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In the late 410s or early 420s, in an epistle that is no longer extant, a monk in Gaul named Leporius, motivated by a desire to avoid attributing change and the human condition to God in the incarnation, wrote that he was disinclined to confess that God was born of a woman. Instead, he preferred to say that a perfect human being was born along with God rather than as God. The epistle sought to demonstrate this basic point and related Christological consequences through the interpretation of several key passages of scripture. But the form of Christological dualism that he advocated soon came to be deemed aberrant. When he refused to recant his views, Proculus, bishop of Marseilles, and Cillenius, a bishop of an unknown see in southern Gaul, formally rebuked Leporius in circumstances that remain unclear, and expelled him from Gaul. Along with two disciples named Domninus and Bonus, he took refuge in North Africa with Augustine.
Numerous theories posit different core features to borderline personality disorder (BPD). Recent advances in network analysis provide a method of examining the relative centrality of BPD symptoms, as well as examine the replicability of findings across samples. Additionally, despite the increase in research supporting the validity of BPD in adolescents, clinicians are reluctant to diagnose BPD in adolescents. Establishing the replicability of the syndrome across adolescents and adults informs clinical practice and research. This study examined the stability of BPD symptom networks and centrality of symptoms across samples varying in age and clinical characteristics.
Methods
Cross-sectional analyses of BPD symptoms from semi-structured diagnostic interviews from the Collaborative Longitudinal Study of Personality Disorders (CLPS), the Methods to Improve Diagnostic Assessment and Service (MIDAS) study, and an adolescent clinical sample. Network attributes, including edge (partial association) strength and node (symptom) expected influence, were compared.
Results
The three networks were largely similar and strongly correlated. Affective instability and identity disturbance emerged as relatively central symptoms across the three samples, and relationship difficulties across adult networks. Differences in network attributes were more evident between networks varying both in age and in BPD symptom severity level.
Conclusions
Findings highlight the relative importance of affective, identity, and relationship symptoms, consistent with several leading theories of BPD. The network structure of BPD symptoms appears generally replicable across multiple large samples including adolescents and adults, providing further support for the validity of the diagnosis across these developmental phases.
This study aimed to critically analyse Australia’s current and proposed policy actions to reduce added sugar consumption. Over-consumption of added sugar is a significant public health nutrition issue. The competing interests, values and beliefs among stakeholders mean they have disparate views regarding which policy actions are preferable to reduce added sugar consumption.
Design:
Semi-structured interviews using purposive, snowball sampling and policy mapping. Policy actions were classified by two frameworks: NOURISHING (e.g. behaviour change communication, food environment and food system) and the Orders of Change (e.g. first order: technical adjustments, second order: reforming the system, third order: transforming the system).
Setting:
Australia.
Participants:
Twenty-two stakeholders from the food industry, food regulation, government, public health groups and academia.
Results:
All proposed and existing policy actions targeted the food environment/behaviour change; most were assessed as first-order changes, and reductionist (nutrient specific) in nature. Influences on policy actions included industry power, stakeholder fragmentation, government ideology/political will and public pressure. Few stakeholders considered potential risks of policy actions, particularly of non-nutritive sweetener substitution or opportunity costs for other policies.
Conclusions:
Most of Australia’s policy actions to reduce added sugar consumption are reductionist. Preferencing nutrient specific, first-order policy actions could reflect the influence of vested interests, a historically dominant reductionist orientation to nutrition science and policy, and the perceived difficulty of pursuing second- or third-order changes. Pursuing only first-order policy actions could lead to ‘regrettable’ substitutions and creates an opportunity cost for more comprehensive policy aimed at adjusting the broader food system.
South Africa has embarked on major health policy reform to deliver universal health coverage through the establishment of National Health Insurance (NHI). The aim is to improve access, remove financial barriers to care, and enhance care quality. Health technology assessment (HTA) is explicitly identified in the proposed NHI legislation and will have a prominent role in informing decisions about adoption and access to health interventions and technologies. The specific arrangements and approach to HTA in support of this legislation are yet to be determined. Although there is currently no formal national HTA institution in South Africa, there are several processes in both the public and private healthcare sectors that use elements of HTA to varying extents to inform access and resource allocation decisions. Institutions performing HTAs or related activities in South Africa include the National and Provincial Departments of Health, National Treasury, National Health Laboratory Service, Council for Medical Schemes, medical scheme administrators, managed care organizations, academic or research institutions, clinical societies and associations, pharmaceutical and devices companies, private consultancies, and private sector hospital groups. Existing fragmented HTA processes should coordinate and conform to a standardized, fit-for-purpose process and structure that can usefully inform priority setting under NHI and for other decision makers. This transformation will require comprehensive and inclusive planning with dedicated funding and regulation, and provision of strong oversight mechanisms and leadership.
Passive microwave satellite observations are used to identify the presence of surface meltwater across Antarctica at daily intervals from July 1979 to June 2020, with a focus on ice shelves. Antarctic Peninsula ice shelves have the highest number of annual days of melt, with a maximum of 89 days. Over the entire time period, there are few significant linear trends in days of melt per year. High melt years can be split into two distinct categories, those with high melt days in Dronning Maud Land and Wilkes Land, and those with high melt days in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Bellingshausen Sea sector of West Antarctica. The first pattern coincides with significant negative correlations between melt days and spring and summer Southern Annular Mode. Both patterns also form the primary modes of spatial and annual variability in the dataset observed by Principal Component Analysis. Areas experiencing extended melt for the first time in years tend to show large decreases in subsequent winter microwave emissions due to structural changes in the firn. We use this to identify the impact of novel melt events, particularly over the austral summers of 1991/92 and 2015/16 on the Ross Ice Shelf.
Younger-onset dementia (YOD) is a dementia of which symptom onset occurs at 65 years or less. There are approximately 27000 people in Australia with a YOD and the causes can range from Alzheimer’s dementia (AD), frontotemporal dementia (FTD), metabolic and genetic disorders. It is crucial to obtain a definitive diagnosis as soon as possible in order for appropriate treatment to take place and future planning. Previous research has reported 4-5 years to get a diagnosis (Draper et al. 2016) and factors associated with delay include younger age (van Vliet et al. 2013) and psychiatric comorbidity (Draper et al. 2016). We report on our experience of diagnostic delay.
Methods:
This was a retrospective file review of 10 years of inpatients from Neuropsychiatry, Royal Melbourne Hospital, Australia. Neuropsychiatry is a tertiar service which provides assessment of people with cognitive, psychiatric, neurological and behavioural symptoms. Factors such as age of onset, number of services/specialists seen were extracted and analysed using multivariate regression.
Results:
Of the 306 individual patients who had a YOD, these were grouped into the major dementia groups (such as AD, FTD, Huntington’s disease, vascular dementia, alcohol-related dementia). The most commonly occurring dementia was AD (24.2%), followed by FTD (23%). There was an average of 3.7 years (SD=2.6), range 0.5-15 years, of delay to diagnosis. Cognitive impairment, as measured using the Neuropsychiatry Unit Cognitive Assessment (NUCOG) was moderate, with a mean score of 68.9 (SD=17.9). Within the groups of dementia, patients with Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) had the longest delay to diagnosis F(11,272)=3.677, p<0.0001, with 6.3 years delay. Age of symptom onset and number of specialists/services seen were the significant predictors of delay to diagnosis F(7, 212)=3.975, p<0.001, R211.6.
Discussion and conclusions:
This was an eclectic group of people with YOD. The results of regression suggests that there are other factors which contribute to the delay, which are not just demographic related. Rarer disorders, such as NPC which present at an early age, and present with symptoms that are not cognitive in nature, can contribute to diagnostic delay.
The study investigates sex differences in the prevalence of undernutrition in sub-Saharan Africa. Undernutrition was defined by Z-scores using the CDC-2000 growth charts. Some 128 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) were analysed, totalling 700,114 children under-five. The results revealed a higher susceptibility of boys to undernutrition. Male-to-female ratios of prevalence averaged 1.18 for stunting (height-for-age Z-score <−2.0); 1.01 for wasting (weight-for-height Z-score <−2.0); 1.05 for underweight (weight-for-age Z-score <−2.0); and 1.29 for concurrent wasting and stunting (weight-for-height and height-for-age Z-scores <−2.0). Sex ratios of prevalence varied with age for stunting and concurrent wasting and stunting, with higher values for children age 0–23 months and lower values for children age 24–59 months. Sex ratios of prevalence tended to increase with declining level of mortality for stunting, underweight and concurrent wasting and stunting, but remained stable for wasting. Comparisons were made with other anthropometric reference sets (NCHS-1977 and WHO-2006), and the results were found to differ somewhat from those obtained with CDC-2000. Possible rationales for these patterns are discussed.
Studying phenotypic and genetic characteristics of age at onset (AAO) and polarity at onset (PAO) in bipolar disorder can provide new insights into disease pathology and facilitate the development of screening tools.
Aims
To examine the genetic architecture of AAO and PAO and their association with bipolar disorder disease characteristics.
Method
Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) and polygenic score (PGS) analyses of AAO (n = 12 977) and PAO (n = 6773) were conducted in patients with bipolar disorder from 34 cohorts and a replication sample (n = 2237). The association of onset with disease characteristics was investigated in two of these cohorts.
Results
Earlier AAO was associated with a higher probability of psychotic symptoms, suicidality, lower educational attainment, not living together and fewer episodes. Depressive onset correlated with suicidality and manic onset correlated with delusions and manic episodes. Systematic differences in AAO between cohorts and continents of origin were observed. This was also reflected in single-nucleotide variant-based heritability estimates, with higher heritabilities for stricter onset definitions. Increased PGS for autism spectrum disorder (β = −0.34 years, s.e. = 0.08), major depression (β = −0.34 years, s.e. = 0.08), schizophrenia (β = −0.39 years, s.e. = 0.08), and educational attainment (β = −0.31 years, s.e. = 0.08) were associated with an earlier AAO. The AAO GWAS identified one significant locus, but this finding did not replicate. Neither GWAS nor PGS analyses yielded significant associations with PAO.
Conclusions
AAO and PAO are associated with indicators of bipolar disorder severity. Individuals with an earlier onset show an increased polygenic liability for a broad spectrum of psychiatric traits. Systematic differences in AAO across cohorts, continents and phenotype definitions introduce significant heterogeneity, affecting analyses.
Background: Infections are a frequent cause of hospital (re)admissions for older adults receiving home health care (HHC) in the United States. However, previous investigators have likely underestimated the prevalence of infections leading to hospitalization due to limitations of identifying infections using Outcome and Assessment Information Set (OASIS), the standardized assessment tool mandated for all Medicare-certified HHC agencies. By linking OASIS data with inpatient data from the Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) file, we were able to better quantify infection hospitalization trends and subsequent mortality among HHC patients. Method: After stratification (by census region, ownership, and urban or rural location) and random sampling, our data set consisted of 2,258,113 Medicare beneficiaries who received HHC services between January 1, 2013, and December 31, 2018, from 1,481 Medicare-certified HHC agencies. The 60-day HHC episodes were identified in OASIS. Hospital transfers reported in OASIS were linked with corresponding MedPAR records. Our outcomes of interest were (1) hospitalization with infection present on admission (POA); (2) hospitalization with infection as the primary cause; and (3) 30-day mortality following hospitalization with infection as the primary cause. We identified bacterial (including suspected) infections based on International Classification of Disease, Ninth Revision (ICD-9) and ICD-10 codes in MedPAR. We classified infections by site: respiratory, urinary tract, skin/soft tissue, intravenous catheter-related, and all (including other or unspecified infection site). We also identified sepsis diagnoses. Result: From 2013 through 2018, the percentage of 60-day HHC episodes with 1 or more hospital transfers ranged from 15% to 16%. Approximately half of all HHC patients hospitalized had an infection POA. Over the 6 years studied, infection (any type) was the primary cause of hospitalization in more than a quarter of all transfers (25.86%–27.57%). The percentage of hospitalizations due to sepsis increased from 7.51% in 2013 to 11.49% in 2018, whereas the percentage of hospitalizations due to respiratory, urinary tract, or skin/soft-tissue infections decreased (p <0.001). Thirty-day mortality following a transfer due to infection ranged from 14.14% in 2013 to 14.98% in 2018; mortality rates were highest following transfers caused by sepsis (23.14%-26.51%) and respiratory infections (13.07%-14.27%). Conclusion: HHC is an important source of post-acute care for those aging in place. Our findings demonstrate that infections are a persistent problem in HHC and are associated with substantial 30-day mortality, particularly following hospitalizations caused by sepsis, emphasizing the importance of infection prevention in HHC. Effective policies to promote best practices for infection prevention and control in the home environment are needed to mitigate infection risk.
Ethnohistoric accounts indicate that the people of Australia's Channel Country engaged in activities rarely recorded elsewhere on the continent, including food storage, aquaculture and possible cultivation, yet there has been little archaeological fieldwork to verify these accounts. Here, the authors report on a collaborative research project initiated by the Mithaka people addressing this lack of archaeological investigation. The results show that Mithaka Country has a substantial and diverse archaeological record, including numerous large stone quarries, multiple ritual structures and substantial dwellings. Our archaeological research revealed unknown aspects, such as the scale of Mithaka quarrying, which could stimulate re-evaluation of Aboriginal socio-economic systems in parts of ancient Australia.
Political polarization and generational politics are important topics in contemporary political science classrooms. This article presents an approach to teaching political polarization in an introduction to politics course. Coauthored by two Generation Z students from the course and their Boomer Generation professor, the article provides conflicting views of young people and politics as found in the work of Robert Putnam and Russell Dalton. The article presents survey data on affective and issue political polarization from the course, including discussion by the two student coauthors of the survey results interpreting their generation’s political polarization. The course approaches the introductory politics course using cognitive psychology concepts including confirmative bias, motivated reasoning, and other cognitive biases. Teaching from this micro-level perspective helps students to reflect on their own political biases. The article provides concepts and readings for political science professors to use in replicating the course.
It is increasingly common for models of shallow-layer overland flows to include equations for the evolution of the underlying bed (morphodynamics) and the motion of an associated sedimentary phase. We investigate the linear stability properties of these systems in considerable generality. Naive formulations of the morphodynamics, featuring exchange of sediment between a well-mixed suspended load and the bed, lead to mathematically ill-posed governing equations. This is traced to a singularity in the linearised system at Froude number ${\textit {Fr}} = 1$ that causes unbounded unstable growth of short-wavelength disturbances. The inclusion of neglected physical processes can restore well posedness. Turbulent momentum diffusion (eddy viscosity) and a suitably parametrised bed load sediment transport are shown separately to be sufficient in this regard. However, we demonstrate that such models typically inherit an associated instability that is absent from non-morphodynamic settings. Implications of our analyses are considered for simple generic closures, including a drag law that switches between fluid and granular behaviour, depending on the sediment concentration. Steady morphodynamic flows bifurcate into two states: dilute flows, which are stable at low ${\textit {Fr}}$, and concentrated flows which are always unstable to disturbances in concentration. By computing the growth rates of linear modes across a wide region of parameter space, we examine in detail the effects of specific model parameters including the choices of sediment erodibility, eddy viscosity and bed load flux. These analyses may be used to inform the ongoing development of operational models in engineering and geosciences.
Multicentre research databases can provide insights into healthcare processes to improve outcomes and make practice recommendations for novel approaches. Effective audits can establish a framework for reporting research efforts, ensuring accurate reporting, and spearheading quality improvement. Although a variety of data auditing models and standards exist, barriers to effective auditing including costs, regulatory requirements, travel, and design complexity must be considered.
Materials and methods:
The Congenital Cardiac Research Collaborative conducted a virtual data training initiative and remote source data verification audit on a retrospective multicentre dataset. CCRC investigators across nine institutions were trained to extract and enter data into a robust dataset on patients with tetralogy of Fallot who required neonatal intervention. Centres provided de-identified source files for a randomised 10% patient sample audit. Key auditing variables, discrepancy types, and severity levels were analysed across two study groups, primary repair and staged repair.
Results:
Of the total 572 study patients, data from 58 patients (31 staged repairs and 27 primary repairs) were source data verified. Amongst the 1790 variables audited, 45 discrepancies were discovered, resulting in an overall accuracy rate of 97.5%. High accuracy rates were consistent across all CCRC institutions ranging from 94.6% to 99.4% and were reported for both minor (1.5%) and major discrepancies type classifications (1.1%).
Conclusion:
Findings indicate that implementing a virtual multicentre training initiative and remote source data verification audit can identify data quality concerns and produce a reliable, high-quality dataset. Remote auditing capacity is especially important during the current COVID-19 pandemic.
This study reports on the changes in stress, anxiety, and depressive symptoms of subscribers after 3 months using Text4Hope, a supportive text messaging program designed to provide support during the pandemic.
Methods:
Standardized self-report measures were used to evaluate perceived stress (measured with the Perceived Stress Scale-10 [PSS-10]), anxiety (measured with the General Anxiety Disorder Scale 7 [GAD-7]), and depressive symptoms (measured with the Patient Health Questionnaire [PHQ-9]), at baseline and 3rd month (n = 373).
Results:
After 3 months of using Text4Hope, subscribers’ self-reports revealed significant (p< 0.001) mean score reductions compared with baseline on: the GAD-7 by 22.7%, PHQ-9 by 10.3%, and PSS-10 scores by 5.7%. Reductions in inferred prevalence rates for moderate to high symptoms were also observed, with anxiety demonstrating the largest reduction (15.7%).
Conclusions:
Observed Text4Hope-related reductions in psychological distress during COVID-19 indicate that Text4Hope is an effective, convenient, and accessible means of implementing a population-level psychological intervention.
In recent years, a variety of efforts have been made in political science to enable, encourage, or require scholars to be more open and explicit about the bases of their empirical claims and, in turn, make those claims more readily evaluable by others. While qualitative scholars have long taken an interest in making their research open, reflexive, and systematic, the recent push for overarching transparency norms and requirements has provoked serious concern within qualitative research communities and raised fundamental questions about the meaning, value, costs, and intellectual relevance of transparency for qualitative inquiry. In this Perspectives Reflection, we crystallize the central findings of a three-year deliberative process—the Qualitative Transparency Deliberations (QTD)—involving hundreds of political scientists in a broad discussion of these issues. Following an overview of the process and the key insights that emerged, we present summaries of the QTD Working Groups’ final reports. Drawing on a series of public, online conversations that unfolded at www.qualtd.net, the reports unpack transparency’s promise, practicalities, risks, and limitations in relation to different qualitative methodologies, forms of evidence, and research contexts. Taken as a whole, these reports—the full versions of which can be found in the Supplementary Materials—offer practical guidance to scholars designing and implementing qualitative research, and to editors, reviewers, and funders seeking to develop criteria of evaluation that are appropriate—as understood by relevant research communities—to the forms of inquiry being assessed. We dedicate this Reflection to the memory of our coauthor and QTD working group leader Kendra Koivu.1