Resilience Through the Lens of Interactionism: A Systematic Review

This systematic review presents findings from a conceptual and methodological review of resilience measures using an interactionist theoretical framework. The review is also intended to update findings from previous systematic reviews. Two databases (EBSCOHost and Scopus) were searched to retrieve empirical studies published up until 2013, with no lower time limit. All articles had to meet specific inclusion criteria, which resulted in 17 resilience measures selected for full review. Measures were conceptually evaluated against an interactionist framework and methodologically reviewed using Skinner's (1981) validity evidence framework. We conclude that inconsistencies associated with the definition and operationalization of resilience warrant further conceptual development to explain resilience as a dynamic and interactive phenomenon. In particular, measures of resilience may benefit from a greater focus on within-person variance typically associated with behavioral consistency across situations. The use of alternative measurement modalities to self-report scales, such as situational judgment tests, is proposed as a way of advancing knowledge in this area

An exploration of applicant perceptions of asynchronous video MMIs in medical selection

Over the last two decades, technological advancements internationally have meant that the Internet has become an important medium for recruitment and selection. Consequently, there is an increased need for research that examines the effectiveness of newer technology-mediated selection methods. This exploratory research study qualitatively explored applicant perceptions of fairness of asynchronous video interviews used in medical selection. Ten undergraduate medical students participated in a pilot asynchronous multiple-mini interview and were invited to share their experiences and perceptions in a follow-up interview. The data was transcribed verbatim and analysed using template analysis, with Gilliland’s (1993) organisational justice theory guiding the original template. Many of the original themes from Gilliland’s model were uncovered during analysis. Additionally, some significant themes were identified that did not form part of the original template and were therefore added to the final coding template – these were specifically relating to technology, including acceptability in a medical context; technical issues and adverse impact. Overall, results suggested that participants perceived asynchronous video interviews to be a fair method of selection. However, participants thought asynchronous interviews should only be used as part of an extensive selection process and furthermore, should not replace face-to-face interviews. Findings are discussed in line with existing research of fairness perceptions and justice theory in selection (Gilliland, 1993) and implications for research and practice are presented

Ternary Syndrome Decoding with Large Weight

The Syndrome Decoding problem is at the core of many code-based cryptosystems. In this paper, we study ternary Syndrome Decoding in large weight. This problem has been introduced in the Wave signature scheme but has never been thoroughly studied. We perform an algorithmic study of this problem which results in an update of the Wave parameters. On a more fundamental level, we show that ternary Syndrome Decoding with large weight is a really harder problem than the binary Syndrome Decoding problem, which could have several applications for the design of code-based cryptosystems

Chosen-ciphertext security from subset sum

We construct a public-key encryption (PKE) scheme whose security is polynomial-time equivalent to the hardness of the Subset Sum problem. Our scheme achieves the standard notion of indistinguishability against chosen-ciphertext attacks (IND-CCA) and can be used to encrypt messages of arbitrary polynomial length, improving upon a previous construction by Lyubashevsky, Palacio, and Segev (TCC 2010) which achieved only the weaker notion of semantic security (IND-CPA) and whose concrete security decreases with the length of the message being encrypted. At the core of our construction is a trapdoor technique which originates in the work of Micciancio and Peikert (Eurocrypt 2012

A workplace Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) intervention for improving healthcare staff psychological distress: A randomised controlled trial

The levels of psychological distress and burnout among healthcare staff are high, with negative implications for patient care. A growing body of evidence indicates that workplace programmes based on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are effective for improving employees’ general psychological health. However, there is a paucity of research examining the specific psychological and/or behavioural processes through which workplace ACT programmes transmit their beneficial effects. The aim of this randomised controlled trial was to investigate the outcomes and putative processes of change in a 4-session ACT training programme designed to reduce psychological distress among healthcare staff (n = 98). Ninety-eight employees of a healthcare organisation were randomly allocated to the ACT intervention or to a waiting list control group. Study measures were administered on four occasions (baseline, mid-intervention, post-intervention, and follow-up) over a three-month evaluation period. Results showed that the ACT intervention led to a significant decrease in symptoms of psychological distress and a less pronounced reduction in burnout. These effects were mediated primarily via an improvement in mindfulness skills and values-based behaviour and moderated by participants’ initial levels of distress. At four-week post-intervention, 48% of participants who received the ACT intervention showed reliable improvements in psychological distress, with just under half of the aforementioned improvements (46.15%) meeting criteria for clinically significant change. The results advance ACT as an effective stress management intervention for healthcare staff. The findings should be confirmed in a large scale randomised controlled trial with longer follow-up and cost-effectiveness analyses

Assessment of COVID-19 as the underlying cause of death among children and young people aged 0 to 19 years in the US.

IMPORTANCE: COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death for more than 940 000 individuals in the US, including at least 1289 children and young people (CYP) aged 0 to 19 years, with at least 821 CYP deaths occurring in the 1-year period from August 1, 2021, to July 31, 2022. Because deaths among US CYP are rare, the mortality burden of COVID-19 in CYP is best understood in the context of all other causes of CYP death. OBJECTIVE: To determine whether COVID-19 is a leading (top 10) cause of death in CYP in the US. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS: This national population-level cross-sectional epidemiological analysis for the years 2019 to 2022 used data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) database on underlying cause of death in the US to identify the ranking of COVID-19 relative to other causes of death among individuals aged 0 to 19 years. COVID-19 deaths were considered in 12-month periods between April 1, 2020, and August 31, 2022, compared with deaths from leading non-COVID-19 causes in 2019, 2020, and 2021. MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES: Cause of death rankings by total number of deaths, crude rates per 100 000 population, and percentage of all causes of death, using the National Center for Health Statistics 113 Selected Causes of Death, for ages 0 to 19 and by age groupings (<1 year, 1-4 years, 5-9 years, 10-14 years, 15-19 years). RESULTS: There were 821 COVID-19 deaths among individuals aged 0 to 19 years during the study period, resulting in a crude death rate of 1.0 per 100 000 population overall; 4.3 per 100 000 for those younger than 1 year; 0.6 per 100 000 for those aged 1 to 4 years; 0.4 per 100 000 for those aged 5 to 9 years; 0.5 per 100 000 for those aged 10 to 14 years; and 1.8 per 100 000 for those aged 15 to 19 years. COVID-19 mortality in the time period of August 1, 2021, to July 31, 2022, was among the 10 leading causes of death in CYP aged 0 to 19 years in the US, ranking eighth among all causes of deaths, fifth in disease-related causes of deaths (excluding unintentional injuries, assault, and suicide), and first in deaths caused by infectious or respiratory diseases when compared with 2019. COVID-19 deaths constituted 2% of all causes of death in this age group. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE: The findings of this study suggest that COVID-19 was a leading cause of death in CYP. It caused substantially more deaths in CYP annually than any vaccine-preventable disease historically in the recent period before vaccines became available. Various factors, including underreporting and not accounting for COVID-19's role as a contributing cause of death from other diseases, mean that these estimates may understate the true mortality burden of COVID-19. The findings of this study underscore the public health relevance of COVID-19 to CYP. In the likely future context of sustained SARS-CoV-2 circulation, appropriate pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical interventions (eg, vaccines, ventilation, air cleaning) will continue to play an important role in limiting transmission of the virus and mitigating severe disease in CYP

A framework for digital sunken relief generation based on 3D geometric models

Sunken relief is a special art form of sculpture whereby the depicted shapes are sunk into a given surface. This is traditionally created by laboriously carving materials such as stone. Sunken reliefs often utilize the engraved lines or strokes to strengthen the impressions of a 3D presence and to highlight the features which otherwise are unrevealed. In other types of reliefs, smooth surfaces and their shadows convey such information in a coherent manner. Existing methods for relief generation are focused on forming a smooth surface with a shallow depth which provides the presence of 3D figures. Such methods unfortunately do not help the art form of sunken reliefs as they omit the presence of feature lines. We propose a framework to produce sunken reliefs from a known 3D geometry, which transforms the 3D objects into three layers of input to incorporate the contour lines seamlessly with the smooth surfaces. The three input layers take the advantages of the geometric information and the visual cues to assist the relief generation. This framework alters existing techniques in line drawings and relief generation, and then combines them organically for this particular purpose

Robust metrics for assessing the performance of different verbal autopsy cause assignment methods in validation studies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Verbal autopsy (VA) is an important method for obtaining cause of death information in settings without vital registration and medical certification of causes of death. An array of methods, including physician review and computer-automated methods, have been proposed and used. Choosing the best method for VA requires the appropriate metrics for assessing performance. Currently used metrics such as sensitivity, specificity, and cause-specific mortality fraction (CSMF) errors do not provide a robust basis for comparison.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We use simple simulations of populations with three causes of death to demonstrate that most metrics used in VA validation studies are extremely sensitive to the CSMF composition of the test dataset. Simulations also demonstrate that an inferior method can appear to have better performance than an alternative due strictly to the CSMF composition of the test set.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>VA methods need to be evaluated across a set of test datasets with widely varying CSMF compositions. We propose two metrics for assessing the performance of a proposed VA method. For assessing how well a method does at individual cause of death assignment, we recommend the average chance-corrected concordance across causes. This metric is insensitive to the CSMF composition of the test sets and corrects for the degree to which a method will get the cause correct due strictly to chance. For the evaluation of CSMF estimation, we propose CSMF accuracy. CSMF accuracy is defined as one minus the sum of all absolute CSMF errors across causes divided by the maximum total error. It is scaled from zero to one and can generalize a method's CSMF estimation capability regardless of the number of causes. Performance of a VA method for CSMF estimation by cause can be assessed by examining the relationship across test datasets between the estimated CSMF and the true CSMF.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>With an increasing range of VA methods available, it will be critical to objectively assess their performance in assigning cause of death. Chance-corrected concordance and CSMF accuracy assessed across a large number of test datasets with widely varying CSMF composition provide a robust strategy for this assessment.</p

Revising the WHO verbal autopsy instrument to facilitate routine cause-of-death monitoring.

OBJECTIVE: Verbal autopsy (VA) is a systematic approach for determining causes of death (CoD) in populations without routine medical certification. It has mainly been used in research contexts and involved relatively lengthy interviews. Our objective here is to describe the process used to shorten, simplify, and standardise the VA process to make it feasible for application on a larger scale such as in routine civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems. METHODS: A literature review of existing VA instruments was undertaken. The World Health Organization (WHO) then facilitated an international consultation process to review experiences with existing VA instruments, including those from WHO, the Demographic Evaluation of Populations and their Health in Developing Countries (INDEPTH) Network, InterVA, and the Population Health Metrics Research Consortium (PHMRC). In an expert meeting, consideration was given to formulating a workable VA CoD list [with mapping to the International Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, Tenth Revision (ICD-10) CoD] and to the viability and utility of existing VA interview questions, with a view to undertaking systematic simplification. FINDINGS: A revised VA CoD list was compiled enabling mapping of all ICD-10 CoD onto 62 VA cause categories, chosen on the grounds of public health significance as well as potential for ascertainment from VA. A set of 221 indicators for inclusion in the revised VA instrument was developed on the basis of accumulated experience, with appropriate skip patterns for various population sub-groups. The duration of a VA interview was reduced by about 40% with this new approach. CONCLUSIONS: The revised VA instrument resulting from this consultation process is presented here as a means of making it available for widespread use and evaluation. It is envisaged that this will be used in conjunction with automated models for assigning CoD from VA data, rather than involving physicians