How Both the Chicago School and Ordoliberalism Softened on Big Businesses

In new research, Ryan Stones revisits the alleged disagreement between two influential schools of antitrust on how to handle big businesses. Instead of finding contrasting policy recommendations, he highlights a strikingly similar relaxation of attitudes toward enforcement in the Chicago School and Ordoliberalism in the post-war period

Systematic review and meta-analysis of early visual processing, social cognition, and functional outcomes in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Non-affective psychotic disorders are marked by cognitive and sensory processing abnormalities, including in early visual processing and social cognition. Understanding the relationships between these deficits and their impact on daily-life functional outcomes may help to improve outcomes in affected individuals. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to summarise the existing evidence on the relationships between early visual processing, social cognition, and functional outcomes, and to assess the evidence regarding the mediating role of social cognition in the association between early visual processing and functional outcomes in individuals with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. A comprehensive search across five databases identified 364 potentially eligible studies, with eight articles meeting all inclusion criteria. Meta-analytic techniques were employed to synthesise effect sizes and assess a meta-mediation model. Three random-effects meta-analyses revealed significant associations between all three domains of interest. Social cognition partially mediated the relationship between early visual processing and functional outcomes. The direct effect of early visual processing on functional outcomes remained significant, albeit with a reduced effect size. The findings suggest that interventions targeting both early visual processing and social cognition concurrently may improve functional outcomes more effectively than focusing on either domain alone

Investigating a structured diagnostic approach for chronic breathlessness in primary care: a mixed-methods feasibility cluster randomised controlled trial

Background: There is a need to reduce delays to diagnosis for chronic breathlessness to improve patient outcomes. Objective: To conduct a mixed-methods feasibility study of a larger cluster randomised controlled trial (cRCT) investigating a structured symptom-based diagnostic approach versus usual care for chronic breathlessness in primary care. Methods: 10 general practitioner practices were cluster randomised to a structured diagnostic approach for chronic breathlessness including early parallel investigations (intervention) or usual care. Adults over 40 years old at participating practices were eligible if presenting with chronic breathlessness without an existing explanatory diagnosis. The primary feasibility outcomes were participant recruitment and retention rate at 1 year. Secondary outcomes included number of investigations at 3 months, and investigations, diagnoses and patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) at 1 year. Semistructured interviews were completed with patients and clinicians, and analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Recruitment rate was 32% (48/150): 65% female, mean (SD) age 66 (11) years, body mass index 31.2 kg/m2 (6.5), median (IQR) Medical Research Council dyspnoea 2 (2–3). Retention rate was 85% (41/48). At 3 months, the intervention group had a median (IQR) of 8 (7–9) investigations compared with 5 (3–6) investigations with usual care. 11/25 (44%) patients in the intervention group had coded diagnosis for breathlessness at 12 months compared with 6/23 (26%) with usual care. Potential improvements in symptom burden and quality of life were observed in the intervention group above usual care. Conclusions: A cRCT investigating a symptom-based diagnostic approach for chronic breathlessness is feasible in primary care showing potential for timely investigations and diagnoses, with PROMs potentially indicating patient-level benefit. A further refined fully powered cRCT with health economic analysis is needed

Increasing myopia in Scotland at age 3.5-5.5 years: a retrospective epidemiological study

Purpose: Scotland has comprehensive child vision screening at age 3.5-5.5 years, with ~85% participation (40,000-50,000 screening episodes annually). Orthoptists deliver the screening, including presenting vision, cover test, and other tests. Screening failures are referred for eye examinations, including cycloplegic refraction. The study aims to report refractive error data from these examinations (~5,000-6,000 annually) for three years pre- and two years postpandemic and to investigate correlations between myopia and socio-economic factors. Methods: Right eye data from eight Scottish Health Boards (HB) are reported for spherical equivalent refraction (SER) for the years 2013-14, 2014-15, 2015-16, 2020-21, 2021-22. Associations were investigated between the proportion of the sample in each HB with myopia and the proportion of the population in each HB with different levels of deprivation index, classification on a rural/urban continuum, and dwelling type. Results: Refractive error frequency distributions revealed a myopic shift in SER over the five years. Median SER (interquartile range) was, in 2013-14, +1.38D (+0.50 to +2.75); 2014-15, +1.38D (+0.25 to +2.63); 2015-16, +1.38D (+0.50 to +2.75); 2020-21, +1.13D (+0.25 to +2.25); 2021-22, +1.25D (+0.38 to +2.25). The increase in myopia was statistically significant in each of the last two years compared with each of the first three (p<0.0005). The proportion of myopes (≤-0.50D) increased from <7.8% annually 2013-16 to 11.51% in 2020-21, 10.65% in 2021-22 (linear trend: r 2=0.94, p=0.006). Associations between the proportions of children in each HB with myopia and: deprivation index was low and not statistically significant; proportion of population in the most urban environment was high (r2 = 0.79; p=0.003), and proportion of dwellings that were flats/apartments was high (r2 = 0.83, p=0.002). Conclusions: In this predominantly Caucasian population, proportions of children with myopia have increased post-COVID. A strong association exists between myopia and living in flats/apartments and urbanicity, but not with a deprivation index

The MSPTDfast photoplethysmography beat detection algorithm: design, benchmarking, and open-source distribution

Objective: Photoplethysmography is widely used for physiological monitoring, whether in clinical devices such as pulse oximeters, or consumer devices such as smartwatches. A key step in the analysis of photoplethysmogram (PPG) signals is detecting heartbeats. The MSPTD algorithm has been found to be one of the most accurate PPG beat detection algorithms, but is less computationally efficient than other algorithms. Therefore, the aim of this study was to develop a more efficient, open-source implementation of the MSPTD algorithm for PPG beat detection, named MSPTDfast (v.2). Approach: Five potential improvements to MSPTD were identified and evaluated on four datasets. MSPTDfast (v.2) was designed by incorpo- rating each improvement which on its own reduced execution time whilst maintaining a high F1-score. After internal validation, MSPTDfast (v.2) was benchmarked against state-of-the-art beat detection algorithms on four additional datasets. Main results: MSPTDfast (v.2) incorporated two key improvements: pre-processing PPG signals to reduce the sampling frequency to 20 Hz; and only calculating scalogram scales corresponding to heart rates &gt;30 bpm. During internal validation MSPTDfast (v.2) was found to have an execution time of between approximately one-third and one-twentieth of MSPTD, and a comparable F1-score. During benchmarking MSPTDfast (v.2) was found to have the highest F1-score alongside MSPTD, and amongst one of the lowest execution times with only MSPTDfast (v.1), qppgfast and MMPD (v.2) achieving shorter execution times. Significance: MSPTDfast (v.2) is an accurate and efficient PPG beat detection algorithm, available in an open-source Matlab toolbox

GKF-PUAL: A group kernel-free approach to positive-unlabeled learning with variable selection

Variable selection is important for classification of data with many irrelevant predicting variables, but it has not yet been well studied in positive-unlabeled (PU) learning, where classifiers have to be trained without labeled-negative instances. In this paper, we propose a group kernel-free PU classifier with asymmetric loss (GKF-PUAL) to achieve quadratic PU classification with group-lasso regularisation embedded for variable selection. We also propose a five-block algorithm to solve the optimization problem of GKF-PUAL. Our experimental results reveals the superiority of GKF-PUAL in both PU classification and variable selection, improving the baseline PUAL by more than 10% in F1-score across four benchmark datasets and removing over 70% of irrelevant variables on six benchmark datasets. The code for GKF-PUAL is at https://github.com/tkks22123/GKF-PUAL

Everyday narrative skills in autistic adolescents

Spoken narrative skills are crucial to the social and academic success of young people; however, research indicates that this may be an area of challenge for autistic adolescents. Most previous studies have used narrative elicitation tasks that incorporate visual support, and little is known about how autistic adolescents perform on less structured narrative tasks that more closely approximate everyday instances of communication. Autistic participants aged 11-15 years (N=53) and a non-autistic group (N=57) were asked to recount the events of two 3-4 minute video clips. Narratives were coded for both macrostructure (‘story grammar’) and coherence. Group differences were explored using multiple regression analyses, after controlling for age, non-verbal cognitive ability, and both receptive and expressive language skills. Autistic adolescents produced spoken narratives that were rated as less well-structured and less coherent than those of the non-autistic comparison group. However, controlling for narrative length in exploratory analyses virtually eliminated group differences, suggesting that further research into this relationship is warranted

Aeroacoustic impact of triply periodic minimal surface porous casings on axial flow fans

This study investigates the effectiveness of porous casing treatments in reducing noise in axial flow fans, using various triply periodic minimum surface (TPMS) configurations. All TPMS-based casings outperform solid casings in minimizing radial fan noise and enhancing the casing's sound absorption capabilities. Among the structures, the primitive type is less effective compared to the diamond and gyroid designs. Experimental results demonstrate that the gyroid and diamond casings reduce overall sound pressure levels by 6 dB (11%) and 8 dB (14%), respectively. They also decrease accumulated sound energy by 36% and 60%, respectively. Additionally, increasing porosity from 20% to 50% further enhances accumulated sound energy reduction by 27%. TPMS structures significantly lower sound pressure levels at blade passing frequencies (BPF), with maximum noise reductions observed at BPF4 and BPF10, where noise drops by 6 and 7 dB, respectively. This innovative casing treatment has a marked impact on the aeroacoustic performance of axial flow fans, and the findings offer valuable insights for future noise reduction strategies using TPMS-based porous casings