Outbreak of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis among military personnel in French Guiana, 2020: Clinical, phylogenetic, individual and environmental aspects

Background Cutaneous Leishmaniasis (CL) is endemic in French Guiana but cases are usually sporadic. An outbreak signal was issued on May 15th 2020 with 15 suspected cases after a military training course in the rainforest. An outbreak investigation was carried out. Methodology/Principal findings Thirty cases were confirmed. Leishmania guyanensis was the most frequent species (90%). The most frequent presentation was ulcerative (90%). Lesions on the face and hands were frequent (40% each). Eight cases (26%) presented a poor outcome after treatment with pentamidine and required a second line with amphotericin B. Three of them required further treatments with meglumine antimoniate or miltefosine. Two spots within the training area were deemed as likely sites of contamination, due to illegal logging. The isolated Leishmania strains did not form a separate cluster. Participation in Week 13 of year 2020 was associated with infection (OR = 4.59 [1.10–19.83]; p = 0.016) while undergoing only the “Fighting” exercise was protective (OR = 0.1 [0–0.74]; p = 0.021). There was no association between infection and other risk factors at the individual level. The attack rate of Regiment B (14/105 = 13.3%) was significantly higher (OR = 4.22 [1.84–9.53], p = 0.0001) compared to Regiment A (16/507 = 3.2%). The attack rate during this training course (30/858 = 3.5%) was significantly higher (OR 2.29 [1.28–4.13]; p = 0.002) than for other missions in French Guiana during the same period (22/1427 = 1.5%). Conclusions This outbreak could be explained by a combination of factors: climatic conditions around week 13, at-risk activities including night trainings, absence of impregnation, a lesser experience of rainforest duties in Regiment B and illegal logging attracting sandflies on military training grounds.

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Is an Emphasis on Dignity, Honor and Face more an Attribute of Individuals or of Cultural Groups?

Cross-Cultural Research ◽

10.1177/1069397120979571 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 106939712097957

Author(s):

Peter B. Smith ◽

Matthew J. Easterbrook ◽

Yasin Koc ◽

Vivian Miu-Chi Lun ◽

Dona Papastylianou ◽

...

Keyword(s):

University Students ◽

Multilevel Analyses ◽

Cultural Groups ◽

Predictive Utility ◽

Cultural Logic ◽

Interpersonal Conflicts ◽

Individual Level ◽

Self Construal ◽

The Face ◽

The Individual

This study compares the individual-level and sample-level predictive utility of a measure of the cultural logics of dignity, honor, and face. University students in 29 samples from 24 nations used a simple measure to rate their perceptions of the interpersonal cultural logic characterizing their local culture. The nomological net of these measures was then explored. Key dependent measures included three different facets of independent versus interdependent self-construal, relevant attitudes and values, reported handling of actual interpersonal conflicts, and responses to normative settings. Multilevel analyses revealed both individual- and sample-level effects but the dignity measure showed more individual-level effects, whereas sample-level effects were relatively more important with the face measure. The implications of this contrast are discussed.

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Strategizing Safety: Theoretical Frameworks to Understand Women’s Decision Making in the Face of Partner Violence and Social Inequities

Journal of Interpersonal Violence ◽

10.1177/0886260515598953 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 32 (21) ◽

pp. 3321-3345 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Alisa J. Velonis ◽

Nihaya Daoud ◽

Flora Matheson ◽

Julia Woodhall-Melnik ◽

Sarah Hamilton-Wright ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Partner Violence ◽

Theoretical Models ◽

Structural Factors ◽

Theoretical Frameworks ◽

Safe Place ◽

Individual Level ◽

Social Inequities ◽

Women's Lives ◽

The Face ◽

The Individual

Women in physically and psychologically abusive relationships face numerous decisions related to their safety: decisions that historically have been viewed by researchers and human service practitioners as related to individual or interpersonal factors, such as how they feel about their partner, what they (or those they are close to) think is best for their children, or whether they have a safe place to go to. Social and structural factors, such as poverty, sexism, and barriers related to disability, are either left out or viewed at their individual-level consequence, such as a woman’s employment status. Using interview data and case studies from a larger study on housing instability, partner violence, and health, the authors apply ecological and macro-level theoretical models that go beyond the individual level to the stories of women who struggled with partner violence, arguing that it is critical to examine the large social and structural forces that impact women’s lives if we are to understand the decisions women make when facing a violent partner.

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Using simulation to aid trial design: ring-vaccination trials

10.1101/071498 ◽

2016 ◽

Author(s):

Matt D.T. Hitchings ◽

Rebecca F. Grais ◽

Marc Lipsitch

Keyword(s):

Sample Size ◽

Study Design ◽

Attack Rate ◽

Trial Design ◽

Vaccine Effectiveness ◽

Individual Level ◽

Design And Implementation ◽

Ring Vaccination ◽

Sample Size Calculations ◽

The Individual

AbstractBackgroundThe 2014-5 West African Ebola epidemic highlights the need for rigorous, rapid clinical trials under difficult circumstances. Challenges include temporally and spatially patchy transmission, and the responsibility to deliver public health interventions during a randomized trial. An innovative design such as ring vaccination with an immediate arm and a delayed arm can address these issues, but complex trials raise complex analysis issues.Methods and FindingsWe present a stochastic, compartmental model for a ring vaccination trial of a vaccine for an Ebola-like disease. After identification of an index case, a ring of primary contacts is recruited and either vaccinated immediately or after a delay of 21 days. The primary outcome of the trial is effectiveness calculated from cumulative incidence in the two arms, counting cases only from a pre-specified window in which the immediate arm is assumed to be fully protected and the delayed arm is not protected. The results of simulating the trial are used to calculate the sample size necessary for 80% power and the estimates of effectiveness are reported under a variety of assumptions regarding the trial design and implementation.The three key components of sample size calculations – attack rate in controls, estimate of incidence difference between the arms, and intracluster correlation coefficient – are dependent on trial design and implementation in a way that can be quantitatively predicted by the model. Under baseline parameter assumptions, we found that a total of 8,900 study participants were needed to achieve 80% power to detect a difference in attack rate between the two arms, whereas a standard approach with the same parameters returns a necessary sample size of 7,100 individuals. Such a study would on average return a vaccine effectiveness estimate of 69.81%, with average 95% confidence interval (41.2%, 84.2%).We found that for this design the necessary sample size and estimated effectiveness are sensitive to properties of the vaccine – in particular, pre-exposure and post-exposure efficacy; to two setting-specific parameters over which investigators have little control – rate of infections from outside the ring and overall attack rate in the controls; and to three parameters that are determined by the study design – the time window in which cases are counted, intensity of case-detection and administrative delay in vaccinating individuals.This approach replaces assumptions about parameters in the trial with assumptions about disease dynamics and vaccine characteristics at the individual level.ConclusionsIncorporating simulation into the trial design process can improve robustness of sample size calculations. Simulation can identify optimal values for study design parameters that can be controlled. For this specific trial design, vaccine effectiveness depends on properties of the ring vaccination design and on the measurement window, as well as the epidemiologic setting. Rejecting the null likely indicates one or more types of vaccine efficacy at the individual level, but the magnitude of the effect will vary across settings.

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The anatomy of a phenological mismatch: interacting consumer demand and resource characteristics determine the consequences of mismatching

10.1101/2020.12.22.423968 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Luke R. Wilde ◽

Josiah E. Simmons ◽

Rose J. Swift ◽

Nathan R. Senner

Keyword(s):

Consumer Demand ◽

Population Level ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Growth And Survival ◽

Individual Level ◽

Individual Fitness ◽

Phenological Mismatch ◽

Age Structured ◽

Resource Characteristics ◽

The Individual

AbstractClimate change has caused shifts in seasonally recurring biological events and the temporal decoupling of consumer-resource pairs – i.e., phenological mismatching. Despite the hypothetical risk mismatching poses to consumers, they do not invariably lead to individual- or population-level effects. This may stem from how mismatches are typically defined, e.g., an individual or population is ‘matched’ or ‘mismatched’ based on the degree of asynchrony with a resource pulse. However, because both resource availability and consumer demands change over time, this categorical definition can obscure within- or among-individual fitness effects. We therefore developed models to identify the effects of resource characteristics on individual- and population-level processes and determine how the strength of these effects change throughout a consumer’s life. We then measured the effects of resource characteristics on the growth, daily survival, and fledging rates of Hudsonian godwit (Limosa haemastica) chicks hatched near Beluga River, Alaska. At the individual-level, chick growth and survival improved following periods of higher invertebrate abundance but were increasingly dependent on the availability of larger prey as chicks aged. At the population level, seasonal fledging rates were best explained by a model including age-structured consumer demand. Our study suggests that modelling the effects of mismatching as a disrupted interaction between consumers and their resources provides a biological mechanism for how mismatching occurs and clarifies when it matters to individuals and populations. Given the variable responses to mismatching across consumer populations, such tools for predicting how populations may respond under future climatic conditions will be invaluable.

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Current trends in the application of causal inference methods to pooled longitudinal observational infectious disease studies—A protocol for a methodological systematic review

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0250778 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. e0250778

Author(s):

Heather Hufstedler ◽

Ellicott C. Matthay ◽

Sabahat Rahman ◽

Valentijn M. T. de Jong ◽

Harlan Campbell ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Systematic Review ◽

Longitudinal Data ◽

Full Text ◽

Empirical Studies ◽

Joint Estimation ◽

Related Research ◽

Individual Level ◽

The Face ◽

Business Source Premier ◽

The Individual

Introduction Pooling (or combining) and analysing observational, longitudinal data at the individual level facilitates inference through increased sample sizes, allowing for joint estimation of study- and individual-level exposure variables, and better enabling the assessment of rare exposures and diseases. Empirical studies leveraging such methods when randomization is unethical or impractical have grown in the health sciences in recent years. The adoption of so-called “causal” methods to account for both/either measured and/or unmeasured confounders is an important addition to the methodological toolkit for understanding the distribution, progression, and consequences of infectious diseases (IDs) and interventions on IDs. In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and in the absence of systematic randomization of exposures or interventions, the value of these methods is even more apparent. Yet to our knowledge, no studies have assessed how causal methods involving pooling individual-level, observational, longitudinal data are being applied in ID-related research. In this systematic review, we assess how these methods are used and reported in ID-related research over the last 10 years. Findings will facilitate evaluation of trends of causal methods for ID research and lead to concrete recommendations for how to apply these methods where gaps in methodological rigor are identified. Methods and analysis We will apply MeSH and text terms to identify relevant studies from EBSCO (Academic Search Complete, Business Source Premier, CINAHL, EconLit with Full Text, PsychINFO), EMBASE, PubMed, and Web of Science. Eligible studies are those that apply causal methods to account for confounding when assessing the effects of an intervention or exposure on an ID-related outcome using pooled, individual-level data from 2 or more longitudinal, observational studies. Titles, abstracts, and full-text articles, will be independently screened by two reviewers using Covidence software. Discrepancies will be resolved by a third reviewer. This systematic review protocol has been registered with PROSPERO (CRD42020204104).

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Century-long cod otolith biochronology reveals individual growth plasticity in response to temperature

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-020-73652-6 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Szymon Smoliński ◽

Julie Deplanque-Lasserre ◽

Einar Hjörleifsson ◽

Audrey J. Geffen ◽

Jane A. Godiksen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Gadus Morhua ◽

Environmental Variability ◽

Atlantic Cod ◽

Population Level ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Individual Growth ◽

Individual Level ◽

Thermal Plasticity ◽

Individual Effects ◽

The Individual

Abstract Otolith biochronologies combine growth records from individual fish to produce long-term growth sequences, which can help to disentangle individual from population-level responses to environmental variability. This study assessed individual thermal plasticity of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) growth in Icelandic waters based on measurements of otolith increments. We applied linear mixed-effects models and developed a century-long growth biochronology (1908–2014). We demonstrated interannual and cohort-specific changes in the growth of Icelandic cod over the last century which were mainly driven by temperature variation. Temperature had contrasting relationships with growth—positive for the fish during the youngest ages and negative during the oldest ages. We decomposed the effects of temperature on growth observed at the population level into within-individual effects and among‐individual effects and detected significant individual variation in the thermal plasticity of growth. Variance in the individual plasticity differed across cohorts and may be related to the mean environmental conditions experienced by the group. Our results underscore the complexity of the relationships between climatic conditions and the growth of fish at both the population and individual level, and highlight the need to distinguish between average population responses and growth plasticity of the individuals for accurate growth predictions.

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Searching for a new quality – queer, gender and economics

interalia: a journal of queer studies ◽

10.51897/interalia/gqds2207 ◽

2010 ◽

Author(s):

Maria Skóra

Keyword(s):

Gender Studies ◽

Methodological Individualism ◽

Individual Level ◽

Economic Issues ◽

Cultural Conditions ◽

The Face ◽

Social Praxis ◽

And Gender ◽

The Individual

This article aims at pointing out two fundamental biases of contemporary economics and analyzing their consequences for constructing a vision of reality. Both androcentrism and heteronormativity not only prevent scholars from capturing the variety of social praxis, but also reproduce structures of domination and petrify discrimination areas. Methodological individualism reduces economical phenomena to the individual level, remaining blind to the wider socio-cultural conditions influencing human motivations and actions, especially in the face of limited commodities supply. Hence the questions: What could be the role of queer and gender studies for the development of economic sciences? Why not tackle economic issues also from a queer perspective?

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Simulating the ‘Other-Race’ Effect with Autoassociative Neural Networks: Further Evidence in Favor of the Face-Space Model

Perception ◽

10.1068/p5360 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 35 (5) ◽

pp. 659-670 ◽

Cited By ~ 31

Author(s):

Roberto Caldara ◽

Hervé Abdi

Keyword(s):

Quarterly Journal ◽

The Other ◽

Individual Level ◽

Space Model ◽

Face Space ◽

Race Effect ◽

The Face ◽

Network Simulations ◽

Autoassociative Neural Networks ◽

The Individual

Other-race (OR) faces are less accurately recognized than same-race (SR) faces, but faster classified by race. This phenomenon has often been reported as the ‘other-race’ effect (ORE). Valentine (1991 Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology A: Human Experimental Psychology43 161–204) proposed a theoretical multidimensional face-space model that explained both of these results, in terms of variations in exemplar density between races. According to this model, SR faces are more widely distributed across the dimensions of the space than OR faces. However, this model does not quantify nor state the dimensions coded within this face space. The aim of the present study was to test the face-space explanation of the ORE with neural network simulations by quantifying its dimensions. We found the predicted density properties of Valentine's framework in the face-projection spaces of the autoassociative memories. This was supported by an interaction for exemplar density between the race of the learned face set and the race of the faces. In addition, the elaborated face representations showed optimal responses for SR but not for OR faces within SR face spaces when explored at the individual level, as gender errors occurred significantly more often in OR than in SR face-space representations. Altogether, our results add further evidence in favor of a statistical exemplar density explanation of the ORE as suggested by Valentine, and question the plausibility of such coding for faces in the framework of recent neuroimaging studies.

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State-Level Variation in Abortion Stigma and Women and Men’s Abortion Underreporting in the USA

Population Research and Policy Review ◽

10.1007/s11113-021-09657-4 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Isaac Maddow-Zimet ◽

Laura D. Lindberg ◽

Kate Castle

Keyword(s):

State Level ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Structural Factors ◽

Aggregate Level ◽

Quality Of Reporting ◽

Individual Level ◽

The Face ◽

The Usa ◽

Demographic Surveys ◽

The Individual

AbstractAbortion is highly stigmatized in most settings and severely underreported in demographic surveys. In the USA, variation in the context of abortion between states may influence respondents’ exposure to abortion stigma and create geographic variation in their likelihood of disclosing abortion in surveys. We used restricted geographic data from the 2006–2010 and 2011–2015 National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) to investigate the association between abortion reporting in the USA and state-level structural factors that may influence respondents’ experience of abortion stigma. At the aggregate level, we compared the weighted number of abortions women reported in the NSFG to abortion counts derived from abortion provider censuses and test for variation in underreporting by state-level structural measures. At the individual level, we tested if state-level structural factors were associated with less reporting of abortion in the face-to-face (FTF) survey mode than the more confidential audio computer-assisted self-interviewing mode (ACASI) of the NSFG. We found that at the aggregate level, there were no differences in reporting by the state-level measures. At the individual level, about 40% of women and men who reported an abortion in their ACASI did not fully report in the FTF interview; however, there were few differences by any state-level factors. This study documents that abortion stigma plagues the quality of reporting in the USA for both women and men, regardless of which state they live in. Survey improvements to reduce abortion underreporting are needed.

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The pathogen paradox: Evidence that perceived COVID-19 threat is associated with both pro- and anti-immigrant attitudes

10.31234/osf.io/948ch ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Jais Adam-Troian ◽

sabahat bagci

Keyword(s):

Self Report ◽

Threat Perception ◽

Volume Data ◽

Individual Level ◽

Search Volume ◽

Positive Attitudes ◽

The Face ◽

Common Ingroup Identity ◽

The Individual ◽

Global Threat

COVID-19 pandemic, as a global threat to humanity, is likely to instigate a variety of collective responses in the society. We examined, for the first time, whether COVID-19 threat perception is related to attitudes towards Syrian immigrants in Turkey, theorizing a dual pathway whereby threat caused by the COVID-19 pandemic would relate to both pro- and anti-immigrant feelings. While drawing upon behavioral immune system theory, we expected that pathogen threat would lead to more exclusionary attitudes; relying on the common ingroup identity model, we predicted that pathogen threat would promote inclusionary attitudes through creating a common ingroup in the face of a global threat. Results from two studies using online search volume data at the province-level (N = 81) and self-report measures at the individual level (N = 294) demonstrated that perceived COVID-19 threat was directly associated with more positive attitudes towards immigrants (Study 1 and 2). Study 2 further revealed indirect positive (through a sense of common identity) and negative (through perceptions of immigrant threat) links between COVID-19 threat perception and attitudes towards immigrants. These results highlight the importance of integrating evolutionary and social identity perspectives when assessing pathogen-related threats. We draw attention to managing the public perceptions of COVID-19 threat which may mitigate the social aftermath of the pandemic.

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