The case for a modern democratic humane socialism typically has two parts. The first is that capitalism is bad, at or least not very good. In reaching this conclusion, most have either analyzed a ...theoretical ideal-type of capitalism or used a single country, often the United States, as a stand-in for capitalism. To fully and fairly assess democratic socialism’s desirability, we need to compare it to the best version of capitalism that humans have devised: social democratic capitalism, or what is often called the Nordic model. Each chapter in this book examines one of the things that we should want in a good society, that contemporary democratic socialists typically say they want, and that socialism might, conceivably, improve our ability to achieve: an end to poverty in rich countries, an end to poverty everywhere, more jobs, decent jobs, faster economic growth, inclusive growth, more public goods and services, affordable healthcare for all, helpful finance, truly democratic politics, economic democracy, less economic inequality, gender and racial equality, more community, and a livable planet. The book offers a close look at the evidence about how capitalist economies have performed on these outcomes, with particular attention to the performance of social democratic capitalism. The second part of the case for democratic socialism is the notion that it would be an improvement. For each of these outcomes, the book considers what, if anything, we can conclude about whether democratic socialism would do better than social democratic capitalism.
Intensive research in matrix completions, moments, and sums of Hermitian squares has yielded a multitude of results in recent decades. This book provides a comprehensive account of this quickly ...developing area of mathematics and applications and gives complete proofs of many recently solved problems. With MATLAB codes and more than 200 exercises, the book is ideal for a special topics course for graduate or advanced undergraduate students in mathematics or engineering, and will also be a valuable resource for researchers.
We present an application of deep generative models in the context of partial differential equation constrained inverse problems. We combine a generative adversarial network representing an a priori ...model that generates geological heterogeneities and their petrophysical properties, with the numerical solution of the partial-differential equation governing the propagation of acoustic waves within the earth’s interior. We perform Bayesian inversion using an approximate Metropolis-adjusted Langevin algorithm to sample from the posterior distribution of earth models given seismic observations. Gradients with respect to the model parameters governing the forward problem are obtained by solving the adjoint of the acoustic wave equation. Gradients of the mismatch with respect to the latent variables are obtained by leveraging the differentiable nature of the deep neural network used to represent the generative model. We show that approximate Metropolis-adjusted Langevin sampling allows an efficient Bayesian inversion of model parameters obtained from a prior represented by a deep generative model, obtaining a diverse set of realizations that reflect the observed seismic response.
This review (Prospero Registration Number: CRD42017057915) aimed to systematically identify and summarize existing research on the relationship between additional emotional and behavioral problems ...(EBP) in children with autism, and parenting stress (PS) and mental health problems (MHP) in their parents. Sixty-seven studies met criteria for inclusion in the review, 61 of which were included in the meta-analysis. Pooled correlation coefficients were in the low to moderate range (
r
¯
=
-
.
21
to
.
43
). Some evidence for moderation by measurement characteristics was found. Narrative review of concurrent adjusted associations showed some evidence for shared relationships with other factors, most notably ASD severity and parent perception of own parenting. Longitudinal studies showed mixed evidence for bidirectional predictive relationships between child EBP and parent psychological distress variables.
Background
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is one of the most commonly diagnosed and treated psychiatric disorders in childhood. Typically, children and adolescents with ADHD find it ...difficult to pay attention and they are hyperactive and impulsive. Methylphenidate is the psychostimulant most often prescribed, but the evidence on benefits and harms is uncertain. This is an update of our comprehensive systematic review on benefits and harms published in 2015.
Objectives
To assess the beneficial and harmful effects of methylphenidate for children and adolescents with ADHD.
Search methods
We searched CENTRAL, MEDLINE, Embase, three other databases and two trials registers up to March 2022. In addition, we checked reference lists and requested published and unpublished data from manufacturers of methylphenidate.
Selection criteria
We included all randomised clinical trials (RCTs) comparing methylphenidate versus placebo or no intervention in children and adolescents aged 18 years and younger with a diagnosis of ADHD. The search was not limited by publication year or language, but trial inclusion required that 75% or more of participants had a normal intellectual quotient (IQ > 70). We assessed two primary outcomes, ADHD symptoms and serious adverse events, and three secondary outcomes, adverse events considered non‐serious, general behaviour, and quality of life.
Data collection and analysis
Two review authors independently conducted data extraction and risk of bias assessment for each trial. Six review authors including two review authors from the original publication participated in the update in 2022. We used standard Cochrane methodological procedures. Data from parallel‐group trials and first‐period data from cross‐over trials formed the basis of our primary analyses. We undertook separate analyses using end‐of‐last period data from cross‐over trials. We used Trial Sequential Analyses (TSA) to control for type I (5%) and type II (20%) errors, and we assessed and downgraded evidence according to the GRADE approach.
Main results
We included 212 trials (16,302 participants randomised); 55 parallel‐group trials (8104 participants randomised), and 156 cross‐over trials (8033 participants randomised) as well as one trial with a parallel phase (114 participants randomised) and a cross‐over phase (165 participants randomised). The mean age of participants was 9.8 years ranging from 3 to 18 years (two trials from 3 to 21 years). The male‐female ratio was 3:1. Most trials were carried out in high‐income countries, and 86/212 included trials (41%) were funded or partly funded by the pharmaceutical industry. Methylphenidate treatment duration ranged from 1 to 425 days, with a mean duration of 28.8 days. Trials compared methylphenidate with placebo (200 trials) and with no intervention (12 trials). Only 165/212 trials included usable data on one or more outcomes from 14,271 participants.
Of the 212 trials, we assessed 191 at high risk of bias and 21 at low risk of bias. If, however, deblinding of methylphenidate due to typical adverse events is considered, then all 212 trials were at high risk of bias.
Primary outcomes: methylphenidate versus placebo or no intervention may improve teacher‐rated ADHD symptoms (standardised mean difference (SMD) −0.74, 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.88 to −0.61; I² = 38%; 21 trials; 1728 participants; very low‐certainty evidence). This corresponds to a mean difference (MD) of −10.58 (95% CI −12.58 to −8.72) on the ADHD Rating Scale (ADHD‐RS; range 0 to 72 points). The minimal clinically relevant difference is considered to be a change of 6.6 points on the ADHD‐RS. Methylphenidate may not affect serious adverse events (risk ratio (RR) 0.80, 95% CI 0.39 to 1.67; I² = 0%; 26 trials, 3673 participants; very low‐certainty evidence). The TSA‐adjusted intervention effect was RR 0.91 (CI 0.31 to 2.68).
Secondary outcomes: methylphenidate may cause more adverse events considered non‐serious versus placebo or no intervention (RR 1.23, 95% CI 1.11 to 1.37; I² = 72%; 35 trials 5342 participants; very low‐certainty evidence). The TSA‐adjusted intervention effect was RR 1.22 (CI 1.08 to 1.43). Methylphenidate may improve teacher‐rated general behaviour versus placebo (SMD −0.62, 95% CI −0.91 to −0.33; I² = 68%; 7 trials 792 participants; very low‐certainty evidence), but may not affect quality of life (SMD 0.40, 95% CI −0.03 to 0.83; I² = 81%; 4 trials, 608 participants; very low‐certainty evidence).
Authors' conclusions
The majority of our conclusions from the 2015 version of this review still apply. Our updated meta‐analyses suggest that methylphenidate versus placebo or no‐intervention may improve teacher‐rated ADHD symptoms and general behaviour in children and adolescents with ADHD. There may be no effects on serious adverse events and quality of life. Methylphenidate may be associated with an increased risk of adverse events considered non‐serious, such as sleep problems and decreased appetite. However, the certainty of the evidence for all outcomes is very low and therefore the true magnitude of effects remain unclear.
Due to the frequency of non‐serious adverse events associated with methylphenidate, the blinding of participants and outcome assessors is particularly challenging. To accommodate this challenge, an active placebo should be sought and utilised. It may be difficult to find such a drug, but identifying a substance that could mimic the easily recognised adverse effects of methylphenidate would avert the unblinding that detrimentally affects current randomised trials.
Future systematic reviews should investigate the subgroups of patients with ADHD that may benefit most and least from methylphenidate. This could be done with individual participant data to investigate predictors and modifiers like age, comorbidity, and ADHD subtypes.
A fitness assignment process transforms the features (such as the objective value) of a candidate solution to a scalar fitness, which then is the basis for selection. Under frequency fitness ...assignment (FFA), the fitness corresponding to an objective value is its encounter frequency in selection steps and is subject to minimization. FFA creates algorithms that are not biased toward better solutions and are invariant under all injective transformations of the objective function value. We investigate the impact of FFA on the performance of two theory inspired, state-of-the-art evolutionary algorithms, the Greedy (2+1) GA and the self-adjusting <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">(1+(\lambda,\lambda)) </tex-math></inline-formula> GA. FFA improves their performance significantly on some problems that are hard for them. In our experiments, one FFA-based algorithm exhibited mean runtimes that appear to be polynomial on the theory-based benchmark problems in our study, including traps, jumps, and plateaus. We propose two hybrid approaches that use both direct and FFA-based optimization and find that they perform well. All FFA-based algorithms also perform better on satisfiability problems than any of the pure algorithm variants.
Random assignment problems Krokhmal, Pavlo A.; Pardalos, Panos M.
European journal of operational research,
04/2009, Volume:
194, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Analysis of random instances of optimization problems provides valuable insights into the behavior and properties of problem’s solutions, feasible region, and optimal values, especially in ...large-scale cases. A class of problems that have been studied extensively in the literature using the methods of probabilistic analysis is represented by the assignment problems, and many important problems in operations research and computer science can be formulated as assignment problems. This paper presents an overview of the recent results and developments in the area of probabilistic assignment problems, including the linear and multidimensional assignment problems, quadratic assignment problem, etc.
Leveraging the collective mind Haslam, S Alexander
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
09/2021, Volume:
373, Issue:
6560
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Shared social identities can better prepare us to confront societal problems
Mental health problems are elevated in autistic individuals but there is limited evidence on the developmental course of problems across childhood. We compare the level and growth of ...anxious-depressed, behavioral and attention problems in an autistic and typically developing (TD) cohort.
Latent growth curve models were applied to repeated parent-report Child Behavior Checklist data from age 2-10 years in an inception cohort of autistic children (Pathways,
= 397; 84% boys) and a general population TD cohort (Wirral Child Health and Development Study; WCHADS;
= 884, 49% boys). Percentile plots were generated to quantify the differences between autistic and TD children.
Autistic children showed elevated levels of mental health problems, but this was substantially reduced by accounting for IQ and sex differences between the autistic and TD samples. There was small differences in growth patterns; anxious-depressed problems were particularly elevated at preschool and attention problems at late childhood. Higher family income predicted lower base-level on all three dimensions, but steeper increase of anxious-depressed problems. Higher IQ predicted lower level of attention problems and faster decline over childhood. Female sex predicted higher level of anxious-depressed and faster decline in behavioral problems. Social-affect autism symptom severity predicted elevated level of attention problems. Autistic girls' problems were particularly elevated relative to their same-sex non-autistic peers.
Autistic children, and especially girls, show elevated mental health problems compared to TD children and there are some differences in predictors. Assessment of mental health should be integrated into clinical practice for autistic children.
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