Elsevier最新文献

Background: Adverse childhood experiences, such as neglect and abuse in childhood, can significantly harm the mental and physical health of individuals and form the basis for the belief that the world is an unreliable, meaningless, and unjust place.

Objective: This study investigates the mediating role of hope and loneliness in individuals who had experienced adverse childhood experiences in pursuing a meaningful life.

Methods: The study cohort consisted of 419 adults who participated voluntarily. The Socio-demographic Information Form, Adverse Childhood Experiences Scale, Dispositional Hope Scale, Revised UCLA Loneliness Scale, and Meaning in Life Scale were used for data collection.

Results: Adverse childhood experiences were negatively associated with hope (r = -0.157, p < 0.001) and meaning in life (total effect B = -0.284, p < 0.001), while positively associated with loneliness (r = 0.360, p < 0.001). Serial mediation analysis confirmed that hope and loneliness significantly mediated the relationship between childhood adversity and meaning in life.

Conclusions: The findings revealed that hope and loneliness were serial mediators in the relationship between childhood traumas and individuals' perceived meaning in life.

Emerging contaminants in aquatic environments pose undeniable hazards, among which residual anti-inflammatory drugs and antibiotics are particularly prominent ecological threats that have attracted widespread attention. In this study, via a simple two-step process, the organic monomer dimethyloctadecyl[3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl] ammonium chloride (QC18) was grafted onto hollow glass microspheres (HGM), leading to the synthesis of a dual-group functionalized self-floating adsorbent (HGM@QC18) for pharmaceutical removal. Comprehensive characterization of HGM@QC18 was conducted using techniques including SEM, XPS, and FTIR. The adsorption performance of HGM@QC18 towards diclofenac sodium (DS) (as the model anti-inflammatory drug) and moxifloxacin (MOX) (as the model antibiotic) was systematically investigated under different conditions such as adsorption contact duration, system temperature, initial pollutant dosage, solution pH, and the concentration of coexisting ions. The results demonstrated that the D-R and Langmuir models matched the adsorption isotherms of DS and MOX, respectively, with the maximum capacities for adsorption of DS and MOX reaching 278.0 and 244.9 mg g^-1. The PSO model proved applicable for describing the adsorption processes of the two contaminants. After five adsorption-desorption cycles, HGM@QC18 exhibited a 19% and 23% decline in its capacity to remove DS and MOX, respectively. Mechanistic analyses verified that electrostatic attraction, hydrogen bonding, and hydrophobic interaction are the key interactions involved in the adsorption process. With high adsorption efficiency and self-floating separation, HGM@QC18 shows notable potential as a viable solution for reducing emerging contaminant-related pollution in the environment.

Saline wastewater can cause severe damage to the natural environment, yet its physicochemical treatment methods are generally energy-intensive and costly. In this study, a novel straw foam-based aerobic granular sludge (SF-AGS) was employed to protect microbial communities from salinity stress under three experimental conditions: no salinity (R1), salinity with NaCl (R2), and salinity with NaCl + Na₂SO₄ (R3). Results indicated that mature SF-AGS maintained excellent settling performance and high biomass concentration even at 4.0% salinity. The SF-AGS exhibited high removal efficiencies for COD, NH₄⁺-N, TP and TN in both pure-salt and mixed-salt reactors, achieving approximately 91%, 80%, 30% and 75%, respectively, highlighting its high tolerance to high-salinity conditions without significant deterioration in overall performance. Gradual salinity increases substantially altered the microbial community composition, with halotolerant taxa such as Raineyella and Sphingopyxis becoming more abundant and salinity-driven shifts in nitrification processes indirectly affecting phosphorus removal under high-salinity conditions. These findings demonstrate SF-AGS exhibits robust salinity tolerance and its promising applicability for high-salinity wastewater treatment.

High frequency words are more strongly activated than low frequency words, which causes the former to be processed faster than the latter. In the MOGUL framework, the higher the activation of a word is during processing, the higher the activation of the structure containing it is and the greater the learning of the structure resulting from processing is. This study explores whether differences in lexical frequency facilitate adults' acquisition of L2 structures and whether and how this facilitation is modulated by cross-linguistic syntactic similarity. In a structure-search task, two groups of 44 Spanish natives without knowledge of Galician were exposed to a Spanish-Galician similar structure and a Spanish-Galician dissimilar one using Galician verbs cognate with Spanish high or low frequency verbs. Then, a Grammaticality Judgement Task showed that the two structures were learnt. Importantly, the stronger activation of high frequency verbs compared to low frequency verbs facilitated the acquisition of the cross-linguistically dissimilar structure, but not of the cross-linguistically similar structure, which could be processed using an L1 structure. These findings broaden our understanding of the facilitation exerted by lexical processing in initial L2 syntax acquisition and could have pedagogical implications.

Purpose: The aim of the study was to translate the Neuropathic Pain Symptom Inventory - Eye (NPSI-Eye) questionnaire into the Italian language and to validate its psychometric properties for assessing the neuropathic component of ocular pain in chronic eye pain patients.

Methodology: The translation and validation process were conducted according to standardized methods for cross-cultural adaptation of psychometric tools. Patients presenting to the Ophthalmology Unit complaining of chronic ocular pain were enrolled and completed the questionnaire. Objective assessment of ocular surface dysfunction was performed. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were determined. Validity was assessed as face validity, construct validity (convergent and divergent validity) and criterion validity. Factor analysis was performed using Exploratory Factor Analysis.

Results: The Italian version of the NPSI-Eye questionnaire showed optimal internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.889, p < 0.001) and test-retest reliability (ICC = 0.991, p < 0.001). Five of the ten symptom items were endorsed by at least 60%. There were moderate-to-high correlations between NPSI-Eye score and comparison pain questionnaires, and lower correlations with dry eye questionnaire scores, demonstrating good convergent and divergent validity. Concerning criterion validity, the questionnaire score showed significant positive correlation with dry eye discordance score (Spearman ρ = 0.530, p < 0.001), and the mean NPSI-Eye score was significantly higher in patients reporting no or partial analgesic response to anesthetic drop instillation (p < 0.001).

Conclusions: The Italian version of the NPSI-Eye questionnaire proved to be a valid and reliable tool to measure neuropathic component of ocular pain. It demonstrated psychometric properties comparable to those of the original English instrument in a demographically and clinically distinct population. The NPSI-Eye can be used to assess and quantify distinct dimensions of ocular neuropathic pain across diverse patient groups, offering a standardized means of assessing this complex and often underrecognized pain phenotype.

Background: Youths who engage in harmful sexual behaviours (HSBs) have often experienced childhood adversity and psychosocial health problems. Greater understanding of how developmental risks cluster together and/or differ within this heterogeneous population is needed.

Objective: This research aimed to further knowledge of the aetiology and treatment needs of youths with HSBs by identifying typological differences based on co-occurrence of developmental risk factors, including adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).

Participants and setting: Data was derived from clinician case files of 386 Australian male youths receiving specialised treatment following adjudication for sexual offences.

Methods: Latent class analysis was used to determined risk-factor based typologies. Differences in offence characteristics across classes were examined using Chi-square tests and ANOVA.

Results: Four distinct profiles of young males with HSBs were identified: Limited Risk, Socially Excluded, Antisocial, and High Adversity. Characteristics of sexual harm, including offence setting, and victim age and sex, differed across these classes.

Conclusions: Findings suggest differential pathways to youth HSB, and have relevance for informing intervention efforts, to ensure responses meet the varying needs of young people.

Protected areas (PAs) are essential for biodiversity conservation but face increasing challenges due to climate change. While previous research has primarily focused on the spatial extent and expansion of PAs, limited attention has been paid to how climate change affects species distributions and, consequently, the effectiveness of PAs. Here, we used species distribution models (SDMs) to project range shifts of endangered species under future climate scenarios and developed five indicators across three dimensions-biodiversity, habitat condition, and climate connectivity-to comprehensively assess PA effectiveness in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Basin. Our findings reveal that although PAs maintain some capacity to support biodiversity-especially in terms of habitat coverage and biodiversity representation-their overall effectiveness declines over time. This decline is primarily driven by reductions in species richness and habitat suitability, along with diminished climate connectivity, especially under the high-emission scenario. Overall, approximately 50% to 70% of current conservation gaps are projected to lose their critical conservation value, while an estimated 4000 to 5000 km² of gaps will remain important under future climate change. Meanwhile, newly emerged gaps highlight the inadequacies of the current PA network in addressing the challenges of climate change and underscore the urgent need to expand PAs for climate adaptation. Our findings emphasize the importance of adopting adaptive management strategies that integrate climate resilience into PA planning, ensuring their long-term viability in the face of changing environmental conditions.