Institute for Independent Studies Zürich

Background and aimProfessional musicians face unique psychological demands leading to elevated rates of mental health problems, including depression, anxiety, and performance anxiety, as well as stress-related disorders. These difficulties are associated with perfectionism, adverse experiences, and maladaptive coping strategies. While schema modes—recurring emotion, cognitive, and behavioral patterns triggered by early maladaptive schemas—are well-studied in clinical populations, their role in musicians remains unexplored. This study explores schema-mode presence in music students to evaluate their utility for understanding psychological vulnerability and coping.MethodsIn total, 46 music students from Zurich University of the Arts and Basel Music Academy completed an online survey assessing schema modes (short Schema Mode Inventory), musician-specific coping (HIL scale), and self-talk and complaints related to music-making via open-ended questions. Analysis included comparisons of effect sizes with normative summary data from healthy controls and clinical patients, inter-correlations between schema-modes and coping, cluster analysis identifying psychological profiles, and qualitative content analysis.ResultsMusic students scored significantly higher on maladaptive schema-modes vs. non-clinical controls, indicating greater emotional coping difficulties and reduced adaptive resources. Coping capacity correlated negatively with maladaptive modes and positively with the Healthy Adult mode. Scores overlapped with those of Axis I patients but differed from Axis II patients, suggesting intermediate clinical characteristics. Cluster analysis revealed three distinct profiles: “Balanced Musicians” (resilient cluster with high Healthy Adult and Happy Child modes and effective coping), “Vulnerable Musicians” (high-risk cluster with intense emotional child modes and frequent maladaptive parent/coping modes), and “Compensating Musicians” (at-risk cluster with intermediate scores and overcompensating strategies combining functional and maladaptive modes).ConclusionSchema modes appear central to musicians' mental health and coping, highlighting psychological profile heterogeneity among music students. Schema-focused interventions targeting maladaptive modes may enhance resilience and mental health in this population. This approach offers a promising clinical framework for supporting musicians' wellbeing.

Being in the first generation to access Higher Education (First Gen) is a barrier to academic success. First Gens face difficulties transitioning into, completing, and attaining competitive grades in undergraduate studies despite intervention strategies. Triangulating data across studies, we reveal the unique challenges resulting from being First Gen in science and show how these persist at every stage of a career in academia. We propose that invitation practices, i.e. behaviors that encourage, guide, and/or affirm others, need to be intentionally directed towards First Gens throughout their career journey to successfully support their retention and progression in science. As First Gens are overrepresented in other intersectionally marginalised groups, such actions will contribute to building a more inclusive and diverse scientific community.

ABSTRACT In the Middle East, as elsewhere, the protracted transition from empire to nation-state was accompanied by a brutal tide of ethnoreligious homogenisation. One of the more dramatic examples was the destruction of the Arab world’s millennia-old Jewish communities. While this destruction is often discussed only in reference to the creation of the State of Israel, this article proposes a complementary model for understanding it, a model predicated on these Jews’ status as ordinary, not exceptional, inhabitants of the Ottoman world, and the disruption caused by the end of the Ottoman empire and its replacement with European colonial rule. Using interwar Aleppo as a case study, this article demonstrates how the end of the Ottoman system of religious communities led to an extended period of dysfunction for Aleppo’s Jewish communal institutions. Under the French Mandate, this dysfunction left Aleppo’s Jews unable to contend with a succession of crises, including a three-way competition for the community’s loyalty between French administrators, Arab nationalists and the Zionist movement. This dysfunction set the stage for the community’s terminal crisis – the 1947 pogroms.

In recent years, the concept of “misogynistic extremism” has emerged as a subject of interest among scholars, governments, law enforcement personnel, and the media. Yet a consistent understanding of how misogynistic extremism is defined and conceptualized has not yet emerged. Varying epistemological orientations may contribute to the current conceptual muddle of this topic, reflecting long-standing and on-going challenges with the conceptualization of its individual components. To address the potential impact of misogynistic extremism (i.e., violent attacks), a more precise understanding of what this phenomenon entails is needed. To summarize the existing knowledge base on the nature of misogynistic extremism, this scoping review analyzed publications within English-language peer-reviewed and gray literature sources. Seven electronic databases and citation indexes were systematically searched using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR) checklist and charted using the 2020 PRISMA flow diagram. Inclusion criteria included English peer-reviewed articles and relevant gray literature publications, which contained the term “misogynistic extremism” and other closely related terms. No date restrictions were imposed. The search strategy initially yielded 475 publications. After exclusion of ineligible articles, 40 publications remained for synthesis. We found that misogynistic extremism is most frequently conceptualized in the context of misogynistic incels, male supremacism, far-right extremism, terrorism, and the black pill ideology. Policy recommendations include increased education among law enforcement and Countering and Preventing Violent Extremism experts on male supremacist violence and encouraging legal and educational mechanisms to bolster gender equality. Violence stemming from misogynistic worldviews must be addressed by directly acknowledging and challenging socially embedded systems of oppression such as white supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy.

Reforestation is one of our most promising natural climate solutions, and one that addresses the looming biodiversity crisis. Tree planting can catalyse forest community reassembly in degraded landscapes where natural regeneration is slow, however, tree survival rates vary remarkably across projects. Building a trait-based framework for tree survival could streamline species selection in a way that generalizes across ecosystems, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the global restoration movement. We investigated how traits mediated seedling survival in a tropical dry forest restoration, and how traits were coordinated across plant structures. We examined growth and survival of 14 species for 2 years and measured six below-ground and 22 above-ground traits. Species-level survival ranged widely from 7.8% to 90.1%, and a model including growth rate, below-ground traits and their interaction explained more than 73% of this variation. A strong interaction between below-ground traits and growth rate indicated that selecting species with fast growth rates can promote establishment, but this effect was most apparent for species that invest in thick fine roots and deep root structures. Overall, results emphasize the prominent role of below-ground traits in determining early restoration outcomes, and highlight little above- and below-ground trait coordination, providing a path forward for tropical dry forest restoration efforts. This article is part of the theme issue 'Understanding forest landscape restoration: reinforcing scientific foundations for the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration'.

Abstract Background Prognosis in HFpEF is determined by risk factor control and treatment of comorbidities. Industrially processed TFA (IP-TFA) from partially hydrogenated oils have been linked to altered lipoprotein metabolism, endothelial dysfunction, increased biomarkers of inflammation and increased NTproBNP. In patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF), associations of TFA blood levels with patient characteristics are unknown. Purpose To evaluate associations of blood TFA with cardiovascular risk factors, aerobic capacity and cardiac function in patients with HFpEF. Methods This is a secondary analysis from the Aldo-DHF-RCT. From 422 patients, individual blood TFA were analyzed at baseline in n=404 using the HS-Omega-3-Index® methodology. Patient characteristics were; 67±8 years, 53% female, NYHA II/III (87/13%), ejection fraction ≥50%, E/e' 7.1±1.5; median NT-proBNP 158 ng/L (IQR 82–298). Multiple linear regression analyses, using sex and age as covariates, were used to describe associations of TFA with metabolic phenotype, functional capacity, echocardiographic markers for left ventricular diastolic function (LVDF), and neurohumoral activation at baseline and after 12-months-follow-up (12mFU). To account for randomization group, all analyses were repeated as sensitivity analysis with group as covariate. A significance level of α=5% was used for all tests. As all tests were hypothesis generating without confirmatory interpretation, no correction was applied to counteract the problem of multiple comparisons. Results Higher blood levels of the naturally occurring TFA C16:1n-7t were broadly associated with a more favorable lipid profile, lower body weight/central adiposity, lower white blood cell count and lower biochemical markers of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease at baseline/12mFU. Conversely, blood levels of the IP-TFA C18:1n9t were directly associated with lipid risk markers [triglycerides (β=19.7, p<0,001), non-HDL-C (β=7.9, p=0,001), and LDL-C (β=5.4, p=0,011)]. The two IP-TFA C18:2n6 isomers C18:2n6tt and C18:2n6ct were positively associated with HbA1c [(β=14.6, p=0,003) and (β=4.2, p=0,014) respectively]. The IP-TFA C18:2n6tt/-ct isomers were associated with lower submaximal aerobic capacity (distance covered in the 6MWT) at baseline/12mFU. No significant association was found between TFA blood levels and left ventricular filling pressures, left ventricular relaxation or neurohumoral activation. Significant effects of group allocation (spironolactone +/−) were found for the 12mFU outcomes systolic/diastolic blood pressure (all p<0.001), heart rate, E/e$'$ and HbA1c. Conclusions In HFpEF patients, higher blood levels of industrially processed TFA, but not of the TFA C16:1n-7t in full fat dairy and meat, were associated with a higher risk phenotype and lower aerobic capacity. Our findings support efforts to remove IP-TFA from the food supply for improving risk factor control in HFpEF patients. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: Foundation. Main funding source(s): German Foundation of Heart Research

Factorizable joint shift (FJS) was recently proposed as a type of dataset shift for which the complete characteristics can be estimated from feature data observations on the test dataset by a method called Joint Importance Aligning. For the multinomial (multiclass) classification setting, we derive a representation of factorizable joint shift in terms of the source (training) distribution, the target (test) prior class probabilities and the target marginal distribution of the features. On the basis of this result, we propose alternatives to joint importance aligning and, at the same time, point out that factorizable joint shift is not fully identifiable if no class label information on the test dataset is available and no additional assumptions are made. Other results of the paper include correction formulae for the posterior class probabilities both under general dataset shift and factorizable joint shift. In addition, we investigate the consequences of assuming factorizable joint shift for the bias caused by sample selection.

Abstract Introduction Cardiometabolic health has a growing relevance in spinal cord injury (SCI) considering the increasing survival and aging population. We explored longitudinal changes in cardiometabolic risk profile and examined whether injury characteristics could be a non-modifiable risk factor for individuals with SCI in subacute phase of the injury. Methods We used the data from a multicenter Swiss Spinal Cord Injury Cohort (SwiSCI) study and included adults with traumatic SCI (TSCI) without cardiometabolic diseases and diabetes at baseline. We included individuals with available data on admission and prior to discharge from first SCI rehabilitation. Blood pressure, lipid profile, fasting glucose, waist circumference (WC), weight, and body mass index (BMI) were compared according to the injury level (tetraplegia-TP vs paraplegia-PP) and completeness (motor complete-COM vs incomplete-INC). We used multivariable linear regression for cross-sectional analysis and linear mixed models for longitudinal analysis, adjusting for age, sex, lifestyle factors, medication-use, and injury characteristics. We performed age- (above and below median age) and sex-stratified analyses. Sensitivity analyses were also performed by removing systemic steroid-use (proxy for acute injury), adjusting for opioid-use (medication side-effect) and adjusting further for BMI and WC. Results We analyzed 258 individuals with TSCI (110 TP and 148 PP, 122 COM and 136 INC). Median age was 50 years (IQR 32–60), with 76.36% (n=197) of the population being male. The median rehabilitation duration was 5.5 months (IQR 3.2–7.1). On admission, the fully-adjusted models showed higher baseline weight, systolic BP, diastolic BP and triglycerides in PP than TP. Systolic BP, diastolic BP, HDL, HDL/LDL were higher in INC than COM. In the overall population, we observed increases in cholesterol, HDL, and HDL/LDL ratio over rehabilitation period. Individuals with PP had a higher increase in BMI as compared to TT, while no differences were detected when comparing INC and COM injury (Table 1–3). Results from sensitivity analyses were generally in line with the overall findings; however, at baseline, there was some indication that lipid profile may be different in COM and INC injury. In sex-stratified longitudinal analysis, triglycerides were higher in females PP than TP, and diastolic BP was higher in females with INC than COM. For age-stratified longitudinal analysis, elderly with PP have higher triglycerides than younger adults. Conclusion We reported changes in BMI and lipid profile during the inpatient rehabilitation of individuals with traumatic SCI and without history of cardiovascular diseases and diabetes. Injury characteristics may not be an independent risk factor for subacute phase, but maybe important in specific subgroups, like in women and in the elderly (>50 years old). Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None. MethodsResults

This is a review of the book "Guided Imagery and Music: The Bonny Method and beyond" edited by Denise E. Grocke. Title: Guided Imagery and Music: The Bonny Method and beyond Editor: Denise E. Grocke Publication year: 2019 Publisher: Barcelona Publishers Pages: 277 ISBN: 978-1-945411403