Cerebral magnetic resonance imaging in quiescent Crohn’s disease patients with fatigue

FSW - Self-regulation models for health behavior and psychopathology - ou

Academic Performance and Behavioral Patterns

Identifying the factors that influence academic performance is an essential part of educational research. Previous studies have documented the importance of personality traits, class attendance, and social network structure. Because most of these analyses were based on a single behavioral aspect and/or small sample sizes, there is currently no quantification of the interplay of these factors. Here, we study the academic performance among a cohort of 538 undergraduate students forming a single, densely connected social network. Our work is based on data collected using smartphones, which the students used as their primary phones for two years. The availability of multi-channel data from a single population allows us to directly compare the explanatory power of individual and social characteristics. We find that the most informative indicators of performance are based on social ties and that network indicators result in better model performance than individual characteristics (including both personality and class attendance). We confirm earlier findings that class attendance is the most important predictor among individual characteristics. Finally, our results suggest the presence of strong homophily and/or peer effects among university students

Visualising the invisible: a network approach to reveal the informal social side of student learning

World-wide, universities in health sciences have transformed their curriculum to include collaborative learning and facilitate the students’ learning process. Interaction has been acknowledged to be the synergistic element in this learning context. However, students spend the majority of their time outside their classroom and interaction does not stop outside the classroom. Therefore we studied how informal social interaction influences student learning. Moreover, to explore what really matters in the students learning process, a model was tested how the generally known important constructs—prior performance, motivation and social integration—relate to informal social interaction and student learning. 301 undergraduate medical students participated in this cross-sectional quantitative study. Informal social interaction was assessed using self-reported surveys following the network approach. Students’ individual motivation, social integration and prior performance were assessed by the Academic Motivation Scale, the College Adaption Questionnaire and students’ GPA respectively. A factual knowledge test represented student’ learning. All social networks were positively associated with student learning significantly: friendships (β = 0.11), providing information to other students (β = 0.16), receiving information from other students (β = 0.25). Structural equation modelling revealed a model in which social networks increased student learning (r = 0.43), followed by prior performance (r = 0.31). In contrast to prior literature, students’ academic motivation and social integration were not associated with students’ learning. Students’ informal social interaction is strongly associated with students’ learning. These findings underline the need to change our focus from the formal context (classroom) to the informal context to optimize student learning and deliver modern medics

Behavioral Economics and the Public Sector

This thesis consists of four essays dealing with topics that are relevant for the public sector. The essays cover diverse issues of economics partly overlapping with political science. The topics reach from the taxation of labor over monetary policy to preferences over voting institutions. Throughout this thesis it is, in contrast to classical economics, not assumed that humans are necessarily fully rational. Once full rationality is no longer assumed, experiments become an important tool to learn about human behavior. Consequently, most of the work in this thesis makes use of economic experiments

Regulating STING in health and disease.

The presence of cytosolic double-stranded DNA molecules can trigger multiple innate immune signalling pathways which converge on the activation of an ER-resident innate immune adaptor named "STimulator of INterferon Genes (STING)". STING has been found to mediate type I interferon response downstream of cyclic dinucleotides and a number of DNA and RNA inducing signalling pathway. In addition to its physiological function, a rapidly increasing body of literature highlights the role for STING in human disease where variants of the STING proteins, as well as dysregulated STING signalling, have been implicated in a number of inflammatory diseases. This review will summarise the recent structural and functional findings of STING, and discuss how STING research has promoted the development of novel therapeutic approaches and experimental tools to improve treatment of tumour and autoimmune diseases

A Dutch randomized controlled study shows autologous fat transfer with pre-expansion is more cost-effective in the long term than implants

Background: One in seven women will develop breast cancer, making it the most common female cancer worldwide. Consequently, breast cancer-related treatment, including breast reconstruction, impacts societal costs. Autologous fat transfer (AFT) is a relatively new breast reconstruction technique; however, several surgeries are necessary. This study investigates if AFT with pre-expansion is more cost-effective than implant-based reconstruction (IBR). Methods: Seven centers assigned patients randomly from 2015 to 2021 to evaluate costs and EQ-5D-5L quality-adjusted life years (QALY) of AFT vs. IBR at 12 months postoperative. Costs were calculated, including direct costs related to treatment and PROductivity and DISease Questionnaire, to estimate productivity loss (indirect costs). Sensitivity analyses were performed for 10- and 30 years to estimate costs for patients replacing or explanting their breast implants over time. Results: A total of 152 women, of which 91 received AFT (mean age 49.3) and 80 IBR (mean age 49.1). The mean EQ-5D-5L QALY in the AFT group was 0.83, compared with the IBR group of 0.79. Total costs for AFT at 12 months postoperative were higher than IBR (incremental cost: €6763.59). Sensitivity analyses for 10- and 30-year scenarios showed mean incremental costs of respectively €2586.56 and €680.22. Conclusion: Mean EQ-5D-5L QALY and costs were higher for AFT over the first year after reconstruction. However, these costs were low; therefore, AFT was estimated to be more cost-effective over the 10- and 30-year period since no additional surgeries are necessary for this group. Larger cohorts are required to confirm AFT is more cost-effective in the long term

Rage signalling promotes intestinal tumourigenesis

Development of colon cancer is a multistep process that is regulated by intrinsic and extrinsic cellular signals. Extrinsic factors include molecular patterns that are derived from either pathogens (PAMPs) or cellular damage (DAMPs). These molecules can promote tumourigenesis by activation of the innate immune system, but the individual contribution of ligands and their receptors remains elusive. The receptor for advanced glycation end products (Rage) is a pattern recognition receptor that binds multiple ligands derived from a damaged cell environment such as Hmgb1 and S100 protein. Here we show that Rage signalling has a critical role in sporadic development of intestinal adenomas, as Apc(Min/+) Rage(-/-) mice are protected against tumourigenesi