Given the increasing attention ambivalence is receiving from the psychological community, it must be asked if pollsters' (routinely) dichotomous political opinion surveys are missing something crucial. To determine if there is any legitimacy to this question, undergraduates attending a Liberal Arts college in Southern California were asked to rate their level of agreement/disagreement to 28 statements regarding President Trump in two studies, with the items drawn from actual Quinnipiac (Q) and Brookings Institute (BI) surveys. To quantify ambivalence participants were told they could mark one or two responses per item, with double-responses serving as a measure of ambivalence. In Study 1, mean Trump approval ratings divided along party lines, and were consistent with the Q and BI findings. Nonetheless, approximately 40% of participants registered some level of ambivalence across all political-party affiliations, with those defining themselves as Neither Democrats (DEMs) nor Republicans (REPs) showing the greatest degree of ambivalence. In Study 2, ambivalence towards President Trump was examined looking at both party affiliation and political ideology (Conservative, Moderate, and Liberal). Again, roughly 40% of participants displayed some level of ambivalence, with greater degrees of ambivalence for Independents relative to DEMs and REPs, and Moderates relative to Liberals. Given research indicating that ambivalence is associated with delayed decision making and decisions based on "in the moment" contextual information, our findings our suggestive if political opinion pollsters do not assess ambivalence, they may be missing information on a fair-sized demographic that could influence an election based on negative information (real or fictitious) surfacing only days before an election… as it did in 2016.Recent evidence reveals a precocious link between language and cognition in human infants listening to their native language supports infants' core cognitive processes, including object categorization, and does so in a way that other acoustic signals (e.g., time-reversed speech; sine-wave tone sequences) do not. Moreover, language is not the only signal that confers this cognitive advantage listening to vocalizations of non-human primates also supports object categorization in 3- and 4-month-olds. Here, we move beyond primate vocalizations to clarify the breadth of acoustic signals that promote infant cognition. We ask whether listening to birdsong, another naturally produced animal vocalization, also supports object categorization in 3- and 4-month-old infants. We report that listening to zebra finch song failed to confer a cognitive advantage. This outcome brings us closer to identifying a boundary condition on the range of non-linguistic acoustic signals that initially support infant cognition.Participation in cultural activities may protect against cause-specific mortality; however, there is limited knowledge regarding this association. The present study examines the association between participation in a range of receptive and creative cultural activities and risk of cardiovascular disease- and cancer-related mortality. We also examined whether participation in such activities and influence by gender have on this association. We followed 35,902 participants of the Nord-Trøndelag Health Study (HUNT3) of Cardiovascular-Disease and Cancer Mortality from 2006-08 to 2016. Cox proportional-hazards regression was used to estimate the risk of specific mortality based on baseline cultural participation. During the eight-year follow-up, there were 563 cardiovascular-disease- and 752 cancer-related deaths among the sample (292,416 person years). Risk of cardiovascular-disease mortality was higher among non-participants in associations/club meetings (22%) and outdoor activities (23%), respectively, as well a to counteract the public health burden of cardiovascular disease- and cancer mortality, policies and initiatives to increase citizens' participation in cultural activities should be considered.
  The effect of renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) inhibitors in coronavirus disease 19 (Covid-19) patients has not been fully investigated. We evaluated the association between RAAS inhibitor use and outcomes of Covid-19.
 
  This study was a retrospective observational cohort study that used data based on insurance benefit claims sent to the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service of Korea by May 15, 2020. These claims comprised all Covid-19 tested cases and the history of medical service use in these patients for the past five years. The primary outcome was all-cause mortality, and the rate of ventilator care was compared between the groups.
 
  From a total of 7,590 patients diagnosed with Covid-19, two distinct cohorts were generated based on RAAS inhibitors prescribed within 6 months before Covid-19 diagnosis. A total of 1,111 patients was prescribed RAAS inhibitors, and 794 patients were prescribed antihypertensive drugs, excluding RAAS inhibitors. In propensity-score matched analysis, 666 pairs of data set were generated, and all-cause mortality of the RAAS inhibitor group showed no significant difference compared with the non-RAAS inhibitor group (14.6% vs. 11.1%; hazard ratio [HR], 0.79; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.54-1.15; p = 0.22).  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/monomethyl-auristatin-e-mmae.html  The rate of ventilator care was not significantly different between the two groups (4.4% vs. 4.1%; HR, 1.04; 95%CI, 0.60-1.79; p = 0.89).
 
  RAAS inhibitor treatment did not appear to increase the mortality of Covid-19 patients compared with other antihypertensive drugs, suggesting that they may be safely continued in Covid-19 patients.
 RAAS inhibitor treatment did not appear to increase the mortality of Covid-19 patients compared with other antihypertensive drugs, suggesting that they may be safely continued in Covid-19 patients.During medical pandemics, protective behaviors need to be motivated by effective communication, where finding predictors of fear and perceived health is of critical importance. The varying trajectories of the COVID-19 pandemic in different countries afford the opportunity to assess the unique influence of 'macro-level' environmental factors and 'micro-level' psychological variables on both fear and perceived health. Here, we investigate predictors of fear and perceived health using machine learning as lockdown restrictions in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were introduced in Austria, Spain, Poland and Czech Republic. Over a seven-week period, 533 participants completed weekly self-report surveys which measured the target variables subjective fear of the virus and perceived health, in addition to potential predictive variables related to psychological factors, social factors, perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD), and economic circumstances. Viral spread, mortality and governmental responses were further included in the analysis as potential environmental predictors.