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Mental health and coping with fertility treatment cessation during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK
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This study examined experiences during the cessation of fertility treatment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, including levels of mental health, coping strategies used to manage uncertainty about treatment due to the pandemic, sources of support, and predictors of mental health.
Methods
One hundred and seventy-five participants in the UK completed an online survey.
Results
Half of the participants experienced clinical levels of anxiety and/or depression, and 20% reported suicidal feelings as a result of the uncertainty about treatment due to the pandemic. Support from friends, family and online forums were reported by more than half of participants, but support from fertility clinics or counsellors were reported by less than one quarter. The strategy used most frequently to cope with the uncertainty about treatment due to the pandemic was self-distraction, and this predicted reduced depression. However, self-blame, behavioral disengagement and venting predicted increased depression and self-blame, behavioral disengagement, and denial predicted increased anxiety.
Conclusions
Fertility clinic communication and psychological support, such as counselling, which had substantially reduced during treatment cessation, could include some focus on personal coping, including what to avoid. Psychological support is likely to be more important now than ever. Despite resumption of treatment, the impacts of the period of cessation and of COVID-19 are likely to continue to reverberate
Predicting attitudinal and behavioral responses to COVID-19 pandemic using machine learning
Get PDFAt the beginning of 2020, COVID-19 became a global problem. Despite all the efforts to emphasize the relevance of preventive measures, not everyone adhered to them. Thus, learning more about the characteristics determining attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic is crucial to improving future interventions. In this study, we applied machine learning on the multi-national data collected by the International Collaboration on the Social and Moral Psychology of COVID-19 (N = 51,404) to test the predictive efficacy of constructs from social, moral, cognitive, and personality psychology, as well as socio-demographic factors, in the attitudinal and behavioral responses to the pandemic. The results point to several valuable insights. Internalized moral identity provided the most consistent predictive contribution—individuals perceiving moral traits as central to their self-concept reported higher adherence to preventive measures. Similar was found for morality as cooperation, symbolized moral identity, self-control, open-mindedness, collective narcissism, while the inverse relationship was evident for the endorsement of conspiracy theories. However, we also found a non-negligible variability in the explained variance and predictive contributions with respect to macro-level factors such as the pandemic stage or cultural region. Overall, the results underscore the importance of morality-related and contextual factors in understanding adherence to public health recommendations during the pandemic
The EMT-activator ZEB1 is unrelated to platinum drug resistance in ovarian cancer but is predictive of survival
Get PDFThe IGROVCDDP cisplatin-resistant ovarian cancer cell line is an unusual model, as it is also cross-resistant to paclitaxel. IGROVCDDP, therefore, models the resistance phenotype of serous ovarian cancer patients who have failed frontline platinum/taxane chemotherapy. IGROVCDDP has also undergone epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). We aim to determine if alterations in EMT-related genes are related to or independent from the drug-resistance phenotypes. EMT gene and protein markers, invasion, motility and morphology were investigated in IGROVCDDP and its parent drug-sensitive cell line IGROV-1. ZEB1 was investigated by qPCR, Western blotting and siRNA knockdown. ZEB1 was also investigated in publicly available ovarian cancer gene-expression datasets. IGROVCDDP cells have decreased protein levels of epithelial marker E-cadherin (6.18-fold, p = 1.58e−04) and higher levels of mesenchymal markers vimentin (2.47-fold, p = 4.43e−03), N-cadherin (4.35-fold, p = 4.76e−03) and ZEB1 (3.43-fold, p = 0.04). IGROVCDDP have a spindle-like morphology consistent with EMT. Knockdown of ZEB1 in IGROVCDDP does not lead to cisplatin sensitivity but shows a reversal of EMT-gene signalling and an increase in cell circularity. High ZEB1 gene expression (HR = 1.31, n = 2051, p = 1.31e−05) is a marker of poor overall survival in high-grade serous ovarian-cancer patients. In contrast, ZEB1 is not predictive of overall survival in high-grade serous ovarian-cancer patients known to be treated with platinum chemotherapy. The increased expression of ZEB1 in IGROVCDDP appears to be independent of the drug-resistance phenotypes. ZEB1 has the potential to be used as biomarker of overall prognosis in ovarian-cancer patients but not of platinum/taxane chemoresistance
Bans on the wearing of Burqas, Niqabs and Hijabs, religious freedom and the secular nature of the state
Get PDFThis chapter examines the argument that legislation against the wearing of religious clothing, including face-covering clothing, is necessary to perserve the secular nature of the state. The fears of Islam and Muslims that are often at the basis of this argument has two main aspects: the fear of proselytising and the fear of segregation from society and the rejection of minimum requirements of life in society. The chapter assesses this and includes an analysis of how the argument for the preservation of the secular nature of the state and these fears can be countered
Bulgarian private law at crossroads
No full textBulgarian private law has always been at crossroads: it has diverse influences from both Western and Eastern Europe, and it has seen many turning points because of Bulgaria’s tumultuous past, including a communist regime. This book examines its fascinating and turbulent development from the end of the 19th century to the present day and highlights its distinctive features from a comparative perspective. Its main goal is to foster a better understanding of the current messy state of Bulgarian private law – particularly the law of obligations and property law – and an appreciation for its rich heritage.
The book begins by reflecting on why the study of Bulgarian private law is worthwhile. Literature in the English language on East European laws, especially on Bulgarian law, is scarce. Beyond responding to a gap in knowledge, the author argues that research into Bulgarian law may challenge the traditional taxonomies of comparative law, enrich the understanding of the common law–civil law divide, showcase the importance of context in legal development, and help address the difficulties of harmonisation of law in the EU. Subsequently, the book provides an overview of the scattered sources of Bulgarian private law, since Bulgaria does not have a civil code. It also traces the turbulent history of Bulgarian private law over the past century and a half to shed light on how the unexpected vibrant patchwork observed today came to be, and shatters myths about Bulgarian law spread due to years of communist censorship. The author then explains the complex fabric of Bulgarian contract law which emerges from legislation, scholarly writing and case law, surveys the hazy realms of tort and unjust enrichment, and examines the fascinating transformations of the right to property which required the re-invention of property law twice over the past 100 years. This is followed by a discussion on whether a reform of Bulgarian private law, including the enactment of a civil code, is necessary, as well as an evaluation of Bulgarian private law’s preparedness to help tackle the challenges of the 21st century, such as the digitalisation of trade, environmental problems, the protection of human rights, and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, the book recommends and explains, in context, literature for those willing to broaden their understanding of Bulgarian private law.
Bulgarian Private Law at Crossroads is written for students, academics, and practitioners interested in comparative law, as well as for any open-minded jurist wishing to discover more about the Bulgarian legal culture
Joelle Grogan, review of Miguel Poiares Maduro and Paul W. Kahn, eds., Democracy in Times of Pandemic: Different Futures Imagined [Book review]
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Miguel Poiares Maduro and Paul W. Kahn, eds. Democracy in Times of Pandemic: Different Futures Imagined. Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. 250. £ 19.99. ISBN: 9781108845366
Negative Airbnb reviews: an aspect based sentiment analysis approach
Get PDFPurpose (limit 100 words) The current paper aims at exploring negative aspects in reviews about Airbnb listings in Athens, Greece. Design/methodology/approach (limit 100 words) The aspect-based sentiment approach (ABSA), a subset of sentiment analysis, is used. The study analyzed 8,200 reviews, which had at least one negative aspect. Based on dependency parsing, noun phrases were extracted, and the underlying grammar relationships were used to identify aspect and sentiment terms.
Findings (limit 100 words) The extracted aspect terms were classified into three broad categories, i.e., the location, the amenities and the host. To each of them the associated sentiment was assigned. Based on the results, Airbnb properties could focus on certain aspects related to negative sentiments in order to minimize negative reviews and increase customer satisfaction.
Originality/value (limit 100 words) The study employs the ABSA, which offers more advantages in order to identify multiple conflicting sentiments in Airbnb comments, which is the limitation of the traditional sentiment analysis method
Differential cost analysis with simultaneous potentials and anti-potentials
Get PDFWe present a novel approach to differential cost analysis that, given a program revision, attempts to statically bound the difference in resource usage, or cost, between the two program versions. Differential cost analysis is particularly interesting because of the many compelling applications for it, such as detecting resource-use regressions at code-review time or proving the absence of certain side-channel vulnerabilities. One prior approach to differential cost analysis is to apply relational reasoning that conceptually constructs a product program on which one can over-approximate the difference in costs between the two program versions. However, a significant challenge in any relational approach is effectively aligning the program versions to get precise results. In this paper, our key insight is that we can avoid the need for and the limitations of program alignment if, instead, we bound the difference of two cost-bound summaries rather than directly bounding the concrete cost difference. In particular, our method computes a threshold value for the maximal difference in cost between two program versions simultaneously using two kinds of cost-bound summaries---a potential function that evaluates to an upper bound for the cost incurred in the first program and an anti-potential function that evaluates to a lower bound for the cost incurred in the second. Our method has a number of desirable properties: it can be fully automated, it allows optimizing the threshold value on relative cost, it is suitable for programs that are not syntactically similar, and it supports non-determinism. We have evaluated an implementation of our approach on a number of program pairs collected from the literature, and we find that our method computes tight threshold values on relative cost in most example
What does a ‘typical’ geography trainee journey look like, and what subject support should we look to provide across the different stages of this journey?
No full textLearning to teach is a complex and messy process, and individual learning journeys for geography trainees are undoubtedly very different. However, under the new ITE inspection framework (Ofsted, 2020) there has increasingly been a call for ITE providers to explicitly articulate the intentions of their taught curriculum. Although we recognise that there is certainly no such thing as a ‘typical’ journey for a geography trainee this session will look to use the collective subject expertise of the GTE community to workshop and share ideas for the shape of this journey. The results of this workshop will feed into a small working group, who are looking to develop a resource to support ITE providers with staging and sequencing their curriculums to build subject expertise among trainee geographers
The Privacy Paradox - investigating people's attitude towards privacy in a time of COVID-19
Get PDFThe advent of digital technologies used as a mechanism to deal with the Covid-19 global pandemic, has raised serious concerns around privacy and security issues. Despite these concerns and the potential risk of data misuse, including third party use, countries around the world have pushed the use and proliferation of contact-tracing applications. However, the success of these contact-tracing applications relies on their adoption and use. A well known phenomenon referred to as privacy paradox is defined as the discrepancy between the expressed privacy concern and the actual behaviour of users when it comes to protect their privacy. In this context, this paper presents a study investigating the privacy paradox in the context of a global pandemic. A national survey has been conducted and the data is analysed to examine people's privacy risk perception. The results show inconsistencies between people's privacy concerns and their actual behaviour that is reflected in their attitude shift of sharing their mobile data during a global pandemic. The study also compiles a list of recommendations for policymakers