A. B. Warren

This study aimed to compare how healthcare professionals and laypeople from the UK engaged with and confronted misinformation about masks on social media and some of the barriers encountered, applying connectivism as a theoretical lens to interpret findings. Using thematic framework analysis, 12 in-depth interviews were conducted with participants consisting of seven healthcare professionals and five laypeople who actively use the social media website Twitter (now known as X). Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed iteratively using constant comparison and line-by-line coding. After coding of the first few interviews a working analytical framework was developed by comparing codes and grouping them together into categories. This was later applied to the subsequent interview transcripts. Analysis revealed six key categories: social capital (e.g., celebrity status), emotion (e.g., fear, anger, and burnout), culture (e.g., politics and toxic social media culture), social media dynamics (e.g., information overload), communication (e.g., managing cognitive load), and belief (e.g., beliefs being fixed and difficult to change). Our study suggests that healthcare professionals must actively engage with the public on social media by providing clear, evidence-based information, correcting false claims, and fostering trust through transparent communication. Interpreting our findings through a connectivist perspective highlights how digital networks shape trust and learning in online health discourse. Wider society, including tech companies and policymakers, should implement stronger fact-checking mechanisms, promote digital literacy, and support regulations that curb the spread of harmful health misinformation.

The Trump administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy promised to make America more competitive, to challenge China’s revisionist global agenda, and to push back against the new ‘gray zone’ conflicts of great power competition. Fundamentally, the strategy required the government to exercise a Whole of Government (WoG) approach to bring to bear all elements of national power. Despite wide-ranging calls for WoG, the administration eschewed basic reforms, destroyed interdepartmental trust networks, and over time expelled the conduits of national security, pushing WoG more thoroughly into the military. While departmental emphasis on Indo-Pacific issues took place in the Trump administration, this occurred largely in isolation of grand strategic goals.

This article presents an extension of an article previously featured in History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences by Schweda and Jongsma (History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 2022), who aptly (1) critiqued the “Zombification” of people living with dementia by reviewing the historic and philosophic origins of this damaging metaphor and (2) offered a life course perspective to highlight the ethical implications related to biomedicine and the life sciences. Herein, we aim to build upon and constructively critique the important discourse offered by Schweda and Jongsma by (1) presenting a transdisciplinary perspective highlighting many important remaining social and cognitive abilities of people living with dementia that (2) further informs philosophical discussion and (3) provides ways of helping people diagnosed as well as formal and informal caregivers to live with dementia rather than enduring the damaging and incorrect “living death” notion, and its ramifications, of the syndrome. In the process, we will explore many inherent harms associated with the “zombie-like” construction of the syndrome: harms that entail dysfunctional treatment of people living with dementia. Specifically, we will draw upon evidence from psychology, sociology, philosophy, neurology, and neuroscience, to provide an integrated, whole-person perspective that adds specific dimensions to the life-course perspective and support the necessary multifaceted interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research and clinical collaborations for this complex issue.

Alzheimer’s disease is an insidious onset neurodegenerative syndrome without effective treatment or cure. It is rapidly becoming a global health crisis that is overwhelming healthcare, society, and individuals. The clinical nature of neurocognitive decline creates significant challenges in bidirectional communication between caregivers and persons with Alzheimer’s disease that can negatively impact quality-of-life. This paper sought to understand how and to what extent would awareness training about the levels of consciousness in AD influence the quality-of-life interactions in the caregiver-patient dyad. A literature review of multiple databases was conducted utilizing a transdisciplinary approach. The sum of findings indicates a positive relationship between enhanced caregiver awareness and training, positive interactions, and improved QOL measures among patients and caregivers. A multidirectional relationship was found among healthcare policies, training and education resources, caregivers, and persons with AD. Specifically, the current lack of policy and inadequate training and educational resources has various detrimental effects on patients and caregivers, while improvements in training and education of caregivers yields positive outcomes in communication and QOL. Furthermore, evidence of preserved consciousness in persons with AD was demonstrated from multiple disciplines, including neurobiological, psychological, and biopsychosocial models. The literature further revealed several methods to access the preserved consciousness in persons with AD and related dementias, including sensory, emotional, and cognitive stimulations. The evidence from the literature suggests a reframed approach to our understanding and treatment of persons with AD is not only warranted, but crucial to address the needs of those affected by AD.

Dementia has rapidly become a major global health crisis. As the aging population continues to increase, the burden increases commensurately on both individual and societal levels. The behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia are a prominent clinical feature of Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. BPSD represent a myriad of manifestations that can create significant challenges for persons living with dementia and their care providers. As such, BPSD can result in detriments to social interaction with others, resulting in harm to the psychosocial health of the person with dementia. While brain deterioration can contribute to BPSD as the disease progresses, it may be confounded by language and communication difficulties associated with ADRD. Indeed, when a person with dementia cannot effectively communicate their needs, including basic needs such as hunger or toileting, nor symptoms of pain or discomfort, it may manifest as BPSD. In this way, a person with dementia may be attempting to communicate with what little resources are available to them in the form of emotional expression. Failing to recognize unmet needs compromises care and can reduce quality of life. Moreover, failing to fulfill said needs can also deteriorate communication and social bonds with loved ones and caregivers. The aim of this review is to bring the differential of unmet needs to the forefront of BPSD interpretation for both formal and informal caregivers. The overarching goal is to provide evidence to reframe the approach with which caregivers view the manifestations of BPSD to ensure quality of care for persons with dementia. Understanding that BPSD may, in fact, be attempts to communicate unmet needs in persons with dementia may facilitate clinical care decisions, promote quality of life, reduce stigma, and foster positive communications.

The role of paleontology in evolutionary biology between the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 and the Evolutionary Synthesis of the 1940s is frequently described as mostly misguided failure. However, a significant number of American and British PDPS invertebrate paleontologists of this period did devote considerable attention to evolution, and their evolutionary theories and conclusions were a good deal more diverse and nuanced than previous histories have suggested. This paper brings into focus a number of important but underrecognized aspects of the history of paleontology within the history of biology, including that PDPS paleontologists were not all as theoretically backward as they have been portrayed; that the post-Synthesis narrative of the history of evolution should be continually reevaluated, in part to decouple historical understanding from the agendas of authors who have used history to advance particular views of evolution; and that there is a much richer story to be told about the history of evolutionary biology in both the pre- and post-Synthesis eras.