bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Cost‐Effectiveness Analysis of Risky Health Interventions: Moving Beyond Risk Neutrality
Authors: Thoma Johanna 
Published: November 2024

ABSTRACTCost‐effectiveness analysis for health interventions is traditionally conducted in a risk‐neutral way, insensitive to risk attitudes in the population, which are potentially non‐neutral. While the standard outcome metric of quality‐adjusted life years (QALYs) aims to be deferential to people's valuations of health states, cost‐effectiveness analysis of risky interventions using the QALY metric is not similarly deferential to people's risk attitudes. I argue that there is no good justification for this practice. Non‐neutral attitudes to risk, especially where they concern individually life‐changing interventions need not be irrational, and so imposing neutrality is not justifiable as a way of debiasing preferences. Many common justifications for deference to health state preferences extend to risk attitudes. But even if reasons for deference do not extend, imposition of risk neutrality as opposed to any other rationally permissible risk attitude is under‐motivated as default practice. Thus, either methods for measuring risk attitudes separately and incorporating them into cost‐effectiveness analysis should be used more widely or a richer set of information should be presented to political decision‐makers and the public to enable them to decide how to take into account the individual risks faced by members of the population, on top of aggregate effects on population health.
Attitudes Toward Prostitution in Norway, Spain, and Germany: Association With the Legal Context and Susceptibility to Persuasion
Authors: Megías Jesús L. , Thon Pia‐Renée , Siebler Frank , Bohner Gerd 
Published: November 2024

ABSTRACTThe social and legal treatment of prostitution varies between countries. We examined attitudes toward prostitution (ATP) and their susceptibility to persuasion in three countries: Norway, where prostitution is illegal; Spain, where prostitution is not explicitly regulated in the law; and Germany, where prostitution is legal. Participants (total N = 579) read arguments in favor of either legalization or abolition of prostitution or no arguments. Then they reported their ATP, judged the consequences of abolishing prostitution and completed measures of feminism, political orientation and sociosexuality. Results showed that, as hypothesized, ATP scores (1) reflected the countries' legislation, being most positive in Germany and least positive in Norway; (2) were affected by arguments only in Spain, where the legal situation is ambiguous; and (3) were meaningfully correlated with other attitudes across countries. These findings highlight the association of legal frameworks with attitudes, suggesting that national legislation can shape social norms and perceptions of prostitution. Additionally, the varying susceptibility to persuasive messages across different legal contexts underscores the role of legal ambiguity in shaping openness to attitudinal change.
Spinoza's authentic solitude
Authors: Soyarslan Sanem 
Published: November 2024

AbstractIn this article, I consider two interpretations of Spinoza's account of the good life in recent literature, which I call the social activist model and the solitary intellectualist model, in order to shed light on his underexamined views on solitude within this context. The former model has gained more support than the latter due to Spinoza's criticism of the solitary life and the importance he ascribes to friendship and living cooperatively with others within his corpus. While I recognize its strengths, I am skeptical as to whether the social activist model appreciates the complexity of Spinoza's account of the good life in the Ethics. For even though Spinoza clearly values friendship, he has a largely pessimistic view of those he calls ordinary people, which bears on the possibility of friendship between the philosopher and ordinary people. Furthermore, intuitive knowledge is unlike reason in that it concerns an asocial and intellectual insight beyond an identification with humanity and imaginative dimensions of ordinary life. It is, thus, conducive to what psychologists James Averill and Louise Sundararajan have called authentic solitude to the extent that it brings about a metaphysical awareness of our ontological status as finite modes of God. Although neither of the aforementioned models offers an entirely accurate representation of Spinoza's understanding of freedom in the Ethics, considering them enables us simultaneously to appreciate the complexity of Spinoza's thought and recognize a problematic tension within it. This tension is due to the gap between, on the one hand, his pessimistic view of ordinary people and his intellectualist portrayal of the philosopher who becomes disconnected from ordinary people as she increases her knowledge of the eternal, and his insistence on the shareability of knowledge and the importance he ascribes to the task of bringing ordinary people to enlightenment, on the other.
Screening for Asylum at Airports: The Implementation of the ‘Manifestly Unfounded’ Filter in France and Germany, 1980–2005
Authors: Langrognet Fabrice 
Published: November 2024

ABSTRACTThis historical paper examines pre‐screening procedures for asylum‐seekers at Western European international airports during the period from the 1980s to the 2000s, with a particular focus on France and Germany as case studies. It highlights the tension between attempts to standardise the application of the ‘manifest unfoundedness’ criterion for asylum claims at the border through intergovernmental harmonisation efforts and the significant variations observed in how this criterion was implemented both between and within Member States of the European Community and later the European Union. By exploring these discrepancies, the paper emphasises the context‐dependent nature of enforcing asylum rules and the influence of local dynamics on the effectiveness of these norms. It begins by providing background on the refugee landscape in the 1980s and the prevalent desire among Western European policy‐makers to reduce the number of asylum‐seekers at the borders. The paper then discusses efforts to harmonise procedures and the adoption of a common, and soon distorted, yardstick pertaining to the ‘manifest unfoundedness’ of asylum claims. Furthermore, the article examines disparities in implementation across countries and within them, shedding light on differences in norms, procedures and institutional dynamics that led to divergent approaches at the local level.
The Wage Stop and Restricting Benefit Income in the United Kingdom: Discretion, Wages and Hardship
Authors: Grover Chris 
Published: November 2024

ABSTRACTIn 2013 the UK government introduced a household benefit cap to restrict the benefit income of its poorest people. Although taking different forms, such restrictions are not new there. Drawing upon files held at the UK's National Archives, this article focuses upon the years 1935 to 1975 during which the main benefit restriction that operated was the wage stop. The wage stop affected claimants categorised as unemployed. As the article demonstrates, those claimants not expected to do wage‐labour, such as lone mothers and sick people, could also have their benefit limited, though not via the wage stop. The article examines these benefit restrictions through notions of discretion. In doing so, it engages with the misconception that the wage stop was wholly discretionary. And through discussion of the main decisions that were embedded in discretion demonstrates how the discretionary potential to mitigate the impact of benefit restrictions, was often constrained by broader state concerns with labour and social discipline. Consequently, the potential positive use of discretion was limited by a desire not to incentivise behaviours and lifestyles deemed problematic. Hence, like the operation of today's benefit cap, wage‐stopped households faced lives marked by poverty, by, for example, poor diets, and inadequate clothing and essential household items.
A narrative orientation for the longitudinal integrated clerkship
Authors: Parkin Nicola , Moore Maxine 
Published: November 2024

AbstractBackgroundThis paper follows through with findings from a longitudinal integrated curriculum (LIC) programme evaluation, which revealed that (1) experiential perspectives and (2) the integration of learning featured weakly in the programme's structure. On examination, these two areas were seen to be linked because, by granting authority to experience, we are called to follow its lead wherever it may take us.MethodsData was collected from students, clinicians and programme administrators using participatory mapping and discussions and analysed through four lenses, one of which was to identify what seemed to be missing or quiet.FindingsTwo features of the LIC model were not explicitly structurally supported in the programme: integration of learning and experiential perspectives.DiscussionThe authors draw on narrative medicine and visual thinking to propose a novel response to the problem, which locates the clinical educator as embodying a narrative orientation to teaching. A narrative orientation affirms the power of human experience, told through stories, to enable integrative, whole‐person, big picture thinking in the medical education curriculum. Teaching ideas are scaffolded through metaphors of form, space and integration.ConclusionIn pursuit of an authentic integrator of learning in the LIC, we already have within our reach the power to grant human experience the authority to teach us wherever we find it and follow wherever it leads. However, its potential is yet to be realised, and this discussion throws up new questions for practical enquiry: how best to support educators to adopt a narrative orientation.
Assessment of meibomian gland morphology and tear‐film lipid layer using noncontact infrared meibography and meibometry, respectively, and tear‐film osmolarity in healthy dogs
Authors: Ng Alexandra T. J. , Moore Phillip Anthony , Boveland Shannon D. 
Published: November 2024

AbstractObjectiveTo further investigate quantitative and qualitative tear‐film dynamics through tear‐film osmolarity, meibometry, meibography, and non‐invasive tear‐film break‐up time and to describe a survey of parameters in normal eyes of healthy non‐brachycephalic dogs.Animals StudiedThirty‐two veterinary hospital staff and student owned dogs between 1 and 7 years with no known comorbidities or ocular disease.ProcedureComplete ophthalmic examination, tear‐film osmolarity (I‐PEN® VET), meibometry (Meibometer MB560), meibography, and non‐invasive tear‐film break‐up time (handheld Ocular Surface Analyzer) were performed. Significance threshold was 0.05. Q‐Q plots and histograms were used to assess normality of measurements. Data were summarized descriptively with mean, standard deviation, median, and interquartile range (IQR). Pearson and Spearman's correlations were used to test for correlations between diagnostics with each other and tear‐film break‐up times.ResultsThirty‐two dogs (64 eyes) met the inclusion criteria. Mean tear‐film osmolarity level was 293.6 ± 14.1 mOsm/L (IQR 282.5–302.3). Median meibomian lipid level was 30.4 Meibometry Units (MU) (IQR 11.5–59.1). Median percent loss of meibomian glands in the upper eyelids was 25.3% (IQR 13.5–26.8). Median percent loss of meibomian glands in the lower eyelids was 26.0% (IQR 13.5–52.3). Automatic assessment of meibomian gland loss showed that grade 0 was present in 4/128 (3.1%) eyelids, grade 1 in 78/128 (60.9%) eyelids, grade 2 in 30/128 (23.4%) eyelids, and grade 3 in 16/128 (12.5%) eyelids.ConclusionsTear‐film osmolarity, meibometry, meibography, and non‐invasive tear break‐up time can easily be incorporated into routine ophthalmic examinations to provide clinical information about meibomian gland morphology and function.
Detection of early renal perfusion changes by contrast‐enhanced ultrasonography in dogs with preclinical myxomatous mitral valve disease
Authors: Kamata Saho , Morita Tomoya , Yamasaki Masahiro 
Published: November 2024

AbstractSince the prognosis of myxomatous mitral valve disease (MMVD) varies, its characterization is clinically relevant, and renal impairment has been identified as one of its associated factors. Intrarenal Doppler ultrasonography (IRD), an intrarenal hemodynamic assessment method, is useful for predicting cardiac‐ and renal‐related death but cannot detect early changes in dogs with preclinical MMVD. Contrast‐enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS), another intrarenal hemodynamic assessment method, may identify earlier changes; however, renal perfusion evaluations using CEUS have not yet been performed on dogs with MMVD. We hypothesized that CEUS detects changes earlier than IRD in dogs with preclinical MMVD. This prospective, cross‐sectional study examined renal perfusion in dogs without cardiac disease and preclinical MMVD dogs of different American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine stages using CEUS and compared it with IRD indices. Twenty‐three dogs with MMVD (ten stage B1 and thirteen stage B2) and 12 control dogs without cardiac disease were included. The rise times of the renal cortex and medulla were measured from a time‐intensity curve. The rise time of the cortex was longer in dogs with stage B2 MMVD than in control dogs, while that of the medulla was shortened in the right ventricular dysfunction group in stage B2. No changes were observed in IRD indices (the resistance index and venous impedance index). In conclusion, CEUS detected changes in renal perfusion in dogs with preclinical MMVD even when IRD indices remained unchanged, suggesting the utility of CEUS in evaluations of renal perfusion in MMVD dogs.
The local‐international trend of Intercultural Communication through world Englishes and translanguaging
Authors: Fang Fan , Xu Yidie 
Published: November 2024

AbstractThis study investigates how world Englishes (WE) and translanguaging may be combined to enhance intercultural competence in Intercultural Communication. First, this paper reviews WE contributions to Intercultural Communication and explores the potential of translanguaging in facilitating intercultural competence in Intercultural Communication. Second, semi‐structured interviews were conducted to explore the perceptions and practices of WE, translanguaging, and intercultural competence in Intercultural Communication among Chinese university students with the aim to investigate how their experiences of WE and translanguaging enhance intercultural competence in Intercultural Communication within both local and global contexts. The findings revealed the possibility of integrating WE and translanguaging into the promotion of intercultural competence in Intercultural Communication. Such an integration of WE and translanguaging through the intercultural dimensions in English language learning can help enhance linguistic and cultural diversity, and equip individuals with the skills to effectively navigate the multilingual and multicultural world in response to diverse communicative needs.
“
Ca
. Nitrosocosmicus” members are the dominant archaea associated with plant rhizospheres
Authors: Lee Ui-Ju , Gwak Joo-Han , Choi Seungyeon , Jung Man-Young , Lee Tae Kwon , Ryu Hojin , Imisi Awala Samuel , Wanek Wolfgang , Wagner Michael , Quan Zhe-Xue , Rhee Sung-Keun 
Published: November 2024

ABSTRACT

Archaea catalyzing the first step of nitrification in the rhizosphere possibly have an influence on plant growth and development. In this study, we found a distinct archaeal community, dominated by ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA), associated with the root system of pepper (
Capsicum anuum
L.) and ginseng plants (
Panax ginseng
C.A. Mey.) compared to bulk soil not penetrated by roots. While the abundance of total AOA decreased in the rhizosphere soils, AOA related to “
Candidatus
Nitrosocosmicus,” which harbor gene encoding manganese catalase (MnKat) in contrast to most other AOA, dominated the AOA community in the rhizosphere soils. For both plant species, the ratio of copy numbers of the AOA MnKat gene to the
amoA
gene (encoding the ammonia monooxygenase subunit A) was significantly higher in the rhizospheres than in bulk soils. In contrast to MnKat-negative strains from other AOA clades, the catalase activity of a representative isolate of “
Ca.
Nitrosocosmicus” was demonstrated. Members of this clade were enriched in H
2
O
2
-amended bulk soils, and constitutive expression of their MnKat gene was observed in both bulk and rhizosphere soils. Due to their abundance,
“Ca.
Nitrosocosmicus
”
members can be considered important players mediating the nitrification process in rhizospheres. The dominance of this MnKat-containing AOA in rhizospheres of agriculturally important plants hints at a previously overlooked AOA-plant interaction.

IMPORTANCE

Ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) are widespread in terrestrial environments and outnumber other ammonia oxidizers in the rhizosphere, possibly exerting an influence on plant growth and development. However, little is known about the selection forces that shape their composition, functions, survival, and proliferation strategies in the rhizosphere. Here, we observed a distinct AOA community on root systems of two different plant species compared to bulk soil. Our results show that the
“Ca.
Nitrosocosmicus
”
clade, which possesses functional MnKat genes unlike most other AOA, dominated the rhizosphere soils. Moreover, members of this clade were enriched in H2O2-amended bulk soil, which mimics the ROS stress in root systems. While research on AOA-plant interactions in the rhizosphere is still in its infancy, these findings suggest that
“Ca.
Nitrosocosmicus
”
may be an important clade of AOA with potential AOA-plant interaction.
Increasing resuscitation status-related goals of care discussions for older adults with severe mental illness in a Canadian mental health setting: a retrospective study
Authors: de Lasa Cristina , Mesfin Elnathan , Tajirian Tania , Chessex Caroline , Lo Brian , Sockalingam Sanjeev 
Published: November 2024

BackgroundOlder adults with severe mental illness, including advanced dementia (AD), within geriatric admission units (GAU) often prioritise comfort care, avoiding life-prolonging procedures including cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Pre-2019, hospital policy lacked a resuscitation status order (RSO) incorporating distinct do-not-resuscitate levels. Providers entered ‘NO CPR’ orders in the electronic health record (EHR), necessitating transfers for non-CPR medical issues, contradicting patient preferences.MethodsThe study aimed for a 75% increase in resuscitation status-related (RSR) goals of care discussion (GOCD) completion rates within 1 week of GAU admission or transfer by December 2022. We implemented an EHR RSO, updated hospital policy and provided staff education. A 4-year GAU retrospective chart review assessed RSR GOCD frequency, completion time, documentation quality and discrepancies. Additionally, an environmental scan identified contributing factors to RSR GOCD.ResultsAmong 431 reviewed charts, the mean RSR GOCD completion rate was 13.9%; taking 39.5 days, with extreme outliers removed, the mean of time to completion was 15 days. Subgroup analysis highlighted a significant difference in RSR GOCD completion rates for AD (41.6%) compared with non-AD patients (16.3%). Discrepancy rates in charts with RSR GOCD were substantial: documentation without a corresponding RSO (66.7%), RSO without documentation (26.1%) and discordant resuscitation status between documentation and RSO (7.2%). Documentation quality varied: 32.9% lacked context, 20.7% had limited context, while 46.3% provided comprehensive context. Barriers to RSR GOCD included the absence of an EHR documentation tool and clear triggers.ConclusionRSR GOCD completion rates were lower and took longer than anticipated, highlighting improvement opportunities. AD subgroup analysis indicated provider awareness of RSR GOCD importance in this population. Discrepancies and documentation quality issues pose risks to patient-centred care. Collaborative stakeholder efforts are imperative for developing system-based informatics solutions, ensuring timely, comprehensive and patient-centred RSR GOCD.
Gender disparity in Canadian Institutes of Health Research funding within neurology
Authors: Tao Brendan , Tsai Chia-Chen , Wang Catherine , Vosoughi Amir R , Bui Esther , Chapman Kristine M , Fox Susan , Khosa Faisal 
Published: November 2024

BackgroundDespite efforts to advance equity, diversity and inclusion, women face gender-based barriers in research, including in neurology. Compared with men, women are less likely to hold leadership positions and be senior authors. Gender disparities in grant funding within neurology have yet to be investigated. We examine gender disparities in Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) funding for Canadian neurology divisions and departments.MethodsData on CIHR grant recipients and metrics (grant contribution, duration and quantity) within Canadian neurology divisions and departments between 2008 and 2022 were acquired from the CIHR Funding Decisions Database. Gender identity was determined by a validated application programming interface. Gender-based differences in CIHR grant contribution amount, duration and prevalence within neurology were calculated. Subgroup analysis was conducted for Canadian-licensed neurologists and Project Grant awards.Results1604 grants were awarded to Canadian neurology divisions and departments between 2008 and 2022. Compared with men, women received less funding (p<0.0001), shorter grant durations (p<0.0001) and fewer grants (41.5%) annually. Women comprised the minority of recipients (45.5%) and were less likely to be awarded grants (p<0.001) annually relative to men. Differences were consistent in subgroup analyses, except for equal grant durations observed across genders in Project Grant awards.ConclusionWe report gender disparities in CIHR grant funding to Canadian neurology divisions and departments. Women receive lower contribution amounts, shorter grant durations and fewer grants than men. Future recommendations include addressing gender differences and continuing to evaluate CIHR funding to provide equal opportunities for women in research and funding.