Understanding communication pathways to foster community engagement for health improvement in North West Pakistan

Background: This paper describes the community engagement process undertaken to ascertain the focus, development and implementation of an intervention to improve iodised salt consumption in rural communities in North West Pakistan. The Jirga is a traditional informal structure, which gathers men respected within their community and acts in a governing and decision making capacity in the Pukhtoon culture. The Jirga system had a dual purpose for the study; to access men from the community to discuss the importance of iodised salt, and as an engagement process for the intervention. Methods: A number of qualitative data collection activities were undertaken, with Jirga members and their wives, male and female outreach workers and two groups of women, under and over forty years old. The aim of these were to highlight the communication channels and levers of influence on health behaviour, which were multiple and complex and all needed to be taken into consideration in order to ensure successful and locally sensitive community engagement. Results: Communication channels are described within local families and the communities around them. The key influential role of the Jirga is highlighted as linked both to the standing of its members and the community cohesion ethos that it embodies. Engaging Jirga members in discussions about iodised salt was key in designing an intervention that would activate the most influential levers to decision making in the community. Gendered decision making-processes within the household have been highlighted as restricting women’s autonomy. Whilst in one respect our data confirm this, a more complex hierarchy of decisional power has been highlighted, whereby the concept of ‘wisdom’, an amalgamation of age, experience and education, presents important possibilities. Community members with the least autonomy are the youngest uneducated females, who rely on a web of socially and culturally determined ways to influence decision-making. Conclusions: The major lines of communication and influence in the local community described are placed within the wider literature on community engagement in health improvement. The process of maximisation of local cultural knowledge as part of a community engagement effort is one that has application well beyond the particular setting of this study

The Anatomical Boundary of the Rat Claustrum

The claustrum is a subcortical nucleus that exhibits dense connectivity across the neocortex. Considerable recent progress has been made in establishing its genetic and anatomical characteristics, however, a core, contentious issue that regularly presents in the literature pertains to the rostral extent of its anatomical boundary. The present study addresses this issue in the rat brain. Using a combination of immunohistochemistry and neuroanatomical tract tracing, we have examined the expression profiles of several genes that have previously been identified as exhibiting a differential expression profile in the claustrum relative to the surrounding cortex. The expression profiles of parvalbumin (PV), crystallin mu (Crym), and guanine nucleotide binding protein (G protein), gamma 2 (Gng2) were assessed immunohistochemically alongside, or in combination with cortical anterograde, or retrograde tracer injections. Retrograde tracer injections into various thalamic nuclei were used to further establish the rostral border of the claustrum. Expression of all three markers delineated a nuclear boundary that extended considerably (∼500 μm) beyond the anterior horn of the neostriatum. Cortical retrograde and anterograde tracer injections, respectively, revealed distributions of cortically-projecting claustral neurons and cortical efferent inputs to the claustrum that overlapped with the gene marker-derived claustrum boundary. Finally, retrograde tracer injections into the thalamus revealed insular cortico-thalamic projections encapsulating a claustral area with strongly diminished cell label, that extended rostral to the striatum

Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application

This chapter explores the processes of reviewing literature as a research method. The logic of the family of research approaches called systematic review is analysed and the variation in techniques used in the different approaches explored using examples from existing reviews. The key distinctions between aggregative and configurative approaches are illustrated and the chapter signposts further reading on key issues in the systematic review process

Investigating the Relationship Between Self-Perceived Moral Superiority and Moral Behavior Using Economic Games

Most people report that they are superior to the average person on various moral traits. The psychological causes and social consequences of this phenomenon have received considerable empirical attention. The behavioral correlates of self-perceived moral superiority, however, remain unknown. We present the results of two preregistered studies (Study 1, N=827; Study 2, N=825) in which we indirectly assessed participants’ self-perceived moral superiority, and used two incentivized economic games to measure their engagement in moral behavior. Across studies, self-perceived moral superiority was unrelated to trust in others and to trustworthiness, as measured by the Trust Game; and unrelated to fairness, as measured by the Dictator Game. This pattern of findings was robust to a range of analyses, and, in both studies, Bayesian analyses indicated moderate support for the null over the alternative hypotheses. We interpret and discuss these findings, and highlight interesting avenues for future research on this topic

Machine learning algorithms for systematic review: reducing workload in a preclinical review of animal studies and reducing human screening error

BACKGROUND: Here, we outline a method of applying existing machine learning (ML) approaches to aid citation screening in an on-going broad and shallow systematic review of preclinical animal studies. The aim is to achieve a high-performing algorithm comparable to human screening that can reduce human resources required for carrying out this step of a systematic review. METHODS: We applied ML approaches to a broad systematic review of animal models of depression at the citation screening stage. We tested two independently developed ML approaches which used different classification models and feature sets. We recorded the performance of the ML approaches on an unseen validation set of papers using sensitivity, specificity and accuracy. We aimed to achieve 95% sensitivity and to maximise specificity. The classification model providing the most accurate predictions was applied to the remaining unseen records in the dataset and will be used in the next stage of the preclinical biomedical sciences systematic review. We used a cross-validation technique to assign ML inclusion likelihood scores to the human screened records, to identify potential errors made during the human screening process (error analysis). RESULTS: ML approaches reached 98.7% sensitivity based on learning from a training set of 5749 records, with an inclusion prevalence of 13.2%. The highest level of specificity reached was 86%. Performance was assessed on an independent validation dataset. Human errors in the training and validation sets were successfully identified using the assigned inclusion likelihood from the ML model to highlight discrepancies. Training the ML algorithm on the corrected dataset improved the specificity of the algorithm without compromising sensitivity. Error analysis correction leads to a 3% improvement in sensitivity and specificity, which increases precision and accuracy of the ML algorithm. CONCLUSIONS: This work has confirmed the performance and application of ML algorithms for screening in systematic reviews of preclinical animal studies. It has highlighted the novel use of ML algorithms to identify human error. This needs to be confirmed in other reviews with different inclusion prevalence levels, but represents a promising approach to integrating human decisions and automation in systematic review methodology

Christianity, Sexuality and Citizenship in Africa: Critical Intersections

Citizenship in sub-Saharan Africa has undergone profound changes in recent decades as part of wider social and political dynamics. One notable development is the emergence of Christianity, especially in its Pentecostal-Charismatic forms, as a public religion. Christian actors, beliefs and practices have increasingly come to manifest themselves in the public sphere, actively engage with politics, define narratives of nationhood, and shape notions of citizenship. A second major development is the emergence of sexuality as a critical site of citizenship and nationhood in postcolonial Africa. On the one hand, many political and religious leaders are invested in a popular ideology of the heterosexual family as the basis of nation-building, while on the other hand, LGBT communities are becoming more visible and claim recognition from the state. The contributions to this special issue engage these two contrasting developments, examining the interconnections between Christianity, sexuality and citizenship empirically and theoretically through case studies in various African contexts and from several academic disciplines and critical perspectives

The development of sex differences in ring-tailed lemur feeding ecology

Sex differences in feeding ecology may develop in response to fluctuations in physiological costs to females over their reproductive cycles, or to sexual size dimorphism, or function to minimize feeding competition within a group via resource partitioning. For most mammal species, it is unknown how these factors contribute to sex differences in feeding, or how the development of males and females reflects these intraspecific feeding differences. We show changes in dietary composition, diversity, overlap, and foraging behavior throughout development in ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) and test how the development of sex differences in feeding is related to female costs of reproduction and year-round resource partitioning. Sex differences in dietary composition were only present when females were lactating, but sex differences in other aspects of feeding, including dietary diversity, and relative time spent feeding and foraging, developed at or near the time of weaning. Sex difference in juveniles and subadults, when present, were similar to the differences found in adults. The low year-round dietary overlap and early differences in dietary diversity indicate that some resource partitioning may begin with young individuals and fluctuate throughout development. The major differences between males and females in dietary composition suggest that these larger changes in diet are closely tied to female reproductive state when females must shift their diet to meet energetic and nutritional requirements

Dose-dependent expression of claudin-5 is a modifying factor in schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects up to 1% of the general population. Various genes show associations with schizophrenia and a very weak nominal association with the tight junction protein, claudin-5, has previously been identified. Claudin-5 is expressed in endothelial cells forming part of the blood-brain barrier (BBB). Furthermore, schizophrenia occurs in 30% of individuals with 22q11 deletion syndrome (22q11DS), a population who are haploinsufficient for the claudin-5 gene. Here, we show that a variant in the claudin-5 gene is weakly associated with schizophrenia in 22q11DS, leading to 75% less claudin-5 being expressed in endothelial cells. We also show that targeted adeno-associated virus-mediated suppression of claudin-5 in the mouse brain results in localized BBB disruption and behavioural changes. Using an inducible ‘knockdown’ mouse model, we further link claudin-5 suppression with psychosis through a distinct behavioural phenotype showing impairments in learning and memory, anxiety-like behaviour and sensorimotor gating. In addition, these animals develop seizures and die after 3–4 weeks of claudin-5 suppression, reinforcing the crucial role of claudin-5 in normal neurological function. Finally, we show that anti-psychotic medications dose-dependently increase claudin-5 expression in vitro and in vivo while aberrant, discontinuous expression of claudin−5 in the brains of schizophrenic patients post mortem was observed compared to age-matched controls. Together, these data suggest that BBB disruption may be a modifying factor in the development of schizophrenia and that drugs directly targeting the BBB may offer new therapeutic opportunities for treating this disorder