Our investigations show that electrochemical corrosion of copper is faster than electrochemical corrosion of aluminium at temperatures below 100oC. Literature data analysis shows that the Al atoms diffuse faster than the Cu atoms at temperatures higher than 475oC, Al rich intermetallic compounds (IMCs) are formed faster in the Cu-Al system, and the Kirkendall plane shifts toward Al side. Electrochemical corrosion occurs due to electric current and due to diffusion. An electronic devise working time, for example, depends on initial copper cover thickness on aluminium wire, connected to the electronic devise, temperature, and volume and dislocation pipe diffusion coefficients, so copper, iron, and aluminium electrochemical corrosion rates are investigated experimentally at room temperature and at temperature 100oC. Intrinsic diffusivities ratios of copper and aluminium at different temperatures and diffusion activation energies in the Cu-Al system are calculated by proposed here methods using literature experimental data. Dislocation pipe and volume diffusion activation energies of pure iron are calculated separately by earlier proposed method using literature experimental data. Aluminium dissolved into NaCl solution as the Al3+ ions at room temperature and at temperature 100oC, iron dissolved into NaCl solution as the Fe2+ (not Fe3+) ions at room temperature and at temperature 100oC, copper dissolved into NaCl solution as the Cu+ ions at room temperature and as the Cu+ and the Cu2+ ions at temperature 100oC. It is founded experimentally that copper corrosion is higher than aluminium corrosion, and ratio of electrochemical corrosion rates, kCu/kAl>1, decreases with temperature increasing, although iron electrochemical corrosion rate doesn’t depend on temperature below 100oC. It is obvious, because melting point of iron is more higher then melting point of copper or aluminium. It is calculated that copper electrochemical corrosion rate is approximately equal to aluminium electrochemical corrosion at temperature about 300oC, so copper can dissolve into NaCl solution mostly as the Cu2+ ions at temperature about 300oC. Ratio of intrinsic diffusivities, DCu/DAl <1, increases with temperature increasing, and intrinsic diffusivity of aluminium could be approximately equal to intrinsic diffusivity of copper at temperature about 460oC.

Coronaviruses constitute a global threat to human and animal health. It is essential to investigate the long-distance RNA-RNA interactions that approximate remote regulatory elements in strategies, including genome circularization, discontinuous transcription, and transcriptional enhancers, aimed at rapid replication of their large genomes, pathogenicity, and immune evasion. Based on the primary sequences and modeled RNA-RNA interactions of two experimentally de-fined coronaviral enhancers, we detected via in silico primary and secondary structural analysis potential enhancers in various coronaviruses, from the phylogenetically ancient avian IBV to the recently emerged SARS-CoV-2. These potential enhancers possess a core duplex-forming region that could transition between closed and open states, as molecular switches directed by viral or host factors. The open state would permit the enhancer to pair with remote sequences in the viral genome and modulate the expression of crucial genes involved in viral replication and host immune evasion. Consistently, variations in the predicted IBV enhancer region or its distant targets coincide with cases of viral attenuation possibly driven by decreased expression of the ORF3a immune evasion protein. The annotated enhancer sequences could inform structural prediction tools and antiviral interventions if validated experimentally.

Abstract: (1) Background and rationale: To validate the reported therapeutic coverage, a lymphatic filariasis post-mass drug administration (MDA) campaign survey was conducted in the Lukonga health zone from 10 June to 15 July 2023. (2) Materials and methods: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional study conducted at the community level in 30 villages in the Lukonga health zone from 10 June to 15 July 2023. The study population included all individuals from the visited com-munities. The study variables included age, sex, drug use (ivermectin + albendazole), adverse events, and adherence to MDA guidelines for supervised drug use. Questionnaires were administered on Android phones using the SurveyCTO platform. Stata version 17 was used for data analysis. (3) Results: Of the 1092 respondents, 54.8% were female and one-third were between the ages of 5 and 14. Two-thirds of the households surveyed, or 64%, had more than six people living in them, and 1031 individuals, or 94%, reported being present during the community mass drug distribution. Notably, 678 individuals, or 66%, reported taking the drugs offered, and 66.4% of those who took the drugs reported doing so in the presence of drug distributors. Thus, the survey coverage was 65.7% [95% CI: 62.9–68.7]. The results of this study show that the survey coverage was above the 65% threshold recommended by the WHO but below the 82.3% reported by the Lukonga health zone. The main reason for non-compliance was a fear of ivermectin-related side effects (47%). Supervised or directly observed treatment was not adhered to (66.4%). (4) Discussion and conclusions: Key challenges to further increase treatment coverage include assessing data quality, building capacity, motivating drug distributors, improving data reporting tools, proper recording by drug distributors, and ac-curate reporting on non-residents who take the drugs during the MDA. In addition, harmonization of the numerator for calculating drug coverage in the health zone is critical.

Resilience is an important determinant of the quality of life in adults, among others in the sphere of cognitive activities. Developments in brain imaging technology make it possible to acquire a more accurate understanding of the neuronal mechanisms of these correlations. The aim of this study was to verify whether the level of mental resilience would differentiate reading comprehension performance when using different information carriers. More than 150 adults were surveyed with the use of two questionnaires (original and standardised) and near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). The results obtained did not show differences in correct responses between the groups of individuals with different levels of resilience, however, the results in the group of subjects with moderate levels were differentiated by the type of carrier. Further analysis showed that the results referred to above resulted from different neuronal mechanisms. The differences affected many areas of the brain and also depended on the type of information carrier (medium). They affected, among others, attentional areas as well as areas directly involved in the reading process. This may result in increased energy consumption during the examined activities, which can result in greater fatigue, accelerated job burnout and progressive concentration difficulties.

Electroencephalography (EEG) signals provide valuable insights into various activities of the human brain, including the detection of mental stress, which is a complex physiological and psychological response. However, the challenge lies in identifying mental stress accurately while mitigating the limitations associated with a large number of EEG channels. This includes issues such as computational complexity, the risk of overfitting, and the increased setup time for electrode placement, which can be cumbersome for real-life applications. Therefore, it is crucial to develop EEG channel selection algorithms that enable the creation of a wearable device capable of assessing mental stress in real-life scenarios. This study introduces a novel channel selection method aimed at identifying highly accurate channels for detecting mental stress. Our approach, known as the Correlation Coefficient of Hjorth Parameters (CCHP), assesses the correlation between activity, mobility, and complexity in the time domain to nominate the most relevant channels. By selecting channels that exhibit high correlation with the stress task while being uncorrelated with each other, CCHP significantly reduces the number of EEG channels required, without compromising accuracy or performance. To evaluate the effectiveness of CCHP, we conducted experiments using the DEAP public dataset. Comparing our results with other recent algorithms that utilize the full set of EEG channels, CCHP achieved a superior classification accuracy of 81.56% using only eight EEG channels. Furthermore, CCHP outperformed existing channel selection methods by an impressive 8%. These findings strongly indicate that the CCHP algorithm shows great promise in the design of a wearable application for mental stress detection, utilizing a minimal number of EEG channels.

Mental stress state recognition using electroencephalogram (EEG) signals for real-life applications needs a conventional wearable device. This requires an efficient number of EEG channels and an optimal feature set. The main objective of the study is to identify an optimal feature subset that can best discriminate mental stress states while enhancing the overall performance. Thus, multi-domain feature extraction methods were employed, namely, time domain, frequency domain, time-frequency domain, and network connectivity features, to form a large feature vector space. To avoid the computational complexity of high dimensional space, a hybrid feature selection (FS) method of minimum Redundancy Maximum Relevance with Particle Swarm Optimization and Support Vector Machine (mRMR-PSO-SVM) is proposed to remove noise, redundant, and irrelevant features and keep the optimal feature subset. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated and verified using four datasets, namely EDMSS, DEAP, SEED, and EDPMSC. To further consolidate, the effectiveness of the proposed method is compared with that of the state-of-the-art heuristic methods. The proposed model has significantly reduced the features vector space by an average of 70% in comparison to the state-of-the-art methods while significantly increasing overall detection performance.

Objective: The study investigated the benefit of practicing the art of bonsai and the well-being of practitioners. The art promotes relaxation, focus and art therapy that can have personal and emotional value in a self-help setting. When the bonsai tree is used as a healing object, it may improve the ability of the bonsai practitioner to adapt to adverse and stressful life events, such as the present global COVID-19 pandemic. Method: International bonsai artists (n = 255) participated in a study that examined the effect their bonsai had on their mental well-being. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with bonsai artists answering the question: “How has bonsai helped you?”. Results: Most participants acknowledged that being able to take care of their bonsais affected their mood in a positive manner. Discussion: Although the participants did not report overall improved mental health, participants expressed an improvement in their mood when being able to work on a bonsai tree. Conclusion: These findings are significant in that it can be useful in as a preventative and restorative manner in the mental well-being of people who practice the art.

(1) Background: There is insufficient empirical evidence on the correlates of health care utilization of irregular migrants currently living in Turkey. The aim of this study was to identify individual level determinants associated with health service and medication use. (2) Methods: 155 Afghans completed surveys assessing service utilization including encounters with primary care physicians and outpatient specialists in addition to the use of prescription and nonprescription medicines. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were employed to examine associations between service use and a range of predisposing, enabling, and perceived need factors. (3) Results: Health services utilization was lowest for outpatient specialists (20%) and highest for nonprescription medications (37%). Female gender and higher income predicted encounters with primary care physicians. Income, and other enabling factors such as family presence in Turkey predicted encounters with outpatient specialists. Perceived illness-related need factors had little to no influence on use of services; however, asylum difficulties increased the likelihood for encounters with primary care physicians, outpatient services, and the use of prescription medications. 4) Conclusion: This study suggests that health services use among Afghan migrants in Turkey is low considering the extent of their perceived illness-related needs, which may be further exacerbated by the precarious conditions in which they live.

Transition to renewable energy has been recognized as a crucial step to addressing climate change and achieving greenhouse gas reduction targets, but it can also cause energy sprawl if not planned properly. Clean renewable energy communities (CREC) are emerging globally as an approach for decentralized energy systems and an alternative to traditional centralized energy systems. CREC aims to lower the energy carbon footprint, enhance local energy resilience, and improve the quality of life of residents. Through a comprehensive literature review, this study reviews metrics that can assess the impact of energy transition plans and support decision-making to select technologies that create efficient, reliable, and accessible energy systems. It classifies these metrics into a five-dimensional sustainability approach: environmental, technical, social, economic, political and institutional. The paper proposes a conceptual framework to guide decision-makers in recognizing the role of sustainable land development, sustainable energy planning, and resiliency as an integrated approach to energy transition planning. This framework stresses mapping the place-based potential for clean renewable energy at various scales, highlights the importance of resilience in energy planning, and addresses challenges associated with energy source selection, built environment efficiency, and energy trade. While the framework can serve as a starting point for evaluating energy transition plans, further work is needed to address the limitations of existing metrics and identify additional evaluations for energy mixed land use that are critical to managing energy sprawl on ecosystem services and other land uses.

Electromagnetic actuation can support many fields of technology, such as robotics or biomedical applications. In this context, fully understanding the system behavior and proposing a low-cost package for feedback control is challenging. Modeling the electromagnetic force is particularly tricky because it is a nonlinear function of the actuated object’s position and coil’s current. Measuring in real time the position of the actuated object with the precision required for accurate motion control is also nontrivial. In this study, we propose a novel, cost-effective electromagnetic set-up to achieve position control via visual feedback. We actuate vertically and under different experimental conditions a 10 mm diameter steel ball hanging on a low-stiffness spring, demonstrating good tracking performance (the position error remains within ±0.5 mm with a negligible phase delay in the best scenarios). The experimental results confirm the feasibility of the proposed set-up, which is characterized by minimum complexity and realized with off-the-shelf and cost-effective components. For these reasons, such a contribution helps to understand and apply electromagnetic actuation even further.

Implementing net-zero building design is a crucial step towards decarbonizing the built environment during the entire lifecycle of a building, encompassing both embodied and operational carbon. This paper presents a novel computational approach to design Life Cycle Zero-Carbon Building (LC-ZCB), utilizing parametric integrated modeling through the versatile Grasshopper platform and its plug-ins. The Department of Energy’s prototype residential building at New York Institute of Technology, optimized to fulfill the LC-ZCB target, serves as the base building for this comprehensive study. Four main influencing design parameters, namely geometry, construction technology, thermal resistance of the envelope, and on-site renewable energy production, are defined and three-hundred design combinations are evaluated through the assessment of the operational carbon (OC) and embodied carbon (EC). By incorporating bio-based materials in the design options, the influence of biogenic carbon on the whole carbon footprint of the building case study is addressed by utilizing the GWPbio dynamic method, which assumes 100-year time horizon and incorporates dynamic characterization factors based on time of pulse emissions and two variables: rotation of the biomass and storage period of carbon in products. Finally, to account for potential climate changes, future climate data and 2099 weather conditions are considered during the scenarios assessment. The results demonstrate the potential for achieving LC-ZCB when fast growing biobased materials are largely used as construction materials, fostering a more environmentally responsible future for the construction industry.

It is essential to deal with data scattered among heterogeneous information sources, which can be structured, semi-structured, or unstructured, to give consumers a cohesive perspective of the data. Information gathering is challenging as a result, and one of the major causes of this is that data sources are developed to support specific applications. A method to simplify this procedure is to use ontology representation as an intermediate step. An ontology represents a knowledge structure that reasonably reflects the real world's complexity and is ideally used in many industries today. This research aims to enhance the functionality of a global ontology system by implementing and integrating a natural language query system. Leveraging NLP-based approaches, we constructed SPARQL queries for our ontologies to facilitate natural language translation into a well-structured query format. A dedicated query component was developed to transform natural language questions into SPARQL queries, with the selection of the optimal query graph to generate the final queries. In the subsequent phase, we explored the integration of distinct sentence encoders to improve latent sentence representations during query construction. The generated SPARQL queries were executed on the global ontology output and then translated into source-specific questions. This innovative approach enables unified access to heterogeneous data sources through a user-friendly natural language querying interface.

Vector geographic data play an important role in the natural resources and environment sector and other location information services. This is also one of the types of data where the cost to create it is relatively large because of the difficulty in surveying, collecting, and authorizing. The rapid development of the Internet has created many advantages in the distribution, exploitation, and use of vector geographic data, but it also gives rise to many problems such as duplication, redistribution, forgery, and illegal data use. The theft on the Internet is becoming more and more sophisticated and the number of violations is increasing, showing the urgent need to research and develop an effective solution to protect the copyright of vector geographic data and prevent them from being illegally collected and used. Among the major studies and solutions, digital watermarking emerges as an effective method and is an active research area for copyright protection. Towards a good solution for copyright protection of vector geographic data, our study proposes a new algorithm with three main contributions, including: (1) generating short, pseudo-random meaningful watermarks to increase robustness and to enable automated as well as visual manual verifying; (2) building a uniformly distributed mapping between the vertex coordinates and the watermark bit indexes to increase the robustness of the watermarks; and (3) integrate two types of watermarks, namely, spatial domain-based watermarking and zero-watermarking to be resistant to most common attacks on geographic vector data. The algorithm also allows working on all types of vector geographic data, including points, polylines, and polygons.

Product Design is getting nowadays new challenges on developing new products, since the industry is in a rush to introduce products into the marketplace, where customers demand products faster, cheaper, and free of failures. In the meantime, global companies are always trying to improve their Product Design process to get advantages over their competitors using proven tools like FEMA and mixing methodologies like Fuzzy theories with FMEA. Even today using all this tools and combination of methodologies there is a gap to address and it is required a robust risk analysis solving current issues in the electronic industry. This document aims to reveal a novel integrated method, where Failure Mode and Effect Analysis, Pythagorean Fuzzy Sets and Dimensional Analysis are cohesive into a model that minimize the uncertainty of the ranking and prioritization over the Failure Mode and Effect Analysis execution, helping to identify risks within an accurate grade over possible failures in the Product Design process. A real practical example is used to show the proposed method, where it is identified a robust methodology integration and solid and results using a sensitivity analysis.

Despite the productivity, achieving long-term sustainability and maintaining plant biodiversity become the pivotal goals in orchard floor management, especially along tree rows. Thus, the paradigm of eradicating weeds in the tree row using chemical herbicide or repeated soil tillage needs to be substituted with more sustainable alternatives. This study was conducted in two commercial apple and peach orchards in Marche region (Italy). Two integrated mechanical approaches, integrated mowing (mower + brush or disc) and integrated tillage (blade weeder + integrated mowing), were compared with standard herbicide system in a 2-years trial. Weed species abundance, soil coverage rate, and weed biomass productions, including gas exchange parameters, tree growth, fruit yield and quality were measured. Both integrated practices had significant effects on the number of weed species, total vegetation coverage, and dry weed biomass production. No significant differences were found in terms of tree gas exchange parameters, growth and fruit yield. However, a few fruit quality parameters such as fruit firmness, solid soluble content and dry matter content responded positively to the integrated practices. These results suggest that the integrated mechanical approaches of weed management increased orchard biodiversity, and they had no adverse effects on tree growth, fruit yield, and quality.

After conducting a detailed survey among the villagers of Pallissery and Karukutty, it was observed that in most of the villages the native people have to travel long distances for their basic health needs. Also most of the villagers lack knowledge regarding live health updates. At times, these problems have even resulted in death of many people including pregnant women and children. The objective of our research is to propose an integrated and easy to use Medical Kiosk that can be installed at various locations in rural areas. The Kiosk will provide an integrated environment for all medical related activities and would perform numerous functions like sending notifications regarding medical camps, mobile medical help, important dates for vaccinations, child care, insurance policies and provide other live medical updates to the villagers. It would also support the basic facilities for measurement of body parameters like height, weight, BMI, blood pressure, and heartbeat and also facilitate live consultation facilities with specialized doctors through video and voice chats.

Substrate integrated waveguides reduce the losses and increase the quality factor of resonators in communication filters when compared with traditional planar technologies, while maintaining their low cost and low profile characteristics. Empty substrate integrated waveguides go one step further, removing the dielectric of the substrate. One of these transmission lines is the empty substrate integrated coaxial line (ESICL), which adds the advantage of being a two conductor structure. Thus, it propagates a TEM mode, which reduces the dispersion and the bandwith limitation of other one conductor empty substrate integrated waveguides. Continuous profile filters, at the cost of being long structures, are very easy to manufacture and design (usually no optimization is needed), and they are highly insensitive to manufacturing tolerances. In this work a simple continuous profile filter, with a stop band response, is designed for the first time in the novel ESICL technology. The influence of the design parameters on the insertion losses and fractional bandwidth is discussed. A prototype has been successfully manufactured and measured. A sensitivity analysis shows the high tolerance of the proposed stop band filter to manufacturing errors.

The article reviews the current status of label-free integrated optical sensors focusing on the evolution over the years of their analytical performance. At first a short introduction to the evanescent wave optics is provided followed by detailed description of the main categories of label-free optical sensors including sensors based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR), grating coupler, photonic crystals, ring resonators and interferometric transducers. After a short reference to SPR techniques, including localized SPR, integrated optical sensors i.e., grating-couplers, interferometers, photonic crystals, microring resonators are reviewed. For each type of sensor, the detection principle is first provided followed by description of the different transducer configurations so far developed and their performance as biosensors. Finally, a short discussion about the current limitations and future perspectives of integrated label-free biosensors optical sensors is provided

Flooding is a prevalent natural disaster with both short and long-term social, economic, and infrastructure impacts. Changes in intensity and frequency of precipitation (including rain, snow, and rain on snow) events create challenges for the planning and management of resilient infrastructure and communities. While there is general acknowledgement that new infrastructure design should account for future climate change, no clear methods or actionable information is available to community planners and designers to ensure resilient design considering an uncertain climate future. This research used climate projections to drive high-resolution hydrology and flood models to evaluate social, economic, and infrastructure resilience for the Snohomish Watershed, WA, U.S.A. The proposed model chain has been calibrated and validated. Based on the established model chain, the peaks of precipitation and streamflows were found to shift from spring and summer to earlier winter season. The nonstationarity of peak discharges was discovered with more frequent and severe flood risks projected. The peak discharges were also projected to decrease for a certain period in the near future, which might be due to the reduced rain-on-snow events. This research was expected to provide a clear method for the incorporation of climate science in flood resilience analysis and to also provide actionable information relative to the frequency and intensity of future precipitation events.

Shale gas production is associated with significant usage of fresh water and discharge of wastewater. Consequently, there is a necessity to create the proper management strategies for water resources in shale gas production and to integrate conventional energy sources (e.g., shale gas) with renewables (e.g., solar energy). The objective of this study is to develop a design framework for integrating water and energy systems including multiple energy sources, cogeneration process, and desalination technologies in treating wastewater and providing fresh water for shale gas production. Solar energy is included to provide thermal power directly to a multi-effect distillation plant (MED) exclusively (to be more feasible economically) or indirect supply through a thermal energy storage system. Thus, MED is driven by direct or indirect solar energy, and excess or direct cogeneration process heat. The proposed thermal energy storage along with the fossil fuel boiler will allow for the dual-purpose system to operate at steady-state by managing the dynamic variability of solar energy. Additionally, electric production is considered to supply a reverse osmosis plant (RO) without connecting to the local electric grid. A multi-period mixed integer nonlinear program (MINLP) is developed and applied to discretize operation period to track the diurnal fluctuations of solar energy. The solution of the optimization program determines the optimal mix of solar energy, thermal storage, and fossil fuel to attain the maximum annual profit of the entire system. A case study is solved for water treatment and energy management for Eagle Ford Basin in Texas.

Background and objectives: Due to resistance and lack of treatment options, hospital-acquired Acinetobacter baumannii (A. baumannii) infections are associated with high mortality. The aim of this study was to identify the characteristics and outcomes of patients with infections caused by multidrug resistant A. baumannii in a tertiary-care teaching hospital and to determine the risk factors for in-hospital mortality. Materials and methods: A retrospective cohort study including 196 patients with A. baumannii strains isolated from different clinical specimens in the Hospital of the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences in 2016, 2017 and 2020, 2021 was conducted. Data on patients’ characteristics, comorbid diseases, treatment, length of hospital and ICU stay, outcome were collected. To determine risk factors for in-hospital mortality, logistic regression analysis was performed. Results: There were 60 (30.6%) women 136 (69.4%) men with a mean age of 61.7 ± 16.6 years (range, 52–74). More than three-fourths (76.5%, n = 150) of the patients had at least one comorbid disease. The highest number of A. baumannii strains were isolated from patients hospitalized in ICUs (43.4%, n = 85). A. baumannii strains producing three types of β-lactamases were more frequently isolated from women than men (77.8 % vs. 22.2%, p = 0.006). Infections caused by A. baumannii strains producing two types of β-lactamases were significantly more often treated with combination therapy than infections caused by strains producing one type of β-lactamase (78.9% vs. 60.0%, p = 0.019). Patients with A. baumannii strains producing two different types of β-lactamases (AmpC plus KPC, AmpC plus ESBL, or ESBL plus KPC) stayed significantly shorter at the ICU compared to patients with A. baumannii strains not producing β-lactamases (median of 9, IQR 2–18, vs. median of 26, IQR 7–38, p = 0.022). Death occurred in 58.7% (n = 115) of patients. Logistic regression analysis showed that combination therapy, length of hospital stay of < 10 days after A. baumannii infection, age of > 58 years, and absence of co-infection were independent predictors of in-hospital mortality. Conclusions: Patients with infection caused by A. baumannii strains producing two different types of β-lactamases were more frequently treated with combination therapy. Mortality of patients with multidrug resistant A. baumannii infection was high, and it was associated with patient’s age, length of hospital stay after the diagnosis of A. baumannii infection, absence of co-infection, and combination treatment.

Maternal obesity and over/undernutrition can have a long-lasting impact on offspring health during critical periods in the first 1000 days of life. Children born to mothers with obesity have reduced immune responses to stimuli which increase susceptibility to infections. Recently, maternal western-style diets (WSD), high in fat and simple sugars, have been associated with skewing neonatal immune cell development, and recent evidence suggests that dysregulation of innate immunity in early life has long-term consequences on metabolic diseases and behavioral disorders in later life. Several factors contribute to abnormal innate immune tolerance or trained immunity, including changes in gut microbiota, metabolites, and epigenetic modifications. Critical knowledge gaps remain regarding the mechanisms whereby these factors impact fetal and postnatal immune cell development, especially in precursor stem cells in bone marrow and fetal liver. Components of the maternal microbiota that are transferred from mothers consuming a WSD to their offspring are understudied and identifying cause and effect on neonatal innate and adaptive immune development needs to be refined. Tools including single-cell RNA-sequencing, epigenetic analysis, and spatial location of specific immune cells in liver and bone marrow are critical for understanding immune system programming. Considering the vital role of immune function plays in offspring health, it will be important to understand how maternal diets can control developmental programming of innate and adaptive immunity.

Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered several challenges to mental health worldwide. Undergraduate medical students face considerable stress in their academic routines. Thus, there is a need to explore the implications of the mental health of undergraduate medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Objective: To review the global literature about anxiety and depression disorders in undergraduate medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: we developed an integrative literature review on the occurrence of anxiety and depression symptoms in undergraduate medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic. We assessed the results on the occurrence of anxiety and depression and the severity of symptoms in medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic using quantitative studies applying the GAD-7 questionnaire for anxiety or PHQ-9 for depression. Results: We reviewed 85 selected studies, and the results showed a significant prevalence of moderate and severe symptoms of anxiety and depression, with 28.2% of participants presenting scores ≥ 10 on the GAD-7 and 38.9% on the PHQ-9. Statistical analyses revealed associations between higher rates of anxiety symptoms in developing countries and data collected after the lockdown period in 2020, at the Pandemic lockdown. Conclusion: Our findings highlight the need for specific interventions to support the mental health of undergraduate medical students, critically in female students from developing countries during a Pandemic crisis.

Although the neurofilament light chain (NfL) is used as a biomarker for neurodegenerative decline, its use in surgery- and anaesthesia-induced acute cognitive dysfunction remains controversial. We aimed to synthesise the evidence to explore the potential of NfL as an established biomarker for perioperative neurocognitive disorders (PND). We systematically searched the PubMed, EMBASE, MEDLINE, Cochrane Library electronic databases, and Cochrane Central Registry of Clinical Trials. Our results show that CSF NfL levels positively correlated with blood NfL levels (r = 0.63; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.42-0.77). The pooled standardised mean difference (SMD) showed a significantly higher preoperative CSF NfL levels (SMD = 0.27; 95% CI, 0.07-0.47) and both pre- and postoperative blood NfL levels (SMD = 0.53, 95% CI, 0.40-0.66 and SMD = 0.58, 95% CI, 0.43-0.73) in the postoperative delirium (POD) group. Postoperative blood NfL levels were significantly elevated in both POD group (SMD = 0.49; 95% CI, 0.34-0.64) and no-POD group (SMD = 0.67; 95% CI, 0.53-0.81). Our meta-analysis indicates that NfL may serve as a potential biomarker for POD, and elevated preoperative blood NfL levels could be a risk factor for POD. Further studies are needed to confirm the association of CSF/blood NfL levels with other PND types.

Opioid use disorder has increased in the world in recent years and Iran ranks first in terms of opium smoking in the world. In fact, opium smoking by traditional methods, in addition to dependence on morphine, is a behavioral addiction in Iran. The body position during opium smoking is usually non-standard and non-ergonomic. Over time, changes in muscle tissue, tendons and ligaments, and the connective tissue go from elasticity to neuromuscular plasticity. This study aims to compare sway back posture and musculoskeletal problems between opium smokers and non-drug users. In this comparative and cross-sectional study, 80 opium smokers were compared with 74 non-drug users in terms of sway angle (sway back posture), and musculoskeletal complaints (NORDIC questionnaire) and the association of possible risk factors was investigated. Data were analyzed by Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Correlation Coefficient and paired-t tests using SPSS version 23. There were significant differences between two groups in terms of sway back posture (P=0.007), and neck (<0.001), upper back (<0.001) and lower back (0.006) musculoskeletal complaints. Homelessness, the lifetime duration of opium smoking (in months), and the duration of daily opium smoking (in minutes) had significant correlation with sway back posture and musculoskeletal complaints. Homelessness was the strongest predictor and had strongest correlation. Overall, an increase in the duration of sitting in non-ergonomic positions could lead to increase in sway angle and sway back posture and increase in musculoskeletal complaints of neck, upper back and lower back due to the non-neutral posture of opium smoking. It seems that plasticity and structural and functional adaptations of the posture occurs due to opium smoking and further studies are recommended.

Abstract: Background: The main aim of the study was to assess the intensity and frequency of cervical spine pain in young people with temporomandibular disorders (TMD). Methods: The pilot study was conducted from June to July 2023. Inclusion criteria were: age (18-30 years), cervical spine pain (for at least 1 month) and consent to participate in the study. The study was conducted based on a physiotherapeutic examination and an original questionnaire. The pain level was assessed using the Visual Analogue Scale (VAS). Among 95 people with cervical spine pain, 51 people (53.7%) constituted the control group (without a history of temporomandibular disorders), while 44 (46.3%) people constituted the study group. Results: The mean age of people participating in the study was 22.2±2.2 years in the study group and 22.5±3.1 years in the control group. The largest group were people aged 21-25 (n=51 people, 53.7%). Patients from the study group more often experienced pain in the stomatognathic system during palpation (both in the muscle, joint and musculoskeletal groups) and had reduced mobility of the temporomandibular joints in every movement (p<0.001). People from the study group were characterized by also less mobility of the cervical spine (p<0.05), apart from extension movement (p>0.05). There was a significant relationship between temporomandibular disorders and cervical spine pain (p<0.05, chi2=10.118, df=1, rc=0.31). The level of back pain was significantly higher in people from the study group (p<0.001, chi2=45.765, df=4, rc=0.57). Conclusions: Our research has shown that the causes of cervical spine pain at a young age may be temporomandibular disorders, which are generally not recognized and properly treated.

The high demands of caring for and raising a child with autism spectrum disorder on a daily basis fatally lead parents to the appearance of physical and mental fatigue. This study aimed to assess the effect of social support and spirituality on the fatigue of parents with children with autistic spectrum disorder. A cross-sectional study with a convenience sample was conducted in Schools of Special Education in Attica (Greece). The sample consisted of 123 parents who completed The Fatigue Assessment Scale (FAS), the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), and the Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy Spiritual Well-Being Scale (FACIT Sp-12) to measure the levels of fatigue, social support, and spirituality, respectively. Demographic data were, also, recorded. Data analysis was applied using IBM SPSS 21.0. The mean age was 47.3 years old, 81.3% were women, and 38.9% stated much / very much religious. The mean of total FAS was 28.4 (SD±7.5), of total FACIT Sp-12 was 31.5 (SD±8.7), and of total MSPSS 5.1 (SD±1.1). Higher levels of total MSPSS and FACIT Sp-12 were associated with lower total FAS (r= -0.50, p &lt;0.001 and r= -0.49, p&lt;0.001 respectively). Social support and spirituality are significant predictors of fatigue.

In the last two decades, the development of high-throughput diagnostic methods and availabil-ity of effective treatments has increased interest in newborn screening for lysosomal storage disorders. However, long-term follow-up experience is needed to clearly identify risks, benefits and challenges. We report our 8-year experience of screening and follow up on about 250,000 neonates screened for four lysosomal storage diseases (Pompe disease, mucopolysaccharidosis type I, Fabry dis-ease, Gaucher disease), using enzyme activity assay by tandem mass spectrometry, and bi-omarker quantification as second tier test. Among the 126 positive newborns (0.051%), 51 infants were confirmed as affected (positive pre-dictive value 40%), with an overall incidence of 1:4,874. Of these, 3 infantile-onset Pompe dis-ease, 2 neonatal-onset Gaucher disease and 4 mucopolysaccharidosis type I patients were imme-diately treated. Furthermore, another four Gaucher disease patients needed treatment in the first years of life. Our study demonstrated the feasibility and effectiveness of newborn screening for lysosomal storage diseases. Early diagnosis and treatment allow the achievement of better patient out-comes. Challenges such as false positive rates, the diagnosis of variants of uncertain significance or late-onset forms, and the lack of treatment for neuronopathic forms, should be addressed.

In the 21st century, the effects of HIV-associated neurocognitive disorders (HAND) have been significantly reduced in individuals due to the development of antiretroviral therapies (ARTs). However, the growing epidemic of polysubstance use (PSU) has led to concern for the effects of PSU on HIV-seropositive individuals. To effectively treat individuals affected by HAND, it is critical to understand the biological mechanisms affected by PSU including identification of novel markers. To fill this important knowledge gap, we used an in vivo HIV-Transgenic (HIV-Tg) animal model, to investigate the effects of the combined use of chronic methamphetamine (METH) and oxycodone (oxy). RNA-Seq analysis on the striatum - a brain region that is primarily targeted by both HIV and drugs of abuse - identified key differentially expressed markers post-METH and oxy exposure. Furthermore, ClueGO analysis and Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) revealed crucial molecular and biological functions associated with ATP-activated adenosine receptor, neuropeptide hormone activity, and the oxytocin signaling pathway to be altered between the different treatment groups. The current study further reveals the harmful effects of chronic PSU and HIV infection that can subsequently impact neurological outcomes in polysubstance users with HAND.

The frequency of selected polymorphisms, one in each gene coding for proteins with antioxidative properties (CAT, SOD2, GPX1, NQO1) was compared between patients suffering from pain-related temporomandibular disorders (TMDp;n=85) and control subjects (CTR;n=85). According to the Oral Behaviours Checklist score participants were divided into high-frequency parafunction (HFP;n=98) and low-frequency parafunction (LFP;n=72) groups. In addition, we have investigated the association of selected polymorphisms with participants' psychological (anxiety, depression) and psychosomatic (hypervigilance, somatosensory amplification) characteristics. Polymorphisms rs1001179, rs4880, rs1050450, rs689452 were genotyped using the genomic DNA extracted from buccal mucosa swabs and real-time TaqMan genotyping assays. No differences in genotype distribution between TMDp patients and control subjects were found. Still, TMDp patients who were homozygous for minor allele A, related to the GPX1 polymorphism rs1050450 reported significantly more waking-state oral behaviours compared to GA+GG genotype carriers (score: 30 vs. 23, p=0.019). Frequency of genotype AA for rs1050450 polymorphism was higher in HFP compared to LFP participants (14.3% vs. 4.2%, p =0.030). Most important predictors of waking-state oral behaviours were depression, anxiety, AA genotype (rs1050450) and female sex. Explored genetic factors were not found to be significant risk factors for either TMDp or sleep-related oral behaviours. The association of waking-state oral behaviours with selected gene polymorphisms additionally supports previous assumptions that the daytime bruxism is more closely linked to various stress manifestations, which might also be reflected through the variability related to cellular antioxidative activity.

Background: Recently, the management of musculoskeletal disorders with the patients' own stem cells, isolated from the walls of small blood vessels, which can be found in great numbers in the adipose tissue, has received considerable attention. On the other hand, there are still misconceptions about these adipose-derived regenerative cells (ADRCs) that contain vascular-associated pluripotent stem cells (vaPS cells) in regenerative medicine. Methods: Based on our previous publications on this topic, we have developed a concept to describe the significance of the ADRCs/vaPS cells in the field of orthobiologics as briefly as possible and at the same time as precisely as possible. Results: The ADRCs/vaPS cells belong to the group of orthobiologics that are based on autologous cells. Because the latter can both stimulate a patient’s body's localized self-healing power and provide new cells that can integrate into the host tissue during the healing response when the localized self-healing power is exhausted, this group of orthobiologics appears more advantageous than cell-free orthobiologics and orthobiologics that are based on allogeneic cells. Within the group of orthobiologics that are based on autologous cells, enzymatically isolated, uncultured ADRCs/vaPS cells have several advantages over non-enzymatically isolated cells/microfragmented fat as well as over uncultured bone marrow aspirate concentrate and cultured cells (adipose-derived stem cells, bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells). Conclusions: The use of ADRCs/vaPS cells can be seamlessly integrated into modern orthopedic treatment concepts, which can be understood as the optimization of a process which - albeit less efficiently - also takes place physiologically. Accordingly, this new safe and effective type of treatment is attractive in terms of holistic thinking and personalized medicine.

The first step in seeing is light absorption by photopigment molecules expressed in the photore-ceptors of the retina. There are two types of photoreceptors in the human retina that are respon-sible for image formation, rods and cones. Except at very low light levels when rods are active, all vision is based on cones. Cones mediate high acuity vision and color vision. Furthermore, they are critically important in the visual feedback mechanism that regulates refractive development of the eye during childhood. The human retina contains a mosaic of three cone types, short-wavelength (S), long-wavelength (L) and middle-wavelength (M); however, the vast major-ity (~94%) are L and M cones. The OPN1LW and OPN1MW genes, located on the X-chromosome at Xq28, encode the protein component of the light-sensitive photopigments. Here we review mechanism by which splicing defects in these genes cause vision disorders.

An effective behavior changes program is the first-line of prevention for youth obesity. However, effectiveness in prevention of adolescent obesity requires several approaches, with special attention paid to disordered eating behaviors and psychological support among other environmental factors. The aim of this systematic review was to compare the impact of two types of obesity prevention programs, inclusive of behavior change components on weight outcomes. Energy-balance studies were aimed at reducing calories from high-energy sources and increasing PA levels, while “shared risk factors for obesity and eating disorders” focused on reducing disordered eating behaviors to promote a positive relationship with food and eating. A systematic search of ProQuest, PubMed, PsycInfo, SciELO, and Web of Science identified 8825 articles. Twenty were considered “energy-balance” and fifteen “shared-risk factors for obesity and eating disorders”. Overall, energy-balance studies were unable to support a maintenance weight status, diet, and PA over time. Shared risk factors programs also did not result in significant differences in weight status over time. However, the majority of shared risk factors studies demonstrated reduced body dissatisfaction, dieting, and weight-control behaviors. More research is needed to examine how a shared risk factor approach can address both obesity and eating disorder.

COVID-19 pandemic disproportionately affected seven South Asian countries because of rampaging virus and weak health system response. Vaccination commenced in all countries during early 2021, once the vaccines became available in the international market. Vaccines were donated by international development partners, friendly countries and procured utilizing domestic resources and financial support from various agencies. All countries opted for a phasing of the vaccination by prioritizing high risk populations which included health care personnel, front line workers and elderly with comorbidities. Seven vaccines that had WHO emergency authorization usage were utilized in South Asia. India produced more than 2.4 billion doses of AstraZeneca vaccine and has indigenously developed five COVID-19 vaccines. Vaccine inequity was obvious and characterized by fewer people in South Asia vaccinated with single dose vis a vis the developed countries. Vaccine hesitancy was another obstacle that kept the vaccination rates low. Difficult to reach areas in Afghanistan, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal could not fully access vaccines. South Asian countries need to strengthen their health system for efficient deployment of vaccines in future health emergencies. At the same time the global agencies and developed countries must address the issue of vaccine access to low-income countries to mitigate the impact of pandemic all over the world.

Background/Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between 1-year mortality and health insurance benefit extension policy items in severe pneumonia pa-tients requiring mechanical ventilation using a South Korean nationwide cohort. Methods: A nationwide population-based retrospective study was conducted using the Korean National Health Insurance database. A total of 1,099 patients (542 patients in the health insurance benefit item group and 557 patients in the control group) were included. The primary outcome was 1-year mortality. Results: Among patients with health insurance benefit extension policy items, 203 patients (37.5%) were diagnosed with hemato-oncological disease, who were categorized as group A, and 339 patients (62.5%) were diagnosed with cerebrovascular, cardiovascular, or rare diseases, who were categorized as group B. Group B had lower 1-year mortality (50.7% vs. 62.5%, P

Anomaly occurrences in hydraulic machinery may lead to massive systems shut down, jeopardizing the safety of the machinery and its surrounding human operator(s) and environment, and the severe economic implications succeeding the faults and their associated damage. Hydraulics are mostly placed in ruthless environments, where they are consistently vulnerable to many faults. Hence, not only the machines and their components are prone to anomalies, but also the sensors attached to them, which monitor and report their health and behavioral changes. In this work, a comprehensive applicational analysis of anomalies in hydraulic systems extracted from a hydraulic test rig is thoroughly achieved. Firstly, we provided a combination of a new architecture of LSTM autoencoders and supervised machine and deep learning methodologies to perform two separate stages of fault detection and diagnosis. The two phases are condensed by: the detection phase using the LSTM autoencoder. Followed by the fault diagnosis phase represented by the classification schema. The previously mentioned framework is applied to both component and sensor faults in hydraulic systems, deployed in the form of two in-depth applicational experiments. Moreover, a thorough literature review of the past decade related work for the two stages separately is successfully conducted in this paper.

Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) support the harvesting, curating, storage, and sharing of data along with providing access to development, analytic, and visualization tools that enable the building of innovative applications to address broad or specific challenges. SDIs can be especially powerful in bringing together data and tools supporting a particular theme – and this paper discusses and demonstrates the value of an SDI focused on Health. Many potential benefits of a Health SDI are proposed, and the case of supporting emergency response efforts is developed in detail. Leveraging a Health SDI, a Health Risk Index was created that provides emergency response personnel (both Emergency Operations Managers and Emergency Medical Responders) key insights into the unique health risks the impacted population faces due to the disaster. In order to establish the Health Risk Index, datasets from multiple national and global sources representing health data and social data that influences health outcomes – typically called social determinants of health – are harvested, merged, and republished to support further efforts at advancing the Health Risk Index. Visualizations of the Health Risk Index at the global, national, and sub-national levels down to the address level are presented along with demonstrations of its use.

Percutaneous aortic valve replacement (TAVI) has become the treatment of choice for elderly patients with severe aortic valve stenosis because of its less invasiveness compared to surgery. However, it introduces new complications, such as vascular lesions, access site problems, paravalvular leaks, and aortic dissection. Aortic dissection after TAVI is rare but serious, occurring in 0.2% to 0.3% of cases, with both intraprocedural and late cases reported. This case study concerns a 68-year-old woman who developed Stanford B aortic dissection, external iliac artery dissection, and right common femoral artery occlusion after TAVI. Treatment included stenting of the iliac and common femoral arteries, followed by a staged procedure: debranching, thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) and endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR), with satisfactory results. This case, underscores the importance of vigilance in the management of TAVI-related complications to optimize patient care and outcomes.

Pet nutrition awareness has risen enormously, with an increasing interest in homemade diets aimed at controlling food composition. Literature in this field is scarce, especially regarding the homemade diet’s long-term effects on pathological conditions. This prospective study encompassed 167 healthy and sick dogs subjected to a customized dietary plan based on homemade food. After an initial visit, dog owners provided questionnaires with follow-up data on their perceptions of physical signs changes or symptom modifications. 104 (62%) subjects maintained the homemade diet, while 63 reverted to their previous diet. The median follow-up was 14 months. Out of 31 healthy dogs that continued the nutritional plan, 70% exhibited improvements in their coat condition and 47% a decrease in evacuation frequency. Regarding weight loss goals, 67% of dogs achieved their target. The 67 pathological dogs that completed the follow-up were primarily affected by gastrointestinal and dermatological disorders. Dogs with chronic enteropathy improved their symptoms in 95% of the cases, subjects with dermatological pathologies in 83%, and patients presenting both disorders in 100%. These clinical results are promising. Personalized and well-balanced homemade diets noticeably enhanced the overall pet’s health, with almost a complete remission of symptoms in pathological dogs.

This research paper presents a deep learning approach to early detection of skin cancer using image augmentation techniques. The authors propose a two-stage image augmentation technique that involves the use of geometric augmentation and generative adversarial network (GAN) to classify skin lesions as either benign or malignant. This research utilized the public HAM10000 dataset to test the proposed model. Several pre-trained models of CNN were employed, namely Xception, Inceptionv3, Resnet152v2, EfficientnetB7, InceptionresnetV2, and VGG19. Our approach achieved accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score of 96.90%, 97.07%, 96.87%, 96.97%, respectively, which is higher than the performance achieved by other state-of-the-art methods. The paper also discusses the use of SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP), an interpretable technique for skin cancer diagnosis, which can help clinicians understand the reasoning behind the diagnosis and improve trust in the system. Overall, the proposed method presents a promising approach to automated skin cancer detection that could improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs.

Herpes B virus (BV) is a zoonotic virus which can be transmitted from macaques to humans, which is often associated with high mortality rates. Because macaques often exhibit asymptomatic infections, individuals who come into contact with these animals face unexpected risks of BV infections. Serological test is widely performed to investigate BV infections. However, the assay’s sensitivity and specificity appeared to be inadequate, and it does not necessarily indicate ongoing viral shedding. Here, we developed LAMP and qPCR assays aiming to detect BVs with high sensitivity and specificity in various macaque species and validated them using oral swab samples collected from 97 wild cynomolgus macaques living in Thailand. Our LAMP and qPCR assays detected more than 50 and 10 copies of the target sequences per reaction, respectively. The LAMP assay could detect BV within 25 min, indicating its advantages for the rapid detection of BV. Collectively, our findings indicated that both assays developed in this study exhibit advantages and usefulness for BV surveillance and diagnosis of BV infections in macaques. Furthermore, for the first time, we determined the partial genome sequences of BVs detected in cynomolgus macaques in Thailand. Phylogenetic analysis revealed the species-specific evolution of BV within macaques.

The loss of integrity and adverse effect on mechanical properties can be concluded as attributing miro/macro-mechanics damage in structures, especially in composite structures. Damage as a progressive degradation of material continuity in engineering predictions for any aspects of initiation and propagation requires to be identified by a trustworthy mechanism to guarantee the safety of structures. Besides the materials design, structural integrity and health are usually prone to be monitored clearly. One of the most powerful methods for the detection of damage is machine learning (ML). This paper presents the state of the art of ML methods and their applications in structural damage and prediction. Popular ML methods are identified and the performance and future trends are discussed.

The present research intents to study the evolution of the skin fatty acids and physiological disorders through cold storage in ‘Golden Delicious’ apples treated with 1-MCP and calcium. Harvested fruit were treated with calcium chloride (Ca), 1-MCP (MCP), Ca+MCP or no treatment (control) then subjected to cold storage at 0.5 ºC for 6 months. Fatty acids composition, Malondialdehyde (MDA) and the physiological disorders bitter pit (BP), superficial scald and diffuse skin browning (DSB) were measured at harvest and after storage plus 7 days shelf-life at room temperature ≈22 ºC. Palmitic acid decreased and linoleic acid increased through time, while oleic and stearic acids had few changes. Unsaturated/saturated fatty acids and MDA increased through time, despite Ca and Ca+MCP were related to lower MDA and lower BP and rotten fruit, after cold storage and shelf-life. In those treatments, the unsaturated/saturated fatty acids were higher, mainly due to higher linoleic acid and lower palmitic acids. Further research is needed to clarify the changes in membrane properties and the effect of some treatments in response to chilling injury through storage.

Personal protective equipment (P PE) rules must be respected and followed to the letter of healthcare professionals in Cameroon to avoid the transmission of infectious diseases. This research proposes solutions to the problems of non-adherence and non-compliance among healthcare workers in Cameroon towards PPE rules. Inadequate access to suitable PPE, discomfort when wearing PPE during poor quality, and a lack of training on correct PPE use are just a few of these obstacles amongst HCWs in Cameroon. Hospitals and healthcare facilities should prioritize offering thorough instruction on PPE use and pinpoint the need to adhere consistently to PPE rules to remove these obstacles. They should also ensure that all healthcare personnel have access to and a sufficient supply of the proper PPE. Through the organization of impromptu visits by surveillance teams to identify areas of support and training, there is a need for assistance from government bodies and public health groups in creating awareness of the security value of PPE use among healthcare professionals. There is a lack of PPE in health care settings in rural areas in Cameroon, thus a need for an adequate supply. Then can we put appropriate PPE policies and practices for HCWs in Cameroon, as they will keep to it.Healthcare professionals in Cameroon must comprehend that following PPE standards protects not just their selves from diseases but also their patients, coworkers, and communities. We are accountable for ensuring everyone's safety and well-being, and adhering to PPE regulations is an essential first step.

Background: Regular moderate-vigorous intensity exercise is recommended for adults as it can improve longevity and reduce health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle. However, there are barriers to achieving intense exercise that may be addressed using virtual reality (VR) as a tool to promote exercise intensity and adherence, particularly through visual feedback and competition. The purpose of this work is to compare visual feedback and competition within fully-immersive VR to enhance exercise intensity and user experience of exercise for young adults; and to describe and compare visual attention during each of the conditions. Methods: Young adults (21- 34 years old) bicycled in three 5-minute VR conditions (visual feedback, self-competition and competition against others). Exercise intensity (cycling cadence and % of maximum heart rate) and visual attention (derived from a wearable eye tracking sensor) were measured continuously. User experience was measured by an intrinsic motivation questionnaire, perceived effort and participant preference. A repeated measures ANOVA with paired t-test post-hoc tests was conducted to detect differences between conditions. Results: Participants exercised at a higher intensity and had higher intrinsic motivation in the two competitive conditions compared to visual feedback. Further, participants preferred the competitive conditions and only reached a vigorous exercise intensity during self-competition. Visual exploration was higher in visual feedback compared to self-competition. Conclusion: For young adults bicycling in VR, competition promoted higher exercise intensity and motivation compared to visual feedback.

Scedosporium species are human pathogenic fungi, responsible for chronic, localised, and life-threatening disseminated infections in both immunocompetent and immunocompromised individuals. Diagnosis of Scedosporium infections currently relies on non-specific CT, lengthy and insensitive culture from invasive biopsy, and time-consuming histopathology of tissue samples. At present, there are no rapid antigen tests that detect Scedosporium-specific biomarkers. Here we report the development of a rapid (30 min) and sensitive (pmol/L sensitivity) lateral-flow device (LFD) test, incorporating a Scedosporium-specific IgG1 monoclonal antibody (mAb), HG12, which binds to extracellular polysaccharide (EPS) antigens of between ~15 kDa and 250 kDa secreted during hyphal growth of the pathogens. The test is compatible with human serum, and allows the detection of the Scedosporium species most-frequently reported as agents of human disease (Scedosporium apiospermum, Scedosporium aurantiacum, and Scedosporium boydii), with limits of detection (LOD) of the EPS biomarkers in human serum of ~0.81 ng/mL (S. apiospermum), ~0.94 ng/mL (S. aurantiacum), and ~1.95 ng/mL (S. boydii). The Scedosporium-specific LFD (ScedLFD) test therefore provides a potential novel opportunity for the detection of infections caused by different Scedosporium species.

Land use and cover change (LUCC) is an important method to investigate the causes of global environment change. We utilized the emergy ecological footprint (EEF) model to construct a land-use change model to be used as a systematic measuring tool for monitoring sustainable development trends. In particular, we estimated the eco-security of the Cing-jing region as a case study so that responsible agencies can use it to maintain a balance between ecological preservation and tourism development. The results indicated the following: First, the ecological environment of the Cing-jing region satisfied the safety standard in 2008–2014; however, the related indices increased considerably. Second, the grey model predicted a decrease in 2015–2024 ecological carrying capacities of Cing-jing and a large increase in capita EFs, resulting in a larger ecological deficit and higher EFI. The eco-security from 2015–2024 was higher compared to 7 years ago and is predicted to reach the Grade 2 intermediate level in 2022; thus the Cing-jing region is gradually becoming ecologically unsustainable. Strengths of our study included the use of EEF theory in a quantitative analysis of slope lands for the effective evaluation of ecological security. Finally, we expanded our research to include ecological security issues.

In a dual-inertia system based on permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM), the elastic transmission mechanism, such as reducer and coupling, is prone to mechanical resonance, which reduces the precision of servo system transmission. Model prediction and introduction of state feedback are effective methods to suppress mechanical resonance, but the control parameters de-pend on the mechanical parameters of the system. Therefore, mechanical parameter identification is very necessary. In this paper, a forgetting factor recursive least square method is used to identify the mechanical parameters of the dual-inertia elastic system. Firstly, the mathematical model of the dual-inertia system is established and reasonably simplified. Then, the discrete function of the identification algorithm is constructed, and the motor speed and electromagnetic torque are sam-pled to achieve the on-line identification of the main mechanical parameters of the dual-inertia system, and the influencing factors of the identification accuracy are analyzed. Finally, simulations and experiments are carried out to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.

p-type Ag-N dual acceptor doped ZnO thin films with long electrical stability were deposited by DC magnetron reactive co-sputtering technique. After deposition, the films were annealed at 400 °C for one hour in a nitrogen-controlled atmosphere. The deposited films were amorphous. However, after annealing they crystallize in the typical hexagonal wurtzite structure of ZnO. The Ag-N dual acceptors were incorporated substitutionally in the structure of zinc oxide and achieving that the three samples presented the p-type conductivity in the ZnO. Initial electrical properties showed a low resistivity of from 1 to10^{−3} Ω.cm, Hall mobility of tens cm2/V.s and a hole concentration from 10^{17} to 10^{19} cm^{−3}. The electrical stability analysis reveals that the p-type conductivity of the ZnO:Ag,N films is very stable and does not revert to n-type, even after 36 months of aging. These results reveal the feasibility of using these films for applications in short-wavelength or transparent optoelectronic devices.

People are drawn to woodcut-style designs due to their striking visual impact and strong contrast. However, traditional woodcut prints and previous computer-aided methods have not addressed the issues of dwindling design inspiration, lengthy production times, and complex adjustment procedures. We propose a novel network framework, the Woodcut-style Design Assistant Network (WDANet), to tackle these challenges. Notably, our research is the first to utilize diffusion models to streamline the woodcut-style design process. We've curated the Woodcut-62 dataset, featuring works from 62 renowned historical artists, to train WDANet in absorbing and learning the aesthetic nuances of woodcut prints, offering users a wealth of design references. Based on a noise reduction network, our dual cross-attention mechanism effectively integrates text and woodcut-style image features. This allows users to input or slightly modify a text description to quickly generate accurate, high-quality woodcut-style designs, saving time and offering flexibility. As confirmed by user studies, quantitative and qualitative analyses show that WDANet outperforms the current state-of-the-art in generating woodcut-style images and proves its value as a design aid.

Image segmentation is the process of partitioning an image into multiple segments where the goal is to simplify the representation of the image and make the image more meaningful and easier to analyze. In particular, semantic segmentation is an approach of detecting the classes of objects, based on each pixel. In the past, most semantic segmentation models were for only one single style, such as urban street views, medical images, or even Manga. In this paper, we proposed a semantic segmentation model called Dual-Pyramid Wide Residual Network (DPWRN) to solve the segmentation for cross-style datasets, which is suitable for diverse segmentation applications. The DPWRN integrated the Pyramid of Kernel paralleled with Dilation (PKD) and Multi-Feature Fusion (MFF) to improve the accuracy of segmentation. To evaluate the generalization of the DPWRN and its superiority over most state-of-the-art models, three datasets with completely different styles are tested in the experiments. Finally, the DPWRN verified its generalization and also showed its superiority over most state-of-the-art models.

5G low-earth orbit satellite communications offer enhanced wireless coverage beyond the reach of 5G terrestrial networks, with important implications, particularly for automated and connected vehicles. Such wireless automotive mass-market applications demand well-designed compact user equipment antenna terminals offering non-terrestrial jointly with terrestrial communications. The antenna should be low-profile, conformal, and meet specific parameter values for gain and operational frequency bandwidth, tailored to the intended applications, in line with the aesthetic design requirements of passenger cars. This work presents an original concept for a dual-band nested circularly polarized automotive user terminal that operates at the S-band frequencies around 3.5 GHz and Ka-band frequencies around 28 GHz, namely within the 5G new-radio bands n78 and n257, respectively. The proposed terminal is designed to be integrated into the plastic components of a passenger vehicle. The arrays consist of 2×2 aperture-coupled corner-truncated microstrip slot patch antenna elements for the n78 band and of 4×4 single-layer edge-truncated microstrip circular slot patch antenna elements for the n257 band. The embedded arrays offer, across the two bands, respectively 9.9 and 13.7 dBi measured realized gain and 3-dB axial ratio bandwidths of 100 and 1500 MHz for the n78 and n257 bands along the broadside direction. Detailed link budget calculations anticipate uplink data rates of 21 and 6 Mbit/s, respectively, deeming it suitable for various automotive mobility and internet-of-things applications.

Vehicle re-identification research under surveillance cameras has yielded impressive results. However, the challenge of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-based vehicle re-identification (ReID) presents a high degree of flexibility, mainly due to complicated shooting angles, occlusions, low discrimination of top-down features, and significant changes in vehicle scales. To address this, we propose a novel Dual Mixing Attention Network (DMANet) to extract discriminative features robust to variations in viewpoint. Specifically, we first present a plug-and-play Dual Mixing Attention Module (DMAM) to capture pixel-level pairwise relationships and channel dependencies, where DMAM is composed of Spatial Mixing Attention (SMA) and Channel Mixing Attention (CMA). First, the original feature is divided according to the dimensions of spatial and channel to obtain multiple subspaces. Then, a learnable weight is applied to capture the dependencies between local features in the mixture space. Finally, the features extracted from all subspaces are aggregated to promote their comprehensive feature interaction. Moreover, the DMAM can be readily inserted into backbone networks at any depth to improve vehicle discrimination. The experiments show that the proposed structure gains a better performance compared with the representative methods in the UAV-based vehicle ReID task. Our code and models will be publicly released.

Background: Patients undergoing dual antiplatelet therapy (DAPT) may experience recurrent gastrointestinal bleeding (GIB). We investigated the clinical characteristics and risk factors for recurrent non-variceal upper gastrointestinal bleeding (NVUGIB) in patients who had experienced NVUGIB during receiving DAPT. Methods: We enrolled patients diagnosed with NVUGIB during receiving DAPT between 2006 and 2020. Definite bleeding was confirmed by esophagogastroduodenoscopy in all NVUGIB patients. Results: A total of 124 patients were diagnosed with NVUGIB during receiving DAPT. Male was predominant (n = 103, 83.1%), bleeding mostly from the stomach (n = 94, 75.8%) and peptic ulcers (n = 72, 58.1%). After successful hemostasis of NVUGIB, 36 patients (29.0%) experienced at least one episode of recurrent upper GIB, 19 patients (15.3%) died, and 7 (5.6%) patients had a bleeding-related death. Multivariate analysis showed that age was a significant factor for re-bleeding (odds ratio [OR],1.050; 95% confidence interval [CI]:1.001-1.102, P-value:0.047), all-cause mortality (OR,1.096; 95% CI:1.020-1.178, P=0.013), and re-bleeding related mortality (OR,1.187; 95% CI:1.032-1.364, P-value:0.016). In Kaplan-Meier analysis, the cumulative probabilities of re-bleeding, death, and bleeding-related death were significantly higher in patients aged 70 and older (P=0.008, &lt;0.001, and 0.009, respectively). Conclusion: Clinicians should be cautious about re-bleeding and mortality when elderly patients who experienced NVUGIB during receiving DAPT.Keywords: dual antiplatelet therapy; upper gastrointestinal tract; bleeding; mortality

The phenomenon of seat occupancy in university libraries is a prevalent issue. However, existing solutions, such as software-based seat reservations and sensors-based occupancy detection, have proven to be inadequate in effectively addressing this problem. In this study, we propose a novel approach: a serial dual-channel object detection model based on Faster RCNN. Furthermore, we develop a user-friendly web interface and mobile APP to create a computer vision-based platform for library seat occupancy detection. To construct our dataset, we combine real-world data collection with UE5 virtual reality. The results of our tests also demonstrate that the utilization of personalized virtual dataset significantly enhances the performance of the convolutional neural network (CNN) in dedicated scenarios. The serial dual-channel detection model comprises three essential steps. Firstly, we employ Faster RCNN algorithm to determine whether a seat is occupied by an individual. Subsequently, we utilize an object classification algorithm based on transfer learning, to classify and identify images of unoccupied seats. This eliminates the need for manual judgment regarding whether a person is suspected of occupying a seat. Lastly, the web interface and APP provide seat information to librarians and students respectively, enabling comprehensive services. By leveraging deep learning methodologies, this research effectively addresses the issue of seat occupancy in library systems. It significantly enhances the accuracy of seat occupancy recognition, reduces the computational resources required for training CNNs, and greatly improves the efficiency of library seat management.

Holistic information integrity for managing wicked problems, developing equity is getting attention. Artifitial intelligence based topologies, dual sensor-information nodes, are prototyped to offer more availability, reliability, maintainability for operating healthy urbanism. Bipartite spider-webs, cube-connected cycles are aimed in ‘the radial-ring urban-building skeleton’ and ‘wetlands and sparsely populated areas’, respectively. Furthermore, honeycomb tori, mathematical HT(m), m≥2, for tasks related to wireless communications, are found having two mutually independent Hamiltonian paths (MIHP). This parallelism creates dual cipher-coding, supports logistic privacy, and help prevent information loss, electromagnetic interference, unexpected changes caused by such as clogged water.

Single nanowires (NWs) are of great importance for optoelectronic applications, especially solar cells serving as powering nanoscale devices. However, weak off-resonant absorption can limit its light-harvesting capability. Here, we propose a single NW coated with the graded-index dual shells (DSNW). We demonstrate that with appropriate thickness and refractive index of the inner shell, the DSNW exhibits significantly enhanced light trapping compared with the bare NW (BNW), and the NW only coated with the outer shell (OSNW) and the inner shell (ISNW), which can be attributed to the optimal off-resonant absorption mode profiles due to the improved coupling between the reemitted light of the transition modes of the leak mode resonances of the Si core and the nanofocusing light from the dual shells with the graded refractive index. We found that the light absorption can be engineered via tuning the thickness and the refractive index of the inner shell, the photocurrent density is significantly enhanced by 134% (56%, 12%) in comparison with that of the BNW (OSNW, ISNW). This work advances our understanding of how to improve off-resonant absorption by applying graded dual-shell design and provides a new choice for designing high-efficiency single NW photovoltaic devices.

Promoter choice is an essential consideration for transgene expression in gene therapy. The expression of multiple genes requires ribosomal entry or skip sites, or the use of multiple promoters. Promoters systems comprised of two separate, divergent promoters may significantly increase the size of genetic cassettes intended for use in gene therapy. However, an alternative approach is to use a single, compact bidirectional promoter. We identified strong and stable bidirectional activity of the RPBSA synthetic promoter comprised of a fragment of the human Rpl13a promoter, together with additional intron / exon structures. The Rpl13a-based promoter drove long-term bidirectional activity of fluorescent proteins. Similar results were obtained for the EF1-α and LMP2/TAP1 promoters. However, in a lentiviral vector, the divergent bidirectional systems failed to produce sufficient titres to translate into an expression system for dual chimeric antigen receptors (CAR) expression. Although bidirectional promoters show excellent applicability to drive short RNA in Sleeping Beauty transposon systems, their possible use in the lentiviral applications requiring longer and more complex RNA, such as dual CAR cassettes, is limited.

In recent years, researchers have paid increasing attention on hyperspectral image (HSI) classification using deep learning methods. To improve the accuracy and reduce the training samples, we propose a double-branch dual-attention mechanism network (DBDA) for HSI classification in this paper. Two branches are designed in DBDA to capture plenty of spectral and spatial features contained in HSI. Furthermore, a channel attention block and a spatial attention block are applied to these two branches respectively, which enables DBDA to refine and optimize the extracted feature maps. A series of experiments on four hyperspectral datasets show that the proposed framework has superior performance to the state-of-the-art algorithm, especially when the training samples are signally lacking.

In this paper, modification of dual-Halbach permanent magnet (PM) array is investigated to improve performance of tubular linear machine, in terms of flux density and output power. Instead of a classical Halbach array with only radial and axial PMs, proposed model involves insertion of mig-magnets, which have magnetized angle shifted from the reference magnetized angles of axial and radial PMs. This structure leads to elimination of flux leakage and concentration of flux linkage in middle of the coil; therefore, the performance of machine is increased.

The mitigation of NLOS (non-line-of-sight) propagation conditions is one of main challenges in wireless signals based indoor localization. When RFID localization technology is applied in applications, RSS fluctuates frequently due to the shade and multipath effect of RF signal, which could result in localization inaccuracy. In particularly, when tags carriers are walking in LOS (line-of-sight) and NLOS hybrid environment, great attenuation of RSS will happen, which would result in great location deviation. The paper proposes an IMU-assisted (Inertial Measurement Unit) RFID based indoor localization in LOS/NLOS hybrid environment. The proposed method includes three improvements over previous RSS based positioning methods: IMU aided RSS filtering, IMU aided LOS/NLOS distinguishing and IMU aided LOS/NLOS environment switching. Also, CRLB (Cramér-Rao Low Bound) is calculated to prove theoretically that indoor positioning accuracy for proposed method in LOS/NLOS mixed environment is higher than position precision of only use RSS information. Simulation and experiments are conducted to show that proposed method can reduce the mean positioning error to around 3 meters without site survey.

The aim of this research is to expand recent developments in the mapping of pasture yield with remotely piloted aircraft systems to that of satellite-borne imagery. Up to date, spatially explicit and accurate information of the pasture resource base is needed for improved climate-adapted livestock rangeland grazing. This study developed deep learning predictive models of pasture yield, as total standing dry matter in tonnes per hectare (TSDM(tha−1)), from field measurements and both remotely piloted aircraft systems and satellite imagery. Repeated remotely piloted aircraft system structure measurements derived from structure from motion photogrammetry, provided measures of pasture biomass from many overlapping high-resolution images. Repeated remotely piloted aircraft system measures throughout a growing season, were modelled with persistent photosynthetic pasture responses from various Planet Dove high spatial resolution satellite image-derived vegetation indices. Pasture height modelling as an input to the modelling of yield was assessed against terrestrial laser scanning and reported correlation coefficients (R2) from 0.3 to 0.8 for both a coastal grassland and inland woodland pasture. Accuracy of the predictive modelling from both the remotely piloted aircraft system and the Planet Dove satellite image estimates of pasture yield ranged from 0.8 to 1.8 TSDM(tha−1). These results indicated that the practical application of repeated remotely piloted aircraft system derived measures of pasture yield can, with some limitations, be scaled-up to satellite-borne imagery to provide more temporally and spatially explicit measures of the pasture resource base.

Nano- and microparticles are increasingly widely used in biomedical research and applications, particularly as specific labels and targeted delivery vehicles. Silica has long been considered the best material for such vehicles, but it has some disadvantages limiting its potential, such as the proneness of silica-based carriers to spontaneous drug release. Calcium carbonate (CaCO3) is an emerging alternative, being easily available, cost-effective, biocompatible material with high porosity and surface reactivity, which makes it an attractive choice for targeted drug delivery. CaCO3 particles are used in this field in the form of either bare CaCO3 microbeads or core/shell microparticles representing polymer-coated CaCO3 cores. In addition, they serve as removable templates for obtaining hollow polymer microcapsules. Each of these types of particles has its specific advantages in terms of biomedical applications. CaCO3 microbeads are primarily used due to their capacity for carrying pharmaceutics, whereas core/shell systems ensure better protection of the drug-loaded core from the environment. Hollow polymer capsules are particularly attractive because they can encapsulate large amounts of pharmaceutical agents and can be so designed as to release their contents in the target site in response to specific stimuli. This review focuses first on the chemistry of the CaCO3 cores, core/shell microbeads, and polymer microcapsules. Then, systems using these structures for the delivery of therapeutic agents, including drugs, proteins, and DNA, are outlined. The results of systematic analysis of available data are presented. They show that the encapsulation of various therapeutic agents in CaCO3-based microbeads or polymer microcapsules is a promising technique of drug delivery, especially in cancer therapy, enhancing drug bioavailability and specific targeting of cancer cells while reducing side effects. To date, research in CaCO3-based microparticles and polymer microcapsules assembled on CaCO3 templates has mainly dealt with their properties in vitro, whereas their in vivo behavior still remains poorly studied. However, an enormous potential of these highly biocompatible carriers for in vivo applications is undoubted. This last issue is addressed in depth in the Conclusion and Outlook sections of the review.

Background Eating disorders are complex illnesses with serious long-term consequences. They are linked to negative outcomes such as miscarriage, low birth weight, and other obstetric and postpartum difficulties. Our study in Muscat, Oman, examines the eating habits of pregnant women who consult primary care physicians. We aim to understand how eating disorders affect pregnant women and inform more effective interventions. Method We used the Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire to assess the potential for the presence of eating disorders. Chi-Square and Fisher's Exact tests were used to analyze relationships between improper eating behavior and independent variables. Results The study showed that 1.6% of participants had a potential diagnosis of an eating disorder, with the most common inappropriate behavior being binge-eating at a prevalence of 18.8%. A pre- gestational low Body Mass Index (BMI) was associated with a higher prevalence of binge eating during pregnancy. Additionally, we found that pregnant women who were working were more prone to self-induced vomiting. High BMI before pregnancy was significantly associated with various inappropriate eating behaviors such as restraint behavior (p = 0.000), shape concern (p = 0.000), weight concern (p = 0.040), eating (p = 0.045), laxative use (p = 0.020), and excessive exercise (p = 0.043). Conclusion The study reveals a high prevalence of eating disorders in pregnancy. Less educated women exhibit higher laxative use, while working women show more instances of binge eating and self-induced vomiting. These findings emphasize the critical need to prioritize targeted interventions and support for vulnerable pregnant women.

Abstract: Physicians, physical therapists, and occupational therapists have traditionally assessed hand motor function in hemiplegic patients but often struggle to evaluate complex hand move-ments. To address this issue, in 2019, we developed Fahrenheit, a device and algorithm that uses infrared camera image processing to estimate hand paralysis. However, due to Fahrenheit's de-pendency on specialized equipment, we conceived a simpler solution: developing a smartphone app that integrates MediaPipe. The objective of this study was to measure hand movements in stroke patients using both MediaPipe and Fahrenheit and to assess their criterion-related validity. The analysis revealed moderate-to-high correlations between the two methods. Consistent results were also observed in the peak angle and velocity comparisons across severity stages. Because Fahrenheit determines finger recovery status based on these measures, it has the potential to transfer this function to MediaPipe. This study highlighted the potential use of MediaPipe in pa-ralysis estimation applications.

Abstract: The use of IVF and related procedures has offered opportunities for couples to conceive who otherwise would remain childless. This technology is often viewed as the only option but is very expensive and not highly effective. ln an effort to improve access to care, governments are attempting to provide funding. In Ireland for example the Health Service Executive (HSE) has recently made IVF funding available through Regional Fertility Hubs. for couples who qualify. However, this policy has threatened a less invasive approach available in Ireland that can help many couples before IVF is employed. We propose that a newly emerging “medical treatment process” called Restorative Reproductive Medicine (RRM), combined with methods or apps that track biomarkers of the menstrual cycle as a prerequisite option for appropriate patients. To illustrate the effectiveness, we compared live birth rates from an established Irish RRM clinic that uses the ChartNeo app to HFEA (Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority) data, both from 2019. RRM treatment had a live birth rate of 40.4% compared to 24.4% per treatment cycle for IVF (P>0.0001). RRM twin pregnancy rate was 2.5% compared to 7% for IVF. RRM babies were usually full term and normal birth weight. Therefore, RRM is less expensive, less invasive, and more effective than IVF for most patients. This merits further evaluation and support by the HSE and other global authorities guiding health policy.

Biofilter application for treatment of stormwater containing de-icing chemicals commonly applied in airports, propylene glycol and potassium formate, was investigated. Lab-scale adsorption tests using filter media made of crushed clay (Filtralite) and granular activated carbon showed that adsorption was unsuitable for removal of propylene glycol and potassium formate. Column filtration experiment testing two different crushed clay size ranges was conducted. The results showed that DOC removal was dependent on a number of factors. This study investigated the impact of filter depth, nutrients addition, and filtration rate. DOC removal suggested that DOC degradation occurred on the top filter layer. It was shown that the most active separation occurred in the first ~20 cm of filter depth. This was confirmed by results from water quality analysis (i.e. DOC removal and ATP measurement) and calculations based on a filtration performance analysis (Iwasaki model) and filter hydraulic evaluation (Lindquist diagram). It was shown that for the highest C:N:P ratio tested (molar ratio of 24:7:1), 50-60% DOC removal was achieved. Addition of nutrients was found important and determining the biofilter performance.

Advanced air treatment systems have the potential to reduce airborne infection risk, improve indoor air quality (IAQ) and reduce energy consumption, but few studies reported practical implementation and performance. PlasmaShield®, an advanced multi-modal HVAC-integrated system was directly compared with a standard MERV-13 system in a post-surgical pediatric healthcare setting. The evaluation entailed monitoring of multi-size airborne particles, bioaerosols and key IAQ parameters. Measurements were made of outside air, recovery room supply air and air in the occupied space for 3 days prior to, and after, installation of the PlasmaShield system. Compared with the existing arrangement, very significant reductions in particle number concentrations were observed in the occupied space, especially with virus-like submicron particles. Significant reductions in airborne culturable bacteria and fungi were observed in the supply air, with more modest reductions in the occupied space. In the case of virus-like particles, there was an 8-fold improvement in equivalent clean air, suggesting a 5-fold infection risk reduction for long range exposure. The data suggest multiple benefits of airborne particle and biaerosol reduction, with applications beyond healthcare. Long term studies are recommended to confirm the combined IAQ, health and energy benefits.

Maternal obesity and/or Western diet (WD) is associated with increased risk of metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) in offspring, driven, in part, by dysregulation of the early life microbiome. Here, using a mouse model of WD-induced maternal obesity, we demonstrate that exposure to a disordered microbiome from WD-fed dams suppressed circulating levels of endogenous ligands of the aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR; indole, indole-3-acetate) and TMAO (a product of AHR-mediated transcription), as well as hepatic expression of Il10 (an AHR target), in offspring at 3 weeks of age. This signature was recapitulated by fecal microbial transfer from WD-fed pregnant dams to chow-fed germ-free (GF) lactating dams following parturition, and was associated with reduced abundance of Lactobacillus in GF offspring. Further, expression of Il10 was downregulated in liver myeloid cells and in LPS-stimulated bone marrow-derived macrophages (BMDM) in adult offspring, suggestive of a hypo-responsive, or tolerant, innate immune response. BMDMs from adult mice lacking AHR in macrophages exhibited a similar tolerogenic response, including diminished expression of Il10. Overall, our study shows that exposure to maternal WD alters microbial metabolites in the offspring that affect AHR signaling, potentially contributing to innate immune hypo-responsiveness and progression of MASLD, and highlights the impact of early life gut dysbiosis on offspring metabolism. Further investigations are warranted to elucidate the complex interplay between maternal diet, gut microbial function, and development of neonatal innate immune tolerance and potential therapeutic interventions targeting these pathways.

This study aimed to investigate the potential of Cord Blood Stem Cell-derived exosome vesicles (CBSC-EVs) in regulating cancer growth and preventing cellular damage. The study aimed to examine the effects of CBSC-EVs on CHL1 cancer cells and healthy fibroblasts. The study results reveal that CBSC-EVs have an anti-cancer/antioxidant effect on CHL1 cancer cells without inducing any toxic effects on healthy lymphocytes. Further analysis of CBSC-EVs revealed the presence of seven miRNAs (noncoding RNA molecules), including three from the Let 7 family, two from the Let 5 family, and two novel miRNAs. The function of the novel miRNAs was the main focus of the study. To assess the efficacy of CBSC-EVs, CHL1 cells (a type of malignant melanoma cell line) and human fibroblasts were grouped into different treatments. One group of those cell lines were treated with CBSC-EVs, and in the second group, the cells were transfected with either miRNA inhibitor Novel 1 (miRNA IN1) plus CBSC-EVs or miRNA inhibitor Novel 2 (miRNA IN2) and CBSC-EVs to knock down those novel miRNAs in the CBSC-EVs. Therefore, by comparing these groups, the function of novel miRNAs is more understandable. In this study, the Comet assay was employed to evaluate cancer cells' DNA damage and CCK8 to measure cell viability. The findings revealed that CBSC-EVs caused an increase in DNA damage in CHL1 cells compared to cells without treatment (p

Objective: SARS-CoV-2 remains the third most common cause of death in North America. We studied methotrexate and tumor necrosis factor inhibitor (TNFi) effects on neutralization responses post-COVID vaccination, in immune-mediated inflammatory disease(IMID). Methods: Prospective data and sera on adults with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), spondyloarthritis (SpA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and systemic lupus (SLE) were collected at 6 academic centres in Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec between 2022-2023. Sera from two time points were evaluated for each subject. Neutralization studies were divided between 5 laboratories, and each lab’s results analyzed separately using multivariate generalized logit models (ordinal outcomes: absent, low, medium, and high neutralization). Odds ratios (ORs) for methotrexate and TNFi effects were adjusted for demographics, IMID, other biologics and immunosuppressives, prednisone, COVID vaccinations (number/type), and infections in the 6 months prior to sample. Adjusted ORs for methotrexate and TNFi were then pooled in random-effects meta-analyses (separately for ancestral, and Omicron BA1 and BA5 strains). Results: Of 479 individuals (958 samples), 292 (61%) were IBD, 141 (29.4%) RA, and the remainder PsA, SpA and SLE. Mean age was 57 (62.2 % female). For both individual labs and the meta-analyses, adjusted ORs suggested independent negative effects of TNFi and methotrexate on neutralization. The meta-analysis adjusted ORs for TNFi were 0.56 (95% confidence interval, CI 0.39, 0.81) for the ancestral strain and 0.56 (95% CI 0.39, 0.81) for BA5. The meta-analysis adjusted OR for methotrexate was 0.39 (95% CI 0.19, 0.76) for BA1. Conclusions: SARS-CoV-2 neutralization in vaccinated IMID was diminished independently by TNFi and methotrexate. As SARS-CoV-2 circulation continues, ongoing vigilance regarding optimized vaccination is required.

Combined radiation with hemorrhage (combined injury, CI), exacerbates hematopoietic acute radiation syndrome and mortality compared to radiation alone (RI). We evaluated the effects of RI or CI on blood cell depletion as a biomarker to differentiate the two. Male CD2F1 mice were exposed to 8.75 Gy γ- radiation (60Co). Within 2 h of RI, animals were bled under anesthesia 0% (RI) or 20% (CI) of total blood volume. Blood samples were collected at 4-5 h and days 1, 2, 3, 7, and 15 after RI. CI decreased WBC at 4-5 h and continued to decrease them until day 3; counts then stayed at the nadir up to day 15. CI decreased neutrophils, lymphocytes, monocytes, eosinophils and basophils more than RI on day 1 or day 2. CI decreased RBCs, hemoglobin and hematocrit on days 7 and 15 compared to RI, whereas Hemorrhage alone returned to the baseline on days 7 and 15. RBCs depleted after CI faster than post RI. Hemorrhage alone increased platelet counts on days 2, 3, and 7, which returned to the baseline on day 15. Our data suggest that WBC depletion may be a biomarker within 2 days post-CI and RBC depletion after 3 days post-CI.

Introduction: Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women globally and the most common cancer in Tanzania, resulting in about 9772 new cases and 6695 deaths each year. Research has shown an association between low levels of risk perception and knowledge of the prevention, risks, signs, etiology, and treatment of cervical cancer and low screening uptake, as contributing to high rates of cervical cancer-related mortality. However, there is scant literature on the perspectives of a wider group of stakeholders (e.g., policymakers, healthcare providers (HCPs), and women at risk), especially those living in rural and semi-rural settings. Methods: We adapted Risso-Gill and colleagues’ framework for a Health Systems Appraisal (HSA), to identify HCPs' perspective of the extent to which health system requirements for effective cervical cancer screening, prevention, and control are in place in Tanzania. We adapted interview topic guides for cervical cancer screening using the HSA framework approach. Study participants (69 in total) were interviewed between 2014-2018 –participants included key stakeholders, HCPs, and women at risk for cervical cancer. The data was analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis methodology. Results: Seven themes emerged from our analysis of semi-structured interviews and focus groups: 1) knowledge of cervical cancer risk and the role of screening and preventive care/services (e.g., prevention, risks, signs, etiology, and treatment), 2) training and knowledge of HCPs, 3) knowledge of cervical cancer screening among women at risk, 4) beliefs about cervical cancer screening, 5) role of traditional medicine, 6) risk factors, and 7) symptoms and signs. Conclusion: It is evident that there is a low level of knowledge of cervical cancer risk and the role of screening and preventive services among stakeholders, HCPs, and women living in rural and semi-rural locations in Tanzania. There is a critical need to implement more initiatives and programs to increase the uptake of screening and related services and allow women to make more informed decisions on their health.

Background: Platelets are increasingly recognised for their multifaceted roles in inflammation beyond their traditional involvement in haemostasis. This review consolidates knowledge on platelets as critical players in inflammatory responses. Methods: This study did an extensive search of electronic databases and identified studies on platelets in inflammation, focusing on molecular mechanisms, cell interactions, and clinical implications, emphasising recent publications. Results: Platelets contribute to inflammation via surface receptors, release of mediators, and participation in neutrophil extracellular trap formation. They are implicated in diseases like atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and sepsis, highlighting their interaction with immune cells as pivotal in the onset and resolution of inflammation. Conclusion: Platelets are central to regulating inflammation, offering new therapeutic targets for inflammatory diseases. Future research should explore specific molecular pathways of platelets in inflammation for therapeutic intervention.

Thalassemia is a common monogenic autosomal disorder prevalent in India. HbE beta thalassemia is a compound heterozygous state of two different beta globin mutations (HBB), predominant in the Eastern India. In HbE-beta thalassemia (β⁺/β°) patients, one HBB mutation does not produce any functional protein (β°); another mutation produces a structural altered haemoglobin, variant E (β⁺). It has been observed that in HbE-beta thalassemia patients with same type of HBB mutations, there exist diverse phenotypic presentation ranging from very severe, with regular transfusion-dependence to clinically non severe requiring very less transfusion or no transfusion. To explore this phenotypic mystery, we performed trio based expanded whole exome sequencing (WES) of two extreme phenotypes of HbE beta thalassemia subjects with similar HBB genotype and their parents. For WES library preparation, Agilent Sure select V6+UTR kit was used and sequencing was done through the Illumina HiSeq 2500 platform. This study aimed to search for de novo or inherited variants associated with the clinical severity. Six significant inherited variants were found in the genes, ATOH8, TTLL4, P2RX7, PRSS54, SLC9C2 and VRK2 in severe subject, however only one significant inherited variant in MTRR gene was found in non-severe subject. Bioinformatic analysis also confirms that each variant significantly changes in respective protein structure. The identified genes were either associated with iron absorption, oxidative stress, hematopoietic stem cell differentiation, structural organization of RBC cytoskeleton or regulating anemia. No significant de novo variant were identified associated with clinical severity. The finding of this study indicates that the combined effect of mutation load in major pathways may responsible for severe phenotype.

This study aimed to translate and validate the Genomic Nursing Concept Inventory (GNCI) in Greek, analyze the genomic knowledge of nurses in Crete, Greece, and explore potential factors that could affect it. This cross-sectional study included 324 nurses from public hospitals and primary care units between July and December 2022. The GNCI is a 31-item questionnaire that evaluates genomic nursing concepts, but it has not been translated and validated in Greek. The translation process included independent forward translations, reconciliation, and back-translation. To evaluate internal consistency, Cronbach’s alpha was used, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to determine the fit of the model. Multiple linear regression analysis was performed to examine the associations between the demographic variables and GNCI scores. The internal consistency of the GNCI was acceptable (Cronbach’s alpha= 0.622). The CFA indicated that the one-factor model had an adequate fit (SRMR = 0.076, CD = 0.677, CFI = 0.744). The mean GNCI score was moderate (0.35±0.14). Regression analysis suggested that only gender could affect GNCI scores, with female nurses scoring higher than male nurses (p&gt;0.001). In conclusion, the Greek version of the GNCI is a reliable tool for assessing genomic knowledge among Greek nurses.

Glioblastoma (GBM) is a prevalent type of malignancy within the central nervous system (CNS), associated with a poor prognosis. The standard treatment for GBM includes surgical resection of the tumor, followed by radiotherapy and chemotherapy; yet despite these interventions, overall treatment outcomes remain suboptimal. The blood-brain barrier (BBB), which plays a crucial role in maintaining the stability of brain tissue under normal physiological conditions of the CNS,also poses a significant obstacle to the effective delivery of therapeutic agents to GBM. Recent preclinical studies have demonstrated that nanomedicine delivery systems (NDDS) offer promising results, demonstrating both effective GBM targeting and safety, thereby presenting a potential solution for targeted drug delivery. This review explores the various strategies employed in preclinical studies to overcome the BBB for drug delivery. Subsequently, the results of clinical translation of NDDS has been summarized, highlighting the progress made. Finally, we discuss potential strategies for advancing NDDS development and accelerating their translational research through well-designed clinical trials in GBM therapy.

Abstract: Background: MAb114, REGN-EB3, Remdesivir, and ZMapp, which are monoclonal antibody-based treatments, have been compared and shown to be promising therapies against the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD). There has been no comparison between these med-ications and standard treatment (without antiviral). Our study aimed to examine the con-tribution of each regimen compared to standard treatment on the survival of EVD patients and assess whether this association was modified by EVD vaccination (rVSV-ZEBOV Ebola vaccine) status. Methodology: We performed a secondary analysis of data obtained from four EVD treatment centers located in Katwa, Mangina, Butembo, and Beni in the North Kivu region. The main outcome measure was mortality within a 28-day period. A Cox model was used to identify predictors of survival in hospitalized EVD patients. Results: Vaccinated EVD patients were 1.7 times less likely to die compared to unvac-cinated patients (3.70 days vs. 5.00 days; p=0.0002). Delaying care and treatment at EVD treatment centres increased mortality risk by 5% for each day following symptom onset. Compared to the standard treatment group, adjusted mortality rates were significantly re-duced in the groups receiving MAb114 (0.29, p

Background : The multisystem manifestations of Fabry disease can create major challenges in patient care. Although enzyme replacement therapy with recombinant agalsidase beta has demonstrated clinical benefits, the standard fortnightly, multihour infusion regimen imposes a substantial burden on patients. Methods : We assessed the safety and feasibility of shortening the agalsidase beta infusion time to 90 minutes in adult patients with classic or later-onset Fabry disease in the absence of premedication. A total of 39 consecutive adult patients (agalsidase-naive: n=6; significant comorbidities: n=15) with no recent infusion-associated reactions underwent a total of 85 agalsidase beta infusions in our tertiary reference center for lysosomal diseases. Each infusion was administered at a constant rate (between 0.78 and 1.17 mg/min, depending on the patient’s body weight). Results : No adverse events of any type (including discomfort and infusion-associated reactions) were reported during or after infusions. The patients’ vital signs remained stable, and patient satisfaction was high. Seven patients requested even shorter infusions (50 to 60 minutes) under strict medical supervision. Conclusions : Our results suggest that shortening the agalsidase beta infusion time to 90 minutes is safe and feasible in stably treated adult patients with Fabry disease and no recent infusion-associated reactions.

Background : Diabetic wounds are very easy to experience complications in the form of infection due to bacterial invasion, and sugar conditions blood which tall encourage the growth of bacteria.Bacteria that can cause infection in diabetic wounds wrong one is staphylococci aureus . Wound diabetes can treated with honey. Honey contains antibacterial , antioxidant and hydrogen peroxide properties that help kill bacteria dangerous. Objective : The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of the wound dressing contains honey against bacterial colonization Staphylococcus aureus on wound diabetic . Methods : The research design used is pre-experimental with o ne-group pre-test and post-test design . Sampling method using consecutive sampling as many as 7 respondents. Results : Analysis data use test dependent t-test and obtained score p value 0.000 ( p value < = 0.05), so could concluded there is influence care wound use honey to colonization bacteria Staphylococcus aureus in wounds diabetic Diabetes Mellitus patients in the region work Public health center Banjarmasin . Conclusion : best Use honey as product care wound because nature the antibacterial which could prevent infection and speed up process healing wound .

KLHL genes and the related KBTBD genes encode components of the Cullin-E3 ubiquitin ligase complex and typically target tissue-specific proteins for degradation, thereby affecting differentiation, homeostasis, metabolism, cell signaling, and the oxidative stress response. Despite their importance in normal cell function and in disease (KLHL40, KLHL41, KBTBD13, KEAP1, and ENC1), previous studies that examined epigenetic factors affecting transcription were predominantly limited to promoter DNA methylation. Using diverse tissue and cell culture whole-genome profiles, we examined 17 KLHL or KBTBD genes preferentially expressed in skeletal muscle or brain to identify tissue-specific enhancer and promoter chromatin, open chromatin (DNaseI hypersensitivity), and DNA hypomethylation. Sixteen of the 17 genes displayed muscle- or brain-specific enhancer chromatin in their gene bodies, and most exhibited specific intergenic enhancer chromatin as well. Seven genes were embedded in a super-enhancer. The enhancer chromatin regions typically displayed foci of DNA hypomethylation at peaks of open chromatin. In addition, we found evidence that gene neighbors (HHATL and FBXO32) of KLHL40 and KLHL38 harbor enhancer chromatin that likely upregulates the adjacent KLHL gene. Many KLHL/KBTBD genes had tissue-specific promoter chromatin at their 5’ ends, but surprisingly, two (KBTBD11 and KLHL31) had constitutively unmethylated promoter chromatin in their 3’ exons that overlaps a retrotransposed KLHL gene. Our findings demonstrate the importance of expanding epigenetic analyses beyond the 5’ ends of genes in studies of normal and abnormal gene regulation.

While some research supports utilizing plain radiography for measuring biomechanical alignment of the spine for prognosis and treatment, there are contrasting viewpoints regarding both the value and utilization of these procedures in conservative care. Evaluation of both conservative and non-conservative approaches to spinal care revealed vast differences in radiographic utilization and interpretation between orthopedic surgeons, primary care physicians, chiropractic physicians, and physical therapists, which may account for the different viewpoints and rationale in the literature. A research summary is provided regarding the various methods of spinal analysis utilized by these professions to help determine if there is any unique diagnostic or prognostic value associated with radiographic utilization that could assist in advancing conservative spinal assessment and treatment. Understanding any unique value provided through biomechanical assessment utilizing plain radiography of the spine established in the literature may help chiropractic physicians determine the appropriate use of radiographic procedures in clinical practice and how to coordinate efforts with other conservative and non-conservative professions to improve spinal healthcare.

Environmental estrogen pollution and estrogen effects on the female reproduction system are well-recognized scientifically. Among the estrogens, 17 β-estradiol is a priority in environmental estrogen pollution, and it is also a major contributor to estrogen which regulates the female reproduction system. 17 β-estradiol is carcinogen and has a tumor promotion effect relating to breast cancer, lung cancer and others. It also affects the psychological well-being such as depression, fatigue and others. Thus, a simple method of detection of 17 β-estradiol will be important for both environmental estrogen pollution and women’s health care. This study demonstrates a simple-use, cost effective 17 β-estradiol biosensor system which can be used for both environment and women’s health care applications. The bio-recognition mechanism is based on the influence of the redox couple, K₃Fe (CN) ₆/K₄Fe (CN) ₆ by the interaction between 17 β-estradiol antigen and its α-receptor (ER- α; α-estrogen antibody). The transduction mechanism is an electrochemical analytical technique, differential pulse voltammetry (DPV). The levels of 17 β-estradiol antigen studied was between 2.25 pg/mL to 2,250 pg/mL, Phosphate buffered saline (PBS), tap water from the Cleveland regional water district, and simulate urine were used as the test media covering the potential application areas for 17 β-estradiol detection. An interference study by testosterone which has a similar chemical structure and molecular weight as those of 17 β-estradiol was carried out, and this 17 β-estradiol biosensor showed excellent specificity without any interference by similar chemicals.

This study addresses the urgent need for sustainable protein sources in aquaculture due to the depletion of marine resources and rising costs. Animal protein sources, particularly poultry by-product meal (PBM) and insect exuviae meal, are investigated as viable alternatives to fishmeal (FM). Research confirms the successful replacement of FM with a combination of PBM and insect exuviae meal (up to 50%) in the diet of European seabass without compromising growth, feed conversion, gut health and liver fat content. In particular, growth performance was robust with both PBM formulations, with the 25% PBM diet showing better results. Histological examinations showed good gut and liver health, contradicting the concerns of previous studies. The study emphasizes the importance of holistic analyzes that go beyond growth parameters and include histomorphological investigations. The results show that PBM in combination with insect/exuviae meal is well tolerated by seabass, which is consistent with literature reports of mitigating negative effects on gut health. A detailed analysis of the microbiota revealed a decrease in the Firmicutes/Proteobacteria ratio due to an increase in potentially pathogenic bacteria. However, the formulation containing insect exuviae partially counteracted this effect by preserving the beneficial Lactobacillus and promoting the synthesis of short-chain fatty acids (SCFA), particularly butyrate. Chitin-rich components from insect exuviae were associated with improved gut health, which was supported by increased production of SCFA, which are known for their anti-inflammatory properties. The study concludes that a combination of PBM and insect/exuviae meal can replace up to 50% of FM in the diet of seabass, supporting sustainable aquaculture practices. Despite some changes in the microbiota, the negative effects are mitigated by the addition of insect exuviae, highlighting their potential as a prebiotic to increase fish productivity and contribute to a circular economy in aquaculture.

Background and objectives: Unrestricted kinematic alignment total knee arthroplasty (KA-TKA) with a soft tissue respecting technique (STRT) is a soft tissue-dependent tibial resection entailing restoration of the original soft tissue tension using ligamentotaxis after resurfacing the femur, based on the concept of restoring the native or pre-osteoarthritis alignment in each patient. However, there is no consensus on the indications of unrestricted KA-TKA with STRT. We modified the STRT, followed by investigation of the effects of surgery on the postoperative hip-knee-ankle angle (HKAA). Materials and Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the clinical background data, including the preoperative and postoperative HKAA, of 87 patients who underwent unrestricted KA-TKA with the modified STRT. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to determine the factors affecting the postoperative HKAA. A receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was plot-ted to investigate the change in the cut-off values of preoperative HKAA with respect to the safe zone of the postoperative HKAA. We generated two regression models, the linear regression model and generalized additive model (GAM) using machine learning, to predict the postopera-tive HKAA. Results: Univariate and multivariate analyses revealed the preoperative HKAA as the factor most relevant to the postoperative HKAA. ROC analysis revealed that the preoperative HKAA exhibited high predictive utility, with a cut-off value of -10°, when the safe range of postoperative HKAA was set at ± 5°. The GAM was the superior machine learning model, indicating a non-linear association between the preoperative and postoperative HKAA. Patients with preoperative HKAAs ranging from -18° to 4° were more likely to fall within the ± 5° safe range of the postoperative HKAA. Conclusions: The preoperative HKAA influences the postoperative HKAA in unrestricted KA-TKA with the modified STRT. Machine learning using the GAM may contribute to the selection of patients eligible for the surgical approach.

Abstract: The promise of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering is founded on the ability to regenerate diseased or damaged tissues and organs into functional tissues and organs or the creation of new tissues and organs altogether. In theory, all damaged and diseased tissues and organs can be regenerated or created using different configurations and combinations of extracellular matrix, cells and inductive biomolecules. Currently, regenerative medicine and tissue engineering can allow the improvement of patients’ quality of life through availing novel treatment options. Tissues and organs have a specific ECM, with specific proteins and factors released by cells residing within the local microenvironment. The coupling of regenerative medicine and tissue engineering field with 3D printing is revolutionizing the treatment of patients in a huge way. 3D bioprinting allows the proper placement of cells and ECMs, allowing the recapitulation of native microenvironments of tissues and organs. 3D bioprinting utilizes different bioinks made up of different formulations of ECM/biomaterials, biomolecules and even cells. The choice of the bioink used during 3D bioprinting is very important as properties such as printability, compatibility and physical strength influence the final construct printed. The extracellular matrix (ECM) provides both physical and mechanical microenvironment needed by cells to survive and proliferate. Decellularized ECM bioink contains biochemical cues from the original native ECM and also the right proportions of ECM proteins. Different techniques and characterization methods are used to derive bioinks from several tissues and organs and to evaluate their quality. This review discusses the uses of decellularized ECM bioinks and argues that they represent the most biomimetic bioinks available. In addition, we briefly discuss some polymer-based bioinks utilized in 3D bioprinting.

New digital interventions have shown potential in managing asthma and improving patients' quality of life compared with conventional interventions. Our objective was to conduct an exhaustive survey of the application of digital health technologies in evaluating, treating, and self-managing psychological and psychopathological elements linked to asthma. We analyzed a compendium of research papers and systematic reviews pertaining to asthma, encompassing themes such as outdoor air pollution, early life wheezing disorders, atopic dermatitis, digital strategies for asthma self-management, psychiatric conditions and asthma, familial impacts on pediatric asthma, and the utilization of mobile health apps for managing asthma. We scrutinized eight chosen studies to evaluate the capacity of digital health technologies to enhance the man-agement and treatment outcomes of psychological factors related to asthma. The studies under review indicate that eHealth interventions, mixed reality instruments, mHealth technolo-gy-augmented nurse-led interventions, and smartphone apps incorporating Bluetooth-enabled sensors for asthma inhalers can markedly enhance self-management of symptoms, quality of life, and mental health outcomes, particularly in children and adolescents with asthma. Nonetheless, additional research is required to ascertain their efficacy and practicability across diverse populations and environments. Customized interventions that cater to the unique needs and preferences of asthma patients and associated psychological elements are vital to ensure the persistent and equitable adoption of these technologies. We underscore the significance of addressing psychological elements in the management and treatment of asthma and advocate for ongoing research and development in this domain.

This analysis examines the wide range of occupational and environmental health risks that affect people in diverse settings. This article emphasizes the importance of conducting exposure and risk assessments to safeguard public health by analyzing various hazards, including arsenic, oil accidents, lead, welding fumes, and mycotoxins. Various methodologies are utilized in these research articles to conduct the study, emphasizing hazard identification, exposure assessment, and risk characterization. The results uncover harmful substances, vulnerable demographics, and occupational duties linked to increased hazards. The report suggests various mitigation strategies, such as targeted interventions, enhanced community efforts, and improved exposure estimates. Notwithstanding the constraints identified in certain studies, the review emphasizes the necessity for continuous investigation to improve assessments of exposure, comprehend the cumulative effects, and examine the wider societal consequences. The significance of sector-specific risk assessments, protective measures, and ongoing monitoring is underscored to ensure mental and physical health protection.

Despite increasing research efforts, there is a lack of consensus on defining aging or health. To understand the underlying processes, and to foster the development of targeted interventions towards increasing one’s health, there is an urgent need: (1) to find a broadly acceptable and useful definition of health, based on a list of features (which may or may not be molecular); (2) to operationalize features of health so that it can be measured; (3) to identify predictive biomarkers and (molecular) pathways of health, and (4) to suggest interventions, such as nutrition and exercise, targeted at putative causal pathways and processes. Based on a survey of the literature, we propose to define health as a state of an individual characterized by the core features of (a) physiological function, (b) cognitive function and (c) physical function, amended, specifically in case of humans, by (d) lack of disease, and by (e) reproductive function. Often used concepts such as lack of frailty, allostatic load, or self-reported health (in case of human), and indices such as the Healthy Aging Index can be viewed as projections or surrogates of our definition. We further define aging as the set of all processes in an individual that reduce its “wellbeing”, that is, its health or survival or both. We define biomarkers of health by their attribute of predicting future health better than chronological age. We define healthspan pathways as molecular features of health that relate to each other, specifically by belonging to the same molecular pathway. Our conceptual framework may integrate diverse operationalizations of health and guide precision prevention efforts that are a key to reducing the need for medical and nursing care.

Background: We assessed the pertinence of yearly updating the International Working Group on the Diabetic Foot (IWGDF) risk classification in people with diabetes by quantifying the changes in the risk group and its accuracy in identifying those developing an ulcer (DFU) in a primary care setting. Methods: In our retrospective cohort study, we included all people with diabetes with a foot as-sessment registry between January 2016 and December 2018 in the Baixo Alentejo Local Health Unit. Foot-related data was collected at baseline after one and two years. DFU and/or death until December 2019 were registered. The proportion of people changing their risk status each year was calculated. Accuracy measures of the IWGDF classification to predict DFU occurrence at one, two, and three years were calculated. Results: A total of 2097 people were followed for three years, during which 0.1% died, and 12.4% developed a DFU. After two years, 3.6% of the participants had progressed to a higher-risk group. The IWGDF classification presented specificity values superior to 90% and negative predictive values superior to 99%. Conclusion: Foot risk status can be safely updated every two years instead of yearly. The IWGDF classification can accurately identify those not at risk of DFU.

Extended Reality (XR) technologies—encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Mixed Reality (MR)—merge elements of the physical world with virtual environments, revolutionizing various sectors, including healthcare. This paper explores the transformative potential of XR when combined with advanced digital tools to enhance therapeutic practices for individuals with disabilities or social isolation. Emphasizing the pivotal role of healthcare professionals, particularly nurses, the study investigates how these experts can effectively integrate XR technologies to maximize therapeutic benefits. The research includes a pre-implementation phase that assesses the knowledge and acceptance levels of both healthcare professionals and the general population. This foundational study highlights the potential of XR in expanding access to artistic and recreational activities, drawing insights from efforts by the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence) to democratize timeless artistic experiences. The findings underscore the im-portance of defining key terms and understanding stakeholder readiness before full-scale implementation.

Cognitive biases are an important factor contributing to the development and symptom severity of psychosis. Despite that various cognitive biases are contributing to psychosis, they are rarely investigated together. In the current systematic review, we aimed at investigating specific and shared neural correlates of two important cognitive biases: aberrant salience and source monitoring. We conducted a systematic search of fMRI studies of said cognitive biases. Eight studies on aberrant salience and eleven studies on source monitoring were included in the review. We critically discussed behavioural and neuroimaging findings concerning cognitive biases. Various brain regions are associated with aberrant salience and source monitoring in individuals with schizophrenia and the risk of psychosis. Ventral striatum and insula contribute to aberrant salience. The medial prefrontal cortex, superior and middle temporal gyrus contribute to source monitoring. The anterior cingulate cortex and hippocampus contribute to both cognitive biases, constituting a neural overlap. Our review indicates that aberrant salience and source monitoring may share neural mechanisms, suggesting their joint role in producing disrupted external attributions of perceptual and cognitive experiences, thus elucidating their role in positive symptoms of psychosis. Account bridging mechanisms of these two biases is discussed. Further studies are warranted.

Environment, forage quality, management practices, pathogens and pesticides influence honeybee responses to stressors. This study proposes an innovative approach to assess colony health and performance using molecular diagnostic tools, by correlating hemolymph proteins with common measures of colony strength, prevalent honeybee pathogens (Varroa destructor and Nosema spp.) and essential elements (iron, zinc and copper). Colonies were selected from four apiaries in the province of Bologna (Italy), located in different environmental and foraging conditions. Haemolymph samples were taken from June to October 2019. The Varroa infestation of the colonies was estimated by assessing the natural fall of the mites, while the bees were tested for Nosema spp. spores using microscopic method. Proteins were separated using SDS-PAGE and colony performance was assessed by determining adult bees, total brood, and honey and pollen reserves. The biomarkers measured proved to be useful for monitoring changes in performance and trophic conditions during summer and early autumn. Significant correlations were found between haemolymph proteins and colony performance measures. A positive correlation between pollen reserves and vitellogenin and hexamerin 70a highlights the importance of these proteins for successful overwintering. In October, Varroa infestation was negatively correlated with total proteins, vitellogenin, apolipophorin II, transferrin, and hexamerin 70a, with negative implications for overwintering; furthermore, Varroa infestation was also negatively correlated with iron content, potentially affecting iron homeostasis.

More and more works are using machine learning techniques while adopting supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system for wind turbine anomaly or failure detection. While parameter selection is important for modelling a wind turbine’s health condition, only a few papers have been published focusing on this issue and in those papers interconnections among sub-components in a wind turbine are used to address this problem. However, merely the interconnections for decision making sometimes is too general to provide a parameter list considering the differences of each SCADA dataset. In this paper, a method is proposed to provide more detailed suggestions on parameter selection based on mutual information. Moreover, after proving that Copula, a multivariate probability distribution for which the marginal probability distribution of each variable is uniform is capable of simplifying the estimation of mutual information, an empirical copula based mutual information estimation method (ECMI) is introduced for an application. After that, a real SCADA dataset is adopted to test the method, and the results show the effectiveness of the ECMI in providing parameter selection suggestions when physical knowledge is not accurate enough.

Coupling faults that occur simultaneously widely exist in the operation of mechanical equipment, and coupling fault features are formed by nonlinear coupling of multiple base fault features. In this paper, hypergraph neural network is used to obtain the characteristics of coupling faults, and two coupling fault diagnosis frameworks based on hypergraph are provided. 1. Coupling fault diagnosis framework based on feature generation: The hypergraph neural network is used as a generator to provide negative samples for discriminator training. The generator outputs hyperedge vectors as fake samples, and each hyperedge connects a base fault containing a fault type. 2. Coupling fault diagnosis framework based on feature extraction: Each node is regarded as a fault type, and the fault characteristics of each type of fault are extracted through the aggregation operation of hypergraph. The attention mechanism is introduced to realize the dynamic adjustment of the hyperedge, and the dynamic vertex is used to classify the unknown faults. The results show that the diagnostic accuracy of coupling faults under the two frameworks reaches 88.6% and 86.76%, respectively.

Chronic Kidney Disease is a medical condition that causes the decrease in the kidney function and can eventually derive in a total cessation of the work of the organ. It currently affects >10% of the global population, and the number is expected to grow within the next few years, since the correlated diabetes condition is escalating too. Diagnosing the disease on its early stages is crucial to improve life quality, and to increase the chances of survival. The traditional diagnostic methods, which include a biopsy, are invasive, expensive and dangerous. With the use of machine learning algorithms like neural networks, random forest and genetic algorithms, this paper seeks to discover an algorithm with high accuracy, whose selected attributes will be the most optimal combination aiming to reduce the cost, level of invasiveness, and easiness to obtain.

Background: First-line biological diagnosis of malaria in Mali is based on the use of rapid diagnostic tests (RDT), which detect in the blood the Histidin Rich Protein 2 antigen, specific to Plasmodium falciparum. Our study, based on a real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) gold-standard diagnosis, aims to evaluate the performance of RDTs used in Mali and to describe the distribution of Plasmodium species in each administrative regions of Mali; Methods: We collected RDT cassettes in 47 sites of the nine regions of Mali. We randomly selected 150 malaria-negative and up to 30 malaria-positive RDTs from each regions. DNA was extracted from the RDTs’ nitrocellulose strip and then assayed with a pan-Plasmodium qPCR. Positive samples were then analyzed with qPCRs specific for P. falciparum, P. malariae, P. vivax, and P. ovale; Results: Of the 1,389 tested by qPCR RDTs, 258 (18.6%) were positive for Plasmodium spp. P.falciparum was the most predominant (97.3%). However, the prevalence of P.vivax reach 21.1% in the Ménaka region in the north; Conclusion: Overall, RDT diagnostic indices are adequate for the biological diagnosis of malaria in Mali. Our finding support the adjustment of RDTs to the local epidemiology.

Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most frequent gynaecological malignancy. The ESGO/ESTRO/ESP 2020 guidelines identify prognostic groups based on morpho-molecular characteristics. This study aims to evaluate the clinical applicability of NGS analysis to define an appropriate risk class and application for a better diagnostic and prognostic stratification of ECs. Cases of serous carcinoma (OHEC), high (HGEC) and low (LGEC) grade endometrioid carcinoma diagnosed with the morphological and immunohistochemical (IHC) protocols were considered. After a standardized pre-analytical phase, the tumor DNA was semi-automatically extracted and analyzed by NGS with a panel of 14 genes. A total of 63 cases were considered. NGS analysis was successful in 60 cases; all of these were classified according to the new diagnostic algorithm. The molecular risk classification showed a good correlation with the morphological (k=0.8). The study showed that the protocols of the pre-analytical and analytical phases used are robust and can lead to molecular results that fall within the standards required for use in clinical practice for a more precise diagnostic-therapeutic management of patients. The implementation of the classification is particularly relevant for better prognostic stratification of HGECs. In addition, the identification of a suspicious VUS in POLE questions the classification of truncating variants.

To realize the diagnosis of compound faults in gearboxes at different speeds, an "end-to-end" intelligent diagnosis method based on a deep neural network is proposed, named efficiency channel attention-capsule network (ECA-CN). First, the process uses a deep convolutional neural network to extract fault features from the collected raw vibration signals, then embeds the efficient channel attention module to filter important fault features, then uses the capsule network to vectorize the feature space information, and finally calculates the correlation between different levels of capsules by the dynamic routing algorithm to achieve accurate gearbox compound fault diagnosis. The effectiveness of the proposed ECA-CN fault diagnosis method was verified by the composite fault dataset of the 2009 PHM Challenge gearbox, with an average accuracy of 99.63% and a standard deviation of 0.22%. In the comparison experiments with the traditional fault diagnosis method, the average accuracy of the ECA-CN method was improved by 4.62%, and the standard deviation was reduced by 0.58%. The experimental results show that ECA-CN has a more competitive diagnostic performance.

Diffuse interstitial lung diseases (DILD) are a heterogeneous group of over 200 entities, some with dramatical evolution and poor prognostic. Because of their overlapping clinical, physiopathological and imagistic nature, successful management requires early detection and proper progression evaluation. This paper tests a complex networks (CN) algorithm for imagistic aided diagnosis fitness for the possibility of achieving relevant and novel DILD management data. 65 DILD and 31 normal high resolution computer tomography (HRCT) scans were selected and analyzed with the CN model. The algorithm is showcased in two case reports and then statistical analysis on the entire lot shows that a CN algorithm quantifies progression evaluation with a very fine accuracy, surpassing functional parameters’ variations. The CN algorithm can also be successfully used for early detection, mainly on the ground glass opacity Hounsfield Units band of the scan.