Efficacy and moderators of efficacy of cognitive behavioural therapies with a trauma focus in children and adolescents : an individual participant data meta-analysis of randomised trials

BackgroundExisting clinical trials of cognitive behavioural therapies with a trauma focus (CBTs-TF) are underpowered to examine key variables that might moderate treatment effects. We aimed to determine the efficacy of CBTs-TF for young people, relative to passive and active control conditions, and elucidate putative individual-level and treatment-level moderators.MethodsThis was an individual participant data meta-analysis of published and unpublished randomised studies in young people aged 6−18 years exposed to trauma. We included studies identified by the latest UK National Institute of Health and Care Excellence guidelines (completed on Jan 29, 2018) and updated their search. The search strategy included database searches restricted to publications between Jan 1, 2018, and Nov 12, 2019; grey literature search of trial registries ClinicalTrials.gov and ISRCTN; preprint archives PsyArXiv and bioRxiv; and use of social media and emails to key authors to identify any unpublished datasets. The primary outcome was post-traumatic stress symptoms after treatment (FindingsWe identified 38 studies; 25 studies provided individual participant data, comprising 1686 young people (mean age 13·65 years [SD 3·01]), with 802 receiving CBTs-TF and 884 a control condition. The risk-of-bias assessment indicated five studies as low risk and 20 studies with some concerns. Participants who received CBTs-TF had lower mean post-traumatic stress symptoms after treatment than those who received the control conditions, after adjusting for post-traumatic stress symptoms before treatment (b=−13·17, 95% CI −17·84 to −8·50, p2=103·72). Moderation analysis indicated that this effect of CBTs-TF on post-traumatic stress symptoms post-treatment increased by 0·15 units (b=−0·15, 95% CI −0·29 to −0·01, p=0·041, τ2=0·03) for each unit increase in pre-treatment post-traumatic stress symptoms.InterpretationThis is the first individual participant data meta-analysis of young people exposed to trauma. Our findings support CBTs-TF as the first-line treatment, irrespective of age, gender, trauma characteristics, or carer involvement in treatment, with particular benefits for those with higher initial distress.publishe

Limit cycles as stationary states of an extended harmonic balance ansatz

A limit cycle is a self-sustained, periodic, isolated motion appearing in autonomous differential equations. As the period of a limit cycle is a priori unknown, finding it as a stationary state of a rotating ansatz is challenging. Correspondingly, its study commonly relies on numerical methodologies (e.g., brute-force time evolution, and variational shooting methods) or circumstantial evidence such as instabilities of fixed points. Alas, such approaches are (i) unable to find all solutions, as they rely on specific initial conditions, and (ii) do not provide analytical intuition about the physical origin of the limit cycles. Here, we (I) develop a multifrequency rotating ansatz with which we (II) find all limit cycles as stationary-state solutions via a semianalytical homotopy continuation. We demonstrate our approach and its performance on the Van der Pol oscillator. Moving beyond this simple example, we show that our method captures all coexisting fixed-point attractors and limit cycles in a modified nonlinear Van der Pol oscillator. Our results facilitate the systematic mapping of out-of-equilibrium phase diagrams, with implications across multiple fields of the natural sciences.publishe

Effects of oligotrophication and Dreissena littoral-pelagic coupling on littoral invertebrate and fish communities: insights from stable isotopes of archived samples

Changing nutrient concentrations and introduction of non-native species affect the energy and nutrient fluxes in aquatic ecosystems. As a response, invertebrate communities could be altered, and ‘novel’ trophic communities could develop. Lake Constance (Europe) experienced pronounced nutrient variation caused by cultural eutrophication (prior 1980s) and oligotrophication (post-1980) and experienced many neobiota invasions. We used archived samples to investigate the impact of oligotrophication and invasive species on carbon and nitrogen isotope signatures of littoral macroinvertebrates during spring and autumn periods from 2000 to 2015 and of littoral fish species in 2018. Isotopic signatures of invertebrate and fish species were in the same range and showed similar seasonal differences and clear patterns in respect to littoral vs pelagic food sources and trophic level. Oligotrophication did not strongly alter isotopic values and only δ 15 N values of invertebrates declined weakly with oligotrophication. In contrast, interannual variability of stable isotope signatures was related to abundances of the invasive Dreissena polymorpha suggesting interannual differences in the importance of benthic-pelagic coupling due to Dreissena pseudofaeces for the nutrition of littoral invertebrates. This study illustrates how stored samples can be used to detect the importance of oligotrophication and benthic-pelagic coupling on the stable isotope signatures of a benthic community.publishe

Psychosocial Determinants and Interventions in the Context of Stress and Cardiovascular Health – Focus on Stress Contagion, Appreciation, Anger, and Cognitive-Behavioral Stress Management Trainings

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Influence of AlO_x Interlayers on LeTID Kinetics in Ga-Doped Cz-Si

Light and elevated temperature-induced degradation (LeTID) is causing a reduction in efficiency especially in p-type silicon based solar cells. It is assumed to be strongly influenced by the hydrogen content in the bulk material. The presented work focuses on the impact of differently thick (5-25 nm) atomic layer-deposited aluminum oxide (AlOx) interlayers underneath the hydrogen-rich silicon nitride (SiNy:H) capping layer. The interlayer acts as a diffusion barrier for H during the firing step. It is demonstrated that the AlOx interlayer has a comparable effect on the LeTID kinetics in Ga-doped Cz-Si (Cz-Si:Ga) as it is observed in B-doped Cz-Si (Cz-Si:B). Additionally, it substantially minimizes lifetime degradation in the Cz-Si:Ga sample. With a determined ratio of electron to hole capture cross sections k=26(3), the degradation phenomena are attributed to the LeTID kinetics. Deposition of AlOx barrier layers exceeding 10 nm in thickness does not yield additional positive effects. Resistivity measurements revealed that the change in hole concentration correlates with the defect density for varying AlOx layer thicknesses. The doping concentration seems to influence the change in maximum defect density for varying AlOx layer thicknesses.publishe

Neues für die Alte Welt : Plausibilisierungsstrategien in Guaman Poma de Ayalas 'Erste neue Chronik und gute Regierung' (1615)

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Education increases patience : Evidence from a change in a compulsory schooling law

I investigate the causal effect of education on time preferences. To deal with the endogeneity of education, I exploit exogenous variation in education imposed by a Turkish school reform that raised compulsory education from five to eight years. I find that education causes individuals to make more patient inter-temporal choices but does not induce them to report being more patient. I also provide evidence that the effect of education on patient inter-temporal choices does not operate through changes in financial well-being.publishe

Does raising awareness about inequality decrease support for school closures? : An information treatment survey experiment during the COVID-19 pandemic

The increase in inequalities during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been the topic of intense scholarly and public debate. School closures are one of the containment measures that have been debated most critically in this regard. What drives support for closures of schools and pre-school services (daycare/kindergarten) during a public health crisis such as the current COVID-19 pandemic? More specifically, does inequality awareness affect this support? Theoretically, we assume that providing information on current levels of inequality can change policy preferences, as it increases awareness of their consequences for inequality. Moreover, we assume that the strength of the association between information provision and policy support varies across individuals—depending on their exposure to these policies, and the political attitudes that they hold. To identify causal linkages between awareness of inequalities and support for school and daycare/kindergarten closures, we use a survey experiment with information treatment, in which we randomly assign information designed to prime the respondents to think about either education inequality, gender inequality, or both. The experiment, involving more than 3,000 respondents, was conducted in the spring of 2021 at the end of a prolonged lockdown in Germany when a new piece of legislation was enacted, enabling or restricting school reopenings based on local infection rates. Using Probit Regression models for dichotomous dependent variables, we show that raising awareness of education inequality and gender inequality via an information treatment is associated with decreasing support for preschool and primary school closures. We also find that past exposure to school-closure policies strengthens the effects of information treatments, whereas previous political attitudes do not moderate the association between information treatments and support for preschool and school closures.publishe

Optimally Ordered Orthogonal Neighbor Joining Trees for Hierarchical Cluster Analysis

We propose to use optimally ordered orthogonal neighbor-joining (O 3 NJ) trees as a new way to visually explore cluster structures and outliers in multi-dimensional data. Neighbor-joining (NJ) trees are widely used in biology, and their visual representation is similar to that of dendrograms. The core difference to dendrograms, however, is that NJ trees correctly encode distances between data points, resulting in trees with varying edge lengths. We optimize NJ trees for their use in visual analysis in two ways. First, we propose to use a novel leaf sorting algorithm that helps users to better interpret adjacencies and proximities within such a tree. Second, we provide a new method to visually distill the cluster tree from an ordered NJ tree. Numerical evaluation and three case studies illustrate the benefits of this approach for exploring multi-dimensional data in areas such as biology or image analysis.publishe

Organized Labor Versus Robots? : Evidence from Micro Data

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