This article aims to explore the social representations of the Spanish Second Republic and the Transition epochs among university students of various national identities within the Spanish state. A free-association exercise elicited by the words ‘Second Republic’ and ‘Transition’ was completed by 477 university students of the Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia, and Madrid, who were also asked about their national identity ideological orientation. Lexical analysis was used to analyse their responses. The results demonstrate how these two periods are strongly anchored in the ideological affiliations and social identity of the participants. Furthermore, we observed that the Spanish identity and right-wing ideology were related to a narrative crafted by the political elites during the inception of the current democratic period. Meanwhile, the peripheral national identities and left-wing ideology were associated with a contentious narrative that responds to the contested narrative. In addition, the results also reveal the current relevance of these two periods through their symbols and transmission, whose senses and meanings differ based on the ideological affiliation and national identity of the participants.

This article provides a comparative discussion of the theories of imperialism developed by three prominent scholars – Paul Samuel Reinsch, Ukita Kazutami, and Liang Qichao – in the 1900s. Such a discussion offers a fresh understanding of imperialism in the East Asian context from three perspectives. First, by revealing inter-textual connections between the three figures’ writings, it sheds light on Japan’s mediating role in the formation of Chinese knowledge of imperialism in a transpacific exchange of ideas. Second, it examines how the theories of imperialism travelled in the unequal international spaces created by practices of imperialism. Last, it draws attention to the consequences of embracing the Western ideal of national empire in East Asia, highlighting the fact that some Japanese and Chinese elites resisted Western imperialism on the one hand, but, on the other, drew inspiration from the ideal of imperialism to formulate their own expansionist agendas.

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) result in substantial patient harm and avoidable costs. Pay-for-performance programs (PFP) through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have resulted in reductions of HAIs like central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteremia, through robust infection prevention programs and practices. Hospital Onset Bacteremia and Fungemia (HOB) is proposed as an alternative quality measure for public reporting and PFP, and was endorsed by the National Quality Forum in 2022. This broad measure is designed as an electronic quality measure that avoids manual abstraction and excludes risk adjustment. HOB would substantially expand the scope of focus of existing bloodstream infection measurement, and is currently being considered for voluntary reporting in 2025. In this article, we provide arguments for and against adopting HOB as a PFP measure linked to CMS payments.

This is a proof-of-concept study to compare the effects of a 2-week program of “Remind-to-move” (RTM) treatment using closed-loop and open-loop wearables for hemiparetic upper extremity in patients with chronic stroke in the community. The RTM open-loop wearable device has been proven in our previous studies to be useful to address the learned nonuse phenomenon of the hemiparetic upper extremity. A closed-loop RTM wearable device, which emits reminding cues according to actual arm use, was developed in this study. A convenience sample of 16 participants with chronic unilateral stroke recruited in the community was engaged in repetitive upper extremity task-specific practice for 2 weeks while wearing either a closed-loop or an open-loop ambulatory RTM wearable device on their affected hand for 3 hrs a day. Evaluations were conducted at pre-/post-intervention and follow-up after 4 weeks using upper extremity motor performance behavioral measures, actual arm use questionnaire, and the kinematic data obtained from the device. Results showed that both open-loop and closed-loop training groups achieved significant gains in all measures at posttest and follow-up evaluations. The closed-loop group showed a more significant improvement in movement frequency, hand functions, and actual arm use than did the open-loop group. Our findings supported the use of closed-loop wearables, which showed greater effects in terms of promoting the hand use of the hemiparetic upper extremity than open-loop wearables among patients with chronic stroke.

The present paper studies how to encourage longer careers by reducing labor income taxes for older workers. The analysis relies on numerical experiments within a general equilibrium overlapping generations (OLG) model that is calibrated to an average economy of the organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD). I find that the policy can delay retirement and increase tax revenue and the capital stock if treatment occurs close to, and before, the preferred retirement age. A non-trivial share of the increased post-treatment labor supply can be explained by the substitution of hours worked from the pre-treatment career to the post-treatment career. Lowering the treatment age only leads to small changes in the aggregate labor supply, but is increasingly costly for the government in terms of forgone revenue. Tax shifting toward higher consumption taxes always increases welfare, while tax shifting toward higher capital or labor income taxes paid by younger workers only increases welfare if treatment occurs sufficiently late in the career.

We consider Shimura varieties associated to a unitary group of signature $(n-s,s)$ where n is even. For these varieties, we construct smooth p-adic integral models for $s=1$ and regular p-adic integral models for $s=2$ and $s=3$ over odd primes p which ramify in the imaginary quadratic field with level subgroup at p given by the stabilizer of a $\pi $-modular lattice in the hermitian space. Our construction, which has an explicit moduli-theoretic description, is given by an explicit resolution of a corresponding local model.

Mosquito-borne California serogroup orthobunyaviruses Inkoo (INKV) and Chatanga (CHATV) are known to be endemic in Finland with a high seroprevalence. We developed a novel multiplexed reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction method for discriminating between the INKV and CHATV. This assay was used along with traditional serological tests to study a set of summertime patients during the years 2021, 2023, and 2024 to assess the epidemiology and prevalence of acute INKV and CHATV infections in Finland. Altogether, 1470 samples were screened, and there were 16 patients who had an acute infection based on serological findings and/or nucleic acid test. The orthobunyavirus-IgG seroprevalences were 18% (2021), 20% (2023), and 30% (2024), being lower than that in studies from 20 years ago. Neutralization tests were carried out, and all but one acute case had more than four-fold higher titre to INVK vs. CHATV, indicating specificity to INKV infection. The results suggest that epidemiology has changed from previous studies, and INKV should be considered a causative agent of summertime infections in Finland. The symptom diversity in mild disease outcomes should be studied to guide orthobunyavirus recognition by clinicians. The use of molecular assay discriminating INKV and CHATV aids in understanding disease associations.

Negative symptoms in schizophrenia are critical to functional outcomes but remain difficult to assess reliably. The Brief Negative Symptom Scale (BNSS) was developed to address these challenges, though no validation exists in Romanian-speaking populations. To validate the BNSS in a Romanian clinical sample, explore its psychometric properties and compare BNSS-based and PANSS-based classifications of severe negative symptoms. Forty-seven inpatients with schizophrenia were assessed using Romanian versions of the BNSS, PANSS, CDSS and AIMS. Psychometric analyses included internal consistency, inter-rater reliability, factor analysis and correlation-based validity. Two classification schemes, moderate–severe negative symptoms, measured by BNSS (BNSS-MS), and predominant negative symptoms, measured by PANSS (PANSS-PNS), were compared. The BNSS showed excellent internal consistency (α = .94) and inter-rater reliability (ICC = .98). A five-factor structure was confirmed. BNSS total scores correlated strongly with PANSS negative (ρ = .90), but not with positive, depressive, or motor symptoms. Blunted affect emerged as the most prominent subscale. The BNSS-MS group captured more severe cases than PANSS-PNS and showed greater symptom burden and higher distress scores. The Romanian BNSS is valid and sensitive for detecting negative symptoms, outperforming PANSS in identifying clinically significant subgroups.