This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians “crying wolf” over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal. We posit that this benefit, known as the “liar’s dividend,” may be achieved through two politician strategies: by invoking informational uncertainty or by encouraging oppositional rallying of core supporters. We administer five survey experiments to over 15,000 American adults detailing hypothetical politician responses to stories describing real politician scandals. We find that claims of misinformation representing both strategies raise politician support across partisan subgroups. These strategies are effective against text-based reports of scandals, but are largely ineffective against video evidence and do not reduce general trust in media. Finally, these false claims produce greater dividends for politicians than alternative responses to scandal, such as remaining silent or apologizing.

Within the field of virtue and vice epistemology open-mindedness is usually considered an archetypal virtue. Nevertheless, there is ongoing disagreement over how exactly it should be defined. In this paper I propose a novel definition of open-mindedness as a process of impartial belief revision and use it to argue that we should shift our normative assessments away from the trait itself to the context in which it is exercised. My definition works by three sequential stages: not screening new claims, impartially weighing the evidential strength of claims, and updating beliefs accordingly. Using this definition I argue for a focus on agents’ particular circumstances to determine what degrees of credulity, open-, or closed-mindedness are appropriate in any given situation. As well as providing conceptual clarity regarding the concept of open-mindedness this paper indicates the benefits of this contextual approach for our everyday epistemic attitudes. In particular it enables us to recognise, without stigma, when ourselves or others deviate from open-mindedness for appropriate reasons.

In this article, we study the complexity of weighted team definability for logics with team semantics. This problem is a natural analog of one of the most studied problems in parameterized complexity, the notion of weighted Fagin-definability, which is formulated in terms of satisfaction of first-order formulas with free relation variables. We focus on the parameterized complexity of weighted team definability for a fixed formula $\varphi$ of central team-based logics. Given a first-order structure $\mathcal{A}$ and the parameter value $k\in \mathbb N$ as input, the question is to determine whether $\mathcal{A},T\models \varphi$ for some team T of size k. We show several results on the complexity of this problem for dependence, independence, and inclusion logic formulas. Moreover, we also relate the complexity of weighted team definability to the complexity classes in the well-known W-hierarchy as well as paraNP.

Vegetables are known to be beneficial to human health, but the association between vegetable consumption and gastric cancer remains uncertain. To synthesise knowledge about the relationship between vegetable group consumption and gastric cancer risk, update present meta-analyses and estimate associations between vegetable consumption and gastric cancer risk based solely on prospective studies, we perform a PRISMA-compliant three-level meta-analysis. Systematic search identified thirteen prospective studies with fifty-two effect sizes that met all inclusion criteria and no exclusion criteria for our meta-analysis. Pooled risk ratios (RRs) showed a positive association between high vegetable consumption and low gastric cancer risk (pooled RR 0·93, 95% confidence interval 0·90–0·97, P = 0·06). In moderator analyses for indicators of gender, region and quantity of vegetable intake, there was no significant difference between subgroups. However, the effect became significant in populations with lower than the minimum risk exposure level (TMREL) of vegetable consumption (P < 0·05). Higher vegetable intake is associated with a decreased risk of gastric cancer. This effect may be limited to specific populations, such as ones with lower vegetable consumption. Evidence from our study has important public health implications for dietary recommendations.

The objective of this study was to translate the Preference-Based Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Scale to French-Canadian. After the scale underwent forward and back translations, the expert committee examined the translated versions and found minor grammatical errors and suggested idioms to be changed to better represent French-Canadian language. Cognitive debriefing interviews were carried out to assess the pre-final version for clarity, and minor changes were made. Consensus from the expert committee and people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis on the measure’s clarity, word choice, and meaning were achieved, resulting in the final French version of the Preference-Based Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Scale.

Differentially flat under-actuated robots are characterized by more degrees of freedom (DOF) than actuators: this makes possible the design of lightweight cheap robots with high dexterity. The main issue of such robots is the control of the passive joint, which requires accurate dynamic modeling of the robot.

Friction is usually discarded to simplify the models, especially in the case of low-speed trajectories. However, this simplification leads to oscillations of the end-effector about the final position, which are incompatible with fast and accurate motions.

This paper focuses on planar $n$-DOF serial robotic arms with $n-1$ actuated rotational joints plus one final passive rotational joint with stiffness and friction properties. These robots, if properly balanced, are differentially flat. When the non-actuated joint can be considered frictionless, differentially flat robots can be controlled in open loop, calculating the motor torques demanded by point-to-point motions. This paper extends the open-loop control to robots with a passive joint with viscous friction adopting a Laplace transform method. This method can be adopted by exploiting the particular structure of the equations of motion of differentially flat under-actuated robots in which the last equations are linear. Analytical expressions of the motor torques are obtained. The work is enriched by an experimental validation of a $2$-DOF under-actuated robot and by numerical simulations of the $2$- and $4$-DOF robots showing the suppression of unwanted oscillations.

Decades of research shows that sexual minority youth (SMY) display heightened risk for mental health problems, although the onset of such disparities remains unclear. The Millennium Cohort Study is the largest nationally representative longitudinal study of adolescents in the United Kingdom. In this study, participants (N = 10,047, 50% female) self-reported their sexual identity at age 17 and had parent-reported mental health data, from the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, reported across five waves at ages 5, 7, 11, 14, and 17. Multilevel linear spline models, stratified by sex, were used to examine mental health trajectories between sexual identity groups (completely heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, SMY). SMY showed heightened peer problems from the baseline assessment at age five, increasing over time, and heightened emotional problems from age 11, increasing over time. Mostly heterosexual youth showed heightened emotional problems at age 11 in males, and at age 17 in females. Findings are discussed in light of the literature on minority stress and gender conformity in youth. The use of parent-reported mental health data means that estimates are likely to be conservative. We conclude that interventions supporting SMY should start early and be available throughout adolescence.

We aimed to investigate the intricate interplay between genetic predisposition and lifestyle factors on stroke. We conducted a comprehensive genome-wide association study to identify the genetic variants linked to stroke in the participants who experienced a stroke event (cases; n 672) and those with no stroke history (non-stroke; n 58 029) in a large hospital-based cohort. Using generalised multifactor dimensionality reduction, we identified genetic variants with interactive effects and constructed polygenic risk scores (PRS) by summing up the risk alleles from the genetic variants. Food intake was measured with a validated semi-quantitative FFQ. No significant differences in stroke incidence were seen in demographic variables between the two groups. Among the metabolic indicators, only serum TAG levels were higher in males with stroke than those without stroke. The daily nutrient intake, dietary inflammation index, glycaemic index, dietary patterns, alcohol consumption, exercise and smoking did not display associations with the OR for stroke. The stroke-linked genetic variants were related to the IL-18 pathway. After accounting for covariates, the PRS derived from the 5-, 6- and 7-SNP models were positively associated with stroke chance with 2·5-, 2·9- and 2·8-fold. Furthermore, interactions between genetic predisposition and dietary components, including energy, carbohydrates, n-3 fatty acids and branched-chain amino acids (BCAA), that affected OR for stroke were observed. A high intake of energy, carbohydrates and BCAA and a low intake of n-3 fatty acids were positively associated with the chances of stroke occurrence. In conclusion, understanding the interaction between genetic variants and lifestyle factors can assist in developing stroke prevention and management strategies.

I attended the now famous conferences at Sussex in 1968 and Nottingham in 1969 that preceded the later founding of both the History of Economic Thought Society in the UK and the History of Economics Society (HES) in North America. In 1969, I also helped to found the UK Money Study Group at its first conference in Hove, while in 1970 I was at Karl Brunner’s first Konstanz Seminar. In both fields, these conferences were followed by many, many more. At that time new specialist journals were also appearing. The Journal of Money, Credit and Banking (JMCB), where I had a paper in the second issue, started life in 1969. So did History of Political Economy (HOPE), but there I had nothing to submit. Ironically, given Lionel Robbins’s still notorious attack on this proposed journal at Sussex, to which I shall return below, my first completed research paper in history of economic thought (HET)—on Thomas Tooke (Laidler 1972)—was already committed to his forthcoming Festschrift.

Among 8,678 vaccinated healthcare personnel (HCP) with previous coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), by August 28, 2023, 909 (10%) had an infection of severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) omicron XBB variant. Reinfection risk was comparable irrespective of previous infection type except for the omicron BQ.1 variant. Bivalent vaccination had a protective effect. COVID-19 vaccines remain vital to protect HCP, including those with hybrid immunity.

Several individuals of the sea anemone Telmatactis cricoides (Duchassaing, 1850) (order Actiniaria) were observed in the Mediterranean continental Spanish coast (Almeria) and the Balearic Islands (Mallorca) showing an expansion of the species, possibly related to rising sea water temperatures. This finding contributes to increase the knowledge on the geographical distribution range of this actiniarian in the Mediterranean basin.

We find sufficient conditions for bounded density shifts to have a unique measure of maximal entropy. We also prove that every measure of maximal entropy of a bounded density shift is fully supported. As a consequence of this, we obtain that bounded density shifts are surjunctive.