualitative interpretivist paradigm,and draws on reflexive thematic analysis to identify features that stakeholders perceived to be important for supporting the joint pursuit of performance and well-being. Seven interconnected features were identified across micro- and macro-level levels of the environment. At the micro level, stakeholders highlighted competitive cohesion, structure and flexibility, psychological safety and compassion, and a whole-person focus as central to supporting athlete thriving At the macro level, thriving was perceived to be shaped by transparent communication and collaboration, integration of short- and long-term vision, and strategic resource use. . Together, these findings demonstrate that thriving may be supported by factors distributed across the broader sport environment rather than solely within the immediate training context. The study extends understanding of thriving in HPSEs by identifying features that may facilitate the sustained pursuit of both high performance and well-being and encourages practitioners to adopt a holistic perspective when designing and evaluating high-performance sport environments, with attention to the environmental features that shape athletes’ opportunities to thrive over time

Approximate computing is a means for energy efficient computing by allowing some degree of arithmetic imprecision for error tolerant processing applications such as image compression. This work presents a high-efficiency image compression architecture which exploits the use of hybrid approximate multipliers in the discrete wavelet transform (DWT)-pipeline. The work presents four approximate variants which are realized using hybrid Wallace, Dadda and Baugh-Wooley multipliers which results in significant reduction in delay, power consumption and hardware resource usage. Approximation is only used in the least significant areas of the calculation, and exact calculations are used for the most significant calculation areas to maintain visual accuracy. Experimental results show great improvements with the fourth variant of the approximate DWT. The proposed design shows a PSNR of 35.9 dB, a SSIM of 0.94 and compression ratio of 1.9 when integrated to the wavelet-based compression scheme. There is little deviation between original and reconstructed images based on the error analysis. Hardware performance analysis in terms of area, power, and delay is performed by FPG synthesis targeting Artix-7 platform. Overall, the obtained results show that strategic use of approximation in selected computational stages allows energy-efficient wavelet-based image compression without noticeable loss in the perceptual quality.

Introduction:Pediatric heart centers have advanced quality improvement (QI) work through registries and collaboratives, improving benchmarking and shared learning. However, institutions must also build internal, sustainable QI programs tailored to local needs. We outlined our experience in developing an inclusive QI program that provides a structured framework to drive continuous improvement.Methods:We implemented a 5-step approach: (1) cultivating an environment ready for change, (2) optimizing streams to identify improvement opportunities, (3) building systems to support initiatives, (4) promoting QI work and successes, and (5) sustaining and scaling improvements. This included engaging diverse stakeholders, streamlining data, reducing participation barriers, and applying structured project management. Proposals underwent rigorous review to ensure equitable support.Results:Between 2021 and 2025, the program supported 17 subgroups across cardiology, surgery, anesthesia, and critical care, with 60% of projects led by nonphysicians. It facilitated 21 QI consults (71% progressing to formal projects), 13 publications, more than 30 national presentations, and additional impactful unpublished work, while strengthening leadership and team expertise through QI education. System-level outcomes improved, including surgical mortality and US News & World Report rankings. Performance rounds generated 170 improvement actions to guide systematic change.Conclusions:An inclusive QI program enhances outcomes, and our structure underscores the value of both multidisciplinary collaboration and strategic resource use. By investing in leadership, promoting diversity, and aligning with institutional goals, heart centers can achieve sustained improvement. This framework offers a potential model for institutions seeking robust QI infrastructure.

Focused ultrasound ablation for psychiatric disorders.