Large language models have shown promise for automating data extraction (DE) in systematic reviews (SRs), but most existing approaches require manual interaction. We developed an open-source system using GPT-4o to automatically extract data with no human intervention during the extraction process. We developed the system on a dataset of 290 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) from a published SR about cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. We evaluated the system on two other datasets: 5 RCTs from an updated search for the same review and 10 RCTs used in a separate published study that had also evaluated automated DE. We developed the best approach across all variables in the development dataset using GPT-4o. The performance in the updated-search dataset using o3 was 74.9% sensitivity, 76.7% specificity, 75.7 precision, 93.5% variable detection comprehensiveness, and 75.3% accuracy. In both datasets, accuracy was higher for string variables (e.g., country, study design, drug names, and outcome definitions) compared with numeric variables. In the third external validation dataset, GPT-4o showed a lower performance with a mean accuracy of 84.4% compared with the previous study. However, by adjusting our DE method, while maintaining the same prompting technique, we achieved a mean accuracy of 96.3%, which was comparable to the previous manual extraction study. Our system shows potential for assisting the DE of string variables alongside a human reviewer. However, it cannot yet replace humans for numeric DE. Further evaluation across diverse review contexts is needed to establish broader applicability.

Steady-state distribution functions can be used to calculate stability conditions for modes, radiation energy losses and particle loss rates. Heuristic analytic approximations to these distributions can capture key behaviors of the true distributions such as the relative speeds of different transport processes while possessing computational advantages over their numerical counterparts. In this paper, we motivate and present a closed-form analytic model for a distribution of particles in a centrifugal or tandem mirror. We find that our model outperforms other known models in approximating numerical steady-state simulations outside of a narrow range of low confining potentials. We demonstrate the model’s suitability in the high confining potential regime for applications such as loss-cone stability thresholds, fusion yields and available energy.

Monitoring snow depth in Antarctica is essential for understanding permafrost dynamics and soil thermal regimes. This study assesses the performance of low-cost, high-resolution, autocleaning ultrasonic sensors (MB7574-SCXL-Maxsonar-WRST7), powered by lithium D-type battery Geoprecision-Box dataloggers, in the South Shetland Islands. Traditional methods for estimating snow thickness, such as air temperature sensors in snow stakes, are economical but involve high maintenance costs and various complexities. To address these issues, we deployed ultrasonic sensors across 12 stations on Livingston and Deception islands from early 2023 to early 2024. Located at altitudes from 15 to 274 m above sea level and with varying wind exposures, these devices demonstrated notable durability and reliability, with only one sensor failure occurring due to structural damage. Data processing involved using an R script to filter out noise, and this process provided accurate hourly snow-depth measurements and revealed significant spatial and altitudinal variability, with depths ranging from 20 to 110 cm. Snow accumulation began in April and peaked in August and October, with major snowfall events contributing temporarily to snow depth but not to long-term accumulation. Our findings suggest that these sensors, as low-cost alternatives, could be integrated into networks such as the Global Terrestrial Network for Permafrost (GTN-P), supporting climate and permafrost studies.

Over the past twenty years, behavioural insights and nudges have gained prominence in public policy design. Public opinion research on this subject has largely considered two questions: (1) who supports nudges? and (2) where is support for nudges strongest? Using data from two nationally representative surveys fielded in 2023 and 2024 (N = 2020 and N = 1991), we take up these questions in Canada—a ‘principled pro-nudge’ country. We measure opinion toward 30 nudge policies across three policy domains—15 that provide a benchmark to other country studies, coupled with 15 that reflect policies that were implemented by Canadian nudge units. We also analyze open-ended responses to a question that asks what individuals think of nudging (if they think of them at all). We find that approval for nudges is high, with 71% of respondents supporting nudges that have been implemented in Canada. Second, we identify similar gender, ideological and identity-based patterns for support as observed in countries with different social and market structures. Third, analyzing open-ended responses that gauge respondents’ thoughts on BI, our findings highlight the complicated nature of public opinion toward BI, which includes optimism alongside uncertainty and skepticism.

Many networks in political and social research are bipartite, connecting two distinct node types. A common example is cosponsorship networks, where legislators are linked through the bills they support. However, most bipartite network analyses in political science rely on statistical models fitted to a “projected” unipartite network. This approach can lead to aggregation bias and an artificially high degree of clustering, invalidating the study of group roles in network formation. To address these issues, we develop a statistical model of bipartite networks theorized to arise from group interactions, extending the mixed-membership stochastic blockmodel. Our model identifies groups within each node type that exhibit common edge formation patterns and incorporates node and dyad-level covariates as predictors of group membership and observed dyadic relations. We derive an efficient computational algorithm to fit the model and apply it to cosponsorship data from the United States Senate. We show that senators who were perfectly split along party lines remained productive and pass major legislation by forming non-partisan, power-brokering coalitions that found common ground through low-stakes bills. We also find evidence of reciprocity norms and policy expertise impacting cosponsorships. An open-source software package is available for researchers to replicate these insights.

We say that a semigroup of matrices has a submultiplicative spectrum if the spectrum of the product of any two elements of the semigroup is contained in the product of the two spectra in question (as sets). In this note, we explore an approximate version of this condition.

Access to justice for many Kenyans remains a challenge due to the infrastructural and geographic reach of court services throughout the country. This recent development paper presents a spatial proximity analysis that quantifies the distribution of Kenya’s population proximate to the nearest court as an illustrative indicator of access to justice. The results estimate that about 3.5 per cent (1.7 million) of Kenya’s population reside more than 100 kilometres to the nearest physical courthouse, with the average distance to the nearest court per person being 22 kilometres. These considerable travel distances create significant barriers to justice, especially for rural populations, which are further aggravated by limited access to information and low levels of legal literacy. The paper concludes by discussing the current approaches, such as leveraging information and communication technologies, to expand access to court services, improve case information availability and ultimately enhance last-mile justice delivery for Kenyans living in remote regions.

In How to Talk About Love,1 Armand D’Angour offers an eloquent introduction to Plato’s Symposium, which includes a brief but enjoyable look at love in ancient Greek literature and a translation of selections from Plato’s dialogue, accompanied by the original Greek text. The book is part of Princeton University Press’ series on Ancient Wisdom for Modern Readers, which, as the name suggests, aims to repackage ancient texts for the self-help section of bookstores.

This retrospective analysis compares the recovery rate of commensal organisms in two sets of blood cultures with a single-time stamp (STS) versus ones with multiple-time stamps (MTS) in an academic tertiary center. Rates in which both sets were positive for commensals were numerically higher in STS versus MTS.

This study presents a mixed-methods analysis of the integration of social justice into legal practice in Hong Kong. While social justice within the legal field is a growing area of interest, research on how it can be enhanced through legal education remains relatively limited. This study aims to explore how higher education law courses can be leveraged to better incorporate social justice principles into contemporary legal practice. The research adopts a mixed-methods approach, including a quantitative analysis of questionnaires completed by 99 current law students in Hong Kong and a thematic analysis of interviews conducted with 33 students and legal professionals in the region. Findings suggest the potential benefits of increasing the emphasis on social justice within law programs at Hong Kong universities. The study also raises important questions about the optimal content and methods for delivering social justice education in legal curricula.

Dicamba-resistant (DR) soybean cultivars are essential elements in managing broadleaf weeds in modern production systems. However, limited information is available regarding yield reductions associated with dicamba rates that were previously registered for postemergence weed control and off-label dicamba rates in these cultivars. This study aimed to characterize and quantify the effects of postemergence dicamba applications on two DR soybean cultivars. Field trials were conducted in 2022 and 2023, with dicamba applied at 0 to 1,440 g ae ha⁻¹ during the V5 to V6 stages. Visible injury increased with dicamba rate, reaching 18% (Cultivar A) to 20% (Cultivar B) at 1,440 g ae ha⁻¹ at 3 d after treatment, but symptoms declined to <10% by 4 wk after treatment (WAT). Chlorophyll fluorescence was not significantly affected at 2 and 4 WAT. Height reduction at 4 WAT occurred only at the highest dicamba rate (1,440 g ae ha⁻¹), but differences disappeared by maturity. Dry biomass reduction was also dose-dependent, reaching 16% for Cultivar A and 10% for Cultivar B at the highest rate. Pod reduction in DR soybean was minor (<3.5%) and not significant. Applications of dicamba from 288 to 864 g ae ha⁻¹ resulted in minimal yield reductions (<5%) and no significant biomass reduction. At a dicamba dose of 1,152 g ae ha⁻¹, yield reductions reached 7% and 9% for Cultivars A and B, respectively, while the highest rate (1,440 g ae ha⁻¹) resulted in yield reductions of 12% (Cultivar A) and 14% (Cultivar B). Despite over-the-top application restrictions, these results confirm that DR soybean cultivars tolerate rates (≤720 g ae ha⁻¹) of dicamba that were previously registered for postemergence weed control with minimal (<5%) yield reduction and recover rapidly from transient injury. However, applications above these rates can reduce yield by up to 14%, highlighting the importance of adhering to recommended dicamba use guidelines.

The city-state (polis) is undoubtedly one of the most fundamental aspects of Greek history. John Ma’s book is a monumental study of the history of the Greek polis in the very long term.1 It starts from the collapse of the Bronze Age palaces around 1200 bce and takes the story to the end of ancient poleis around 600 ce; alongside the immense temporal extent, Ma impressively covers the whole of the Eastern Mediterranean. In my view, this is unquestionably the most significant contribution to the study of Greek history over the last two decades. It is the first attempt to focus the history of the polis not on the archaic and classical periods, but on the Hellenistic and early imperial poleis. The reason for this, and the most significant contribution of the book, is Ma’s concept of the ‘great convergence’: the spread across the eastern Mediterranean between 400–200 bce of a democratic model of the polis based on citizen equality, assemblies, the provision of public goods, and the disappearance of older models based on oligarchy and characterized by disenfranchised citizens, subject communities, and serf populations. At the same time, the dominance of large-scale geopolitical actors such as the Hellenistic kingdoms and later Rome put an end to the ‘Hundred Years War’ between 450–350 (another important conceptual innovation), in which dominant poleis tried to subjugate and conquer other poleis; after 350 bce, poleis’ attempts at expansion usually incorporated smaller communities on equal terms. The book is structured around the great convergence: earlier chapters examine the diverse world of the poleis before the convergence, while later chapters explore the transformation of the polis and its employment by the Roman Empire, once the Mediterranean stopped being a multipolar world. This very rich book functions both as an excellent survey of numerous Greek communities, as well as an impressive synthesis offering a new periodization of Greek history. It will undoubtedly generate major new debates among Greek historians, which are urgently needed in our field.

A local guideline for the management of patients hospitalized with skin and soft tissue infections was implemented at an academic, safety-net hospital. Immediate reductions in use of broad-spectrum antibiotics and durations of therapy were sustained over the subsequent 12 years.

In the wealth of literature on ethnic variation, ethnicity is often considered independently of other social characteristics. However, prioritizing ethnicity in this way risks overlooking the potential impact of other social factors. In this study, we demonstrate an intersection between ethnicity and social class based on a sociolinguistic corpus of Australian English, representing some of the country’s largest ethnic groups (Australians of Anglo-Celtic, Italian, Greek, and Chinese backgrounds), stratified according to age, gender, and social class. Rather than beginning with the social groupings, we first identify linguistic groupings to then consider how these groupings align with social dimensions. Cluster analyses of speaker random intercepts derived from independent regression analyses of 10 linguistic variables in recordings from 159 speakers reveal primary divisions for age, reflecting change over time, and secondary divisions for ethnicity in conjunction with social class, highlighting the interconnected nature of these social dimensions in linguistic variation.

We aimed to determine the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance, carriage of Panton-Valentine leucocidin (PVL), and the clonal structure of MRSA isolates collected from skin and soft tissue infections at a tertiary care hospital in Pakistan. Between August 2021 and May 2022, 154 non-repetitive MRSA isolates were consecutively collected and characterized by antimicrobial susceptibility testing, SCCmec typing, spa typing, and detection of PVL by PCR. MLST clonal complexes (CCs) were inferred from spa type using the Based Upon Repeat Pattern (BURP) algorithm. High levels of resistance were observed to ciprofloxacin (85.7%), erythromycin (76.0%), sulfamethoxazole (68.8%), gentamicin (68.8%), fusidic acid (57.8%), tetracycline (55.8%), and clindamycin (42.2%). Clonal analysis revealed 16 lineages, with the most frequent being CC8-MRSA-IV (27.3%), PVL-positive “Bengal Bay” CC1/ST772-MRSA-V (26.0%), and CC1-MRSA-IV (16.2%). PVL was detected in 45.5% of isolates across multiple lineages. Our findings highlight the coexistence of high antimicrobial resistance and frequent PVL carriage among MRSA in Pakistan. Given the association of PVL with severe infections and the limited treatment options for multidrug-resistant strains, these data underscore a significant public health concern and the need for systematic surveillance and prudent antibiotic use.

The phylogenetic relationships among arthropods remain contentious because morphological studies face challenges in resolving certain branches. Particularly difficult are relationships within and between the stem arthropods, owing largely to too few well-preserved fossil representatives. Additional fossil evidence, particularly from exceptional deposits like the Silurian Waukesha Lagerstätte in Wisconsin, helps to bolster our views on the evolutionary history of arthropods by providing well-preserved examples of novel taxa that could fit between early diverging stem-arthropod clades and modern euarthropods, thus building possible bridges between the two. Formed in karstification-induced troughs of the Manistique Formation paleoslope, the Waukesha Lagerstätte preserves a unique biota of organisms from the Telychian Age, mostly through secondary precipitation of francolite. Perhaps most well known from this deposit are the many peculiar and enigmatic arthropod taxa that could help resolve early arthropod cladistic relationships. We add to the growing body of work on the diversity, phylogeny, and taxonomic descriptions of the Waukesha biota by detailing a previously unnamed bivalved arthropod, informally called ‘the butterfly animal’ in past literature—which we here designate as Papiliomaris kluessendorfae n. gen. n. sp. We also conducted a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis that placed several recently described Waukesha taxa as basal members of the ‘Mandibulate’ clade within the Euarthropoda.

UUID: http://zoobank.org/c1d6f1dc-d35f-420c-aa57-2c8983f9779e