Explore the vast range of titles available.

The large increase in numbers of refugees and asylum seekers in Germany and most of Europe has put the issue of migration itself, the integration of migrants, and also their health at the top of the political agenda. However, the dynamics of refugee health are not yet well understood. From a life-course perspective, migration experience is associated with various risks and changes, which might differ depending on the socioeconomic status (SES) of refugees in their home country. The aim of this paper was to analyze the relationship between pre-migration SES and self-reported health indicators after migration among Syrian refugees. Specifically, we wanted to find out how their SES affects the change in health satisfaction from pre- to post-migration. We used data from the 2016 refugee survey, which was part of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). Although cross-sectional by design, this survey collected information referring to the current situation as a refugee in Germany as well as to their situation before migration. Using a sample of 2,209 adult Syrian refugees who had entered Germany between 2013 and 2016, we conducted a cross-sectional and a quasi-longitudinal (retrospective) analysis. The mean ± SD age was 35 ± 11 years, with 64% of the participants being male. Our results showed a positive association between pre-migration self-reported SES and several subjective health indicators (e.g., health satisfaction, self-reported health, mental health) in the cross-sectional analysis. However, the quasi-longitudinal analysis revealed that the socioeconomic gradient in health satisfaction before migration was strongly attenuated after migration (SES-by-time interaction: -0.48, 95% CI -0.61 to -0.35, p < 0.001; unstandardized regression coefficients, 5-point SES scale and 11-point health outcome scale). Similar results were produced after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, experiences during the migration passage, and the current situation in Germany. A sex-stratified analysis showed that while there was some improvement in health satisfaction among men from the lowest SES over time, no improvement was found among women. A limitation of this study is that it considers only the first months or years after migration. Thus, we cannot preclude that the socioeconomic gradient regains importance in the longer run. Our findings suggest that the pre-migration socioeconomic gradient in health satisfaction is strongly attenuated in the first years after migration among Syrian refugees. Hence, a high SES before crisis and migration provides limited protection against the adverse health effects of migration passage.

The automatic identification system (AIS) was introduced in the maritime domain to increase the safety of sea traffic. AIS messages are transmitted as broadcasts to nearby ships and contain, among others, information about the identification, position, speed, and course of the sending vessels. AIS can thus serve as a tool to avoid collisions and increase onboard situational awareness. In recent years, AIS has been utilized in more and more applications since it enables worldwide surveillance of virtually any larger vessel and has the potential to greatly support vessel traffic services and collision risk assessment. Anomalies in AIS tracks can indicate events that are relevant in terms of safety and also security. With a plethora of accessible AIS data nowadays, there is a growing need for the automatic detection of anomalous AIS data. In this paper, we survey 44 research articles on anomaly detection of maritime AIS tracks. We identify the tackled AIS anomaly types, assess their potential use cases, and closely examine the landscape of recent AIS anomaly research as well as their limitations.

Rasmussen's encephalitis is a rare chronic neurological disorder, characterised by unilateral inflammation of the cerebral cortex, drug-resistant epilepsy, and progressive neurological and cognitive deterioration. Neuropathological and immunological studies support the notion that Rasmussen's encephalitis is probably driven by a T-cell response to one or more antigenic epitopes, with potential additional contribution by autoantibodies. Careful analysis of the association between histopathology and clinical presentation suggests that initial damage to the brain is mediated by T cells and microglia, suggesting a window for treatment if Rasmussen's encephalitis can be diagnosed early. Advances in neuroimaging suggest that progression of the inflammatory process seen with MRI might be a good biomarker in Rasmussen's encephalitis. For many patients, families, and doctors, choosing the right time to move from medical management to surgery is a real therapeutic dilemma. Cerebral hemispherectomy remains the only cure for seizures, but there are inevitable functional compromises. Decisions of whether or when surgery should be undertaken are challenging in the absence of a dense neurological deficit, and vary by institutional experience. Further, the optimum time for surgery, to give the best language and cognitive outcome, is not yet well understood. Immunomodulatory treatments seem to slow rather than halt disease progression in Rasmussen's encephalitis, without changing the eventual outcome.

We integrated recent improvements within the floating catchment area (FCA) method family into an integrated 'iFCA`method. Within this method we focused on the distance decay function and its parameter. So far only distance decay functions with constant parameters have been applied. Therefore, we developed a variable distance decay function to be used within the FCA method. We were able to replace the impedance coefficient β by readily available distribution parameter (i.e. median and standard deviation (SD)) within a logistic based distance decay function. Hence, the function is shaped individually for every single population location by the median and SD of all population-to-provider distances within a global catchment size. Theoretical application of the variable distance decay function showed conceptually sound results. Furthermore, the existence of effective variable catchment sizes defined by the asymptotic approach to zero of the distance decay function was revealed, satisfying the need for variable catchment sizes. The application of the iFCA method within an urban case study in Berlin (Germany) confirmed the theoretical fit of the suggested method. In summary, we introduced for the first time, a variable distance decay function within an integrated FCA method. This function accounts for individual travel behaviors determined by the distribution of providers. Additionally, the function inherits effective variable catchment sizes and therefore obviates the need for determining variable catchment sizes separately.

Behavioural science has yielded insights about the actions of individuals, particularly as consumers, that affect climate change. Behaviours in other spheres of life remain understudied. In this Perspective, we propose a collaborative research agenda that integrates behavioural science insights across multiple disciplines. To this end, we offer six recommendations for optimizing the quality and impact of research on individual climate behaviour. The recommendations are united by a shift towards more solutions-focused research that is directly useful to citizens, policymakers and other change agents. Achieving this vision will require overcoming challenges such as the limited funding for behavioural and social sciences and structural barriers within and beyond the academic system that impede collaborations across disciplines.Behavioural science offers valuable insights for mitigating climate change, but existing work focuses mostly on consumption and lacks coordination across disciplines. In this Perspective, the authors make six recommendations for improving the quality and impact of behavioural research on mitigation.

Sweet foods are commonly used as rewards for desirable behavior, specifically among children. This study examines whether such practice may contribute to reinforce the valuation of these foods. Two experiments were conducted, one with children, the other with rats. The first study, conducted with first graders ( n = 214 ), shows that children who receive a food reward for performing a cognitive task subsequently value the food more compared to a control group who received the same food without performing any task. The second study, conducted on rats ( n = 64 ), shows that rewarding with food also translates into higher calorie intake over a 24-hour period. These results suggest that the common practice of rewarding children with calorie-dense sweet foods is a plausible contributing factor to obesity and might therefore be ill advised.

What seems obvious in one context can take on an entirely different meaning if that context shifts. While context-dependent inference has been widely studied, a fundamental question remains: how does the brain simultaneously infer both the meaning of sensory input and the underlying context itself, especially when the context is changing? Here, we study flexible perceptual inference-the ability to adapt rapidly to implicit contextual shifts without trial and error. We introduce a novel change-detection task in dynamic environments that requires tracking latent state and context. We find that mice exhibit first-trial behavioral adaptation to latent context shifts driven by inference rather than reward feedback. By deriving the Bayes-optimal policy under a partially observable Markov decision process, we show that rapid adaptation emerges from sequential updates of an internal belief state. In addition, we show that artificial neural networks trained via reinforcement learning achieve near-optimal performance, implementing Bayesian inference-like mechanisms within their recurrent dynamics. These networks develop flexible internal representations that enable adaptive inference in real-time. Our findings establish flexible perceptual inference as a core principle of cognitive flexibility, offering computational and neural-mechanistic insights into adaptive behavior in uncertain environments.

Because the value of preschool child care is under intensive debate among both policy-makers and society in general, this paper analyzes the relation between preschool care and the well-being of children and adolescents in Germany. It specifically examines differences in outcomes based on child socioeconomic background by focusing on the heterogeneous effects for migrant children. Our findings, based on data from the German Health Interview and Examination Survey of Children and Adolescents (KiGGS), suggest that children who have experienced child care have a slightly lower well-being overall. For migrant children, however, the outcomes indicate a positive relation. These results remain robust after controlling for selection into child care on observables and using an instrumental variable approach to address potential endogeneity.

As the aging population increases, the demand for informal caregiving is becoming an ever more important concern for researchers and policy-makers alike. To shed light on the implications of informal caregiving, this paper reviews current research on its impact on three areas of caregivers’ lives: employment, health, and family. Because the literature is inherently interdisciplinary, the research designs, sampling procedures, and statistical methods used are heterogeneous. Nevertheless, we are still able to draw several important conclusions: first, despite the prevalence of informal caregiving and its primary association with lower levels of employment, the affected labor force is seemingly small. Second, such caregiving tends to lower the quality of the caregiver’s psychological health, which also has a negative impact on physical health outcomes. Third, the implications for family life remain under investigated. The research findings also differ strongly among subgroups, although they do suggest that female, spousal, and intense caregivers tend to be the most affected by caregiving.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is characterized by heterogeneity in disease course and prediction of long-term outcome remains a major challenge. Here, we investigate five myeloid markers – CHIT1, CHI3L1, sTREM2, GPNMB and CCL18 – in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) at diagnostic lumbar puncture in a longitudinal cohort of 192 MS patients. Through mixed-effects and machine learning models, we show that CHIT1 is a robust predictor for faster disability progression. Integrative analysis of 11 CSF and 26 central nervous system (CNS) parenchyma single-cell/nucleus RNA sequencing samples reveals CHIT1 to be predominantly expressed by microglia located in active MS lesions and enriched for lipid metabolism pathways. Furthermore, we find CHIT1 expression to accompany the transition from a homeostatic towards a more activated, MS-associated cell state in microglia. Neuropathological evaluation in post-mortem tissue from 12 MS patients confirms CHIT1 production by lipid-laden phagocytes in actively demyelinating lesions, already in early disease stages. Altogether, we provide a rationale for CHIT1 as an early biomarker for faster disability progression in MS. Here, the authors provide evidence for the potential of CHIT1 concentration in the cerebrospinal fluid at diagnostic lumbar puncture as a biomarker for disability progression in multiple sclerosis (MS) as it reflects early microglial activation in active lesions of MS patients.