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Abstract In the classical information theoretic framework, information “value” is proportional to how novel/surprising the information is. Recent work building on such notions claimed that false news spreads faster than truth online because false news is more novel and therefore surprising. However, another determinant of surprise, semantic meaning (e.g., information’s consistency or inconsistency with prior beliefs), should also influence value and sharing. Examining sharing behavior on Twitter, we observed separate relations of novelty and belief consistency with sharing. Though surprise could not be assessed in those studies, belief consistency should relate to less surprise, suggesting the relevance of semantic meaning beyond novelty. In two controlled experiments, belief-consistent (vs. belief-inconsistent) information was shared more despite consistent information being the least surprising. Manipulated novelty did not predict sharing or surprise. Thus, classical information theoretic predictions regarding perceived value and sharing would benefit from considering semantic meaning in contexts where people hold pre-existing beliefs.

Background and Aims: Recommendations on paediatric single-injection local anaesthetic (LA) dosing for peripheral nerve blocks (PNBs) are based on the children's weight and limited by weight-based toxicity concerns. In this study, we assessed the extent of circumferential spread and block characteristics following the injection of an age-based volume (age in years = LA volume) of 0.25% bupivacaine following popliteal sciatic nerve block (PSNB). Methods: Thirty children aged between 2 and 12 years with the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) physical status I and II and undergoing foot and ankle surgical procedures were given single-injection ultrasound-guided subparaneural PSNB using 0.25% bupivacaine at age-based LA volume after the administration of anaesthesia. The circumferential pattern of LA spread (primary objective) was assessed along the nerve (both cephalad and caudal) using ultrasound from the point of administration and the block characteristics in terms of duration of sensory block. Results: The mean [standard deviation (SD)] cephalic circumferential LA spread distance was 2.52 (0.68) [95% confidence interval (CI): 2.27–2.76] cm. The mean (SD) caudal circumferential LA spread distance was 2.27 (0.48) [95% CI: 2.09–2.44] cm. The mean (SD) duration of the sensory block was 9.03 (0.97) [95% CI: 8.67–9.38] h. Conclusion: The age-based LA volume of bupivacaine for ultrasound-guided PSNB resulted in a longitudinal circumferential spread of around 4.7 cm (adding both cephalic and caudal spread) and provided adequate analgesia for nine postoperative hours.

Byline: Parthasarathy. Srinivasan, Mithun. Varman, Karthik. Srinivas Dear Editor, The internal jugular vein (IJV) is a popular site for central venous cannulation due to easy accessibility, less learning curve with [...]

Abstract Human mobility analysis plays a crucial role in urban analysis, city planning, epidemic modeling, and even understanding neighborhood effects on individuals’ health. Often, these studies model human mobility in the form of co-location networks. We have recently seen the tremendous success of network representation learning models on several machine learning tasks on graphs. To the best of our knowledge, limited attention has been paid to identifying communities using network representation learning methods specifically for co-location networks. We attempt to address this problem and study user mobility behavior through the communities identified with latent node representations. Specifically, we select several diverse network representation learning models to identify communities from a real-world co-location network. We include both general-purpose representation models that make no assumptions on network modality as well as approaches designed specifically for human mobility analysis. We evaluate these different methods on data collected in the Adolescent Health and Development in Context study. Our experimental analysis reveals that a recently proposed method (LocationTrails) offers a competitive advantage over other methods with respect to its ability to represent and reflect community assignment that is consistent with extant findings regarding neighborhood racial and socio-economic differences in mobility patterns. We also compare the learned activity profiles of individuals by factoring in their residential neighborhoods. Our analysis reveals a significant contrast in the activity profiles of individuals residing in white-dominated versus black-dominated neighborhoods and advantaged versus disadvantaged neighborhoods in a major metropolitan city of United States. We provide a clear rationale for this contrastive pattern through insights from the sociological literature.