Iatrogenic effects of Reboot/ NoFap on public health: A preregistered survey study

“Reboot,” especially NoFap, promotes abstinence from masturbation and/or pornography to treat “pornography addiction,” an unrecognized diagnosis. While the intention of Reboot/NoFap is to decrease distress, qualitative studies have consistently suggested that “Reboots” paradoxically cause more distress. The distress appears to occur in response to (1) the abstinence goal, which recasts common sexual behaviors as personal “failures,” and (2) problematic and inaccurate Reboot/NoFap forum messaging regarding sexuality and addiction. This preregistered survey asked men about their experience with perceived “relapse” and NoFap forums. Participants reported that their most recent relapse was followed by feeling shameful, worthless, sad, a desire to commit suicide, and other negative emotions. A novel predictor of identifying as a pornography addict in this lower religiosity sample was higher narcissism. Participants reported that NoFap forums contained posts that were misogynist (73.7% of participants), bullying (49.1%), anti-LGBT (42.9%), antisemitic (32.0%), instructing followers to harm or kill themselves (23.5%), or threats to hurt someone else (21.1%). More engagement in NoFap online forums was associated with worse symptoms of erectile dysfunction, depression, anxiety, and more sex negativity. Results support and expand previously documented harms and problems with Reboot/NoFap claims of treating pornography addiction from qualitative research

Hybrid Software Development Approaches in Practice: A European Perspective

Agile and traditional development approaches are used in combination in todays software development. To improve the understanding and to provide better guidance for selecting appropriate development approaches, it is important to analyze such combinations in practice. Results obtained from an online survey strongly confirm that hybrid development approaches are widely used in industry. Our results show that hybrid development approaches: (i) have become reality for nearly all companies; (ii) are applied to specific projects even in the presence of company-wide policies for process usage; (iii) are neither planned nor designed but emerge from the evolution of different work practices; and, (iv) are consistently used regardless of company size or industry secto

Experimental growth law for bubbles in a "wet" 3D liquid foam

We used X-ray tomography to characterize the geometry of all bubbles in a liquid foam of average liquid fraction $\phi_l\approx 17$ and to follow their evolution, measuring the normalized growth rate $\mathcal{G}=V^{-{1/3}}\frac{dV} {dt}$ for 7000 bubbles. While $\mathcal{G}$ does not depend only on the number of faces of a bubble, its average over $f-$faced bubbles scales as $G_f\sim f-f_0$ for large $f$s at all times. We discuss the dispersion of $\mathcal{G}$ and the influence of $V$ on $\mathcal{G}$.Comment: 10 pages, submitted to PR

Integrating robotics into wildlife conservation: testing improvements to predator deterrents through movement

Background Agricultural and pastoral landscapes can provide important habitat for wildlife conservation, but sharing these landscapes with wildlife can create conflict that is costly and requires managing. Livestock predation is a good example of the challenges involving coexistence with wildlife across shared landscapes. Integrating new technology into agricultural practices could help minimize human-wildlife conflict. In this study, we used concepts from the fields of robotics (i.e., automated movement and adaptiveness) and agricultural practices (i.e., managing livestock risk to predation) to explore how integration of these concepts could aid the development of more effective predator deterrents. Methods We used a colony of captive coyotes as a model system, and simulated predation events with meat baits inside and outside of protected zones. Inside the protected zones we used a remote-controlled vehicle with a state-of-the art, commercially available predator deterrent (i.e., Foxlight) mounted on the top and used this to test three treatments: (1) light only (i.e., without movement or adaptiveness), (2) predetermined movement (i.e., with movement and without adaptiveness), and (3) adaptive movement (i.e., with both movement and adaptiveness). We measured the time it took for coyotes to eat the baits and analyzed the data with a time-to-event survival strategy. Results Survival of baits was consistently higher inside the protected zone, and the three movement treatments incrementally increased survival time over baseline except for the light only treatment in the nonprotected zone. Incorporating predetermined movement essentially doubled the efficacy of the light only treatment both inside and outside the protected zone. Incorporating adaptive movement exponentially increased survival time both inside and outside the protected zone. Our findings provide compelling evidence that incorporating existing robotics capabilities (predetermined and adaptive movement) could greatly enhance protection of agricultural resources and aid in the development of nonlethal tools for managing wildlife. Our findings also demonstrate the importance of marrying agricultural practices (e.g., spatial management of livestock at night) with new technology to improve the efficacy of wildlife deterrents

Computer-Assisted Proofs of Some Identities for Bessel Functions of Fractional Order

We employ computer algebra algorithms to prove a collection of identities involving Bessel functions with half-integer orders and other special functions. These identities appear in the famous Handbook of Mathematical Functions, as well as in its successor, the DLMF, but their proofs were lost. We use generating functions and symbolic summation techniques to produce new proofs for them.Comment: Final version, some typos were corrected. 21 pages, uses svmult.cl

Catching up with Method and Process Practice: An Industry-Informed Baseline for Researchers

Software development methods are usually not applied by the book.companies are under pressure to continuously deploy software products that meet market needs and stakeholders\u27 requests. To implement efficient and effective development processes, companies utilize multiple frameworks, methods and practices, and combine these into hybrid methods. A common combination contains a rich management framework to organize and steer projects complemented with a number of smaller practices providing the development teams with tools to complete their tasks. In this paper, based on 732 data points collected through an international survey, we study the software development process use in practice. Our results show that 76.8% of the companies implement hybrid methods.company size as well as the strategy in devising and evolving hybrid methods affect the suitability of the chosen process to reach company or project goals. Our findings show that companies that combine planned improvement programs with process evolution can increase their process\u27 suitability by up to 5%

Subretinal Implantation of Electrospun, Short Nanowire, and Smooth Poly(ε-caprolactone) Scaffolds to the Subretinal Space of Porcine Eyes

Biodegradable scaffolds play an important adjunct role in transplantation of retinal progenitor cells (RPCs) to the subretinal space. Poly(ε-Caprolactone) (PCL) scaffolds with different modifications were subretinally implanted in 28 porcine eyes and evaluated by multifocal electroretinography (mfERG) and histology after 6 weeks of observation. PCL Short Nanowire, PCL Electrospun, and PCL Smooth scaffolds were well tolerated in the subretinal space in pigs and caused no inflammation and limited tissue disruption. PCL Short Nanowire had an average rate of preserved overlying outer retina 17% higher than PCL Electrospun and 25% higher than PCL Smooth. Furthermore, PCL Short Nanowire was found to have the most suitable degree of stiffness for surgical delivery to the subretinal space. The membrane-induced photoreceptor damage could be shown on mfERG, but the reductions in P1 amplitude were only significant for the PCL Smooth. We conclude that of the tested scaffolds, PCL Short Nanowire is the best candidate for subretinal implantation

The Influence of Brightness on Functional Assessment by mfERG: A Study on Scaffolds Used in Retinal Cell Transplantation in Pigs

To determine the effect of membrane brightness on multifocal electroretinograms (mfERGs), we implanted poly lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) membranes in the subretinal space of 11 porcine eyes. We compared membranes with their native shiny white color with membranes that were stained with a blue dye (Brilliant Blue). Histological and electrophysiological evaluation of the overlying retina was carried out 6 weeks after implantation. Histologically, both white and blue membranes degraded in a spongiform manner leaving a disrupted outer retina with no preserved photoreceptor segments. Multifocal ERG revealed the white membranes to have a significantly higher P1-amplitude ratio than the blue (P = 0.027), and a correlation between brightness ratio and P1-amplitude ratio was found (r = 0.762). Based on our findings, we conclude that bright subretinal objects can produce normal mfERG amplitude ratios even when the adjacent photoreceptors are missing. Functional assessment with mfERG in scaffold implant studies should therefore be evaluated with care

Quasisymmetric graphs and Zygmund functions

A quasisymmetric graph is a curve whose projection onto a line is a quasisymmetric map. We show that this class of curves is related to solutions of the reduced Beltrami equation and to a generalization of the Zygmund class $\Lambda_*$. This relation makes it possible to use the tools of harmonic analysis to construct nontrivial examples of quasisymmetric graphs and of quasiconformal maps.Comment: 21 pages, no figure

Low Cost MR Compatible Haptic Stimulation with Application to fMRI Neurofeedback

The most common feedback displays in the fMRI environment are visual, e.g., in which participants try to increase or decrease the level of a thermometer. However, haptic feedback is increasingly valued in computer interaction tasks, particularly for real-time fMRI feedback. fMRI-neurofeedback is a clinical intervention that has not yet taken advantage of this trend. Here we describe a low-cost, user-friendly, MR-compatible system that can provide graded haptic vibrotactile stimulation in an initial application to fMRI neurofeedback. We also present a feasibility demonstration showing that we could successfully set up the system and obtain data in the context of a neurofeedback paradigm. We conclude that vibrotactile stimulation using this low-cost system is a viable method of feedback presentation, and encourage neurofeedback researchers to incorporate this type of feedback into their studies