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Child Vaccination Status and Behavioral and Social Drivers of Vaccination Among Their Caregivers in the Philippines: Cross-Sectional Survey Study Comparison of Household, Mobile, and Online Modes

Background: The World Health Organization recommends that countries routinely collect data on the behavioral and social drivers (BeSD) of vaccination to inform public health interventions that increase vaccine uptake. There is a need to identify data collection methods that can rapidly and inexpensively collect representative data, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. Objective: This study aimed to understand BeSD drivers of vaccination in the Philippines and assess the trade-offs between survey methods. We compared responses to household, mobile, and online surveys in terms of demographics, vaccination status, responses to BeSD questions, and cost. Methods: We conducted concurrent household, mobile (SMS text messaging and interactive voice response), and online surveys among caregivers of children 2 years of age and below in Regions V and XII of the Philippines, with sampling differing by survey method. We assessed, for each survey method, (1) respondent demographics (sex, age, region, and socioeconomic status) and (2) the weighted proportion of responses from caregivers of children who received at least one dose of diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus (DPT)–containing vaccine. We estimated the weighted proportion of each BeSD survey response option and calculated the financial cost (monetary outlays) per survey response from an implementer’s perspective by summing the costs incurred in each survey method and dividing by the number of responses received. Results: We surveyed a total of 1201 household respondents, 2153 mobile respondents, and 398 online respondents from January to March 2025. We found that online and mobile survey respondents were more likely to be male and have completed high school than household survey respondents. The weighted proportion of respondents indicating that their child had received at least one dose of DPT vaccine was 91.8% (n=1090; 95% CI 90%‐93.3%) for the household survey, 90.3% (n=1853) for the mobile survey, and 85% (n=346) for the online survey. With regard to vaccine demand, more than 85% of respondents in each survey method indicated that vaccines are very important, very safe, supported by family, and that they knew where to bring a child for vaccination. More than 30% of mobile and online survey respondents indicated that it was not easy to pay for vaccination. The financial cost to conduct the survey per survey response was US $2.61 for the online survey, US $6.93 for the mobile survey, and US $29.38 for the household survey. Conclusions: In the Philippines, household, mobile, and online survey methods reached caregivers of children who were unvaccinated against DPT, and these proportions were similar across survey methods. BeSD responses indicated high vaccine demand and challenges in caregivers’ cost to access vaccination. Determining the most appropriate survey method depends on trade-offs between representativeness and costs. However, areas with strong connectivity and high mobile device ownership can consider mobile and online methods as a lower-cost alternative to rapidly collect BeSD data.

High-precision measurement of the W boson mass with the CMS experiment

Nature, Published online: 08 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10168-5

The CMS experiment at CERN reports one of the highest-precision measurements of the W boson mass, finding it in line with standard model predictions and at odds with recent anomalous measurements.

Investigating the replicability of the social and behavioural sciences

Nature, Published online: 01 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-025-10078-y

A large-scale study on the replicability of claims from social and behavioural science journals reports that about half of the results replicate in the same patterns as the original study.

Reproducibility and robustness of economics and political science research

Nature, Published online: 01 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10251-x

Robustness checks and reproduction of analyses with existing and updated data based on 110 articles in economics and political science journals with data and code-sharing requirements found high levels of robustness and reproducibility and determined that robustness was not dependent on author characteristics or data availability.

Improving Retrieval Augmented Generation for Health Care by Fine-Tuning Clinical Embedding Models: Development and Evaluation Study

Background: Embedding models are critical components of Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) systems for retrieving and searching unstructured medical data. However, existing models are predominantly trained on publicly available English datasets, limiting their effectiveness in non-English health care settings. More importantly, these models lack training on real-world clinical documents, leading to inaccurate context retrieval when integrated into RAG systems for health care applications. This gap is particularly pronounced in specialized medical documentation containing domain-specific terminology, abbreviations, and nuanced clinical language. Objective: This retrospective study aimed to develop and validate embedding models specifically trained on real-world clinical documents from multiple medical specialties to improve medical information retrieval (IR) and RAG system performance in both German and English language contexts. Methods: We fine-tuned embedding models, so-called sentence transformers, using the multilingual-e5-large architecture as a foundation. Training data consisted of approximately 11 million question-answer pairs synthetically generated from 400,000 diverse clinical documents from a large German tertiary hospital, spanning 163,840 patients and 282,728 clinical cases between 2018 and 2023. The large language model generated medically relevant questions and corresponding answers for each document. The dataset was additionally pseudonymized and translated into English to aim for broader applicability. Models were evaluated in 2 distinct scenarios: IR using questions with multiple relevant passages, and RAG system performance in both cross-patient and patient-centered contexts. Results: In the IR evaluation, the fine-tuned miracle model achieved a mAP@100 of 0.27, outperforming the multilingual-e5-large baseline (0.14) and state-of-the-art models such as bge-m3 (0.11). In the RAG evaluation, the model demonstrated robust performance comparable with the baseline in the constrained patient-centered scenario (BERTScore F1 0.781 vs 0.778) and showed moderate improvements in the unconstrained cross-patient setting (BLEURT 0.56 vs 0.53). Notably, the model trained on pseudonymized data achieved comparable retrieval performance (mAP@100 0.25) and the highest scores for patient-centered contextual precision (0.93). Performance gains were robust in the German dataset, while the translated English model demonstrated promising results as a proof of concept for cross-lingual transfer. Conclusions: By leveraging a comprehensive real-world dataset spanning multiple medical specialties and using large language models for synthetic question generation, we successfully created and validated domain-specific embedding models. These models can improve medical IR in large-scale search spaces and perform competitively in constrained RAG applications. By publishing the models trained on pseudonymized data, other health care institutions can integrate or adapt these embedding models to their needs. This work establishes a reproducible framework for developing domain-specific clinical embedding models, with the potential to improve data retrieval in medical settings.

Genomic history of early dogs in Europe

Nature, Published online: 25 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10112-7

Genome-wide analysis shows European dogs existed by 14,200 years ago, were already genetically distinct, received less Neolithic Southwest Asian admixture than humans did and contributed substantially to later European dogs.

WiseMind: a knowledge-guided multi-agent framework for accurate and empathetic psychiatric diagnosis

npj Digital Medicine, Published online: 25 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41746-026-02559-9

WiseMind: a knowledge-guided multi-agent framework for accurate and empathetic psychiatric diagnosis

Correction: LXRα limits TGFβ-dependent hepatocellular carcinoma associated fibroblast differentiation

Oncogenesis, Published online: 18 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41389-026-00610-8

Correction: LXRα limits TGFβ-dependent hepatocellular carcinoma associated fibroblast differentiation

The dynamic basis of G-protein recognition and activation by a GPCR

Nature, Published online: 11 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-10228-w

Conventional and time-resolved cryo-electron microscopy reveal how NTSR1 dynamically engages and releases different G proteins, capturing over 20 intermediates and uncovering key mechanistic steps in GDP- and GTP-driven activation, subtype selectivity and distinct dissociation pathways.

Author Correction: Global, regional, and national burden of chronic respiratory diseases and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1990–2023: a Global Burden of Disease study

Nature Medicine, Published online: 11 March 2026; doi:10.1038/s41591-026-04288-8

Author Correction: Global, regional, and national burden of chronic respiratory diseases and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1990–2023: a Global Burden of Disease study

Breast Cancer Screening Knowledge and Sentiments in Singaporean Women: Mixed Methods Study Using Topic Modeling, Sentiment Analysis, and Structured Questionnaire Data

Background: Mammography screening uptake in Singapore remains below 40% despite campaigns and subsidies. Natural language processing (NLP) can extract nuanced attitudes from free text that fixed response options miss, revealing latent factors influencing breast cancer (BC) screening behavior. Objective: This study characterized women’s attitudes toward mammography using mixed methods data, examined associations between BC awareness and screening willingness, and identified barriers and facilitators through NLP of free-text responses. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study within the multicenter cohort in Singapore (October 2021-December 2023). In total, 4169 women aged 35‐59 years (median 48, IQR 43‐54) were recruited via convenience sampling (3 hospitals and 2 polyclinics). Participants completed online structured questionnaires on demographics and screening history, then a BC education quiz with feedback. Participants answering >80% correctly were classified as “BC-aware.” Posteducation, participants reported screening willingness (motivated or neutral) with optional free-text explanations. Logistic regression models (adjusted for study site, age, ethnicity, marital status, housing, and education) examined the associations with willingness. For 3819 English-language respondents, biterm topic modeling identified themes and sentiment analysis quantified emotional tone. Statistical significance: =.05. Results: Overall, 79% (3287/4169) were BC-aware, and 94% (3908/4169) reported increased motivation posteducation. BC-aware women had higher screening motivation than BC-unaware women (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] 2.88, 95% CI 2.19‐3.80;
  • ✇Nature Medicine
  • Mosquito-borne viruses, vaccine-borne hope Mike May
    Nature Medicine, Published online: 09 March 2026; doi:10.1038/d41591-026-00014-6From chikungunya and dengue to yellow fever and Zika, mosquito‑transmitted diseases are spreading with urbanization, travel and climate change. A new generation of vaccines, trials and public‑health tools aim to keep ahead of the threat.
     
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