The relationship between walking speed, step parameters, and margins of stability in individuals after stroke

Background: Individuals after stroke walk with different step parameters and consequently with different margins of stability compared to able-bodied peers. These differences might be a side effect of lower preferred walking speeds or primary limitations in regulating step parameters and margins of stability after stroke. Methods: Twenty-eight individuals after stroke (separated into more impaired and less impaired based on speed) and fourteen able-bodied peers completed five walking trials on an instrumented treadmill at 70 %, 85 %, 100 %, 115 %, and 130 % of their preferred speed. Center of pressure data were used to calculate stride frequency, stride length, step width and margins of stability in mediolateral and anteroposterior direction. Generalized estimation equations were used to analyze the (interaction) effects of group, speed, and most versus least affected leg on these parameters. Findings: When controlled for speed, all individuals after stroke walked with higher stride frequencies (P &lt; 0.001) and shorter stride lengths (P &lt; 0.001) than able-bodied peers. Less impaired individuals walked with larger step widths than able-bodied peers (P &lt; 0.001). The interaction effect of group and speed suggested that individuals after stroke showed higher increases in stride length with increasing speed than able-bodied peers. When controlled for speed, mediolateral margins of stability were larger in less impaired individuals compared to able-bodied peers, but otherwise, margins of stability did not differ between groups. Only minor differences between the most and least affected leg were observed. Interpretation: Differences in step parameters between individuals after stroke and able-bodied peers seem independent of walking speed and function to enhance gait stability.</p

“We are no drawings, no clay dolls”:A qualitative exploration of adolescents’ attitudes towards cosmetic procedures

Most previous research into cosmetic surgery acceptance/intention is quantitative in nature and focuses on (female) adults. Yet, qualitative explorations of adolescents are required, as they form the next generation of cosmetic consumers and are growing up in a culture in which procedures are unprecedentedly normalized. Moreover, the number of young people undergoing cosmetic procedures is increasing. This study explores adolescents’ attitudes towards cosmetic procedures and (future) cosmetic procedure intention through 13 focus groups with a total of 42 adolescents (aged 15–19). The sample included variation in terms of gender identity, educational level/attainment, and regionality. The focus groups were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, which resulted in five main themes, providing a comprehensive overview of adolescents’ attitudes towards cosmetic procedures. The first theme, information (sources) illustrates adolescents’ knowledge of cosmetic procedures and how adolescents obtain information related to cosmetic procedures, which may also explain some of their views and attitudes. The second theme, normalization of a commercial industry, explores the adolescents’ discussion of the normalized status of cosmetic procedures, both in the Netherlands and abroad. The third theme, attitudes towards cosmetic procedures, engages with the varied, variable, and context-specific (dis)approval and evaluation of cosmetic procedures. Following this, the fourth theme – cosmetic procedure intention – elaborates on the adolescents’ expressions of their own (lack of) intention to undergo cosmetic procedures. The fifth and final theme was construction and identification of ‘the cosmetic consumer’, where adolescents distanced themselves from the cosmetic surgery industry and/or shared particular (stereotypical) constructions of recipients of cosmetic procedures. This study provides an examination of adolescents’ perceptions of and attitudes towards cosmetic procedures. Importantly, we found that adolescents’ attitudes can be characterized as complex and ambiguous. To explain this ambiguity, we consider insights from Cultivation Theory (Gerbner et al., 2002), the cosmetic surgery paradox (Bonell et al., 2021), and connect the adolescents’ discussions to issues of diversity.</p

Co-offending among outlaw motorcycle gang members:The role of social and geographical proximity

Members of outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs) have been shown to be disproportionally engaged in criminal behavior, including serious and organized crime. Fellow OMCG members have furthermore been found to facilitate this criminal behavior both indirectly, by providing a moral climate and opportunity structure conducive to crime, and directly, by acting as co-offenders. Although co-offending among OMCG members is prevalent, the driving factors in OMCG members' co-offender choice remain largely unknown. In the present study, we examine whether co-offending among OMCG members is best explained by social proximity, measured here as similarity in age and rank within the club, and shared club and chapter membership, or rather by geographical proximity, measure here as the distance (in kilometers) between chapters' clubhouses. To examine the driving factors of OMCG members' co-offending we apply the recently developed Poisson Quadratic Assignment Procedure regression on the officially registered co-offending data of a sample of 1096 members of four of the most notorious Dutch OMCGs. This study examines co-offending of OMCG members in general and for organized, violent and property crime in particular. The results show that in their choice of co-offenders, social rather than geographical proximity predicts the frequency of co-offending among OMCG members.</p

Engagement-driven Persona Prompting for Rewriting News Tweets

Text style transfer is a challenging research task which modifies the linguistic style of a given text to meet pre-set objectives such as making the text simpler or more accessible. Although large language models have been found to give promising results, text rewriting to improve audience engagement of social media content is vastly unexplored. Our research investigates the performance of various prompting strategies in the task of rewriting Dutch news tweets in specific linguistic styles (formal, casual, and factual). Apart from zero-shot and few-shot prompting variants, wit h and without personas, we also explore prompting with feedback on predicted engagement. We perform an extensive analysis of 18 different combinations of Large Language Models (GPT-3.5, GPT-4o, Mistral-7B) and prompting strategies on three different metrics: ROUGE-L, semantic similarity, and predicted engagement. We find that GPT-4o with feedback and persona prompting performs the best in terms of predicted engagement for all three language styles. Our results motivate further exploration of applying prompting techniques to rewrite news headlines on Twitter to align with specific style guidelines.</p

Climate change impacts on the suitability of lowland and upland crop systems in Lao PDR

CONTEXTClimate change is a major driver of changes in agricultural systems, with effects playing out differently across crop types and biophysical conditions. Studies have so far not investigated differences between lowland and upland crop systems when projecting consequences of climate change on agricultural production in Southeast Asia.OBJECTIVETo model the change in crop suitability under different climate scenarios for major crops in Lao PDR and analyse differentiated impacts across lowland and upland crop systems.METHODSWe use a modified version of the EcoCrop suitability model, adding additional considerations for precipitation seasonality, to project the change in crop suitability in Lao PDR under different climate scenarios for the medium term future (2041–2070). The analysis compares impacts across lowland and upland village areas for six major crops: Paddy rice, upland rice, maize, cassava, banana, and rubber. Further, we contextualize the results with data from a survey of eight lowland and four upland villages in Savannakhet Province.RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONSFor all the included crops, we find that changes in climatic suitability will be significantly more negative (higher decrease or smaller increase) in lowland village areas than in upland village areas. In particular, rice suitability is projected to decrease considerably in lowland areas due to increases in heat and variability in wet season precipitation, while higher temperatures improve the suitability of non-rice crops in upland areas due to lower cold stress, with the largest increases being for maize, cassava, and banana. Local crop data from Savannakhet Province further reveals how climate change impacts can increase the risks to production and food security in rice focused systems in lowland areas.SIGNIFICANCEThese results indicate that upland crop systems in Lao PDR may fare better than lowland systems under future climate change and highlight the importance of differentiating between agricultural production systems when projecting impacts of climate change in Southeast Asia

Comparative Analysis of CAD-CAM Workflow Variations on the Marginal and Internal Gaps and Fatigue Behavior of Ceramic and Resin Composite Dental Crowns

OBJECTIVES:  To analyze the marginal/internal gap and the fatigue behavior of crowns made of two different materials, using four combinations of a digital workflow-two intraoral scanners (IOSs) and two milling machines.MATERIALS AND METHODS:  Crowns were made considering three factors: IOS (a confocal microscopy-based scanner: TRIOS 3-TR; or a combination of active triangulation and dynamic confocal microscopy: Primescan-PS), milling machines (four-axis: CEREC MC XL-CR or five-axis: PrograMill PM7-PM), and restorative material (lithium disilicate-LD or resin composite-RC) ( n  = 10). The bonding surface of each crown was treated and bonded to each respective glass fiber-reinforced epoxy resin die using a dual-cure resin cement. A computed microtomography analysis was performed to access marginal/internal gap. The specimens were subjected to a cyclic fatigue test (20 Hz, initial load = 100 N/5,000 cycles; step size= 50 N/10,000 cycles until 1,500 N, then if specimens survived, the step size was increased to 100 N/10,000 cycles). STATISTICAL ANALYSIS:  For data analysis, three-way analysis of variance and Kaplan-Meier with log-rank (Mantel-Cox) test were performed (α = 0.05).RESULTS:  TR resulted in a smaller axial-occlusal angle and occlusal gap, and five-axis milling resulted in a smaller marginal gap, axial-occlusal angle, and occlusal gap. Angled points and occlusal surface showed a tendency for overmilling. RC crowns displayed higher survival rates and a more pronounced topography compared with LD independently of the scanning and milling method. LD crowns produced with a five-axis milling machine resulted in higher fatigue performance and rougher topography compared with a four-axis machine.CONCLUSION:  RC crowns displayed better fatigue behavior compared with LD, while LD benefited from a five-axis machine for improved survival probability.</p