Romantic attachment and cyber dating violence in adolescence: A dyadic approach.

INTRODUCTION: Little research has documented cyber dating violence (DV)-a type of teen DV with unique characteristics that has been associated with negative consequences. Attachment is central to understanding negative behaviors in the context of relationships and has been associated with other forms of DV in teens. This study used an actor-partner interdependence model (APIM) to examine how cyber-DV victimization and perpetration (direct aggression and control) relate to attachment anxiety and avoidance. METHODS: An online questionnaire was completed by 126 adolescent couples (n = 252; mean age = 17.7) from Quebec, Canada. RESULTS: In almost all couples (96%), at least one partner reported an incident of cyber-control in the previous year, while cyber-aggression was reported in 34% of couples. APIM results revealed that girls' and boys' victimization and perpetration of direct cyber-aggression are associated similarly with both their own high levels of attachment anxiety and their partner's. Concerning cyber-control, results show that boys' and girls' victimization is associated more with their partner's higher level of anxious attachment than their own. Girls' perpetration of cyber-control is associated with both their own high levels of attachment anxiety and their partner's, while for boys' perpetration, their own high levels of anxious attachment were found to play a significantly greater role than their girlfriend's. No significant associations were found for the dimension of avoidant attachment for both cyber-aggression and cyber-control whether perpetration or victimization. CONCLUSION: These findings, which identify potential risk factors for victimization and perpetration of cyber-DV, have implications for research, intervention, and prevention.

A Content Analysis of Posts to an Online Support Forum for "Girl Lovers".

The internet is an effective tool for studying the cognitive distortions among those with a sexual attraction to children. Identified through previous works, users of an online "boy love" forum were found to present a variety of justifications for adult-child sexual relations. The current study extends this line of inquiry, analyzing posts from an online "girl love" forum. We found that the most common justification to appear reflected a belief that societal attitudes and authority figures were to blame for the harms caused by adult-child sex. We also found that the forum provided users with support and reinforcement for such distorted beliefs. Overall, online forums provide a window into the cognitive life of individuals with a sexual attraction to children, and one that reflects beliefs that may be largely unexpressed in the confines of forensic treatment settings.

Sources of information used by women during pregnancy and the perceived quality.

BACKGROUND: Access to reliable information is critical to women's experience and wellbeing during pregnancy and childbirth. In our information-rich society, women are exposed to a wide range of information sources. The primary objective of this study was to explore women's use of information sources during pregnancy and to examine the perceived usefulness and trustworthiness of these sources. METHOD: A quantitative cross-sectional study of Dutch women's experiences with various information sources during pregnancy, including professional (e.g. healthcare system), and informal sources, divided into conventional (e.g. family or peers) and digital sources (e.g. websites or apps). Exploratory backward stepwise multiple regression was performed to identify associations between the perceived quality of information sources and personal characteristics. RESULTS: A total of 1922 pregnant women were included in this study. The most commonly used information sources were midwives (91.5%), family or friends (79.3%), websites (77.9%), and apps (61%). More than 80% of women found professional information sources trustworthy and useful, while digital sources were perceived as less trustworthy and useful. Personal factors explain only a small part of the variation in the perceived quality of information sources. CONCLUSION: Even though digital sources are perceived as less trustworthy and useful than professional and conventional sources, they are among the most commonly used sources of information for pregnant women. To meet the information needs of the contemporary generation of pregnant women it is essential that professionals help in the development of digital information sources.

Memory advantage for untrustworthy faces: Replication across lab- and web-based studies.

The Covid-19 pandemic imposed new constraints on empirical research and forced researchers to transfer from traditional laboratory research to the online environment. This study tested the validity of a web-based episodic memory paradigm by comparing participants' memory performance for trustworthy and untrustworthy facial stimuli in a supervised laboratory setting and an unsupervised web setting. Consistent with previous results, we observed enhanced episodic memory for untrustworthy compared to trustworthy faces. Most importantly, this memory bias was comparable in the online and the laboratory experiment, suggesting that web-based procedures are a promising tool for memory research.

Psychological impact during COVID-19 pandemic: A web-based cross-sectional study among students studying at College of Science and Technology (CST), Phuentsholing, Bhutan.

The unprecedented experience of national lockdowns and uncertainty of academic career due to the COVID-19 pandemic has multifaceted impacts on mental health among university students worldwide. This study determined its impact on depression and anxiety level, and associated risk factors among engineering students studying at College of Science and Technology (CST), Phuentsholing, Bhutan during the first lockdown in the country. Self-reported depression and anxiety levels were assessed using Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) respectively. Data was collected using an e-questionnaire link generated in Google form and the link was shared with students via the student's official email group. A total of 278 students (response rate, 26.9%) completed the questionnaire. The majority of respondents were male (69.8%) and were aged from 18 to 30 (Mean: 21.7 ±SD 2.07) years. The prevalence of self-reported moderate to severe depression and anxiety were 44.2% (95% CI, 38.5-49.6) and 27.3% (95% CI, 22.3-32.4) respectively. Participants having their family members as frontline workers reported a significantly higher level of anxiety (χ2 = 4.85, p = 0.028). In multivariable logistic regression analysis, students who were academically lagging showed a higher risk of depression (AOR = 5.36, 95% CI = 2.86-10.04) and anxiety (AOR = 3.83, 95%CI = 1.86-7.88) as compared to students who were not academically behind. A high percentage of depression and anxiety was reported by students of CST during the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings from the study highlight the importance of adopting appropriate online-based teaching and learning methods to ensure timely academic and professional achievements. Moreover, the relevant stakeholders should put health system strategies in place to provide psychological support to university students during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Internet use and pro-environmental behavior: Evidence from China.

Solving environmental problems relies upon cultivating pro-environmental behavior in the society. While the internet has been widely used to facilitate information transmission and communication, it's important to understand its function in promoting pro-environmental behavior. Using the data from the China General Social Survey 2013, the relationship between the use of internet and the individual's pro-environmental behavior is investigated, and overall positive effects are found. The results show that, the influence of internet use is more pronounced on the private pro-environmental behavior when further dividing pro-environmental behavior into private and public types. Moreover, the positive effect of internet use on pro-environmental behavior is more pronounced among low-income and female groups, compared to middle to high income and male counterparts, respectively, when considering the heterogeneity across different groups of individuals. We further explore the plausible channels of providing information, encouraging participation in pro-environmental campaigns and improving social relationships through which internet use facilitates pro-environmental behavior.

The impact of using digitally-mediated social stories on the perceived competence and attitudes of parents and practitioners supporting children with autism.

A Social Story (SS) is a highly acceptable and widely used intervention by the autism community. Yet, inconsistent implementation of the intervention is reported to be one of the causes of variability in terms of outcome research, particularly in a naturalistic context. This study aimed to (1) investigate whether digitally-mediated social stories (SSs) can improve competence in developing and delivering a SS and thus contribute towards improved implementation, and (2) investigate the impact of the digitally-mediated SS on attitudes towards the SS intervention. Ninety-three participants took an initial pre-engagement survey. Forty-eight of these participants also complete a post-engagement survey. A pre-post design was utilised with the participants who completed both surveys. These 48 participants were invited to develop a digitally-mediated SS with the aim of exploring how digitally-mediated SSs impacted perceived competence and attitudes. Post-engagement data was collected two weeks after the pre-engagement data. Outcomes of this study indicate that both perceived competence and attitudes improved after engaging with digitally-mediated SSs. It is concluded that digitally-mediated SS not only impacted the integrity of how the intervention was delivered but also the beliefs in the participants' capabilities to develop and deliver a SS. Digitally-mediated SS, thus, has the potential to effectively support development and delivery whilst also addressing challenges related to intervention implementation in a naturalistic context.

Physician-Rating Websites and Social Media Usage: A Global Survey of Academic Orthopaedic Surgeons: AOA Critical Issues.

ABSTRACT: The relationship between orthopaedic surgeons and the internet is complicated. Social media allows surgeons to educate their patients while marketing to them at the same time. Conversely, patients are able to better communicate with their surgeons while anonymously rating their service and expertise. This study aims to look at the complex relationship between surgeons and social media use.

Reading digital- versus print-easy texts: a study with university students who prefer digital sources

The transition from on-paper to on-screen reading seems to make it necessary to raise some considerations, as a greater attentional efort has been claimed for print texts than digital ones. Not surprisingly, most university students prefer this digital medium. This research aims to examine reading times by contextualizing this phenomenon into two processes: namely, word recognition and reading comprehension task on paper and on screen. Thus, two diferent tasks­counterbalanced into digital and print mediums­were carried out per each participant with a preference for a digital medium: a reading comprehension task (RCT) and a lexical decision task (LDT) after reading a specifc story. Participants were slower reading print texts and no statistically signifcant diferences were found in RCT accuracy. This result suggests that the task required more cognitive resources under the print medium for those with a worse comprehension performance in reading, and a more conservative pattern in digital RCT for those with a better performance.

The Phubbing Scale (PS-8) in the Portuguese population: psychometric properties

Phubbing is defined as ignoring other individuals by using a mobile phone during a face-to-face conversation. The Phubbing Scale (PS) was developed to assess this practice. In this study, we analyze the psychometric properties of the 8-item version of the PS (PS-8) in the Portuguese population, providing validity evidence based on internal structure and on relationships with other variables, and examining item properties, reliability, and measurement invariance across gender. Participants were 391 Portuguese adults (132 men, 259 women) who completed a battery of questionnaires. Confirmatory factor analysis yielded satisfactory goodness-of-fit indices for the two-factor structure (communication disturbance and phone obsession), which was invariant across gender. Item homogeneity and reliability of factor scores (McDonald's omega) were satisfactory. Validity evidence based on relationships with other variables was provided by positive associations with time spent on the Internet on weekdays and at the weekend, time spent on social networking sites, number of social networks used, Internet addiction, problematic mobile phone use, Facebook intrusion, fear of missing out, and depression. These associations show the addictive component of phubbing and its relationship with mental health. The PS-8 is a short and easy-to-administer scale with adequate psychometric properties for measuring phubbing in the Portuguese population. (AU)

Can auxiliary indicators improve COVID-19 forecasting and hotspot prediction?

Short-term forecasts of traditional streams from public health reporting (such as cases, hospitalizations, and deaths) are a key input to public health decision-making during a pandemic. Since early 2020, our research group has worked with data partners to collect, curate, and make publicly available numerous real-time COVID-19 indicators, providing multiple views of pandemic activity in the United States. This paper studies the utility of five such indicators-derived from deidentified medical insurance claims, self-reported symptoms from online surveys, and COVID-related Google search activity-from a forecasting perspective. For each indicator, we ask whether its inclusion in an autoregressive (AR) model leads to improved predictive accuracy relative to the same model excluding it. Such an AR model, without external features, is already competitive with many top COVID-19 forecasting models in use today. Our analysis reveals that 1) inclusion of each of these five indicators improves on the overall predictive accuracy of the AR model; 2) predictive gains are in general most pronounced during times in which COVID cases are trending in "flat" or "down" directions; and 3) one indicator, based on Google searches, seems to be particularly helpful during "up" trends.

An open repository of real-time COVID-19 indicators.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented enormous data challenges in the United States. Policy makers, epidemiological modelers, and health researchers all require up-to-date data on the pandemic and relevant public behavior, ideally at fine spatial and temporal resolution. The COVIDcast API is our attempt to fill this need: Operational since April 2020, it provides open access to both traditional public health surveillance signals (cases, deaths, and hospitalizations) and many auxiliary indicators of COVID-19 activity, such as signals extracted from deidentified medical claims data, massive online surveys, cell phone mobility data, and internet search trends. These are available at a fine geographic resolution (mostly at the county level) and are updated daily. The COVIDcast API also tracks all revisions to historical data, allowing modelers to account for the frequent revisions and backfill that are common for many public health data sources. All of the data are available in a common format through the API and accompanying R and Python software packages. This paper describes the data sources and signals, and provides examples demonstrating that the auxiliary signals in the COVIDcast API present information relevant to tracking COVID activity, augmenting traditional public health reporting and empowering research and decision-making.

R-Loop Tracker: Web Access-Based Tool for R-Loop Detection and Analysis in Genomic DNA Sequences.

R-loops are common non-B nucleic acid structures formed by a three-stranded nucleic acid composed of an RNA-DNA hybrid and a displaced single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) loop. Because the aberrant R-loop formation leads to increased mutagenesis, hyper-recombination, rearrangements, and transcription-replication collisions, it is regarded as important in human diseases. Therefore, its prevalence and distribution in genomes are studied intensively. However, in silico tools for R-loop prediction are limited, and therefore, we have developed the R-loop tracker tool, which was implemented as a part of the DNA Analyser web server. This new tool is focused upon (1) prediction of R-loops in genomic DNA without length and sequence limitations; (2) integration of R-loop tracker results with other tools for nucleic acids analyses, including Genome Browser; (3) internal cross-evaluation of in silico results with experimental data, where available; (4) easy export and correlation analyses with other genome features and markers; and (5) enhanced visualization outputs. Our new R-loop tracker tool is freely accessible on the web pages of DNA Analyser tools, and its implementation on the web-based server allows effective analyses not only for DNA segments but also for full chromosomes and genomes.

Trends and Seasonality of Information Searches Carried Out through Google on Nutrition and Healthy Diet in Relation to Occupational Health: Infodemiological Study.

This study aimed to analyze and relate the population interest through information search trends on Nutrition and Healthy Diet (HD) with the Occupational Health (OH). Ecological and correlational study of the Relative Search Volume (RSV) obtained from Google Trends query, segmented in two searched periods concerning antiquity; date of query: 20 April 2021. The RSV trends for the analyzed three Topics were: Nutrition (R2 = 0.02), HD (R2 = 0.07) and OH (R2 = -0.72). There was a good positive correlation between Nutrition and OH (R = 0.56, p < 0.001) and a moderate one between HD and OH (R = 0.32, p < 0.001). According to seasons, differences were verified between RSV means in the Topics HD (p < 0.01) and OH (p < 0.001). Temporal dependence was demonstrated on Nutrition searches (Augmented Dickey-Fuller = -2.35, p > 0.05). There was only a significant relationship between the RSV Topic HD (p < 0.05) for the Developing and Least Developed countries. The data on the analyzed RSV demonstrated diminishing interest in the search information on HD and OH as well as a clearly positive trend change in recent years for Nutrition. A good positive correlation was observed between the RSV of nutrition and OH whereas the correlation between HD and OH was moderate. There were no milestones found that may report a punctual event leading to the improvement of information searches. Temporal dependence was corroborated in the RSV on Nutrition, but not in the other two Topics. Strangely, only an association was found on HD searches between the Developing and Least Developed Countries. The study of information search trends may provide useful information on the population's interest in the disease data, as well as would gradually allow the analysis of differences in popularity, or interest even between different countries. Thus, this information might be used as a guide for public health approaches regarding nutrition and a healthy diet at work.

A nationwide web-based survey of oncologic surgeons to clarify the current status of preoperative assessment for elderly cancer surgery patients in Japan.

Elderly cancer patients requiring surgical treatment are increasing, and the deterioration of quality of life and shortening of healthy life expectancy due to postoperative complications represent major problems. This study investigated the current status of medical treatment, including perioperative evaluations, for elderly cancer patients requiring surgical treatment at cancer treatment facilities nationwide. A total of 436 cancer care facilities around Japan were invited to participate in this web-based survey regarding management of cancer patients ≥ 65 years old who had undergone surgical treatment in 2018. A total of 919 department heads from 245 facilities agreed to participate. Although most respondents answered that performance status, preoperative examinations, and comorbidities were important when deciding on a treatment plan, age, Geriatric Assessment (GA), and guidelines were "not important" for > 10% of all respondents. GA was familiar to 195 department heads (21%), and awareness of GA was significantly lower among respondents from medical education institutions than the other types of hospitals (18.5% vs 26.3%; P = 0.006). This large survey revealed that the use of GA is not widespread, and its awareness in medical education institutions remains low. We believe that accumulating evidence of geriatric oncology surgery is an urgent issue in Japan.

StackHCV: a web-based integrative machine-learning framework for large-scale identification of hepatitis C virus NS5B inhibitors.

Fast and accurate identification of inhibitors with potency against HCV NS5B polymerase is currently a challenging task. As conventional experimental methods is the gold standard method for the design and development of new HCV inhibitors, they often require costly investment of time and resources. In this study, we develop a novel machine learning-based meta-predictor (termed StackHCV) for accurate and large-scale identification of HCV inhibitors. Unlike the existing method, which is based on single-feature-based approach, we first constructed a pool of various baseline models by employing a wide range of heterogeneous molecular fingerprints with five popular machine learning algorithms (k-nearest neighbor, multi-layer perceptron, partial least squares, random forest and support vectors machine). Secondly, we integrated these baseline models in order to develop the final meta-based model by means of the stacking strategy. Extensive benchmarking experiments showed that StackHCV achieved a more accurate and stable performance as compared to its constituent baseline models on the training dataset and also outperformed the existing predictor on the independent test dataset. To facilitate the high-throughput identification of HCV inhibitors, we built a web server that can be freely accessed at http://camt.pythonanywhere.com/StackHCV . It is expected that StackHCV could be a useful tool for fast and precise identification of potential drugs against HCV NS5B particularly for liver cancer therapy and other clinical applications.

The impact of a digital platform on migraine patient-centered outcome research. Evaluation of midolordecabeza.org, a headache website in Spanish.

OBJECTIVE: This internet survey aimed to analyze the activity of midolordecabeza.org, a specialized website for headache stakeholders. BACKGROUND: eHealth tools, such as websites, can be educational for stakeholders of a specific disease, such as patients. This is particularly helpful in chronic disorders such as migraine. eHealth also enhances patient-centered outcome research. The website midolordecabeza.org has the stated aim of organizing key information on headache making it accessible and useful for all stakeholders, and, eventually promoting patient participation. METHODS: We analyzed Google Analytics (GA) data to study the web's activity, traffic source, geographical distribution of access, registered-user behavior, electronic device performance, and temporary references with greater web activity. RESULTS: From January 2015 until December 2020, the website registered 1,121,585 visitors, 1,775,953 sessions, and a total of 3,833,144 views with an average time per session of nearly 2 min. Higher data traffic has been registered in Spanish-speaking countries such as Spain (33.3%; 591,256/1,775,953), where Spain's regions with higher views were statistically significantly correlated with the nationwide migraine prevalence (ρ = 0.505; p = 0.039). In regard to social behavior, returning users were statistically significantly associated with being a woman (84.0%; 5696/6781), and they predominantly acceded from organic searches (50.6%; 3434/6781). When answering available open surveys, 72.5% (1827/2520) described their migraine as a disabling disease with high impact on their daily tasks and 64.4% (14,016/21,764) were unaware of what their headache diagnosis is. CONCLUSIONS: Spanish-speaking patients with migraine around the world increasingly visited the headache-specialized website midolordecabeza.org using different electronic devices, showing great interest in their disease. This website allowed them to get updated information on their disease, share clinical data with physicians, and finally express their concerns.

Effects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on women affected by endometriosis: a large cross-sectional online survey.

INTRODUCTION: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has forced healthcare providers to reorganize their activities to protect the population from infection, postponing or suspending many medical procedures. Patients affected by chronic conditions were among the most affected. In the case of catastrophes, women have a higher lifetime prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and those with endometriosis have higher anxiety levels, making them fragile in such circumstances. MATERIALS AND METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, conducted in May 2020, we considered all women aged ≥18 years, followed up at our referral centre for endometriosis. Patients were sent an anonymous 6-section questionnaire via email, containing different validated tools for the evaluation of anxiety levels and the risk of PTSD. A multivariable linear regression was performed to assess the impact of patients' characteristics on the distress caused by the SARS-COV-2 pandemic. RESULTS: Among the 468 women recruited, 68.8% were quite-to-extremely worried about not being able to access gynaecologic care, with almost one-third of them scoring ≥33 on the IES-R. Older age and increased levels of anxiety were associated with higher risks of PTSD (age: b = 0.28, 95% CI = 0.12 - 0.44; GAD-7: b = 1.71, 95% CI = 1.38 - 2.05), with up to 71.8% of patients with severe anxiety (GAD-7 > 15) having an IES-R score ≥33 suggestive for PTSD. Women who could leave home to work showed lower levels of PTSD (b = -4.79, 95% CI = -8.44 to - 1.15, ref. unemployed women). The implementation of telemedicine in routine clinical practice was favourably viewed by 75.6% of women. DISCUSSION: Women with endometriosis are particularly exposed to the risk of PTSD during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, especially if they are older or have higher levels of anxiety. Gynaecologists should resort to additional strategies, and telemedicine could represent a feasible tool to help patients cope with this situation.KEY MESSAGESThe COVID-19 pandemic significantly impacted the lives of women with endometriosis, who appeared to have a considerable risk of PTSD.Older age, higher anxiety levels and unemployment were independently associated with the risk of developing PTSD.Clinicians should develop successful alternative strategies to help patients cope with this situation, and telemedicine might represent an applicable and acceptable solution.