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An extensive library of symptom inventories has been developed over time to measure clinical symptoms, but this variety has led to several long standing issues. Most notably, results drawn from different settings and studies are not comparable, which limits reproducibility. Here, we present an artificial intelligence (AI) approach using semantic textual similarity (STS) to link symptoms and scores across previously incongruous symptom inventories. We tested the ability of four pre-trained STS models to screen thousands of symptom description pairs for related content - a challenging task typically requiring expert panels. Models were tasked to predict symptom severity across four different inventories for 6,607 participants drawn from 16 international data sources. The STS approach achieved 74.8% accuracy across five tasks, outperforming other models tested. This work suggests that incorporating contextual, semantic information can assist expert decision-making processes, yielding gains for both general and disease-specific clinical assessment.

This White Paper on child care is the second of four to be published by the Action Alliance for Virginia's Children, and focuses on the affordability and availability of quality child care in Virginia. The paper states that despite federal attempts to simplify funding, funding remains complicated due to differences in the federal and state fiscal years and multiple programs administered through multiple departments. The paper asserts that public funding must supplement parent fees and that diversified funding is needed. The fragmented, uncoordinated child care system compounds funding problems, with concomitant problems in values and increasingly complex funding streams and policies. There is a shortage of care, particularly quality care, care at nontraditional hours, care for infants and school-age children, and care for children who are ill or who have special needs. Topics addressed by the paper include: (1) the affordability of child care; (2) the funding problems created by a fragmented, uncoordinated child care system; (3) the availability of child care, including care at times required by parents' schedules, infant and school age care, sick child care, accessibility to public transportation, and time delays; and (4) funding sources for child care, including parent fees, the Child Care and Development Fund, and smaller government programs. The paper concludes with recommendations for child care advocates to lobby for more dollars to be well spent, to insist that spending be based on the best information available, and to work persistently for a coordinated, systematic approach to child care in Virginia. (KB)

Both children and adults benefit from living in communities and neighborhoods that are rich in social capital. However, the research literature is relatively silent with respect to the influence that children may play as catalysts for the formation and maintenance of community or family stocks of social capital. This article investigates whether having dependent children living at home play a role in forging adult connections, community involvement, and social capital in a suburban context. The qualitative data were derived from 12 focus groups and the quantitative data from a survey of 339 residents in three Western Australian suburbs. Overall, the quantitative results found that social capital, neighborhood cohesion, and community participation were all significantly higher among respondents with dependent children living at home. The results have implications for urban design and community infrastructure, including the extent to which the built environment caters for children and fosters social connectedness among parents, families, and the broader community. (Contains 2 figures and 1 table.)