Group and sex differences in social cognition in bipolar disorder, schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder and healthy people

Background: Impairment of social cognition is documented in bipolar disorder (BD) and schizophrenia/schizoaffective disorder (SCH). In healthy individuals, women perform better than men in some of its sub-domains. However, in BD and SCH the results are mixed. Our aim was to compare emotion recognition, affective Theory of Mind (ToM) and first- and second-order cognitive ToM in BD, SCH and healthy subjects, and to investigate sex-related differences. Methods: 120 patients (BD = 60, SCH = 60) and 40 healthy subjects were recruited. Emotion recognition was assessed by the Pictures of Facial Affect (POFA) test, affective ToM by the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test (RMET) and cognitive ToM by several false-belief stories. Group and sex differences were analyzed using parametric (POFA, RMET) and non-parametric (false-belief stories) tests. The impact of age, intelligence quotient (IQ) and clinical variables on patient performance was examined using a series of linear/logistic regressions. Results: Both groups of patients performed worse than healthy subjects on POFA, RMET and second-order false-belief (p < 0.001), but no differences were found between them. Instead, their deficits were related to older age and/or lower IQ (p < 0.01). Subthreshold depression was associated with a 6-fold increased risk of first-order false-belief failure (p < 0.001). Sex differences were only found in healthy subjects, with women outperforming men on POFA and RMET (p ≤ 0.012), but not on first/second-order false-belief. Limitations: The cross-sectional design does not allow for causal inferences. Conclusion: BD and SCH patients had deficits in emotion recognition, affective ToM, and second-order cognitive ToM, but their performance was comparable to each other, highlighting that the differences between them may be subtler than previously thought. First-order cognitive ToM remained intact, but subthreshold depression altered their normal functioning. Our results suggest that the advantage of healthy women in the emotional and affective aspects of social cognition would not be maintained in BD and SCH

Software Citation Checklist for Developers

This document provides a minimal, generic checklist that developers of software (either open or closed source) used in research can use to ensure they are following good practice around software citation. This will help developers get credit for the software they create, and improve transparency, reproducibility, and reuse

Qualitative data sharing and re-use for socio-environmental systems research: A synthesis of opportunities, challenges, resources and approaches

Researchers in many disciplines, both social and natural sciences, have a long history of collecting and analyzing qualitative data to answer questions that have many dimensions, to interpret other research findings, and to characterize processes that are not easily quantified. Qualitative data is increasingly being used in socio-environmental systems research and related interdisciplinary efforts to address complex sustainability challenges. There are many scientific, descriptive and material benefits to be gained from sharing and re-using qualitative data, some of which reflect the broader push toward open science, and some of which are unique to qualitative research traditions. However, although open data availability is increasingly becoming an expectation in many fields and methodological approaches that work on socio-environmental topics, there remain many challenges associated the sharing and re-use of qualitative data in particular. This white paper discusses opportunities, challenges, resources and approaches for qualitative data sharing and re-use for socio-environmental research. The content and findings of the paper are a synthesis and extension of discussions that began during a workshop funded by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) and held at the Center Feb. 28-March 2, 2017. The structure of the paper reflects the starting point for the workshop, which focused on opportunities, challenges and resources for qualitative data sharing, and presents as well the workshop outputs focused on developing a novel approach to qualitative data sharing considerations and creating recommendations for how a variety of actors can further support and facilitate qualitative data sharing and re-use. The white paper is organized into five sections to address the following objectives: (1) Define qualitative data and discuss the benefits of sharing it along with its role in socio-environmental synthesis; (2) Review the practical, epistemological, and ethical challenges regarding sharing such data; (3) Identify the landscape of resources available for sharing qualitative data including repositories and communities of practice (4) Develop a novel framework for identifying levels of processing and access to qualitative data; and (5) Suggest roles and responsibilities for key actors in the research ecosystem that can improve the longevity and use of qualitative data in the future.This work was supported by the National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) under funding received from the National Science Foundation DBI-1052875

The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship

There is an urgent need to improve the infrastructure supporting the reuse of scholarly data. A diverse set of stakeholders—representing academia, industry, funding agencies, and scholarly publishers—have come together to design and jointly endorse a concise and measureable set of principles that we refer to as the FAIR Data Principles. The intent is that these may act as a guideline for those wishing to enhance the reusability of their data holdings. Distinct from peer initiatives that focus on the human scholar, the FAIR Principles put specific emphasis on enhancing the ability of machines to automatically find and use the data, in addition to supporting its reuse by individuals. This Comment is the first formal publication of the FAIR Principles, and includes the rationale behind them, and some exemplar implementations in the community

Radiative Transfer in a Turbulent Expanding Molecular Envelope: Application to Mira

Mira (o Ceti), the prototypical Mira variable, due to its proximity (D = 128⁺¹⁹₋₁₄ pc, van Leeuwen et al. 1997) is one of the best-studied red giant stars. Mira has an extended molecular envelope created by mass-loss, whose properties can be determined from studies of rotational emission lines from various molecules at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The CO molecule is a particularly important probe because its has a relatively high abundance relative to hydrogen, [CO/H₂] > 10⁻⁴, which is constant throughout large parts of the envelope, from the stellar photosphere, R_(star) = 2.5 × 10¹³ cm, out to a radius R ~ 5 × 10¹⁶ cm. The bulk of the emission observed in a given rotational line arises from a limited certain part of the envelope, so that multi-transition studies allows us to determine temperature, density, and velocity profiles throughout the envelope, as well as an estimate of the mass-loss rate

Radiative Transfer in a Turbulent Expanding Molecular Envelope: Application to Mira

Mira (o Ceti), the prototypical Mira variable, due to its proximity (D = 128⁺¹⁹₋₁₄ pc, van Leeuwen et al. 1997) is one of the best-studied red giant stars. Mira has an extended molecular envelope created by mass-loss, whose properties can be determined from studies of rotational emission lines from various molecules at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The CO molecule is a particularly important probe because its has a relatively high abundance relative to hydrogen, [CO/H₂] > 10⁻⁴, which is constant throughout large parts of the envelope, from the stellar photosphere, R_(star) = 2.5 × 10¹³ cm, out to a radius R ~ 5 × 10¹⁶ cm. The bulk of the emission observed in a given rotational line arises from a limited certain part of the envelope, so that multi-transition studies allows us to determine temperature, density, and velocity profiles throughout the envelope, as well as an estimate of the mass-loss rate

Radiative Transfer in a Turbulent Expanding Molecular Envelope: Application to Mira

Mira (o Ceti), the prototypical Mira variable, due to its proximity (D = 128⁺¹⁹₋₁₄ pc, van Leeuwen et al. 1997) is one of the best-studied red giant stars. Mira has an extended molecular envelope created by mass-loss, whose properties can be determined from studies of rotational emission lines from various molecules at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The CO molecule is a particularly important probe because its has a relatively high abundance relative to hydrogen, [CO/H₂] > 10⁻⁴, which is constant throughout large parts of the envelope, from the stellar photosphere, R_(star) = 2.5 × 10¹³ cm, out to a radius R ~ 5 × 10¹⁶ cm. The bulk of the emission observed in a given rotational line arises from a limited certain part of the envelope, so that multi-transition studies allows us to determine temperature, density, and velocity profiles throughout the envelope, as well as an estimate of the mass-loss rate

Software Citation Checklist for Developers

This document provides a minimal, generic checklist that developers of software (either open or closed source) used in research can use to ensure they are following good practice around software citation. This will help developers get credit for the software they create, and improve transparency, reproducibility, and reuse

Packaging research artefacts with RO-Crate

An increasing number of researchers support reproducibility by including pointers to and descriptions of datasets, software and methods in their publications. However, scientific articles may be ambiguous, incomplete and difficult to process by automated systems. In this paper we introduce RO-Crate, an open, community-driven, and lightweight approach to packaging research artefacts along with their metadata in a machine readable manner. RO-Crate is based on Schema.org annotations in JSON-LD, aiming to establish best practices to formally describe metadata in an accessible and practical way for their use in a wide variety of situations. An RO-Crate is a structured archive of all the items that contributed to a research outcome, including their identifiers, provenance, relations and annotations. As a general purpose packaging approach for data and their metadata, RO-Crate is used across multiple areas, including bioinformatics, digital humanities and regulatory sciences. By applying “just enough” Linked Data standards, RO-Crate simplifies the process of making research outputs FAIR while also enhancing research reproducibility