Bowling Green State University

Background Even though robust evidence suggests the high prevalence of eating disorders (EDs) in China, EDs in China are characterized by low diagnosis rates, delayed treatment-seeking, and ineffective treatments. Given that listening to patients’ perspectives and lived experiences is crucial to improving our understanding of EDs in the Chinese context, an investigation of the perceived causes of EDs in Chinese individuals with EDs represents a key step in improving the prevention and treatment of EDs in China. Aims To explore the perceived causes of EDs based on data from a sample of Chinese social media users with self-reported EDs, with a particular focus on the Zhihu platform. Methods We extracted and analyzed data through content analysis. Eight specific causes that could be classified into two groups were coded, including individual factors (e.g., “body image and eating”) and sociocultural factors (e.g., “media and cultural ideals”). Results A total of 2079 entries regarding self-reported EDs were retained for content analysis (14.7% were anorexia nervosa, 37.6% were bulimia nervosa, and 47.7% were binge-eating disorder). More than 90% of users with self-reported EDs claimed causes belonging to individual factors, while 35–51% of users claimed sociocultural factors. “Body image and eating” (68–87%) and “psychological and emotional problems” (65–67%) were the most commonly claimed specific causes, while “traumatic life events” (13–14%), “genetics and biology” (7–13%), and “sports and health” (9–12%) were the least claimed. Chi-square independent tests showed that users with different self-reported EDs disproportionately claimed certain causes. Conclusions Using large-scale social media data, findings provide a deeper understanding of the perceived causes of EDs in the Chinese context from individuals with self-reported EDs and highlight the variations in perceived causes across different self-reported ED types.

In cultures committed to making everything explicit, calling for trickery in education seems suspicious. However, for better or worse, trickery is already prevalent in education. In particular, it quietly persists in assumptions it is possible and desirable to be explicit about many educational matters, including learning intentions, and knowledge of self and others. In this philosophical and autobiographical inquiry, we explore trickery's role in disrupting and exposing this presumptive transparency, and in working with the educational possibilities that then arise. In parallel, we take note that the Anthropocene is an ambiguous and undetermined situation, which promises to trick whoever seeks secure diagnoses and prescriptions of what is at stake. There are therefore confluences between disrupting explicitification in classroom ecologies and ecologies of the broader world. Suspicious of habits that foreclose people's ability to respond to events as they arise, trickery surfaces and engage ambiguities, contradictions, and potentials inherent in the invisible and assumed. Despite such antics, the trickster is no mere jokester. As she deals in duplicity, confusion, and concealment, she attends evermore carefully to sincerity, trust, and revelation, to the freedom of people and planet, and to the ongoing threats and promises of a perpetual return to harmony.

Like many other regions, Africa has been a target of global terrorism in recent decades with countries like Nigeria, Somalia, Congo DRC, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Mozambique, Libya, Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Kenya being among the most affected. Specifically, Kenya is ranked 23 out of 135 on the 2020 Global Terrorism Index which measures the impact of terrorism on countries. The same index ranks Kenya twelfth in Africa in terms of terrorism impact after Nigeria, Somalia, Congo DRC, Mali, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Mozambique, Libya, Central African Republic, and South Sudan. In this chapter, I use data from the Rand Global Terrorism database and other sources to explore Kenya’s experience with global terrorism in the 1975–2018 period before briefly reflecting on the same in the COVID and post-COVID era. The chapter starts with an exploration of the factors behind Kenya’s vulnerability to global terrorism before moving on to explore the temporal and geographic distribution of terrorist incidents in the study period, their victims (i.e., number of people killed and wounded), property damage, weapons used, responsible terrorist groups, and the challenges of dealing with terrorism in the post-COVID era including the worrying rise of the terrorism-climate nexus. A good understanding of these issues can help Kenya to protect itself from future terrorism attacks.

This study delves into the complex challenges surrounding the employment of older adults, investigating perceived barriers and their interaction with sociodemographic variables and life satisfaction. Utilizing data from 153 older adults and employing a cross-sectional design and multivariate analysis of covariance, the study uncovers significant associations between gender, age, race, and perceived barriers. Female, older, and racially diverse individuals report higher perceived employment barriers, indicating disparities influenced by sociodemographic factors. Gender and race interactions on these barriers are substantial, with life satisfaction emerging as a significant covariate affecting perceived employment barriers. These findings stress the importance of targeted interventions and policy reforms to address systemic inequalities and promote age-inclusive practices. By embracing diversity, fostering inclusivity, and championing age-friendly policies, stakeholders can create a more equitable labor market, empowering older adults to contribute meaningfully to society.

Drawing on a raciolinguistic perspective and theoretical constructs of critical consciousness, this study examines Chinese dual language bilingual education (DLBE) teachers’ lived experiences and the raciolinguistic ideologies shaping their perceived language and literacy pedagogy in the classroom. We conducted semistructured interviews with 10 Utah secondary Chinese DLBE teachers to capture and understand their stories. The findings reveal that teachers’ diverse experiences influenced their ideologies toward language and race as well as their language and literacy instructional practices. While the teachers invested various efforts to facilitate bilingual and biliteracy learning by leveraging students’ background knowledge, they did not engage students in discussing and learning critical topics on race, power, and equity, setting aside the DLBE foundational goal of developing critical consciousness. We argue for the need to support Chinese DLBE teachers to critically examine their raciolinguistic ideologies and practice critical language and literacy pedagogies that challenge oppressive practices and advance equity in Mandarin Chinese DLBE classrooms. Implications for educators, school leaders, policymakers, and families are also discussed.

This case study examined how the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) managed the 2018 Hajj season, one of the largest worldwide gatherings, to identify prominent communication strategies utilised in a large event. The two-way symmetrical communication and the renewal discourse theory served as theoretical frameworks. A thematic analysis was utilised to analyse communication content, news articles, and tweets. It is almost impossible to know whether the KSA intentionally applied Grunig’s two-way symmetrical communications theory; nevertheless, the results suggested that KSA operated in a way that followed Grunig’s theory. The findings showed how the KSA learned from past mistakes and incorporated Grunig’s two-way symmetrical communication model to implement best public relations practices for a successful 2018 Hajj season. This case study provided various perspectives on how employing communication strategies can help manage a significant event successfully.

Heavy-atom-free photosensitizers (HAF-PSs) have emerged as a new class of photosensitizers aiming to broaden their applicability and versatility across various fields of the photodynamic therapy of cancers. The strategy involves...

Archaerhodopsin-3 (AR-3) variants stand out among other rhodopsins in that they display a weak, but voltage-sensitive, near-infrared fluorescence emission. This has led to their application in optogenetics both in cell cultures and small animals. However, in the context of improving the fluorescence characteristics of the next generation of AR-3 reporters, an understanding of their ultrafast light-response in light-adapted conditions, is mandatory. To this end, we present a combined experimental and computational investigation of the excited state dynamics and quantum yields of AR-3 and its DETC and Arch-5 variants. The latter always display a mixture of all-trans/15-anti and 13-cis/15-syn isomers, which leads to a bi-exponential excited state decay. The isomerisation quantum yield is reduced more than 20 times as compared to WT AR-3 and proves that the steady-state fluorescence is induced by a single absorption photon event. In wild-type AR-3, we show that a 300 fs, barrier-less and vibrationally coherent isomerization is driven by an unusual covalent electronic character of its all-trans retinal chromophore leading to a metastable twisted diradical (TIDIR), in clear contrast to the standard charge-transfer scenario established for other microbial rhodopsins. We discuss how the presence of TIDIR makes AR-3 an ideal candidate for the design of variants with a one-photon induced fluorescence possibly reaching the emission quantum yield of the top natural emitter neorhodopsin (NeoR).

The United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) has recently incorporated driver pay into its guidelines on the promotion of safe and decent work in road transport. ILO guideline 73 states that ‘the remuneration of … CMV [commercial motor vehicle] drivers should be sustainable and take into consideration the attractiveness and sustainability of the industry’. In the spirit of this, we explore the relationship between truck drivers’ relative income and intrastate motor carrier safety performance. We utilise the United States (US) Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage data for heavy and tractor-trailer truck driver median annual incomes and the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey estimates of median household incomes to construct county level relative income ratios for truck drivers. This information is merged with public safety data to analyse the relationship between truck drivers’ relative pay and motor carrier safety performance. We find that, all else constant, carriers located in counties where driver earnings are relatively high tend to experience fewer crashes. This provides evidence that safety performance is better when driver pay is more attractive in the truck driver labour market and, consequently, validates the ILO’s assertion under guideline 73.

Motivation The recent progress in RNA structure determination methods has resulted in a surge of newly solved RNA 3D structures. However, there is an absence of a user-friendly browser-based tool that can facilitate the comparison and visualization of RNA motifs across multiple 3D structures. Results We introduce R3DMCS, a web server that allows users to compare selected RNA nucleotides across all 3D structures of a given molecule from a given species, or across all 3D structures mapped to a single Rfam family. Starting from one instance of the motif, R3DMCS retrieves, aligns, annotates, organizes, and displays 3D coordinates of corresponding sets of nucleotides from other 3D structures. With R3DMCS, one can explore conformational changes of motifs due to 3D structures being solved in different functional states or different experimental conditions. One can also investigate conservation of 3D structure across species, or changes in 3D structure due to changes in sequence. Availability R3DMCS is open-source software and freely available at https://rna.bgsu.edu/correspondence/ and https://github.com/BGSU-RNA/RNA-3D-correspondence . Supplementary information Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Empirical evidence, based on variable-centered approaches (e.g., correlation and regression analyses), supports robust links between weight and muscularity teasing and eating variables in men. However, limited research has considered the directions (i.e., high and low) of teasing or their combinations via person-centered approaches (e.g., latent class analysis). Thus, this study explored the relationships between four types of teasing (i.e., teasing for high weight, low weight, high muscularity, and low muscularity) and eating variables in 596 Chinese adult men using variable and person-centered approaches. Independent t-tests and regression analyses revealed that four types of teasing had unique associations with eating disorder (ED) symptomatology, eating-related psychosocial impairment, and intuitive eating. Latent class analysis identified four distinct teasing classes, including High Weight-Low Muscularity, Low Weight-Low Muscularity, Low Teasing, and High Weight-High Muscularity. Notably, individuals in the Low Teasing group consistently showed the lowest ED symptomatology and psychosocial impairment and the highest intuitive eating. Individuals in the High Weight-High Muscularity group exhibited the highest traditional ED symptomatology and the most severe psychosocial impairment. The findings highlight the importance of future research considering teasing directions and tailored interventions for adult men in certain subgroups at risk of eating disorder psychopathology (e.g., the High Weight-High Muscularity teasing group).

Objective: This study examined cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of intermittent fasting (IF) engagement with body mass index (BMI), both thinness-oriented and muscularity-oriented eating disorder (ED) psychopathology, eating-related psychological impairment, and intuitive eating. Method: Using a longitudinal design, 491 Chinese adults (M age = 30.33 years, SD = 7.89) provided data regarding BMI, IF status, and eating variables at baseline (T1) and 8-month (T2) follow-up. One-way ANOVA was used to explore cross-sectional associations between IF engagement at T1 and study variables (i.e., BMI and eating variables) at T1. Cross-lagged regression analyses were used to examine the longitudinal associations between IF engagement at T1 and study variables at T2, after adjusting for covariates and study variables at T1. Results: Cross-sectionally, compared with participants who never engaged in IF at T1, those with current or past engagement in IF at T1 exhibited significantly higher BMI, ED psychopathology, eating-related psychosocial impairment, and lower intuitive eating at T1. Longitudinally, relative to never engagement in IF at T1, both current and past engagement in IF at T1 were associated with higher ED psychopathology and greater eating-related psychosocial impairment at T2. Also, relative to never engagement in IF at T1, past engagement in IF at T1 was associated with higher BMI at T2 and lower unconditional permission to eat as a facet of intuitive eating at T2. Discussion: The findings challenge the perception of IF as an effective approach for weight loss and also suggest IF might have enduring adverse impacts on eating behaviors, similar to traditional forms of dieting.

We report 40 metagenomic libraries collected from the Winam Gulf of Lake Victoria during May–July of 2022–2023 and an additional eight opportunistic libraries from adjacent Lakes Simbi, Naivasha, and regional river systems. The sampling period captured cyanobacterial bloom events – shedding insight onto community composition and genomic potential.

Background: Dietary interventions play a crucial role in weight management and reducing cardiovascular risk factors. Our study aims to compare the effectiveness of four dietary macronutrient interventions on weight loss and cardiovascular (CV) risk factor reduction through a systematic review and network meta-analysis. Methods: We conducted a comprehensive literature search on PubMed, Scopus, Embase, and Cochrane Library up till May 2024 to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing four macronutrient dietary interventions including Mediterranean Diet (MD), Keto, Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH), and Intermittent Fasting (IF) with study period ≥ 6 months or 24 weeks. The primary outcomes of interest were weight loss, systolic blood pressure (SBP), Diastolic blood pressure (DBP), Body Mass Index (BMI), High density lipoprotein (HDL), Low density Lipoprotein (LDL), cholesterol levels and C-reactive protein (CRP) levels. Outcomes were reported as standard mean difference (SMD). Results: Our analysis identified 50 studies enrolling 5368 patients (MD=3554; DASH=838; Keto=206; IF=770). Regarding BP outcome, MD and DASH had significant reduction in SBP and DBP respectively (MD [SBP]: -0.76 mmHg vs DASH [DBP]: -1.92 mmHg) respectively. In contrast, IF showed a significant rise in SBP (0.87). MD participants also had significant weight loss (-1.06 kg) and a moderate decrease in BMI (-0.79) when compared with other diets. Furthermore, IF, keto, and MD showed moderate increase in HDL levels (0.61, 0.77 and 0.33) respectively. In contrast, DASH resulted in a moderate decline in HDL levels (-0.92). IF and MD resulted in modest decline in LDL levels (-0.45 and -0.42) respectively. In contrast, Keto demonstrated non-significant rise in LDL (0.35). DASH showed a significant decrease in triglycerides (-3.02). Lastly, MD demonstrated a significant reduction in CRP (-0.89). Conclusions: MD and DASH were superior to other dietary interventions in terms of weight loss and CV risk factors. Further research is required to tailor specific types of dietary interventions and assess their long-term efficacy on weight loss and CV risk reduction.

Objectives Guided by the life‐course principles of linked lives embedded in historical time and place, we investigated whether nonresident adult children provided financial and time assistance to parents in response to their needs during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Background Adult children are an important source of support for older adults during crises, yet their ability to help parents may have been constrained during the pandemic. Method Data were extracted from the 2016, 2018, and 2020 waves of the Health and Retirement Study. We employed three analytic strategies. First, we examined how nonresident adult children responded to parental needs during the pandemic. Second, we compared the financial and time assistance received during the pandemic with earlier periods. Third, we assessed whether support patterns varied depending on the severity of the pandemic in places where parents lived. All analyses used linear probability models, adjusting for pre‐pandemic characteristics. Results Parents facing economic hardship more often received money help and those experiencing difficulty buying food for nonfinancial reasons more often received time help from adult children compared to those without such challenges. Moreover, both financial and time assistance from adult children increased during the pandemic compared to pre‐pandemic levels. Hardships increased the probability of receiving money and time help from adult children when parents lived in areas with a high level of pandemic severity. Conclusion Adult children became more responsive to parental needs during the COVID‐19 pandemic, underscoring the importance of linked lives across generations during times of crisis.