Is Digital Government Advancing Sustainable Governance? A Study of OECD/EU Countries

International bodies and numerous authors advocate a key role for Digital Government (DG) in improving public governance and achieving other policy outcomes. Today, a particularly relevant outcome is advancing Sustainable Governance (SG), i.e., the capacity to steer and coordinate public action towards sustainable development. This article performs an empirical study of the relationship between DG and SG using data about 41 OECD/EU countries from the United Nations’ E-Government Survey and the Bertelsmann’s Sustainable Governance Indicators project, covering the period from 2014 to 2020. We examine if DG progress pairs with SG progress, apply a DEA model to find out which countries are efficient in using DG for better SG, and uncover cases of imbalance where high DG pairs with poor SG and vice versa. The results show that the efficiency in using DG for SG strongly varies, and that some DG leaders persistently fail to advance or even regress their SG. These findings refute the claims about the benign role of DG and points at democracy as the “weak link” in the analyzed relation.

Osteoblast-osteoclast co-cultures: A systematic review and map of available literature

Drug research with animal models is expensive, time-consuming and translation to clinical trials is often poor, resulting in a desire to replace, reduce, and refine the use of animal models. One approach to replace and reduce the use of animal models is to use in vitro cell-culture models. To study bone physiology, bone diseases and drugs, many studies have been published using osteoblast-osteoclast co-cultures. The use of osteoblast-osteoclast co-cultures is usually not clearly mentioned in the title and abstract, making it difficult to identify these studies without a systematic search and thorough review. As a result, researchers are all developing their own methods, leading to conceptually similar studies with many methodological differences and, as a consequence, incomparable results. The aim of this study was to systematically review existing osteoblast-osteoclast co-culture studies published up to 6 January 2020, and to give an overview of their methods, predetermined outcome measures (formation and resorption, and ALP and TRAP quantification as surrogate markers for formation and resorption, respectively), and other useful parameters for analysis. Information regarding these outcome measures was extracted and collected in a database, and each study was further evaluated on whether both the osteoblasts and osteoclasts were analyzed using relevant outcome measures. From these studies, additional details on methods, cells and culture conditions were extracted into a second database to allow searching on more characteristics. The two databases presented in this publication provide an unprecedented amount of information on cells, culture conditions and analytical techniques for using and studying osteoblast-osteoclast co-cultures. They allow researchers to identify publications relevant to their specific needs and allow easy validation and comparison with existing literature. Finally, we provide the information and tools necessary for others to use, manipulate and expand the databases for their needs.

Childhood Trauma and Psychosis: The case for exploring Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) as an adjunctive treatment for schizophrenia

There is an association between childhood trauma and the development of psychosis in adulthood and a treatment recommended to reduce the symptoms of trauma is Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR). Studies of EMDR in adults with psychotic experiences and a history of trauma have shown encouraging results. As psychosis is a core feature of schizophrenia, and many persons with schizophrenia will have experienced childhood trauma, we review the evidence that EMDR may be a safe and effective adjunctive treatment for schizophrenia. We conclude that the evidence base supports well-designed and adequately powered randomised controlled studies of EMDR in schizophrenia with careful consideration given to inclusion criteria, participant acceptability and selection of clinically relevant outcome measures. Mechanism of action and potential effects on cognitive functioning should also be explored.

Involving frail older patients in identifying outcome measures for transitional care—a feasibility study

Background During care transitions, the older (75+) patient’s agenda can easily be missed. To counteract this, involving patients in shared clinical decision making has proven to be of great value. Likewise, involving patients and other stakeholders as researchers is gaining ground. Patient and public involvement (PPI) in research entails many benefits, for example, by bringing further insight from those with lived experiences of being ill. There are various challenges associated with involving some older patients, for example frailty, cognitive impairment and other chronic illnesses. To the best of our knowledge, there are only a few examples of initiatives involving older patients beyond research participation. The feasibility of involving frail older patients during an ongoing care transition from hospital to primary health care remains unknown. To investigate the feasibility of including older frail patients, their relatives and health care professionals (HCPs) as co-researchers, we established a study with increasingly demanding levels of patient involvement to identify relevant outcome measures for future transitional care research. Methods The study was a pragmatic, qualitative feasibility study. The involved individuals were frail older patients, their relatives and HCPs. Patients and their relatives were interviewed, while the interviewer made reflective notes. A thematic analysis was made. Relatives and HCPs discussed the themes to identify relevant outcome measures and potentially co-create new patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) for use in future transitional care studies. The feasibility was evaluated according to six involvement steps. The level of involvement was evaluated using the five-levelled Health Canada Public Involvement Continuum (HCPIC). Results In total, eight patients, five relatives and three HCPs were involved in the study. Patients were involved in discussing care transitions (HCPIC level 3), while some relatives were engaged (HCPIC level 4) in forming PROMs. The partnership level of involvement (HCPIC level 5) was not reached. The thematic analysis and the subsequent theme discussion successfully formed PROMs. The key PROMs were related to care, transparency and the relatives’ roles in the transitional care process. Conclusions When applying a pragmatic involvement approach, frail older patients can be successfully involved in identifying relevant transitional care outcome measures; however, involving these patients as fellow researchers seems infeasible. To maintain involvement, supportive relatives are essential. Useful experiences for future research involvement of this vulnerable group were reported, arguing that patient participation has the potential to become inherent in future geriatric research.

Data Tamper Detection from NoSQL Database in Forensic Environment

The growth of service sector is increasing the usage of digital applications worldwide. These digital applications are making use of database to store the sensitive and secret information. As the database has distributed over the internet, cybercrime attackers may tamper the database to attack on such sensitive and confidential information. In such scenario, maintaining the integrity of database is a big challenge. Database tampering will change the database state by any data manipulation operation like insert, update or delete. Tamper detection techniques are useful for the detection of such data tampering which play an important role in database forensic investigation process. Use of NoSQL database has been attracted by big data requirements. Previous research work has limited to tamper detection in relational database and very less work has been found in NoSQL database. So there is a need to propose a mechanism to detect the tampering of NoSQL database systems. Whereas this article proposes an idea of tamper detection in NoSQL database such as MongoDB and Cassandra, which are widely used document-oriented and column-based NoSQL database respectively. This research work has proposed tamper detection technique which works in forensic environment to give more relevant outcome on data tampering and distinguish between suspicious and genuine tampering.

Neuropathological and behavioral characterization of aged Grn R493X progranulin-deficient frontotemporal dementia knockin mice

Frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) causes a spectrum of clinical presentations of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), including progressive changes in behavior, personality, executive function, and language. Up to 20% of familial FTLD cases are caused by progranulin (GRN) haploinsufficiency (FTD-GRN), with one of the most common causal variant being a nonsense mutation at arginine 493 (R493X). Recently, a genetic knockin FTD-GRN mouse model was generated bearing this GrnR493X mutation, at the analogous arginine in murine Grn. Aged, homozygous GrnR493X mice (GrnR493X/R493X) have been shown to phenotypically replicate several neuropathological hallmarks previously demonstrated in Grn null mice. We conducted a comprehensive neuropathological and behavioral assessment of 18 month old GrnR493X/R493X mice, observing a striking lysosomal dysfunction and thalamic neurodegeneration not previously described in this model, as well as a male-specific increase in generalized anxiety. These findings provide additional phenotypic markers of pathogenesis in aged GrnR493X/R493X mice that will contribute to better defining mechanisms underlying FTD-GRN, and offer relevant outcome measures for preclinical efficacy testing of novel therapeutics that target nonsense mutations leading to this devastating disease.

Disability improvement as a clinically relevant outcome in clinical trials of relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis

Background: Disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) can reduce the risk of disability worsening in patients with relapsing forms of multiple sclerosis (RMS). High-efficacy DMTs can lead to confirmed or sustained disability improvement (CDI and SDI). Objective and Methods: Post hoc analyses of data from the TRANSFORMS, FREEDOMS, and FREEDOMS II trials and their extensions assessed the effects of fingolimod (0.5–1.25 mg/day) on stabilizing or improving disability over ⩽8 years in participants with RMS. CDI and SDI rates were compared between participants initially randomized to fingolimod, interferon (IFNβ-1a), or placebo. Results: At 8 years’ follow-up in TRANSFORMS, 35.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 28.2%–43.1%) of assessed participants in the IFNβ-1a–fingolimod switch group and 41.9% (36.6%–47.6%) on continuous fingolimod experienced CDI; disability did not worsen in approximately 70%. Similar results were seen in the combined FREEDOMS population. Proportionally fewer TRANSFORMS participants achieved SDI in the IFNβ-1a–fingolimod switch group than on continuous fingolimod (5.4% [3.0%–9.5%] vs 14.2% [10.8%–18.4%], p = 0.01). Conclusion: CDI and SDI are outcomes of interest for clinical trials and for long-term follow-up of participants with RMS. Monitoring CDI and SDI in addition to disability worsening may facilitate understanding of the therapeutic benefit of RMS treatments.