stories

After more than 4 years of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, a great deal of knowledge on how this virus affects pregnant women, the fetus and the newborn has accumulated. Guidelines for mode of delivery, cord clamping, skin to skin, breastfeeding, and rooming-in have become uniform across the world. Vaccination has considerably improved outcomes, but hesitancy amongst pregnant patients and the emergence of variants remain challenged and SARS-CoV-2 positivity during pregnancy continues to be associated with an increased risk of maternal complications, premature delivery and higher neonatal mortality and morbidity...

Narratives have been widely acknowledged as a powerful persuasion tool in health promotion and education. Recently, great efforts have been devoted to identifying message components and causal pathways that maximize a narrative's persuasion power. Specifically, we investigated how narrator point of view and readers' subjective relative risk moderate the effects of protagonist competence on intentions to adopt osteoporosis-prevention behaviors, and proposed identification with the protagonist, self-referencing, and fear arousal as three mediators explaining the effect...

INTRODUCTION: Almost one third of people affected by leprosy in Colombia suffer from disability, which often results from delayed diagnosis and treatment. We aimed to explore the experience of people affected by leprosy during the process of diagnosis and treatment and if and how this experience was influenced by peers. METHODS: A qualitative study using body map stories was conducted from October 2019 to February 2020 in Colombia. Adult people affected by leprosy were recruited through patient associations in different cities...

With the emergence of Olympic internationalism, scholarly networking in East Central Europe came to be dominated by the idea of scholars representing their nations, which replaced the previously leading pattern of private elite scholars with extensive international contacts. This also formalised trans-border contacts, which became increasingly seen as international. In this article, we trace the relationship between these formal and informal networks from the late 19th century to the end of the socialist period, showing that even as formalisation grew, it depended heavily on a variety of informal connections...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

What develops in adulthood? More specifically, what develops in adult analysis, not just in terms of thwarted childhood capacities, not just through accrued experience, but even more fundamentally in terms of abilities or structures not possible until the present moment? In this paper, I posit narrative capacity-the capacity to organize conflictual aspects of self and other in a temporary causal-motivational sequence-as a core feature of what develops in the clinical encounter between the analyst and adult patient...

An overview of circumstances in which twins take the place of their co-twin is presented. Various explanations and speculations are proposed for understanding twins' willingness to do so in certain situations. This section is followed by reviews of timely twin research, namely single versus multiple embryo transfer; neurimaging of twins with periventricular nodular heterotopia; a twin dietary comparison; and a new book of twin-related readings from Hungary. The final portion of this article concerns human interest stories that both inform and entertain...

The auditory brainstem response (ABR) is a valuable clinical tool for objective hearing assessment, which is conventionally detected by averaging neural responses to thousands of short stimuli. Progressing beyond these unnatural stimuli, brainstem responses to continuous speech presented via earphones have been recently detected using linear temporal response functions (TRFs). Here, we extend earlier studies by measuring subcortical responses to continuous speech presented in the sound-field, and assess the amount of data needed to estimate brainstem TRFs...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) has historically been utilized as a temporary life support option for patients with severe cardiac and pulmonary dysfunction. Recent advancements have enabled the safe application of ECMO in a wider variety of patients; we present a review of its use in patients undergoing general thoracic procedures supported by a case series at our institution. METHODS: We review current literature focusing on ECMO applications in thoracic surgery outside of the traditional use...

Key origins of the opioid crisis in the US lie in some pharmaceutical companies' substantial efforts to sell prescription painkillers. To legitimize opioids, the companies built up a body of medical science and opinions, and channels with which to communicate. Archival searches found 876 contracts that together provide information on how Mallinckrodt, an opioid manufacturer, attempted the ghost-management of medicine. These records-available because of litigation-involved contract research organizations, medical education and communication companies, publishers, professional societies, researchers, and other people who could be Mallinckrodt's agents...

OBJECTIVE: Existing literature indicates distinct pathways and the key role of shame and stigma into alcohol dependence (AD) and recovery for women. Internationally, there is a paucity of research exploring these factors from women's perspectives. METHODS AND MEASURES: Taking a critical realist epistemological position, unstructured life story interviews were analysed via narrative analysis to explore how seven women from the UK, storied shame in their recovery from AD...

This conversation between former Journal Editor-in-Chief Warren Colman and Deputy Editor Amanda Dowd took place via Zoom on Sunday, September 3 2023. The conversation ranges widely as Warren shares stories of his formative years and speaks about his experiences regarding his introduction to Jung, his training as an analyst, and his significant contributions to our profession via his writing and editorship of the Journal.

Despite considerable evidence that exposure to conflicting health information can have undesirable effects on outcomes including public understanding about and trust in health recommendations, comparatively little is known about whether such exposure influences intentions to engage in two communication behaviors central to public health promotion: information sharing and information seeking. The purpose of the current study is to test whether exposure to conflicting information influences intentions to share and seek information about six health topics...

BACKGROUND: Dr. Ney Bienvenido Arias Lora emerged not only as a pioneer in neurosurgery but a community leader in the Dominican Republic, contributing significantly to a region where both fundamental and neurosurgical resources were scarce. This account aims to shed light on the remarkable life and career of Dr. Arias Lora, emphasizing the critical role he played in establishing and advancing neurosurgery in the Dominican Republic. METHODS: This paper relies on original bibliographic materials, providing an in-depth analysis of Dr...

This special issue of JBC pays tribute to Sidney Altman, whose discovery of a catalytic role for RNA, a breakthrough made independently by Thomas Cech, overturned the long-held dogma that only proteins can serve as catalysts in biological systems. The discovery of RNA catalysis galvanized biologists to think expansively in new directions and has given rise to a remarkable RNAissance in science and medicine. The collection of articles begins with the story of the discovery of RNase P and builds up to the emerging picture of an unexpectedly vast repertoire of RNase P variants in the three domains of life, including insights derived from recent high-resolution structures on how RNAs, ribonucleoproteins, or protein scaffolds can be used variably to generate an active site for catalyzing the same RNA processing reaction...

In his important article, Prof. G. Eshel describes the story of three Jewish physicians who returned to Nazi Germany to complete their MD thesis despite laws prohibiting Jewish students from German Universities. The three physicians completed their MD thesis examination with the help of three German Professors who supported them regardless of the laws banning Jewish students. The three physicians risked their lives by returning to Nazi Germany, as did the three professors who supported them. The three physicians returned to Palestine upon completion of the requirement for their medical licensing and continued to contribute to the medical system for many years in the State of Israel...

Initially developed as medications for diabetes mellitus, GLP-1 agonists have gained much popularity in the treatment of obesity and weight loss. The present case describes a 69-year-old woman with a history of peptic ulcer and use of NSAIDs, who presented with abdominal pain and oral intolerance refractory to conventional management, for which an upper digestive endoscopy was performed, diagnosing severe gastroparesis. Asking more about the story, revealed surreptitious use of semaglutide. She continued with supportive therapy and the symptoms resolved spontaneously...

Many human behavioral and brain imaging studies have used narratively structured stimuli (e.g., written, audio, or audiovisual stories) to better emulate real-world experience in the laboratory. However, narratives are a special class of real-world experience, largely defined by their causal connections across time. Much contemporary neuroscience research does not consider this key property. We review behavioral and neuroscientific work that speaks to how causal structure shapes comprehension of and memory for narratives...

While plant toxicity reduction remains the primary metric for judging the success of metal immobilization in soil, the suitability of microorganisms as universal indicators of its effectiveness in various contaminated soils remains a point of contention. This study assessed the sensitivity of microbial bioindicators in monitoring metal immobilization success in smelter-impacted soils. It compared plants and microorganisms as indicators of the efficiency of natural Fe-Mn nodules from the Gulf of Finland in immobilizing metals in soils contaminated by a Ni/Cu smelter, on the Kola Peninsula, Murmansk region, Russia...

The leading role of the media is very important in the new media era to build the reporting system and framework of sexual violence crimes, guide people's awareness and public opinion, and improve society's vigilance on sexual crimes. This study took People's Daily Online, a representative online media in China, as a research object to analyse the reporting of sexual crimes over the past 15 years. We conducted relevant searches for specific keywords set in the Python crawler and used IBM SPSS Statistics 19 software to analyse the frequency of relevant content...