Converting the Bulk Transition Metal Dichalcogenides Crystal into Stacked Monolayers via Ethylenediamine Intercalation.

We report the synthesis of ethylenediamine-intercalated NbSe2 and Li-ethylenediamine-intercalated MoSe2 single crystals with increased interlayer distances and their electronic structures measured by means of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). X-ray diffraction patterns and transmission electron microscopy images confirm the successful intercalation and an increase in the interlayer distance. ARPES measurement reveals that intercalated NbSe2 shows an electronic structure almost identical to that of monolayer NbSe2. Intercalated MoSe2 also returns the characteristic feature of the monolayer electronic structure, a direct band gap, which generates sizable photoluminescence even in the bulk form. Our results demonstrate that the properties and phenomena of the monolayer transition metal dichalcogenides can be achieved with large-scale bulk samples by blocking the interlayer interaction through intercalation.

Exploring Fear of Cancer Recurrence (FCR) in cancer survivors from a medical social work perspective: A qualitative study of medical social workers in South Korea.

BACKGROUND: Fear of Cancer Recurrence (FCR) in cancer survivors has been insufficiently addressed despite its imperativeness in cancer journey. Although several studies have investigated healthcare professionals' experience with FCR in cancer survivors, a medical social work perspective has rarely been reflected. This study aimed to explore Korean medical social workers' experience with intervening FCR in cancer survivors. METHODS: Snowball sampling recruited 12 experienced medical social workers intervening with cancer survivors at tertiary or university cancer hospitals in South Korea. Individual and focus-group interviews (FGI) were conducted with the medical social workers. The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed by using an inductive qualitative content analysis. RESULTS: Content analysis of the interviews extracted the following major themes regarding FCR in cancer survivors. First, when and how FCR among cancer survivors emerged at the early stage of medical social work interventions was identified. Second, how medical social workers dealt with FCR in cancer survivors was illustrated. Third, the responses of cancer survivors to medical social work interventions for FCR were assessed. Finally, the internal and external issues underlying the medical social work interventions for FCR among cancer survivors were revealed and discussed. CONCLUSION: Based on the results, this study suggested the implications on dealing with FCR in cancer survivors in the realm of medial social work profession. Furthermore, it expanded the discussion about FCR in cancer survivors from cancer hospitals to community.

Automated measurement of infant and mother Duchenne facial expressions in the Face-to-Face/Still-Face.

Although still-face effects are well-studied, little is known about the degree to which the Face-to-Face/Still-Face (FFSF) is associated with the production of intense affective displays. Duchenne smiling expresses more intense positive affect than non-Duchenne smiling, while Duchenne cry-faces express more intense negative affect than non-Duchenne cry-faces. Forty 4-month-old infants and their mothers completed the FFSF, and key affect-indexing facial Action Units (AUs) were coded by expert Facial Action Coding System coders for the first 30 s of each FFSF episode. Computer vision software, automated facial affect recognition (AFAR), identified AUs for the entire 2-min episodes. Expert coding and AFAR produced similar infant and mother Duchenne and non-Duchenne FFSF effects, highlighting the convergent validity of automated measurement. Substantive AFAR analyses indicated that both infant Duchenne and non-Duchenne smiling declined from the FF to the SF, but only Duchenne smiling increased from the SF to the RE. In similar fashion, the magnitude of mother Duchenne smiling changes over the FFSF were 2-4 times greater than non-Duchenne smiling changes. Duchenne expressions appear to be a sensitive index of intense infant and mother affective valence that are accessible to automated measurement and may be a target for future FFSF research.

Objective Measurement of Social Gaze and Smile Behaviors in Children with Suspected Autism Spectrum Disorder During Administration of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 2nd Edition.

Best practice for the assessment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) symptom severity relies on clinician ratings of the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule, 2nd Edition (ADOS-2), but the association of these ratings with objective measures of children's social gaze and smiling is unknown. Sixty-six preschool-age children (49 boys, M = 39.97 months, SD = 10.58) with suspected ASD (61 confirmed ASD) were administered the ADOS-2 and provided social affect calibrated severity scores (SA CSS). Children's social gaze and smiling during the ADOS-2, captured with a camera contained in eyeglasses worn by the examiner and parent, were obtained via a computer vision processing pipeline. Children who gazed more at their parents (p = .04) and whose gaze at their parents involved more smiling (p = .02) received lower social affect severity scores, indicating fewer social affect symptoms, adjusted R2 = .15, p = .003.

Effectiveness of Self-Assessment, TAilored Information, and Lifestyle Management for Cancer Patients' Returning to Work (START): A Multi-center, Randomized Controlled Trial.

PURPOSE: We developed a comprehensive return to work (RTW) intervention covering physical, psycho-social and practical issues for patients newly diagnosed and evaluated its efficacy in terms of RTW. Materials and Methods: A multi-center randomized controlled trial was done to evaluate the efficacy of the intervention conducted at two university-based cancer centers in Korea. The intervention program comprised educational material at diagnosis, a face-to-face educational session at completion of active treatment, and three individualized telephone counseling sessions. The control group received other education at enrollment. RESULTS: At 1-month post-intervention (T2), the intervention group was more likely to be working compared to the control group after controlling working status at diagnosis (65.4% vs. 55.9%, p=0.037). Among patients who did not work at baseline, the intervention group was 1.99-times more likely to be working at T2. The mean of knowledge score was higher in the intervention group compared to the control group (7.4 vs. 6.8, p=0.029). At the 1-year follow-up, the intervention group was 65% (95% confidence interval, 0.78 to 3.48) more likely to have higher odds for having work. CONCLUSION: The intervention improved work-related knowledge and was effective in facilitating cancer patients' RTW.

Infant AFAR: Automated facial action recognition in infants.

Automated detection of facial action units in infants is challenging. Infant faces have different proportions, less texture, fewer wrinkles and furrows, and unique facial actions relative to adults. For these and related reasons, action unit (AU) detectors that are trained on adult faces may generalize poorly to infant faces. To train and test AU detectors for infant faces, we trained convolutional neural networks (CNN) in adult video databases and fine-tuned these networks in two large, manually annotated, infant video databases that differ in context, head pose, illumination, video resolution, and infant age. AUs were those central to expression of positive and negative emotion. AU detectors trained in infants greatly outperformed ones trained previously in adults. Training AU detectors across infant databases afforded greater robustness to between-database differences than did training database specific AU detectors and outperformed previous state-of-the-art in infant AU detection. The resulting AU detection system, which we refer to as Infant AFAR (Automated Facial Action Recognition), is available to the research community for further testing and applications in infant emotion, social interaction, and related topics.

Changes in working status after cancer diagnosis and socio-demographic, clinical, work-related, and psychological factors associated with it.

BACKGROUND: While many studies investigated changes in working status in cancer survivors, most studies have been performed in survivors of breast cancer and few studies evaluated factors associated with changes in the working status of cancer survivors comprehensively. We aimed to evaluate the changes in the working status of cancer survivors after diagnosis and socio-demographic, clinical, work-related and psychological factors associated with it. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of adult patients with cancer who were working at the time of diagnosis. A trained interviewer inquired about participants' current working status, including leave of absence, discontinuing, continuing, and changing work. Sociodemographic, clinical, work-related and psychological factors were measured. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify factors associated with changes in the working status. RESULTS: Among the 730 patients, 29%, 18% and 6% were currently on a discontinued working, leave of absence and had changed jobs, respectively. Patients who discontinued working after cancer diagnosis were more likely to be female, have ≥ $3,000 of monthly family income, not be the principal wage earners for their families and be blue-collar workers. In clinical characteristics, advanced-stage cancer and experienced cancer recurrence was associated with leave of absence and discontinued working. In work-related and psychological factors, stress due to insufficient job control (relative risk ratio [RRR] = 2.26), interpersonal conflict (RRR = 1.86), job insecurity (RRR = 2.63), organizational system (RRR = 3.49), and lack of reward (RRR = 11.76), and less meaning to work were more likely to discontinue working after a cancer diagnosis. CONCLUSION: Occupational health care professionals and other stakeholders need to openly communicate with patients with cancer about potential barriers during the return-to-work trajectory.

The impact of COVID-19 on individuals with ASD in the US: Parent perspectives on social and support concerns.

The COVID-19 pandemic's disruptions to daily routines and services have proven especially challenging for children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families. The current retrospective study aimed to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic's social environmental changes on parental ratings of personal and child concerns about family conflict, opportunities for social interaction, and loss of institutional support (school and therapy services). Analyses of responses from families with ASD in the US determined differences in concerns across three time points which were measured simultaneously: prior to COVID-19, at the start of COVID-19, and at the time of survey completion. From our sample of 246 school-aged children, parents retrospectively reported significantly increasing levels of concern for both themselves and their children over time, with parents' personal concern levels rated consistently higher than their ratings of their child's level of concern. Concerns about loss of institutional support were higher for parents of children reported as having co-occurring intellectual disability. Further, parents of younger children also reported more concerns about loss of services, as well as more social concerns. For parent ratings of child concerns, children who were reportedly aware of COVID-19 were determined to have higher levels of social concerns and concerns about loss of institutional support. Meanwhile, the child's age and gender did not impact their parent ratings of child concerns. The increased level of parental and child-perceived concerns over the course of the pandemic suggests a need for improved service delivery and support for these families. The high levels of concerns observed in the current study provide support for the need to assess families' priorities and tailor services to best meet families' needs. This will potentially increase the quality of life of family members, and improve ASD services across the lifespan, and improve outcomes.

Objective measurement of vocalizations in the assessment of autism spectrum disorder symptoms in preschool age children.

Assessment of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) relies on expert clinician observation and judgment, but objective measurement tools have the potential to provide additional information on ASD symptom severity. Diagnostic evaluations for ASD typically include the autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS-2), a semi-structured assessment composed of a series of social presses. The current study examined associations between concurrent objective features of child vocalizations during the ADOS-2 and examiner-rated autism symptom severity. The sample included 66 children (49 male; M = 40 months, SD = 10.58) evaluated in a university-based clinic, 61 of whom received an ASD diagnosis. Research reliable administration of the ADOS-2 provided social affect (SA) and restricted and repetitive behavior (RRB) calibrated severity scores (CSS). Audio was recorded from examiner-worn eyeglasses during the ADOS-2 and child and adult speech were differentiated with LENA SP Hub. PRAAT was used to ascertain acoustic features of the audio signal, specifically the mean fundamental vocal frequency (F0) of LENA-identified child speech-like vocalizations (those with phonemic content), child cry vocalizations, and adult speech. Sphinx-4 was employed to estimate child and adult phonological features indexed by the average consonant and vowel count per vocalization. More than a quarter of the variance in ADOS-2 RRB CSS was predicted by the combination of child phoneme count per vocalization and child vocalization F0. Findings indicate that both acoustic and phonological features of child vocalizations are associated with expert clinician ratings of autism symptom severity. LAY SUMMARY: Determination of the severity of autism spectrum disorder is based in part on expert (but subjective) clinician observations during the ADOS-2. Two characteristics of child vocalizations-a smaller number of speech-like sounds per vocalization and higher pitched vocalizations (including cries)-were associated with greater autism symptom severity. The results suggest that objectively ascertained characteristics of children's vocalizations capture variance in children's restricted and repetitive behaviors that are reflected in clinician severity indices.

A return-to-work intervention protocol directed at cancer patients (self-assessment, tailored information & lifestyle management for returning to work among cancer patients, START): A multi-center, randomized controlled trial.

PURPOSE: This study describes the protocol for the design and evaluation of a self-assessment based educational program supporting cancer patients' return-to-work (RTW), prior to its complete and ongoing implementation. METHODS: We designed a multi-center, randomized controlled trial with three follow-up points. The study population (N = 239) includes recently diagnosed cancer patients who plan to receive active treatment at two university hospitals in Korea. A pre-test is conducted at the point of enrollment for both groups. The intervention group receives a leaflet clarifying misconceptions about RTW and is shown a video clip of patient interviews concerning RTW. The control group receives a booklet about cancer and nutrition, and is not provided with further intervention. After active treatment, the intervention group receives a one-time, face-to-face education session with an oncology nurse. Following the education session, both groups receive three follow-up phone calls. The first follow-up call occurs at the end of intervention and at the end of active treatment for intervention and control groups, respectively. The next two follow-up calls will be conducted one month and a year following the post-test. The primary outcome is whether the patient has RTW or has plans to RTW, and the secondary outcome is knowledge of RTW. RESULTS: As of April 2020, 239 patients have been enrolled in the trial. Statistical analyses will be conducted upon trial completion in December 2020. DISCUSSION: We hypothesize that the provision of RTW education near diagnosis will not only enhance patients' intentions to RTW, but also effectively encourage them to RTW.

Human and monkey infant attention to dynamic social and nonsocial stimuli.

The present study explored behavioral norms for infant social attention in typically developing human and nonhuman primate infants. We examined the normative development of attention to dynamic social and nonsocial stimuli longitudinally in macaques (Macaca mulatta) at 1, 3, and 5 months of age (N = 75) and humans at 2, 4, 6, 8, and 13 months of age (N = 69) using eye tracking. All infants viewed concurrently played silent videos-one social video and one nonsocial video. Both macaque and human infants were faster to look to the social than the nonsocial stimulus, and both species grew faster to orient to the social stimulus with age. Further, macaque infants' social attention increased linearly from 1 to 5 months. In contrast, human infants displayed a nonlinear pattern of social interest, with initially greater attention to the social stimulus, followed by a period of greater interest in the nonsocial stimulus, and then a rise in social interest from 6 to 13 months. Overall, human infants looked longer than macaque infants, suggesting humans have more sustained attention in the first year of life. These findings highlight potential species similarities and differences, and reflect a first step in establishing baseline patterns of early social attention development.

What Develops in Infants' Spatial Categorization? Korean Infants' Categorization of Containment and Tight-Fit Relations.

Korean-learning infants' categorization of two spatial categories, one consistent and one inconsistent with the Korean semantic category of "kkita," was examined. Infants of 10 months (n = 32) and 18 months (n = 49) were tested on their categorization of containment or tight fit spatial relations. At 10 months, infants only formed a category of containment, but at 18 months, their categorization of tight fit was significantly stronger than containment. The results suggest that Korean infants benefit from their language environment in forming a category of tight fit when the exemplars are perceptually diverse. In particular, infants' language environment may bolster their ability to generalize across diverse exemplars to form abstract categorical representations of spatial relations.