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We develop a game-theoretic model of strategic interdependence and tipping in public policy choices and show that the model can be estimated by probit and logit estimators. We test its validity and applicability by using daily data on state-level COVID-19 responses in the United States. Social distancing via shelter-in-place (SIP) strategies and wearing masks emerged as the most effective nonpharmaceutical ways of combatting COVID-19. In the United States, choices about these policies are made by individual states. We develop a game-theoretic model of such choices and test it econometrically, confirming strong interdependence in the implementation of these policies. If enough states engage in social distancing or mask wearing, others will be tipped to follow suit. Policy choices are influenced mainly by the choices of other states, especially those of similar political orientation and to a lesser degree by the number of new COVID-19 cases. The choice of mask-wearing policies is more sensitive to peer choices than the choice of SIP policies, and Republican states are much less likely than Democratic to introduce mask-wearing policies. The choices of policies are influenced more by political than public health considerations. These findings emphasize strategic interdependence in policy choice and offer an analytical framework for these complex dynamics., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Data integration to align cells across batches has become a cornerstone of single-cell data analysis, critically affecting downstream results. Currently, there are no guidelines for when the biological differences between samples are separable from batch effects. Here we show that current paradigms for single-cell data integration remove biologically meaningful variation and introduce distortion. We present a statistical model and computationally scalable algorithm, CellANOVA (cell state space analysis of variance), that harnesses experimental design to explicitly recover biological signals that are erased during single-cell data integration. CellANOVA uses a 'pool-of-controls' design concept, applicable across diverse settings, to separate unwanted variation from biological variation of interest and allow the recovery of subtle biological signals. We apply CellANOVA to diverse contexts and validate the recovered biological signals by orthogonal assays. In particular, we show that CellANOVA is effective in the challenging case of single-cell and single-nucleus data integration, where it recovers subtle biological signals that can be validated and replicated by external data., Competing Interests: Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc.)

Aim: To evaluate the implementation of the Transitional Care Model (TCM), an evidence-based, advanced practice registered nurse-led multi-component intervention, as part of a randomised controlled trial during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic., Design: Parallel convergent mixed-methods approach., Methods: Data for this study were collected between June 2020 and February 2021. Data from 78 patients who received the intervention and 68 recorded meetings with system leaders and clinical teams were analysed using descriptive statistics, directed content analysis, and joint display., Results: Fidelity to delivery of elements of the TCM components was variable, with the Hospital-to-Home visit elements having the widest range (14.3%-100%) and Maintaining Relationships elements having the highest range (97.3%-98.6%). There were 27 identified challenges and 15 strategies for implementing the TCM with fidelity during the pandemic., Conclusion: The COVID-19 pandemic impacted all aspects of the delivery of the TCM across all sites. This historical event highlighted the need for services and support for patients and caregivers transitioning from the hospital to home., Implications for Nursing and Patient Care: Evidence-based solutions are needed to enhance healthcare delivery and patient outcomes. Findings will guide nurses in implementing proven transitional care interventions., Impact: Findings will inform the implementation and scaling of transitional care and other evidence-based interventions across diverse healthcare settings., Reporting Method: GRAMMS reporting guidelines., Patient or Public Contribution: No patient or public contribution., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT04212962. https://www., Clinicaltrials: gov/study/NCT04212962?titles=NCT04212962&rank=1., (© 2024 The Author(s). Journal of Advanced Nursing published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

3D-printed microporous titanium scaffolds enjoy good biointegration with the residuum's soft and bone tissues, and they promote excellent biomechanical properties in attached prostheses. Implant-associated infection, however, remains a major clinical challenge. Silver-based implant coatings can potentially reduce bacterial growth and inhibit biofilm formation, thereby reducing the risk of periprosthetic infections. In the current study, a 1-µm thick silver coating was prepared on the surface of a 3D-printed microporous titanium alloy with physical vapor deposition (PVD), with a final silver content of 1.00 ± 02 mg/cm 2 . Cell viability was evaluated with an MTT assay of MC3T3-E1 osteoblasts and human dermal fibroblasts cultured on the surface of the implants, and showed low cytotoxicity for cells during the 14-day follow-up period. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis of the relative gene expression of the extracellular matrix components (fibronectin, vitronectin, type I collagen) and cell adhesion markers (α2, α5, αV, β1 integrins) in dermal fibroblasts showed that cell adhesion was not reduced by the silver coating of the microporous implants. An RT-PCR analysis of gene expression related to osteogenic differentiation, including TGF-β1, SMAD4, osteocalcin, osteopontin, and osteonectin in MC3T3-E1 osteoblasts, demonstrated that silver coating did not reduce the osteogenic activity of cells and, to the contrary, enhanced the activity of the TGF-β signaling pathway. For representative sample S5 on day 14, the gene expression levels were 7.15 ± 0.29 (osteonectin), 6.08 ± 0.12 (osteocalcin), and 11.19 ± 0.77 (osteopontin). In conclusion, the data indicate that the silver coating of the microporous titanium implants did not reduce the biointegrative or osteoinductive properties of the titanium scaffold, a finding that argues in favor of applying this coating in designing personalized osseointegrated implants.

Here we test the feasibility of using decision markets to select studies for replication and provide evidence about the replicability of online experiments. Social scientists (n = 162) traded on the outcome of close replications of 41 systematically selected MTurk social science experiments published in PNAS 2015-2018, knowing that the 12 studies with the lowest and the 12 with the highest final market prices would be selected for replication, along with 2 randomly selected studies. The replication rate, based on the statistical significance indicator, was 83% for the top-12 and 33% for the bottom-12 group. Overall, 54% of the studies were successfully replicated, with replication effect size estimates averaging 45% of the original effect size estimates. The replication rate varied between 54% and 62% for alternative replication indicators. The observed replicability of MTurk experiments is comparable to that of previous systematic replication projects involving laboratory experiments., Competing Interests: Competing interests The authors declare no competing interests., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Discrimination in the evaluation of others is a key cause of social inequality around the world. However, relatively little is known about psychological interventions that can be used to prevent biased evaluations. The limited evidence that exists on these strategies is spread across many methods and populations, making it difficult to generate reliable best practices that can be effective across contexts. In the present work, we held a research contest to solicit interventions with the goal of reducing discrimination based on physical attractiveness using a hypothetical admissions task. Thirty interventions were tested across four rounds of data collection (total N > 20,000). Using a signal detection theory approach to evaluate interventions, we identified two interventions that reduced discrimination by lessening both decision noise and decision bias, while two other interventions reduced overall discrimination by only lessening noise or bias. The most effective interventions largely provided concrete strategies that directed participants' attention toward decision-relevant criteria and away from socially biasing information, though the fact that very similar interventions produced differing effects on discrimination suggests certain key characteristics that are needed for manipulations to reliably impact judgment. The effects of these four interventions on decision bias, noise, or both also replicated in a different discrimination domain, political affiliation, and generalized to populations with self-reported hiring experience. Results of the contest for decreasing attractiveness-based favoritism suggest that identifying effective routes for changing discriminatory behavior is a challenge and that greater investment is needed to develop impactful, flexible, and scalable strategies for reducing discrimination. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

People often rely on numeric metrics to make decisions and form judgments. Numbers can be difficult to process, leading to their underutilization, but they are also uniquely suited to making comparisons. Do people decide differently when some dimensions of a choice are quantified and others are not? We explore this question across 21 preregistered experiments (8 in the main text, N = 9,303; 13 in supplement, N = 13,936) involving managerial, policy, and consumer decisions. Participants face choices that involve tradeoffs (e.g., choosing between employees, one of whom has a higher likelihood of advancement but lower likelihood of retention), and we randomize which dimension of each tradeoff is presented numerically and which is presented qualitatively (using verbal estimates, discrete visualizations, or continuous visualizations). We show that people systematically shift their preferences toward options that dominate on tradeoff dimensions conveyed numerically-a pattern we dub "quantification fixation." Further, we show that quantification fixation has financial consequences-it emerges in incentive-compatible hiring tasks and in charitable donation decisions. We identify one key mechanism that underlies quantification fixation and moderates its strength: When making comparative judgments, which are essential to tradeoff decisions, numeric information is more fluent than non-numeric information. Our findings suggest that when we count, we change what counts., Competing Interests: Competing interests statement:The authors declare no competing interest.

Competing Interests: Competing interests statement: The authors declare no competing interest.

Human forecasting accuracy improves through the "wisdom of the crowd" effect, in which aggregated predictions tend to outperform individual ones. Past research suggests that individual large language models (LLMs) tend to underperform compared to human crowd aggregates. We simulate a wisdom of the crowd effect with LLMs. Specifically, we use an ensemble of 12 LLMs to make probabilistic predictions about 31 binary questions, comparing them with those made by 925 human forecasters in a 3-month tournament. We show that the LLM crowd outperforms a no-information benchmark and is statistically indistinguishable from the human crowd. We also observe human-like biases, such as the acquiescence bias. In another study, we find that LLM predictions (of GPT-4 and Claude 2) improve when exposed to the median human prediction, increasing accuracy by 17 to 28%. However, simply averaging human and machine forecasts yields more accurate results. Our findings suggest that LLM predictions can rival the human crowd's forecasting accuracy through simple aggregation.

Geographic disparities in access to inpatient procedures are a significant issue within the US healthcare system. This study introduces the Procedure Access Inequality (PAI) index, a standardized metric to quantify these disparities while adjusting for disease prevalence. Using data from the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Inpatient Databases, we analyzed inpatient procedure data from 18 states between 2016 and 2019. The PAI index reveals notable variability in access inequality across different procedures, with minimally invasive and newer procedures exhibiting higher inequality. Key findings indicate that procedures such as skin grafts and minimally invasive gastrectomy have the highest PAI scores, while cesarean sections and percutaneous coronary interventions have the lowest. The study highlights that higher inequality is associated with greater market concentration and in particular, fewer hospitals offering these procedures. These findings emphasize the need for targeted policy interventions to address procedural access disparities to promote more equitable healthcare delivery across the United States., Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest Please see ICMJE form(s) for author conflicts of interest. These have been provided as supplementary materials., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Project HOPE - The People-To-People Health Foundation, Inc.)

Objective: To identify predictors of HIV acquisition in Botswana., Design: We applied machine learning approaches to identify HIV risk predictors using existing data from a large, well-characterized HIV incidence cohort., Methods: We applied machine learning (randomForestSRC) to analyze data from a large population-based HIV incidence cohort enrolled in a cluster-randomized HIV prevention trial in 30 communities across Botswana. We sought to identify the most important risk factors for HIV acquisition, starting with 110 potential predictors., Results: During a median 29-month follow-up of 8,551 HIV-negative adults, 147 (1.7%) acquired HIV. Our machine learning analysis found that for females, the most important variables for predicting HIV acquisition were the use of injectable hormonal contraception, frequency of sex in the prior 3 months with the most recent partner and residing in a community with HIV prevalence of 29% or higher. For the small proportion (0.3%) of females who had all three risk factors, their estimated probability of acquiring HIV during 29 months of follow-up was 34% (approximate annual incidence of 14%). For males, non-long-term relationships with the most recent partner and community HIV prevalence of 34% or higher were the most important HIV risk predictors. The 6% of males who had both risk factors had a 5.1% probability of acquiring HIV during the follow-up period (approximate annual incidence of 2.1%)., Conclusions: Machine learning approaches allowed us to analyze a large number of variables to efficiently identify key factors strongly predictive of HIV risk. These factors could help target HIV prevention interventions in Botswana., Clinical Trials Registration: NCT01965470., (Copyright © 2024 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

Objective: We urgently need to understand Alzheimer's disease (AD) stigma among Black adults. Black communities bear a disproportionate burden of AD, and recent advances in early diagnosis using AD biomarkers may affect stigma associated with AD. The goal of our study is to characterize AD stigma within our cohort of self-identified Black participants and test how AD biomarker test results may affect this stigma., Design: We surveyed a sample of 1,150 self-identified Black adults who were randomized to read a vignette describing a fictional person, who was described as either having a positive or negative biomarker test result. After reading the vignette, participants completed the modified Family Stigma in Alzheimer's Disease Scale (FS-ADS). We compared FS-ADS scores between groups defined by age, gender, and United States Census region. We examined interactions between these groupings and AD biomarker test result., Results: Participants over age 65 had lower scores (lower stigma) on all 7 FS-ADS domains compared to those under 65: structural discrimination, negative severity attributions, negative aesthetic attributions, antipathy, support, pity, and social distance . In the biomarker positive condition, worries about structural discrimination were greater than in the biomarker negative condition and statistically similar in the two age groups (DOR, 0.39 [95%CI, 0.22-0.69]). This pattern of results was similar for negative symptom attributions (DOR, 0.51 [95%CI, 0.28-0.90])., Conclusion: While older adults reported less AD stigma than younger adults, AD biomarker testing caused similarly high concerns about structural discrimination and negative severity attributions. Thus, use of AD biomarker diagnosis may increase AD stigma and exacerbate healthcare disparities known to effect AD diagnosis in some Black adults. Advances in AD diagnosis may interact with social and structural factors to differentially affect groups of Black adults.

Competing Interests: Disclosures: All relevant financial relationships have been mitigated. Disclosure forms are available with the article online.

Phenotypic aging is ubiquitous across mammalian species, suggesting shared underlying mechanisms of aging. Aging is linked to molecular changes to DNA methylation and gene expression, and environmental factors, such as severe external challenges or adversities, can moderate these age-related changes. Yet, it remains unclear whether environmental adversities affect gene regulation via the same molecular pathways as chronological, or 'primary', aging. Investigating molecular aging in naturalistic animal populations can fill this gap by providing insight into shared molecular mechanisms of aging and the effects of a greater diversity of environmental adversities - particularly those that can be challenging to study in humans or laboratory organisms. Here, we characterised molecular aging - specifically, CpG methylation - in a sample of free-ranging rhesus macaques living off the coast of Puerto Rico (n samples = 571, n individuals = 499), which endured a major hurricane during our study. Age was associated with methylation at 78,661 sites (31% of all sites tested). Age-associated hypermethylation occurred more frequently in areas of active gene regulation, while hypomethylation was enriched in regions that show less activity in immune cells, suggesting these regions may become de-repressed in older individuals. Age-associated hypomethylation also co-occurred with increased chromatin accessibility while hypermethylation showed the opposite trend, hinting at a coordinated, multi-level loss of epigenetic stability during aging. We detected 32,048 CpG sites significantly associated with exposure to a hurricane, and these sites overlapped age-associated sites, most strongly in regulatory regions and most weakly in quiescent regions. Together, our results suggest that environmental adversity may contribute to aging-related molecular phenotypes in regions of active gene transcription, but that primary aging has specific signatures in non-regulatory regions., (© 2024 The Author(s). Molecular Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Importance: Increased secure firearm storage can reduce youth firearm injury and mortality, a leading cause of death for children and adolescents in the US. Despite the availability of evidence-based secure firearm storage programs and recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics, few pediatric clinicians report routinely implementing these programs., Objective: To compare the effectiveness of an electronic health record (EHR) documentation template (nudge) and the nudge plus facilitation (ie, clinic support to implement the program; nudge+) at promoting delivery of a brief evidence-based secure firearm storage program (SAFE Firearm) that includes counseling about secure firearm storage and free cable locks during all pediatric well visits., Design, Setting, and Participants: The Adolescent and Child Suicide Prevention in Routine Clinical Encounters (ASPIRE) unblinded parallel cluster randomized effectiveness-implementation trial was conducted from March 14, 2022, to March 20, 2023, to test the hypothesis that, relative to nudge, nudge+ would result in delivery of the firearm storage program to an additional 10% or more of the eligible population, and that this difference would be statistically significant. Thirty pediatric primary care clinics in 2 US health care systems (in Michigan and Colorado) were included, excluding clinics that were not the primary site for participating health care professionals and a subset selected at random due to resource limitations. All pediatric well visits at participating clinics for youth ages 5 to 17 years were analyzed., Interventions: Clinics were randomly assigned in a 1:1 ratio to receive either the nudge or nudge+., Main Outcomes and Measures: Patient-level outcomes were modeled to estimate the primary outcome, reach, which is a visit-level binary indicator of whether the parent received both components of the firearm storage program (counseling and lock), as documented by the clinician in the EHR. Secondary outcomes explored individual program component delivery., Results: A total of 47 307 well-child visits (median [IQR] age, 11.3 [8.1-14.4] years; 24 210 [51.2%] male and 23 091 [48.8%] female) among 46 597 children and 368 clinicians were eligible to receive the firearm storage program during the trial and were included in analyses. Using the intention-to-treat principle, a higher percentage of well-child visits received the firearm storage program in the nudge+ condition (49%; 95% CI, 37-61) compared to nudge (22%; 95% CI, 13-31)., Conclusions and Relevance: In this study, the EHR strategy combined with facilitation (nudge+) was more effective at increasing delivery of an evidence-based secure firearm storage program compared to nudge alone., Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04844021.

Women are unequally represented in the highest positions in society. Beyond discrimination and bias, women are missing from the top because they are less likely to pursue high-ranking opportunities. We propose that experience is a critical moderator of gender differences in pursuing leadership opportunities, with low-experience women being particularly unlikely to seek higher level positions. We used field analyses of 96 years of U.S. senator and governor elections to examine male and female politicians' propensity to run for higher political offices. As predicted, among those with little political experience, women were less likely than men to run for higher office, but experience closed this gender gap. A preregistered experiment among U.S.-based adults replicated the field findings and revealed that it was the increased self-confidence of experienced women that reduced the gender gap. The findings suggest experience, and the self-confidence that comes with it, is one lever for closing the gender gap in seeking to climb professional hierarchies.

The sex steroid hormone testosterone regulates aggression and display of dominance in non-human animals. According to the Challenge Hypothesis, these effects arise from context-sensitive testosterone increases that facilitate inter-male competitions over resources, status, and mates. A growing body of literature documents similar testosterone effects on behaviors related to competition and risk-taking in humans, though the findings have been mixed. Here, we report two randomised double-blind placebo-controlled testosterone administration experiments (N 1  = 91, N 2  = 242) designed independently by researchers in Europe and the US. Both experiments investigated the effect of a single dose of testosterone (at 4 h and 21-24 h post administration) on men's willingness to compete, confidence, and risk-taking in economic tasks. We estimate weak treatment effects that are statistically indistinguishable from zero for all behavioral outcomes across the two experiments. Our findings cast doubt on the proposition that there is an overall effect of a single dose of testosterone administration on the dimensions of economic behavior studied. If such effects existed, detecting them experimentally via pharmacological studies would require very large samples. We discuss different explanations for our results, including the possibility that context and individual difference factors moderate the effects., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Background: Survivors of breast and prostate cancer, especially those that are Black and/or Hispanic, are at high risk for cardiovascular events. Physical activity can reduce the risk of cardiovascular events in cancer survivors, but Black and Hispanic people are less likely to engage in routine physical activity. Concepts from behavioral economics have been used to design scalable, low-touch gamification interventions that increase physical activity in individuals at high risk for cardiovascular events, but the effectiveness of these strategies in Black and Hispanic survivors of breast and prostate cancer is uncertain., Study Design and Objectives: ALLSTAR (NCT05176756) is a pragmatic, virtual randomized controlled trial designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a gamification intervention informed by behavioral economic concepts to increase daily physical activity in Black and Hispanic breast and prostate cancer survivors who received cardiotoxic therapies and have additional risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Patients are either referred by their cancer care team or identified by electronic health record searches; contacted by letter, email, text message and/or phone; and complete enrollment and informed consent on the Penn Way to Health online platform. Patients are then provided with a wearable fitness tracker, establish a baseline daily step count, set a goal to increase daily step count by 1,500-3,000 steps from baseline, and are randomized 1:1 to control or gamification. Interventions continue for 6 months, with follow-up for an additional 3 months to evaluate the durability of behavior change. The trial has met its enrollment goal of 150 participants, with a primary endpoint of change from baseline in daily steps over the 6-month intervention period. Key secondary endpoints include change from baseline in daily steps over the 3-month post-intervention follow-up period, change in moderate to vigorous physical activity over the intervention and follow-up periods, and change in patient-reported measures of physical function, fatigue, and overall quality of life., Conclusions: ALLSTAR is a virtual, pragmatic randomized clinical trial powered to demonstrate whether gamification is superior to control in increasing physical activity in Black and Hispanic breast and prostate cancer survivors. Its results will have important implications for strategies to promote physical activity in survivors of breast and prostate cancer, specifically among minority populations., Clinical Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05176756., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest Dr. Volpp is a co-owner of a behavioral economics consulting firm, VAL Health, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of THRIVE Global. Neither organization has any involvement in this study. All other authors report no relevant conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Scholars warn that partisan divisions in the mass public threaten the health of American democracy. We conducted a megastudy ( n = 32,059 participants) testing 25 treatments designed by academics and practitioners to reduce Americans' partisan animosity and antidemocratic attitudes. We find that many treatments reduced partisan animosity, most strongly by highlighting relatable sympathetic individuals with different political beliefs or by emphasizing common identities shared by rival partisans. We also identify several treatments that reduced support for undemocratic practices-most strongly by correcting misperceptions of rival partisans' views or highlighting the threat of democratic collapse-which shows that antidemocratic attitudes are not intractable. Taken together, the study's findings identify promising general strategies for reducing partisan division and improving democratic attitudes, shedding theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

Background: Opportunities to minimize inequities in accessing treatments for tricuspid regurgitation disease should be considered., Objective: The objective of this study was to explore how access to new tricuspid regurgitation technologies change when heart centers are restricted by payer coverage requirements., Methods: This case series study identified U.S. hospitals with a record of performing transcatheter aortic valve replacement, transcatheter edge-to-edge repair, and tricuspid and mitral valve procedures for the calendar year 2021. Population 65+ years of age and Area Deprivation Index (ADI), were identified by zip code. We created 10 scenarios based on low, medium, and high hospital volumes for combinations of transcatheter aortic valve replacement, transcatheter edge-to-edge repair, tricuspid and mitral valve procedures. Distance from a zip code to scenario eligible hospitals was determined; the closest hospital to a zip code was identified as the distance someone with tricuspid regurgitation would have to travel for care. Each scenario was modeled with the dependent variable as the distance to the nearest scenario eligible hospital by ADI, controlling for population size 65+ years of age., Results: A total of 929 U.S. hospitals met our study inclusion. ADI was statistically significant in every scenario-when ADI goes up (more deprivation), distance to the nearest hospital increases. Patients in zip codes with low ADI travel an average of 15 to 52 miles, medium ADI 31 to 67 miles, and high ADI 47 to 95 miles., Conclusions: Patients in higher socioeconomic deprivation areas travel longer distances to hospitals meeting procedure volume requirements. Policymakers and patient advocacy groups should consider this to ensure equitable access to potentially life-saving technologies., Competing Interests: This research was sponsored by Edwards Lifesciences. Dr Barker has reported personal fees from Edwards Lifesciences, Medtronic, Boston Scientific and Alleviant. Dr Kemp, Ms. Mancilla, and Ms. Mollenkopf are employees of Edwards Lifesciences. Dr Gunnarsson, Mr. Ryan, and Dr David have reported personal fees from Edwards Lifesciences., (© 2024 The Authors.)

Although fear of missing out (FOMO) has become a widely experienced phenomenon, the specific social situations and cognitions driving the FOMO experience have not yet been closely studied. Across seven experiments ( N = 5,441), we find that FOMO occurs when people miss events involving valued social groups and is driven by the perception of missed bonding and concerns about how this may negatively affect their future relationships. People feel greater FOMO when they miss events involving valued others (vs. strangers or irrelevant social groups) and when events foster social bonding (vs. individual activity)-even when the events themselves may be unenjoyable. FOMO is further intensified when concerns about one's future social-group belonging are elevated, either stemming from situational triggers (e.g., social media photos) or one's chronic anxious attachment to their social group. Notably, these concerns are exaggerated when considering the social costs of missing an event for oneself (vs. a friend). Given the social underpinnings of FOMO, reaffirming one's social belonging by reflecting on past social connection provides temporary relief. By revealing a novel, situational antecedent of FOMO and the underlying cognitions, this research demonstrates that current well-being is informed not only by current and past feelings of belonging but also by hypothetical projections about one's future social belonging. Taken together, our findings highlight the importance of social bonding in experiential consumption, identify new determinants of FOMO, and lay the groundwork for simple interventions to mitigate FOMO and its maladaptive consequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

To identify patterns of medication adherence during the pandemic and factors associated with these patterns among Medicaid-enrolled individuals with schizophrenia who had highly adherent medication use prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. We used Medicaid claims from Philadelphia to identify individuals with schizophrenia ≥ 18 years of age, their demographic characteristics, and health service use. We used group trajectory models to identify adherence trends, and ANOVA to examine associations between adherence groups and demographic characteristics and service use. The sample included 1,622 individuals. A 4-group trajectory model best fit our data. Seventy percent of individuals averaged about 92% adherence throughout the study period; 10% experienced a pronounced decline when the pandemic started (pandemic non-adherers); 11% experienced a sharp decline mid-pandemic (late non-adherers); and 9% experienced a sharp decline at the beginning of the pandemic and returned to higher adherence after a year (disrupted adherers). Adherers were least likely to be diagnosed with a substance use disorder, and had more telehealth visits, mental health outpatient visits, and fewer emergency department visits on average. Late non-adherers were more likely than adherers to have substance use disorders and physical health conditions. Pandemic non-adherers had more co-occurring psychiatric disorders than adherers and had the lowest use of case management. Three in ten previously adherent individuals with schizophrenia became less adherent to antipsychotic medications, either at the onset or later in the pandemic. Our findings point to telehealth and case management as critical strategies for treatment engagement, especially during public health crises, and well as the need to address co-occurring conditions., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Background: The organizational culture (shared beliefs, perceptions, and values) of teams informs their behaviours and practices. Little is known about organizational culture for resuscitation teams. Our objective was to develop a reliable and valid resuscitation-specific organizational culture instrument (ROCI) with the goal of improving team performance., Methods: Using Neonatal Resuscitation Program principles, literature review, and discussion of existing culture measures with experts, we identified organizational culture components for resuscitation and adapted existing measures to resuscitation. We developed a ROCI with five subscales (role clarity, shared-mental models, closed-loop communication, team adaptability, and psychological safety) and administered it to neonatal resuscitation team members across a hospital network. Survey psychometric assessment included reliability analyses (Cronbach's α, Pearson correlation coefficients) and validity testing (confirmatory factor analysis [CFA] and regression models examining the association of culture with implementation outcomes: climate and perceived success)., Results: Across 11 hospitals there were 318 complete responses (41 % response rate). Of the 22-items tested, 18 were retained after iterative psychometric assessment. The ROCI had excellent overall reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.994) and very good subscale reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.789-0.867). The CFA goodness-of-fit statistics confirmed five constructs (subscales). At the individual-level, the ROCI and all subscales were associated with both implementation outcomes. At the hospital-level, the ROCI overall and three subscales were associated with perceived success., Conclusion: The ROCI is a reliable and valid measure of the organizational culture of resuscitation teams. Future ROCI assessments may provide a foundation to inform culture change initiatives to improve resuscitation quality and outcomes across populations and contexts., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R03HE108387 to SCH, CPB, and EEF and K23HD109426 to SCH) and the American Academy of Pediatrics Neonatal Resuscitation Program (to SCH). CPB discloses additional current and recently completed research grants from NIH, AHRQ, PCORI, and the National Science Foundation, none of which supported this work., (© 2024 The Authors.)

Objective: To understand the characteristics of infants admitted to US NICUs., Study Design: 2006-2014 linked birth certificate and hospital discharge data for potentially viable deliveries in Pennsylvania and South Carolina were used. NICU admissions were identified using revenue codes. NICU-admitted infants were categorized by gestational age (GA), birthweight, and condition severity (for GA 35+ weeks). We also assessed total patient days and trends over time., Results: 12% of infants were admitted to a NICU; 13.6% were GA < 32 weeks (45.3% of total days); 36.1% were GA 32-36 weeks (31.2% of total days); and 50.4% were GA 37+ weeks (23.5% of total days). 20% of admissions were for infants with GA 35+ weeks and mild conditions. Admissions increased numerically from 11.2% (2006) to 13.0% (2014), with increases among infants 35+ weeks., Conclusion: Most NICU admissions are for infants 35+ weeks GA, many with mild conditions who may be accommodated in well-baby units., (© 2024. This is a U.S. Government work and not under copyright protection in the US; foreign copyright protection may apply.)

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) often suffer from a lack of representation from historically marginalized populations, and it is uncertain whether virtual RCTs (vRCTs) enhance representativeness or if elements of their consent and enrollment processes may instead contribute to underrepresentation of these groups. In this study, we aimed to identify disparities in enrollment demographics in a vRCT, the BE ACTIVE study, which recruited patients within a single health system. We discovered that the proportions of eligible patients who were randomized differed significantly by gender and race/ethnicity (men 1.2%, women 2.0%, P < .001; White 1.8%, Black 1.3%, Hispanic 0.7%, Asian 0.9%; P < .001), and compared with White patients, non-White patients were less likely to have a valid email address on file and were less likely to click on the email link to the study webpage and begin enrollment., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest Dr. Volpp is a co-owner of a behavioral economics consulting firm, VAL Health. All other authors report no relevant conflicts of interest., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

What do self-controlled individuals do that distinguishes them from those who are more impulsive? That is, why are some people better able to align their behavior with personal long-term goals despite alternatives that would be more immediately gratifying? To address this question, we use the Process Model of Self-Control [1], which posits that all impulses are generated via a four-stage, recursive process and can be regulated by intentionally intervening at any of these stages. We suggest that this framework illuminates not only individual states of self-control, but also the diverse ways that stable individual differences in self-control can come about., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Surveys often estimate vaccination intentions using dichotomous ("Yes"/"No") or trichotomous ("Yes," "Unsure," "No") response options presented in different orders. Do survey results depend on these variations? This controlled experiment randomized participants to dichotomous or trichotomous measures of vaccine intentions (with "Yes" and "No" options presented in different orders). Intentions were measured separately for COVID-19, its booster, and influenza vaccines. Among a sample of U.S. adults (N = 4,764), estimates of vaccine intention varied as much as 37.5 ± 17.4 percentage points as a function of the dichotomous or trichotomous response set. Among participants who had not received the COVID-19 vaccine, the "Unsure" option was more likely to reduce the share of "No" (versus "Yes") responses, whereas among participants who had received the COVID-19 vaccine, the "Unsure" option was more likely to reduce the share of "Yes" (versus "No") responses. The "Unsure" category may increase doubt and decrease reliance on past vaccination behavior when forming intentions. The order of "Yes" and "No" responses had no significant effect. Future research is needed to further evaluate why the effects of including the "Unsure" option vary in direction and magnitude., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

Selection bias is a common concern in epidemiologic studies. In the literature, selection bias is often viewed as a missing data problem. Popular approaches to adjust for bias due to missing data, such as inverse probability weighting, rely on the assumption that data are missing at random and can yield biased results if this assumption is violated. In observational studies with outcome data missing not at random, Heckman's sample selection model can be used to adjust for bias due to missing data. In this paper, we review Heckman's method and a similar approach proposed by Tchetgen Tchetgen and Wirth (2017). We then discuss how to apply these methods to Mendelian randomization analyses using individual-level data, with missing data for either the exposure or outcome or both. We explore whether genetic variants associated with participation can be used as instruments for selection. We then describe how to obtain missingness-adjusted Wald ratio, two-stage least squares and inverse variance weighted estimates. The two methods are evaluated and compared in simulations, with results suggesting that they can both mitigate selection bias but may yield parameter estimates with large standard errors in some settings. In an illustrative real-data application, we investigate the effects of body mass index on smoking using data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children., (© 2024 The Author(s). Statistics in Medicine published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

How people vote often defies rational explanation. Physical traits sometimes sway voters more than policies do-but why? Here we show that rhesus macaques, who have no knowledge about political candidates or their policies, implicitly predict the outcomes of U.S. gubernatorial and senatorial elections based solely on visual features. Given a pair of candidate photos, monkeys spent more time looking at the loser than the winner, and this gaze bias predicted not only binary election outcomes but also the candidates' vote share. Analysis of facial features revealed candidates with more masculine faces were more likely to win an election, and vote share was a linear function of jaw prominence. Our findings endorse the idea that voters spontaneously respond to evolutionarily conserved visual cues to physical prowess and that voting behavior is shaped, in part, by ancestral adaptations shared with nonhuman primates., Competing Interests: Competing Interest Statement The authors declare no competing interests.

Introduction: Regenerative medicine is revolutionizing oral and maxillofacial surgeries with stem cells, particularly mesenchymal stem cells, for tissue and bone regeneration. Despite promising in-vitro results, human trials are limited. A systematic review is needed to evaluate stem cell efficacy in maxillofacial issues, aiming to improve surgical outcomes and patient satisfaction., Methods: Following Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Guidelines, this review included peer-reviewed articles (2013-2023) on stem cells in oral surgery, excluding non-English publications, abstracts, reviews, and opinion pieces. Searches were conducted in PubMed, Web of Science, OVID, Cochrane, Dentistry & Oral Sciences Source-Ebscohost, and Scopus. Two authors independently screened titles and abstracts, resolving disagreements by consensus. Full-text analysis involved extracting key data, verified by a secondary reviewer and additional quality checks., Results: From 3540 initial articles, 2528 were screened after removing duplicates, and 7 met the inclusion criteria after excluding irrelevant studies. Key themes included the safety and efficacy of stem cell therapy, and bone regeneration and quality. Studies predominantly used mesenchymal stem cells. Findings showed positive outcomes in clinical safety and effectiveness and significant potential for bone regeneration., Conclusions: This systematic review highlights the potential of stem cell therapies in maxillofacial applications, supporting their safety, efficacy, and bone regeneration capabilities. Further research is needed to standardize protocols and confirm long-term benefits.

When eliciting people's forecasts or beliefs, you can ask for a point estimate-for example, what is the most likely state of the world?-or you can ask for an entire distribution of beliefs-for example, how likely is every possible state of the world? Eliciting belief distributions potentially yields more information, and researchers have increasingly tried to do so. In this article, we show that different elicitation methods elicit different belief distributions. We compare two popular methods used to elicit belief distributions: Distribution Builder and Sliders. In 10 preregistered studies ( N = 14,553), we find that Distribution Builder elicits more accurate belief distributions than Sliders, except when true distributions are right-skewed, for which the results are mixed. This result holds when we assess accuracy (a) relative to a normative benchmark and (b) relative to participants' own beliefs. Our evidence suggests that participants approach these two methods differently: Sliders users are more likely to start with the lowest bins in the interface, which in turn leads them to put excessive mass in those bins. Our research sheds light on the process by which people construct belief distributions while offering a practical recommendation for future research: All else equal, Distribution Builder yields more accurate belief distributions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Negative controls are increasingly used to evaluate the presence of potential unmeasured confounding in observational studies. Beyond the use of negative controls to detect the presence of residual confounding, proximal causal inference (PCI) was recently proposed to de-bias confounded causal effect estimates, by leveraging a pair of treatment and outcome negative control or confounding proxy variables. While formal methods for statistical inference have been developed for PCI, these methods can be challenging to implement as they involve solving complex integral equations that are typically ill-posed. We develop a regression-based PCI approach, employing two-stage generalized linear regression models (GLMs) to implement PCI, which obviates the need to solve difficult integral equations. The proposed approach has merit in that (i) it is applicable to continuous, count, and binary outcomes cases, making it relevant to a wide range of real-world applications, and (ii) it is easy to implement using off-the-shelf software for GLMs. We establish the statistical properties of regression-based PCI and illustrate their performance in both synthetic and real-world empirical applications., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.)

People now commonly interact with Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents. How do these interactions shape how humans perceive each other? In two preregistered studies (total N = 1,261), we show that people evaluate other humans more harshly after interacting with an AI (compared with an unrelated purported human). In Study 1, participants who worked on a creative task with AIs (versus purported humans) subsequently rated another purported human's work more negatively. Study 2 replicated this effect and demonstrated that the results hold even when participants believed their evaluation would not be shared with the purported human. Exploratory analyses of participants' conversations show that prior to their human evaluations they were more demanding, more instrumental and displayed less positive affect towards AIs (versus purported humans). These findings point to a potentially worrisome side effect of the exponential rise in human-AI interactions., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of National Academy of Sciences.)

Percutaneous implants osseointegrated into the residuum of a person with limb amputation need to provide mechanical stability and protection against infections. Although significant progress has been made in the biointegration of percutaneous implants, the problem of forming a reliable natural barrier at the level of the surface of the implant and the skin and bone tissues remains unresolved. The use of a microporous implant structure incorporated into the Skin and Bone Integrated Pylon (SBIP) should address the issue by allowing soft and bone tissues to grow directly into the implant structure itself, which, in turn, should form a reliable barrier to infections and support strong osseointegration. To evaluate biological interactions between dermal fibroblasts and MC3T3-E1 osteoblasts in vitro, small titanium discs (with varying pore sizes and volume fractions to achieve deep porosity) were fabricated via 3D printing and sintering. The cell viability MTT assay demonstrated low cytotoxicity for cells co-cultured in the pores of the 3D-printed and sintered Ti samples during the 14-day follow-up period. A subsequent Quantitative Real-Time Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) analysis of the relative gene expression of biomarkers that are associated with cell adhesion (α2, α5, αV, and β1 integrins) and extracellular matrix components (fibronectin, vitronectin, type I collagen) demonstrated that micropore sizes ranging from 200 to 500 µm of the 3D printed and sintered Ti discs were favorable for dermal fibroblast adhesion. For example, for representative 3D-printed Ti sample S6 at 72 h the values were 4.71 ± 0.08 (α2 integrin), 4.96 ± 0.08 (α5 integrin), 4.71 ± 0.08 (αV integrin), and 1.87 ± 0.12 (β1 integrin). In contrast, Ti discs with pore sizes ranging from 400 to 800 µm demonstrated the best results (in terms of marker expression related to osteogenic differentiation, including osteopontin, osteonectin, osteocalcin, TGF-β1, and SMAD4) for MC3T3-E1 cells. For example, for the representative 3D sample S4 on day 14, the marker levels were 11.19 ± 0.77 (osteopontin), 7.15 ± 0.29 (osteonectin), and 6.08 ± 0.12 (osteocalcin), while for sintered samples the levels of markers constituted 5.85 ± 0.4 (osteopontin), 4.45 ± 0.36 (osteonectin), and 4.46 ± 0.3 (osteocalcin). In conclusion, the data obtained show the high biointegrative properties of porous titanium structures, while the ability to implement several pore options in one structure using 3D printing makes it possible to create personalized implants for the best one-time integration with both skin and bone tissues.

Point-of-care testing (PoCT), an alternative to laboratory-based testing, may be useful in the clinical care of critically ill children in resource-limited settings. We evaluated the clinical utility of PoCT in the care of 193 Malawian children treated for World Health Organization-defined cerebral malaria (CM) between March 2019 and May 2023. We assessed the frequency of abnormal PoCT results and the clinical interventions performed in response to these abnormalities. We determined the association between abnormal PoCT results and patient outcomes. Overall, 52.1% of all PoCT results were abnormal. Of the children with abnormal results, clinical interventions occurred in 16.9%. Interventions most commonly followed abnormal results for PoCT glucose (100.0% of the patients had treatment for hypoglycemia), potassium (32.1%), lactate (22.0%), and creatinine (16.3%). Patients with hypoglycemia, hyperlactatemia, and hypocalcemia had a higher mortality risk than children with normal values. Future studies are needed to determine whether obtaining laboratory values using PoCT and the clinical response to these interventions modify outcomes in critically ill African children with CM.

Background: Organizational readiness for change, defined as the collective preparedness of organization members to enact changes, remains understudied in implementing sepsis survivor transition-in-care protocols. Effective implementation relies on collaboration between hospital and post-acute care informants, including those who are leaders and staff. Therefore, our cross-sectional study compared organizational readiness for change among hospital and post-acute care informants., Methods: We invited informants from 16 hospitals and five affiliated HHC agencies involved in implementing a sepsis survivor transition-in-care protocol to complete a pre-implementation survey, where organizational readiness for change was measured via the Organizational Readiness to Implement Change (ORIC) scale (range 12-60). We also collected their demographic and job area information. Mann-Whitney U -tests and linear regressions, adjusting for leadership status, were used to compare organizational readiness of change between hospital and post-acute care informants., Results: Eighty-four informants, 51 from hospitals and 33 from post-acute care, completed the survey. Hospital and post-acute care informants had a median ORIC score of 52 and 57 respectively. Post-acute care informants had a mean 4.39-unit higher ORIC score compared to hospital informants ( p  = 0.03)., Conclusions: Post-acute care informants had higher organizational readiness of change than hospital informants, potentially attributed to differences in health policies, expertise, organizational structure, and priorities. These findings and potential inferences may inform sepsis survivor transition-in-care protocol implementation. Future research should confirm, expand, and examine underlying factors related to these findings with a larger and more diverse sample. Additional studies may assess the predictive validity of ORIC towards implementation success., Competing Interests: The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© 2024 Sang, Quinn, Stawnychy, Song, Hirschman, You, Pitcher, Hodgson, Garren, O'Connor, Oh and Bowles.)

Accurate measurement of vital signs are important at skilled nursing facilities (SNF). Recent technological advancements now enable automated vital sign measurements. This overcomes the limitations of traditional manual vital sign measurement, which is time-consuming and error-prone. We present a novel case where continuous vital sign measurement was used to detect meaningful vital sign changes that led to early detection of a COVID-19 outbreak at a SNF. Residents were continuously monitored for changes to baseline respiratory rate and heart rate and with a Probability of Change (POC). Variations in baseline respiratory rate and heart rate occurred in 66% and 42%, respectively, of COVID-19 positive individuals; 83% of participants had statistically significant variations in either vital sign. Clinical investigations are typically triggered by vital signs outside normal ranges. We present a novel methodology to detect subtle vital sign changes that can lead to earlier diagnosis, treatment, and recovery from infections, like COVID-19., Competing Interests: The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Linda Mayhue, Jeong Woo (Glen) Choi, Sun Jong (Sam) Yang, and Yuna Lee are employed by Xandar Kardian Corporation. Salim Ahmed is a consultant to Xandar Kardian Corporation., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

Competing Interests: Dr Volpp receives research funding and personal fees from the American Heart Association. Dr Volpp is a Scientific Advisory Board member of Thrive Global. He is a co-owner of VALHealth, a behavioral economics consulting firm. This is unrelated to this work, as VALHealth has not done any work related to Food is Medicine.

Political partisanship is often conceived as a lens through which people view politics. Behavioral research has distinguished two types of "partisan lenses"-policy-based and identity-based-that may influence peoples' perception of political events. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms through which partisan discourse appealing to policy beliefs or targeting partisan identities operate within individuals. We addressed this question by collecting neuroimaging data while participants watched videos of speakers expressing partisan views. A "partisan lens effect" was identified as the difference in neural synchrony between each participant's brain response and that of their partisan ingroup vs. outgroup. When processing policy-based messaging, a partisan lens effect was observed in socio-political reasoning and affective responding brain regions. When processing negative identity-based attacks, a partisan lens effect was observed in mentalizing and affective responding brain regions. These data suggest that the processing of political discourse that appeals to different forms of partisanship is supported by related but distinguishable neural-and therefore psychological-mechanisms, which may have implications for how we characterize partisanship and ameliorate its deleterious impacts., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Importance: Nonlinear changes in brain function during aging are shaped by a complex interplay of factors, including sex, age, genetics, and modifiable health risk factors. However, the combined effects and underlying mechanisms of these factors on brain functional connectivity remain poorly understood., Objective: To comprehensively investigate the combined associations of sex, age, APOE genotypes, and ten common modifiable health risk factors with brain functional connectivities during aging., Design Setting and Participants: This analysis used data from 36,630 UK Biobank participants, aged 44-81, who were assessed for sex, age, APOE genotypes, 10 health risk factors, and brain functional connectivities through resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging., Main Outcomes and Measures: Brain functional connectivities were evaluated through within- and between-network functional connectivities and connectivity strength. Associations between risk factors and brain functional connectivities, including their interaction effects, were analyzed., Results: Hypertension, BMI, and education were the top three influential factors. Sex-specific effects were also observed in interactions involving APOE4 gene, smoking, alcohol consumption, diabetes, BMI, and education. Notably, a negative sex-excessive alcohol interaction showed a stronger negative effect on functional connectivities in males, particularly between the dorsal attention network and the language network, while moderate alcohol consumption appeared to have protective effects. A significant negative interaction between sex and APOE4 revealed a greater reduction in functional connectivity between the cingulo-opercular network and the posterior multimodal network in male APOE4 carriers. Additional findings included a negative age-BMI interaction between the visual and dorsal attention networks, and a positive age-hypertension interaction between the frontoparietal and default mode networks., Conclusions and Relevance: The findings highlight significant sex disparities in the associations between age, the APOE -ε4 gene, modifiable health risk factors, and brain functional connectivity, emphasizing the necessity of jointly considering these factors to gain a deeper understanding of the complex processes underlying brain aging., Competing Interests: Conflict of Interest Disclosures: Authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose

Background: Observational studies of anesthetic neurotoxicity may be biased because children requiring anesthesia commonly have medical conditions associated with neurobehavioral problems. This study takes advantage of a natural experiment associated with appendicitis to determine whether anesthesia and surgery in childhood were specifically associated with subsequent neurobehavioral outcomes., Methods: This study identified 134,388 healthy children with appendectomy and examined the incidence of subsequent externalizing or behavioral disorders (conduct, impulse control, oppositional defiant, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) or internalizing or mood or anxiety disorders (depression, anxiety, or bipolar disorder) when compared to 671,940 matched healthy controls as identified in Medicaid data between 2001 and 2018. For comparison, this study also examined 154,887 otherwise healthy children admitted to the hospital for pneumonia, cellulitis, and gastroenteritis, of which only 8% received anesthesia, and compared them to 774,435 matched healthy controls. In addition, this study examined the difference-in-differences between matched appendectomy patients and their controls and matched medical admission patients and their controls., Results: Compared to controls, children with appendectomy were more likely to have subsequent behavioral disorders (hazard ratio, 1.04; 95% CI, 1.01 to 1.06; P = 0.0010) and mood or anxiety disorders (hazard ratio, 1.15; 95% CI, 1.13 to 1.17; P < 0.0001). Relative to controls, children with medical admissions were also more likely to have subsequent behavioral (hazard ratio, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.18 to 1.22; P < 0.0001) and mood or anxiety (hazard ratio, 1.25; 95% CI, 1.23 to 1.27; P < 0.0001) disorders. Comparing the difference between matched appendectomy patients and their matched controls to the difference between matched medical patients and their matched controls, medical patients had more subsequent neurobehavioral problems than appendectomy patients., Conclusions: Although there is an association between neurobehavioral diagnoses and appendectomy, this association is not specific to anesthesia exposure and is stronger in medical admissions. Medical admissions, generally without anesthesia exposure, displayed significantly higher rates of these disorders than appendectomy-exposed patients., (Copyright © 2024 American Society of Anesthesiologists. All Rights Reserved.)

Advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence are revolutionizing many aspects of human life, and as Banker et al. (2024) illustrate, generative artificial intelligence may also facilitate hypothesis generation in academic research. But while it is easy to imagine this idea generating some alarm (i.e., hypothesis generation may seem like the most creative, human part of research), their work actually raises an even more important question: Why should we believe that the current (human) method of hypothesis generation is somehow ideal in the first place? This article discusses the implications of their work and outlines how automated content analysis and machine learning can also help researchers determine what hypotheses deserve attention in the first place. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Arsenic trioxide (ATO) has gained significant attention due to its promising therapeutic effects in treating different diseases, particularly acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). Its potent anticancer mechanisms have been extensively studied. Despite the great efficacy ATO shows in fighting cancers, drawbacks in the clinical use are obvious, especially for solid tumors, which include rapid renal clearance and short half-life, severe adverse effects, and high toxicity to normal cells. Recently, the emergence of nanomedicine offers a potential solution to these limitations. The enhanced biocompatibility, excellent targeting capability, and desirable effectiveness have attracted much interest. Therefore, we summarized various nanocarriers for targeted delivery of ATO to solid tumors. We also provided detailed anticancer mechanisms of ATO in treating cancers, its clinical trials and shortcomings as well as the combination therapy of ATO and other chemotherapeutic agents for reduced drug resistance and synergistic effects. Finally, the future study direction and prospects were also presented., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors of this review paper declare no conflicts of interest related to the content presented in this study. The review paper was written impartially and without any financial or non-financial influences that could potentially bias the outcomes or interpretations of the research findings. No external funding, grants, or affiliations with organizations or entities that might have a vested interest in the research outcomes were involved in this study. The review paper was carried out solely in the pursuit of scientific knowledge and advancement in the field of targeted drug delivery of ATO drugs for maximizing ATO anticancer potential., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

With the emergence of Omicron and establishment of antibody waning over time, vaccine effectiveness, especially against infection, declined sharply from the original levels seen after the initial rollout. However, studies have demonstrated that they still provided substantial protection vs. severe/fatal disease even with Omicron and after waning. Social media has been rife with reports claiming vaccines provided no benefit and some even claiming they made things worse, often driven by simple presentations of raw observational data using erroneous arguments involving epidemiological fallacies including the base rate fallacy, Simpson's paradox, and the ecological fallacy and ignoring the extensive bias especially from confounding that are inherent features of these data. Similar fallacious arguments have been made by some in promoting vaccination policies as well. Generally, vaccine effectiveness cannot be accurately estimated from raw population summaries, but instead require rigorous, careful studies using epidemiological designs and statistical analysis tools attempting to adjust for key confounders and sources of bias. This article summarizes what aggregated evidence across studies reveals about effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines as the pandemic has evolved, chronologically summarized with emerging variants, and highlighting some of the fallacies and flawed arguments feeding social media-based claims that have obscured society's collective understanding., (© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.)

Background: Across a wide range of tasks it has been shown that workers switching between different activities have 'switching costs' due to slower performance and increased errors. Scheduling similar cases consecutively, or 'stacking cases', allows an operating room (OR) team to avoid switching costs and might therefore result in increased efficiency., Objective: To investigate whether stacking neuroendovascular cases decreases turnover and procedure time., Methods: A retrospective case series was identified of 4386 endovascular cases performed by vascular neurosurgeons between 2015 and 2023 at an academic center. A 'stacked case' was defined as a binary variable, which counted as 'yes' when the preceding case was the same procedure. Primary outcomes were turnover time and procedure time., Results: Diagnostic angiograms (n=2575) and aneurysm embolizations (n=517) had a sufficient number of cases for statistical analysis.Stacked diagnostic angiograms were associated with significantly faster turnover time (7 min, P=1e-12) in a multivariate regression model. Turnover time decreased with additional stacked cases, with a 4 min reduction for a single stacked case, up to 11 min for a fifth stacked angiogram.For angiograms and aneurysm embolizations, stacked cases were associated with shorter procedure times: 4 min for angiograms (P<0.0001) and 20 min for aneurysm embolizations (P=0.0057)., Conclusion: This project demonstrates that stacking similar cases is associated with reduced turnover and procedure time, after controlling for other variables that affect the flow of an OR day. Stacking cases is a zero-cost intervention that offers significant efficiency gains in the OR schedule., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.)

Open Science initiatives such as preregistration, publicly available procedures and data, and power analyses have rightly been lauded for increasing the reliability of findings. However, a potentially equally important initiative-aimed at increasing the validity of science-has largely been ignored. Adversarial collaborations (ACs) refer to team science in which members are chosen to represent diverse (and even contradictory) perspectives and hypotheses, with or without a neutral team member to referee disputes. Here, we provide background about ACs and argue that they are effective, essential, and underutilized. We explain how and why ACs can enhance both the reliability and validity of science and why their benefit extends beyond the realm of team science to include venues such as fact-checking, wisdom of crowds, journal reviewing, and sequential editing. Improving scientific validity would increase the efficacy of policy and interventions stemming from behavioral science research, and over time, it could help salvage the reputation of our discipline because its products would be perceived as resulting from a serious, open-minded consideration of diverse views. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Interpersonal communication is an integral part of everyday life. People are constantly sharing thoughts, opinions, and information with others, both online and offline. Further, such social sharing has important implications for what people think, buy, and do. However, while it is clear that interpersonal communication is both frequent and important, research is only starting to understand what people share and why. This article reviews the literature on interpersonal communication and word of mouth, focusing on the drivers of social transmission and the implications for individuals and society at large. It discusses how factors like audiences, modalities (e.g., speaking or writing), channels (e.g., email or text), and devices (e.g., phone or PC) moderate what gets shared, and it outlines areas that deserve further attention. Such areas include the diffusion of false information, conversations and conversational dynamics, and how automated textual analysis can be used to shed light on a range of interesting questions.