Eco-acoustic indices allow us to rapidly evaluate habitats and ecosystems and derive information about anthropophonic impacts. However, it is proven that indices\' values and trends are not comparable between studies. These incongruences may be caused by the availability on the market of recorders with different characteristics and costs. Thus, there is a need to reduce these biases and incongruences to ensure an accurate analysis and comparison between soundscape ecology studies and habitat assessments. In this study, we propose and validate an audio recording equalization protocol to reduce eco-acoustic indices\' biases, by testing three soundscape recorder models: Song Meter Micro, Soundscape Explorer Terrestrial and Audiomoth. The equalization process aligns the signal amplitude and frequency response of the soundscape recorders to those of a type 1 level meter. The adjustment was made in MATLAB R2023a using a filter curve generated comparing a reference signal (white noise); the measurements were performed in an anechoic chamber using 11 audio sensors and a type 1 sound level meter (able to produce a .WAV file). The statistical validation of the procedure was performed on recordings obtained in an urban and Regional Park (Italy) assessing a significant reduction in indices\' biases on the Song Meter Micro and Audiomoth.

Serial dependence has shown seemingly contradictory effects on visual perception and working memory. While serial dependence promotes perpetual and mnemonic stability, it biases behavioral reports toward prior information. The neural mechanisms that drive both biasing and adaptive stabilizing effects are not well understood. We proposed and tested a reactivation and integration mechanism that can account for these contradictory effects. We used multivariate pattern analyses of EEG data (26 human participants, 17 females, 9 males) to examine the reactivation of prior reported orientation during the delay period of a visual working memory task. The reactivation strength of prior reports, but not prior sensory items, was predictive of the magnitude of serial dependency biases. These reactivated representations integrated with the representation of the current memory item and improved the ability to decode the current contents of memory. Overall, our data provide convergent evidence suggesting that prior reports in a visual working memory task are reactivated on the subsequent trial and become integrated with current memory representations. This similarity-dependent reactivation mechanism drives both report biasing and stabilization effects attributed to serial dependence in working memory.

The growing prominence of artificial intelligence (AI) in mobile health (mHealth) has given rise to a distinct subset of apps that provide users with diagnostic information using their inputted health status and symptom information-AI-powered symptom checker apps (AISympCheck). While these apps may potentially increase access to health care, they raise consequential ethical and legal questions. This paper will highlight notable concerns with AI usage in the health care system, further entrenchment of preexisting biases in the health care system and issues with professional accountability. To provide an in-depth analysis of the issues of bias and complications of professional obligations and liability, we focus on 2 mHealth apps as examples-Babylon and Ada. We selected these 2 apps as they were both widely distributed during the COVID-19 pandemic and make prominent claims about their use of AI for the purpose of assessing user symptoms. First, bias entrenchment often originates from the data used to train AI systems, causing the AI to replicate these inequalities through a \"garbage in, garbage out\" phenomenon. Users of these apps are also unlikely to be demographically representative of the larger population, leading to distorted results. Second, professional accountability poses a substantial challenge given the vast diversity and lack of regulation surrounding the reliability of AISympCheck apps. It is unclear whether these apps should be subject to safety reviews, who is responsible for app-mediated misdiagnosis, and whether these apps ought to be recommended by physicians. With the rapidly increasing number of apps, there remains little guidance available for health professionals. Professional bodies and advocacy organizations have a particularly important role to play in addressing these ethical and legal gaps. Implementing technical safeguards within these apps could mitigate bias, AIs could be trained with primarily neutral data, and apps could be subject to a system of regulation to allow users to make informed decisions. In our view, it is critical that these legal concerns are considered throughout the design and implementation of these potentially disruptive technologies. Entrenched bias and professional responsibility, while operating in different ways, are ultimately exacerbated by the unregulated nature of mHealth.

BACKGROUND: Family reconstitution and data from online genealogies, such as FamiLinx, are two potential sources for investigating mortality dynamics for the period before official lifetables became available. In this paper, we use two of them, the family reconstitution of Imhof and the FamiLinx dataset based on geni.com, to estimate dynamics in life expectancy and discuss the sex-specific differential mortality in the German Empire.
METHODS: Sex-specific lifetables are estimated for the territory of the German Empire from the individual data of the family reconstitution and the online genealogies. On the basis of these lifetables, we estimate the conditional life expectancy and derive the corresponding sex-specific differential mortality. Findings are compared with the official lifetable of the German Empire in 1871-1910. The contribution of each age group to the differential mortality is determined using the stepwise-replacement algorithm.
RESULTS: The family reconstitution overestimates conditional life expectancy less than FamiLinx after 1871, when official lifetables are available in the German Empire. However, both sources fail to capture the sex-specific mortality differentials of the official lifetables at the end of the nineteenth century and show a higher life expectancy for males instead of females. The bias in sex-specific mortality rates is particularly pronounced in the age groups 15 to 45.
CONCLUSIONS: Finally, we discuss possible explanations for the biased findings. Notability bias, the patriarchal approach to family trees, and maternal mortality are important mechanisms in the FamiLinx dataset. Censoring due to mobility serves as a potential reason for the bias in the family reconstitution.
UNASSIGNED: HINTERGRUND: Familienrekonstitutionen und Familienstammbäume genealogischer Online-Plattformen sind 2 mögliche Datenquellen für die Untersuchung der Sterblichkeit in einer Zeit, als noch keine amtlichen Sterbetafeln verfügbar waren. Der vorliegende Artikel diskutiert anhand zweier Beispiele, der Familienrekonstitution aus Imhof und dem auf geni.com beruhenden Datensatz FamiLinx, die geschätzten Verläufe der Lebenserwartung im Deutschen Reich mit einem Fokus auf die geschlechtsspezifische differenzielle Mortalität.
METHODS: Mithilfe der Individualdaten aus der Familienrekonstitution und aus den Online-Genealogien werden die geschlechtsspezifischen Sterbetafeln geschätzt. Aus ihnen wird die bedingte Lebenserwartung ermittelt und die entsprechende geschlechtsspezifische differenzielle Mortalität abgeleitet und mit den amtlichen Sterbetafeln für die Jahre 1871–1910 abgeglichen. Der Beitrag der einzelnen Altersklassen zur differenziellen Sterblichkeit wird mit dem Stepwise Replacement Algorithm bestimmt.
UNASSIGNED: Die Ergebnisse der Familienrekonstitution überschätzen die Lebenserwartung nach 1871 weniger stark als die FamiLinx-Schätzungen. Die geringere Sterblichkeit der Frauen in der amtlichen Statistik wird von beiden Quellen nicht abgebildet. Im Gegensatz zur amtlichen Statistik ist die geschätzte Lebenserwartung der Männer höher als die der Frauen. Diese verzerrte geschlechtsspezifische Abbildung der Mortalitätsraten geht insbesondere auf die Altersklassen von 15 bis 45 Jahren zurück.
CONCLUSIONS: Der Notability Bias, der patriarchische Ansatz in der Erstellung von Familienstammbäumen und die Müttersterblichkeit sind mögliche Ursachen für diese Beobachtungen in FamiLinx. In der Familienrekonstitution ist die mit der Mobilität einhergehende Zensierung ein Erklärungsansatz.

UNASSIGNED: To examine the immediate effects of a comprehensive pain course on medical students\' pre-existing perceptions and attitudes toward pain patients and opioid management.
UNASSIGNED: First-year medical students at a major academic medical center enrolled in a required pre-clerkship pain course in June 2020 and completed pre- and post-course online surveys with Likert-scale questions about their attitudes toward pain management and opioid-related issues. Additionally, the surveys included a free-text question where the students listed the first five words that came to mind when hearing the word \"opioids\". These words were categorized as \"professional\" or \"lay\" words and further as having \"positive\", \"negative\", or \"neutral\" connotations. Data analyses included descriptive statistics, as well as non-parametric and parametric tests.
UNASSIGNED: Fifty-four of the 119 students responded to pretest and posttest surveys and were included in paired analyses. There was a significant difference between the number of professional words used before (M=1.21, SD=0.97) and after the course (M=2.40 SD=1.33); t(52)=-6.39, P<0.001. Students also used more lay-positive words after the course (M=0.81, SD=0.63) than they used pre-course (M=0.23, SD=0.43); t(51)=-5.98, P<0.001. Students\' post-course responses to several key Likert-scale questions showed significant shifts toward more positive attitudes about caring for patients with pain. For example, students acknowledged greater comfort in providing opioids for chronic pain (P<0.001) where appropriate, and enhanced interest in handling complex pain cases (P<0.001).
UNASSIGNED: Results showed that a comprehensive, multi-disciplinary pain course could greatly enhance first-year medical students\' attitudes toward pain management, chronic pain patients, and the complex issues surrounding opioids.

BACKGROUND: Randomized controlled trials have been the gold standard for evaluating medical treatments for many decades but they are often criticized for requiring large sample sizes. Given the urgent need for better therapies for glioblastoma, it has been argued that data collected from patients treated with the standard regimen can provide high-quality external control data to supplement or replace concurrent control arm in future glioblastoma trials.
METHODS: In this article, we provide an in-depth appraisal of the use of external control data in the context of neuro-oncology trials. We describe several clinical trial designs with particular attention to how external information is utilized and address common fallacies that may lead to inappropriate adoptions of external control data.
RESULTS: Using 2 completed glioblastoma trials, we illustrate the use of an assessment tool that lays out a blueprint for assembling a high-quality external control data set. Using statistical simulations, we draw caution from scenarios where these approaches can fall short on controlling the type I error rate.
CONCLUSIONS: While this approach may hold promise in generating informative data in certain settings, this sense of optimism should be tampered with a healthy dose of skepticism due to a myriad of design and analysis challenges articulated in this review. Importantly, careful planning is key to its successful implementation.

This paper reports our analysis of the ELSI Virtual Forum: 30 Years of the Genome: Integrating and Applying ELSI Research, an online meeting of scholars focused on the ethical, legal, and social implications (ELSI) of genetics and genomics.

UNASSIGNED: Despite the rising prevalence of developmental disabilities (DD) in the US, there remains insufficient training for healthcare professionals to care for this medically underserved population - particularly adults. The National Inclusive Curriculum for Health Education (NICHE) aims to improve attitudes and knowledge towards people with intellectual and developmental disabilities (PWIDD); herein we describe one such intervention.
UNASSIGNED: The intervention integrated didactic, panel presentation and clinical skills components into a 2nd year medical school curriculum.  The didactic session, covering  health and assessment of PWIDDs, history of IDD, stigma, etc., was co-taught by a developmental pediatrician, family medicine physician and social worker.  A panel of 3 adult self-advocates (SAs) with DD and a parent of a child with DD spoke about their lived experiences.  One week later, students practiced taking clinical histories of SAs within small group settings with adult PWIDDs, facilitated by medical school faculty. Students completed the NICHE Knowledge(49 items) and Attitudes (60 items) surveys. The evaluation analyzed pre/post intervention differences in a) knowledge and attitude scores overall and b) by student age, gender, intended medical specialty, and prior experiences with PWIDDs. Open-ended comments were analyzed with content analysis.
UNASSIGNED: Overall Knowledge scores increased from pre-to posttest (n = 85; 65[19] vs. 73[17], p = 0.00), while Attitudes score improved (i.e., decreased) (n = 88; 0.55 [.06] vs. 0.53 [0.06]); p = 0.00).  Higher pretest knowledge was found among female identified students (vs. others; p = 0.01) and those knowing > = 5 PWIDD (vs < 5; p = 0.02).  Students characterize their IDD training and experience prior to intervention as \'lacking\' and described the sessions as effective.
UNASSIGNED: A brief (4 hours total) intervention was associated with modest but significant improved knowledge and attitudes towards PWIDDs. Replication and sustainability of this and other NICHE interventions are needed to fill gaps in PWIDDs\' health care.

A better understanding of factors that can affect preferences and choices may contribute to more accurate decision-making. Several studies have investigated the effects of cognitive biases on decision-making and their relationship with cognitive abilities and thinking dispositions. While studies on behaviour, attitude, personality, and health worries have examined their relationship with human values, research on cognitive bias has not investigated its relationship to individual differences in human values. The purpose of this study was to explore individual differences in biased choices, examining the relationships of the human values self-direction, conformity, power, and universalism with the anchoring effect, the framing effect, the certainty effect, and the outcome bias, as well as the mediation of need for cognition and the moderation of numeracy in these relationships. We measured individual differences and within-participant effects with an online questionnaire completed by 409 Brazilian participants, with an age range from 18 to 80 years, 56.7% female, and 43.3% male. The cognitive biases studied consistently influenced choices and preferences. However, the biases showed distinct relationships with the individual differences investigated, indicating the involvement of diverse psychological mechanisms. For example, people who value more self-direction were less affected only by anchoring. Hence, people more susceptible to one bias were not similarly susceptible to another. This can help in research on how to weaken or strengthen cognitive biases and heuristics.

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) affects approximately 850 million people globally and is associated with an increased risk of cognitive impairment. The prevalence of cognitive impairment among CKD patients ranges from 30 to 60%, and the link between CKD and cognitive impairment is partially understood. Methodological challenges and biases in studying cognitive function in CKD patients need to be addressed to improve diagnosis, treatment, and management of cognitive impairment in this population. Here, we review the methodological challenges and study design issues, including observational studies\' limitations, internal validity, and different types of bias that can impact the validity of research findings. Understanding the unique challenges and biases associated with studying cognitive function in CKD patients can help to identify potential sources of error and improve the quality of future research, leading to more accurate diagnoses and better treatment plans for CKD patients.