Accidental exposure to politics on social media as online participation equalizer in Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom

We assess whether and how accidental exposure to political information on social media contributes to citizens\u2019 online political participation in comparative perspective. Based on three online surveys of samples representative of German, Italian, and British Internet users in the aftermath of the 2014 European Parliament elections, we find that accidental exposure to political information on social media is positively and significantly correlated with online participation in all three countries, particularly so in Germany where overall levels of participation were lower. We also find that interest in politics moderates this relationship so that the correlation is stronger among the less interested than among the highly interested. These findings suggest that inadvertent encounters with political content on social media are likely to reduce the gap in online engagement between citizens with high and low interest in politics, potentially broadening the range of voices that make themselves heard

Do Interventions Designed to Support Shared Decision-Making Reduce Health Inequalities? : A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Copyright: © 2014 Durand et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.Background: Increasing patient engagement in healthcare has become a health policy priority. However, there has been concern that promoting supported shared decision-making could increase health inequalities. Objective: To evaluate the impact of SDM interventions on disadvantaged groups and health inequalities. Design: Systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials and observational studies.Peer reviewe

Using technology to deliver cancer follow-up : a systematic review

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Slow wind belt in the quiet solar corona

The slow solar wind belt in the quiet corona, observed with the Metis coronagraph on board Solar Orbiter on May 15, 2020, during the activity minimum of the cycle 24, in a field of view extending from 3.8 $R_\odot$ to 7.0 $R_\odot$, is formed by a slow and dense wind stream running along the coronal current sheet, accelerating in the radial direction and reaching at 6.8 $R_\odot$ a speed within 150 km s$^{-1}$ and 190 km s$^{-1}$, depending on the assumptions on the velocity distribution of the neutral hydrogen atoms in the coronal plasma. The slow stream is separated by thin regions of high velocity shear from faster streams, almost symmetric relative to the current sheet, with peak velocity within 175 km s$^{-1}$ and 230 km s$^{-1}$ at the same coronal level. The density-velocity structure of the slow wind zone is discussed in terms of the expansion factor of the open magnetic field lines that is known to be related to the speed of the quasi-steady solar wind, and in relation to the presence of a web of quasi separatrix layers, S-web, the potential sites of reconnection that release coronal plasma into the wind. The parameters characterizing the coronal magnetic field lines are derived from 3D MHD model calculations. The S-web is found to coincide with the latitudinal region where the slow wind is observed in the outer corona and is surrounded by thin layers of open field lines expanding in a non-monotonic way

Lack of effect of lowering LDL cholesterol on cancer: meta-analysis of individual data from 175,000 people in 27 randomised trials of statin therapy

<p>Background: Statin therapy reduces the risk of occlusive vascular events, but uncertainty remains about potential effects on cancer. We sought to provide a detailed assessment of any effects on cancer of lowering LDL cholesterol (LDL-C) with a statin using individual patient records from 175,000 patients in 27 large-scale statin trials.</p> <p>Methods and Findings: Individual records of 134,537 participants in 22 randomised trials of statin versus control (median duration 4.8 years) and 39,612 participants in 5 trials of more intensive versus less intensive statin therapy (median duration 5.1 years) were obtained. Reducing LDL-C with a statin for about 5 years had no effect on newly diagnosed cancer or on death from such cancers in either the trials of statin versus control (cancer incidence: 3755 [1.4% per year [py]] versus 3738 [1.4% py], RR 1.00 [95% CI 0.96-1.05]; cancer mortality: 1365 [0.5% py] versus 1358 [0.5% py], RR 1.00 [95% CI 0.93–1.08]) or in the trials of more versus less statin (cancer incidence: 1466 [1.6% py] vs 1472 [1.6% py], RR 1.00 [95% CI 0.93–1.07]; cancer mortality: 447 [0.5% py] versus 481 [0.5% py], RR 0.93 [95% CI 0.82–1.06]). Moreover, there was no evidence of any effect of reducing LDL-C with statin therapy on cancer incidence or mortality at any of 23 individual categories of sites, with increasing years of treatment, for any individual statin, or in any given subgroup. In particular, among individuals with low baseline LDL-C (<2 mmol/L), there was no evidence that further LDL-C reduction (from about 1.7 to 1.3 mmol/L) increased cancer risk (381 [1.6% py] versus 408 [1.7% py]; RR 0.92 [99% CI 0.76–1.10]).</p> <p>Conclusions: In 27 randomised trials, a median of five years of statin therapy had no effect on the incidence of, or mortality from, any type of cancer (or the aggregate of all cancer).</p&gt

The role of collaboration in the cognitive development of young children: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND: Collaboration is a key facilitator of cognitive development in early childhood; this review evaluates which factors mediate the impact of collaborative interactions on cognitive development in children aged 4-7 years. METHODS: A systematic search strategy identified relevant studies (n = 21), which assessed the role of ability on the relationship between collaboration and cognitive development. Other factors that interact with ability were also assessed: gender, sociability/friendship, discussion, age, feedback and structure. RESULTS: Immediate benefits of collaboration on cognitive development are highlighted for same-age peers. Collaborative interactions are beneficial for tasks measuring visual perception, problem-solving and rule-based thinking, but not for word-reading and spatial perspective-taking. Collaboration is particularly beneficial for lower-ability children when there is an ability asymmetry. High-ability children either regressed or did not benefit when paired with lower-ability participants. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the studies included within this review indicate that brief one-off interactions can have a significant, positive effect on short-term cognitive development in children of infant school age. The longer-term advantages of collaboration are still unclear. Implications for practice and future research are discussed

Divergent platforms

Models of electoral competition between two opportunistic, office-motivated parties typically predict that both parties become indistinguishable in equilibrium. I show that this strong connection between the office motivation of parties and their equilibrium choice of identical platforms depends on two—possibly false—assumptions: (1) Issue spaces are uni-dimensional and (2) Parties are unitary actors whose preferences can be represented by expected utilities. I provide an example of a two-party model in which parties offer substantially different equilibrium platforms even though no exogenous differences between parties are assumed. In this example, some voters’ preferences over the 2-dimensional issue space exhibit non-convexities and parties evaluate their actions with respect to a set of beliefs on the electorate

Recurrent solar density transients in the slow wind observed with the Metis coronagraph

Aims We aim to investigate and characterize the morphology and dynamics of small-scale coronal plasma density inhomogeneities detected as brighter, denser features propagating outward through the solar corona in the visible-light images of the Metis coronagraph on board Solar Orbiter on February 22, 2021. Our main focus is on investigating their possible origin and contribution to the slow wind variability and dynamics and their dependence on coronal magnetic field configurations and structure. Methods. The method adopted is based on the computations of autocorrelation and cross-correlation functions applied to temporal and spatial series of total brightness as a function of the heliocentric distance and solar latitudes. Results. We find that the plasma density inhomogeneities studied here are small-scale structures with typical radial and transverse sizes, as projected on the plane of sky, on the order of 500 Mm and 40 Mm, respectively, and that they are up to 24 times brighter than the ambient solar wind. The brighter density structures exhibit longer lifetime and more stable shape and dimensions as they travel toward the outer edge of the field of view. The enhanced density structures are ejected with a most probable cadence of about 80 min at or below the inner edge of the Metis field of view (within 3.1 R· 5.7 R· at the time of observations) in a wide latitudinal region corresponding to the site of a complex web of separatrix and quasi-separatrix layers, as resulting from the simulated magnetohydrodynamic configuration of the west limb of the solar corona. Some of the moving density enhancements clearly show morphological characteristics compatible with the switchback phenomenon, supporting the results indicating that the switchbacks occur at the coronal level. The enhanced density structures were ejected into the ambient slow wind with a mean velocity of about 240 ± 40 km s-1, which is significantly higher than that deduced for the ambient solar wind on the basis of previous Metis observations during the solar minimum of cycle 24. The absence of acceleration observed across the coronagraph field of view suggests that the ejected plasmoids are progressively reaching the expansion rate of the ambient wind. Conclusions. The results suggest that the quasi-periodic enhanced-density plasmoids might be the consequence of reconnection phenomena occurring in the complex web of the separatrix and quasi-separatrix layers present in the solar corona. Moreover, the structural characteristics of some of the detected plasmoids are in favor of the presence of switchbacks that originate during interchange reconnection processes occurring at or below 3 R· in the S-web. The speed of the plasma ejected in the reconnection process is higher than that of the ambient slow solar wind and is likely to be related to the energy involved in the process generating the propagating structures