COVID-19 has led to an unprecedented disruption of normal social relationships and activities, which are so important during the teen years and young adulthood, and to education and economic activity worldwide. The impact of this on young people’s mental health and future prospects may affect their need for support and services, and the speed of the nation’s social recovery afterwards. This study focused on the unique challenges facing young people at different points during adolescent development, which spans from the onset of puberty until the mid-twenties. Although this is an immensely challenging time and there is a potential risk for long term trauma, adolescence can be a period of opportunity, where the teenagers’ brain enjoys greater capacity for change. Hence, the focus on young people is key for designing age-specific interventions and public policies, which can offer new strategies for instilling resilience, emotional regulation, and self-control. In fact, adolescents might be assisted to not only cope, but excel, in spite of the challenges imposed by this pandemic. Our work will feed into the larger societal response that utilizes the discoveries about adolescence in the way we raise, teach, and treat young people during this time of crisis. Wave 1 data has already been collected from 2,002 young people aged 13-24, measuring their mental health (anxiety, depression, trauma), family functioning, social networks, and resilience, and social risk-taking at the time of the pandemic. Here we present a preliminary report of our findings, (Report 1). Data collected 21/4/20- 29/4/20 - a month after the lockdown started).

Conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, this study (n = 310) tested whether past and current engagement with thematically relevant media fictions, including horror and pandemic films, was associated with greater preparedness for and psychological resilience toward the pandemic. Since morbid curiosity has previously been associated with horror media use during the COVID-19 pandemic, we also tested whether trait morbid curiosity was associated with pandemic preparedness and psychological resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that fans of horror films exhibited greater resilience during the pandemic and that fans of “prepper” genres (alien-invasion, apocalyptic, and zombie films) exhibited both greater resilience and preparedness. We also found that trait morbid curiosity was associated with positive resilience and interest in pandemic films during the pandemic. Taken together, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that exposure to frightening fictions allow audiences to practice effective coping strategies that can be beneficial in real-world situations.

Background: Digital interventions may be used to mitigate psychosocial consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic but evidence-based recommendations are lacking. The aim of this rapid meta-review was to investigate the theoretical base, user perspective, safety, and clinical and cost effectiveness of digital interventions in public mental health provision (i.e. mental health promotion, prevention of, and treatment for mental disorder). Methods: A rapid meta-review was conducted. MEDLINE, PsycINFO, and CENTRAL databases were searched on May 11, 2020. Study inclusion criteria were broad and considered systematic reviews that investigated digital tools for health promotion, prevention, or treatment of mental health conditions likely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Findings: We identified 813 reviews of which 82 met inclusion criteria. Overall, there is good evidence on the usability, safety, acceptance/satisfaction, and effectiveness of eHealth interventions while evidence on mHealth apps is promising, especially if social components (e.g. blended care) and strategies to promote adherence are incorporated. Although most digital interventions focus on the prevention or treatment of mental disorders, there is some evidence on mental health promotion. However, evidence on long-term clinical effects, process quality, and cost-effectiveness is very limited. Interpretation: Accumulating evidence suggests negative effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on public mental health. There is evidence that digital interventions are particularly suited to mitigating psychosocial consequences at the population level. Decision-makers should develop digital strategies for continued mental health care and the development and implementation of mental health promotion and prevention programs in times of quarantine and social distancing.

Background: Stress and compromised parenting often place children at risk of abuse and neglect. Child maltreatment has generally been viewed as a highly individualistic problem by focusing on stressors and parenting behaviors that impact individual families. However, because of the global coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), families across the world are experiencing a new range of stressors that threaten their health, safety, and economic well-being. Objective: This study examined the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to parental perceived stress and child abuse potential. Participants and Setting: Participants included parents (N = 183) with a child under the age of 18 years in the western United States. Method: Tests of group differences and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were employed to assess the relationships among demographic characteristics, COVID-19 related disruptions, mental health risk, protective factors, perceived stress, and child abuse potential. Results: Greater COVID-19 related disruptions and high anxiety and depressive symptoms are associated with higher perceived stress and child abuse potential. In addition, higher perceived stress is associated with higher child abuse potential. Conversely, greater parental support and perceived control during the pandemic may have a protective effect against perceived stress and child abuse potential. Results also indicate racial and ethnic differences in COVID-19 related disruptions, but not in mental health risk, protective factors, perceived stress, or child abuse potential. Conclusion: Findings suggest that although families experience elevated stressors from COVID-19, providing parental support and increasing perceived control may be promising intervention targets.

Background: Stressful events associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to have significant effects on psychiatric symptoms, and well-validated methods for assessing psychosocial experiences related to the pandemic are needed. We developed the Pandemic Stress Questionnaire (PSQ) and tested its psychometric properties, characterized experiences in emerging adults, and examined associations with internalizing symptoms. Methods: Emerging adults (N=450) completed the PSQ and measures of internalizing symptoms and perceived stress through an online platform in May 2020. One month later, 288 participants completed a follow-up questionnaire to assess the stability of the PSQ and prospective associations between stress and internalizing symptoms. Results: Results supported the validity and stability of the PSQ and indicated that experiences of stress are highly prevalent, particularly among younger, female, and Black emerging adults. Pandemic-related stress was moderately associated with depression and anxiety at each assessment, but did not predict change in symptoms when controlling for baseline symptoms. Conclusions: The PSQ is a promising measure for assessing COVID-19 pandemic-related events in research and clinical practice. Results provide empirical support for the range of life disruptions as a result of the pandemic and highlight individual differences and experiences associated with the greatest risk for depression and anxiety.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to calls for contributions from the social and behavioural sciences in responding to the social and behavioural dimensions of the pandemic. The current Delphi study explored expert opinions and consensus about the contributions that can be made by social psychology and social psychologists, and research priorities and strategies to this end. A two-round Delphi process was employed involving a panel of 52 professors of social psychology from 25 countries. Responses to open-ended questions presented to the panel in Round 1 were condensed and reformulated into 100 closed-ended statements that the panel rated their agreement with in Round 2. Consensus was reached for 55 topics to which social psychology can contribute, 26 topics that should be prioritised, and 19 strategies that should be implemented. The findings contribute to further focusing research efforts in psychology in its response to the social and behavioural dimensions of the COVID-19 and future pandemics.

We focus on the role of trust in scientists in attitudes toward vaccination and analysed data from Wellcome Global Monitor (Wellcome Trust, 2018), a survey conducted with more than 140,000 people in more than 140 countries. In our analysis we focused on worldwide, European, and Polish data. We assumed that higher levels of trust in scientists is related to more positive beliefs and attitudes towards vaccines. We also expected that the level of education modifies the effects in a way that the higher the education, the more positive attitudes towards vaccines. We found that trust in scientists was related to more positive attitudes toward vaccination, which was further modified by education (education exacerbated the effects of trust). That was, however, not the case for Poland, where we only found the main effect of trust but not that of education.

In the COVID-19 situation, social and behavioral science evidence is accumulating rapidly through online data collection, but the options to share and publish this information are scarce. As a remedy, I recommend the adoption of micropublishing in the fields of social and behavioral sciences. While micropublishing has been gaining popularity, it is not yet widely accepted or utilized by existing academic journals. Greater implementation would improve the availability of data in the immediate COVID-19 era and establish a post-COVID-19 publishing methodology that could increase researcher and practitioner engagement in real time. I recommend micropublishing in a specific manner that bifurcates an experiment’s methodology or survey method from the subsequently published data based on that experiment protocol. Published findings could be presented in a series and edited as new data emerges. This publishing system promotes cumulative science. To provide a visual example that supports my argument, I created a demo journal with sample papers organized according to the structure I recommend. The demo journal has features—except a Digital Object Finder (DOI)—that make it possible to publish social and behavioral sciences research. It could be replicated for a newly established journal. Alternatively, existing journals could add a section dedicated to micropublication.

The global challenge of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been emerged and continued up to now. These reports suggested that research of investigating the effect of COVIID-19 pandemic on mental health and well-being. Thus, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relations among socioeconomic changes driven from the pandemic, mental health, life satisfaction (past, current, and future), and fear of COVID-19 in Japan. 560 Japanese individuals response to demographic variables (sex, age, self-restraint, changing income), FCV-19S (Fear of COVID-19 Scale), DASS (Depression, Anxiety, Stress Scale), Present, Past, and Future Life Satisfaction. Two Structural equation modeling (SEM) s conducted in this study revealed that corona fear mediated reduced time out and income and negative symptoms and current, future, and past life satisfaction. We explored the associations between changing lifestyle, mental health, fear of COVID-19, and life satisfaction during the pandemic in Japanese population. The results showed that the fear of COVID-19 was mediated by an association between reduced outgoings and income and depression and life satisfactions: current and future.

The term fake news is increasingly used to discredit information from reputable news organizations. We tested the possibility that fake-news claims are appealing because they satisfy the need to see the world as structured. Believing that news organizations are involved in an orchestrated disinformation campaign implies a more orderly world than believing that the news is prone to random errors. Across six studies (N > 2,800), individuals with dispositionally high or situationally increased need for structure were more likely to attribute contested news stories to intentional deception than to journalistic incompetence. The effect persisted for stories that were ideologically consistent and ideologically inconsistent and after analyses controlled for strength of political identification. Political orientation showed a moderating effect; specifically, the link between need for structure and belief in intentional deception was stronger for Republican participants than for Democratic participants. This work helps to identify when, why, and for whom fake-news claims are persuasive.

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the lives of millions of people around the globe and some of the unprecedent emerged disruptions, are likely to have been particularly challenging for young children (e.g., school closures, social distancing measures, movement restrictions). Studying the impact of such extraordinary circumstances on their well-being is crucial to identify processes leading to risk and resilience. To better understand how Spanish children have adapted (or fail to) to the stressful disruptions resulting from the pandemic outbreak, we examined the effects of child coping and its interactions with contextual stressors (pandemic and family-related) on child adjustment, incorporating in our analysis a developmental perspective. Data was collected in April 2020, through parent-reports, during the acute phase of the pandemic and, temporarily coinciding with the mandatory national quarantine period imposed by the Spanish Government. A sample of 1,123 Spanish children (50% girls) aged three to 12 (Mage = 7.26; SD = 2.39) participated in the study. Results showed differences in the use of specific strategies by children in different age groups (i.e., 3-6, 7-9 and 10-12-year-olds). Despite the uncontrollable nature of the pandemic-related stressors, child disengagement coping was distinctively associated to negative outcomes (i.e., higher levels of behavioral and emotional difficulties), whereas engagement coping predicted psychosocial adjustment across all age groups. Moreover, interactively with child coping, parent fear of the future and parent dispositional resilience appear as relevant contextual factors to predict both negative and positive outcomes, but their effects seem to be age dependent, suggesting a higher contextual vulnerability for younger children. These findings might have implications for identifying individual and contextual risk and informing potential preventive interventions aimed to reduce the impact of future pandemic outbreaks on children of different ages.

Science denialism is not just a simple matter of logic or ignorance

Postdoc researchers like me aren’t considered university employees, even though we’re essential to research. This must change

Anxiety and depression in graduate students is worsening. The health of the next generation of researchers needs systemic change to research cultures.

Project Free Our Knowledge aims to increase the adoption of open research practices through collective action in academia. Researchers can sign onto the platform using ORCID and pledge to change their behaviour in line with various campaigns (e.g., publish/review exclusively in Open Access journals), but only act on their pledge when a predefined threshold of 'support' is met in their research field (see below). This strategy is designed to ‘kickstart’ support for new publishing models and initiatives, while mitigating risks to vulnerable academics (e.g., early-career researchers and under-represented minorities).

The phenomenon of an ‘infodemic’ has escalated to a level that requires a coordinated response. An infodemic is an overabundance of information – some accurate and some not – occurring during an epidemic. Like pathogens in epidemics, misinformation spreads further and faster and adds complexity to health emergency response. In the pre-conference experts engage with the public with 7 inspiring talks how the infodemic affects the world currently and reflections how it can be managed.

The COVID-19 epidemic and the quarantine that children in many countries have had to undergo is a stressful situation about which little is known so far. The coping behaviors carried out by children and adolescents to face home confinement can be associated with their emotional welfare. The objectives of this study were: 1) to examine the coping strategies carried out by children and adolescents during the COVID-19 health crisis, 2) to analyze the differences in these behaviors in three countries, and 3) to examine the relationship between different modalities of coping and better adaptation. Participants were 1,480 parents of children aged 3-18 years from three European countries (n Spain = 431, n Italy = 712, and n Portugal = 355). The children’s mean age was 9.15 years (SD = 4.27). Parents completed an online survey providing information on symptoms and coping behaviors observed in their children. The most frequent coping strategies were accepting what is going on (58.9%), collaborating with quarantine social activities (e.g., drawings on the windows, supportive applauses) (35.9%), acting as if nothing is happening (35.5%), highlighting pros of being at home (35.1%), and not seeming worried about what is happening (30.1%). Compared to Italian and Spanish children, Portuguese children used a sense of humor more frequently when parents talked about the situation. Acting as if nothing happened, collaborating with social activities, and seeking comfort from others was more likely in Spanish children than in children from the other countries. Compared to Portuguese and Spanish children, those from Italy seem not worried about what was happening. Overall, an emotional-oriented coping style was directly correlated with a greater presence of anxious symptoms, as well as mood, sleep, behavioral, and cognitive alterations. Task-oriented and avoidance-oriented styles were related to better psychological adaptation, measured as the low presence of psychological symptoms. Results also show that unaffected children or children with a lower level of impact were more likely to use strategies based on a positive focus on the situation. This study provides interesting data on the strategies to be promoted by parents to cope with the COVID-19 health crisis in children.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created a public health crisis. Because SARS-CoV-2 can spread from individuals with pre-symptomatic, symptomatic, and asymptomatic infections, the re-opening of societies and the control of virus spread will be facilitated by robust surveillance, for which virus testing will often be central. After infection, individuals undergo a period of incubation during which viral titers are usually too low to detect, followed by an exponential growth of virus, leading to a peak viral load and infectiousness, and ending with declining viral levels and clearance. Given the pattern of viral load kinetics, we model surveillance effectiveness considering test sensitivities, frequency, and sample-to-answer reporting time. These results demonstrate that effective surveillance, including time to first detection and outbreak control, depends largely on frequency of testing and the speed of reporting, and is only marginally improved by high test sensitivity. We therefore conclude that surveillance should prioritize accessibility, frequency, and sample-to-answer time; analytical limits of detection should be secondary.

Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR)

In this episode, Professor Sir Simon Wessely spoke to Dr Howard Bauchner, editor-in-chief of JAMA, and Dr Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief of The BMJ, about the role medical journals play in a pandemic such as COVID-19.

Resilience is meant as the capability of a networked infrastructure to provide its service even if some components fail: in this paper we focus on how resilience depends both on net-wide measures of connectivity and the role of a single component. This paper has two objectives: first to show how a set of global measures can be obtained using techniques from network theory, in particular how the spectral analysis of the adjacency and Laplacian matrices and a similarity measure based on Jensen-Shannon divergence allows us to obtain a characteriza-tion of global connectivity which is both mathematically sound and operational. Second, how a clustering method in the subspace spanned by the l smallest eigen-vectors of the Laplacian matrix allows us to identify the edges of the network whose failure breaks down the network. Even if most of the analysis can be applied to a generic networked infrastructure, specific references will be made to Water Distribution Networks (WDN).

Coronavirus spikes in states reopening early and the financial fallout are discussed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman in conversation with Joy Reid.

Countries within the European Union have agreed on a framework to allow COVID-19 tracing apps to work across national borders. These apps will be able to monitor the spread of the virus. The system will involve a Federation Gateway Service that will receive and pass on “relevant information” from national contact tracing apps and servers. But there’s a way to go before any digital contacts tracing works smoothly.

Download the presentations from this webinar.

Public health strategies to curb the spread of the coronavirus involve sheltering at home and social distancing have been effective in reducing the transmission rate, but the unintended consequences of prolonged social isolation on mental health has not been investigated. We conducted an online survey of residents in Hong Kong. We focused on Hong Kong for its very rapid and comprehensive response to the pandemic and strictly enacted social distancing protocols. Thus, Hong Kong is a model case for the population-wide practice of effective social distancing and provides an opportunity to examine the impact of loneliness on mental health during the COVID-19. The result of this online survey indicates a dire situation with respect to mental health. An astonishing 65.6% of the respondents reported clinical levels of depression, anxiety, and/or stress. Moreover, 22.5% of the respondents were showing signs of psychosis-risk. Loneliness, but not social network size, explained 12.0% to 29.2% of variance in these psychiatric symptoms. To mitigate the potential epidemic of mental illness in the near future, there is an urgent need to prepare clinicians, caregivers and stakeholders to focus on loneliness. Although the sociopolitical situation of Hong Kong prior to the pandemic was likely another exacerbating factor, given that sociopolitical unrest and violence are common, global problems that co-exist with the pandemic, the case of Hong Kong may prove to be prescient.

Increasingly, researchers are attempting to replicate published original studies by using large, multisite replication projects, at least 134 of which have been completed or are on going. These designs are promising to assess whether the original study is statistically consistent with the replications and to reassess the strength of evidence for the scientific effect of interest. However, existing analyses generally focus on single replications; when applied to multisite designs, they provide an incomplete view of aggregate evidence and can lead to misleading conclusions about replication success. We propose new statistical metrics representing firstly the probability that the original study's point estimate would be at least as extreme as it actually was, if in fact the original study were statistically consistent with the replications, and secondly the estimated proportion of population effects agreeing in direction with the original study. Generalized versions of the second metric enable consideration of only meaningfully strong population effects that agree in direction, or alternatively that disagree in direction, with the original study. These metrics apply when there are at least 10 replications (unless the heterogeneity estimate 𝜏̂ =0τ^=0<math altimg="urn:x-wiley:09641998:media:rssa12572:rssa12572-math-0001" location="graphic/rssa12572-math-0001.png"> <mrow> <mover accent="true"> <mi>τ</mi> <mo stretchy="false">^</mo> </mover> <mo>=</mo> <mn>0</mn> </mrow> </math>, in which case the metrics apply regardless of the number of replications). The first metric assumes normal population effects but appears robust to violations in simulations; the second is distribution free. We provide R packages (Replicate and MetaUtility)

This report contains latest responses on people's mental health during Covid19 pandemic. It also highlights the need for accessible mental health care application. Invitations (https://lnkd.in/e3Ua_DD) were sent out to US citizens with at least high school degrees. We use Qualtrics system and its advanced features of anti survey stuffing, fraud scoring, and so on. At the moment of this report, we have eighty three usable entries (n=83).

It would be nice to be able to say otherwise, but the UK’s approach to testing in this covid-19 pandemic continues to be chaotic, centralised, commercialised, and driven by numerical targets rather than clear strategy. Allan Wilson, president of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences, has called this reactive and random approach the “wild west of testing.”1 Writing for BMJ Opinion this week, Chris Ham agrees. The system is far from “world beating,” and ministers must be prepared to acknowledge and learn from mistakes, he says.2

As the relationship between ideology and attitudes towards vaccinations is usually analysed on data coming from the US context, in our analysis we analysed European data with special focus on Poland. The current findings show that the effects of ideology on vaccine are insignificant, when European context is considered. Even if there is an interactive impact of ideology and political interest, the effects are not very strong and, furthermore, they do not provide support for the “liberal bias” against vaccination. We suggest that it lack of the effects of ideology on vaccines in European context is related to the fact that vaccines have not become a strongly politicized issue as in the US.

Background: While the United States has struggled to keep the spread of COVID-19 at bay, many other countries have significantly stunted the number of new cases. Recent evidence suggests that cultural factors may play a key role in the spread of infection. To examine the cultural values underlying adherence to social distancing, this study used global cultural data as well as mobility scores from Google LLC’s global measurement on mobility. Methods: A composite variable for country-level engagement in social distancing was created from February 15, 2020 to June 7, 2020 (N = 14,022) across 118 countries. Segmented piece-wise multilevel modeling was used to examine the influence of cultural values of uncertainty avoidance, individualism-collectivism, tightness-looseness, and societal level of trust in three distinct time frames: 1) from February 15, 2020 to the country’s 100th COVID-19 case, 2) the first 30 days after each country’s 100th COVID-19 case, and 3) from the 31st day after the 100th case to June 7, 2020. Results: Results showed that collectivism promoted quick mobilization of social distancing behaviors while uncertainty avoidance stunted this mobilization. After the 100th case of COVID-19, high societal level of trust was related to the decline of social distancing behaviors. Interaction effects showed that countries high on uncertainty avoidance, collectivism, and tightness were all quicker to engage in social distancing at the earliest stages of the pandemic but not at the later stages. Conclusion: With the imminent second wave of COVID-19, policy makers and health scholars may explore the efficacy of culture-specific policies, strategies, and social interventions in mobilizing social distancing measures.

The general public is subject to triage policies that allocate scarce lifesaving resources during the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the worst public health emergencies in the past 100 years. However, public attitudes toward ethical principles underlying triage policies used during this pandemic are not well understood. Three experiments (preregistered; online samples; N = 1,868; U.S. residents) assessed attitudes toward ethical principles underlying triage policies. The experiments evaluated assessments of utilitarian, egalitarian, prioritarian, and social usefulness principles in conditions arising during the COVID-19 pandemic, involving resource scarcity, resource reallocation, and bias in resource allocation toward at-risk groups, such as the elderly or people of color. We found that participants agreed with utilitarian and prioritarian principles for allocating scarce resources during initial allocation and disagreed with egalitarian and social usefulness principles. However, support for these principles did not extend to resource reallocation between existing patients. Lastly, participants did not agree with utilitarian principles when they disadvantaged at-risk groups, such as people of color and people with disabilities. Abandoning utilitarian principles that disadvantaged people of color in favor of equitable allocation resulted in significantly more agreement with triage policy. Understanding these attitudes can contribute to developing triage policies, increase trust in health systems, and assist them in achieving their goals of patient care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the current COVID-19 pandemic a key unsolved question is the duration of acquired immunity in recovered individuals. The recent emergence of SARS-CoV-2 precludes a direct study on this virus, but the four seasonal human coronaviruses may reveal common characteristics applicable to all human coronaviruses. We monitored healthy subjects over a time span of 35 years (1985-2020), providing a total of 2473 follow up person-months, and determined a) the time to reinfection by the same seasonal coronavirus and b) the dynamics of coronavirus antibody depletion post-infection. An alarmingly short duration of protective immunity to coronaviruses was found. Reinfections occurred frequently at 12 months post-infection and there was for each virus a substantial reduction in antibody levels as soon as 6 months post-infection.

I hear a lot from our readers and stakeholders about how to solve this problem of science denial. Most of them suggest that Science and science “need to do a better job at telling its stories.” I don't buy it. For more than a century, this journal has been delivering insightful and reliable scientific information; today, our articles have the highest readership ever. Sure, we can do a better job of simplifying messages and making them accessible to more people. There is always room for improvement. But is this really the crux of this dangerous problem?The scientific community is up against a sophisticated, data-driven machine that is devoted to making sure that science doesn't fully succeed

Coronavirus remains top global concern in May, according to a monthly Ipsos poll. But unemployment takes the place of COVID-19 as the chief worry in six countries. Concern about joblessness spikes to five-year high.

As the health and economic impact of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) expands globally, growing attention is being paid to low-or lower-middle-income countries due to high population densities, limited access to health-case-service, and existing financial burdens. Yet, literature on the psychological reaction to COVID-19 pandemic in low- or lower-middle-income countries is still limited. In this study, we examined people’s awareness of COVID-19 symptoms, perceived risk of contracting coronavirus, fear in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, and changes in behaviors and stress during the lockdown in peri-urban areas in Tamil Nadu India. Field workers conducted rapid phone call surveys (N=2044) in 26 communities from May 20th – 25th 2020. We found that the majority of the residents in our sampled community perceived no (60%) or low (23%) level of risk of personally contracting coronavirus. Common fears were related to both the health and economic impact of the pandemic, including loss of income (62%), inability to travel freely (46%), self might get sick (46%), and food shortage (39%). Residents were well-aware of the common symptoms of COVID-19, such as fever (66%) and dry cough (57%), but only a small proportion (24%) mentioned the asymptomatic features of COVID-19. A considerable proportion reported that they did not increase their practice of preventive behaviors since the lockdown, which included not reducing social gatherings (26%), not increasing social distancing practices (19%), and not inform others of COVID-19 related facts (30%). The majority experienced increased stress about finance (79%) and about the lockdown (51%). Our findings emphasize the need to develop context-adequate education and communication programs aimed to raise vigilance about coronavirus, specifically focused on factors such as its asymptomatic features, and to sustain preventive behaviors. The evidence on fear and changes in stress levels may serve as a reference in designing coping strategies and programs with a focus on mental well-being.

Due to the strong overreliance on p-values in the scientific literature some researchers have argued that p-values should be abandoned or banned, and that we need to move beyond p-values and embrace practical alternatives. When proposing alternatives to p-values statisticians often commit the ‘Statistician’s Fallacy’, where they declare which statistic researchers really ‘want to know’. Instead of telling researchers what they want to know, statisticians should teach researchers which questions they can ask. In some situations, the answer to the question they are most interested in will be the p-value. As long as null-hypothesis tests have been criticized, researchers have suggested to include minimum-effect tests and equivalence tests in our statistical toolbox, and these tests (even though they return p-values) have the potential to greatly improve the questions researchers ask. It is clear there is room for improvement in how we teach p-values. If anyone really believes p-values are an important cause of problems in science, preventing the misinterpretation of p-values by developing better evidence-based education and user-centered statistical software should be a top priority. Telling researchers which statistic they should use has distracted us from examining more important questions, such as asking researchers what they want to know when they do scientific research. Before we can improve our statistical inferences, we need to improve our statistical questions.

The average number of people one person with an infectious disease will likely infect

“Waste warriors” need immediate protection during the COVID-19 crisis. And a longer-term plan to formalize the sector must get underway. The post-COVID world offers an opportunity to add value to our economies and planet through comprehensive waste management approaches – all of which start with the people who work (often informally) in the sector.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, people have been stuck indoors with their partners for months. Having a supportive partner is likely to be especially important during this time where access to outside sources of support is limited. Individuals have to continue to work on goals and tasks while dealing with demands caused by the pandemic. The present mixed-methods study aimed to investigate how partner support is associated with goal outcomes during COVID-19. The quantitative participants (n = 200) completed a daily diary for a week and weekly longitudinal reports for a month and 48 participants attended a semi-structured interview. The quantitative results showed that higher relational catalyst support was associated with better goal outcomes; qualitative analyses revealed partners use direct and indirect forms of emotional and instrumental support toward goal pursuit. Across both forms of data, participants’ resilience in the face of the pandemic was evident.

Patients will face much longer waits for procedures as hospitals operate at a predicted 40% of capacity

Tens of thousands flock to beaches and illegal street parties after restrictions eased, causing chaotic scenes

Survey shows people want to continue with more fulfilling and family-friendly work environments

Academia is often critiqued as an “ivory tower” where research, thinking, and teaching is isolated from the complexity and everyday experience of so many people. As instructors of political and other psychology courses, we strive to break down these barriers and engage with the dynamic and nuanced nature of phenomena as situated in lived social and political contexts. In this report, we unpack and detail how we strive to achieve this goal by expanding on Plous’ articulation of action teaching (2012). We first define our pedagogical focus on active engagement, critical thinking, and staying on the move between multiple perspectives. We then provide specific examples of how we enact our philosophy in activities and assessment. We end by articulating how this approach to teaching in social and political psychology can be understood as furthering not only our students’ intellectual growth as psychologists, but also their development as democratic citizens. In doing so, we argue that action teaching not only involves course activities directly engaging with social issues, but also provides students with a scaffold to actually do so in a way that is attentive to the complexity, pluralism, and dynamism of social and political issues.

Memory is a crucial component of everyday decision making, yet little is known about how memory and choice processes interact, and whether or not established memory regularities persist during memory-based decision making. In this paper, we introduce a novel experimental paradigm to study the differences between memory processes at play in standard list recall versus in preferential choice. Using computational memory models, fit to data from two pre-registered experiments, we find that some established memory regularities (primacy, recency, semantic clustering) emerge in preferential choice, whereas others (temporal clustering) are significantly weakened relative to standard list recall. Notably, decision-relevant features, such as item desirability, play a stronger role in guiding retrieval in choice. Our results suggest memory processes differ across preferential choice and standard memory tasks, and that choice modulates memory by differentially activating decision-relevant features such as what we like.

The repulsive body image (RBI) describes a schematic representation of the own body marked by body-directed self-disgust and other body image concerns. This RBI may bias autobiographical memory processing towards RBI-congruent memories, which would be expected to be overgeneral, because disgust may promote the avoidance of specific memories. In the current study, women with high (HRBI; n = 61) and low (LRBI; n = 64) RBI levels retrieved memories in response to abstract body-related cue words in a minimal instructions Autobiographical Memory Test. Compared to the LRBI group, the HRBI group recalled a higher number of autobiographical memories that involved appraisals of the own body as disgusting, and reported elevated habitual tendencies to prevent experiencing disgust towards the own body. Neither RBI scores nor tendencies to prevent experiencing body-related disgust were found to be statistically significant predictors of memory specificity. In light of the low memory specificity in the whole sample, more sensitive measures of autobiographical memory specificity may be needed to examine disgust-driven avoidance at the memory level. Nevertheless, the current results may indicate that disgust-related memories and the prevention of experiencing disgust towards the own body could play a role in the persistence of body image concerns.

Objectives: The present study examined the role of aging in participants between 18 and 87-years of age on open-mindedness in the Actively Open-minded Thinking (AOT) scale and the Actively Open-minded Thinking about Evidence (AOT-E) scale. Method: The amalgamated data from 12 Amazon Mechanical Turk™ studies was analysed. This included a total of 9010 participants (age: M = 37.30, SD = 14.13 / sex: 4191 males, 4734 females and 85 who did not wish to state their sex). All participants completed the 7-item Actively Open-minded Thinking (AOT) scale, of these participants four-hundred and ninety-one also completed the 8-item Actively Open-minded Thinking about Evidence (AOT-E) scale (age: M = 33.27, SD = 5.78 / sex: 2317 males, 2512 females and 62 who did not wish to state their sex). Results: AOT score positively correlated with AOT-E score (r = 0.27). Age negatively correlated with AOT score (r = -0.11) and AOT-E score (r = -0.13). There was a statistical difference in AOT score between the age ranges of participants (18-28, 29-38, 39-48, 49-58, 59-68 and 69-87 years of age). There was also a difference in AOT-E score between the age ranges of participants too. Discussion: The results showed that open-mindedness as measured by the AOT and AOT-E decreased as a function of aging. In an aging population were more adults work into later age the decrease in open-mindedness could influence many areas of judgments of decision-making.

Registered reports are a relatively new type of journal article format in which the decision to publish an article is based on sound conceptualization, methods, and planned analyses, rather than the specific nature of the results. Registered reports are becoming increasingly instituted in journals across the sciences, but mostly in experimental contexts. Relatively few of these journals pertain directly to developmental research with adolescents, emerging adults, and adults, which tend to use more complex methods, or at least methods that involve a greater degree of flexibility. This article describes lessons learned through editing a special issue focused on registered reports based on analyses of a single existing dataset, the Emerging Adulthood Measured and Multiple Institutions 2 project. These observations should be helpful for researchers interested in preparing registered report submissions using developmental and secondary data.

Facial expressions support effective social communication by dynamically transmitting complex, multi-layered messages, such as emotion categories and their intensity. How facial expressions achieve this signalling task remains unknown. Here, we address this question by identifying the specific facial movements that convey two key components of emotion communication – emotion classification (such as ‘happy,’ ‘sad’) and intensification (such as ‘very strong’) – in the six classic emotions (happy, surprise, fear, disgust, anger and sad). Using a data-driven, reverse correlation approach and an information-theoretic analysis framework, we identified in 60 Western receivers three communicative functions of face movements: those used to classify the emotion (classifiers), to perceive emotional intensity (intensifiers), and those serving the dual role of classifier and intensifier. We then validated the communicative functions of these face movements in a broader set of 18 complex facial expressions of emotion (including excited, shame, anxious, hate). We find that the timing of emotion classifier and intensifier face movements are temporally distinct, in which intensifiers peaked earlier or later than classifiers. Together, these results reveal the complexities of facial expressions as a signalling system, in which individual face movements serve specific communicative functions with a clear temporal structure.

Women are underrepresented in positions of power – a pattern partly explained by pervasive stereotypes about who should be leaders. How do the beliefs underlying gender disparities in leadership develop? This study revealed that gender stereotypes influence children’s (3.5-6.9 years; N = 185) decisions about who should be leaders: Girls asked to pick someone to lead were less likely to choose a girl than were girls asked to choose someone to work on a team, whereas boys were equally likely to select a boy for either type of role. Yet, there were no gender differences in children’s interest in leadership or beliefs about their own leadership potential. These findings indicate that gender disparities in advancement may begin with the acquisition of gender stereotypes about who should lead.

Although past research has shown that social comparisons made through social media contribute to negative outcomes, little is known about the nature of these comparisons (domains, direction, and extremity), variables that determine comparison outcomes (post valence, perceiver’s self- esteem), and how these comparisons differ from those made in other contexts (e.g., text messages, face-to-face interactions). In four studies (N=798), we provide the first comprehensive analysis of how individuals make and respond to social comparisons on social media, using comparisons made in real-time while browsing news feeds (Study 1), experimenter- generated comparisons (Study 2), and comparisons made on social media vs. in other contexts (Studies 3-4). More frequent and more extreme upward comparisons resulted in immediate declines in self-evaluations as well as cumulative negative effects on individuals’ state self- esteem, mood, and life satisfaction after a social media browsing session. Moreover, downward and lateral comparisons occurred less frequently and did little to mitigate upward comparisons’ negative effects. Furthermore, low self-esteem individuals were particularly vulnerable to making more frequent and more extreme upward comparisons on social media, which in turn threatened their already-lower self-evaluations. Finally, social media comparisons resulted in greater declines in self-evaluation than those made in other contexts. Together, these studies provide the first insights into the cumulative impact of multiple comparisons, clarify the role of self-esteem in online comparison processes, and demonstrate how the characteristics and impact of comparisons on social media differ from those made in other contexts.

The outbreak of novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has become a pandemic. Drug repurposing may represent a rapid way to fill the urgent need for effective treatment. We evaluated the clinical utility of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine in treating COVID-19. Forty-eight patients with moderate COVID-19 were randomized to oral treatment with chloroquine (1000 mg QD on Day 1, then 500 mg QD for 9 days; n=18), hydroxychloroquine (200 mg BID for 10 days; n=18), or control treatment (n=12). Adverse events were mild, except for one case of Grade 2 ALT elevation. Adverse events were more commonly observed in the chloroquine group (44.44%) and the hydroxychloroquine group (50.00%) than in the control group (16.67%). The chloroquine group achieved shorter time to clinical recovery (TTCR) than the control group (P=0.019). There was a trend toward reduced TTCR in the hydroxychloroquine group (P=0.049). The time to reach viral RNA negativity was significantly faster in the chloroquine group and the hydroxychloroquine group than in the control group (P=0.006 and P=0.010, respectively). The median numbers of days to reach RNA negativity in the chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, and control groups was 2.5 (IQR: 2.0-3.8) days, 2.0 (IQR: 2.0-3.5) days, and 7.0 (IQR: 3.0-10.0) days, respectively. The chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine groups also showed trends toward improvement in the duration of hospitalization and findings on lung computerized tomography (CT). This study provides evidence that (hydroxy)chloroquine may be used effectively in treating moderate COVID-19 and supports larger trials.

We report cellular nanosponges as an effective medical countermeasure to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Two types of cellular nanosponges are made of the plasma membranes derived from human lung epithelial type II cells or human macrophages. These nanosponges display the same protein receptors, both identified and unidentified, required by SARS-CoV-2 for cellular entry. It is shown that, following incubation with the nanosponges, SARS-CoV-2 is neutralized and unable to infect cells. Crucially, the nanosponge platform is agnostic to viral mutations and potentially viral species, as well. As long as the target of the virus remains the identified host cell, the nanosponges will be able to neutralize the virus.

Background It is to be determined whether people infected with SARS-CoV-2 will develop long-term immunity against SARS-CoV-2 and retain long-lasting protective antibodies after the infection is resolved. This study was to explore to explore the outcomes of IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in four groups of individuals in Wuhan, China. Methods We included the following four groups of individuals who received both COVID-19 IgM/IgG tests and RT-PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 from February 29, 2020 to April 29, 2020: 1470 hospitalized patients with COVID-19 from Leishenshan Hospital, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, and Wuhan No. 7 Hospital, 3832 healthcare providers without COVID-19 diagnosis, 19555 general workers, and 1616 other patients to be admitted to the hospital (N=26473). COVID-19 patients who received IgM/IgG tests <21 days after symptom onset were excluded. Results IgG prevalence was 89.8% (95% CI 88.2-91.3%) in COVID-19 patients, 4.0% (95% CI 3.4-4.7%) in healthcare providers, 4.6 (95% CI 4.3-4.9 %) in general workers, and 1.0% in other patients (p all <0.001 for comparisons with COVID-19 patients). IgG prevalence increased significantly by age among healthcare workers and general workers. Prevalence of IgM antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 was 31.4% in COVID-19 patients, 1.5% in healthcare providers, 1.3% in general workers, and 0.2% in other patients. Conclusions Very few healthcare providers had IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, though a significant proportion of them had been infected with the virus. After SARS-CoV-2 infection, people are unlikely to produce long-lasting protective antibodies against this virus.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown a markedly low proportion of cases among children1,2,3,4. Age disparities in observed cases could be explained by children having lower susceptibility to infection, lower propensity to show clinical symptoms or both. We evaluate these possibilities by fitting an age-structured mathematical model to epidemic data from China, Italy, Japan, Singapore, Canada and South Korea. We estimate that susceptibility to infection in individuals under 20 years of age is approximately half that of adults aged over 20 years, and that clinical symptoms manifest in 21% (95% credible interval: 12–31%) of infections in 10- to 19-year-olds, rising to 69% (57–82%) of infections in people aged over 70 years. Accordingly, we find that interventions aimed at children might have a relatively small impact on reducing SARS-CoV-2 transmission, particularly if the transmissibility of subclinical infections is low. Our age-specific clinical fraction and susceptibility estimates have implications for the expected global burden of COVID-19, as a result of demographic differences across settings. In countries with younger population structures—such as many low-income countries—the expected per capita incidence of clinical cases would be lower than in countries with older population structures, although it is likely that comorbidities in low-income countries will also influence disease severity. Without effective control measures, regions with relatively older populations could see disproportionally more cases of COVID-19, particularly in the later stages of an unmitigated epidemic

The clinical features and immune responses of asymptomatic individuals infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) have not been well described. We studied 37 asymptomatic individuals in the Wanzhou District who were diagnosed with RT–PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections but without any relevant clinical symptoms in the preceding 14 d and during hospitalization. Asymptomatic individuals were admitted to the government-designated Wanzhou People’s Hospital for centralized isolation in accordance with policy1. The median duration of viral shedding in the asymptomatic group was 19 d (interquartile range (IQR), 15–26 d). The asymptomatic group had a significantly longer duration of viral shedding than the symptomatic group (log-rank P = 0.028). The virus-specific IgG levels in the asymptomatic group (median S/CO, 3.4; IQR, 1.6–10.7) were significantly lower (P = 0.005) relative to the symptomatic group (median S/CO, 20.5; IQR, 5.8–38.2) in the acute phase. Of asymptomatic individuals, 93.3% (28/30) and 81.1% (30/37) had reduction in IgG and neutralizing antibody levels, respectively, during the early convalescent phase, as compared to 96.8% (30/31) and 62.2% (23/37) of symptomatic patients. Forty percent of asymptomatic individuals became seronegative and 12.9% of the symptomatic group became negative for IgG in the early convalescent phase. In addition, asymptomatic individuals exhibited lower levels of 18 pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines. These data suggest that asymptomatic individuals had a weaker immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. The reduction in IgG and neutralizing antibody levels in the early convalescent phase might have implications for immunity strategy and serological surveys.

Objective To assess the clinical effectiveness of oral hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) with or without azithromycin (AZI) in preventing death or leading to hospital discharge. Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting An analysis of data from electronic medical records and administrative claim data from the French Assistance Publique - Hopitaux de Paris (AP-HP) data warehouse, in 39 public hospitals, Ile-de-France, France. Participants All adult inpatients with at least one PCR-documented SARS-CoV-2 RNA from a nasopharyngeal sample between February 1st, 2020 and April 6th, 2020 were eligible for analysis. The study population was restricted to patients who did not receive COVID-19 treatments assessed in ongoing trials, including antivirals and immunosuppressive drugs. End of follow-up was defined as the date of death, discharge home, day 28 after admission, whichever occurred first, or administrative censoring on May 4, 2020. Intervention Patients were further classified into 3 groups: (i) receiving HCQ alone, (ii) receiving HCQ together with AZI, and (iii) receiving neither HCQ nor AZI. Exposure to a HCQ/AZI combination was defined as a simultaneous prescription of the 2 treatments (more or less one day). Main outcome measures The primary outcome was all-cause 28-day mortality as a time-to-event endpoint under a competing risks survival analysis framework. The secondary outcome was 28-day discharge home. Augmented inverse probability of treatment weighted (AIPTW) estimates of the average treatment effect (ATE) were computed to account for confounding. Results A total of 4,642 patients (mean age: 66.1 +/- 18; males: 2,738 (59%)) were included, of whom 623 (13.4%) received HCQ alone, 227 (5.9%) received HCQ plus AZI, and 3,792 (81.7%) neither drug. Patients receiving "HCQ alone" or "HCQ plus AZI" were more likely younger, males, current smokers and overall presented with slightly more co-morbidities (obesity, diabetes, any chronic pulmonary diseases, liver diseases), while no major difference was apparent in biological parameters. After accounting for confounding, no statistically significant difference was observed between the "HCQ" and "Neither drug" groups for 28-day mortality: AIPTW absolute difference in ATE was +1.24% (-5.63 to 8.12), ratio in ATE 1.05 (0.77 to 1.33). 28-day discharge rates were statistically significantly higher in the "HCQ" group: AIPTW absolute difference in ATE (+11.1% [3.30 to 18.9]), ratio in ATE (1.25 [1.07 to 1.42]). As for the "HCQ+AZI" vs neither drug, trends for significant differences and ratios in AIPTW ATE were found suggesting higher mortality rates in the former group (difference in ATE +9.83% [-0.51 to 20.17], ratio in ATE 1.40 [0.98 to 1.81];p=0.062). Conclusions Using a large non-selected population of inpatients hospitalized for COVID-19 infection in 39 hospitals in France and robust methodological approaches, we found no evidence for efficacy of HCQ or HCQ combined with AZI on 28-day mortality. Our results suggested a possible excess risk of mortality associated with HCQ combined with AZI, but not with HCQ alone. Significantly higher rates of discharge home were observed in patients treated by HCQ, a novel finding warranting further confirmation in replicative studies. Altogether, our findings further support the need to complete currently undergoing randomized clinical trials.

An analysis from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention of over a million coronavirus cases in the U.S. puts new numbers behind previous observations that the disease "disproportionately" affects racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States, as well as older people and those with underlying health conditions.

What is already known about this topic? Surveillance data reported to CDC through April 2020 indicated that COVID-19 leads to severe outcomes in older adults and those with underlying health conditions. What is added by this report? As of May 30, 2020, among COVID-19 cases, the most common underlying health conditions were cardiovascular disease (32%), diabetes (30%), and chronic lung disease (18%). Hospitalizations were six times higher and deaths 12 times higher among those with reported underlying conditions compared with those with none reported. What are the implications for public health practice? Surveillance at all levels of government, and its continued modernization, is critical for monitoring COVID-19 trends and identifying groups at risk for infection and severe outcomes. These findings highlight the continued need for community mitigation strategies, especially for vulnerable populations, to slow COVID-19 transmission.

Amid increased acts of violence against telecommunication engineers and property, this pre‐registered study (N  = 601 Britons) investigated the association between beliefs in 5G COVID‐19 conspiracy theories and the justification and willingness to use violence. Findings revealed that belief in 5G COVID‐19 conspiracy theories was positively correlated with state anger, which in turn, was associated with a greater justification of real‐life and hypothetical violence in response to an alleged link between 5G mobile technology and COVID‐19, alongside a greater intent to engage in similar behaviours in the future. Moreover, these associations were strongest for those highest in paranoia. Furthermore, we show that these patterns are not specific to 5G conspiratorial beliefs: General conspiracy mentality was positively associated with justification and willingness for general violence, an effect mediated by heightened state anger, especially for those most paranoid in the case of justification of violence. Such research provides novel evidence on why and when conspiracy beliefs may justify the use of violence.

A study in the UK has suggested a link between 5G Covid-19 conspiracy beliefs and the justification of violence.

As much of the country presses forward with reopening, a growing number of cities and states are finding that the coronavirus outbreak now has a foothold in a younger slice of the population, with people in their 20s and 30s accounting for a larger share of new coronavirus infections. The demographic shift has emerged in regions with different populations and political approaches to the pandemic – from Washington state and California to Florida and Texas. North Carolina, South Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin and Colorado also all report clusters that have a larger proportion of young adults than they had previously seen.

Governors promise to put kids back in class in a matter of weeks, but school officials are largely stuck navigating the messy details.

The White House coronavirus task force has been out of public view as President Donald Trump has shown an urgency to move past the pandemic, downplay recent surges in Covid cases in some states, and get Americans back to work.But the nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, has been warning Americans about the risk of further spread of the virus. On Wednesday, Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, joined the US Department of Health and Human Services' podcast "Learning Curve" and gave his expertise on the pandemic and the vaccine development process.He also defended the stay-at-home orders as having saved "millions of lives," and drew attention to anti-science bias and the disproportionate impact the virus is having on the black community.

In the wake of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), social distancing has become important for containing the pandemic and preventing a renewed spread of the virus. We investigated psychological factors that predict adherence to social distancing guidelines. In a two-part longitudinal study (N = 574), we assessed adherence and its difficulty twice, one week apart. At T1, participants either planned to deal with the difficulties of adherence (planning intervention) or not (control condition). We further measured individual differences in planning, self-control, and boredom. T2 adherence was higher in the planning intervention, when participants intended to use plans. Trait planning was associated with higher T1 and T2 adherence and mitigated negative effects of T1 difficulty. Analogous effects emerged for trait self-control at T1. Trait boredom was associated with higher difficulty at T1 and T2 without directly affecting adherence. Our results are relevant for designing effective measures in prolonged responses to COVID-19.

As public scrutiny of a secretive panel of scientists heightened, its members nearly buckled under the strain.

As states ease their lockdowns, bars are emerging as fertile breeding grounds for the coronavirus. They create a risky cocktail of tight quarters, young adults unbowed by the fear of illness and, in some instances, proprietors who don’t enforce crowd limits and social distancing rules. Public health authorities have identified bars as the locus of outbreaks in Louisiana, Florida, Wyoming and Idaho. Last weekend, the Texas alcohol licensing board suspended the liquor licenses of 17 bars after undercover agents observed crowds flouting emergency rules that required patrons to keep a safe distance from one another and limit tavern occupancy.

Openness in research can lead to greater reproducibility, an accelerated pace of discovery, and decreased redundancy of effort. In addition, open research ensures equitable access to knowledge and the ability for any community to assess, interrogate, and build upon prior work. It also requires open infrastructure and distributed access; but few institutions can provide all of these services alone. Providing a trustworthy network for perpetual availability of research data is critical to ensuring reproducibility, transparency, and ongoing inquiry. Increased attention on the importance of open research and data sharing has led to a proliferation of platforms to store data, materials, etc., with limited technical integration. This can hinder data sharing, but also complicate coordination with local library expertise and services, thus hampering curation and long-term stewardship. For example, the open source OSF enables researchers to directly create and manage research projects and integrates with other tools researchers use (Google Drive, Dropbox, Box, etc.), but lacks the ability to archive that material locally at a researcher’s institution. Long-term stewardship and preservation requires multiple copies of data archived in different locations, and creating archives seamlessly would be ideal. COS and IA are working together to address these preservation and stewardship challenges by providing open, cooperative infrastructure to ensure long-term access and connection to research data, and by supporting and promoting adoption of open science practices to enhance research reproducibility as well as data sharing and reuse. In this webinar, attendees will learn about both the technical and practical aspects of this collaborative project connecting the researcher tool OSF and the preservation system of Internet Archive. We demonstrate how researchers can improve the openness and reproducibility of their research through preregistration, and how those preregistrations are preserved with Internet Archive. We answer questions and explore use cases for how this powerful workflow can support library curation and stewardship of open research.

Openness in research can lead to greater reproducibility, an accelerated pace of discovery, and decreased redundancy of effort. In addition, open research ensures equitable access to knowledge and the ability for any community to assess, interrogate, and build upon prior work. It also requires open infrastructure and distributed access; but few institutions can provide all of these services alone. Providing a trustworthy network for perpetual availability of research data is critical to ensuring reproducibility, transparency, and ongoing inquiry. Increased attention on the importance of open research and data sharing has led to a proliferation of platforms to store data, materials, etc., with limited technical integration. This can hinder data sharing, but also complicate coordination with local library expertise and services, thus hampering curation and long-term stewardship. COS and IA are working together to address these preservation and stewardship challenges by providing open, cooperative infrastructure to ensure long-term access and connection to research data, and by supporting and promoting adoption of open science practices to enhance research reproducibility as well as data sharing and reuse. In this webinar, attendees will learn about both the technical and practical aspects of this collaborative project connecting the researcher tool OSF and the preservation system of Internet Archive. We will demonstrate how researchers can improve the openness and reproducibility of their research through preregistration, and how those preregistrations are preserved with Internet Archive. We will answer questions and seek to learn your needs and use cases for how this powerful workflow can support library curation and stewardship of open research.

In mid-May, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey ended the state's stay-at-home order and proclaimed the state ready for "the next stage of economic recovery." Little more than a month later, that recovery is under serious strain as local coronavirus cases spike, causing some reopened businesses to close again and consumers to retreat homeward. States now seeing explosive growth in coronavirus cases are also taking an economic hit, with indicators such as restaurant bookings, consumer spending and small business activity pointing to a slowdown, according to Deutsche Bank economists. Those states include Arizona, South Carolina and Texas, all of which pushed to reopen their economies quickly. Texas, which had one of the shortest stay-at-home orders in the country, on Thursday announced a halt to its reopening plan, citing the surge in COVID-19 cases.

Video & Podcast: Tracking and enabling new possibilities

In this webinar, chaired by the University of Warwick’s Provost, Professor Christine Ennew, you will hear from two of the University's leading researchers in Behavioural Science and Public Health, who discuss the global response to Covid-19, the many lessons learnt, and how Warwick is best placed to lead a new research institute focused on preparing the world for future pandemics.

You’re listening to a press conference from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health featuring Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology and director of the School’s Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. This call was recorded at 11:30 am Eastern Time on Wednesday, March 4. 

PurposeNew York State (NYS) is an epicenter of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic in the United States. Reliable estimates of cumulative incidence in the population are critical to tracking the extent of transmission and informing policies.MethodsWe conducted a statewide seroprevalence study among a 15,101 patron convenience sample at 99 grocery stores in 26 counties throughout NYS. SARS-CoV-2 cumulative incidence was estimated from antibody reactivity by first post-stratification weighting then adjusting by antibody test characteristics. The percent diagnosed was estimated by dividing diagnoses by estimated infection-experienced adults.ResultsBased on 1,887 of 15,101 reactive results (12.5%), estimated cumulative incidence through March 29 was 14.0% (95% CI: 13.3-14.7%), corresponding to 2,139,300 (95% CI: 2,035,800-2,242,800) infection-experienced adults. Cumulative incidence was highest in New York City (NYC) 22.7% (95% CI: 21.5-24.0%) and higher among Hispanic/Latino (29.2%), non-Hispanic black/African American (20.2%), and non-Hispanic Asian (12.4%) than non-Hispanic white adults (8.1%, p<.0001). An estimated 8.9% (95% CI: 8.4-9.3%) of infections in NYS were diagnosed, with diagnosis highest among adults ≥55 years (11.3%, 95% CI: 10.4-12.2%).ConclusionsFrom the largest US serosurvey to date, we estimated > 2 million adult New York residents were infected through late March, with substantial disparities, although cumulative incidence remained below herd immunity thresholds. Monitoring, testing, and contact tracing remain essential public health strategies.

As severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spreads, the susceptible subpopulation is depleted causing the incidence of new cases to decline. Variation in individual susceptibility or exposure to infection exacerbates this effect. Individuals that are more susceptible or more exposed tend to be infected earlier, depleting the susceptible subpopulation of those who are at higher risk of infection. This selective depletion of susceptibles intensifies the deceleration in incidence. Eventually, susceptible numbers become low enough to prevent epidemic growth or, in other words, the herd immunity threshold (HIT) is reached. Although estimates vary, simple calculations suggest that herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2 requires 60-70% of the population to be immune. By fitting epidemiological models that allow for heterogeneity to SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks across the globe, we show that variation in susceptibility or exposure to infection reduces these estimates. Accurate measurements of heterogeneity are therefore of paramount importance in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Boston — The coronavirus death toll now tops 3,000 worldwide, with nearly 90,000 cases. But even those numbers are nothing compared to what could happen in the months ahead.CBS News spoke to one of the country's top experts on viruses, Marc Lipsitch from Harvard University, who cautions that 40-70% of the world's population will become infected — and from that number, 1% of people who get symptoms from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, could die. The virus can spread rapidly and people can transmit it before they know they are infected.Lipsitch breaks down his findings in this extended conversation with CBS News. The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Cues sent by political elites are known to influence public attitudes and behavior. Polarization in elite rhetoric may hinder effective responses to public health crises, when accurate information and rapid behavioral change can save lives. We examine polarization in cues sent to the public by current members of the U.S. House and Senate during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, measuring polarization as the ability to correctly classify the partisanship of tweets’ authors based solely on the text and the dates they were sent. We find that Democrats discussed the crisis more frequently—emphasizing threats to public health and American workers, while Republicans placed greater emphasis on China and businesses. Polarization in elite discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic peaked in mid-February – weeks after the first confirmed case in the United States – and continued into March. These divergent cues correspond with a partisan divide in the public’s early reaction to the crisis.

The scale and intensity of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide pandemic is unprecedented in all our lifetimes. It has changed our lifestyles and our workstyles, in a manner and to a degree that is likely to persist for some time. Here we offer some guidance, in the familiar ten simple rules format, for how to navigate a stressful situation, considering it realistically as both a curse and an opportunity. This is written for all of us involved in scientific research—graduate student, postdoc, academic, staff scientist, in academia, government or industry. Each such person has so much to contribute in a time of need but is simultaneously also a member of a worldwide population under threat. What can one do in a time like this?

Analytic flexibility is known to influence the results of statistical tests, e.g. effect sizes and p-values. Yet, the degree to which flexibility in data-processing decisions influences the reliability of our measures is unknown. In this paper I attempt to address this question using a series of reliability multiverse analyses. The methods section incorporates a brief tutorial for readers interested in implementing multiverse analyses reported in this manuscript; all functions are contained in the R package splithalf. I report six multiverse analyses of data-processing specifications, including accuracy and response time cutoffs. I used data from a Stroop task and Flanker task at two time points. This allowed for an internal consistency reliability multiverse at time 1 and 2, and a test-retest reliability multiverse between time 1 and 2. Largely arbitrary decisions in data-processing led to differences between the highest and lowest reliability estimate of at least 0.2. Importantly, there was no consistent pattern in the data-processing specifications that led to greater reliability, across time as well as tasks. Together, data-processing decisions are highly influential, and largely unpredictable, on measure reliability. I discuss actions researchers could take to mitigate some of the influence of reliability heterogeneity, including adopting hierarchical modelling approaches. Yet, there are no approaches that can completely save us from measurement error. Measurement matters and I call on readers to help us move from what could be a measurement crisis towards a measurement revolution.

Background: SARS-CoV-2 is currently causing a high mortality global pandemic. However, the clinical spectrum of disease caused by this virus is broad, ranging from asymptomatic infection to cytokine storm with organ failure and death. Risk stratification of individuals with COVID-19 would be desirable for management, prioritization for trial enrollment, and risk stratification. We sought to develop a prediction rule for mortality due to COVID-19 in individuals with diagnosed infection in Ontario, Canada. Methods: Data from the Ontario provincial iPHIS system were extracted for the period from January 23 to May 15, 2020. Both logistic regression-based prediction rules, and a rule derived using a Cox proportional hazards model, were developed in half the study and validated in remaining patients. Sensitivity analyses were performed with varying approaches to missing data. Results: 21,922 COVID-19 cases were reported. Individuals assigned to the derivation and validation sets were broadly similar. Age and comorbidities (notably diabetes, renal disease and immune compromise) were strong predictors of mortality. Four point-based prediction rules were derived (base case, smoking excluded as a predictor, long-term care excluded as a predictor, and Cox model based). All rules displayed excellent discrimination (AUC for all rules > 0.92 ) and calibration (both by graphical inspection and P > 0.50 by Hosmer-Lemeshow test) in the derivation set. All rules performed well in the validation set and were robust to random replacement of missing variables, and to the assumption that missing variables indicated absence of the comorbidity or characteristic in question. Conclusions: We were able to use a public health case-management data system to derive and internally validate four accurate, well-calibrated and robust clinical prediction rules for COVID-19 mortality in Ontario, Canada. While these rules need external validation, they may be a useful tool for clinical management, risk stratification, and clinical trials.

The grim milestone reported Wednesday surpasses the peak hit in late April.

Iran is struggling to control COVID-19 between difficult public health decisions and persistent international sanctions.

A sense of civic duty and mutual confidence between scientists and health authorities played a role in Portugal high testing rates.

Healthcare workers and patients who have survived COVID-19 are facing stigma and discrimination all over the world.

What kinds of face coverings work for protection against COVID-19? How do you use them safely? A series of simple steps outlines the answers

People infected with the coronavirus may be left with permanent lung damage. Doctors are reporting growing numbers of people who still have breathlessness and coughing months after falling ill with covid-19, and whose chest scans show evidence of irreversible lung scarring.

More than 2,435,200 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 124,300 have died, according to a New York Times database. This map shows where the number of new cases is rising and where it is falling in the last 14 days.

New York City has not reported an uptick in Covid-19 cases many feared would come from weeks of mass protests against police brutality.

The research was the target of a conspiracy theory about the origin of the new coronavirus.

Several factors suggest that Bangladesh could be one of the next COVID-19 hotspots: it has a high population density; it has poor health infrastructure and resources; there has been poor adherence to physical distancing; complete lockdown has not been ensured at a national level; there is uncoordinated population mobility between rural and urban areas; there is little awareness of COVID-19 among the population; home quarantine has been used in place of institutional quarantine for returning overseas travellers; there are overcrowded urban areas with substandard housing; health institutions have limited capacities; and effective governance has been largely absent. In addition, the country is accommodating 1 118 576 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals named as Rohingya, including 860 175 Rohingya people who are sheltering in the world's largest refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, a city in southeastern Bangladesh.1The Daily StarAll Rohingya refugees registered: Minister.https://www.thedailystar.net/rohingya-crisis/all-rohingya-refugeesregistered-minister-1603690Date: July 11, 2018Date accessed: June 8, 2020Google Scholar,  2

Traditionally, handshaking has conferred benefits for businesspeople—signaling politeness, establishing an intention to cooperate, and promoting deal-making. How might the psychological meaning of handshaking have shifted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which led handshaking to become touted as an imminent threat to public health? Through a highly powered, preregistered study (N = 595), we compared U.S. adults’ perceptions of a businessperson who shakes hands vs. refrains from shaking hands during the era of COVID-19. Participants judged handshakers more negatively than non-handshakers, in terms of both global attitude toward them (d = 2.21) and approval of their job performance (d = 2.66). Mediation analyses suggest that businesspeople were judged negatively for shaking hands principally because doing so made them seem less competent and less moral. Judgments of handshaking were more negative among liberals than conservatives and among women than men. To maximize others’ perceptions of them, it would behoove businesspeople to refrain from shaking hands for the foreseeable future. The months and years ahead may be an unprecedented time to rediscover the psychology of handshaking and its role in the workplace.

Analyses of urban scaling laws assume that observations in different cities are independent of the existence of nearby cities. Here we introduce generative models and data-analysis methods that overcome this limitation by modelling explicitly the effect of interactions between individuals at different locations. Parameters that describe the scaling law and the spatial interactions are inferred from data simultaneously, allowing for rigorous (Bayesian) model comparison and overcoming the problem of defining the boundaries of urban regions. Results in five different datasets show that including spatial interactions typically leads to better models and a change in the exponent of the scaling law. Data and codes are provided in Ref. [1].

We develop a principled methodology to infer assortative communities in networks based on a nonparametric Bayesian formulation of the planted partition model. We show that this approach succeeds in finding statistically significant assortative modules in networks, unlike alternatives such as modularity maximization, which systematically overfits both in artificial as well as in empirical examples. In addition, we show that our method is not subject to a resolution limit, and can uncover an arbitrarily large number of communities, as long as there is statistical evidence for them. Our formulation is amenable to model selection procedures, which allow us to compare it to more general approaches based on the stochastic block model, and in this way reveal whether assortativity is in fact the dominating large-scale mixing pattern. We perform this comparison with several empirical networks, and identify numerous cases where the network's assortativity is exaggerated by traditional community detection methods, and we show how a more faithful degree of assortativity can be identified.

Communication networks, power grids, and transportation networks are all examples of networks whose performance depends on reliable connectivity of their underlying network components even in the presence of usual network dynamics due to mobility, node or edge failures, and varying traffic loads. Percolation theory quantifies the threshold value of a local control parameter such as a node occupation (resp., deletion) probability or an edge activation (resp., removal) probability above (resp., below) which there exists a giant connected component (GCC), a connected component comprising of a number of occupied nodes and active edges whose size is proportional to the size of the network itself. Any pair of occupied nodes in the GCC is connected via at least one path comprised of active edges and occupied nodes. The mere existence of the GCC itself does not guarantee that the long-range connectivity would be robust, e.g., to random link or node failures due to network dynamics. In this paper, we explore new percolation thresholds that guarantee not only spanning network connectivity, but also robustness. We define and analyze four measures of robust network connectivity, explore their interrelationships, and numerically evaluate the respective robust percolation thresholds for the 2D square lattice.

The estimate comes from a nationwide look at antibody tests.

With social distancing and shelter-in-place mandates in effect worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic is necessitating large-scale behavior change and taking a significant psychological toll. How can we use insights from the behavioral and social sciences to align human behavior with the recommendations of epidemiologists and public health experts, and guide decision-making? Northwestern University professor of political science Dr. Jamie Druckman and University of Cambridge social psychology professor, Dr. Sander van der Linden address these questions and more, drawing on key insights from a just-released report they coauthored with more than two dozen social scientists from universities around the world.

Jay Van Bavel shares the presentation he made to the World Health Organization (WHO). Dr. Van Bavel is an associate professor of Psychology & Neural Science at New York University. He completed his PhD at the University of Toronto and a postdoctoral fellowship at The Ohio State University. Jay has published 75 academic papers and written research essays in The New York Times, Scientific American, Wall Street Journal, Quartz, and the Washington Post. He also writes a mentoring column, entitled Letters to Young Scientists, for Science Magazine. Dr. Van Bavel is the recipient of the American Psychological Foundation’s 2015 Visionary Grant and F. J. McGuigan Early Career Investigator Research Grant on Understanding the Human Mind.

On Thursday May 21, at 11:00 am The Global Policy Institute and Bay Atlantic University held an event via Zoom titled: The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Politics and International Institutions.

It is commonly thought that morality applies universally to all human beings as moral targets, and our general moral obligations to people will not, as a rule, be affected by their views. I propose and explore a radical, alternative normative moral theory, ‘Designer Ethics’, according to which our views are pro tanto crucial determinants of how, morally, we ought to be treated. For example, since utilitarians are more sympathetic to the idea that human beings may be sacrificed for the greater good, perhaps it is permissible (or, even under certain conditions, obligatory) to give them ‘priority’ as potential victims. This odd idea has manifold drawbacks but I claim that it also has substantial advantages, that it has some affinities to more commonly accepted moral positions, and that it should be given a significant role in our ethical thinking.

Loneliness may be a fundamental part of the human condition, but scientists have only recently begun exploring its causes, consequences, and potential interventions. A special section in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, aims to bring these strands of inquiry together, presenting a series of articles that review the current state of scientific research on loneliness. The section, edited by psychological scientist David Sbarra of the University of Arizona, investigates loneliness across multiple levels, from evolutionary theory to genetics to social epidemiology. “As a group, these articles set the bar high for future research on loneliness,” Sbarra writes in his introduction to the special section. “At the same time, they also contain ‘something for everyone’ — they are accessible, thought-provoking ideas that can be tackled from many different perspectives.”

Coronavirus cases rising in Europe following eased lockdowns, says WHO

In court, the jury is told that DNA found at the crime scene is very likely to have come from the suspect. How good is this as evidence? A couple have two children, both of whom die of cot death. Is this such an unlikely coincidence that there must be some other explanation? In many countries, people are routinely tested for certain cancers, including bowel, breast, prostate and cervical cancers. But does a positive test mean you definitely have cancer? Whether evidence is used in a court of law or in a diagnostic test, or in a variety of other everyday situations, we need to understand how probability and statistics can help us to evaluate that evidence. This video clip, featuring Professor Philip Dawid, is part of a set of free online mathematics resources designed to help school students become informed citizens, who can understand that unless we ask the right questions, we won't do the right things with the numbers.

You may think that statistical causal inference is about inferring causation. You may think that it can not be tackled with standard statistical tools, but requires additional structure, such as counterfactual reasoning, potential responses or graphical representations.  I shall try to disabuse you of such woolly misconceptions by locating statistical causality firmly within the scope of traditional statistical decision theory.  From this viewpoint, the enterprise of "statistical causality" could fruitfully be rebranded as "assisted decision making".

COVID-19 is a significant threat to human life and health, which makes people experience fear, stress, anxiety and mood disorders, which have a negative impact on their psychological well-being. One of the resources that makes people manage stress better is a sense of coherence, which also has a positive impact on quality of life. The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between fear of COVID-19, stress, a sense of coherence, and life satisfaction during the coronavirus pandemic. 907 Polish people (522 women and 385 men) participated in this study. Perceived Stress Scale (PSS-10), Fear of COVID-19 Scale (FOC-6), Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-29) and the Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS) were used in the study. It was verified that the relationship between stress and life satisfaction was mediated by sense of coherence. The relationship between stress and sense of coherence was moderated by fear of COVID-19. The fear of COVID-19 acted as a buffer in the relationship between stress and a sense of coherence - it weakened the impact of stress on the sense of coherence. This study is the first to verify the proposed model of moderated mediation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The analyses were performed on a very large sample. This manuscript draws attention to the important role of fear of COVID-19 and the sense of coherence in our functioning. The sense of coherence can, by effectively managing stress and reducing the level of anxiety, affect subjective well-being.

The most valuable data is often the most sensitive. In this webinar we explore the privacy issues that need to be considered when collecting and analysing sensitive data. Professor Simon Dennis presents empirical work that identifies how people make decisions about the acceptability of research projects and will introduce a new data analysis language ("Private") that addresses the failures of popular statistical languages like R or python. The Private language code is available on github: https://github.com/complex-human-data... An introduction to the Private language on Simon Dennis' blog: https://simondennis.blog/2019/08/06/a... Weniger anzeigen Mehr ansehen

In this webinar, Professor Simon Dennis speaks about the collection and analysis methods that are applicable to experience sampling data from dense data sources. Smartphones, social media networks, wearable sensors and the internet of things are being used to provide an unparalleled window into psychological processes as they occur in the real world. He presents some of the current psychological research that has used these technologies in the fields of clinical psychology, cognitive psychology, and psychiatry. Professor Dennis is the Director of the Complex Human Data Hub at the University of Melbourne, and CEO of Unforgettable Research Services.

In an effort to slow down the transmission of COVID-19, countries around the world implemented social distancing and stay-at-home policies—potentially compelling people to rely more on household members for their sense of closeness and belonging. To understand the conditions under which people felt the most connected, we examined whether changes in overall feelings of social connection varied as a function of household size and household composition. In two pre-registered studies, undergraduates in Canada (NStudy 1 = 548) and adults primarily from the U.S. and U.K. (NStudy 2 = 336) reported on their perceived social connection once before and once during the pandemic. In both studies, living with a romantic partner robustly and uniquely buffered shifts in social connection during the first phases of the pandemic (βStudy 1 = .22, βStudy 2 = .16). In contrast, neither household size nor other aspects of household composition predicted changes in connection. We discuss implications for future social distancing policies that aim to balance physical health with psychological health.

Adolescence is a formative phase for social development. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and associated social distancing measures social contact with peers has been severely limited. In the current three-week daily diary study, we investigated the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown and associated social distancing measures on Dutch adolescents’ mood, concern for others, and social behavior. Longitudinal analyses including measures before the pandemic showed that adolescents reported decreased levels of empathic concern, opportunities for prosocial actions, and tension, and increased levels of perspective taking and vigor during the first weeks of lockdown. We also investigated giving towards targets associated with the COVID-19 pandemic utilizing novel Dictator Games, and how this was influenced by individual differences in empathy, contributions to society, and opportunities for prosocial actions. Adolescents showed higher levels of giving (i.e., 51 – 78% of the total share) to targets associated with the COVID-19 pandemic (i.e., doctor in hospital, individuals with COVID-19 or a poor immune system) and close others (a friend) compared to unfamiliar peers. Individuals who showed higher levels of empathic concern, gave more to others, regardless of target. Finally, adolescents who showed higher levels of general contributions to society gave more to an unfamiliar peer and friend, and those who showed higher levels of opportunities for prosocial actions gave more to individuals with a poor immune system and COVID-19. Overall, these results shed new light on adolescence as a crucial period in life for social interactions, and as a phase that is not only characterized by risk factors, but also by resilience and a willingness to meaningfully contribute to others and society.

Objectives: Loneliness is a significant public health issue. The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in lockdown measures limiting social contact. The UK public are worried about the impact of these measures on mental health outcomes. Understanding the prevalence and predictors of loneliness at this time is a priority issue for research. Design: The study employed a cross-sectional online survey design. Method: Baseline data collected between March 23rd and April 24th 2020 from UK adults in the COVID-19 Psychological Wellbeing Study were analysed (N = 1963, 18-87 years, M = 37.11, SD = 12.86, 70% female). Logistic regression analysis was used to look at the influence of sociodemographic, social, health and COVID-19 specific factors on loneliness. Results: The prevalence of loneliness was 27% (530/1963). Risk factors for loneliness were younger age group (OR: 4.67 – 5.31), being separated or divorced (OR: 2.29), meeting clinical criteria for major depression (OR: 1.74), greater emotion regulation difficulties (OR: 1.04), and poor quality sleep due to the COVID-19 crisis (OR: 1.30). Higher levels of social support (OR: 0.92), being married/co-habiting (OR: 0.35) and living with a great number of adults (OR: 0.87) were protective factors. Conclusions: Rates of loneliness during the initial phase of lockdown were high. Risk factors were not specific to the COVID-19 crisis. Findings suggest that supportive interventions to reduce loneliness should prioritise younger people and those with mental health symptoms. Improving emotion regulation and sleep quality may be optimal initial targets to reduce the impact of COVID-19 regulations on mental health outcomes.

The COVID-19 Family Life Study is a research study that explores the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on family life across cultures. The data was collected via snowball sampling starting May 30, 2020 through a survey instrument that was translated by volunteers into 18 languages. The study provides robust and reliable data to inform the design and delivery of cutting-edge services for families across cultures.

EU-wide survey reveals deep disillusionment at response, and desire for closer cooperation in future

England’s pubs can reopen on 4 July, UK prime minister Boris Johnson has announced, after they were shut due to covid-19. Customers will have to provide personal information upon entry to help coronavirus contact tracing, but there are concerns about how the data will be handled.

Greater independence from commercial interests is more important than ever

The goal of this webinar is to present specific data on COVID-19 to help tackle the global pandemic we are facing. We encourage participants to use these new datasets to develop apps in that domain

The goal of this webinar is to present specific data on COVID-19 to help tackle the global pandemic we are facing. We encourage participants to use these new datasets to develop apps in that domain, suitable for all the challenges of the competition (Challenge 1, 2, 3 and 4)

The goal of this webinar is to present specific data on COVID-19 to help tackle the global pandemic we are facing. We encourage participants to use these new datasets to develop apps in that domain, suitable for all the challenges of the competition (Challenge 1, 2, 3 and 4).

The implications of the COVID-19 outbreak is causing many junior academics to struggle with social isolation, confinement and uncertainty.

During a pandemic outbreak, how can we try and keep ourselves mentally and physically well? This is the question the Division of Psychology at the IoPPN answered in a series of talks at our virtual event 'Maintaining health and wellbeing during the COVID-19 pandemic' on 2 April 2020. Below, you will find video recordings of all of the talks.

Online panel on ways that researchers can communicate and engage locally and globally in response to COVID-19 -- even if they're not an expert in the virus.

The reduction of the 2-metre rule in England tells people we’re out of the woods, and they’ll behave accordingly

As case counts surge, we look at regional and state-level numbers to find out which recent jumps in COVID-19 case counts are likely to be explained by increased testing, and which are not. For the states with the worst recent numbers, the news is not good.

Unsupervised learning is widely recognized as one of the most important challenges facing machine learning nowa- days. However, in spite of hundreds of papers on the topic being published every year, current theoretical understanding and practical implementations of such tasks, in particular of clustering, is very rudimentary. This note focuses on clustering. I claim that the most signif- icant challenge for clustering is model selection. In contrast with other common computational tasks, for clustering, dif- ferent algorithms often yield drastically different outcomes. Therefore, the choice of a clustering algorithm, and their pa- rameters (like the number of clusters) may play a crucial role in the usefulness of an output clustering solution. However, currently there exists no methodical guidance for clustering tool-selection for a given clustering task. Practitioners pick the algorithms they use without awareness to the implications of their choices and the vast majority of theory of clustering papers focus on providing savings to the resources needed to solve optimization problems that arise from picking some concrete clustering objective. Saving that pale in com- parison to the costs of mismatch between those objectives and the intended use of clustering results. I argue the severity of this problem and describe some recent proposals aiming to address this crucial lacuna.