Commentary: Were they being properly reported, two critically important court hearings in February 2024, in London and The Hague, would expose the US ‘rules-based order’ as a hollow sham. Both posed ...globe-spanning threats to our most basic freedoms. Neither received more than perfunctory coverage in Western establishment media such as the BBC. One was a week-long hearing by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over a United Nations General Assembly request for an advisory opinion over Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and the other was a last-ditch appeal of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against efforts by the United States to extradite him so that he can be locked away for the rest of his life. EDITORIAL NOTE: After the editorial of Pacific Journalism Review and the lead article in this edition (Vol 30, No 1&2) about the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange were printed, the Australian journalist was set free and he arrived back in Australia after a plea bargain. The winner of his country’s Walkley Award for journalism excellence, Assange was freed by a US federal court in Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, on 26 June 2024 after a plea bargain to plead guilty to one charge of violating the US Espionage Act and the judge sentenced him to 62 months, jail time already served in the UK on remand. His 14-year struggle for freedom was over, but his lawyers say they will press for a full US presidential pardon.
The dense clustering of glycans creates an unfavorable environment for the interaction of otherwise neutralizing antibodies. ...critical regions on EBOV GP, such as the receptor-binding site, are ...hidden under layers of glycan. ...host BST-2 is incorporated in the membrane of the nascent virion and forms a protein tether to prevent viral release. ...it may be worthwhile to explore the role of the transmembrane domain of EBOV GP in BST-2 antagonism.
Randomised evaluations of surgical interventions are rare; some interventions have been widely adopted without rigorous evaluation. Unlike other medical areas, the randomised controlled trial (RCT) ...design has not become the default study design for the evaluation of surgical interventions. Surgical trials are difficult to successfully undertake and pose particular practical and methodological challenges. However, RCTs have played a role in the assessment of surgical innovations and there is scope and need for greater use. This article will consider the design, conduct and analysis of an RCT of a surgical intervention. The issues will be reviewed under three headings: the timing of the evaluation, defining the research question and trial design issues. Recommendations on the conduct of future surgical RCTs are made. Collaboration between research and surgical communities is needed to address the distinct issues raised by the assessment of surgical interventions and enable the conduct of appropriate and well-designed trials.
Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are commonly used to evaluate predictions of binary outcomes. When there is a small percentage of items of interest (as would be the case with fraud ...detection, for example), ROC curves can provide an inflated view of performance. This can cause challenges in determining which set of predictions is better. In this article, we discuss the conditions under which precision-recall curves may be preferable to ROC curves. As an illustrative example, we compare two commonly used fraud predictors (Beneish’s 1999, Financial Analysts Journal 55: 24–36 M score and Dechow et al.’s 2011, Contemporary Accounting Research 28: 17–82 F score) using both ROC and precision-recall curves. To aid the reader with using precision-recall curves, we also introduce the command prcurve to plot them.
Reconstruction of lower lip defects is challenging because of the functional and aesthetic demands of the lower face. We review the functional and aesthetic outcomes of the Karapandzic-type flaps for ...reconstructing lower lip defects.
A retrospective review of patients who underwent repair using Karapandzic-type flaps.
Fifty patients with lower lip defects ranging from 20% to 95% (mean 59.2% ± 20%) were included. Eighteen patients (36%) were repaired using a bilateral flap, and 32 (64%) were reconstructed using a unilateral flap design. All patients had preservation of oral competency and a satisfactory aesthetic result. No patient complained of microstomia. A complication rate of 8% was noted ( n = 4) with postoperative wound infection and small areas of dehiscence. There was no statistically significant difference in complication rates in patients older than 75 years, in patients with a history of head/neck radiation, or in defects greater than 70% of lower lip breadth.
Karapandzic-type flaps are versatile and reliable for the reconstruction of a broad range of lower lip defects. This one-stage procedure can produce superior functional and aesthetic results as compared with other local and distant flaps with minimal risk of functional microstomia.
Two
longitudinal field experiments in a middle school examined how a brief
"values affirmation" affects students' psychological experience and
the relationship between psychological experience and ...environmental threat over
2 years. Together these studies suggest that values affirmations insulate
individuals' sense of belonging from environmental threat during a key
developmental transition. Study 1 provided an analysis of new data from a
previously reported study. African American students in the control condition
felt a decreasing sense of belonging during middle school, with low-performing
students dropping more in 7th grade and high-performing students dropping more
in 8th grade. The affirmation reduced this decline for both groups. Consistent
with the notion that affirmation insulates belonging from environmental threat,
affirmed African American students' sense of belonging in Study 1 fluctuated
less over 2 years and became less contingent on academic performance. Based on
the idea that developmentally sensitive interventions can have long-lasting
benefits, Study 2 showed that the affirmation intervention was more effective if
delivered before any drop in performance and subsequent psychological toll could
unfold. The role of identity threat and affirmation in affecting the encoding of
social experience, and the corresponding importance of timing treatments to
developmentally sensitive periods, are explored.
This article uses a multilevel approach to review the literature on interventions with promise to reduce social stigma and its consequences for population health. Three levels of an ecological system ...are discussed. The intrapersonal level describes interventions directed at individuals, to either enhance coping strategies of people who belong to stigmatized groups or change attitudes and behaviors of the non-stigmatized. The interpersonal level describes interventions that target dyadic or small group interactions. The structural level describes interventions directed at the social-political environment, such as laws and policies. These intervention levels are related and they reciprocally affect one another. In this article we review the literature within each level. We suggest that interventions at any level have the potential to affect other levels of an ecological system through a process of mutually reinforcing reciprocal processes. We discuss research priorities, in particular longitudinal research that incorporates multiple outcomes across a system.
•We conduct a review of intervention research relevant to stigma and health.•We assess where in a multilevel, ecological system each intervention fits.•We found evidence of effective interventions at each system level.•Most interventions were limited in duration and attention to system processes.•Interdisciplinary collaboration and longitudinal outcomes should be prioritized.
Use of patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and patient and public engagement are critical ingredients of pragmatic trials, which are intended to be patient centered. Engagement of patients and members ...of the public in selecting the primary trial outcome and determining the target difference can better ensure that the trial is designed to inform the decisions of those who ultimately stand to benefit. However, to the best of our knowledge, the use and reporting of PROs and patient and public engagement in pragmatic trials have not been described. The objectives of this study were to review a sample of pragmatic trials to describe (1) the prevalence of reporting patient and public engagement; (2) the prevalence and types of PROs used; (3) how its use varies across trial characteristics; and (4) how sample sizes and target differences are determined for trials with primary PROs.
This was a methodological review of primary reports of pragmatic trials. We used a published electronic search filter in MEDLINE to identify pragmatic trials, published in English between January 1, 2014 and April 3, 2019; we identified the subset that were registered in ClinicalTrials.gov and explicitly labeled as pragmatic. Trial descriptors were downloaded from ClinicalTrials.gov; information about PROs and sample size calculations were extracted from the manuscript. Chi-squared, Cochran-Armitage, and Wilcoxon rank sum tests were used to examine associations between trial characteristics and use of PROs. Among 4,337 identified primary trial reports, 1,988 were registered in CT.gov, of which 415 were explicitly labeled as pragmatic. Use of patient and public engagement was identified in 39 (9.4%). PROs were measured in 235 (56.6%): 144 (34.7%) used PROs as primary outcomes and 91 (21.9%) as only secondary outcomes. Primary PROs were symptoms (64; 44%), health behaviors (36; 25.0%), quality of life (17; 11.8%), functional status (16; 11.1%), and patient experience (10; 6.9%). Trial characteristics with lower prevalence of use of PROs included being conducted exclusively in children or adults over age 65 years, cluster randomization, recruitment in low- and middle-income countries, and primary purpose of prevention; trials conducted in Europe had the highest prevalence of PROs. For the 144 trials with a primary PRO, 117 (81.3%) reported a sample size calculation for that outcome; of these, 71 (60.7%) justified the choice of target difference, most commonly, using estimates from pilot studies (31; 26.5%), standardized effect sizes (20; 17.1%), or evidence reviews (16; 13.7%); patient or stakeholder opinions were used to justify the target difference in 8 (6.8%). Limitations of this study are the need for trials to be registered in ClinicalTrials.gov, which may have reduced generalizability, and extracting information only from the primary trial report.
In this study, we observed that pragmatic trials rarely report patient and public engagement and do not commonly use PROs as primary outcomes. When provided, target differences are often not justified and rarely informed by patients and stakeholders. Research funders, scientific journals, and institutions should support trialists to incorporate patient engagement to fulfill the mandate of pragmatic trials to be patient centered.
The research presented here investigates potential psychological and health consequences of concealing a chronic illness. Data were collected from 2,500 individuals living with multiple sclerosis ...(MS), as part of an ongoing longitudinal research project. Questions on identity concealment and psychosocial reserve (a broad measure of well‐being) were embedded in a semi‐annual national survey. Responses were linked to each participant's concurrent responses to questions about their disability status, and prospectively to the same measure of disability status 1 year later. Just over 16% of respondents indicated that it was mostly true to very true that they actively concealed their MS and most indicated at least some degree of concealment. For people at lower levels of disability, decisions to conceal or disclose were not related to their levels of psychosocial reserve. However, with rising disability, concealment predicted lower levels of psychosocial reserve. Concealment was also associated with improved disability status 1 year later. A mediation analysis suggests that this may be in part because people who concealed were more likely to be employed. Taken together, the current research adds to the evidence that consequences of concealment often may be multifaceted and depend on a variety of moderators, including degree of disability.
PDF
