Religiosity and gender bias structure social networks.

The number of studies examining gender differences in the social relationship rewards associated with costly religious practice has been surprisingly low. Here, we use data from 289 residents of an agricultural Tibetan village to assess whether individuals are more inclined to establish supportive relationships with religious individuals in general and to investigate the gender disparities in the relationship between religiosity and personal network characteristics. Our results reveal that participation in religious rituals contributes to the overall development of social support networks. The benefits to personal networks, however, seem to be contingent upon gender. For resource-intensive, infrequent religious rituals such as distant pilgrimages, males seem to benefit slightly more in terms of elevated in-degree values in their personal networks, despite similar levels of investment as females. In contrast, for daily, low-cost religious practices requiring ongoing participation, both genders obtain similar increases in in-degree values through regular engagement. It becomes more challenging for women to increase their status in communities when the effort invested in religious rituals yields smaller rewards compared with the same effort by men, contributing to ongoing gender inequality. These findings highlight the importance of examining the particular characteristics of religious rituals and the gender disparities in the associated rewards.

Use of indocyanine green in hepatic alveolar echinococcosis surgery: a retrospective study of 13 patients / 中华肝胆外科杂志

Objective To preliminarily study the use of indocyanine green in hepatic alveolar echinococcosis surgery.Methods The data of 13 patients with hepatic alveolar ecbinococcosis treated at the Affiliated Hospital of Qinghai University from May 2017 to May 2018 with laparotomy and intraoperative indocyanine green injection were retrospectively studied.Images were collected by the fluorescence acquisition system.Results There were 7 females and 6 males,with an average age of (37.9±14.7) years.The mean weight was (57.4±11.3) kg.Except for one patient of Han nationality,the rest were Tibetans.The lesions were not visualized but normal liver tissues emitted green fluorescence.One patient had a slightly enhanced fluorescence circle around the lesion.The fluorescence intensity of some areas were between normal liver tissues and the lesion,which were suspected to be the marginal zone (which needed to be confirmed by pathology).Three patients (23.1％,3/13) had small lesions on the liver surface,2 were not found by imaging examination,and 1 showed strip calcification on CT.No residual lesions in the liver (except for the microwave ablated lesions) were found after resection.No postoperative complications occurred in all the patients.Seven patients were followed up and no recurrence was found.Conclusions Fluorescence imaging of indocyanine green has the advantages of detecting small and residual lesions in surgery carried out for hepatic alveolar echinococcosis.More studies are needed to confirm the findings.