London taxi drivers exploit neighbourhood boundaries for hierarchical route planning.

Humans show an impressive ability to plan over complex situations and environments. A classic approach to explaining such planning has been tree-search algorithms which search through alternative state sequences for the most efficient path through states. However, this approach fails when the number of states is large due to the time to compute all possible sequences.

A test of the social withdrawal syndrome hypothesis of bulimia nervosa.

Background: The study examined the social withdrawal syndrome (SWS) hypothesis of bulimia nervosa (BN). According to the hypothesis, eating disorders such as BN are associated with a coherent set of social withdrawal cognitions, affect, and behavior.

Participants And Procedure: Eight-eight young female adults completed a standardized measure of bulimic symptoms and measures of social withdrawal (affective withdrawal, trust beliefs in close others, and disclosure).

Future directions in human mobility science.

We provide a brief review of human mobility science and present three key areas where we expect to see substantial advancements. We start from the mind and discuss the need to better understand how spatial cognition shapes mobility patterns. We then move to societies and argue the importance of better understanding new forms of transportation.

The Impact of Spatial Orientation Changes on Driving Behavior in Healthy Aging.

Objectives: Global cognitive changes in older age affect driving behavior and road safety, but how spatial orientation differences affect driving behaviors is unknown on a population level, despite clear implications for driving policy and evaluation during aging. The present study aimed to establish how spatial navigation changes affect driving behavior and road safety within a large cohort of older adults.

Methods: Eight hundred and four participants (mean age: 71.

Lack of racial and ethnic diversity in lung cancer cell lines contributes to lung cancer health disparities.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States and worldwide, and a major source of cancer health disparities. Lung cancer cell lines provide key models for molecular studies of lung cancer development and progression, and for pre-clinical drug testing. To ensure health equity, it is imperative that cell lines representing different lung cancer histological types, carrying different cancer driver genes, and representing different genders, races, and ethnicities should be available.

Factors leading to disparity in lung cancer diagnosis among black/African American communities in the USA: a qualitative study.

Objective: This study has two objectives: first, to explore the diagnostic experiences of black/African American (BAA) patients with lung cancer to pinpoint pitfalls, suboptimal experiences and instances of discrimination leading to disparities in outcomes compared with patients of other ethnic backgrounds, especially white patients. The second objective is to identify the underlying causes contributing to health disparities in the diagnosis of lung cancer among BAA patients.

Methods: We employed a phenomenological research approach, guiding in-depth interviews with patients self-identifying as BAA diagnosed with lung cancer, as well as caregivers, healthcare professionals and community advocates knowledgeable about BAA experiences with lung cancer.

No link between handedness and spatial navigation: evidence from over 400 000 participants in 41 countries.

There is an active debate concerning the association of handedness and spatial ability. Past studies used small sample sizes. Determining the effect of handedness on spatial ability requires a large, cross-cultural sample of participants and a navigation task with real-world validity.

Cultural determinants of the gap between self-estimated navigation ability and wayfinding performance: evidence from 46 countries.

Cognitive abilities can vary widely. Some people excel in certain skills, others struggle. However, not all those who describe themselves as gifted are.

Assessing spatiotemporal variability in SARS-CoV-2 infection risk for hospital workers using routinely-collected data.

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasised the need to rapidly assess infection risks for healthcare workers within the hospital environment. Using data from the first year of the pandemic, we investigated whether an individual's COVID-19 test result was associated with behavioural markers derived from routinely collected hospital data two weeks prior to a test. The temporal and spatial context of behaviours were important, with the highest risks of infection during the first wave, for staff in contact with a greater number of patients and those with greater levels of activity on floors handling the majority of COVID-19 patients.

A synthetic population for agent-based modelling in Canada.

In order to anticipate the impact of local public policies, a synthetic population reflecting the characteristics of the local population provides a valuable test bed. While synthetic population datasets are now available for several countries, there is no open-source synthetic population for Canada. We propose an open-source synthetic population of individuals and households at a fine geographical level for Canada for the years 2021, 2023 and 2030.

Investigating healthcare worker mobility and patient contacts within a UK hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Insights into behaviours relevant to the transmission of infections are extremely valuable for epidemiological investigations. Healthcare worker (HCW) mobility and patient contacts within the hospital can contribute to nosocomial outbreaks, yet data on these behaviours are often limited.

Methods: Using electronic medical records and door access logs from a London teaching hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic, we derive indicators for HCW mobility and patient contacts at an aggregate level.

Reported sleep duration reveals segmentation of the adult life-course into three phases.

Classically the human life-course is characterized by youth, middle age and old age. A wide range of biological, health and cognitive functions vary across this life-course. Here, using reported sleep duration from 730,187 participants across 63 countries, we find three distinct phases in the adult human life-course: early adulthood (19-33yrs), mid-adulthood (34-53yrs), and late adulthood (54+yrs).

Patient survey examining the experience of care of a hospital-based opt-out tobacco dependency treatment service (the CURE Project).

Introduction: Treating tobacco dependency in patients admitted to hospital is a key priority in the National Health Service long-term plan. This service evaluation assessed the perception, needs and experience of care within an opt-out hospital-based tobacco dependency treatment service (the Conversation, Understand, Replace, Experts and Evidence Base (CURE) team) in North-West England.

Methods: A survey was offered to all eligible patients between 1 July 2020 and 30 September 2020.

PTSD: Anesthesia Considerations for the Patient With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a common psychological condition identified in combat veterans and individuals who have experienced natural or manmade disasters or other traumatic experiences. PTSD is known to increase a patient's risk of emergence delirium after undergoing general anesthesia. While this is well known by certified registered nurse anesthetists in practice, particularly those in military hospitals, recommendations for anesthetic management of patients with PTSD is notably lacking.

A qualitative study of interactions with oncologists among patients with advanced lung cancer.

Introduction: To support the care of lung cancer patients, oncologists have needed to stay current on treatment advancements and build relationships with a new group of survivors in an era where lung cancer survivorship has been re-defined. The objectives of the study were to (1) understand the perspectives of advanced lung cancer patients whose tumors have oncogenic alterations about their care experiences with their oncologist(s) and (2) describe the perceptions of advanced lung cancer patients about seeking second opinions and navigating care decisions.

Methods: In this qualitative study, patients with advanced lung cancer (n = 25) on targeted therapies were interviewed to discuss their ongoing experience with their oncologists.

Entropy of city street networks linked to future spatial navigation ability.

The cultural and geographical properties of the environment have been shown to deeply influence cognition and mental health. Living near green spaces has been found to be strongly beneficial, and urban residence has been associated with a higher risk of some psychiatric disorders-although some studies suggest that dense socioeconomic networks found in larger cities provide a buffer against depression. However, how the environment in which one grew up affects later cognitive abilities remains poorly understood.

A Framework for Evaluating Dashboards in Healthcare.

In the era of 'information overload', effective information provision is essential for enabling rapid response and critical decision making. In making sense of diverse information sources, dashboards have become an indispensable tool, providing fast, effective, adaptable, and personalized access to information for professionals and the general public alike. However, these objectives place heavy requirements on dashboards as information systems in usability and effective design.

London taxi drivers: A review of neurocognitive studies and an exploration of how they build their cognitive map of London.

Licensed London taxi drivers have been found to show changes in the gray matter density of their hippocampus over the course of training and decades of navigation in London (UK). This has been linked to their learning and using of the "Knowledge of London," the names and layout of over 26,000 streets and thousands of points of interest in London. Here we review past behavioral and neuroimaging studies of London taxi drivers, covering the structural differences in hippocampal gray matter density and brain dynamics associated with navigating London.

Household visitation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed novel risks related to the indoor mixing of individuals from different households and challenged policymakers to adequately regulate this behaviour. While in many cases household visits are necessary for the purpose of social care, they have been linked to broadening community transmission of the virus. In this study we propose a novel, privacy-preserving framework for the measurement of household visitation at national and regional scales, making use of passively collected mobility data.

Transition-Metal-Free Homopolymerization of Pyrrolo[2,3-:5,4-']bisthiazoles via Nucleophilic Aromatic Substitution.

Novel methods to synthesize electron-deficient π-conjugated polymers utilizing transition-metal-free coupling reactions for the use of nonfunctionalized monomers are attractive due to their improved atom economy and environmental prospective. Herein we describe the use of PrMgCl·LiCl complex to afford thiazole-based conjugated polymers in the absence of any transition metal catalyst, that enables access to well-defined polymers with good molecular weights. The mechanistically distinct polymerizations proceeded via nucleophilic aromatic substitution (SAr) reaction supported by density functional theory (DFT) calculations.

Future Developments in Geographical Agent-Based Models: Challenges and Opportunities.

Despite reaching a point of acceptance as a research tool across the geographical and social sciences, there remain significant methodological challenges for agent-based models. These include recognizing and simulating emergent phenomena, agent representation, construction of behavioral rules, and calibration and validation. While advances in individual-level data and computing power have opened up new research avenues, they have also brought with them a new set of challenges.

Perception of urban subdivisions in pedestrian movement simulation.

The perception of urban subdivisions, deriving from regionalisation processes and the identification of separating elements (barriers), has proven to dynamically shape peoples' cognitive representations of space and route choice behaviour in cities. However, existing Agent-Based Models (ABMs) for pedestrian simulation have not accounted for these particular cognitive mapping processes. The aim of this paper is to explore the behaviour of pedestrian agents endowed with knowledge about urban subdivisions.