Ryan Barrett

How does online speech affect offline attacks? While a growing literature has examined this link in right-wing violence in the West, much less is known about its importance in the religiously divided societies of the Global South. Furthermore, existing research has overwhelmingly focused on negative externalities of social media, while paying comparatively little attention to their conciliatory effects. We advance the scholarship in both of these areas by analyzing 22.4 million posts from Koo, an Indian social media network popular among India’s Hindu nationalists. We combine these data with information on attacks on religious minorities in India from 2020 through 2022. We find that the frequency of hashtags with a Hindu-chauvinist connotation are associated with increased attacks on Muslims and Christians. We also find that the frequency of hashtags alluding to the overcoming of religious divisions is associated with fewer attacks. These results survive a battery of robustness checks and supplemental tests. Additionally, the observed relationships disappear during exogenous Internet outages, consistent with the effect being driven by online speech. Importantly, since the content we study is not overtly aggressive and conveys values rather than factual claims, it does not classify as hate speech, misinformation, or disinformation. This suggests that the scholarly debate on what kinds of online speech influence offline harm has to be broadened and that censorship and fact-checking can fall short of addressing online speech’s negative consequences in religiously divided societies.

Publicly available genetic databases promote data sharing and fuel scientific discoveries for the prevention, treatment and management of disease. In 2018, we built Color Data, a user-friendly, open access database containing genotypic and self-reported phenotypic information from 50 000 individuals who were sequenced for 30 genes associated with hereditary cancer. In a continued effort to promote access to these types of data, we launched Color Data v2, an updated version of the Color Data database. This new release includes additional clinical genetic testing results from more than 18 000 individuals who were sequenced for 30 genes associated with hereditary cardiovascular conditions as well as polygenic risk scores for breast cancer, coronary artery disease and atrial fibrillation. In addition, we used self-reported phenotypic information to implement the following four clinical risk models: Gail Model for 5-year risk of breast cancer, Claus Model for lifetime risk of breast cancer, simple office-based Framingham Coronary Heart Disease Risk Score for 10-year risk of coronary heart disease and CHARGE-AF simple score for 5-year risk of atrial fibrillation. These new features and capabilities are highlighted through two sample queries in the database. We hope that the broad dissemination of these data will help researchers continue to explore genotype–phenotype correlations and identify novel variants for functional analysis, enabling scientific discoveries in the field of population genomics. Database URL: https://data.color.com/

OBJECTIVE: Given evidence that malnutrition and immobility increase the risk of pressure injuries (PIs) in nursing home (NH) residents and that body mass index guidelines related to undernutrition may differ between Asian and non-Asian populations, the purpose of this study was to describe differences in overall nutrition, dietary intake, and nonnutrition risk factors for PIs between Asian and non-Asian NH residents. DESIGN AND SETTING: Secondary data analysis of a 3-week PI prevention randomized controlled trial in seven Canadian NHs. PATIENTS: Asian (n = 97) and non-Asian (n = 408) residents at moderate or high mobility-related risk of PI. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Incident PI by racial subgroups. MAIN RESULTS: Asian residents (PI = 6) consumed significantly smaller meals and marginally different patterns of daily dietary consumption of protein types, liquid supplements, and snacks; took more frequent tub baths; and had marginally lower body mass index than non-Asian residents (PI = 4). CONCLUSIONS: Findings are consistent with earlier research suggesting that nutrition consumption and care patterns may predispose Asian NH residents to develop more PIs than their non-Asian counterparts. Future research should focus on the threshold for and types of nutrition support sufficient to improve nutrition status and reduce PI risk.

In this study, the construct validity of the moisture subscale of the Braden Scale for Predicting Pressure Sore Risk is partially supported by the significant inverse relationships between moisture subscale scores, the number of wet observations and soiled observations, brief changes, and differences among the moisture subscale score groups.