Do households prioritise children? Intrahousehold deprivation a case study of the South Pacific

We thank the Economic and Social Research Council for their funding through the Global Challenges initiative.There is increasing evidence of unequal access to resources within the household between children and adults. The literature suggests that patterns of intra-household inequality are context specific: while some find that households prioritise children (Main and Bradshaw 2016), others find that children are more likely to experience the consequences of poverty (Brown et al. 2018a). In Tonga, the high value of children, role of women in decision making and low extreme poverty rates suggest that households will prioritise children. However, the data does not match this expectation. Where possible households share resources equally. In contexts of low resources, both adults and children may be prioritised. This article builds on the methodology developed by Main and Bradshaw to provide the first analysis of intra-household inequalities between children and adults in the South Pacific. It argues that deprivation patterns are shaped both by household decisions on resource allocation and by wider access to resources. The approach used can be applied in other contexts to explore deprivation patterns and inform anti-poverty strategies. The article contributes to the growing literature on intra-household inequalities between children and adults

A Novel Approach to Detect COVID-19 Fake News by Mining Biomedical Information from News Articles

Containing the spread of fake news is crucial to the management of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Machine learning models have been used to automatically detect COVID-19 fake news from news content. Current machine learning features have limitations in preserving the biomedical information reported in the news articles. To address this limitation, we propose a novel approach to predict COVID-19 fake news by combining biomedical information extraction (BioIE) with machine learning models. We extracted 158 novel features using advanced BioIE algorithms. Fifteen machine learning classifiers were trained to predict the COVID-19 fake news using those BioIE-based features. Among the fifteen classifiers, random forest achieved the best performance with an Area Under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.892. We demonstrated that BioIE-based features have higher prediction power as compared to the existing machine learning features. We next developed a multi-modality model by combining BioIE-based features with existing features. Our new model outperformed a state-of-art multi-modality model (AUC 0.916 vs. 0.875). In summary, our study indicates that mining biomedical information from news articles has great potential in identifying COVID-19 fake news

Rare Lipomatous Tumors with Osseous and/or Chondroid Differentiation in the Oral Cavity Report of Two Cases and Review of the Literature

The purpose of this study was to determine the clinicopathological and immunohistochemical features of lipoma/fibrolipoma with rare occasions as osseous and/or chondroid differentiation in the oral cavity. Two cases of the tumors, who presented with a painless, relatively hard mass on the oral mucosa, were studied. These were consisted of a well-circumscribed mass of fatty tissue with chondroid and significant fibrous component intermixed with the lobules of fat cells with chondroid and woven bone component, respectively. Immunohistochemical study revealed that peripheral spindle cells around chondroid tissue stained diffusely for S-100 α & β and Sox-9, though peripheral spindle cells around osteoid tissue only stained for RUNX-2. According to review of the literature, lipoma/fibrolipoma with osseous and/or chondroid differentiation was 18 cases. Also fibrolipoma with osseous and chondroid differentiation is the first to be reported here. These results indicated that the cartilage/bone is produced by differentiation of undifferentiated mesenchymal cells of stroma

Pacific Islander Organization’s Approach towards Increasing Community Colorectal Cancer Knowledge and Beliefs

Purpose: Evaluate the educational intervention and determine if changes in knowledge and beliefs are associated with positive intentions to screen among Pacific Islanders (PIs). Design: Pre- and post-test surveys were utilized to evaluate the intervention. Educational materials included an in-language presentation, educational videos, and bookmarks with screening re-enforcement messages for communitybased PI groups. Methods: One hundred and ninety-six PIs aged 50 years and older residing in Orange County completed the educational workshop. The dependent variable is intention and the independent variables are demographic, enabling, and predisposing characteristics. Statistical analyses included paired samples t-tests, chi-square tests, and two logistic regression models. Results: Knowledge and belief scores increased pre- to post-test. A majority intended to (1) talk to a doctor about colorectal cancer (CRC) screening (74.5%), and (2) participate in CRC screening (73.5%). Positive change in knowledge score was a significant predictor for intending to talk to a doctor about CRC screening; female gender and positive change in knowledge score were significant predictors for intending to participate in screening. Conclusion: The study highlighted the effectiveness of tailored education in addressing cultural and linguistic needs of the community. Moreover, it demonstrated the education’s potential for moving participants with limited CRC screening knowledge to intend to screen

CCNF mutations in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are overlapping, fatal neurodegenerative disorders in which the molecular and pathogenic basis remains poorly understood. Ubiquitinated protein aggregates, of which TDP-43 is a major component, are a characteristic pathological feature of most ALS and FTD patients. Here we use genome-wide linkage analysis in a large ALS/FTD kindred to identify a novel disease locus on chromosome 16p13.3. Whole-exome sequencing identified a CCNF missense mutation at this locus. Interrogation of international cohorts identified additional novel CCNF variants in familial and sporadic ALS and FTD. Enrichment of rare protein-altering CCNF variants was evident in a large sporadic ALS replication cohort. CCNF encodes cyclin F, a component of an E3 ubiquitin-protein ligase complex (SCFCyclin F). Expression of mutant CCNF in neuronal cells caused abnormal ubiquitination and accumulation of ubiquitinated proteins, including TDP-43 and a SCFCyclin F substrate. This implicates common mechanisms, linked to protein homeostasis, underlying neuronal degeneration

Chapter 15 - National and sub-national policies and institutions

This chapter assesses national and sub-national mitigation policies and their institutional settings. There has been a marked increase in national policies and legislation on climate change since the AR4 with a diversity of approaches and a multiplicity of objectives (see Section 15.2). However, Figure 1.9 of Chapter 1 suggests that these policies, taken together, have not yet achieved a substantial deviation in emissions from the past trend. Limiting concentrations to levels that would be consistent with a likely probability of maintaining temperature increases below 2 degrees C this century (scenarios generally in the range of 430-480 ppmv CO2eq) would require that emissions break from these trends and be decreased substantially. In contrast, concentrations exceed 1000 ppmv CO2eq by 2100 in many baseline scenarios (that is, scenarios without additional efforts to reduce emissions). The literature on mitigation scenarios provides a wide range of CO2 shadow price levels consistent with these goals, with estimates of less than US$50/tCO2 in 2020 in many studies and exceeding US$100/tCO2 in others, assuming a globally-efficient and immediate effort to reduce emissions. These shadow prices exhibit a strongly increasing trend thereafter. Policies and instruments are assessed in this light. Section 15.2 assesses the role of institutions and governance. Section 15.3 lays out the classification of policy instruments and packages, while 15.4 discusses the methodologies used to evaluate policies and institutions. The performance of various policy instruments and measures are individually assessed in Sections 15.5 and 15.6. The two main types of economic instruments are price instruments, that is, taxes and subsidies (including removal of subsidies on fossil fuels), and quantity instruments - emission-trading systems. These are assessed in Sections 15.5.2 and 15.5.3 respectively. An important feature of both these instruments is that they can be applied at a very broad, economy-wide scale. This is in contrast to the regulation and information policies and voluntary agreements which are usually sector- specific. These policies are assessed in Sections 15.5.4, 15.5.5, and 15.5.7. Government provision and planning is discussed in 15.5.6. The next section, 15.6, provides a focused discussion on technology policy including research and development and the deployment and diffusion of clean energy technologies. In addition to technology policy, longer-term effects of the policies assessed in Section 15.5 are addressed in Section 15.6. Both these sections, 15.5 and 15.6, bring together lessons from policies and policy packages used at the sectoral level from Chapters 7 (Energy), 8 (Transport), 9 (Buildings), 10 (Industry), 11 (Agriculture, Forestry and Land Use) and Chapter 12 (Human Settlements, Infrastructure, and Spatial Planning). The following sections further assess the interaction among policy instruments, as they are not usually used in isolation, and the impacts of particular instruments depend on the entire package of policies and the institutional context. Section 15.7 reviews interactions, both beneficial and harmful, that may not have been planned. The presence of such interactions is in part a consequence of the multi-jurisdictional nature of climate governance as well as the use of multiple policy instruments within a jurisdiction. Section 15.8 examines the deliberate linkage of policies across national and sub-national jurisdictions. Other key issues are further discussed in dedicated sections. They are: the role of stakeholders including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) (15.9), capacity building (15.10), links between adaptation and mitigation policies (15.11), and investment and finance (15.12). Gaps in knowledge are collected in 15.13