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Sensory feedback is required for the stable execution of learned motor skills, and its loss can severely disrupt motor performance. The neural mechanisms that mediate sensorimotor stability have been extensively studied at systems and physiological levels, yet relatively little is known about how disruptions to sensory input alter the molecular properties of associated motor systems. Songbird courtship song, a model for skilled behavior, is a learned and highly structured vocalization that is destabilized following deafening. Here, we sought to determine how the loss of auditory feedback modifies gene expression and its coordination across the birdsong sensorimotor circuit. To facilitate this system-wide analysis of transcriptional responses, we developed a gene expression profiling approach that enables the construction of hundreds of spatially-defined RNA-sequencing libraries. Using this method, we found that deafening preferentially alters gene expression across birdsong neural circuitry relative to surrounding areas, particularly in premotor and striatal regions. Genes with altered expression are associated with synaptic transmission, neuronal spines, and neuromodulation and show a bias toward expression in glutamatergic neurons and Pvalb/Sst-class GABAergic interneurons. We also found that connected song regions exhibit correlations in gene expression that were reduced in deafened birds relative to hearing birds, suggesting that song destabilization alters the inter-region coordination of transcriptional states. Finally, lesioning LMAN, a forebrain afferent of RA required for deafening-induced song plasticity, had the largest effect on groups of genes that were also most affected by deafening. Combined, this integrated transcriptomics analysis demonstrates that the loss of peripheral sensory input drives a distributed gene expression response throughout associated sensorimotor neural circuitry and identifies specific candidate molecular and cellular mechanisms that support the stability and plasticity of learned motor skills.

Biological rhythms are ubiquitous. They can be generated by circadian oscillators, which produce daily rhythms in physiology and behavior, as well as by developmental oscillators such as the segmentation clock, which periodically produces modular developmental units. Here, we show that the circadian clock controls the timing of late-stage floret development, or anthesis, in domesticated sunflowers. In these plants, up to thousands of individual florets are tightly packed onto a capitulum disk. While early floret development occurs continuously across capitula to generate iconic spiral phyllotaxy, during anthesis floret development occurs in discrete ring-like pseudowhorls with up to hundreds of florets undergoing simultaneous maturation. We demonstrate circadian regulation of floral organ growth and show that the effects of light on this process are time-of-day dependent. Delays in the phase of floral anthesis delay morning visits by pollinators, while disruption of circadian rhythms in floral organ development causes loss of pseudowhorl formation and large reductions in pollinator visits. We therefore show that the sunflower circadian clock acts in concert with environmental response pathways to tightly synchronize the anthesis of hundreds of florets each day, generating spatial patterns on the developing capitulum disk. This coordinated mass release of floral rewards at predictable times of day likely promotes pollinator visits and plant reproductive success.

Traditionally considered random noise, variability in behaviour in fact contains meaningful structure. Healthy functioning can be characterised by behavioural variability that is statistically self-similar (i.e., exhibits 1/f scaling), while disease or injury can result in deviations from this pattern. To date this work has focused predominantly on physical conditions. Little is known about the link between mental health and 1/f scaling. To address this gap, in the present study participants completed a simple walking task during which their gait variability was captured. Cognitive load, a factor known to impact 1/f scaling, was manipulated and symptoms of social anxiety assessed. As expected, being distracted by a cognitive task led to deviations in gait structure away from 1/f scaling. Notably, this effect was influenced by symptoms of social anxiety. This provides initial evidence that difference in mental health status impacts the structure of behaviour.

Older adults can experience declines in their cognitive abilities, which could affect their ability to engage in daily activities such as driving. Here, we compare the driving habits of older adults across different cognitive groups: cognitively healthy older adults (control), Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD), Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI), and Alzheimer’s Disease (AD). We analyzed data from the large-scale Comprehensive Assessment of Neurodegeneration and Dementia study (COMPASS-ND, Chertkow et al., 2019). Results revealed that the AD group drove the least often and shortest distances. Interestingly, on several measures, the SCD group was more like the MCI group than the control group (driving frequency, restrictions), suggesting that even subjective declines were associated with differences in driving habits. We will further discuss how these results are influenced by sensory and demographic factors. Driving-related limitations could reduce older adults’ participation and access to essential resources, in turn, negatively affecting their physical and mental health.

People have a remarkable capacity to infer others’ goals and intentions based on how they behave. Yet, humans are also motivated to ensure that others can infer their mental states easily and accurately. Past work has shown that people achieve this by introducing inefficiencies to their behavior, which reveal its underlying goal (e.g., exaggerating one’s movements so as to make their purpose obvious). We hypothesized that inefficiency is not a constitutive feature of signaling, and that people will often signal their goals and intentions solely through efficient action. We test this idea in a signal-design experiment where participants need to reach an instrumental goal while also making that goal as inferable as possible. In line with our hypothesis, people shape their behavior to increase inferability without jeopardizing efficiency (Experiment 1). Using a computational model, we show that these efficient signals are well-designed to guide observers’ inferences about the relevant instrumental goal. Moreover, observers’ intuitions about which paths were produced to signal correlate with the proportion of times that the paths were generated in the signaling condition of our first experiment (Experiment 2). Our results show that humans not only exploit opportunities to reveal their goals without deviating from efficient action, but that these signals allow observers to understand the instrumental and signaling goals underpinning the movement.

Listeners often have trouble identifying other-accented talkers. Some suggest this Other Accent Effect (OAE) occurs only for non-native accents (e.g., Canadian English listeners experience it for Mandarin-accented English, but not Australian English). But the line between native and non-native accents can be difficult to distinguish, and past studies have confounded accent strength with accent type. Thus, we hypothesize that accent strength modulates the OAE. We predict a heavy non-native accent will elicit an OAE, whereas a light one will not. To test this, we presented native Canadian English listeners with voice line-ups of native Canadian English accented, non-native heavy Mandarin-accented, and non-native light Mandarin-accented talkers. Unsurprisingly, listeners performed better with Canadian English talkers than Mandarin-accented talkers. Crucially, listeners performed equally poorly with both heavy and light Mandarin-accented talkers. Thus, we found no evidence for our hypothesis; instead, we observe that even a weak non-native accent can elicit a strong OAE.

Fermi problems are often taught in science and engineering as a technique for difficult numerical estimation in which a question is broken down into sub-questions that people can more confidently estimate. Thus, they may be tools providing insight into how people estimate numbers. However, there are no empirical studies into the effectiveness of Fermi problems. This study presented participants with the same questions as both Fermi problems (with sub-questions) and as non-Fermi problems (no sub-questions) and tested the hypothesis that participants’ estimates would be more accurate when presented with Fermi problems than non-Fermi problems. The same data tested a hypothesis that participants would better fit to Benford’s law when presented with Fermi problems than non-Fermi problems. Neither hypothesis was supported, although the strong fit of peoples estimates to Benford’s law was replicated. This first attempt to empirically examine Fermi problems pointed to ways to more rigorously test these hypotheses.

Curiosity relates to learning and recent work shows robust associations between curiosity and recall of information in adults and children over age 10. The current study tested a similar association in younger children and explored children’s information-seeking behaviors. Children (n=90, 4-10-year-olds) played a free-exploration game in which they clicked shapes to learn different facts about different topics. They then recalled what they remembered learning on the task (recall) and asked questions about what they were curious to know more about (curiosity). We observed a positive association between children’s curiosity and recall of information, even when controlling for amount of information seeking and children’s age. This association was seen for recall with and without memory cues. There was no association between children’s curiosity and information seeking behavior, and children showed a strong tendency of breadth exploration over exploring in depth with indication of an association between exploring more depth with age.

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in probabilistic measures of argument strength. Such measures have been used to elucidate longstanding questions of both theoretical and practical interest around fallacies of argumentation, scientific argument, legal argument, or argument and evidence aggregation. The measures typically used have drawn, in one form or other, on conditional probability as a central component for measuring argument quality, strength or confirmation. Work in this area has also consistently highlighted the value of Bayesian Belief Networks for computing argument strength in multi-argument (variable) contexts. However, to date, there has been no consideration of whether the key structural property underlying such networks – the notion of conditional independence- has a bearing on argument quality. In this paper, we consider the potential impact of causal structure on the utility of arguments.

Alcohol binge drinking is ubiquitous among young adults. While the neurotoxic effects of general alcohol consumption are well known, binge drinking has unique effects on the brain through the intoxication and withdrawal cycle. In particular, the research regarding binge drinking and attention is mixed; this study investigates this relationship in young adults. University students (N=105) were recruited. Socio-demographic and alcohol use information was collected, then participants completed cognitive tasks based on the Attention Network Theory: alerting, orienting, and executive control. Binge drinking, sex, and age of first binge did not predict attention impairment, nor did sex moderate the relationship. The tasks measuring attention did not relate in the expected manner. While there were no differences in attention performance between those who binge drink and controls in this study, the relationship between binge drinking and attention impairments in young adults may be more nuanced and future research directions are suggested.

Many studies have failed to replicate the disfluency effect (i.e. disfluent font better than fluent font) on Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) performance shown in Alter et al. (2007). Those studies manipulated perceptual disfluency using color, style, size, and/or typefaces. The new Sans Forgetica (SF) typeface, designed to promote desirable difficulty, creates perceptual disfluency through fragmented letters, which make it difficult for readers to use good continuation and perceptual completion to identify letters. Here, we compare CRT performance and font legibility ratings when CRT problems are presented in SF or in Arial. Bayes Factors on solution rates show moderate evidence of SF not improving CRT performance. After solving CRT problems, participants who solved the problems in SF rated Arial to be harder to read than participants who solved the problems in Arial, suggesting that after prolong use of SF, participants viewed Arial as being closer in legibility to SF.

Commutativity–the fact that changing the order of operands in an operation does not change the result–is a fundamental principle of mathematics. How does its understanding develop in children? While this question has mostly been addressed for addition, here we focus on multiplication. We ask whether children’s formal learning of multiplication commutativity relies on pre-existing non-symbolic intuitions, or whether it is first learnt symbolically and only later elaborated as a general principle that extends to concrete situations. 2nd and 3rd graders received an intervention on commutative multiplication, before and after which they played a number comparison game testing their understanding of commutativity in symbolic and non-symbolic contexts. Our results suggest that the commutative principle of multiplication may not be available to intuition before formal teaching: perceiving that 2 groups of 3 dots and 3 groups of 2 dots contain the same number of dots requires mastering commutativity symbolically first.

This work attempts to bridge the divide between accounts of causal reasoning with respect to agents and objects. We begin by examining the influence of animacy. In a collision-based context, we vary the animacy status of an object using 3D animations. By holding the fine-grained kinematics of the actual and counterfactual outcomes fixed across animate and inanimate conditions, we find that animacy itself has no effect on causal attribution judgments. Next, we test if causal judgments for animate and inanimate objects differ as a function of the counterfactuals they respectively afford in a disjunctive causal structure. Here, we find that the effect of perceived animacy on causal attribution is mediated by differences in counterfactual judgments. Finally, we introduce the known effect of prescriptive norm violations to this paradigm. Our results collectively highlight how normative expectations specify the counterfactual considerations that guide causal reasoning about both agents and objects.

Knowledge affects how humans think and reason: people use background knowledge to interpret natural language, and reason over those interpretations. We show one way in which offline knowledge, which is stored in semantic memory, interacts with online knowledge, that is, knowledge acquired through the use of factive mental state verbs such as know and discover. The interaction tests a theory of human thinking that assumes people construct simulations of possibilities – mental models – when they reason. It predicts that offline knowledge can affect reasoning through a process known as modulation, which blocks the mental construction of possibilities; and that online knowledge can cause reasoners to make presuppositions about facts. It also describes the mechanisms by which the mind updates mental models and separates fact from belief. An experiment tested the theory and corroborated its predicted interaction effect. We discuss the results in light of recent proposals of reasoning with knowledge.

Young children make systematic mistakes when reasoning about what other agents know and believe -- mature mental state reasoning emerges around late childhood. We describe a novel class of errors that adult reasoners make when considering information about the mental states of others. Participants in two studies reasoned about common conditional reasoning inferences couched in terms of an agent’s knowledge or belief, e.g., Alia knows that if it’s rainy then the café is closed; It’ s rainy. What follows? They generated their responses using a novel sentence construction interface. Many participants spontaneously generated responses such as, Alia knows that the café is closed. This pattern reflects an “omniscience” error, i.e., one in which reasoners erroneously impute knowledge of a deductive consequence to an agent. We discuss the results in the context of recent proposals on epistemic inference.

How do people prepare for upcoming distractors? It has been recently suggested that not only observers do not inhibit distractors before their appearance, but they are rather more alert at those moments. Interestingly, a similar effect was found when observers were expecting task-relevant, informative stimuli, supporting a mandatory "attend-all" mechanism. However, thus far, the preparation effect was only demonstrated in speeded dot-probe tasks and it is yet to be determined whether preparing for distractors merely facilitates motor preparation or whether it has other outcomes, such as modifying early perceptual processes. Replacing the dot-probe task with a four-letter memory encoding task revealed that memory was enhanced when the letters appeared when informative stimuli were expected. Memory was also enhanced, although to a lesser extent, when observers were expecting distracting stimuli to appear. These results indicate that the preparation effect has perceptual consequences and that it is more flexible than previously thought.

An influential theory of human fairness has suggested that norms of equity evolved as community sizes grew, markets and institutions stabilized and world religions came about. The theory assumes that humans predominantly interacted with kin in the evolutionary past, lived in genetically related groups and did not have formal norms of cooperation. In this article I present anthropological evidence to the contrary. Contemporary hunter-gatherer societies from around the globe live in nomadic camps with fluid membership and low genetic relatedness; cooperate extensively based on principles of need, equity and reciprocity; have high prevalence of food sharing, cooperative hunting and alloparenting; and demonstrate formal norms of redistribution for essential goods. This directly contradicts the claim that fairness is a recently evolved disposition for market-integrated societies.

Dual process theories of memory state that memory can be dissociated as recollection (intentional, deliberate and effortful) and automatic (fast and effortless) components. Previous studies have established a strong positive correlation between people’s Judgements of Learning i.e., predictions about their memory performance and the recollection component, but the studies have been inconclusive regarding the link of JOLs with the automatic component. The links between the time at which metacognition judgments are made and the two components of memory are investigated in this study. Experiment 1 inspects these links for prospective metacognitive judgements (Judgment of Learning) while Experiment 2 explores for retrospective metacognitive judgements (Retrospective Confidence Judgment). The results show a correlation between both the metacognitive judgments and recollection, as expected. There was a correlation between the metacognitive judgments and the automatic component in only the first experiment and not the second. The reasons for this are speculated.

Previous research has shown that voices of unfamiliar young children are more difficult to differentiate and identify than the voices of adults. In the present study, we examine whether difficulty identifying child voices extends to cases in which those voices are highly familiar. Caregivers (n = 132) of 3.5- to 10-year-old children were presented with voice recordings of their own child amongst gender- and age-matched peers and asked to identify which voice belonged to their child. Although overall accuracy was high, voices of younger children were misidentified more often than voices of older children. In contrast with existing models of familiar voice identification, results suggest that listeners are sensitive to variability in low-level acoustic cues to speaker identity in familiar as well as unfamiliar voice processing.

Rules are central to the successful coordination of large-scale societies. However, official codified rules (like laws) and other important social information like descriptive (often implicit) norms can sometimes provide conflicting accounts of what someone should do. Here, we explored two situations in which official rules and descriptive norms conflict—with implications for enforcement and punishment. Experiment 1 looked in the US and Belgium and found that descriptive norms shape the extent to which violating a codified rule is seen as actually breaking a rule. In Experiment 2 we demonstrated that descriptive norms also influence who people think was the cause of a punishment—the rule enforcer, not the rule breaker, is seen as the cause when the rule is rarely enforced (i.e. descriptive norms of enforcement are low.) Overall, this work suggests that norms play a vital role in shaping how we understand official rules and those who break them.

Introduction & Aims: There is a current drive nationally to improve the management of acute ureteric colic. Management targets set by the British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) include a 4-week target for the time from diagnosis-to-definitive management, or to clinic review in patients managed expectantly. The motivation to review our acute stone service stemmed from concerns that we did not have the capacity to consistently offer primary definitive treatment or timely clinic review to patients. We aimed to restructure our service using Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycles to achieve the BAUS targets. Method: All patients diagnosed with a ureteric stone between March and September 2017 were reviewed as a baseline. Our strategy for improvement involved implementing an emergency stone clinic (ESC) model. This was developed through collaboration between the key stakeholders and centred on a weekly consultant-led specialist clinic designed to review and make early management decisions for all patients referred with a ureteric stone meeting pre-agreed criteria. Post-intervention data were collected between June 2018 and January 2019. To assess whether we were able to meet these targets during the COVID-19 pandemic, data were also collected between January 2020 and October 2020. Results: Time from CT diagnosis to clinic review reduced from 77 to 9 days. Patients seen within 4 weeks of diagnosis improved from 2.9% to 90.5%. Of those requiring a procedure, the percentage receiving a primary intervention increased to 72.1%. Emergency stent insertion was reduced from 69% to 27.9%. The rate of patient re-presentation to A&E reduced from 3.0 to 1.6 episodes/month. The percentage receiving their definitive procedure within 4 weeks improved from 26.2% to 51.2% in the first post-intervention cycle and remained at 54.5% during the pandemic period. Conclusions: Implementing the ESC model led to substantial improvements in patient care and significant progress towards achieving the BAUS management targets while reducing the burden on our Emergency Department. Level of evidence: Not applicable [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Melanoma causes most skin cancer–related deaths, and disparities in mortality persist. Rural communities, compared to urban, face higher levels of poverty and more barriers to care, leading to higher stage at presentation and shorter survival in melanoma. To further evaluate these disparities, we sought to assess the association between rurality and melanoma cause-specific mortality and receipt of recommended surgery in a national cohort. Methods: Patients with primary non-ocular, cutaneous melanoma from the SEER database, 2000-2017, were included. Outcomes included melanoma-specific survival and receipt of recommended surgery. Rurality was based on Rural-Urban Continuum Codes. Variables included age, sex, race, ethnicity, income, and stage. Multivariate regression models assessed the effect of rurality on survival and receipt of recommended surgery. Results: 103,606 patients diagnosed with non-ocular cutaneous primary melanoma met criteria during this period. 93.3% (n = 96620) were in urban areas and 6.7% (n = 6986) were in rural areas. On multivariate regression controlling for age, sex, race, ethnicity, and stage patients living in a rural area were less likely to receive recommended surgery (aOR.52, 95% CI:.29-.90, P =.02) and had increased hazard of melanoma-specific mortality (aHR 1.19, 95% CI: 1.02-1.40, P =.03) even after additionally controlling for surgery receipt. Conclusion: Using a large national cohort, our study found that rural patients were less likely to receive recommended surgery and had shorter melanoma cause-specific survival. Our findings highlight the importance of access to cancer care in rural areas and how this ultimately effects survival for these patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Academic Journal of Philosophy / Felsefi Düşün is the property of Pinhan Yayincilik and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In an era marked by global concerns about democratic erosion, this study delves into the nuanced landscape of individual-level perceptions of democracy. This paper uncovers intriguing insights that challenge conventional wisdom by examining a robust dataset from the World Values Survey comprising over 90,000 responses across 60+ countries. Surprisingly, people's perception of democracy and satisfaction with the political system exhibit minimal correlation with systematic measures of liberal democracy. Instead, indicators like sentiments regarding the 'army taking over during government incompetence' and 'participation in unofficial strikes' emerge as robust predictors of democratic evaluation. Moreover, this analysis unveils a notable connection between individual economic satisfaction and perceptions of democratic governance and political system performance. These relationships illuminate the dynamics shaping democratic assessment at the individual level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Farol - Revista de Estudos Organizacionais e Sociedade is the property of Farol - Revista de Estudos Organizacionais e Sociedade and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of RumeliDE Journal of Language & Literature Research / RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of RumeliDE Uluslararasi Hakemli Dil & Edebiyat Arastirmalari Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article presents an ethnographic case study of pre-service teachers' transformative learning in a Culture-Writing course at a Chinese university. In recounting three stories with fieldwork data gleaned from moments of students' pre-class discussions, reflective writings, and reports on term-paper projects, this study showcases how a group of student-teachers transformed the self through getting to know and/or re-understanding other(s). Learning to 'write culture', as their teacher led them to see, is to appreciate the lifeworlds of others and further to destabilise taken-for-granted assumptions, beliefs, and understandings, thereby leading towards transformation. I argue that transformative learning takes place in the process of knowing and rebuilding the self in relationships with other(s). It constitutes moments of critical shift that place the self and identity in a more reflexive, relational, and reversible position within specific socio-cultural contexts. This study contributes to the ongoing discussions on transformative education by illuminating how other(s) play a role in promoting pre-service teachers' transformation in a classroom-based course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Physical or cognitive disability of a person is the embodied form of disablement, whereas disability can be seen as metaphoric of disqualification from being 'normal'. As the mother of the disabled protagonist in Firdaus Kanga's autobiographical debut novel Trying to Grow (1990) tells him, 'It's the heights you reach that count, not the height you are', the issue of physical normalcy appears to be challenged. In this novel, Daryus Kotwal, alias Brit, is the poster-boy of physical disability with 'osteogenesis imperfecta', a disease which makes the bones brittle. This article attempts to investigate how the physical disability experienced by Brit and the fragility of his bones, could be seen as material dimension of impairment and metaphorically equated with the postcolonial nation's societal differences and supposed fragility. This article also draws attention to Brit's Anglicized Parsee identity emphasizing the minority status of the 'different' in the Indian context and focussing on the multi-layered metaphorical ties between disability, difference and postcoloniality as well as between oppression and the possibilities of resistance. This essay finally points out that disability is not a kind of 'medicalized' identity, but the identity of someone who is normally 'able' to face psycho-physical and attitudinal barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dialogue between and comparative research into Christianity and Buddhism theoretically involve the issues of self and other. Faced with the cultural reality of religious diversity, theologies of religions provide four modes of dialogue through which Christianity can interface with religious others. The exploration of the infinite and transcendent traits of otherness in contemporary phenomenological philosophy, as well as the emphasis on differences in postmodern philosophy, contributes to maintaining a clear awareness of otherness and self-identity in the Buddhist–Christian dialogue. Following the dialogical path in comparative theology, which leads one out of oneself, into the other, and back into oneself, in experimental Buddhist-Christian dialogue activities, both Christianity and Buddhism figure as the self and the other. If they openly accept each other's otherness and heterogeneity, view each other as mirrors, and criticize and reflect on themselves, then creative insights into themselves will ultimately be generated. Their selves will be rediscovered, and their understanding and expression will be updated. Reflecting on the Buddhist–Christian dialogue from four aspects, namely, ultimate realism, cosmology, ethics, and religious ideals, can eliminate some misunderstandings and deepen both parties' understandings of themselves and others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Mahasweta Devi's literary work 'Rudali' alongside Kalpana Lajmi's cinematic adaptation Rudaali from the perspective of Derek Attridge's views on literary instrumentalism and literariness. It attempts to tease out the literary elements and explore the shifting dynamic of the instrumental and the literary. The article looks at how the focus on the literariness in the two works facilitates an opening out towards the 'other' and an inclusivity that an instrumental approach may negate. The article also analyses the representation of the stereotype of the sex worker as prostitute and whore in the story and the film vis-à-vis the dynamics of openness to otherness and alterity. As a comparative analysis of the text and its adaptation in film, the article studies the contrast and complementarity of these works in text and film and finally examines how the features particular to the specific medium bring to bear on the instrumental approach, literariness, stereotypes and inclusivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IntroductionAccess to surgical service is limited by provider availability and geographic barriers. Telemedicine ensures that patients can access medical care.ObjectiveThe objective is to describe our use of telemedicine in delivering vascular surgery services to remote locations before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective chart review analyzing care delivered at six vascular surgery telemedicine clinics over a 22-month period. We examined vascular diagnoses, recommended interventions, referrals placed, and emergency department visits within 30 days of evaluation. We calculated travel distance saved for patients between their local clinic and our main hospital.ResultsWe identified 94 patients and 144 telemedicine visits, with an average of 1.5 visits per patient (SD = 0.73). The most common referrals were for peripheral artery disease (20.2%) and abdominal aortic aneurysm (14.9%). Three patients were immediately referred to the emergency department due to concern for acute limb ischemia (2) or questionable symptomatic AAA (1). Telemedicine visit recommendations were distributed between no intervention (n = 30, 31.9%), medical management (n = 41, 43.6%), and surgical intervention (n = 23, 24.5%).The surgical intervention cohort was most commonly referred to arterial revascularization (n = 4), venous ablation (n = 4), and arteriovenous fistula procedures (n = 4). Fourteen patients came to our main hospital for surgery and four to local providers. Average travel distance saved per telemedicine visit was 104 miles (SD = 43.7).ConclusionsTelemedicine provided safe, efficient care during the COVID-19 pandemic and saved patients an average of 104 travel miles per visit.

Abstract Patients with primary aldosteronism (PA) have increased morbidity and mortality compared to those with essential hypertension. Accurate detection of lateralized PA is important so that affected patients can receive potentially curative adrenalectomy. However, around 40% of patients with lateralized PA have “normal” adrenal glands on computed tomography (CT). Additional independent review of imaging has been shown to improve diagnostic accuracy in many areas of imaging. Therefore, the authors sought to establish if multi‐reader re‐assessment of previously reported normal CT scans would result in increased detection of surgically remediable disease. The authors found that re‐assessment of CT imaging by one, two, or three additional radiologists (or a combination thereof) slightly increased the detection of lateralized disease, but these differences were not statistically significant (p > .05). Readers had low inter‐observer agreement (kappa = 0.17). If detection of a discrete nodule on CT was made a prerequisite for adrenal vein sampling (AVS), a second read by another reviewer would still result in an excess of missed cases (84.2%, 36.8%, and 65.8%, respectively, for each of the three independent reviewers). Therefore, a “normal” CT does not preclude the possibility of lateralized PA. Adrenal vein sampling should still be strongly considered wherever available and whenever surgery is considered for treatment of PA, irrespective of CT findings.

Despite the effectiveness of seatbelts, concerns persist about compliance, especially among teenagers. Survey data from a local high school and registry data from a level 1 trauma center were used to observe seatbelt and motor vehicle accident trends. The survey data was analyzed to gauge student's sentiments on seatbelt education. The trauma center data was analyzed to identify characteristics and trends among teenage motor vehicle accidents. Social media was the most common strategy selected for seatbelt safety awareness. Random seatbelt checks performed over 4 months revealed seatbelt compliance rates of 90%, 93.55%, and 96.94% after education intervention. Trauma center data showed that lack of seatbelt usage resulted in greater morbidity. These findings emphasize the need for targeted interventions. This study provides insights into creating effective education campaigns that can be used to enhance safety belt compliance and potentially reduce injury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of the research is determined by the insufficient study of the forms of aggression in the context of culture, as well as insufficient description of the extralinguistic prerequisites of aggression correlated with the subject area of culture, and intra-linguistic means and methods of cultural reference of aggression. The aim of the study is to identify the linguistic and cultural foundations of expressing aggression in the Russian language and to describe the means of its verbalization through the prism of the binary category “Own/ Other”, which is the basis of ethnic conflicts. To achieve this aim, the method of definitional, semantic, linguistic-cultural analysis, descriptive method was used. A sociolinguistic experiment was conducted. Methods of continuous sampling from lexicographic sources and of quantitative calculations of the responses received by the participants of the experiment were applied. The research material included: 1) a corpus of more than 50 lexical and phraseological units of the Russian language taken from dictionaries, which verbalize aggressive attitude towards “foreign” culture and “foreign” ethnos; 2) a range of ethnopholisms obtained in the sociolinguistic experiment among high school students in Astrakhan. It was determined that aggression in the Russian language has a culturological explanation: it is conditioned by identifying the ethnos according to the principle of “own - other”. The linguistic and cultural basis of aggressive semantics is the semantics of “alienness”, which is expressed by demonstrating an obviously negative attitude to “alien”, which is the object of an aggressive action. A special group of lexical means - linguistic and cultural markers of aggression - includes units, negatively characterizing representatives/artifacts of a “foreign” culture. Linguistic and cultural markers of aggression are ethnopholisms. Aggressive nominations of ethnic groups historically residing both far abroad and in the Russian multicultural region are equally relevant in the linguistic consciousness of young people. From extralinguistic positions, the consolidation and activation of hostile lexico-phraseological means in the language are conditioned by the intercultural historical contacts of nations which are currently being reflected in the journalistic discourse, in Internet communication. The perspective of the research is seen in the use of its results for developing the concept of overcoming speech aggression in the educational space, where the factor of hostility has hindered the education of a tolerant personality.