Author Correction: Crowther et al. reply.

In this Brief Communications Arising Reply, the affiliation for author P. H. Templer was incorrectly listed as 'Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California Irvine, Irvine, California 92697, USA' instead of 'Department of Biology, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA'. This has been corrected online.

Decolonizing Impact Through the Culture-Centered Approach to Health Communication: Mobilizing Communities to Transform the Structural Determinants of Health.

In this issue, we outline the central tenets of the culture-centered approach to health communication. What does the culture-centered approach address when suggesting the co-creation of voice infrastructures? What is the theory's methodological emphasis for mobilizing and transforming structures that shape health inequalities for communities at the margins? Drawing on examples of culture-centered interventions in over fifty communities spread across 17 countries and three continents, a large number of them housed under the umbrella of the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) at Massey University in Aotearoa, New Zealand, we articulate the communicative processes (referring to actionable sources and targets of communicative action) that shape the building of voice infrastructures mobilizing toward structural transformation. For instance, African American communities organizing under the framework of the culture-centered approach, documented in Dutta, Collins, and colleagues study in 2019, discuss the building of voice infrastructures where community members participate in co-creating heart health information based on comparative effectiveness research, building an African American media ecosystem disseminating the information alongside community-led initiatives growing healthy food, community-led youth activities, and activism addressing the racist structural drivers that adversely impact African American heart health. In this essay, we describe the impact of culture-centered interventions reflected in the voice infrastructures within communities that witness and articulate the oppressions that threaten human health at the margins and in the transformations of these structures that organize various facets of life and livelihood at the global margins linked to health.

Culturally Centering the Voices of Transgender Sex Workers in Singapore: Health, Materiality and Violence.

The transgender sex worker experience of health in Singapore is multidimensional, working at the intersections of culture, social class, and gendered marginalization. Drawing on in-depth interviews with transgender sex workers in the context of Singapore's extreme neoliberalism and located within a larger culture-centered intervention that emerged through an academic-activist-community partnership, this study foregrounds the everyday meanings of health among transgender sex workers who are marginalized. We offer a discursive register for theorizing violence as disruption of health. Participants narrate health as the negotiation of stigmas coded into their everyday lives, the forms of material violence they experience, and the struggles with accessing secure housing. The theorizing of violence as threat to health by transgender sex workers shapes the health advocacy and health activism that takes the form of a 360 degrees campaign. This essay pushes the literature on the culture-centered approach (CCA) by centering voice as the basis for structurally transformative articulations amidst neoliberal authoritarianism.

Situating Health Experiences: A Culture-Centered Interrogation.

Culture-centered studies of health communication de-center the theorization of health as an individual behavior and reveal the structural conditions that shape inequalities in health outcomes. The present study examines the ways in which space and housing shape experiences of health in a low-income site in Auckland undergoing radical redevelopment. We draw from a culture-centered project undertaken in 2018-2021 predominantly among Maori and Pasifika peoples involving 60 initial in-depth interviews, seven focus groups, a series of filmed interviews, and 32 additional in-depth interviews conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The residents' narratives foregrounded the detrimental health impact of inadequate housing, financial constraints, transience, and displacement that severs ties to place and community. These findings reveal the relationship between housing challenges, economic marginalization, and neoliberal capitalism, highlighting the need for policy interventions to address housing as a fundamental determinant of health disparities among marginalized communities.

Health Orientation as a Psychographic Framework for Understanding Physical Exercise Behavior.

The consistent association between regular physical exercise and positive health outcomes presents a compelling case for investigating the differences between individuals who exercise regularly and those who do not. Based on a randomized cross-sectional survey of 1,201 households, this study adopts a psychographic framework to investigate the role of health orientation in physical exercise behavior. This study extends the concept of health orientation, operationalized as five psychographic subscales (health information orientation, preventative orientation, exercise orientation, healthy eating orientation, and health information efficacy) as well as three behavioral constructs (sedentary behavior, BMI and cigarette smoking) to understand physical exercise behavior. The results show significant differences between regular exercisers and non-exercisers, and suggest that a psychographic framework based on health orientation could offer a more holistic approach for understanding physical exercise behavior by highlighting the treatment of the whole individual. Physical exercise, as a specific health behavior, is in fact interlinked with other health behaviors through an underlying health orientation toward health issues in general.

Quantifying global soil carbon losses in response to warming.

The majority of the Earth's terrestrial carbon is stored in the soil. If anthropogenic warming stimulates the loss of this carbon to the atmosphere, it could drive further planetary warming. Despite evidence that warming enhances carbon fluxes to and from the soil, the net global balance between these responses remains uncertain. Here we present a comprehensive analysis of warming-induced changes in soil carbon stocks by assembling data from 49 field experiments located across North America, Europe and Asia. We find that the effects of warming are contingent on the size of the initial soil carbon stock, with considerable losses occurring in high-latitude areas. By extrapolating this empirical relationship to the global scale, we provide estimates of soil carbon sensitivity to warming that may help to constrain Earth system model projections. Our empirical relationship suggests that global soil carbon stocks in the upper soil horizons will fall by 30 ± 30 petagrams of carbon to 203 ± 161 petagrams of carbon under one degree of warming, depending on the rate at which the effects of warming are realized. Under the conservative assumption that the response of soil carbon to warming occurs within a year, a business-as-usual climate scenario would drive the loss of 55 ± 50 petagrams of carbon from the upper soil horizons by 2050. This value is around 12-17 per cent of the expected anthropogenic emissions over this period. Despite the considerable uncertainty in our estimates, the direction of the global soil carbon response is consistent across all scenarios. This provides strong empirical support for the idea that rising temperatures will stimulate the net loss of soil carbon to the atmosphere, driving a positive land carbon-climate feedback that could accelerate climate change.

Receiving Healthcare Amidst Poverty During the COVID-19 Lockdowns: A Culture-Centered Interrogation.

COVID-19 has exacerbated existing health inequalities globally. Guided by the culture-centered approach, this study examined perspectives and experiences of healthcare during two lockdowns in four marginalized contexts in Aotearoa New Zealand. The participants' narratives depicted dissatisfaction with the new modes of healthcare delivery, reporting longer waiting times, a preference for face-to-face delivery, language barriers, and issues with the limitations in support people attending appointments. This resulted in healthcare being delivered in a way that was not in keeping with the localized cultural norms of communication and collective support, further exacerbating existing health inequalities. Our findings suggest that public health interventions in response to COVID-19 within the context of healthcare delivery have the potential to further reify and reproduce exclusions and experiences of marginalization, with cultural marginalization reifying structural marginalization.

Fine-needle aspiration of pancreatic cystic lesions: a randomized study with long-term follow-up comparing standard and flexible needles.

BACKGROUND: Pancreatic cystic lesions (PCLs) are increasingly found on cross-sectional imaging, with the majority having a low risk for malignancy. The added value of fine-needle aspiration (FNA) in risk stratification remains unclear. We evaluated the impact of three FNA needles on diagnostic accuracy, clinical management, and the ability to accrue fluid for tumor markers. METHODS: A multicenter prospective trial randomized 250 patients with PCLs ≥ 13 mm 2:1:1 to 19G Flex, 19G, and 22G needles with crossover for repeated FNA procedures. Diagnostic accuracy was established at 2-year follow-up, with the final diagnosis from surgical histopathology or consensus diagnosis by experts based sequentially on clinical presentation, imaging, and aspirate analysis in blinded review. RESULTS: Enrolled patients (36 % symptomatic) had PCLs in the head (44 %), body (28 %), and tail (26 %). Percentage of cyst volume aspirated was 78 % (72 % - 84 %) for 19G Flex, 74 % (64 % - 84 %) for 22G, and 73 % (63 % - 83 %) for 19G (P = 0.84). Successful FNA was significantly higher for 19G Flex (89 % [82 % - 94 %]) and 22G (82 % [70 % - 90 %]) compared with 19G (75 % [63 % - 85 %]) (P = 0.02). Repeated FNA was required more frequently in head/uncinate lesions than in body and tail (P < 0.01). Diagnostic accuracy of the cyst aspirate was 84 % (73 % - 91 %) against histopathology at 2-year follow-up (n = 79), and 77 % (70 % - 83 %) against consensus diagnosis among nonsurgical cases (n = 171). Related serious adverse events occurred in 1.2 % (0.2 % - 3.5 %) of patients. CONCLUSIONS: Our study results demonstrate a statistically significant difference among the three needles in the overall success rate for aspiration, but not in the percentage of cyst volume aspirated. Flexible needles may be particularly valuable in sampling cystic PCLs in the pancreatic head/uncinate process.

Negotiating Health Amidst COVID-19 Lockdown in Low-income Communities in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Aotearoa New Zealand's public health crisis communication approach amidst the COVID-19 pandemic effectively mobilized the nation into swift lockdown, significantly reducing community transmission. This communication approach has been applauded around the world. How did communities situated amongst the "margins of the margins" in Aotearoa New Zealand navigate through the existing structural barriers to health during the pandemic? In this study, we use a culture-centered analysis to foreground the structural context of disenfranchisement amidst the COVID-19 lockdown. Drawing on in-depth interviews with participants in a larger ethnographic project on poverty and health across three communities in Aotearoa New Zealand, we attend to the ways in which health is negotiated amidst the COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown response at the "margins of the margins." The narratives point out that health communication interventions to prevent COVID-19 in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand furthered the marginalization of communities at the margins, and community voices were largely erased from the enactment of interventions. With the extant structures failing to recognize these aspects of everyday struggles of health at the margins, the health and access challenges were further magnified during COVID-19. Our attention to communication situated in relationship to structures builds a register for health communication scholarship in the context of COVID-19 that is committed to disrupting the behaviorally based hegemonic health communication literature and transforming the unequal terrains of health experiences.

Space within the Scientific Discourse for the Voice of the Other? Expressions of Community Voice in the Scientific Discourse of Community-Based Participatory Research.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has captured public health attention and support because it is positioned as an approach that involves researchers and communities as equitable partners in addressing health disparities. However, it is unknown the extent to which CBPR creates a participatory space in the scientific discourse to signal "community voice," which we define as textual expression of community-centered perspectives on collective roles, interests, and worldviews. In this study, we utilized the culture-centered approach to examine the expression of community voice in the abstracts and public health relevance statements of 253 extramural CBPR projects in the U.S. that received funding from the National Institute of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2009. We found that project abstracts and public health relevance statements contain four textual domains, or potential sites of contest to signal the articulation of community agency and voice within the CBPR projects. These domains include: 1) the rationale for the community health issue, 2) the roles of community partners, 3) community-centered outcomes of the partnership, and 4) elements of participatory research process. The degree of culture-centeredness of the texts is suggested in the extent to which articulations of community agency and voice are signaled across the four domains. We conclude that the dynamics of CBPR may shape culture-centered expressions of problem identification, solution configuration, structural transformations, reflexivity, values, and agency in the project abstracts and public health relevance statements.

Culture-centeredness in community-based participatory research: contributions to health education intervention research.

Health education research emphasizes the importance of cultural understanding and fit to achieve meaningful psycho-social research outcomes, community responsiveness and external validity to enhance health equity. However, many interventions address cultural fit through cultural competence and sensitivity approaches that are often superficial. The purpose of this study was to better situate culture within health education by operationalizing and testing new measures of the deeply grounded culture-centered approach (CCA) within the context of community-based participatory research (CBPR). A nation-wide mixed method sample of 200 CBPR partnerships included a survey questionnaire and in-depth case studies. The questionnaire enabled the development of a CCA scale using concepts of community voice/agency, reflexivity and structural transformation. Higher-order confirmatory factor analysis demonstrated factorial validity of the scale. Correlations supported convergent validity with positive associations between the CCA and partnership processes and capacity and health outcomes. Qualitative data from two CBPR case studies provided complementary socio-cultural historic background and cultural knowledge, grounding health education interventions and research design in specific contexts and communities. The CCA scale and case study analysis demonstrate key tools that community-academic research partnerships can use to assess deeper levels of culture centeredness for health education research.

A Culture-Centered Community-Grounded Approach to Disseminating Health Information among African Americans.

This study highlights the role of local communities in creating culturally rooted health information resources based on comparative effectiveness research (CER), depicting the role of culture in creating entry points for building community-grounded communication structures for evidence-based health knowledge. We report the results from running a year-long culture-centered campaign that was carried out among African American communities in two counties, Lake and Marion County, in Indiana addressing basic evidence-based knowledge on four areas of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Campaign effectiveness was tested through an experimental design with post-test knowledge of CER among African Americans in these counties compared to CER knowledge among African Americans in a comparable control county (Allen). Our campaign, based on the principles of the culture-centered approach (CCA), increased community CER knowledge in the experimental communities relative to a community that did not receive the culturally centered health information campaign. The CCA-based campaign developed by community members and distributed through the mass media, community wide channels such as health fairs and church meetings, postcards, and face-to-face interventions explaining the postcards improved CER knowledge in specific areas (ACE-I/ARBs, atrial fibrillation, and renal artery stenosis) in the CCA communities as compared to the control community.

Trust Ecologies and Channel Complementarity for Information Seeking in Cancer Prevention.

Our paper extends channel complementarity theory, which has focused on evidence of complementarity and patterns of channel use, by elucidating the notion of trust complementarity. We examined trust, an information-carrier characteristic and a core construct in health-focused decision-making to understand cancer information seeking, based on data from two nationally representative surveys in Singapore. Trust is found to be differential, relational, and ecological, with implications for individuals' access to and reliance on doctors, family/friends, newspapers/magazines, radio, TV, and the Internet for cancer prevention information. In an ideal trust complementarity environment, an individual should be able to traverse a range of communication channels seamlessly. Our findings however suggest that although individuals trust different channels complementarily, their trust patterns are limited and fettered. We identified two types of trust ecologies shaped by dual-channel and polymorphic complementarity patterns that suggest that health information seekers are trapped within specific trust ecologies that prevent them from navigating a broader range of communication channels for cancer prevention.

Health Meanings among Foreign Domestic Workers in Singapore: A Culture-Centered Approach.

Economic migration is integral to processes of globalization, with large numbers of the global poor moving across borders in search of employment in the face of structural adjustment programs and large-scale displacement of the poor from traditional forms of livelihood. One such group are foreign domestic workers (FDWs). In this culture-centered study, we listen to the voices of FDWs in Singapore to understand the key meanings of health held by this group of migrant workers as they negotiate living and working in Singapore. Through the representation of FDW voices at sites where they have previously been excluded, we hope to co-create participatory spaces in national discourse so that policies and interventions can be developed to address the health needs of FDWs. The results represented in this essay are part of a larger project engaging the CCA to foster communicative platforms for structural transformation.

Health Communication in the Time of Ebola: A Culture-Centered Interrogation.

This brief essay is a commentary on how critical health communication theory can contribute to an understanding of the cultural dynamics of infectious disease pandemics. In particular, we focus on a specific trajectory of health communication theorizing-the culture-centered approach-and its heuristic and pragmatic utility in enhancing knowledge about public health crises like infectious disease outbreaks. In the backdrop of the mobilizations against the 2014 Ebola virus disease epidemic in the 3 West African nations of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, indigenous cultural practices were construed as pathogenic and local agency of affected communities disregarded, even as the global risks of the epidemic were highlighted. In contrast to this interventionist notion of culture, the culture-centered approach offers a heuristic rubric through which to scrutinize the dialectical interrelationship between indigenous cultural practices, structural determinants of health, and the everyday agency of individuals of affected communities. We argue that such a listening-based paradigm of communication theorizing is instrumental in developing authentic, ethical, and effective health communication practice in public health crises.

A Replication of Channel Complementarity Theory among Internet Users in India.

This article examined channel complementarity in health information seeking among Internet users in India. It posited that online users complementarily use different channels to search for health information. Based on the existing literature, it suggested that age is an important moderator of different channels as health information sources. Data regarding the consumption of 11 different channels were collected from nearly 1,000 Internet users. The results demonstrated complementary use of different channels as health information sources in relationship to the Internet as a health information source, except for newspapers and family members. Moreover, not supporting our hypothesis regarding the sources of health information among online users, the Internet was surprisingly not the primary source of health information, being shadowed by the predominant and significantly greater use of newspapers as sources of health information among online users in India. Extending the theory of channel complementarity, we found that age is an important moderator of complementary relationships among various channels as health information sources, demonstrating that younger users were more likely to use greater numbers of channels complementarily as compared to older users. Contributions to channel complementarity and implications of research are discussed on the basis of the findings.

Food Insecurity in Singapore: The Communicative (Dis)Value of the Lived Experiences of the Poor.

Food insecurity is a form of health disparity that results in adverse health outcomes, particularly among disenfranchised and vulnerable populations. Using the culture-centered approach, this article engages with issues of food insecurity, health, and poverty among the low-income community in Singapore. Through 30 in-depth interviews, the narratives of the food insecure are privileged in articulating their lived experiences of food insecurity and in co-constructing meanings of health informed by their sociocultural context, in a space that typically renders them invisible. Arguing that poverty is communicatively sustained through the erasure of subaltern voices from mainstream discourses and policy platforms, we ask the research question: What are the meanings of food insecurity in the everyday experiences of health among the poor in Singapore? Our findings demonstrate that the meanings of health among the food insecure are constituted in culture and materiality, structurally constrained, and ultimately complexify their negotiations of health and health decision making.

Semen characteristics and biochemical composition of cloacal foam of male Japanese quails (Coturnix coturnix Japonica) fed diet incorporated with selenium.

An attempt was made to investigate the effect of dietary selenium (Se) on physical and cloacal gland size, foam production, biochemical composition of foam and semen biochemical characteristics of male Japanese quail (Coturnix coturnix Japonica). Two hundred twenty-five (225)-day-old male Japanese quail were randomly distributed to three dietary treatment groups for a period of 20 weeks. Each treatment comprised of three replicates, each containing 25 chicks. Three experimental diets were supplemented with 0, 0.5 and 1.0 mg Se/kg (T1 , T2 and T3, respectively), and diet T1 was considered as control. Sodium selenite was used as the source of selenium. All the birds were provided with feed and water ad libitum. Cloacal foam characteristics, that is cloacal gland index and foam weight, were significantly higher in T2 group. However, body weight, frequency of foam discharge and testes weight (left and right) did not differ significantly (p > 0.05). Physical characteristics of semen, that is semen volume and sperm concentration, did not differ (p > 0.05) among the Se-treated groups. The sperm motility, live-dead count and abnormality improved significantly (p < 0.05) in 0.5 mg/Se-supplemented group compared to 0 or 1.0 mg/Se-supplemented groups. Similarly, fertility and hatchability percentages were higher (p < 0.05) in 0.5 mg/Se-supplemented group than in control or 1.0 mg/Se-supplemented counterparts. The biochemical characteristics of foam in terms of total protein, acid phosphatase (ACP) and nitric oxide did not differ (p > 0.05), while the concentration of glucose was higher (p < 0.05) in 0.5 mg/Se-supplemented diet. On the other hand, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), alanine aminotransferase (ALT) and aspartate aminotransferase (AST) were lower (p < 0.05) in 0.5 mg/Se-supplemented group compared to control or 1.0 mg/Se-supplemented groups. From this study, it was concluded that supplementation of 0.5 mg Se/kg diet was beneficial for foam variables, biochemical composition of foam, semen characteristics and fertility in male Japanese quail.

Chicken sperm transcriptome profiling by microarray analysis.

It has been confirmed that mammalian sperm contain thousands of functional RNAs, and some of them have vital roles in fertilization and early embryonic development. Therefore, we attempted to characterize transcriptome of the sperm of fertile chickens using microarray analysis. Spermatozoal RNA was pooled from 10 fertile males and used for RNA preparation. Prior to performing the microarray, RNA quality was assessed using a bioanalyzer, and gDNA and somatic cell RNA contamination was assessed by CD4 and PTPRC gene amplification. The chicken sperm transcriptome was cross-examined by analysing sperm and testes RNA on a 4 × 44K chicken array, and results were verified by RT-PCR. Microarray analysis identified 21,639 predominantly nuclear-encoded transcripts in chicken sperm. The majority (66.55%) of the sperm transcripts were shared with the testes, while surprisingly, 33.45% transcripts were detected (raw signal intensity greater than 50) only in the sperm and not in the testes. The greatest proportion of up-regulated transcripts were responsible for signal transduction (63.20%) followed by embryonic development (56.76%) and cell structure (56.25%). Of the 20 most abundant transcripts, 18 remain uncharacterized, whereas the least abundant genes were mostly associated with the ribosome. These findings lay a foundation for more detailed investigations on sperm RNAs in chickens to identify sperm-based biomarkers for fertility.