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How deadly is financial leverage? Evidence from care homes during the COVID-19 crisis
Get PDFOnce information about leasing and corporate structure is incorporated into the way financial leverage is calculated, highly leveraged care homes are found to have a deathrate twice as high as that of non-leveraged care homes before the government provided financial support (i.e., during the first wave). Highly leveraged care homes cut costs more aggressively and experienced the largest drop in cash reserves. Care homes controlled by private equity firms no longer display higher COVID-19 death rates once their significantly higher leverage is controlled for. Our results illustrate the importance of accurately measuring financial flexibility and the negative externalities caused by high leverage
The Acoustic Index User's Guide: a practical manual for defining, generating and understanding current and future acoustic indices
Get PDFEcoacoustics, the study of environmental sound, is a rapidly growing discipline offering ecological insights at scales ranging from individual organisms to whole ecosystems. Substantial methodological developments over the last 15 years have streamlined extraction of ecological information from audio recordings. One widely used set of methods are acoustic indices, which offer numerical summaries of the spectral, temporal and amplitude patterns in audio recordings. Currently, the specifics of each index's background, methodology and the soundscape patterns they are designed to summarise, are spread across multiple sources. Critically, details of index calculation are sometimes scarce, making it challenging for users to understand how index values are generated. Discrepancies in understanding can lead to misuse of acoustic indices or reporting of spurious results. This hinders ecological inference, replicability and discourages adoption of these tools for conservation and ecosystem monitoring, where they might otherwise provide useful insight. Here we present the Acoustic Index User's Guide—an interactive RShiny web app that defines and deconstructs eight of the most commonly used acoustic indices to facilitate consistent application across the discipline. We break the acoustic indices calculations down into easy‐to‐follow steps to better enable practical application and critical interpretation of acoustic indices. We demonstrate typical soundscape patterns using a suite of 91 example audio recordings: 66 real‐world soundscapes from terrestrial, aquatic and subterranean systems around the world, and 25 synthetic files demonstrating archetypal soundscape patterns. Our interpretation figures signpost specific soundscape patterns likely to be reflected in acoustic indices' values. This RShiny app is a living resource; additional acoustic indices will be added in the future through collaboration with authors of pre‐existing and new indices. The app also serves as a best‐practice template for the information required when publishing new acoustic indices, so that authors can facilitate the widest possible understanding and uptake of their indices. In turn, improved understanding of acoustic indices will aid effective hypothesis generation, application and interpretation in ecological research, ecosystem monitoring and conservation management
A systematic review of the role of systemic inflammation-based prognostic scores in patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm
Get PDFBackground and aims:
Activation of the systemic inflammatory response (SIR) is associated with inferior outcomes across a spectrum of disease. Routinely available measures of the SIR (neutrophil:lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet:lymphocyte ratio (PLR), systemic immune-inflammatory index (SII), systemic inflammatory grade (SIG)) have been shown to provide prognostic value in patients undergoing surgical intervention. The present study aimed to review the literature describing the prognostic association of NLR, PLR, SII and SIG in patients undergoing intervention for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA).
Methods:
This PRISMA guidelines were followed. The MEDLINE database was interrogated for relevant studies investigating the effect of peri-operative systemic inflammation-based prognostic systems on all-cause mortality in patients undergoing OSR and EVAR for AAA. Inter-study heterogeneity precluded meaningful meta-analysis; qualitative analysis was instead performed.
Results:
There were 9 studies included in the final review reporting outcomes on a total of 4571 patients; 1256 (27 %) patients underwent OSR, and 3315 (73 %) patients underwent EVAR. 4356 (95 %) patients underwent a procedure for unruptured AAA, 215 (5 %) patients underwent an emergency procedure for ruptured AAA0.5 studies reported early (inpatient or 30-day) mortality; 2 of these found that elevated NLR predicted inferior survival, however PLR did not provide prognostic value. 6 studies reported long-term mortality; elevated NLR (5 studies), PLR (1 study), and SIG (1 study) predicted inferior survival.
Conclusions:
It appears that activation of the SIR is associated with inferior prognosis in patients undergoing intervention for AAA, however the evidence is limited by heterogenous methodology and lack of consensus regarding optimal cutoff.
Prospero database registration number:
CRD42022363765
Interventions for pre‐school children in foster care: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials of child‐related outcomes
Get PDFBackground:
Children in foster care are at high risk of future mental health and developmental difficulties. A number of interventions may be helpful; however, the effectiveness of interventions specifically for pre-school children in foster care is not well established. This is an important omission, since infancy and early childhood may be the optimal period for interventions to prevent future problems. The current systematic review set out to establish the existing evidence base for interventions to improve social-emotional, developmental and relational outcomes for pre-school children in foster and kinship care.
Methods:
Searches of online databases were undertaken in June 2023 with keyword search terms related to the study population and design. Studies utilising a randomised control design to measure the effectiveness of interventions for foster children aged 0–7 years were included. The methodological quality of included studies was assessed using the Cochrane Risk of Bias (ROB-2) tool and effects evaluated using narrative synthesis and GRADE assessments of included interventions and outcomes.
Results:
Searches identified 6815 results. Twenty studies, describing seven interventions, met inclusion criteria. Fifteen studies reported intervention benefits comparative to control in at least one outcome domain, with particularly good evidence for Attachment and Behaviour Catch-Up (ABC) in improving developmental outcomes. There was also evidence for Multi-Treatment Foster Care for Pre-Schoolers (MTFC-P), Kids In Transition To School (KITS), Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) and HeadStart in improving behavioural outcomes. The findings for relational outcomes, including attachment, were mixed; however, there was some evidence for MTFC-P and ABC in reducing avoidant attachment.
Conclusions:
This systematic review contributes to our current understanding of how we might best support pre-school children in foster care. It remains unclear whether the effectiveness of particular interventions may be moderated by participant or intervention characteristics. Further research is needed to understand which interventions work best for whom in this group. Despite some variability in methodological quality and heterogeneity across studies, our findings suggest that certain interventions are likely to be helpful for young children in foster care. Dissemination and ongoing evaluation of the evidence-based interventions highlighted within this review should be implemented in clinical practice
A laboratory experiment on using different financial-incentivization schemes in software-engineering experimentation
Get PDFIn software-engineering research, many empirical studies are conducted with open-source or industry developers. However, in contrast to other research communities like economics or psychology, only few experiments use financial incentives (i.e., paying money) as a strategy to motivate participants’ behavior and reward their performance. The most recent version of the SIGSOFT Empirical Standards mentions payouts only for increasing participation in surveys, but not for mimicking real-world motivations and behavior in experiments. Within this article, we report a controlled experiment in which we tackled this gap by studying how different financial incentivization schemes impact developers. For this purpose, we first conducted a survey on financial incentives used in the real-world, based on which we designed three incentivization schemes: (1) a performance-dependent scheme that employees prefer, (2) a scheme that is performance-independent, and (3) a scheme that mimics open-source development. Then, using a between-subject experimental design, we explored how these three schemes impact participants’ performance. Our findings indicate that the different schemes can impact participants’ performance in software-engineering experiments. Our results are not statistically significant, possibly due to small sample sizes and the consequent lack of statistical power, but with some notable trends that may inspire future hypothesis generation. Our contributions help understand the impact of financial incentives on participants in experiments as well as real-world scenarios, guiding researchers in designing experiments and organizations in compensating developers
A Victorian Vergil in Spenserian stanzas: Henry Edwards' Destruction of Troy
Get PDFIn 1888, styling himself ‘Rector of Banningham’ (Norfolk), the Rev. Henry Edwards presented some verse translations for which he had not found a publisher to the Bodleian Library, Oxford. They are available, with Edwards’ covering letter, in six manuscript volumes of fair copies. Most of them psalm paraphrases, they also include a version of Book 2 of the Æneid done in Spenserian stanzas in Bodleian Eng. poet. d. 1–5, making up a total 1,773 lines or 197 stanzas. Stanzaic English translations of Vergil are rare. Some of the strengths and weaknesses of this one are discussed here, and a 31-stanza sample printed
The iterative development and refinement of health psychology theories through formal, dynamical systems modelling: a scoping review and initial expert-derived ‘best practice’ recommendations
Get PDFThis scoping review aimed to synthesise methodological steps taken by researchers in the development of formal, dynamical systems models of health psychology theories. We searched MEDLINE, PsycINFO, the ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore in July 2023. We included studies of any design providing that they reported on the development or refinement of a formal, dynamical systems model unfolding at the within-person level, with no restrictions on population or setting. A narrative synthesis with frequency analyses was conducted. A total of 17 modelling projects reported across 29 studies were included. Formal modelling efforts have largely been concentrated to a small number of interdisciplinary teams in the United States (79.3%). The models aimed to better understand dynamic processes (69.0%) or inform the development of adaptive interventions (31.0%). Models typically aimed to formalise the Social Cognitive Theory (31.0%) or the Self-Regulation Theory (17.2%) and varied in complexity (range: 3–30 model components). Only 3.4% of studies reported involving stakeholders in the modelling process and 10.3% drew on Open Science practices. We conclude by proposing an initial set of expert-derived ‘best practice’ recommendations. Formal, dynamical systems modelling is poised to help health psychologists develop and refine theories, ultimately leading to more potent interventions
Winds of change: democratic transitions and long-term democratic support
No full textDo democratic transitions affect citizens’ subsequent support for democracy? We propose that the type of democratic transition (citizen-centered vs elite-centered) shapes citizens’ support for democracy through the investment created by citizen participation in the transition and the expectations this generates about the future under democracy. We test our hypotheses using democratic transitions data from Geddes et al. (2014) and harmonized survey data of citizens’ support for democracy from nearly 500,000 respondents in 78 established and new democracies over the period 1946–2015. Our results show a consistent negative effect of elite-centered transitions on support for democracy, while the effects of citizen-centered transitions are less robust and much more context-dependent. Using an augmented difference-in-difference estimation we can underpin these findings by isolating the causal effect of transitions. Our results indicate the political socialization effect and long-lasting impact of major political events on individuals’ democratic attitudes
Moving from psychiatric practice in the UK to Australia: some personal reflections
Get PDFIn this article, we reflect on factors which may tempt psychiatrists to move from working in the UK to Australia. A comparison between the UK and Australian healthcare systems is presented. Following this, G.W. offers personal reflections on his transition between working in the UK and Australia, including an experience of being a patient, the benefits of working and training in the respective countries, and personal sacrifices which must be considered. We conclude that individual clinicians must weigh up the positives and negatives of the system which they want to work within, with the best option for each person being specifically individual to them
Old habits die hard? The role of trade union identity and framing processes in shaping strategy
Get PDFThis article investigates whether differences in trade union identity can explain local and national variations in union strategy. To do so, it compares the divergent responses of unions to healthcare privatisation initiatives across six cases in England and France. It brings together the often disparate literatures on union identity, strategy and mobilisation and presents a new conceptual model to explicate these differences by linking a union’s identity to union strategy via two core framing processes: diagnostic framing and prognostic framing. Findings reveal that unions respond differently to healthcare privatisation initiatives, irrespective of the local and national context. Union identity influenced how they framed the threats and opportunities around them, shaping their expectations in terms of effective action. Union identity not only explains divergent responses but is also responsible for path dependencies which would make it potentially more difficult for unions to overcome structural constraints and learn from other groups
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