Scalable Strategies to Increase Efficiency and Augment Public Health Activities During Epidemic Peaks.

OBJECTIVE: Scalable strategies to reduce the time burden and increase contact tracing efficiency are crucial during early waves and peaks of infectious transmission. DESIGN: We enrolled a cohort of SARS-CoV-2-positive seed cases into a peer recruitment study testing social network methodology and a novel electronic platform to increase contact tracing efficiency. SETTING: Index cases were recruited from an academic medical center and requested to recruit their local social contacts for enrollment and SARS-CoV-2 testing. PARTICIPANTS: A total of 509 adult participants enrolled over 19 months (384 seed cases and 125 social peers). INTERVENTION: Participants completed a survey and were then eligible to recruit their social contacts with unique "coupons" for enrollment. Peer participants were eligible for SARS-CoV-2 and respiratory pathogen screening. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The main outcome measures were the percentage of tests administered through the study that identified new SARS-CoV-2 cases, the feasibility of deploying the platform and the peer recruitment strategy, the perceived acceptability of the platform and the peer recruitment strategy, and the scalability of both during pandemic peaks. RESULTS: After development and deployment, few human resources were needed to maintain the platform and enroll participants, regardless of peaks. Platform acceptability was high. Percent positivity tracked with other testing programs in the area. CONCLUSIONS: An electronic platform may be a suitable tool to augment public health contact tracing activities by allowing participants to select an online platform for contact tracing rather than sitting for an interview.

Computational signatures of inequity aversion in children across seven societies.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Experimental Psychology: General on Aug 10 2023 (see record 2023-96713-001). In the original article, there were affiliation errors for the first and 14th authors. The affiliations for Dorsa Amir are Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley; and Department of Psychology, Boston College. The affiliation for Katherine McAuliffe is Department of Psychology, Boston College. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Inequity aversion is an important factor in fairness behavior. Previous work suggests that children show more cross-cultural variation in their willingness to reject allocations that would give them more rewards than their partner-advantageous inequity-as opposed to allocations that would give them less than their partner-disadvantageous inequity. However, as past work has relied solely on children's decisions to accept or reject these offers, the algorithms underlying this pattern of variation remain unclear. Here, we explore the computational signatures of inequity aversion by applying a computational model of decision-making to data from children (N = 807) who played the Inequity Game across seven societies. Specifically, we used drift-diffusion models to formally distinguish evaluative processing (i.e., the computation of the subjective value of accepting or rejecting inequity) from alternative factors such as decision speed and response strategies. Our results suggest that variation in the development of inequity aversion across societies is best accounted for by variation in the drift rate-the direction and strength of the evaluative preference. Our findings underscore the utility of looking beyond decision data to better understand behavioral diversity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Wearable Sensor-Based Detection of Influenza in Presymptomatic and Asymptomatic Individuals.

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for early detection of viral infections in symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals to allow for timely clinical management and public health interventions. METHODS: Twenty healthy adults were challenged with an influenza A (H3N2) virus and prospectively monitored from 7 days before through 10 days after inoculation, using wearable electrocardiogram and physical activity sensors. This framework allowed for responses to be accurately referenced to the infection event. For each participant, we trained a semisupervised multivariable anomaly detection model on data acquired before inoculation and used it to classify the postinoculation dataset. RESULTS: Inoculation with this challenge virus was well-tolerated with an infection rate of 85%. With the model classification threshold set so that no alarms were recorded in the 170 healthy days recorded, the algorithm correctly identified 16 of 17 (94%) positive presymptomatic and asymptomatic individuals, on average 58 hours postinoculation and 23 hours before the symptom onset. CONCLUSIONS: The data processing and modeling methodology show promise for the early detection of respiratory illness. The detection algorithm is compatible with data collected from smartwatches using optical techniques but needs to be validated in large heterogeneous cohorts in normal living conditions. Clinical Trials Registration. NCT04204493.

Motivating children's cooperation to conserve forests.

Forests are essential common-pool resources. Understanding children's and adolescents' motivations for conservation is critical to improving conservation education. In 2 experiments, we investigated 1086 school-aged children and adolescents (6-16 years old) from China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the United States. testING participants in groups, we assessed their motivation for conservation based on collective-risk common-pool goods games in which they are threatened with losing their endowment unless the group donation exceeds a threshold needed to maintain the forest.eExtrinsic motivations, rather than intrinsic , tended to lead to successful cooperation to maintain a forest. Certainty of losing individual payoffs significantly boosted successful cooperative conservation efforts across cultures (success rates were 90.63 % and 74.19% in the 2 risk-extrinsic conditions and 43.75% in the control condition). In U.S. participants, 2 extrinsic incentives, priming discussions of the value of forests and delay of payoffs as punishment , also increased success of cooperative conservation (success rates were 97.22% and 76.92% in the 2 extrinsic-incentive conditions and 29.19% and 30.77% in the 2 control conditions). Conservation simulations, like those we used, may allow educators to encourage forest protection by leading groups to experience successful cooperation and the extrinsic incentives needed to motivate forest conservation. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

Assessing conservation attitudes and behaviors of Congolese children neighboring the world's first bonobo (Pan paniscus) release site.

Poaching and habitat destruction in the Congo Basin threaten African great apes including the bonobo (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and gorillas (Gorilla spp.) with extinction. One way to combat extinction is to reintroduce rescued and rehabilitated apes and repopulate native habitats. Reintroduction programs are only successful if they are supported by local populations. Ekolo ya Bonobo, located in Equateur province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is the world's only reintroduction site for rehabilitated bonobos. Here we assess whether children, of the Ilonga-Pôo, living adjacent to Ekolo ya Bonobo demonstrate more pro-ape conservation attitudes than children living in, Kinshasa, the capital city. We examined children's attitudes toward great apes because children are typically the focus of conservation education programs. We used the Great Ape Attitude Questionnaire to test the Contact Hypothesis, which posits that proximity to great ape habitat influences pro-conservation attitudes toward great apes. Ilonga-Pôo children who live in closer contact with wild bonobos felt greater responsibility to protect great apes compared to those in Kinshasa who live outside the natural habitat of great apes. These results suggest that among participants in the DRC, spatial proximity to a species fosters a greater sense of responsibility to protect and conserve. These results have implications for the successful implementation of great ape reintroduction programs in the Congo Basin. The data analyzed in this study were collected in 2010 and therefore provide a baseline for longitudinal study of this reintroduction site.

Implicit Measures Help Demonstrate the Value of Conservation Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Biodiversity is being lost at unprecedented rates. Limited conservation resources must be prioritized strategically to maximize impact. Here we introduce novel methods to assess a small-scale conservation education program in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Lola ya Bonobo is the world's only sanctuary for one of humans' two closest living relatives, bonobos, orphaned by the illegal trade in bushmeat and exotic pets. The sanctuary is situated on the edge of the country's capital, Kinshasa, its most densely populated region and a hub for the illegal wildlife trade that is imperiling bonobos and other endangered species. Lola ya Bonobo implements an education program specifically designed to combat this trade. Previous evaluation demonstrated the program's efficacy in transmitting conservation knowledge to children. In Study 1, we use novel implicit tests to measure conservation attitudes before and after an educational visit and document a significant increase in children's pro-conservation attitudes following direct exposure to bonobos and the education program. In Study 2, we show that adults exhibit high levels of conservation knowledge even before visiting the sanctuary, likely due to the sanctuary's longstanding education efforts in Kinshasa. In Study 3, we explored adults' empathetic attitudes toward bonobos before and after the sanctuary tour. Our results support the conservation education hypothesis that conservation education has improved relevant knowledge and attitudes in Kinshasa. Crucially, the present study validates new methods for implicitly assessing attitudes about environmental and social issues. These methods overcome typical biases in survey sampling and can be employed in diverse populations, including those with low literacy rates.

Predicting body mass of bonobos (Pan paniscus) with human-based morphometric equations.

A primate's body mass covaries with numerous ecological, physiological, and behavioral characteristics. This versatility and potential to provide insight into an animal's life has made body mass prediction a frequent and important objective in paleoanthropology. In hominin paleontology, the most commonly employed body mass prediction equations (BMPEs) are "mechanical" and "morphometric": uni- or multivariate linear regressions incorporating dimensions of load-bearing skeletal elements and stature and living bi-iliac breadth as predictor variables, respectively. The precision and accuracy of BMPEs are contingent on multiple factors, however, one of the most notable and pervasive potential sources of error is extrapolation beyond the limits of the reference sample. In this study, we use a test sample requiring extrapolation-56 bonobos (Pan paniscus) from the Lola ya Bonobo sanctuary in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo-to evaluate the predictive accuracy of human-based morphometric BMPEs. We first assess systemic differences in stature and bi-iliac breadth between humans and bonobos. Due to significant differences in the scaling relationships of body mass and stature between bonobos and humans, we use panel regression to generate a novel BMPE based on living bi-iliac breadth. We then compare the predictive accuracy of two previously published morphometric equations with the novel equation and find that the novel equation predicts bonobo body mass most accurately overall (41 of 56 bonobos predicted within 20% of their observed body mass). The novel BMPE is particularly accurate between 25 and 45 kg. Given differences in limb proportions, pelvic morphology, and body tissue composition between the human reference and bonobo test samples, we find these results promising and evaluate the novel BMPE's potential application to fossil hominins.

Seasonal variation in metabolic rate, flight activity and body size of Anopheles gambiae in the Sahel.

Malaria in Africa is vectored primarily by the Anopheles gambiae complex. Although the mechanisms of population persistence during the dry season are not yet known, targeting dry season mosquitoes could provide opportunities for vector control. In the Sahel, it appears likely that M-form A. gambiae survive by aestivation (entering a dormant state). To assess the role of eco-physiological changes associated with dry season survival, we measured body size, flight activity and metabolic rate of wild-caught mosquitoes throughout 1 year in a Sahelian locality, far from permanent water sources, and at a riparian location adjacent to the Niger River. We found significant seasonal variation in body size at both the Sahelian and riparian sites, although the magnitude of the variation was greater in the Sahel. For flight activity, significant seasonality was only observed in the Sahel, with increased flight activity in the wet season when compared with that just prior to and throughout the dry season. Whole-organism metabolic rate was affected by numerous biotic and abiotic factors, and a significant seasonal component was found at both locations. However, assay temperature accounted completely for seasonality at the riparian location, while significant seasonal variation remained after accounting for all measured variables in the Sahel. Interestingly, we did not find that mean metabolic rate was lowest during the dry season at either location, contrary to our expectation that mosquitoes would conserve energy and increase longevity by reducing metabolism during this time. These results indicate that mosquitoes may use mechanisms besides reduced metabolic rate to enable survival during the Sahelian dry season.