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The COVID-19 epidemic imposed significant stressors on individuals and changed how medical care is delivered. The affect that this stress has placed on the field of bariatric surgery and the associated outcomes is not well established.A retrospective review of a prospectively collected database from a single academic institution was conducted. Weight loss and comorbidity outcomes were compared between a cohort of patients operated on during the pandemic and a matched group operated on prior to COVID-19. GAD-7 and PHQ-9 questionnaires were used to assess for anxiety and depression, respectively.A total of 329 and 155 patients were enrolled in the pre-pandemic and COVID-19 groups respectively. There were no significant differences in pre-operative BMI (p = 0.437) or comorbidities: Type II DM (p = 0.810), hypertension (p = 0.879), sleep apnea (p = 0.502), and hyperlipidemia (p = 0.227). Post-operatively, weight loss was comparable at all time points out to 1 year. Type II DM resolution rates were higher in the control cohort at 6 months (p = 0.007), but not at 12 months (p = 1.000). There was no statistically significant difference in resolution rates between the control group and the COVID-19 group for the other measured comorbidities. There was no difference in objective measures of anxiety and depression when comparing the two groups (both p 0.05).The COVID-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how society and medical systems function. Focusing on pre-operative dietary training and screening for inadequately managed psychological comorbidities yielded similar weight loss outcomes notwithstanding the significant societal and individual stressors with which patients were faced.

The main objective of the present paper is to examine whether distinct trajectories of mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic represent the data best (covering a time span from March 2020 to February 2021).

This project is the central platform for the Network of (German-speaking) Open Science Initiatives (Netzwerk der Open-Science-Initiativen, NOSI). We're providing protocols, links, and resources that might be of interest to others interested in Open Science.

In this study, we propose that improving motivation and accessibility to the questionnaire by enabling participants to choose their own items could be a pivotal factor to foster participants completion of measurement points.

In this study, we are interested in how students’ personality (extraversion and neuroticism) and subjective well- being change during two COVID-19 lockdowns. We already surveyed a cohort of first-year students at four times of measurement (October 2019, January 2020, April 2020, May 2020) and now repeat and pre-register the same survey with this year’s cohort (November 2020, February 2021, April 2021, May 2021).

This case study is based on experiences with an international meta-scientific project across different fields of research, assessing the use of Open Science practices in these fields, as well as individual researchers’ reasons for not engaging in Open Science practices. The project was conducted by a cross-cultural and diverse group of researchers. In the present article, we share insights into potential pitfalls when conducting an international study, as well as possible solutions to overcome them. Specifically, we highlight various issues focusing on two key phases: designing an online survey with a focus on cross-cultural data collection, and recruiting a cross-cultural online sample of researchers.

A pre-print of this article is available at MetaArXiv Preprints under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License: https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/kdqcw. Supplementary Information: This list of terms represents the ‘Open Scholarship Glossary 1.0’ (available at: https://forrt.org/glossary/. Glossary available under a CC BY NC SA 4.0 license at: https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41562-021-01269-4/MediaObjects/41562_2021_1269_MOESM1_ESM.pdf). https://osf.io/preprints/metaarxiv/kdqcw https://static-content.springer.com/esm/art%3A10.1038%2Fs41562-021-01269-4/MediaObjects/41562_2021_1269_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

The COVID-19 lockdowns represent a major life event with an immense impact on university students' lives. Findings prior to the pandemic suggest that changes in personality and subjective well-being (SWB) can occur after critical life events or psychological interventions. The present study examined how university students' extraversion, neuroticism, and SWB changed during two COVID-19 lockdowns in Germany. To this end, we conducted a partly preregistered, two-cohort study with four measurement points each from October 2019 to May 2021 (N

BackgroundFree Open-Access Medical education (FOAM) use among residents continues to rise. However, it often lacks quality assurance processes and residents receive little guidance on quality assessment. The Academic Life in Emergency Medicine Approved Instructional Resources tool (AAT) was created for FOAM appraisal by and for expert educators and has demonstrated validity in this context. It has yet to be evaluated in other populations.ObjectivesWe assessed the AAT's usability in a diverse population of practicing emergency medicine (EM) physicians, residents, and medical students; solicited feedback; and developed a revised tool.MethodsAs part of the Medical Education Translational Resources: Impact and Quality (METRIQ) study, we recruited medical students, EM residents, and EM attendings to evaluate five FOAM posts with the AAT and provide quantitative and qualitative feedback via an online survey. Two independent analysts performed a qualitative thematic analysis with discrepancies resolved through discussion and negotiated consensus. This analysis informed development of an initial revised AAT, which was then further refined after pilot testing among the author group. The final tool was reassessed for reliability.ResultsOf 330 recruited international participants, 309 completed all ratings. The Best Evidence in Emergency Medicine (BEEM) score was the component most frequently reported as difficult to use. Several themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: for ease of use-understandable, logically structured, concise, and aligned with educational value. Limitations include deviation from questionnaire best practices, validity concerns, and challenges assessing evidence-based medicine. Themes supporting its use include evaluative utility and usability. The author group pilot tested the initial revised AAT, revealing a total score average measure intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of moderate reliability (ICC=0.68, 95% confidence interval [CI]=0 to 0.962). The final AAT's average measure ICC was 0.88 (95% CI= 0.77 to 0.95).ConclusionsWe developed the final revised AAT from usability feedback. The new score has significantly increased usability, but will need to be reassessed for reliability in a broad population.

Background: Work-related stress shows steadily increasing prevalence rates and has tangible consequences for individual workers, their organizations, and society as a whole. One mechanism that may help offset the negative outcomes of work-related stress on employees’ well-being is recovery. Recovery refers to the experience of unwinding from one's job when not at work. However, employees who experience high levels of work-related stress and are thus particularly in need of recovery tend to struggle to switch-off. Due to the detrimental effects of this prolonged and sustained mental representation of job stressors, interventions promoting recovery may contribute to improvements in employees' mental health. Methods: In this randomized, waitlist controlled trial, we will investigate the effectiveness of two 6-week online training programs (cognitive behavioral and mindfulness-based). The sample will include employees working at least part-time during regular work hours. Besides the pre-post-follow-up assessments, the trial will include measurement bursts with the goal of examining the underlying mechanisms. We expect that both interventions will reduce work-related perseverative thinking (PT) compared with the waitlist control groups (primary outcome). Also, we expect that both interventions will result in similar improvements, but the underlying mechanisms will differ (process outcomes). In the cognitive-behavioral intervention group, we expect that the main mechanism responsible for lower PT levels will be an increase in recovery experiences across time. In the mindfulness-based group, we expect that the main mechanism responsible for lower PT levels will be an increase in facets of mindfulness across time. Discussion: In the present study, we will investigate mechanisms underlying assumed changes in work-related PT in great detail. Besides evaluating the overall effectiveness of the two interventions in terms of pre-post-follow-up changes, we will look at the underlying processes at different levels—that is, within days, within weeks, across weeks, and between individuals. Accordingly, our study will offer a fine-grained approach to investigating potential determinants, mediators, and moderators of the processes that may, in the end, be responsible for work-related strain. From a public health perspective, if effective, the online training programs may offer valuable, low-threshold, and low-intensity interventions for a broad range of occupations. Trial registration German Clinical Trials Registration: DRKS00024933. Registered prospectively 7 April 2021. https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00024933.

In the aftermath of the Shoah (Holocaust)—the mass murder of 6,000,000 Jews—Jean-Paul Sartre wrote Reflexions sur la Question Juive (1946), in which he concluded that the fate of the Jews, the fate of the individual non-Jew, and the fate of the entire world are inextricably and reciprocally intertwined. Building on Sartre's perception, Portrait of a Jew (1962) and The Liberation of the Jew (1966) describe what the author, Albert Memmi, terms "the universal Jewish fate": that of being the paradigmatic "colonized" Other—insofar as the Jews are a particularly oppressed minority, that is, their marginalization epitomizes the fate of all humanity. Further, Memmi argues both that "to be a Jewish writer is ... to express the Jewish fate" and that a "true Jewish literature" is necessarily one which revolts against the imposition and acceptance of this fate. Sartre's and Memmi's insights posit that Jewish consciousness acts upon both national and world consciousness. Memmi suggests that one means of expressing the Jewish consciousness is through literature. In their imaginative interpretations of the post-Shoah interconnections between the Jew, the nation, and the world, modern Jewish fiction writers of the Diaspora (dispersion) —at least those whose work foregrounds tropes of Jewish sensibility, incorporating Jewish characters and themes—often delineate a world which, in the aftermath of Auschwitz, is socially and existentially even more precarious than it was before the war. This study examines post-Shoah Jewish consciousness and its relation to national/world consciousness,as represented in the English-language Jewish fiction of Australia, South Africa, and Canada, Commonwealth countries whose diverse Jewish literatures have been overshadowed by the predominant English-language Jewish literary culture of the U.S.A. The structure of this study is bipartite. Part B is an indexed Bibliography enumerating primary works by Jewish prose fiction writers of Australia, Canada, and South Africa. Part A is a critical commentary on Part B. The Introduction (Chapter 1) outlines the theoretical bases for the study. The three following chapters scrutinize Jewish Australian (Chapter 2), Jewish South African (Chapter 3), and Jewish Canadian (Chapter 4) fiction. Among the writers considered are Australians B.N. Jubal, Judah Waten, David Martin, Morris Lurie, Serge Liberman, and Lily Brett; South Africans Nadine Gordimer, Dan Jacobson, Jillian Becker, Antony Sher, and Rose Zwi; and Canadians Henry Kreisel, A.M. Klein, Adele Wiseman, Mordecai Richler, and Robert Majzels. Each of these three chapters follows a similar format: a description of the origin, history, and demography of the Jewish community; an outline of the important pre-World War II Jewish fiction writers and their work; an examination of representative post-Shoah works; and concluding remarks about the ways in which the works under consideration here contest and revise both the canons of nation and national literature and the very concepts of nation, canon, and canon-making. An Epilogue (Chapter 5) contextualizes the thematic patterns common to the Jewish fiction of the three countries and suggests ways in which this fiction can be located within the larger framework of Jewish Literature.