Second Language Pronunciation Assessment

Open letter to the Society for Neuroscience

<p dir="ltr"><b>Introduction:</b> Early childhood caries (ECC) is a multifactorial disease influenced by biological, behavioral, and social determinants. Parental behaviors and family environments play an important role in its development and prevention. Using parental support interventions have been proposed as a strategy to promote preventive routines and reduce the burden of disease, particularly in populations at increased risk. However, evidence regarding the effectiveness of such interventions at different stages of the disease trajectory remains limited.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Aim:</b> The overall aim of this thesis was to improve the understanding of parental support programs for preventing early childhood caries, with particular attention to children at increased risk of disease. It had three specific aims: to evaluate oral health outcomes within a parental support program integrated into child health services; to assess the effect of a phone-delivered motivational interviewing-based intervention following treatment for severe ECC under general anesthesia (GA); and to examine associations between parental psychosocial factors, children's caries burden, and child oral health-related quality of life.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Materials and methods:</b> This thesis was based on three studies. Study I evaluated oral health outcomes among children participating in an extended home visiting program delivered through collaboration between the Child Health Services and the Social Services in a socioeconomically disadvantaged area. Studies II and III were based on a randomized controlled trial evaluating a parental support intervention delivered by telephone following treatment of severe ECC under GA. Clinical examinations were conducted using the International Caries Detection and Assessment System (ICDAS) for caries registration. Study II assessed caries progression and behavioral outcomes during a two-year follow-up period. Study III examined parental psychosocial factors and children's oral health-related quality of life using questionnaires and path analysis.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Results:</b> In the early preventive context (Study I), participation in the extended home visiting program was associated with higher reported toothbrushing frequency and a lower prevalence of cavitated caries at 18 months as well as a higher proportion of children remaining caries-free at 36 months. In contrast, in the secondary preventive context (Study II), the motivational interviewing-based intervention delivered by phone did not reduce caries recurrence following treatment under general anesthesia. Caries progression during follow-up was substantial in both the intervention and control group. Study III showed that parental psychosocial factors, including stress, dental fear and dental beliefs, were not significantly associated with the child's caries burden at the one-year follow-up. Baseline caries burden emerged as the strongest predictor of subsequent caries burden. However, participation in the parental support program was associated with improved child oral health- related quality of life as reported by caregivers.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Conclusions: </b>The findings suggest that the implications of parental support interventions may differ depending on the stage of disease. Early parental support integrated within child health services was associated with improvements in oral health behaviors and differences in early caries outcomes. In contrast, among children with established severe ECC, parental support did not appear sufficient to modify the clinical course of disease but was associated with improved child oral health-related quality of life. These findings highlight the importance of early preventive efforts while illustrating the complex challenges of modifying disease progression once severe early childhood caries has developed.</p><h3 dir="ltr">List of scientific papers</h3><p dir="ltr">I. <b>Brännemo I,</b> Dahllöf G, Cunha Soares F, Tsilingaridis G. Impact of an extended postnatal home visiting programme on oral health among children in a disadvantaged area of Stockholm, Sweden. Acta Paediatr. 2021;110(1):230-236. Published open access under the CC BY NC license. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.15457" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1111/apa.15457</a></p><p dir="ltr">II. <b>Brännemo I,</b> Hasselblad T, Levinsson A, Dahllöf G, Tsilingaridis G. Phone-based parental support program for caries prevention in children: a randomized controlled trial. JDR Clin Transl Res. 2024;10(3):304-314. Published open access under the CC BY license Commons Attribution 4.0 License. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/23800844241296054" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1177/23800844241296054</a></p><p dir="ltr">III. <b>Brännemo I,</b> Levinsson A, Hasselblad T, Dahllöf G, Tsilingaridis G. Parental psychosocial factors and children's oral health-related quality of life: data from a caries prevention study with phone- based support. BMC Oral Health. 2025;25(1):94. Published open access under the CC BY license. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-025-05446-z" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://doi.org/10.1186/s12903-025-05446-z</a></p>

Datasets of Iso-Seq transcripts for decoding transcriptome complexity in four Leishmania species

2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

For a connected graph G and a, b is an element of R, the general degree-eccentricity index of G is defined as DEIa,b(G) = & sum;(v is an element of V(G) )d(G)(a)(v)ecc(G)(b)(v), where V(G) is the vertex set of G, d(G)(v) is the degree of a vertex v and ecc(G)(v) is the eccentricity of v in G, i.e. the maximum distance from v to another vertex of the graph. This index generalizes several well-known 'topological indices' of graphs such as the eccentric connectivity index. We characterize the unique unicyclic graphs with the maximum and the minimum general degree-eccentricity index among all n-vertex unicyclic graphs with fixed order, girth, and maximum degree for the cases a >= 1, b <= 0 and 0 <= a <= 1, b >= 0. (c) 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Summary. — A growing number of extraterritorial private-sector actors, often in partnership with the state, are expanding the frontiers of extractive and primary export economies to new rural territories in Latin America. This paper analyzes the conditions that might drive meaningful efforts to address environmental problems in territories dominated by large, externally controlled natural resource-based activities. It studies three cases: salmon aquaculture in Chiloe ´ (Chile), fruit growing in O’Higgins (Chile), and gas production in Tarija (Bolivia). We conclude that such efforts are unlikely to occur unless environmental problems directly threaten the short-term viability of the activities or social movements emerge to demand change. 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/).

Despite increased attention toward the links between climate, human mobility and conflict, the pathways through which resulting human insecurity may lead to violence are poorly understood. Although there is no inherent link between climate-related mobility and conflict, a coherent understanding of the triple nexus is needed to address the impact of intersecting crises on millions of lives and livelihoods. To achieve this, an in-depth literature review is employed to identify and explore four pathways that connect climate, human mobility and violent conflict: conflict as a result of climate-related disaster displacement, conflict as a result of scarcity-related mobility, conflict as a result of abundance-related migration, and conflict as a result of pre-existing tensions and migratory patterns interacting with climate change and/or variability. Finally, recommendations are made to guide research, policies and programming aiming to sever the link between climate-related mobility and conflict, where it may exist.Published open access under a CC BY licence. https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/

Bibliography: Larrea, Miren: Editorial, IJAR – International Journal of Action Research, Vol. 18, Issue 3-2022, pp. 201-203. https://doi.org/10.3224/ijar.v18i3.01 ----- Open Access License: This contribution is available in Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International) as of January 24, 2023. More information about the license and the terms of use can be found here .

Bibliography: Larrea, Miren: Editorial: Stirring the fire under the ashes of action research, IJAR – International Journal of Action Research, Vol. 19, Issue 2-2023, pp. 105-106. https://doi.org/10.3224/ijar.v19i2.01 ----- Open Access License: This contribution is available in Open Access under the Creative Commons license CC BY 4.0 (Attribution 4.0 International) as of August 14, 2023. More information about the license and the terms of use can be found here .

Scientific Online Letters on the Atmosphere (SOLA) is going to implement new policy changes starting from 2018 in order to comply with a fully Open Access policy under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License. This license permits users to adapt, distribute, and reproduce the articles of SOLA in any medium, even commercially, provided that the users give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the original source, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made, without obtaining permission from the Meteorological Society of Japan (MSJ). The copyright of articles will be retained by the authors. Authors will be required to sign a License to Publish form in order to give the MSJ permission to reproduce the article in SOLA under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. Another change is to employ Article Processing Charge (APC) in order to cover the publication cost such as copy editing, typesetting, and online procedures under the Open Access policy with the CC BY license, shifting from the current page charge. Author(s) or their institution(s) are requested to pay an APC to the MSJ with the amount of 80,000 Japanese Yen for members of the MSJ and 100,000 Japanese Yen for non-members of the MSJ (both with consumption tax if applicable). There will be a transition period for the articles that have been submitted in 2017 and will appear in early 2018; either the current page charge or the APC, a lower amount, will be asked to pay. I believe that this policy change would further enhance the status of SOLA in the international community.

This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ .

2023 marked the 50th anniversary of Peace Studies – a discipline which has been closely connected with the Quaker community – at Bradford. Peace Studies as an academic centre of teaching and research at Bradford University was set up in 1973, starting its first postgraduate course in 1974 and welcoming its first undergraduate students the following year. It would not have been established without the determination of a group of Quakers to see such a centre in a UK university, and this Research Note looks primarily at the first 25 years and how the department came about and survived the many internal and external challenges. It also includes some personal reflections, as I joined the department 45 years ago and have retained a close connection through to the present. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .

COVID-19 has had a traumatic effect on both the way people live and work in their everyday lives, and the way places function. The rapid transformation of employment practices, including the necessity to stay at home for lockdown periods, has given rise to increased digitisation and technological use to enable people to continue to work and to remain in contact with friends and colleagues. Digital planning, and the enhancement of digital citizen engagement, has been one area that has started to inform local government’s online activity. This is coincidental to the UK government’s interest in transforming planning into a digital and map-based service. This article examines digital planning activity in English local planning authorities since COVID-19 hit the UK, reporting on two interrelated research studies that analysed statements of community involvement and planners’ perceptions of digital planning activity. The article shows that COVID-19 has certainly accelerated the adoption and deployment of digital planning, but it is an activity that has been developing in local planning incrementally for more than two decades. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0.

This article presents the historical roots of Roma women’s activism, using the example of two countries in different historical periods. The first part is devoted to a discussion on empowering Roma women in the early USSR. It happened in the frames of the general discourse of Soviet national policy in this period and aimed at the complete elimination of the disadvantaged position of women in various spheres (social, economic, political, cultural, educational, etc.). The second part presents the case of socialist Bulgaria, where we have an example of a process of women’s empowerment at the grassroots level. There, we outline the role of the Fatherland Front’s schools for women activists of minority background. In conclusion, we discuss which of the two presented patterns of the development of Roma women’s activism – from top to bottom (as in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s) or from bottom to top (as in Bulgaria in the 1960s and the 1970s) – proved to be more efficient and gave better results in terms of the socialist women’s emancipation processes and the current position of Roma women in society and their community. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0 .