Online social cohesion reflects real-world group action in Syria during the Arab Spring.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Chiovaro M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8284667 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:Background"Health Care Workers in Conflict Areas" emerged as one of the priority themes for a Lancet Commission addressing health in conflict. The objective of our study was to conduct a scoping review on health workers in the setting of the Syrian conflict, addressing four topics of interest: violence against health care workers, education, practicing in conflict setting, and migration.MethodsConsidering the likelihood of scarcity of data, we broadened the scope of the scoping review to include indirect evidence on health care workers from other countries affected by the "Arab Spring". We electronically searched six electronic databases. We conducted descriptive analysis of the general characteristics of the included papers. We also used the results of this scoping review to build an evidence gap map.ResultsOut of the 11 165 identified citations, 136 met our eligibility criteria. The majority of the articles tackled the issue of violence against health care workers (63%) followed by practicing in conflict setting (19%), migration (17%) and education (10%). Countries in focus of most articles were: Syria (35%), Iraq (33%), and Bahrain (29%). News, editorials, commentaries and opinion pieces made up 81% of all included papers, while primary studies made up only 9%. All the primary studies identified in this review were conducted on Iraq. Most of the articles about violence against health care workers were on Bahrain, followed by Syria and Iraq. The first and corresponding authors were most frequently affiliated with institutions from non-Arab countries (79% and 79% respectively).ConclusionsResearch evidence on health care workers in the setting of the "Arab Spring" is scarce. This review and the gap map can inform the research agendas of funders and researchers working in the field of health care workers in conflict setting. More well-designed primary studies are needed to inform the decisions of policymakers and other interested parties.
| S-EPMC6207103 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The current study uses big data to study prosocial behavior by analyzing donations made on the GoFundMe platform. In a dataset of more than $44 million in online donations, we find that 21% were made while opting to be anonymous to the public, with survey results indicating that 11% of these anonymous donations (2.3% of all donations) are not attributable to any egoistic goal. Additionally, we find that donors gave significantly more to recipients who had the same last name as them. We find evidence that men and women donated more when more donors of the opposite sex were visible on the screen at the time of donating. Our results suggest that men and women were both significantly affected by the average donation amounts visible at the time of their decisions, and men were influenced more. We find that women expressed significantly more empathy than men in messages accompanying their donations.
| S-EPMC6722054 | biostudies-literature
Project description:In recent years, the reach and influence of far-right ideologies have been extended through online communities with devastating effects in the real world. In this research, we examine how far-right online communities can be empowered by socio-political events that are significant to them. Using over 14 years of data extracted from an Australian national sub-forum of a global online white supremacist community, we investigate whether the group cohesion of the community is affected by local race riots. Our analysis shows that the online community, not only became more cohesive after the riots, but was also reinvigorated by highly active new members who joined during the week of the riots or soon after. These changes were maintained over the longer-term, highlighting pervasive ramifications of the local socio-political context for this white supremacist community. Pre-registered analyses of data extracted from other white supremacist online communities (in South Africa and the United Kingdom) show similar effects on some of the indicators of group cohesion, but of reduced magnitude, and not as enduring as the effects found in the context of the Australian far-right online community.
| S-EPMC7105128 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Games involving virtual worlds are popular in several segments of the population and societies. The online environment facilitates that players from different countries interact in a common virtual world. Virtual worlds involving social and economic interactions are particularly useful to test social and economic theories. Using data from EVE Online, a massive online multi-player game simulating a fantasy galaxy, we analyse the relation between the real-world context in which players live and their in-game behaviour at the country level. We find that in-game aggressiveness to non-player characters is positively related to real-world levels of aggressiveness as measured by the Global Peace Index and the Global Terrorist Index at the country level. The opposite is true for in-game aggressiveness towards other players, which seems to work as a safety valve for real-world player aggressiveness. The ability to make in-game friends is also positively related to real-world levels of aggressiveness in much the same way. In-game trading behaviour is dependent on the macro-economic environment where players live. The unemployment rate and exchange rate make players trade more efficiently and cautiously in-game. Overall, we find evidence that the real-world environment affects in-game behaviour, suggesting that virtual worlds can be used to experiment and test social and economic theories, and to infer real-world behaviour at the country level.
| S-EPMC7577455 | biostudies-literature
Project description:The autosomal recessive inherited Krabbe disease (KD) is a devastating pediatric lysosomal storage disorder affecting white matter of the brain. It is caused by mutations in the gene coding for the lysosomal enzyme galactocerebrosidase. While most patients present with symptoms within the first 6 months of life, others present later in life throughout adulthood. The early infantile form of KD (EIKD) is frequent in the Muslim Arab population in Israel, with a very high prevalence of approximately 1/100 to 1/150 live births. The homozygous variant c.1582G?>?A (p.D528N) was found to be responsible for EIKD in Palestinian Arab patients. KD was reported in different Arab countries with much lower frequency. While most Arab patients presented with EIKD, late infantile and late onset KD forms were also reported. Most Arab patients presented with variable symptoms ranging from EIKD to late onset KD, with variable clinical findings. Based on literature studies, this review focuses on the clinical and molecular findings of KD patients with Arab ancestry, and highlights the need for developing universal genetic screening programs to overcome the under-reported status of KD prevalence in Arabia. This is expected to improve the prognosis of the disease and promote targeted molecular diagnostics to the Arab patients.
| S-EPMC4906415 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC1618440 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundThe proportion of days covered (PDC) is used to estimate medication adherence by looking at the proportion of days in which a person has access to the medication, over a given period of interest. This study aimed to adapt the PDC algorithm to allow for plausible assumptions about prescription refill behaviour when applied to data from online pharmacy suppliers.MethodsThree PDC algorithms, the conventional approach (PDC1) and two alternative approaches (PDC2 and PDC3), were used to estimate adherence in a real-world dataset from an online pharmacy. Each algorithm has different denominators and increasing levels of complexity. PDC1, the conventional approach, is the total number of days between first dispensation and a defined end date. PDC2 counts the days until the end of supply date. PDC3 removes from the denominator specifically defined large gaps between refills, which could indicate legitimate reasons for treatment discontinuation. The distribution of the three PDCs across four different follow-up lengths was compared.ResultsThe dataset included people taking ACE inhibitors (n = 65,905), statins (n = 100,362), and/or thyroid hormones (n = 30,637). The proportion of people taking ACE inhibitors with PDC ≥ 0.8 was 50-74% for PDC1, 81-91% for PDC2, and 86-100% for PDC3 with values depending on drug and length of follow-up. Similar ranges were identified in people taking statins and thyroid hormones.ConclusionThese algorithms enable researchers and healthcare providers to assess pharmacy services and individual levels of adherence in real-world databases, particularly in settings where people may switch between different suppliers of medicines, meaning an individual supplier's data may show temporary but legitimate gaps in access to medication. Accurately identifying problems with adherence provides the foundation for opportunities to improve experience, adherence and outcomes and to reduce medicines wastage. Research with people taking medications and prescribers is required to validate the algorithms' assumptions.
| S-EPMC8715592 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundTreatment for pediatric psoriasis is challenging because of the lack of real-world evidence, especially for biological therapies.ObjectivesThis study evaluated the efficacy and safety of biologics in children with psoriasis based on real-world evidence.MethodsPediatric psoriasis patients aged <18 years who were treated with biologics in our hospital (2020-2022) were prospectively analyzed. Patients treated with adalimumab, secukinumab, or ixekizumab were followed up for at least 16 weeks, and 22 of 38 patients completed the 52-week observation period. Dermatologist raters were blinded to ensure the reliability of the PASI, BSA, and PGA score assessments. PASI 75 or PGA 0/1 at week 12 represented an efficient indicator.ResultsThirty-eight patients (20 males and 18 females; median age, 12.6 ± 4.1 years) were enrolled, and none were lost to follow-up. All participants were diagnosed with psoriasis, including plaque psoriasis (n = 36), nail psoriasis (n = 1), and pustular psoriasis (n = 1). Within 12 weeks, all patients achieved scores above PASI 75 and PGA 0/1. The average time to reach PASI 75 was 4.3 ± 2.0, 3.2 ± 1.8, and 2.4 ± 0.4 weeks in patients using adalimumab, secukinumab, and ixekizumab, respectively, and, 27.2% (3/11), 86.4% (19/22), and 75.0% (3/4) of these patients achieved PASI 100 at week 12, respectively. Moreover, 18 of 20 patients with plaque psoriasis maintained ≥PASI 75 after 52 weeks. The most commonly reported adverse effect was upper respiratory tract infection, and no severe adverse effects were reported.ConclusionsOur real-world data demonstrated the safety and effectiveness of adalimumab, secukinumab, and ixekizumab in children with psoriasis.
| S-EPMC9490006 | biostudies-literature
Project description:Speech discrimination that determines whether a participant is speaking at a given moment is essential in investigating human verbal communication. Specifically, in dynamic real-world situations where multiple people participate in, and form, groups in the same space, simultaneous speakers render speech discrimination that is solely based on audio sensing difficult. In this study, we focused on physical activity during speech, and hypothesized that combining audio and physical motion data acquired by wearable sensors can improve speech discrimination. Thus, utterance and physical activity data of students in a university participatory class were recorded, using smartphones worn around their neck. First, we tested the temporal relationship between manually identified utterances and physical motions and confirmed that physical activities in wide-frequency ranges co-occurred with utterances. Second, we trained and tested classifiers for each participant and found a higher performance with the audio-motion classifier (average accuracy 92.2%) than both the audio-only (80.4%) and motion-only (87.8%) classifiers. Finally, we tested inter-individual classification and obtained a higher performance with the audio-motion combined classifier (83.2%) than the audio-only (67.7%) and motion-only (71.9%) classifiers. These results show that audio-motion multimodal sensing using widely available smartphones can provide effective utterance discrimination in dynamic group communications.
| S-EPMC7287755 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: Apiculture has been practiced in North Africa and the Middle-East from antiquity. Several thousand years of selective breeding have left a mosaic of Apis mellifera subspecies in the Middle-East, many uniquely adapted and survived to local environmental conditions. In this study we explore the genetic diversity of A. mellifera from Syria (n?=?1258), Lebanon (n?=?169) and Iraq (n?=?35) based on 14 short tandem repeat (STR) loci in the context of reference populations from throughout the Old World (n?=?732). RESULTS: Our data suggest that the Syrian honeybee Apis mellifera syriaca occurs in both Syrian and Lebanese territories, with no significant genetic variability between respective populations from Syria and Lebanon. All studied populations clustered within a new fifth independent nuclear cluster, congruent with an mtDNA Z haplotype identified in a previous study. Syrian honeybee populations are not associated with Oriental lineage O, except for sporadic introgression into some populations close to the Turkish and Iraqi borders. Southern Syrian and Lebanese populations demonstrated high levels of genetic diversity compared to the northern populations. CONCLUSION: This study revealed the effects of foreign queen importations on Syrian bee populations, especially for the region of Tartus, where extensive introgression of A. m. anatolica and/or A. m. caucasica alleles were identified. The policy of creating genetic conservation centers for the Syrian subspecies should take into consideration the influence of the oriental lineage O from the northern Syrian border and the large population of genetically divergent indigenous honeybees located in southern Syria.
| S-EPMC4029286 | biostudies-other