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Perpetrators often have easy access to victims via widely used social media networks, such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Facebook. Nowadays, dating applications have provided one more platform where sextortionists identify potential victims and lure them into extortion and victimization. Limited research and media coverage has revealed that sextortion can cause significant harm, with victims reporting negative psychological consequences, such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. Many empirical findings arise from explorations of webcam sextortion, with limited literature examining sextortion in social media platforms, and particularly online dating sites. In the current, exploratory study, we examine these modern trends directly via an online survey of 102 participants. Overall, 62.7% had been sextorted by another dating application user, and 25.5% experienced failed attempts of sextortion by another dating application user. Results uniquely showed that Tinder, as well as Snapchat, are often used as fishing platforms for identifying sextortion victims. Furthermore, sextortion could be successfully predicted if individuals perceived that the perpetrator "seemed genuinely interested," demonstrating how online dating platforms which specifically target those seeking romantic connections provide an ideal mechanism for perpetrators to fish for victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of protecting forests and woodlands to achieve global climate and biodiversity goals, logging impacts persist worldwide. Forestry advocates often downplay these impacts but rarely consider the cumulative threat deforestation and degradation has had, and continues to have, on biodiversity. Using New South Wales (Australia) as a case study, we quantify the extent of deforestation and degradation from 1788 (pre‐European colonization) to 2021. We used historical loss as a baseline to evaluate recent logging (2000–2022) and the condition of the remaining native forest and woodland. Condition was quantified by measuring the similarity of a current ecosystem to a historical reference state with high ecological integrity. Using these data, we measured the impacts on 269 threatened terrestrial species. We show that possibly over half (29 million ha) of pre‐1788 native forest and woodland vegetation in NSW has been lost. Of the remaining 25 million ha, 9 million ha is estimated to be degraded. We found recent logging potentially impacted 150 species that had already been affected by this historical deforestation and degradation, but the impacts varied across species. Forty‐three species that were identified as impacted by historical deforestation and degradation and continue to be impacted by logging, now have ≤50% of their pre‐1788 extent remaining that is intact and nine species now have ≤30%. Our research contextualizes the impact of current logging against historical deforestation and highlights deficiencies in environmental assessments that ignore historical baselines. Future land management must consider both the extent and condition of remaining habitat based on pre‐1788 extents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a lack of measures that reflect the intervention priorities of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and that assess the impact of interventions on family experience and quality of life. The Autism Family Experience Questionnaire (AFEQ) was developed through focus groups and online consultation with parents, and reflected parental priorities. It was then administered to the parents of children enrolled in the Pre-school Autism Communication Trial and its 6-year follow-up study. The AFEQ showed good convergent validity with well-established measures of child adaptive functioning, parental mental health and parental wellbeing. It was sensitive to change in response to a parent-mediated intervention for young children with autism, showing treatment effect at treatment endpoint which increased at six-year follow-up.

We examined predictors of mental health difficulties and wellbeing in caregivers of children with autism in the Pre-school Autism Communication Trial cohort in middle childhood (N = 104). Child's intellectual disability, daily living skills impairment, elevated emotional and behavioural difficulties, high educational level of caregiver and household income below the median significantly predicted caregivers' mental health difficulties, but autism severity, child communication skills and family circumstances did not. Lower caregiver mental wellbeing was predicted by elevated child emotional and behavioural difficulties. The need to support the mental health and wellbeing of caregivers of children with autism is discussed in light of the results.

Key digested message Sextortion is currently the highest reported form of image-based sexual abuse, a form of online blackmail which has been growing in prevalence since 2021. Research highlights sextortion to have severe psychological consequences, with over a dozen cases of suicide among victims. This paper used two transcripts from the media of victims' experiences, as well as qualitative survey responses from an additional 99 victims, to explore in detail how sextortion affects victims psychologically. A main theme was low self-esteem leading to depression, within which feelings of hopelessness and negative thinking of oneself were prominent. Another main theme was paranoia causing anxiety, which was characterised by a loss of trust and feeling of not being able to escape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paying attention is a critical first step toward learning. For children in primary school classrooms there can be many things to attend to other than the focus of a lesson, such as visual displays on classroom walls. The aim of this study was to use eye-tracking techniques to explore the impact of visual displays on attention and learning for children. Critically, we explored these issues for children developing typically and for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Both groups of children watched videos of a teacher delivering classroom activities--2 of "story-time" and 2 mini lessons. Half of the videos each child saw contained high levels of classroom visual displays in the background (high visual display [HVD]) and half had none (no visual display [NVD]). Children completed worksheets after the mini lessons to measure learning. During viewing of all videos children's eye movements were recorded. The presence of visual displays had a significant impact on attention for all children, but to a greater extent for children with ASD. Visual displays also had an impact on learning from the mini lessons, whereby children had poorer learning scores in the HVD compared with the NVD lesson. Individual differences in age, verbal, nonverbal, and attention abilities were important predictors of learning, but time spent attending the visual displays in HVD was the most important predictor. This novel and timely investigation has implications for the use of classroom visual displays for all children, but particularly for children with ASD.

Summary: Limited data exist on COVID‐19 vaccination efficacy in patients with acute myeloid leukemia and myelodysplasia with excess blasts (AML/MDS‐EB2). We report results from a prospective study, PACE (Patients with AML and COVID‐19 Epidemiology). 93 patients provided samples post‐vaccine 2 or 3 (PV2, PV3). Antibodies against SARS‐COV‐2 spike antigen were detectable in all samples. Neutralization of the omicron variant was poorer than ancestral variants but improved PV3. In contrast, adequate T‐cell reactivity to SARS‐COV‐2 spike protein was seen in only 16/47 (34%) patients PV2 and 23/52 (44%) PV3. Using regression models, disease response (not in CR/Cri), and increasing age predicted poor T cell response. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relation between skill in simple addition and subtraction and more general math achievement in elementary school is well established but not understood. Both the intrinsic importance of skill in simple calculation for math and the influence of conceptual knowledge and cognitive factors (working memory, processing speed, oral language) on simple calculation and math are plausible. The authors investigated the development of basic calculation fluency and its relations to math achievement and other factors by tracking a group of 259 United Kingdom English children from second to third grade. In both grades the group did not retrieve the solutions to most problems, but their math achievement was typical. Improvement in basic calculation proficiency was partially predicted by conceptual knowledge and cognitive factors. These factors only partially mediated the relation between basic calculation and math achievement. The relation between reading and math was wholly mediated by number measures and cognitive factors. (Contains 9 tables and 1 footnote.)

The developmental disorder Williams syndrome (WS) has been associated with an atypical social profile of hyper-sociability and heightened social sensitivity across the developmental spectrum. In addition, previous research suggests that both children and adults with WS have a predisposition towards anxiety. The current research aimed to explore the profiles of social behaviour and anxiety across a broad age range of individuals with the disorder (n = 59, ages 6-36 years). We used insights from parental reports on two frequently used measures, the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (SCAS-P) and the Social Responsiveness Scale (SRS). Severity of anxiety was correlated with a greater degree of social dysfunction as measured by the SRS in this group. We split the group according to high or low anxiety as measured by the SCAS-P and explored the profile of social skills for the two groups. Individuals high and low in anxiety differed in their social abilities. The results emphasise the need to address anxiety issues in this disorder and to consider how components of anxiety might relate to other features of the disorder. Keywords Williams syndrome * Social * Anxiety, Introduction Williams Syndrome (WS) is a developmental disorder, prevalence of 1:20,000 (Korenberg et al. 2003, but see also 1:7,500 Stromme et al. 2002), caused by the micro-deletion of 25-28 genes [...]