Do rural infrastructure investments benefit the poor? Evaluating linkages : a global view, a focus on Vietnam

What are linkages between rural infrastructure investments, and household welfare? In the past, most of the evaluations to assess the effectiveness of a project, focused on physical outputs, and success of project implementation. In recent years, more attention has been given to the impact of investments, particularly its effect on the poor, both in economic, and non-economic terms. The author presents findings from a survey of the existing literature on such impacts. Although evidence exists for improved household welfare from rural infrastructure investment, little evidence was found of studies that provided concrete linkages between specific investments in rural infrastructure, and increased welfare of the rural poor. This is due in part to the complexity, and oftentimes the concurrent nature of interventions, that make attributing welfare improvements, to a particular project, virtually impossible. The evidence is presented in this three-part paper. Part I gives examples of past, and current attempts to assess the impact of rural infrastructure projects, and provides suggestions for future evaluations. Part II discusses in detail some observed economic, and non-economic impacts on the poor, from different rural infrastructure interventions. Part III presents lessons learned from the literature on how to maximize the impact of rural infrastructure interventions on household welfare. Specific project, and country examples from the literature, and new data from a recent qualitative study in Vietnam, are presented as evidence for, and illustration of key ideas, and issues.Environmental Economics&Policies,Decentralization,Health Economics&Finance,ICT Policy and Strategies,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Environmental Economics&Policies,ICT Policy and Strategies,Poverty Monitoring&Analysis,Agricultural Research,Engineering

Proposed Strategy for the Development of the Palestinian NGO sector

1. This strategy is intended for the broad range of non-governmental organizations in Palestine. The initiative to prepare this strategy came from the Project Management Office (PMO) of the Palestinian NGO (PNGO) Project of the World Bank in preparation for the third phase of PNGO. However, the strategy is not intended to be a strategy of the PMO for PNGO III only. It is crafted to address the alleged weaknesses of NGOs and the expectations of stakeholders of the role that they should play in responding both to current problems as well as long-term concerns. It is expected that implementation will be a collaborative undertaking by different stakeholders

Emotional information-processing correlates of positive mental health in adolescence: a network analysis approach

The combined cognitive bias hypothesis proposes that emotional informationprocessing biases may conjointly influence mental health. Yet, little is known about the interrelationships amongst cognitive biases, particularly in adolescence. We used data from the CogBIAS longitudinal study (Booth et al., 2017), including 450 adolescents who completed measures of interpretation bias, memory bias, and a validated measure of general mental health in a typically developing population. We used a moderated network modelling approach to examine positive mental health-related moderation of the cognitive bias network. We found that mental health was directly associated with positive and negative memory biases, and positive interpretation biases, but not negative interpretation biases. Further, we observed some mental health-related moderation of the network structure. Network connectivity decreased with higher positive mental health scores. Network approaches allow us to model complex relationships amongst cognitive biases and develop novel hypotheses for future research.Sam Parsons, Annabel Songco, Charlotte Booth and Elaine Fo

Data and Protocol for the Oxford Achieving Resilience During COVID-19 (ARC) Study

The Oxford Achieving Resilience during COVID-19 (ARC) study collected data from adolescents (aged 13–18), and parents of adolescents, from March 2020 to August 2021. Following a baseline survey (1274 completed baseline), participants were invited to 11 follow-up weekly surveys then 9 monthly follow-up surveys, and to an optional cognitive task. Each survey included questionnaires on mental health, resilience and wellbeing, COVID-19 related experiences and pandemic anxiety. Data is stored on the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/4b85w/), with comprehensive documentation on all measures. These data may be valuable to adolescent mental health researchers for further analyses and aggregation with other datasets.Sam Parsons, Ana Todorovic, Michele C. Lim, Annabel Songco, Elaine Fo

Affect and mental health across the lifespan during a year of the COVID-19 pandemic: The role of emotion regulation strategies and mental flexibility

Online First Publication, May 18, 2023. OnlinePublDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rise in common mental health problems compared to prepandemic levels, especially in young people. Understanding the factors that place young people at risk is critical to guide the response to increased mental health problems. Here we examine whether age-related differences in mental flexibility and frequency of use of emotion regulation strategies partially account for the poorer affect and increased mental health problems reported by younger people during the pandemic. Participants (N= 2,367; 11–100 years) from Australia, the UK, and US were surveyed thrice at 3-month intervals between May 2020 and April 2021. Participants completed measures of emotion regulation, mental flexibility, affect, and mental health. Younger age was associated with less positive (b=0.008, p,.001) and more negative (b=−0.015, p,.001) affect across the first year of the pandemic. Maladaptive emotion regulation partially accounted for age-related variance in negative affect (β=−0.013, p=.020), whereby younger age was associated with more frequent use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, which, in turn, was associated with more negative affect at our third assessment point. More frequent use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies, and in turn, changes in negative affect from our first to our third assessment, partially accounted for age-related variance in mental health problems (β= 0.007, p=.023). Our findings add to the growing literature demonstrating the vulnerability of younger people during the COVID-19 pandemic and suggest that emotion regulation may be a promising target for intervention.Savannah Minihan, Annabel Songco, Elaine Fox, Cecile D. Ladouceur, Louise Mewton, Michelle Moulds, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, Anne-Laura Van Harmelen, and Susanne Schweize

Development of a gamified cognitive training app “Social Brain Train” to enhance adolescent mental health: a participatory design study protocol

Background: Adolescence is a sensitive period for the onset of mental health disorders. Effective, easy-to-disseminate, scalable prevention and early interventions are urgently needed. Affective control has been proposed as a potential target mechanism. Training affective control has been shown to reduce mental health symptoms and improve emotion regulation. However, uptake and adherence to such training by adolescents has been low. Thus, the current study aims to receive end user (i.e., adolescents) feedback on a prototype of a novel app-based gamified affective control training program, the Social Brain Train. Methods: The proposed study aims to recruit participants aged 13-16 years old (N = 20) to provide user feedback on the Social Brain Train app. The first group of participants (n = 5) will complete an online questionnaire assessing demographics, symptoms of depression and anxiety, social rejection sensitivity and attitudes toward the malleability of cognition and mental health. They will complete two tasks assessing cognitive capacity and interpretation bias. Participants will be then be invited to an online group workshop, where they will be introduced to the app. They will train on the app for three days, and following app usage, participants will complete the aforementioned measures again, as well as provide ratings on app content, and complete a semi-structured interview to obtain in-depth user feedback, which will be used to inform modifications to the app. Following these modifications, a second group of participants (n = 15) will follow the same procedure, except they will train on the app for 14 days. Feedback from both groups of participants will be used to inform the final design. Conclusions: By including young people in the design of the Social Brain Train app, the proposed study will help us to develop a novel mental health intervention that young people find engaging, acceptable, and easy-to-useSavannah Minihan, Annabel Songco, Jack L. Andrews, Karina Grunewald, Aliza Werner-Seidler, Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, Helen Christensen, Elaine Fox, Ian M. Goodyer, William Raffe, Susanne Schweize

The effect of intolerance of uncertainty on anxiety and depression, and their symptom networks, during the COVID-19 pandemic

Individuals vary in their ability to tolerate uncertainty. High intolerance of uncertainty (the tendency to react nega‑ tively to uncertain situations) is a known risk factor for mental health problems. In the current study we examined the degree to which intolerance of uncertainty predicted depression and anxiety symptoms and their interrelations across the frst year of the COVID-19 pandemic. We examined these associations across three time points (May 2020 – April 2021) in an international sample of adults (N=2087, Mean age=41.13) from three countries (UK, USA, Australia) with varying degrees of COVID-19 risk. We found that individuals with high and moderate levels of intolerance of uncertainty reported reductions in depression and anxiety symptoms over time. However, symptom levels remained signifcantly elevated compared to individuals with low intolerance of uncertainty. Individuals with low intolerance of uncertainty had low and stable levels of depression and anxiety across the course of the study. Network analyses further revealed that the relationships between depression and anxiety symptoms became stronger over time among individuals with high intolerance of uncertainty and identified that feeling afraid showed the strongest association with intolerance of uncertainty. Our findings are consistent with previous work identifying intolerance of uncertainty as an important risk factor for mental health problems, especially in times marked by actual health, economic and social uncertainty. The results highlight the need to explore ways to foster resilience among individuals who struggle to tolerate uncertainty, as ongoing and future geopolitical, climate and health threats will likely lead to continued exposure to significant uncertainty.Jack L. Andrews, Meiwei Li, Savannah Minihan, Annabel Songco, Elaine Fox, Cecile D. Ladouceur, Louise Mewton, Michelle Moulds, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, Anne, Laura Van Harmelen, and Susanne Schweize

Sniff-synchronized, gradient-guided olfactory search by freely moving mice.

For many organisms, searching for relevant targets such as food or mates entails active, strategic sampling of the environment. Finding odorous targets may be the most ancient search problem that motile organisms evolved to solve. While chemosensory navigation has been well characterized in microorganisms and invertebrates, spatial olfaction in vertebrates is poorly understood. We have established an olfactory search assay in which freely moving mice navigate noisy concentration gradients of airborne odor. Mice solve this task using concentration gradient cues and do not require stereo olfaction for performance. During task performance, respiration and nose movement are synchronized with tens of milliseconds precision. This synchrony is present during trials and largely absent during inter-trial intervals, suggesting that sniff-synchronized nose movement is a strategic behavioral state rather than simply a constant accompaniment to fast breathing. To reveal the spatiotemporal structure of these active sensing movements, we used machine learning methods to parse motion trajectories into elementary movement motifs. Motifs fall into two clusters, which correspond to investigation and approach states. Investigation motifs lock precisely to sniffing, such that the individual motifs preferentially occur at specific phases of the sniff cycle. The allocentric structure of investigation and approach indicates an advantage to sampling both sides of the sharpest part of the odor gradient, consistent with a serial-sniff strategy for gradient sensing. This work clarifies sensorimotor strategies for mouse olfactory search and guides ongoing work into the underlying neural mechanisms

Cephalopod-omics: emerging fields and technologies in cephalopod biology

Few animal groups can claim the level of wonder that cephalopods instill in the minds of researchers and the general public. Much of cephalopod biology, however, remains unexplored: the largest invertebrate brain, difficult husbandry conditions, complex (meta-)genomes, among many other things, have hindered progress in addressing key questions. However, recent technological advancements in sequencing, imaging, and genetic manipulation have opened new avenues for exploring the biology of these extraordinary animals. The cephalopod molecular biology community is thus experiencing a large influx of researchers, emerging from different fields, accelerating the pace of research in this clade. In the first post-pandemic event at the Cephalopod International Advisory Council (CIAC) conference in April 2022, over 40 participants from all over the world met and discussed key challenges and perspectives for current cephalopod molecular biology and evolution. Our particular focus was on the fields of comparative and regulatory genomics, gene manipulation, single cell transcriptomics, metagenomics and microbial interactions. This article is a result of this joint effort, summarizing the latest insights from these emerging fields, their bottlenecks and potential solutions. The article highlights the interdisciplinary nature of the cephalopod -omics community and provides an emphasis on continuous consolidation of efforts and collaboration in this rapidly evolving field