Recent publications
- Eliana Miura Zucchi
- Dulce Ferraz
- Ramiro Fernandez Unsain
- [...]
- Márcia Thereza Couto
We aimed to understand how COVID-19 impacted LGBTQIA+ adolescents’ and young people’s well-being and to explore self-care strategies developed by them to address such effects. A qualitative investigation was conducted with adolescents and young people including 39 men who have sex with men and transgender women aged 15–22 years in Brazil. Data collection comprised digital-based diaries and semi-structured interviews and occurred during physical distancing measures. We adopted an iterative thematic analysis from an intersectional lens to examine how participants’ multiple social identities—such as gender, sexuality, race, and class—influenced their self-care practices. The process of reflecting on and adapting to COVID-19-related restrictions prompted participants to recognize experiences that impacted their well-being throughout their lives, such as stigma, discrimination, and violence. Social class emerged as the primary factor in social differentiation, rather than race, leading to varied effects of the pandemic on participants’ lives. In their quest for a sense of wholeness, participants became more critical of their relationships, often choosing to end toxic and abusive connections while seeking new sources of social support as a key strategy for protecting their well-being. Transgender participants noted that certain aesthetics within the transgender community could be oppressive rather than emancipatory. Engaging with new social media circles and participating in volunteer work were important forms of community engagement, particularly among Black participants. Future research on the long-term effects of COVID-19 on the well-being of adolescents should prioritize articulating structural drivers of inequality in qualitative health research.
- Kevin Rebecchi
This article examines the linguistic aspects of autism, focusing specifically on expressive and phatic traits, reevaluating the field of pragmatics. Inspired by the emphasis on inclusion and diverse modes of expression in the Reggio Emilia pedagogy, this study explores the applicability of Reggio Emilia’s pedagogical principles to autism research. The concept of “hundred languages” highlights the multitude of ways in which children can express themselves, think, communicate, and create. By prioritizing inclusive education and recognizing individual differences, the Reggio Emilia approach provides valuable insights for creating inclusive educational environments for autistic individuals. Furthermore, the concept of “hundred languages” aligns with the diverse modes of expression and communication observed in autistic individuals. Emphasis is placed on the pragmatic aspects of language, including social context and the management of similarities and differences in social interactions. This prompts an exploration of how autistic pragmatics may differ from that of non-autistic individuals. The dynamics of linguistic power, wherein individuals in positions of power use language and influence specific segments of the population, raise questions about the impact of power structures on autistic individuals and their language experiences. Moreover, historical descriptions of language in autism provide valuable insights. Observations made by researchers such as Sukhareva, Kanner, Asperger, and Frankl highlight common linguistic peculiarities that cannot be assimilated to deficits or impairments. These descriptions prompt a deeper examination of autistic communication profiles and explain why communication can be more effective between autistic individuals but often more challenging between autistic and non-autistic individuals. This article proposes future research directions, including the study of the “hundred languages” of autism, exploration of the pragmatic aspects of autistic language use, and investigation of the expressive and phatic functions of language in relation to the specialized interests of autistic individuals. These research avenues should aim to enhance our understanding of autistic communication and contribute to the development of effective educational and professional support strategies that encompass and adapt to the unique communication styles and preferences of autistic individuals.
Abstract
Purpose
Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) is a stressful exam assessing medical competencies. Stress coping strategies are expected to enhance students’ performance during OSCE. The objective was to determine the effect of short preventive coping interventions on performance of medical students.
Materials and methods
Double-blinded, randomized controlled trial with multiple arms and a superiority hypothesis. Enrolment was proposed to each fourth-year undergraduate medical student convened to the Lyon Est University OSCE in 2022. There was no exclusion criterion. Students were randomized to one of four groups: standardized breathing with cardiac biofeedback (BFB), mindfulness-based intervention (MBI), positive psychology intervention (PPI), or control (CTRL). Each intervention was video-guided, lasted six minutes, and occurred just before starting the OSCE. The primary outcome was the academic OSCE score, assessed through specific grids by university examiners blinded to the interventions. Secondary outcomes included specific performance scores, and student perception of the influence of the intervention on their performance.
Results
A total of 482 students were included. No difference was found between BFB (−0.17 [95%CI, −1.20 to 0.86], p = .749), MBI (0.32 [95%CI, −0.71 to 1.36], p = .540), or PPI groups (−0.25 [95%CI, −1.29 to 0.79], p = .637) on the academic OSCE score compared to the control group, nor regarding the specific performance scores. Compared to the control group, the students perceived that the intervention influenced more positively their performance (BFB +3 [95%CI, 0–8]), p < .001; MBI +4 [95%CI, 1–9], p = .040; PPI +1 [95%CI, 0–4], p = .040]).
Conclusions
A single six-minute cardiac biofeedback, mindfulness, or positive psychology intervention performed by fourth-year medical students just before an OSCE did not improve their following academic performance. Still, students reported that the interventions helped them to enhance their performance. Future research should aim to further explore the perception of intervention on performance and potential long-term effects for students
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected vulnerable populations, especially individuals living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). The convergence of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 presents unique challenges, exacerbating existing health concerns and magnifying the strain on individuals already grappling with compromised immune systems. This study aimed to investigate the mental well-being repercussions faced by PLWHA co-infected with SARS-CoV-2 in France.
Methods
COVIDHIV is a French multicenter cohort of PLWHA co-infected with SARS-CoV-2, which collected sociodemographic, clinical, and mental health data. Anxiety and depression symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were assessed by the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) and the PTSD Checklist (PCL-S), respectively. Multivariable logistic regression was performed to identify factors associated with mental health outcomes at inclusion in the cohort.
Results
Of the 397 participants included, 64.7% were male. The mean age was 51.6 (± 11.8) years. The prevalence of mental health outcomes was 33.5% ([95%CI: 28.5-39.0%]) for anxiety, 21.0% ([16.8-25.9%]) for depression, and 12.2% ([8.9-16.5%]) for PTSD. In multivariable regression adjusted for sex, COVID-19 wave and duration between COVID-19 confirmation and enrolment, age (adjusted odds-ratio (aOR): 0.97 [0.95-0.99]), being professionally active (0.43 [0.25-0.75]), and the number of self-reported symptoms (1.17 [1.11-1.24]) were associated with anxiety. Being professionally active (0.34 [0.18-0.65]), living in a couple (0.52 [0.20-0.98]), number of self-reported symptoms (1.15 [1.08-1.22]), and hospitalization for COVID-19 (3.35 [1.34-8.33]) were associated with depression. The number of self-reported symptoms (1.27 [1.16-1.41]), psychiatric disorders (4.04 [1.48-11.11]), and perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 (4.53 [1.69-14.60]) were associated with PTSD.
Conclusion
The mental health is a challenging issue among the participants and needs to be closely monitored among people already affected by a chronic disease such as HIV. The findings underscore the urgent need for targeted support and interventions tailored to address the mental health needs of PLWHA facing the dual burden of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19.
A number of bridges have collapsed around the world over the past years, with detrimental consequences on safety and traffic. To a large extend, such failures can be prevented by regular bridge inspections and maintenance, tasks that fall in the general category of structural health monitoring (SHM). Those procedures are time and labor consuming, which partly accounts for their neglect. Computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) methods have the potential to ease this burden, by fully or partially automating bridge monitoring. A critical step in this automation is the identification of a bridge’s structural components. In this work, we propose an extensible synthetic dataset for structural component semantic segmentation of portal frame bridges ( PFBridge ). We first create a 3 dimensional (3D) generic mesh representing the bridge geometry, while respecting a set of rules. The definition of new, or the extension of the existing rules can adjust the dataset to specific needs. We then add textures and other realistic elements to the model, and create an automatically annotated synthetic dataset. The synthetic dataset is used in order to train a deep semantic segmentation model to identify bridge components on bridge images. The amount of available real images is not sufficient to entirely train such a model, but is used to refined the model trained on the synthetic data. We evaluate the contribution of the dataset to semantic segmentation by training several segmentation models on almost 2,000 synthetic images and then finetuning with 88 real images. The results show an increase of 28% on the F1-score when the synthetic dataset is used. To demonstrate a potential use case, the model is integrated in a 3D point cloud capturing system, producing an annotated point cloud where each point is associated with a semantic category (structural component). Such a point cloud can then be used in order to facilitate the generation of a bridge’s digital twin.
This study explores the impact of visually similar flanking stimuli on central target words using the Flanking Letter Lexical Decision (FLLD) task. Specifically, we investigated whether visual similarity effects can explain orthographic relatedness effects observed in previous FLLD tasks. By employing non-reversal mirror letters as visual flankers, we compared their influence on response times to traditional orthographic-related and orthographic-unrelated conditions. Results confirmed the known facilitative effect of orthographic-related flankers on response times (ROCK ROCK ROCK). However, mirror-related conditions showed no facilitative effect (ROCK ROCK ROCK), as evidenced by a Bayesian analysis indicating no significant differences between mirror-related and mirror-unrelated (STEP ROCK STEP). These findings suggest that low-level visual information in the parafovea does not contribute to the processing of the foveal word in tasks requiring specific word identification. The study concludes that only parafoveal information with relevant linguistic content is spatially pooled across target and flankers during word identification tasks. This research highlights the need to consider task-specific attentional demands and the linguistic relevance of parafoveal information in understanding visual and orthographic processing in reading.
During the COVID‐19 pandemic, anatomy educators have demonstrated their ability to respond to face‐to‐face (F2F) teaching restrictions and offer emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL) approach. Another educational model that was intensified during COVID‐19 was blended learning (BL) which is a combination of F2F and online settings. Studies on the effects of the methods employed during COVID‐19 pandemic on anatomy students' learning outcomes are sparse and show slightly similar but nuanced results. There is poor evidence on how the transition to online‐only or to BL in response to COVID‐19 impacted anatomy students' performance, cognitive load, and embodied learning. The main aim of this longitudinal study is to evaluate the effectiveness of ERTL and BL on anatomy performance in kinesiology students. The second aim of this study was to better understand students' performance in terms of cognitive load embodied learning, and the use of 3D digital tools. The results indicate no significant differences between F2F and ERTL students’ performance. However, the results yielded significantly better performance for the BL students in comparison with both F2F (p = 0.001) and ERTL cohort (p = 0.001). The rapid transition to online‐only teaching and learning neither enhanced nor deteriorated students' performance. The BL modality appears to be the most efficient. Learning outcomes were discussed in relation to cognitive load, embodied learning, and the use of 3D digital tools.
Genome streamlining, i.e. genome size reduction, is observed in bacteria with very different life traits, including endosymbiotic bacteria and several marine bacteria, raising the question of its evolutionary origin. None of the hypotheses proposed in the literature is firmly established, mainly due to the many confounding factors related to the diverse habitats of species with streamlined genomes. Computational models may help overcome these difficulties and rigorously test hypotheses. In this work, we used Aevol, a platform designed to study the evolution of genome architecture, to test two main hypotheses: that an increase in population size (N) or mutation rate (μ) could cause genome reduction. In our experiments, both conditions lead to streamlining but have very different resulting genome structures. Under increased population sizes, genomes lose a significant fraction of non-coding sequences but maintain their coding size, resulting in densely packed genomes (akin to streamlined marine bacteria genomes). By contrast, under an increased mutation rate, genomes lose both coding and non-coding sequences (akin to endosymbiotic bacteria genomes). Hence, both factors lead to an overall reduction in genome size, but the coding density of the genome appears to be determined by N × μ. Thus, a broad range of genome size and density can be achieved by different combinations of N and μ. Our results suggest that genome size and coding density are determined by the interplay between selection for phenotypic adaptation and selection for robustness.
In many cities, shared micromobility services (SMMS) have become popular. These services contribute to the popularity of car-alternative mobility by promoting the use of micro-vehicles. Bike-sharing and e-scooter-sharing systems are examples of these services. Despite their potential, the share of SMMS is still marginal. To unlock their full potential, policymakers and service providers need to comprehend the wider implications of their strategies on the adoption, use, and profitability of these services. This paper investigates the implications on travel demand, use patterns, and business profit of two strategic decisions: the size of the fleet and the pricing of shared bikes and e-scooters. This research is based on an agent-based transport simulation framework and trip records of shared bike and e-scooter users from the city of Lyon, France. The results show that despite their actual marginal share, SMMS have a non-negligible growth potential in Lyon. This potential is unfulfilled due to sub-optimal pricing and fleet size strategies. In the paper, more optimal strategies are discussed from the point of view of service providers and customers. These findings can be generalized to other cities and shared micromobility services. They can also be of interest to policymakers and service providers in the design and operation of successful and efficient SMMS.
In this comparative cross-linguistic study we test whether expressive interjections (words like ouch or yay) share similar vowel signatures across the world's languages, and whether these can be traced back to nonlinguistic vocalizations (like screams and cries) expressing the same emotions of pain, disgust, and joy. We analyze vowels in interjections from dictionaries of 131 languages (over 600 tokens) and compare these with nearly 500 vowels based on formant frequency measures from voice recordings of volitional nonlinguistic vocalizations. We show that across the globe, pain interjections feature a-like vowels and wide falling diphthongs (“ai” as in Ayyy! “aw” as in Ouch!), whereas disgust and joy interjections do not show robust vowel regularities that extend geographically. In nonlinguistic vocalizations, all emotions yield distinct vowel signatures: pain prompts open vowels such as [a], disgust schwa-like central vowels, and joy front vowels such as [i]. Our results show that pain is the only affective experience tested with a clear, robust vowel signature that is preserved between nonlinguistic vocalizations and interjections across languages. These results offer empirical evidence for iconicity in some expressive interjections. We consider potential mechanisms and origins, from evolutionary pressures and sound symbolism to colexification, proposing testable hypotheses for future research.
In this paper, we conduct an in-depth review of and commentary on two frameworks for international comparative work focused on education systems and skill formation – specifically, welfare regime and production regime approaches. We focus on how tertiary education is understood to function relationally within a national policy repertoire and explore the interplay between education and economic systems. Whereas the welfare regime literature illuminates why some regimes are conducive to human capital production and create more equitable educational and labour market opportunities, the production regime literature focuses on the ways that actors such as government, educational institutions, and unions optimise skill formation. These two theoretical perspectives offer both rival and complementary explanations of varying patterns in public investment, differentiation in education systems, and participation rates in tertiary education across countries. Our analytical account provides useful insights for understanding different national education policies and framing future research, including informing these perspectives with the more recent theoretical contributions of the social investment approach. In relation to changing conceptions of the knowledge economy, education, skill development, and the nature of employment, these two theoretical perspectives continue to provide useful conceptual lenses to examine the education/skill /employment nexus.
Background
Adolescence shapes adulthood and is a time of vulnerability. This study explores risk behaviors among African adolescents from Gabon.
Methods
This study was done in 2021 and followed the Global School-Based Student Health Survey (GSHS) guidelines. Six core modules (alcohol, tobacco, and drug use, sexual behaviors, mental health, and safety) were included. A self-administered questionnaire was used to gather data. The data were analyzed using Prism version 6 GraphPad software.
Results
This study includes 1009 adolescents aged 10–19 years (62% females and 38% males). 30.8% are under 16 years old. 41.3% have low to medium self-esteem. The prevalence of alcohol, tobacco, and cannabis use is 37%, 7.4%, and 4.3%, respectively. 15.4% of under 16 years are alcohol drinkers. 38% are sexually active (6% of them have had sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)). Alcohol increases by 6.1 (p < 0.0001) the odds of being sexually active. The age of the first sexual intercourse is 15.3 ± 1.9 years. Sexually active adolescents have, on average, 3.2 ± 2.2 sex partners. Also, 38% of sexually active adolescents experienced coerced sex. 11.3% of sexually active girls had an abortion, and 17.4% of them had kids. 19.4% have experienced sex under substance influence. Less than half of adolescents consistently use condoms. The odds of unprotected sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs is 10.7 (p < 0.001).
Conclusions
These results suggest Gabonese adolescents have a relatively high rate of alcohol use, risky sexual behaviors, sexual coercion, low to medium self-esteem, and vulnerability.”
This study presents the process of design and development of a low-cost turbidimeter for monitoring water quality, facilitating rigorous spatial–temporal variability analysis within large-scale hydrological systems. We propose a low-cost optical turbidimeter, modifying the existent SEN0189 turbidity sensor, Arduino boards, and additional sensors for temperature compensation. We compared a low-cost system with high-tech sensors, modifying the original low-cost SEN0189 probe for enhanced environmental performance. The three-step methodological framework involved prototype development, compensation for environmental factors, and preparation for future field deployment. Calibration equations with a high coefficient of determination and a temperature correction equation were established. We made adaptations to overcome field deployment challenges, including a 3-D printed sensor case, defining the relationship between measurement uncertainty and energy consumption, and specifying field installation guidelines. In summary, this study presents a comprehensive approach to a low-cost optical turbidity system, demonstrating its potential for accurate and affordable field deployment. We aim to address the critical need for sustainable inland water management tools, making this system a valuable contribution to environmental monitoring practices. We also aim to inspire similar development of open-source monitoring systems within our community.
This article examines little-known French collections of hinagata bon (Japanese pattern books) kept at the Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris, whose origins can be traced back to the travels of the first japonistes to Japan in the middle of the nineteenth century. The reception of these books by the French artists, collectors, and writers, who identified, analyzed, exhibited, and then preserved them for artistic, encyclopedic, and historical purposes, reveals the fascination the patterns and the cut of Japanese clothing held for early japonistes . Hinagata bon were originally intended for the textile industry, but in France served primarily to inspire artists and designers of every kind. Moreover, the books were also appreciated for their aesthetic value, which enables us to assess the role of japonistes in the conservation of Japanese fashion images.
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Lyon, France
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Nathalie Dompnier (Présidente)
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