We present evidence from a pre-registered experiment indicating that a philosophical argument – a type of rational appeal – can persuade people to make charitable donations. The rational appeal we used follows Singer’s “shallow pond” argument (1972), while incorporating an evolutionary debunking argument (Paxton, Ungar and Greene, 2012) against favoring nearby victims over distant ones. The effectiveness of this rational appeal did not differ significantly from that of a well-tested emotional appeal involving an image of a single child in need (Small, Loewenstein and Slovic, 2007). This is a surprising result, given evidence that emotions are the primary drivers of moral action, a view that has been very influential in the work of development organizations. We found no support for our hypothesis that combining our rational and emotional appeals would have a stronger effect than either appeal in isolation. However, our finding that both kinds of appeal can increase charitable donations is cause for optimism, especially concerning the potential efficacy of well-designed rational appeals. We consider the significance of these findings for moral psychology, ethics, and the work of organizations aiming to alleviate severe poverty.

Gun ownership is a highly consequential political behavior. It often signifies a belief about the inadequacy of state-provided security and leads to membership in a powerful political constituency. As a result, it is important to understand why people buy guns and how shifting purchasing patterns affect the composition of the broader gun-owning community. We address these topics by exploring the dynamics of the gun-buying spike that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was one of the largest in American history. We find that feelings of diffuse threat prompted many individuals to buy guns. Moreover, we show that new gun owners, even more than buyers who already owned guns, exhibit strong conspiracy and anti-system beliefs. These findings have substantial consequences for the subsequent population of gun owners and provide insight into how social disruptions can alter the nature of political groups.

The purpose of this investigation was to expand upon the limited existing research examining the test–retest reliability, cross-sectional validity and longitudinal validity of a sample of bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) devices as compared with a laboratory four-compartment (4C) model. Seventy-three healthy participants aged 19–50 years were assessed by each of fifteen BIA devices, with resulting body fat percentage estimates compared with a 4C model utilising air displacement plethysmography, dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry and bioimpedance spectroscopy. A subset of thirty-seven participants returned for a second visit 12–16 weeks later and were included in an analysis of longitudinal validity. The sample of devices included fourteen consumer-grade and one research-grade model in a variety of configurations: hand-to-hand, foot-to-foot and bilateral hand-to-foot (octapolar). BIA devices demonstrated high reliability, with precision error ranging from 0·0 to 0·49 %. Cross-sectional validity varied, with constant error relative to the 4C model ranging from −3·5 (sd 4·1) % to 11·7 (sd 4·7) %, standard error of the estimate values of 3·1–7·5 % and Lin’s concordance correlation coefficients (CCC) of 0·48–0·94. For longitudinal validity, constant error ranged from −0·4 (sd 2·1) % to 1·3 (sd 2·7) %, with standard error of the estimate values of 1·7–2·6 % and Lin’s CCC of 0·37–0·78. While performance varied widely across the sample investigated, select models of BIA devices (particularly octapolar and select foot-to-foot devices) may hold potential utility for the tracking of body composition over time, particularly in contexts in which the purchase or use of a research-grade device is infeasible.

Politics and science have become increasingly intertwined. Salient scientific issues, such as climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research, become politicized, pitting partisans against one another. This creates a challenge of how to effectively communicate on such issues. Recent work emphasizes the need for tailored messages to specific groups. Here, we focus on whether generalized messages also can matter. We do so in the context of a highly polarized issue: extreme COVID-19 vaccine resistance. The results show that science-based, moral frame, and social norm messages move behavioral intentions, and do so by the same amount across the population (that is, homogeneous effects). Counter to common portrayals, the politicization of science does not preclude using broad messages that resonate with the entire population.

Theories that explain the power of legislative leaders have been developed for the U.S. Congress and lower chambers of state legislatures, but they have not been tested for state senates, even though senate leaders can be quite influential. Following Mooney (2013a), I develop a new numerical index score measuring the formal power of the top chamber-elected leader of each state senate from 1995 through 2010. I then use the data to test various hypotheses explaining variation in the power of legislative leaders. The results uncover partial evidence for conditional party government theory, but only for senates that elect their own president. When the lieutenant governor serves as senate president, senators do not perceive their top chamber-elected leader as an officer able to best carry out their ideological, electoral, or policy objectives. This underscores crucial differences between senate chambers that elect their own presidents and those that do not.

Narrow-windrow burning (NWB) is a form of harvest weed seed control in which crop residues and weed seeds collected by the combine are concentrated into windrows and subsequently burned. The objectives of this study were to determine how NWB will 1) affect seed survival of Italian ryegrass in wheat and Palmer amaranth in soybean and 2) determine whether a relationship exists between NWB heat index (HI; the sum of temperatures above ambient) or effective burn time (EBT; the cumulative number of seconds temperatures exceed 200 C) and the post-NWB seed survival of both species. Average soybean and wheat windrow HI totaled 140,725 ± 14,370 and 66,196 ± 6224 C, and 259 ± 27 and 116 ± 12 s of EBT, respectively. Pre-NWB versus post-NWB germinability testing revealed an estimated seed kill rate of 79.7% for Italian ryegrass, and 86.3% for Palmer amaranth. Non-linear two-parameter exponential regressions between seed kill and HI or EBT indicated NWB at an HI of 146,000 C and 277 s of EBT potentially kills 99% of Palmer amaranth seed. Seventy-six percent of soybean windrow burning events resulted in estimated Palmer amaranth seed kill rates greater than 85%. Predicted Italian ryegrass seed kill was greater than 97% in all but two wheat NWB events; therefore, relationships were not calculated. These results validate the effectiveness of the ability of NWB to reduce seed survival, thereby improving weed management and combating herbicide resistance.

The purpose of this document is to highlight practical recommendations to assist acute care hospitals to prioritize and implement strategies to prevent ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP), ventilator-associated events (VAE), and non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NV-HAP) in adults, children, and neonates. This document updates the Strategies to Prevent Ventilator-Associated Pneumonia in Acute Care Hospitals published in 2014. This expert guidance document is sponsored by the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology (SHEA), and is the product of a collaborative effort led by SHEA, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Hospital Association, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, and The Joint Commission, with major contributions from representatives of a number of organizations and societies with content expertise.

Nutrition education and policy, systems and environmental (PSE) change interventions may be able to address food insecurity and obesity, conditions which are disproportionately experienced by African Americans. Work that seeks to address these disparities and advance social justice should uplift and learn from participant voices, particularly from marginalised groups. This scoping review aimed to summarise the available literature describing African Americans’ perceptions of and experiences participating in nutrition interventions. We conducted an electronic literature search with the assistance of a research librarian which encompassed six databases (MEDLINE, PyscINFO, Agricola, ERIC, SocINDEX and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses) and identified thirty-five sources meeting our inclusion criteria. The majority of studies assessing African Americans’ satisfaction with interventions examined educational interventions alone, and about half of the included studies assessed satisfaction through quantitative methods alone. The only studies which found participants to be dissatisfied with interventions used qualitative methods and examined interventions providing education alone. Future work should evaluate African Americans’ experience with nutrition-focused PSE changes, interventions which may be better able to address racial disparities in obesity and food insecurity. Nutrition educators working with African Americans should also consider evaluating future interventions using qualitative inquiry, to obtain an in-depth understanding of participant experiences with interventions.

African Americans experience high rates of obesity and food insecurity in part due to structural racism, or overlapping discriminatory systems and practices in housing, education, employment, health care and other settings. Nutrition education and nutrition-focused policy, systems and environmental changes may be able to address structural racism in the food environment. This scoping review aimed to summarise the available literature regarding nutrition interventions for African Americans that address structural racism in the food environment and compare them with the ‘Getting to Equity in Obesity Prevention’ framework of suggested interventions. An electronic literature search was conducted with the assistance of a research librarian encompassing six databases: MEDLINE, PyscINFO, Agricola, ERIC, SocINDEX and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. A total of thirty sources were identified detailing interventions addressing structural barriers to healthy eating. The majority of nutrition interventions addressing structural racism consisted of policy, systems and/or environmental changes in combination with nutrition education, strategies focused on proximal causes of racial health disparities. Only two articles each targeted the ‘reduce deterrents’ and ‘improve social and economic resources’ aspects of the framework, interventions which may be better suited to addressing structural racism in the food environment. Because African Americans experience high rates of obesity and food insecurity and encounter structural barriers to healthy eating in the food environment, researchers and public health professionals should address this gap in the literature.

The diatomic free radical methylidyne (CH) is an important tracer of the interstellar medium, and the study of it was critical to our earliest understanding of star formation. Although it is detectable across the electromagnetic spectrum, observations at radio frequencies allow for a study of the kinematics of the diffuse and dense gas in regions of new star formation. There is only two published (single-dish) detections of the low-frequency hyperfine transitions between 700 and 725 MHz, despite the precise frequencies being known. These low-frequency transitions are of particular interest as they are shown in laboratory experiments to be more sensitive to magnetic fields than their high-frequency counterparts (with more pronounced Zeeman splitting). In this work, we take advantage of the radio quiet environment and increased resolution of the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) over previous searches to make a pilot interferometric search for CH at 724.7883 MHz (the strongest of the hyperfine transitions) in RCW 38. We found the band is clean of radio frequency interference, but we did not detect the signal from this transition to a five-sigma sensitivity limit of 0.09 Jy, which corresponds to a total column density upper limit of 1.9 $\times 10^{18}$ cm–2 for emission and 1.3 $\times 10^{14}$ cm–2 for absorption with an optical depth limit of 0.95. Achieved within 5 h of integration, this column density sensitivity should have been adequate to detect the emission or absorption in RCW 38, if it had similar properties to the only previous reported detections in W51.

Background: Handshake antibiotic stewardship is an effective but resource-intensive strategy for reducing antimicrobial utilization. At larger hospitals, widespread implementation of direct handshake rounds may be constrained by available resources. To optimize resource utilization and mirror handshake antimicrobial stewardship, we designed an indirect feedback model utilizing existing team pharmacy infrastructure. Methods: The antibiotic stewardship program (ASP) utilized the plan-do-study-act (PDSA) improvement methodology to implement an antibiotic stewardship intervention centered on antimicrobial utilization feedback and patient-level recommendations to optimize antimicrobial utilization. The intervention included team-based antimicrobial utilization dashboard development, biweekly antimicrobial utilization data feedback of total antimicrobial utilization and select drug-specific antimicrobial utilization, and twice weekly individualized review by ASP staff of all patients admitted to the 5 hospitalist teams on antimicrobials with recommendations (discontinuation, optimization, etc) relayed electronically to team-based pharmacists. Pharmacists were to communicate recommendations as an indirect surrogate for handshake antibiotic stewardship. As reviewer duties expanded to include a rotation of multiple reviewers, a standard operating procedure was created. A closed-loop communication model was developed to ensure pharmacist feedback receipt and to allow intervention acceptance tracking. During implementation optimization, a team pharmacist-champion was identified and addressed communication lapses. An outcome measure of days of therapy per 1,000 patient days present (DOT/1,000 PD) and balance measure of in-hospital mortality were chosen. Implementation began April 5, 2019, and data were collected through October 31, 2019. Preintervention comparison data spanned December 2017 to April 2019. Results: Overall, 1,119 cases were reviewed by the ASP, of whom 255 (22.8%) received feedback. In total, 236 of 362 recommendations (65.2%) were implemented (Fig. 1). Antimicrobial discontinuation was the most frequent (147 of 362, 40.6%), and most consistently implemented (111 of 147, 75.3%), recommendation. The DOT/1,000 PD before the intervention compared to the same metric after intervention remained unchanged (741.1 vs 725.4; P = .60) as did crude in-hospital mortality (1.8% vs 1.7%; P = .76). Several contributing factors were identified: communication lapses (eg, emails not received by 2 pharmacists), intervention timing (mismatch of recommendation and rounding window), and individual culture (some pharmacists with reduced buy-in selectively relayed recommendations). Conclusion: Although resource efficient, this model of indirect handshake did not significantly impact total antimicrobial utilization. Through serial PDSA cycles, implementation barriers were identified that can be addressed to improve the feedback process. Communication, expectation management, and interpersonal relationship development emerged as critical issues contributing to poor recommendation adherence. Future PDSA cycles will focus on streamlining processes to improve communication among stakeholders.

Funding: None

Disclosures: None

We describe an ultra-wide-bandwidth, low-frequency receiver recently installed on the Parkes radio telescope. The receiver system provides continuous frequency coverage from 704 to 4032 MHz. For much of the band ( ${\sim}60\%$ ), the system temperature is approximately 22 K and the receiver system remains in a linear regime even in the presence of strong mobile phone transmissions. We discuss the scientific and technical aspects of the new receiver, including its astronomical objectives, as well as the feed, receiver, digitiser, and signal processor design. We describe the pipeline routines that form the archive-ready data products and how those data files can be accessed from the archives. The system performance is quantified, including the system noise and linearity, beam shape, antenna efficiency, polarisation calibration, and timing stability.

Considering the important role that paid support workers play in care of older people with dementia, it is vital that researchers and relevant organisations understand the factors that lead to them feeling valued for the work that they do, and the consequences of such valuing (or lack thereof). The current study employed semi-structured interviews to understand the individual experiences of 15 support workers based both in residential care homes and private homes. The General Inductive Approach was used to analyse the interview transcriptions and to develop a conceptual model that describes the conditions that lead to support workers feeling valued for the work that they do. This model consists of organisational or individual strategies, the context in which support work takes place, and various interactions, actions and intervening conditions that facilitate or prevent support workers feeling valued. A significant finding in this research was the role of interpersonal relationships and interactions which underlie all other aspects of the conceptual model developed here. By understanding the importance of how employers, families of older adults with dementia and peers interact with support workers, we may promote not only the quality of work that support workers deliver, but also the wellbeing of the support workers themselves.

Antimicrobial stewardship improves patient care and reduces antimicrobial resistance, inappropriate use, and adverse outcomes. Despite high-profile mandates for antimicrobial stewardship programs across the healthcare continuum, descriptive data, and recommendations for dedicated resources, including appropriate physician, pharmacist, data analytics, and administrative staffing support, are not robust. This review summarizes the current literature on antimicrobial stewardship staffing and calls for the development of minimum staffing recommendations.

Sintered nanoparticle structures are macroscopically brittle but quite robust if deposited on a flexible substrate. The effects of a polymer substrate on the stretchability of both brittle and ductile coatings and traces are well established. Systematic effects of substrate properties on the fatigue resistance of aerosol printed nano-Ag are slightly more complex. The present work is focused on the early stages of fatigue, where the resistance increases significantly but cracks are not yet visible. Overall, the fatigue behavior is seen to vary with the combination of substrate modulus and viscoelastic deformation properties. Comparing two common polyimides, the rate of damage was seen to increase faster with increasing amplitude on the less compliant one. Consistently with this increasing the minimum strain in the cycle led to a significantly stronger reduction in damage rates. However, the damage rate remained lower on the less compliant substrate at all amplitudes and strain ranges of practical concern.

Prior research into the liquid-phase exfoliation of graphite to produce few-layer graphene has focused primarily on the surface energy matching between graphite and solvent; however, the effect of other solvent properties, such as liquid viscosity, have not been systematically explored. In principle, a higher viscosity solvent should enable the production of graphene and other graphitic nanomaterials by liquid-phase exfoliation at lower shear rates than traditionally used organic solvents of low viscosity, such as N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP). Thus, at a given shear rate, more material should be exfoliated in the higher viscosity solvent. Hence, graphite suspensions in NMP, benzyl benzoate, and propylene glycol were exfoliated at various shear rates in a rheometer. Exfoliant concentrations were measured by ultraviolet- visual (UV-vis) spectroscopy and quality characterization was performed by Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Graphite exfoliation in the more viscous propylene glycol solvent resulted in a higher exfoliant concentration than in the less viscous NMP and benzyl benzoate solvents across all shear rates. Benzyl benzoate lowered exfoliant levels, likely due to a poor surface energy match, resulting in particle attraction and aggregation. Characterization showed that at least some of our material is few-layer graphene.