Resilience to Violent Extremism: Validation of the Arabic BRAVE Measure

This study translates the Building Resilience to Violent Extremism (BRAVE) measure to assess individual and community resilience levels to resist, counter, and buffer violent extremism. The Arabic BRAVE measure translated and validated the original Grossman (2020) five factors scale. The Arabic BRAVE measure provided scores across the same five factors contextualized using data from 604 youth Arabs from five countries. Following analyses of its structural validity, reliability, and measurement invariance, the 14-item Arabic BRAVE measure was found to have good internal reliability according to its composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha, which varied between 0.73 and 0.93.  The overall structure and measurement of the models were assessed through confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group invariance testing. Evidence for the configural and partial metric (but not scalar or residuals) invariance of the factor structure was observed when comparing the male and female subsamples. The Arabic BRAVE measure is a much-needed tool that can help identify young people’s protective capacities against and vulnerabilities to violent extremism, incorporating various capital factors to assist in designing a culturally sensitive public health approach to countering the threat of extremism.   AcknowledgementsThis research was funded by Naif Arab University for Security Sciences (Grant No. NAUSS-SRC-21-02)

Psychiatric Comorbidity in Children and Adults with Gluten-Related Disorders: A Narrative Review

Gluten-related disorders are characterized by both intestinal and extraintestinal manifestations. Previous studies have suggested an association between gluten-related disorder and psychiatric comorbidities. The objective of our current review is to provide a comprehensive review of this association in children and adults. A systematic literature search using MEDLINE, Embase and PsycINFO from inception to 2018 using terms of ‘celiac disease’ or ‘gluten-sensitivity-related disorders’ combined with terms of ‘mental disorders’ was conducted. A total of 47 articles were included in our review, of which 28 studies were conducted in adults, 11 studies in children and eight studies included both children and adults. The majority of studies were conducted in celiac disease, two studies in non-celiac gluten sensitivity and none in wheat allergy. Enough evidence is currently available supporting the association of celiac disease with depression and, to a lesser extent, with eating disorders. Further investigation is warranted to evaluate the association suggested with other psychiatric disorders. In conclusion, routine surveillance of potential psychiatric manifestations in children and adults with gluten-related disorders should be carried out by the attending physician

Resilience to Violent Extremism: Validation of the Arabic BRAVE Measure

This study translates the Building Resilience to Violent Extremism (BRAVE) measure to assess individual and community resilience levels to resist, counter, and buffer violent extremism. The Arabic BRAVE measure translated and validated the original Grossman (2020) five factors scale. The Arabic BRAVE measure provided scores across the same five factors contextualized using data from 604 youth Arabs from five countries. Following analyses of its structural validity, reliability, and measurement invariance, the 14-item Arabic BRAVE measure was found to have good internal reliability according to its composite reliability and Cronbach’s alpha, which varied between 0.73 and 0.93. The overall structure and measurement of the models were assessed through confirmatory factor analysis and multi-group invariance testing. Evidence for the configural and partial metric (but not scalar or residuals) invariance of the factor structure was observed when comparing the male and female subsamples. The Arabic BRAVE measure is a much-needed tool that can help identify young people’s protective capacities against and vulnerabilities to violent extremism, incorporating various capital factors to assist in designing a culturally sensitive public health approach to countering the threat of extremism

3DCoMPaT++^{++}: An improved Large-scale 3D Vision Dataset for Compositional Recognition

In this work, we present 3DCoMPaT$^{++}$, a multimodal 2D/3D dataset with 160 million rendered views of more than 10 million stylized 3D shapes carefully annotated at the part-instance level, alongside matching RGB point clouds, 3D textured meshes, depth maps, and segmentation masks. 3DCoMPaT$^{++}$ covers 41 shape categories, 275 fine-grained part categories, and 293 fine-grained material classes that can be compositionally applied to parts of 3D objects. We render a subset of one million stylized shapes from four equally spaced views as well as four randomized views, leading to a total of 160 million renderings. Parts are segmented at the instance level, with coarse-grained and fine-grained semantic levels. We introduce a new task, called Grounded CoMPaT Recognition (GCR), to collectively recognize and ground compositions of materials on parts of 3D objects. Additionally, we report the outcomes of a data challenge organized at CVPR2023, showcasing the winning method's utilization of a modified PointNet$^{++}$ model trained on 6D inputs, and exploring alternative techniques for GCR enhancement. We hope our work will help ease future research on compositional 3D Vision.Comment: https://3dcompat-dataset.org/v2

Hepatic safety of atypical antipsychotics: current evidence and future directions

The newer atypical antipsychotic agents (AAPs) represent an attractive therapeutic option for a wide range of psychotic disorders, including schizophrenia and bipolar mania, because of the reduced risk of disabling extrapyramidal symptoms. However, their growing use has raised questions about their tolerability over the endocrine, metabolic, and cardiovascular axes. Indeed, atypical antipsychotic drugs are associated, to differing extents, with mild elevation of aminotransferases related to weight gain, AAP-induced metabolic syndrome, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. Although the hepatic safety of new AAPs seems improved over that of chlorpromazine, they can occasionally cause idiosyncratic liver injury with varying phenotypes and, rarely, lead to acute liver failure. However, AAPs are a group of heterogeneous, chemically unrelated compounds with distinct pharmacological and pharmacokinetic properties and substantially different safety profiles, which precludes the notion of a class effect for hepatotoxicity risk and highlights the need for an individualized therapeutic approach. We discuss the current evidence on the hepatotoxicity potential of AAPs, the emerging underlying mechanisms, and the limitations inherent to this group of drugs for both establishing a proper causality assessment and developing strategies for risk management

The Probiotic VSL#3 Does Not Seem to Be Efficacious for the Treatment of Gastrointestinal Symptomatology of Patients with Fibromyalgia: A Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trial

Background: Gastrointestinal symptomatology is frequent among patients with fibromyalgia, which increases disease burden and lacks specific treatment, either pharmacological or nonpharmacological. We aimed to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of a multi-strain probiotic, VSL#3®, for the treatment of fibromyalgia-associated gastrointestinal manifestations. Methods: This randomized, placebo-controlled trial included 12 weeks of probiotic or placebo treatment followed by 12 weeks of follow up. The primary outcome variable was the mean change from the baseline to the endpoint in the composite severity score of the three main gastrointestinal symptoms reported by patients with fibromyalgia (abdominal pain, abdominal bloating and meteorism). Secondary outcome variables were the severity of additional gastrointestinal symptoms, fibromyalgia severity, depression, sleep disturbance, health-related quality of life and patients’ overall impression of improvement. Results: No differences were found between VSL#3® (n = 54) and the placebo (n = 56) in the primary outcome (estimated treatment difference: 1.1; 95% confidence interval [CI]: −2.1, 4.2; p = 0.501), or in any of the secondary outcomes. However, responders to VSL#3 were more likely to maintain any improvement during the follow-up period compared to responders in the placebo arm. Overall, VSL#3 tolerability was good. Conclusion: Our data could not demonstrate any beneficial effects of VSL#3® either on the composite score of severity of abdominal pain, bloating and meteorism or in any of the secondary outcome variables. More research is needed to elucidate specific factors that may predict a favourable response to treatment in patients with fibromyalgia.Actial Farmaceutica Srl (Rome, Italy)Ferring SAU (Madrid, Spain)Neither Actial Farmaceutica Srl nor Ferring SAUActial Farmaceutica Sr

Adenosine signaling inhibits erythropoiesis and promotes myeloid differentiation

Intracellular uptake of adenosine is essential for optimal erythroid commitment and differentiation of hematopoietic progenitor cells. The role of adenosine signaling is well documented in the regulation of blood flow, cell proliferation, apoptosis, and stem cell regeneration. However, the role of adenosine signaling in hematopoiesis remains unclear. In this study, we show that adenosine signaling inhibits the proliferation of erythroid precursors by activating the p53 pathway and hampers the terminal erythroid maturation. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the activation of specific adenosine receptors promotes myelopoiesis. Overall, our findings indicate that extracellular adenosine could be a new player in the regulation of hematopoiesis