Bridging Alone: Religious Conservatism, Marital Homogamy, and Voluntary Association Membership

This study characterizes social insularity of religiously conservative American married couples by examining patterns of voluntary associationmembership. Constructing a dataset of 3938 marital dyads from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, the author investigates whether conservative religious homogamy encourages membership in religious voluntary groups and discourages membership in secular voluntary groups. Results indicate that couples’ shared affiliation with conservative denominations, paired with beliefs in biblical authority and inerrancy, increases the likelihood of religious group membership for husbands and wives and reduces the likelihood of secular group membership for wives, but not for husbands. The social insularity of conservative religious groups appears to be reinforced by homogamy—particularly by wives who share faith with husbands

Platform trials

Platform trials focus on the perpetual testing of many interventions in a disease or a setting. These trials have lasting organizational, administrative, data, analytic, and operational frameworks making them highly efficient. The use of adaptation often increases the probabilities of allocating participants to better interventions and obtaining conclusive results. The COVID-19 pandemic showed the potential of platform trials as a fast and valid way to improved treatments. This review gives an overview of key concepts and elements using the Intensive Care Platform Trial (INCEPT) as an example.</p

A new tool to assess Clinical Diversity In Meta‐analyses (CDIM) of interventions

OBJECTIVE: To develop and validate Clinical Diversity In Meta-analyses (CDIM), a new tool for assessing clinical diversity between trials in meta-analyses of interventions.STUDY DESIGN AND SETTING: The development of CDIM was based on consensus work informed by empirical literature and expertise. We drafted the CDIM tool, refined it, and validated CDIM for interrater scale reliability and agreement in three groups.RESULTS: CDIM measures clinical diversity on a scale that includes four domains with 11 items overall: setting (time of conduct/country development status/units type); population (age, sex, patient inclusion criteria/baseline disease severity, comorbidities); interventions (intervention intensity/strength/duration of intervention, timing, control intervention, cointerventions); and outcome (definition of outcome, timing of outcome assessment). The CDIM is completed in two steps: first two authors independently assess clinical diversity in the four domains. Second, after agreeing upon scores of individual items a consensus score is achieved. Interrater scale reliability and agreement ranged from moderate to almost perfect depending on the type of raters.CONCLUSION: CDIM is the first tool developed for assessing clinical diversity in meta-analyses of interventions. We found CDIM to be a reliable tool for assessing clinical diversity among trials in meta-analysis.</p

Impact of Common Diabetes Risk Variant in MTNR1B

The risk of type 2 diabetes (T2D) is increased by abnormalities in sleep quantity and quality, circadian alignment, and melatonin regulation. A common genetic variant in a receptor for the circadian-regulated hormone melatonin (MTNR1B) is associated with increased fasting blood glucose and risk of T2D, but whether sleep or circadian disruption mediates this risk is unknown. We aimed to test if MTNR1B diabetes risk variant rs10830963 associates with measures of sleep or circadian physiology in intensive in-laboratory protocols (n = 58–96) or cross-sectional studies with sleep quantity and quality and timing measures from self-report (n = 4,307–10,332), actigraphy (n = 1,513), or polysomnography (n = 3,021). In the in-laboratory studies, we found a significant association with a substantially longer duration of elevated melatonin levels (41 min) and delayed circadian phase of dim-light melatonin offset (1.37 h), partially mediated through delayed offset of melatonin synthesis. Furthermore, increased T2D risk in MTNR1B risk allele carriers was more pronounced in early risers versus late risers as determined by 7 days of actigraphy. Our results provide the surprising insight that the MTNR1B risk allele influences dynamics of melatonin secretion, generating a novel hypothesis that the MTNR1B risk allele may extend the duration of endogenous melatonin production later into the morning and that early waking may magnify the diabetes risk conferred by the risk allele

Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects

Search for eccentric black hole coalescences during the third observing run of LIGO and Virgo

Despite the growing number of confident binary black hole coalescences observed through gravitational waves so far, the astrophysical origin of these binaries remains uncertain. Orbital eccentricity is one of the clearest tracers of binary formation channels. Identifying binary eccentricity, however, remains challenging due to the limited availability of gravitational waveforms that include effects of eccentricity. Here, we present observational results for a waveform-independent search sensitive to eccentric black hole coalescences, covering the third observing run (O3) of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. We identified no new high-significance candidates beyond those that were already identified with searches focusing on quasi-circular binaries. We determine the sensitivity of our search to high-mass (total mass M&gt;70 M⊙) binaries covering eccentricities up to 0.3 at 15 Hz orbital frequency, and use this to compare model predictions to search results. Assuming all detections are indeed quasi-circular, for our fiducial population model, we place an upper limit for the merger rate density of high-mass binaries with eccentricities 0&lt;e≤0.3 at 0.33 Gpc−3 yr−1 at 90\% confidence level

Ultralight vector dark matter search using data from the KAGRA O3GK run

Among the various candidates for dark matter (DM), ultralight vector DM can be probed by laser interferometric gravitational wave detectors through the measurement of oscillating length changes in the arm cavities. In this context, KAGRA has a unique feature due to differing compositions of its mirrors, enhancing the signal of vector DM in the length change in the auxiliary channels. Here we present the result of a search for U(1)B−L gauge boson DM using the KAGRA data from auxiliary length channels during the first joint observation run together with GEO600. By applying our search pipeline, which takes into account the stochastic nature of ultralight DM, upper bounds on the coupling strength between the U(1)B−L gauge boson and ordinary matter are obtained for a range of DM masses. While our constraints are less stringent than those derived from previous experiments, this study demonstrates the applicability of our method to the lower-mass vector DM search, which is made difficult in this measurement by the short observation time compared to the auto-correlation time scale of DM

Chronotype Genetic Variant in PER2 is Associated with Intrinsic Circadian Period in Humans

Abstract The PERIOD2 (PER2) gene is a core molecular component of the circadian clock and plays an important role in the generation and maintenance of daily rhythms. Rs35333999, a missense variant of PER2 common in European populations, has been shown to associate with later chronotype. Chronotype relates to the timing of biological and behavioral activities, including when we sleep, eat, and exercise, and later chronotype is associated with longer intrinsic circadian period (cycle length), a fundamental property of the circadian system. Thus, we tested whether this PER2 variant was associated with circadian period and found significant associations with longer intrinsic circadian period as measured under forced desynchrony protocols, the ‘gold standard’ for intrinsic circadian period assessment. Minor allele (T) carriers exhibited significantly longer circadian periods when determinations were based on either core body temperature or plasma melatonin measurements, as compared to non-carriers (by 12 and 11 min, respectively; accounting for ~7% of inter-individual variance). These findings provide a possible underlying biological mechanism for inter-individual differences in chronotype, and support the central role of PER2 in the human circadian timing system