Your search

Whereas research on caregiving is well documented, less is known about gender inequalities in caregiver stress, coping mechanisms, and health outcomes, all of which may vary by race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. This scoping review investigated racial and ethnic disparities using the Stress Process Model among male caregivers. Several databases were searched including Academic Search Premier, Medline Complete, APA PsycInfo, CINHAL, Google, ProQuest, and Web of Science. Included were peer-reviewed articles in English, published from 1990 to 2022. A total of nine articles fulfilled inclusion criteria. Most of the articles indicated that compared to White male caregivers, African American male caregivers provided more hours of care, assisted with more activities of daily living (ADLs) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs), and experienced more financial stress. In terms of coping style, one study found African American male caregivers, compared to White male caregivers, held negative religious beliefs. Another study showed that they were at a higher risk for stroke than their White counterparts. The search revealed a dearth of studies on racial disparities in stress, coping, and health outcomes among male caregivers. Further research is needed on the experiences and perspectives of male minority caregivers. © 2023 by the authors.

We seek to develop a low-dimensional model for the interactions between horizontally adjacent turbulent convection rolls. This was tested in Rayleigh-Bénard convection experiments with two adjacent cubic cells with a partial wall in between. Observed stable states include both counterrotating and corotating states for Rayleigh number 7.6×107< Ra <3.5×109 and Prandtl number 6.41. The stability of each of these states and their dynamics can be modeled low-dimensionally by stochastic ordinary differential equations of motion in terms of the orientation, amplitude, and mean temperature of each convection roll. The form of the interaction terms is predicted based on an effective turbulent diffusion of temperature between the adjacent rolls, which is projected onto the neighboring rolls with sinusoidal temperature profiles. With measurements of a constant coefficient for effective thermal turbulent diffusion, quantitative predictions are made for the nine forcing terms which affect stable fixed points of the corotating and counterrotating states for 5.5×108< Ra <3.5×109. Predictions are found to be accurate within a factor of 3 of experiments. This suggests that the same turbulent thermal diffusivity that describes macroscopically averaged heat transport also controls the interactions between neighboring convection rolls. The surprising stability of corotating states is due to the temperature difference between the neighboring rolls becoming large enough that the heat flux between the rolls stabilizes the temperature profile of aligned corotating states. This temperature difference can be driven with an asymmetry, for example, by heating the plates of the two cells to different mean temperatures. When such an asymmetry is introduced, it also shifts the orientations of the rolls of counterrotating states in opposite directions away from their preferred orientation, which is otherwise due to the geometry of the cell. As the temperature difference between the plates of the different cells is increased, the shift in orientation increases until the counterrotating states become unstable and only corotating states are stable. At very large temperature differences between cells, both the counterrotating and predicted corotating states become unstable; instead we observe a corotating state with much larger temperature difference between the rolls that cannot be explained by turbulent thermal diffusion. Spontaneous switching between corotating and counterrotating states is also observed, including in nominally symmetric systems. Switching to counterrotating states occurs mainly due to cessation (a significant weakening of a convection roll), which reduces damping on changes in orientation, allowing the orientation to change rapidly due to diffusive fluctuations. Switching to corotating states is mainly driven by smaller diffusive fluctuations in the orientation, amplitude, and mean temperature of rolls, which have a positive feedback that destabilizes the counterrotating state. © 2023 American Physical Society.

The elliptic (v2) and triangular (v3) azimuthal anisotropy coefficients in central He3+Au, d+Au, and p+Au collisions at sNN=200 GeV are measured as a function of transverse momentum (pT) at midrapidity (|η|<0.9), via the azimuthal angular correlation between two particles both at |η|<0.9. While the v2(pT) values depend on the colliding systems, the v3(pT) values are system independent within the uncertainties, suggesting an influence on eccentricity from subnucleonic fluctuations in these small-sized systems. These results also provide stringent constraints for the hydrodynamic modeling of these systems. © 2023 American Physical Society.

Monitoring of electrical distribution grids requires the joint processing of electrical measurements from different grid locations. Such type of processing is influenced by inaccuracies in measurement data originating from measurement errors, non-ideal clocks in measurement devices, and from time averaging of measurands as part of the data collection process. This paper introduces an approach to assess the impact of these three different measurement artifacts in realistic measurement scenarios of electrical distribution grids. A case study of power loss calculation in a real-life medium-voltage grid is presented, covering both technical loss obtained from current measurement and total loss obtained from power measurements. The results show that total loss in general is more robust to aggregation of power measurements over longer measurement intervals, while it is more sensitive to measurement errors and clock offsets. The results of the study are important for quantifying the trustworthiness of the obtained loss values and for the future enhancement of the measurement data collection process. © 2023 ACM.

The optical disc in the human retina can reveal important information about a person's health and well-being. We propose a deep learning-based approach to automatically identify the region in human retinal images that corresponds to the optical disc. We formulated the task as an image segmentation problem that leverages multiple public-domain datasets of human retinal fundus images. Using an attention-based residual U-Net, we showed that the optical disc in a human retina image can be detected with more than 99% pixel-level accuracy and around 95% in Matthew's Correlation Coefficient. A comparison with variants of UNet with different encoder CNN architectures ascertains the superiority of the proposed approach across multiple metrics.

In this work, we propose a multi-task learning-based approach towards the localization of optic disc and fovea from human retinal fundus images using a deep learning-based approach. Formulating the task as an image-based regression problem, we propose a Densenet121-based architecture through an extensive set of experiments with a variety of CNN architectures. Our proposed approach achieved an average mean absolute error of only 13pixels (0.04%), mean squared error of 11 pixels (0.005%), and a root mean square error of only 0.02 (13%) on the IDRiD dataset.

We report a new measurement of the production of electrons from open heavy-flavor hadron decays (HFEs) at mid-rapidity (|y| &lt; 0.7) in Au+Au collisions at sNN = 200 GeV. Invariant yields of HFEs are measured for the transverse momentum range of 3.5 &lt; p T &lt; 9 GeV/c in various configurations of the collision geometry. The HFE yields in head-on Au+Au collisions are suppressed by approximately a factor of 2 compared to that in p + p collisions scaled by the average number of binary collisions, indicating strong interactions between heavy quarks and the hot and dense medium created in heavy-ion collisions. Comparison of these results with models provides additional tests of theoretical calculations of heavy quark energy loss in the quark-gluon plasma. [Figure not available: see fulltext.] © 2023, The Author(s).

ABSTRACT: Breastfeeding affords numerous health benefits to mothers and children, but for women with HIV in the United States, avoidance of breastfeeding is recommended. Evidence from low-income countries demonstrates low risk of HIV transmission during breastfeeding with antiretroviral therapy, and the World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding and shared decision making about infant feeding options in low-income and middle-income countries. In the United States, gaps in knowledge exist surrounding the experiences, beliefs, and feelings of women with HIV surrounding infant feeding decisions. Undergirded by a framework of person-centered care, this study describes the experiences, beliefs, and feelings of women with HIV in the United States surrounding recommendations for breastfeeding avoidance. Although no participants reported consideration of breastfeeding, multiple gaps were identified with implications for the clinical care and counseling of the mother-infant dyad. Copyright © 2023 Association of Nurses in AIDS Care.

Purpose: Reduced use of visible articulatory information on a speaker's face has been implicated as a possible contributor to language deficits in autism spectrum disorders (ASD). We employ an audiovisual (AV) phonemic restoration paradigm to measure behavioral performance (button press) and event-related potentials (ERPs) of visual speech perception in children with ASD and their neurotypical peers to assess potential neural substrates that contribute to group differences. Method: Two sets of speech stimuli, /ba/–“/a/” (“/a/” was created from the /ba/ token by a reducing the initial consonant) and /ba/–/pa/, were presented within an auditory oddball paradigm to children aged 6–13 years with ASD (n = 17) and typical development (TD; n = 33) within two conditions. The AV condition contained a fully visible speaking face; the pixelated (PX) condition included a face, but the mouth and jaw were PX, removing all articulatory information. When articulatory features were present for the /ba/–“/a/” contrast, it was expected that the influence of the visual articulators would facilitate a phonemic restoration effect in which “/a/” would be perceived as /ba/. ERPs were recorded during the experiment while children were required to press a button for the deviant sound for both sets of speech contrasts within both conditions. Results: Button press data revealed that TD children were more accurate in discriminating between /ba/–“/a/” and /ba/–/pa/ contrasts in the PX condition relative to the ASD group. ERPs in response to the /ba/–/pa/ contrast within both AV and PX conditions differed between children with ASD and TD children (earlier P300 responses for children with ASD). Conclusion: Children with ASD differ in the underlying neural mechanisms responsible for speech processing compared with TD peers within an AV context.

This article examines anthropocentric and ecocentric tendencies in two major works written by Mario Vargas Llosa, The Storyteller and The Dream of the Celt, to identify the value of those novels in ecocritical terms. I provide this analysis in the context of recent academic dialogue which notes an apparent contradictory relationship between the presentation of abuses of Amazonian people and their environment, and the portrayal of Westernized protagonists as their saviors in fiction written by Vargas Llosa. This essay provides a solution to this paradox and other apparent contradictions in his narratives and posits that even though the anthropocentric literary discourse concerning the environment has declined throughout the latter part of the twentieth century, in part, due to the rise of the environmental movement, this type of discourse has changed in Vargas Llosa’s literature, rejecting early twentieth century misconceptions of the natural world but holding onto technocentric neoliberal beliefs. © 2023, University of Montevideo. All rights reserved.

Mobile health apps have been widely considered in the healthcare sector as innovative channels to reach patients and their families. Accordingly, the aim of the chapter was to investigate factors that influence the customers' adoption of digital health apps in Algeria. The authors adopted an extende...

The ability to write clearly and effectively is an important communication skill that is necessary for school and employment, as it is often the best way to disseminate information and ideas. Both unrecorded sign and speech are ephemeral, but writing allows the author to share an experience or idea...

Face to face communication typically involves audio and visual components to the speech signal. To examine the effect of task demands on gaze patterns in response to a speaking face, adults participated in two eye-tracking experiments with an audiovisual (articulatory information from the mouth was visible) and a pixelated condition (articulatory information was not visible). Further, task demands were manipulated by having listeners respond in a passive (no response) or an active (button press response) context. The active experiment required participants to discriminate between speech stimuli and was designed to mimic environmental situations which require one to use visual information to disambiguate the speaker’s message, simulating different listening conditions in real-world settings. Stimuli included a clear exemplar of the syllable /ba/ and a second exemplar in which the formant initial consonant was reduced creating an /a/−like consonant. Consistent with our hypothesis, results revealed that the greatest fixations to the mouth were present in the audiovisual active experiment and visual articulatory information led to a phonemic restoration effect for the /a/ speech token. In the pixelated condition, participants fixated on the eyes, and discrimination of the deviant token within the active experiment was significantly greater than the audiovisual condition. These results suggest that when required to disambiguate changes in speech, adults may look to the mouth for additional cues to support processing when it is available.

Background The body positivity movement on social media is thought to foster body appreciation, but pervasive societal concern persists about the body positivity movement and the body image, health behaviors, and “normalization of obesity” of young adult women. Purpose This study explored the relationship between engagement in the body positivity movement on social media and weight status, body appreciation, body dissatisfaction, and the health behaviors of intuitive eating and physical activity in young adult women (18–35 years). Methods Participants (N = 521; ∼64% engaged in body positivity content on social media) were recruited using Qualtrics online panels for this cross-sectional survey during February 2021. Outcomes included weight status, weight consideration, weight perception, body appreciation, body dissatisfaction, physical activity, and intuitive eating. Logistic and linear regression models adjusted for age, race, ethnicity, education level, and household income were used to assess the association between engagement in the body positivity movement and specified outcomes. Results Engagement in body positivity content was associated with greater body dissatisfaction (β = 2.33, t(519) = 2.90 p = .017), body appreciation (β = 0.26, t(519) = 2.90 p = .004), and greater likelihood of reporting high amounts of physical activity (odds ratio = 2.28; p < .05) relative to nonengaged peers; these associations remained significant after further adjustment for weight status. Body positivity was not associated with weight status, weight perception, or intuitive eating. Conclusions Engagement in the body positivity movement is associated with higher body dissatisfaction and body appreciation in young adult women, which suggests they may be drawn to and engage in the body positivity movement as a protective or coping mechanism for body dissatisfaction.

We report systematic measurements of dielectron (e+e−) invariant-mass Mee spectra at midrapidity in Au+Au collisions at √sNN = 27, 39, and 62.4 GeV taken with the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. For all energies studied, a significant excess yield of dielectrons is observed in the low-mass region (0.40<Mee<0.75 MeV/c2) compared to hadronic cocktail simulations at freeze-out. Models that include an in-medium broadening of the ρ-meson spectral function consistently describe the observed excess. In addition, we report acceptance-corrected dielectron-excess spectra for Au+Au collisions at midrapidity (|yee|< 1) in the 0–80% centrality bin for each collision energy. The integrated excess yields for 0.4<Mee<0.75GeV/c2, normalized by the charged particle multiplicity at midrapidity, are compared with previously published measurements for Au+Au at √sNN1 = 19.6 and 200 GeV. Models that include an in-medium broadening of the ρ-meson spectral function consistently describe the observed excess. The normalized excess yields in the low-mass region show no significant collision energy dependence. The data, however, are consistent with model calculations that demonstrate a modest energy dependence.

Purpose This study examined the language skills and the type and frequency of disfluencies in the spoken narrative production of typically developing Spanish-English bilingual children. Method A cross-sectional sample of 106 bilingual children (50 boys; 56 girls) enrolled in kindergarten through Grade 4, produced a total of 212 narrative retell language samples in English and Spanish. A specialized fluency coding system was implemented to index the percentage of total (%TD) and stuttering-like disfluencies (%SLD) in each language. Large-scale reference databases were used to classify children’s dual language proficiency profiles (balanced, English dominant, Spanish dominant) based on language sample analysis measures of morphosyntax and lexical diversity. Results The bilingual Spanish-English children in this study did not demonstrate significant cross-linguistic differences for mean %TD or %SLD. However, the mean %TD and %SLD in both languages exceeded the risk threshold based on monolingual English-speaking norms. English dominant bilingual children demonstrated significantly lower %TD in English than Spanish. Spanish dominant children demonstrated significantly lower %SLD in Spanish than English. Conclusions This study included the largest sample size of bilingual Spanish-English children investigated to date from a fluency perspective. The frequency of disfluencies was found to be variable across participants and change dynamically as a function of grade and dual language proficiency profiles, indicating the need for studies that employ larger sample sizes and longitudinal designs.

We report the triton (t) production in midrapidity (|y|<0.5) Au+Au collisions at √sNN=7.7–200 GeV measured by the STAR experiment from the first phase of the beam energy scan at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The nuclear compound yield ratio (Nt×Np/N2d), which is predicted to be sensitive to the fluctuation of local neutron density, is observed to decrease monotonically with increasing charged-particle multiplicity (dNch/dη) and follows a scaling behavior. The dNch/dη dependence of the yield ratio is compared to calculations from coalescence and thermal models. Enhancements in the yield ratios relative to the coalescence baseline are observed in the 0%-10% most central collisions at 19.6 and 27 GeV, with a significance of 2.3σ and 3.4σ, respectively, giving a combined significance of 4.1σ. The enhancements are not observed in peripheral collisions or model calculations without critical fluctuation, and decreases with a smaller pT acceptance. The physics implications of these results on the QCD phase structure and the production mechanism of light nuclei in heavy-ion collisions are discussed.

IntroductionMotivation to be physically active and sedentary is a transient state that varies in response to previous behavior. It is not known: (a) if motivational states vary from morning to evening, (b) if they are related to feeling states (arousal/hedonic tone), and (c) whether they predict current behavior and intentions. The primary purpose of this study was to determine if motivation states vary across the day and in what pattern. Thirty adults from the United States were recruited from Amazon MTurk.MethodsParticipants completed 6 identical online surveys each day for 8 days beginning after waking and every 2–3 h thereafter until bedtime. Participants completed: (a) the CRAVE scale (Right now version) to measure motivation states for Move and Rest, (b) Feeling Scale, (c) Felt Arousal Scale, and (d) surveys about current movement behavior (e.g., currently sitting, standing, laying down) and intentions for exercise and sleep. Of these, 21 participants (mean age 37.7 y; 52.4% female) had complete and valid data.ResultsVisual inspection of data determined that: a) motivation states varied widely across the day, and b) most participants had a single wave cycle each day. Hierarchical linear modelling revealed that there were significant linear and quadratic time trends for both Move and Rest. Move peaked near 1500 h when Rest was at its nadir. Cosinor analysis determined that the functional waveform was circadian for Move for 81% of participants and 62% for Rest. Pleasure/displeasure and arousal independently predicted motivation states (all p's < .001), but arousal had an association twice as large. Eating, exercise and sleep behaviors, especially those over 2 h before assessment, predicted current motivation states. Move-motivation predicted current body position (e.g., laying down, sitting, walking) and intentions for exercise and sleep more consistently than rest, with the strongest prediction of behaviors planned for the next 30 min.DiscussionWhile these data must be replicated with a larger sample, results suggest that motivation states to be active or sedentary have a circadian waveform for most people and influence future behavioral intentions. These novel results highlight the need to rethink the traditional approaches typically utilized to increase physical activity levels.

King Zedekiah of Judah’s covenant to release Hebrew slaves during the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 588/587 and Jeremiah’s idealistic denunciation of the reclaiming of those slaves in Jer 34 has been the subject of interesting scholarly debate. For all the proposed foreign and intra-Biblical parallels, the policy was purely pragmatic and can be understood as a recognizable strategy from ancient texts that recommend procedures during a siege. Therefore when the siege is temporarily lifted, the policy is reversed.