This review focuses on social play, a complex behavior that is often difficult to categorize. Although play has been typically associated with positive emotions, emerging research indicates that it relates to various emotional systems, ranging from attachment to conflict. Play oscillates between compe-tition and cooperation, and includes a spectrum in-between, thus quantitatively identifying and demonstrating the emotional nature of play remains challenging. We examined some examples from human and non-human animal studies and explored the emotional and neuro-hormonal systems involved in play. We considered ethological data possibly indicating the emotional states underlying play and we focused on the cooperative and competitive elements of play. We investigated the relationship between play and affiliative/aggressive behaviours, the communicative meaning of play signals (especially primate play faces), and the motor and possibly emotional contagion func-tion of rapid motor mimicry during play. Of all the literature on play, this review selects and com-bines the studies in an innovative way, to present the methods, tools, and evidence indicative of the emotional nature underlying play, which is much more complex than previously thought.

With the rapid growth of large language models (LLMs), there is increasing demand for memory and computation in LLMs. Recent efforts on post-training pruning of LLMs aim to reduce the model size and computation requirements, yet the performance is still sub-optimal. In this paper, we present a plug-and-play solution for post-training pruning of LLMs. The proposed solution has two innovative components: 1) Relative Importance and Activations (RIA), a new pruning metric that jointly considers the weight and activations efficiently on LLMs; and 2) Channel Permutation, a new approach to maximally preserve important weights under N:M sparsity. The two proposed components can be readily combined to further enhance the N:M semi-structured pruning of LLMs. Our empirical experiments show that RIA alone can already surpass all existing post-training pruning methods on prevalent LLMs, e.g., LLaMA ranging from 7B to 65B. Furthermore, N:M semi-structured pruning with channel permutation can even outperform the original LLaMA2-70B on zero-shot tasks, together with practical speed-up on specific hardware. Our code is available at: https://github.com/biomedical-cybernetics/Relative-importance-and-activation-pruning

Studying models of healthy aging and exceptional longevity is crucial to understand a possible longevity signature as most of them show resistance to age-related diseases. In particular, semi- and supercentenarians are a highly selected group, having survived significant adversities, including the Spanish Flu and COVID-19 pandemics, indicating distinctive immune system characteristics. This paper analyse the inflammatory scores (INFLA-score, Systemic Inflammation Response Index (SIRI)) and Aging-Related Immune Phenotype (ARIP) indicators calculated from the dataset of the DESIGN project, including 249 participants aged 19-111 years, trying to understand the immune-inflammatory (IMFLAM) role to achieve longevity. Statistical analyses, including linear regression and one-way ANOVA, were performed to explore the correlations between these parameters and age. Both INFLA-score and SIRI showed a significant increase with age. However, no statistical difference is observed when analysing the values for semi- and supercentenarians with those for other age groups, whose values are similar to that of adults and less than younger centenariansRegarding ARIP values, it is noteworthy that when comparing the CD8 Naive/Effector scores between groups, no significant differences were observed between the semi- and supercentenarian group and the other groups. These results support the idea that the control of IMFLAM response can promote extreme longevity.

Based on a reflection on the tensions between play, education, and learning in early childhood, this article aims to identify and analyze the factors that limit or negatively condition the possibilities for play at school during the transition between Early Childhood Education and Primary Education in Chile. The study was conducted in four Chilean schools, with the Transition Levels of Chilean Early Childhood Education (children aged 4 and 5) and the first two levels of Primary Education (children aged 6 and 7). Based on an ethnographic approach, we combined 22 ethnographic observation days spread over two consecutive years and 59 interviews of various types with children, educators, and parents. The results show structural-material limitations on school play that mainly affect children in Primary Education. Beyond, factors associated with routines, indications, and statements governing functioning and participation in this level tend to limit or prevent play, often considered a "non-legitimate" activity. Conclusions highlight the potentialities that children's restricted or resisted play can present in terms of learning.

We define life as the amplification of quantum uncertainty up to macroscopic scales. A living being is any amplifier that achieves this goal. We argue that everything we know about life can be explained from this idea. We study a ladder mechanism to estimate the probability that the amplification occurs spontaneously in nature. The amplification mechanism is so sensitive to small variations of its own parameters that it acts as a bifurcation itself, i.e. it implies that the universe is either everywhere dead or alive wherever possible. Since the first option is excluded by the existence of life on earth, we infer that the universe hosts a huge number of inhabited planets (possibly one per star on average). We also investigate models of conscious and unconscious learning processes, as well as the structure of the brain and evolution. Finally, we address the problem of creating artificial life.

Introduction: Anterior cervical discectomy and fusion (ACDF) for cervical disc herniation (CDH) is commonly performed. Specific postoperative complications include dysphagia, dysphonia, cervicalgia, adjacent segment disorder, cage subsidence, and infections. However, interscapular pain is commonly reported by these patients after surgery, although its mechanisms have been not clarified yet. Methods: This retrospective series of 31 patients undergoing ACDF for CDH at a single Academic Hospital. Baseline and postoperative clinical, radiological, and surgical data were analyzed. The linear regression analysis was conducted to identify any factor independently influencing the occurrence rate of postoperative interscapular pain. Results: The mean age was 57.6±10.8 years, and the M:F ratio was 2.1. The preoperative mean VAS-arm was 7.15±0.81 among the 20 patients reporting brachialgia, and the mean VAS-neck was 4.36±1.43 among those 9 patients reporting cervicalgia. At 1 month interscapular pain was still reported by 8 out of the 17 patients who experienced it postoperatively, and it was recovered in all patients after 2 months. The regression analysis showed how the interscapular pain was not directly associated to age(p=0,74), gender(p=0,46), smoking status(p=0,44), diabetes(0,42), preoperative brachialgia(p=0,21) or cervicalgia(p=0,48), symptoms duration(p=0,13), baseline VAS-arm(p=0,11), VAS-neck(p=0,93), or mJOA(p=0,63) scores, or disc height modification(p=0,90). However, the postoperative increase of the mean zygapophyseal joint rims distance was identified as an independent factor in determining interscapular pain (p=0,02). Conclusions: Our study revealed that the onset of interscapular pain following ACDF may be determined by over-distraction of the zygapophyseal joints rim. Then, proper sizing of prosthetic implants could reduce this painful complication.

Play therapy is an approach to providing assistance in overcoming problems using media such as toys, art media, games, and communication. The purpose of this paper is to find out that play therapy can reduce anxiety in children. The research design used in this study was a study-literature review. The data used in this research comes from the results of research that have been conducted and published in national and international online journals. The method of analysis used in this study is the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis) method.

Since its introduction almost 50 years ago, the concept of ‘flow’ has been descriptive of optimal experiences, also in relation to play. However, the explorative nature of play leads to some discrepancies between flow and the optimal experience of play. In this paper the differences between flow and play are explored, leading to proposing the state of ‘wonder’ (directed at exploration) as an alternative to ‘flow’. From this perspective, the study further explores how we may design toys that enable meaningful experiences of play, identifying opportunities in designing for toys as the enablers of immersed experiences of wonder.

Background. The possible interactions between anger and fear have not been widely explored in the psychological literature. Fear and anger are currently beginning to be studied by looking at their interrelationships, rather than seeing them as simply opposing emotions. Furthermore, there is a tendency to think that anger is more typical of men and fear of women. Our contribution proposes a particular perspective of affective neuroscience. The objectives of the study are: 1) To assess possible differences in affective systems, states, and traits of anger in relation to biological sex; 2) To assess correlations between ANGER, FEAR, and PANIC, state and trait anger in both a female and male sample; 3) To assess possible differences in basic affective systems in relation to different levels of ANGER, FEAR, and PANIC, state and trait anger, in sample of female and in sample of male. Methods. A non-clinical sample of 339 females and 99 males completed the ANPS 3.1 to assess basic affective states and the STAXI 2 to assess anger states and traits. Results. No significant differences were found for ANGER and FEAR scores and for state and trait scores between the male and female samples. Clear correlations emerged (p < .01) between FEAR. PANIC and FEAR in both the female and male samples. Among the differences that emerged in the affective systems, we emphasise that in the female group as FEAR increases, there are significant variations in systems of SEEKING, PLAY, and CARE. Furthermore, only in the female sample as PANIC increases, PLAY progressively decreases, and CARE shows an irregular trend. Discussion. Given the importance of the SEEKING and PLAY systems for well-being and gender equality the hypoactivation of these systems to increases in FEAR and PANIC highlights the need to monitor conditions that may trigger these affective systems.

Programmed death ligand 1 (PD-L1) is a co-inhibitory molecule expressed on the surface of various cell types, known for its suppressive effect on T cells through interaction with PD-1. Neutrophils also express PD-L1, and its expression is elevated in specific situations; however, the immunobiological role of PD-L1+ neutrophil has not been fully characterized. Here, we report that PD-L1-expressing neutrophils increased in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection are highly functional in bacterial elimination and supporting inflammatory resolution. The frequency of PD-L1+ neutrophils was dramatically increased in MRSA-infected mice, and this population exhibited enhanced activity in bacterial elimination compared to PD-L1- neutrophils. An administration of PD-L1 monoclonal antibody did not impair PD-L1+ neutrophil function suggesting that PD-L1 expression itself does not influence neutrophil activity. However, PD-1/PD-L1 blockade significantly delayed liver inflammation resolution in MRSA-infected mice, as indicated by increased plasma alanine transaminase (ALT) level and frequencies of inflammatory leukocytes in the liver implying that neutrophil PD-L1 suppresses the inflammatory response of these cells during the acute phase of MRSA infection. Our results reveal that elevated PD-L1 expression can be a marker for enhanced anti-bacterial function of neutrophils. Moreover, PD-L1+ neutrophils are an indispensable population attenuating inflammatory leukocyte activities assisting in a smooth transition into the resolution phase in MRSA infection.

Adventurous play, defined as exciting, thrilling play where children are able to take age-appropriate risks has been associated with a wide range of positive outcomes. Despite this, it remains unclear what factors might aid or hinder schools in offering adventurous play opportu-nities. The purpose of this systematic review is to synthesise findings from qualitative studies on the perceived barriers and facilitators of adventurous play in schools. A total of nine studies were included in the final synthesis. The review used two synthesis strategies: a meta-aggregative syn-thesis and narrative synthesis. Findings were similar across the two syntheses, highlighting that key barriers and facilitators were: adults’ perceptions of children; adults’ attitudes and beliefs about adventurous play and concerns pertaining to health; and, safety and concerns about legis-lation. Based on the findings of the review, recommendations for policy and practice as provided to support adventurous play in schools.

For a considerable length of time synthetic composts are utilized to satisfy the dirt necessity of supplements and yield, however huge measure of these substance manures are hazardous for condition, advantageous microorganisms, creatures, and people also. In this way, natural inviting and savvy biofertilizers are utilized. Biofertilizer are the substances which contain microorganisms those microorganisms might be growths, microscopic organisms, and protozoa which have capacity to build ripeness of soil by Nitrogen obsession, Phosphorous solubilization, and Iron sequestration. These cycles convert insoluble type of supplements into solvent structure and make it accessible to the foundations of plant which effectively take them up and use them. There are assortment of the yields whose profitability can be expanded by applying biofertilizer, for example, rice, oat, and other grain crops. In this audit we experience the method of utilization of biofertilizers, and how the assistance the plants and in which they help.

Ninety percent of the existing building stock in Europe was built before 1990. These buildings are in urgent need for a significant improvement of energy-efficiency through renovation. Regrettably, so far only five percent of renovation projects have been able to yield energy-saving at deep renovation level. State-of-the-art renovation solutions are available, but costly and lengthy renovation processes and incomprehensible technical complexities hinder the achievement of a wide impact at a European scale. This paper presents research on Plug-and-Play (PnP) technologies supported by Building Information Modelling (BIM) to provide affordable, interchangeable and quick-installation solutions to overcome the main barriers of building deep renovation.

The physiological mechanism of membrane potential generation relies on the passage of mobile ions across the plasma membrane, which is selectively permeable to mobile ions. The existence of a membrane and the transport of ions across it are essential for the generation of membrane potential. However, a long-forgotten theory, Association-Induction hypothesis, asserts that the heterogeneous distribution of charges in space, due to ion adsorption, is the true cause of membrane potential generation. Using an artificial living cell model consisting of a viscous aqueous solution, the mechanism of membrane potential generation is restudied in this work. The results indicate that membrane potential can be generated even in the absence of a plasma membrane and that ion adsorption leading to a heterogeneous spatial charge distribution is an essential factor for membrane potential generation. Consequently, the authors invites people to reconsider the Association-Induction hypothesis as a genuine mechanism for generating membrane potential.

Google play store allow the user to download a mobile application (app) and user get inspired by the rating and reviews of the mobile app. A recent study analyzes that user preferences, user opinion for improvement, user sentiment about particular feature and detail with descriptions of experiences are very useful for an application developer. However, many application reviews are very large and difficult to process manually. Star rating is given of the whole application and the developer cannot analyze the single feature. In this research, we have scrapped 282,231 user reviews through different data scraping techniques. We have applied the text classification on these user reviews. We have applied different algorithms and find the precision, accuracy, F1 score and recall. In evaluated results, we have to also find the best algorithm.

The fact is quite transparent that almost everybody around the world is using android apps. Half of the population of this planet is associated with messaging, social media, gaming, and browsers. This online marketplace provides free and paid access to users. On the Google Play store, users are encouraged to download countless of applications belonging to predefined categories. In this research paper, we have scrapped thousands of users reviews and app ratings. We have scrapped 148 apps’ reviews from 14 categories. We have collected 506259 reviews from Google play store and subsequently checked the semantics of reviews about some applications form users to determine whether reviews are positive, negative, or neutral. We have evaluated the results by using different machine learning algorithms like Naïve Bayes, Random Forest, and Logistic Regression algorithm. we have calculated Term Frequency (TF) and Inverse Document Frequency (IDF) with different parameters like accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 and compared the statistical result of these algorithms. We have visualized these statistical results in the form of a bar chart. In this paper, the analysis of each algorithm is performed one by one, and the results have been compared. Eventually, We've discovered that Logistic Regression is the best algorithm for a review-analysis of all Google play store. We have proved that Logistic Regression gets the speed of precision, accuracy, recall, and F1 in both after preprocessing and data collection of this dataset.

Chess is an interesting game for artificial intelligence research and an entertaining hobby and sport for a growing number of people. However, humans differ greatly in their ability to play. Typically, the Elo rating is used to determine a player's skill and to predict who will win. When differences in Elo are too great the weaker player is almost guaranteed to lose. While on one hand, the Elo rating allows players to be matched to equally well-playing opponents, it also to some degree restricts the games to be played between equally strong opponents since otherwise the result is known beforehand. Here a handicap system where stronger players remove pieces at the start of the game is evaluated. Specifically, the effect each removed piece or combination of pieces have on a player. Interestingly, pieces do not always reduce the Elo of a player by a predefined amount, but their effect depends strongly on the player's current Elo. The results presented here are from playing the computer engine Stockfish because data about humans playing this scheme is limited. However, the results make direct predictions about the effect of piece removal on Elo.

The pre-chamber technologies can improve the ignition performance of IC engines by more than two orders in magnitude and thereby substantial economic benefits. Compared with the common pre-chamber, a plug-and-play passive scheme is suitable for quick retrofit, which is getting more attention from the automobile industry. Good scavenging is the precondition for improving turbulent jet ignition performance for a passive pre-chamber. Therefore, detailed evaluations of the scavenging process and turbulent jet ignition deserve investigations for new pre-chamber schemes. In this paper, the effects of design parameters on ignition processes of plug-and-play passive pre-chamber were numerically studied, allowing for the lateral angle, orifice diameter, and vertical angle design. Seven pre-chamber schemes were evaluated, and four optimal ones were selected for bench tests. The characteristics of the scavenging process, turbulent jet ignition, and main-chamber combustion were investigated and analyzed. The results show that allowing for the trade-off between ignition energy and scavenging efficiency, the volume ratio of the pre-chamber to clearance is recommended to be 0.2~0.7%, and the corresponding area-volume ratio is 0.003~0.006 mm-1. Compared with the original natural gas engine, the pre-chamber retrofit can save up to 13.2% fuel consumption, which presents a significant improvement in fuel economy.

Innovations and improvements in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal well technologies have contributed to the success of the shale gas industry; however, the industry is also challenged by freshwater use and environmental health issues. Increasing water impact makes precise quantification of water consumption important. The objective in this study was to better understand water sustainability and availability of the projected shale gas from 2018 to 2030 in the Weiyuan play, China. The water footprint framework was used to quantify the potential water use and environmental impacts on different time scales. The results showed that the water use per well ranged from 11351.3 to 60664.73 m3, with a median of 36013.94 m3, totaling ~3.44 Mm3 for 97 wells. Yearly evaluation results showed that the gray water footprint was the main contributor and accounted for 83.82% to 96.76%, which was dependent on different scenarios of treatment percentages. The monthly environmental impact results indicated that the annual streamflow statistics were more likely to prevent water withdrawal. Water quality issues may be alleviated through recycling and retreatment measures that improve current waste water management strategies. Resource regulators should manage their water resources by matching water demand to water availability or replenishment.

It is unclear how maternal glycemic status and maternal iodine status influence birth weight in mild-to-moderate iodine deficiency (ID). We studied the association between birth weight and both maternal glucose levels and iodine intake in pregnant women with mild-to-moderate ID. Glucose values were assessed using a glucose challenge test (GCT), non-fasting glucose before delivery; iodine status was assessed using an iodine food frequency questionnaire, serum thyroglobulin (Tg) and urinary iodine concentrations (UIC). Thyroid antibodies and free thyroxine (FT4) were measured. Obstetric and an-thropometric data were also collected. Large for gestational age (LGA) was predicted using a Cox proportional hazards model with multiple confounders. Tg>13g/L was in-dependently associated with LGA (adjusted hazard ratio = 3.4, 95% CI: 1.4–10.2, p=0.001). Estimated iodine intake correlated with FT4 among participants reporting io-dine-containing supplements (ICS) after adjusting for confounders (β = 0.4 95 %CI: 0.0002-0.0008, p=0.001). Newborn weight percentiles were inversely correlated with maternal FT4 values (β=-0.2 95 %CI:-0.08 - -56.49, p=0.049). We conclude that in mild-to-moderate ID regions, maternal insufficient iodine status may increase LGA risk. Iodine status and ICS intake may modify the effect maternal dysglycemia has on offspring weight.

We aimed to assess whether play behavior can be used as a welfare indicator for farmed spotted pacas (Cuniculus paca) by examining its association with other positive welfare markers including affiliative behavior and low-amplitude vocalizations. We submitted six groups of spotted pacas (one male/two females per group) (N=18) to an ABA experimental design (A1/A2: without ball; B: with three boomer balls). Play behavior occurred only during phase B (mean=35.5s, SE=6.4). Spotted pacas spent more time in affiliative and exploratory behaviors, while they spent less time engaging in agonistic interactions during phase B than in both control phases (A1 and A2) (P<0.05). Moreover, spotted pacas emitted more low-amplitude bark vocalizations during phase B than during either control phase (P<0.05), which have previously been shown to indicate a positive affective state and low arousal level. Because the expression of play was associated with a decrease in aggression, an increase in affiliative behavior, and an increase in low-amplitude barking, indicating thus a positive state, we suggest that play behavior can be used as a non-invasive indicator of positive welfare in this species.

Background: Role-playing is often used as a pedagogical method for learning communication in medical education. Therefore, medical play using the Teddy Bear Hospital (TBH) is a concept that can quickly familiarize children with health care and help them develop positive experiences in these areas. This review aims to assess the strengths of TBH, as a form of directed medical role play, in improving health outcomes and well-being in children, along with implanting an awareness of preventive health care in young children.Methods: For this scoping review, we examined the list of recommendations, including 11 studies from two databases, PubMed and Google Scholar. We incorporated pre/post quasi-experimental studies, ANOVA, qualitative research studies, systematic reviews, and control group studies that deliberately utilize the teddy bear hospital as an intervention.Results: The results of individual studies were further categorized into three sections. The first being upon the analysis of 11 studies, the Teddy Bear Hospital was mainly conducted in Europe and Asia. It is evident that regardless of the different approaches and strategies used to implement the Teddy Bear Hospital, they all ultimately share the same intent: to raise health care awareness and alleviate young children's anxiety over medical treatment while focusing on the promotion of positive healthy lifestyle. All studies portray the teddy bear hospital as an intervention of medical roleplay which analyzed the children's feelings, behaviors, and health awareness after visiting the Teddy Bear Hospital.Conclusion: The application of the teddy bear hospital has overwhelmingly positive results, with lower levels of anxiety and improved health knowledge. Its reported efficacy calls for future studies on aspects that lead to its efficacy and potential effectiveness.

This scholarly article introduces the "Change Through Play: Rethinking Masculinity" program, a potential intervention designed to address gun violence in the United States by targeting its societal roots, particularly through the lens of gender socialization. The program focuses on transforming children’s, particularly young boys', perceptions of masculinity away from gun violence by influencing the types of toys they play with. By promoting non-violent play, the initiative aims to foster a future generation less inclined to engage in gun violence. This community-interactive and educational approach emphasizes the importance of evidence-based interventions that respect community values and cultural dynamics. The program employs a mixed-methods approach, combining qualitative and quantitative research to evaluate its effectiveness. The program highlights the necessity of sustained, collective action to transform the entrenched practices and beliefs that perpetuate violence, ultimately striving for a society that prioritizes peace, justice, and safety.

Although diet interventions are mostly related to metabolic disorders, nowadays they are used in wide variety of pathologies. From diabetes and obesity to cardiovascular diseases, through cancer or neurological disorders and stroke, nutritional recommendations applied to almost all diseases. Among those disorders, metabolic disturbances and brain function and/or diseases have recently been shown to be linked. Indeed, numerous neurological functions are often associated with perturbations of whole-body energy homeostasis. In this regard, specific diets are used in various neurological conditions such as epilepsy, stroke, or seizure recovery. In addition, Alzheimer’s disease or Autism Spectrum Disorders are also considered as putatively improved by diet intervention. Glycemic index diets are a novel developed indicator expected to anticipate the changes in blood glucose induced by specific foods, and how they can affect various physiological function. Several results provide indications of efficiency of low glycemic index diets in weight management, insulin sensitivity, but also cognitive function, epilepsy treatment, stroke, or neurodegenerative diseases. Overall, studies involving glycemic index could provide new insight in the relationship between energy homeostasis regulation and brain function or related disorders. Therefore, in this review we will summarize main evidences on glycemic index involvement in brain mechanisms of energy homeostasis regulation.

Nonhost disease resistance is the most common type of plant defense mechanism against potential pathogens. In this study, the metabolic enzyme formate dehydrogenase (FDH1) was identified to be involved in nonhost disease resistance in Nicotiana benthamiana and Arabidopsis thaliana. In Arabidopsis, AtFDH1 was highly upregulated in response to both host and nonhost bacterial pathogens. Arabidopsis Atfdh1 mutants were compromised in nonhost resistance, basal resistance, and gene-for-gene resistance. The expression patterns of salicylic acid (SA) and jasmonic acid (JA) marker genes after pathogen infections in Atfdh1 mutant indicated that SA is most likely involved in the FDH1-mediated plant defense response to both host and nonhost bacterial pathogens. Previous studies reported that FDH1 localizes to only mitochondria, or both mitochondria and chloroplasts. Our results showed that the AtFDH1 localized to mitochondria and the amount of FDH1 localized to mitochondria increased upon infection with host or nonhost pathogens. Interestingly, the subcellular localization of FDH1 was observed in both mitochondria and chloroplasts after infection with a nonhost pathogen in Arabidopsis. We speculate that FDH1 plays a role in cellular signaling networks between mitochondria and chloroplasts to produce coordinated defense responses such as SA-induced reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation and hypersensitive response (HR)-induced cell death against nonhost bacterial pathogens.

This paper analyzes if the Financial Fair Play (FFP) regulations set by UEFA have influenced the auditing fees charged to the football clubs. In addition, it explores the determinants of audit fees. We use a two-sample t test with equal variances to determine whether differences are present. After this, we carry out a panel data regression with clubs fix effect to estimate the determinants of audit fees in football clubs. Our findings reveal an increase of audit fees after the implementation of FFP regulations. On top of that, audit fees are explained by the presence of foreign investors if the audit firm is one of the Big4 and if the auditor is a woman. The regulation change has an impact on the audit fees charged by auditors for their services. However, this increase can be compensated across future years given the improving financial situation of clubs; therefore, the auditors’ risk diminishes and subsequent audit fees may be reduced. UEFA should monitor audit fees as well as the quality of the audit reports, which have become crucial to obtaining the license to participate in UEFA competitions.

Proper bipolar spindle assembly underlies accurate chromosome segregation. A cohort of microtubule-associated proteins orchestrates spindle microtubule formation in a spatiotemporally coordinated manner. Among them, the conserved XMAP215/TOG family of microtubule polymerase plays a central role in spindle assembly. In fission yeast, two XMAP215/TOG members, Alp14 and Dis1, share essential roles in cell viability; however how these two proteins functionally collaborate remains undetermined. Here we show the functional interplay and specification of Alp14 and Dis1. Creation of new mutant alleles of alp14, which display temperature sensitivity in the absence of Dis1, enabled us to conduct detailed analyses of a double mutant. We have found that simultaneous inactivation of Alp14 and Dis1 results in early mitotic arrest with very short, fragile spindles. Intriguingly, these cells often undergo spindle collapse, leading to a lethal “cut” phenotype. By implementing an artificial targetting system, we have shown that Alp14 and Dis1 are not functionally exchangeable and as such are not merely redundant paralogues. Intriguingly, while Alp14 promotes microtubule nucleation, Dis1 does not. Our results uncover that the intrinsic specification, not the spatial regulation, between Alp14 and Dis1 underlies the collaborative actions of these two XMAP215/TOG members in mitotic progression, spindle integrity and genome stability.

Neutrophils play an important role as the first line of innate immune defense. One function of neutrophils, called neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), has been discovered recently. NETs are extensive fibrous structures released extracellularly from activated neutrophils in response to infection. They are composed of cytosolic protein assembled on a scaffold of released chromatin. These structures suppress the dissemination of micro-organisms in blood by trapping them mechanically, and by exploiting coagulant function to segregate them within the circulation. In addition, NET components (DNA, histone, and granule proteins) also contribute to the triggering of an inflammatory process. NET function, however, can be regarded as a double-edged sword. On one hand, NET formation is an efficient strategy for neutralizing invading micro-organisms. On the other hand, NET can be harmful to the host, as its exposed by-products that are toxic to endothelial cells and parenchymal tissue. We present here the analogous biological and physiological features of the harmful positive amplification loop between inflammation and tissue damage induced by NETosis dysregulation and Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pathogenesis. Considering the rapid evolution of this disease symptoms and its lethality, we hypothesize that COVID-19 progresses under an amplifier loop, leading to an massive, uncontrolled inflammation process. We also describe the correlations of COVID-19 symptoms and biological features with those consecutive to uncontrolled NET formation causing various sterile or infectious diseases. General clinical conditions, and numerous pathological and biological features, are analogous with NETs deleterious effects. We postulate that Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) induces a disproportionate virus-induced NET release, and that this plays a key role in COVID-19 pathogenesis. While neutrophils are the principal starting point for extracellular and circulating DNA release, targeting NETs rather than neutrophils themselves may stand for an effective strategy. This paper offers an in-depth review of NET formation, function and pathogenic dysregulation, as well as of current and future therapies to control NET unbalance. As such, it enables us also to suggest new therapeutic strategies to fight COVID-19. In combination with or independent of the latest tested approaches, we propose that, in the short term, deoxyribonuclease I (DNase-1) treatment should be evaluated; we also advocate a significant increase in research on the development of toll-like receptors (TLR) and C-type Lectin like receptors (CLEC) inhibitors, and on anti-IL26 therapies.

The interactions between work and personal life are important for ensuring well-being especially during COVID-19 where the lines between work and home are blurred. Work-life interference/imbalance can result in work-related burnout, which has been shown to have negative effects on faculty members’ physical and psychological health. Although our understanding of burnout has advanced considerably in recent years, little is known about the effects of burnout on nursing faculty turnover intentions and career satisfaction. Thus, this study aimed to test a hypothesized model examining the effects of work-life inference on nursing faculty burnout (emotional exhaustion and cynicism), turnover intentions and ultimately, career satisfaction. A predictive cross-sectional design was used. An online national survey of nursing faculty members was administered throughout Canada in Summer 2021. Nursing faculty who held full-time or part-time positions in Canadian academic settings were invited via email to participate in the study. Data was collected from an anonymous survey housed on Qualtrics. Descriptive statistics and reliability estimates were computed. The hypothesized model was tested using structural equation modeling. Data suggest that work-life interference significantly increase burnout which contribute to both higher turnover intentions and lower career satisfaction. Turnover intentions in turn was negatively associated with career satisfaction. The findings add to the growing body of literature linking burnout to turnover and dissatisfaction, highlighting key antecedents and/or drivers of burnout among nurse academics. These results provide suggestions for suitable areas for the development of interventions and policies within the organizational structure to reduce the risk of burnout during and post-COVID-19 and improve faculty retention.

Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL) tear is currently a main issue in all of sports communities. Although the number of ACL injuries in football remains low, it’s consequences on both professional and personal lives remain a major concern of rehabilitation. If practitioners often require more time to bring athletes in the best condition, the fact remains that this concept of time before return to sport is nowadays considered as obsolete. Indeed, the better understanding of the mechanisms of lesion and the strains placed on the graft after reconstruction, allow us to establish a personalized program based on clinical criteria and the patient's objectives. The current scientific literature allows us today to optimize the return to play and performance by the use of neuromotor and neurocognitive approaches, muscle strengthening methods and a preventive program necessary to cover the previous level of the players while taking into account physiological and psychological changes due to ACL reconstruction. Indeed, it is important to have a systemic approach centered on the patient, the sports movement, as close as possible to the field in order to find an optimal function of the knee in interaction with its environment.If there is a risk of reinjury of the ACL, it appears important to be able to identify the risk factors so that the player can return to play in optimal conditions.

Prostate cancer contributes to cancer-related deaths globally, and the etiology of this disease is not yet fully understood. While Human Papillomavirus (HPV) has been associated with several types of cancer, including cervical, anal, and oropharyngeal cancer, studies investigating the relationship between HPV and prostate cancer have shown mixed results. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the causative association between HPV and prostate cancer using Bradford Hill's criteria. A comprehensive search of PubMed was conducted, and 60 out of 482 studies were included in the review. The included studies were evaluated based on nine Bradford Hill criteria, and information on the identification and transmission of the virus and potential oncogenic mechanisms was also extracted. The strength of association criterion was not met, and other criteria, such as consistency and coherence, were not fulfilled. However, biological plausibility was supported, and potential oncogenic mechanisms were identified. While some studies have reported the presence of HPV in prostate cancer tissues, the overall quality of evidence remains low, and the association between HPV and prostate cancer is weak. Nevertheless, the prostate is a potential reservoir for the transmission of HPV, and the HPV E6 and E7 oncoproteins and inflammation are likely to be involved in any oncogenic mechanisms. Further studies with a higher level of evidence are needed to establish a definitive link between HPV and prostate cancer.

Being hospitalized is a threatening and stressful experience for many children. From a psychological point of view, children may experience increased feelings of anxiety and fear that can negatively interfere with behavioral, cognitive, and emotional outcomes. To limit these impacts on children's well-being and mental health, interventions that could contribute to protecting the emotional domain of hospitalized children are welcomed. The present research reported a single-setting case study intervention to evaluate the impact of educational play-based activity with a CoderBot robot in a pediatric short-term recovery ward (N=61). The methodology included multiple sources of data (i.e., children, parents, nurses), observations on the field, and a sequential (quantitative-qualitative) mixed-method approach to data analysis. Results supported the idea that robot-based activities were associated with increased participant well-being (particularly positive emotions). The conclusions of this pilot study discuss the strengths, limitations, and further developments of using robots with hospitalized children.

“All diseases originate in the gut.” Hippocrates (400 BC) A healthy gut microbiome via the gut-brain-axis (GBA) elevates heart rate variability (HRV), a general measure of health and well-being. A dysbiotic gut microbiome, low in biodiversity and butyrate producers, alters tryptophan metabolism with release of proinflammatory cytokines, predominantly TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β. These also characterize chronic inflammation, oxidative stress, and a multitude of diseases, all exhibiting low HRV. Gut dysbiosis upregulates IFN-γ and with it IDO (indoleamine 2,3 dioxygenase). Tryptophan pivots from serotonin synthesis to that of IDO induced kynurenine, increasing the kynurenine to tryptophan ratio (KTR). An elevated KTR is positively linked to neurodegenerative and autoimmune diseases and negatively linked to HRV. Elevated IDO activity is not only enzymatic but also an intracellular signal transducer potentiated by TGF-β. This cytokine is the primary determinant of the TME. Also proposed is the gut-lung dysbiosis concept and consequent degradation of ACE2 (richest in lungs and gut). Leaky gut induced autoantibodies related to G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) in combination with increased Ang II further potentiate oxidative stress. Aldosterone and paroxysmal orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS) paradoxes are highlighted in the context of GPCR and gut dysbiosis, and the role of Candida is explored. The triple play of a prebiotic (d-mannose), probiotic (bifidobacteria and lactobacilli), and postbiotic (butyrate) might improve intestinal barrier integrity, oppose entry of GPCR antigens, suppress the inflammatory cytokine triad, balance IFN-γ and TGF-β, suppress oxidative stress, depress KTR, elevate HRV, and extend lifespan and its quality.

Brain capillary endothelial cell(s) (BECs) have numerous functions including their semipermeable interface-barrier (transfer and diffusion of solutes), trophic (metabolic homeostasis), tonic (vascular hemodynamics), and trafficking (vascular permeability, coagulation, and leukocyte extravasation) functions to provide brain homeostasis. BECs also serve as the brain’s sentinel cell of the innate immune system and are capable of antigen presentation. In metabolic syndrome (MetS) there are two regions resulting in proinflammatory signaling of BECs. Namely, visceral adipose tissue depots supplying excessive peripheral cytokines/chemokines (pCC) and gut microbiota dysbiotic regions supplying excessive soluble lipopolysaccharide (sLPS), small LPS-enriched extracellular vesicle exosomes (lpsEVexos), and pCC. This dual signaling of BECs at their receptor sites results in BEC activation and dysfunction (BECact/dys) and neuroinflammation. sLPS and lpsEVexos signal BECs toll-like receptor four, which then signals translocated nuclear factor kappa B (NFkB). Translocated NFkB promotes the synthesis and secretion of BEC proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines. Specifically, the chemokine CCL5 (RANTES) is capable of attracting microglia cells to BECs. BEC neuroinflammation activates perivascular space(s) (PVS) resident macrophages. Excessive phagocytosis by reactive resident PVS macrophages results in a stagnation-like obstruction, which along with increased capillary permeability due to BECact/dys could expand the fluid volume within the PVS to result in enlarged PVS (EPVS). Importantly, this remodeling may result in pre- and post-capillary EPVS that would contribute to their identification on T2-weighted MRI, which are considered to be biomarkers for cerebral small vessel disease.

Dynamic visualizations have been developed to exchange information that transforms over time across a broad range of professional and academic contexts. However, these visual tools may impose substantial demands on the learner’s cognitive resources that are very limited in current knowledge. Cognitive load theory has been used to improve learning from dynamic visualizations by providing certain design techniques to manage learner cognitive load without adding any oral/written explanations. This systematic review examined a series of experimental studies assessing the roles of these design techniques in learning tactical scenes of play through dynamic visualizations. Electronic databases PubMed and Google Scholar were used to search relevant articles. Eleven studies were eventually included for the systematic review based on the eligibility criteria. The present review revealed that adapting design techniques to the level of learners’ expertise, type of depicted knowledge, and level of content complexity is a crucial part of effective learning.

Abstract: Astrocytes (ACs) are the most abundant human cell in the brain and importantly, are the master connecting and communicating cells that provide structural and functional support of brain cells at all levels of organization. Further, they are recognized to be the guardians and housekeepers of the brain. Protoplasmic perivascular astrocyte endfeet and their basal lamina form the delimiting outermost barrier (glia limitans) of the perivascular spaces in postcapillary venules and are important for the clearance of metabolic waste and comprise the glymphatic system, which is critically dependent on the proper waste removal by the pvACef polarized aquaporin 4 water channels. Also, the protoplasmic perisynaptic astrocyte endfeet (psACef) are important in cradling the neuronal synapses that serve to maintain homeostasis and serve a functional and supportive role for synaptic transmission. Enlarged perivascular spaces (EPVS) are emerging as important aberrant findings on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and associate with white matter hyperintensities, lacunes, aging, accepted to be biomarkers for cerebral small vessel disease, increased in obesity, metabolic syndrome, and type 2 diabetes. Knowledge is exponentially expanding regarding EPVS along with the glymphatic system, since EPVS are closely associated with impaired glymphatic function and waste removal from the brain to the cerebrospinal fluid and systemic circulation. This review intends to focus on how the pvACef play a crucial role in the development of EPVS.

Abstract: Pericyte(s) (Pcs) and resident perivascular macrophages (rPVMΦs) are positioned perfectly in the neurovascular unit (NVU) and perivascular spaces to facilitate metainflammation that results in brain endothelial cell activation and dysfunction and neuroinflammation. Their positions within the NVU allow intimate contact with one another as follows: Brain endothelial cells (BECs) and the Pcs via their shared basement membrane and physical contact peg-socket junctions with N cadherins and gap junctions Cx43; Pcs and rPVMΦs intimate contacts. Additionally, rPVMΦs have intimate contact with the astrocyte endfeet (ACef) that form the outermost membrane of perivascular spaces. Importantly, ACef have intimate contact with BECs that have intimate physical contact with neuronal axons and dendrites to complete NVU coupling. The multiplicity of intimate contacts of NVU cells allow for continuous crosstalk communications to provide brain homeostasis. While each of the cells of the NVU play important roles in the development of enlarged perivascular spaces (EPVS), this review focuses on the Pcs and rPVMΦs and discusses each of the intimate contacts and their functional significance in detail with numerous illustrations and transition electron microscopic images to demonstrate their role in the development of EPVS. EPVS are known to be biomarkers for cerebral small vessel disease and impaired glymphatic system waste clearance. Additionally, EPVS associate with mixed dementias of vascular dementia, vascular contributions to cognitive impairment and dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease that results in high economic and psychosocial cost to the global community.

Cross-institutional secondary use of medical data benefits from structured semantic annotation, which, ideally, enables matching and merging semantically related data items from different sources and sites. While numerous medical terminologies and ontologies, as well as some tooling, exist to support such annotation, cross-institutional data usage based on independently annotated datasets is challenging for multiple reasons: the annotation process is resource intensive and requires a combination of medical and technical expertise since it often requires judgment calls to resolve ambiguities resulting from non-uniqueness of potential mappings to various levels of ontological hierarchies and relational and representational systems. Divergent resolution of such ambiguities can inhibit joint cross-institutional data usage based on semantic annotation since data items with related content from different sites will not be identifiable based on their respective annotations if different choices were made without further steps such as ontological inference, which is still an active area of research. We hypothesize that a collaborative approach to semantic annotation of medical data can contribute to more resource efficient and high-quality annotation by utilizing prior annotational choices of others to inform the annotation process, thus both speeding up the annotation itself and fostering a consensus approach to resolving annotational ambiguities by enabling annotators to discover and follow pre-existing annotational choices. Therefore, we have implemented a prototypical Collaborative Annotation Tool (CoAT), evaluated its usability, and present first inter-institutional experiences with this novel approach to promoting practically relevant interoperability driven by use of standardized ontologies.

One of the most used markers of cancer stem cells in several cancers, including colorectal cancer and breast cancer, is CD44. CD44 is a glycoprotein that traverses the cell membrane and binds to many ligands including hyaluronan resulting in activation of signaling cascades. Several reports have shown conflicting data on the expression of CD44 and that the expression depends on modes of investigations and subtypes of cancers. In addition, the correlation between CD44 expression and drug resistance, immune infiltration, EMT, metastasis and patients prognosis in several cancer types remains unclear. This study investigated CD44 expression in several cancers and explored its relationship with tumorigenesis using various publicly available databases, including The Cancer Genome Atlas, GEPIA, Oncomine, Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer and Tumor Immune Estimation Resource. Our analysis reveals that CD44 is differentially expressed in different cancers. CD44 expression is significantly associated with cancer patients’ survival in gastric, pancreatic and colorectal cancers. In addition, CD44 expression is closely linked with immune infiltration and immune suppressive features in pancreatic, colon adenocarcinoma and stomach cancer. High CD44 expression was significantly correlated with the expression of drug resistance-, EMT- and metastasis- linked genes. Tumors expressing high CD44 have higher mutation burden and afflict older patients than tumors expressing low CD44. Cell lines expressing high CD44 are more resistant to anti-cancer drugs compared to those expressing low CD44. Protein-protein interaction investigations and functional enrichment analysis showed that CD44 interacts with gene products related to cell-substrate adhesion, migration, platelet activation, and cellular response to stress. KEGG pathway analysis revealed that these genes play key roles in biological adhesion, cell component organization, locomotion, G-α-signaling and the response to stimulus. Overall, this investigation reveals that CD44 play significant roles in tumorigenesis, can be used as a prognostic biomarker in several cancers and can be therapeutically targeted in cancer therapy.

The Oryzaephilus surinamensis L. (Coleoptera: Silvanidae), is widely distributed all over the world, this beetle causes serious damage to stored products. Much attention has been paid to use food attraction or food volatile as a non-pollution method to achieve pest management. However, in this study, six most attractive food to O. surinamensis were selected among thirty eight food. Furthermore, the food mixture M17 with the best attractiveness were selected among the eighteen food mixtures combined by these six foods at different ratio. Subsequently food mixture M17 were tested in actual barn and compared with commercial attractant. We collected the volatile from food mixture, the volatile compounds attractive to this beetle also. We identified six electrophysio-logically active compounds responsible for the attraction of O. surinamensis, among the six chemically identified compounds, nonanal, dodecane, tridecaneand β-caryophyllene significantly attracted O. surinamensis when tested individually in behavioral assays. Blend of six chemicals according to food volatile concentration was most attractive to the beetles. The findings of this study reveal that food mixture M17 and food volatile can be potentially used for development of effective attractants for management of O. surinamensis.

This research contributes to the overall debate on education for sustainable development (ESD) by shed- ding lights on the contributing role of formal education to the contemporaneous dynamics of literacy, labor market participation and poverty reduction in Africa, with a focus on Burkina Faso. The study uses a semi-parametric recursive trivariate probit modeling approach, and data from the 2014 National Survey on Household Living Conditions in Burkina Faso. The results show that the embraced systemic approach in this analysis is statistically signi cant as shown by the 95% con dence intervals on the three correlation coeffcients in the model. Furthermore, education does improve literacy skills, however improved literacy skills in itself does not guaranty active labor market participation in Burkina Faso. Active labor market participation seem to be affected by labor market rates of return, and individual reservation wage (or income). When labor market rate of return is short of high literacy skilled individuals' reservation wage, then the natural response is a choice of inactivity in the labor market, by the later group. Simultaneously however, it is found that active labor market participation leads to poverty reduction; therefore, in addition to new industrial policies for structural transformation of the economy, policy makers in Burkina Faso should consider education and minimum wage reforms to give highly literate household members the incentive to be active in the labor market.

Video gamers can play to negate the psychological impact of stress (Pine et al., 2020), which may become problematic when users over-rely on the stress-relief potential of gaming. This study used a repeated-measures experimental design to investigate the relationships between stress, video gaming, and problematic video gaming behaviours in a convenience sample of 40 students at a UK university. Results indicated that positive affect increased and negative affect decreased, whilst a biological stress measure (Instantaneous Pulse Rate) also decreased after a short video gaming session (t(36) = 4.82, p < .001, d = 0.79). Results also suggest that video gaming can act as a short-term buffer against the physiological impact of stress. Further research should focus on testing individuals who have been tested for Gaming Disorder as opposed to a general population. Research could also utilise variations of the methodological framework used in this study to examine the intensity of a stress-relief effect under different social situations. The study’s findings in relation to published work are also discussed.

Background: Early diagnosis of postoperative complications is an urgent task, allowing timely prescribing of appropriate therapy and reducing the cost of patient treatment. Prognostic models based on various data could help in the early diagnosis of postoperative complications after cardiac surgery. Objectives: The purpose of the study was to determine whether an integrated approach based on clinical data along with metabolites and biomarkers had greater predictive value than the models built on less data. Methods: The study included patients (n=62) admitted for planned cardiac surgery (coronary artery bypass grafting with cardiopulmonary bypass), who were retrospectively divided into two groups depending on the presence (n=26) or absence (n=36) of postoperative complications of all types. Clinical and laboratory data on the first day after surgery were analyzed. Additionally, patients' blood samples were collected before and on the first day after surgery to determine biomarkers (interleukin-6, procalcitonin, NT-proBNP, high-sensitivity troponin T) and metabolites (8 aromatic and 2 dicarboxylic acids were detected using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry). Results: Patients before surgery, compared with healthy donors, differed in the concentration of metabolites (p &lt; 0.05), and had concentrations of a number of biomarkers exceeding the corresponding reference values. Multivariate PLS-DA models, predicting the presence or absence of postoperative complications, were built using clinical data (ROC-AUC=0.71), concentrations of metabolites and biomarkers (ROC-AUC=0.60), and the entire data set (ROC-AUC=0.75). For comparison we built univariate models using the EuroScore2 (ROC-AUC=0.59) and SOFA (ROC-AUC=0.76) scales; concentrations of lactate (ROC-AUC=0.71), the dynamic changes of 4-hydroxyphenyllactic acid (ROC-AUC=0.69), and the sum of three sepsis-associated metabolites (ROC-AUC=0.70). The proposed complex model using entire data set was comparable to the SOFA scale, which confirms the expediency of searching for new predictive models based on a variety of factors.

Milk serves as a crucial source of natural bioactive compounds essential for human nutrition and health. The gastrointestinal digestion of milk proteins releases various biologically active peptides that positively impact human health and enhance physiological performance. With the growing production of cheese, Greek yogurt, and other dairy products, the volume of unutilized acid whey is significantly increasing. Acid whey, containing almost all whey proteins and approximately one-quarter of casein, presents a valuable raw material for generating peptides with potential health benefits. These peptides exhibit properties such as antioxidant, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, anticarcinogenic, antihypertensive, antithrombotic, opioid, mineral-binding, and growth-stimulating activities, contributing to improved human immunity and the treatment of chronic diseases. Enzymatic hydrolysis of milk proteins has been developed as a method to produce these peptides, facilitating their use in food fortification. To incorporate whey into functional beverages, it undergoes fermentation by lactic acid bacteria with proteolytic activity. To specifically enrich these beverages with peptides exhibiting targeted bioactivities, it is essential to select lactic acid bacteria strains possessing the requisite protease profiles. Additionally, the sensory properties of the final product can be enhanced using starter cultures with diverse metabolic capabilities, even in the absence of added flavoring agents. Given the imperative to develop waste-free technologies and enhance the profitability of the dairy industry, there is a growing need to efficiently utilize and transform acid whey into a broad spectrum of valuable products and food additives. This approach is justified not only by the nutritional benefits of the bioactive components in whey but also by the commercial potential of safe and health-enhancing products.

The paper focuses on the application of a multilevel, integrative and territorial approach to the protection of cultural heritage through planning instruments in Serbia. It points out the problems of the sectoral approach and discusses international recommendations that can be integrated into the planning methodology. The case study is the area of Djerdap National Park, which has an already established international and national importance. The research suggests that the cultural heritage in the area, with the exception of the Roman limes, is still recognized at the level of individual localities. The study emphasizes the importance of aligning all levels of governance to safeguard the whole spatial entity rather than focusing solely on its particular areas. The interna-tional and national importance of the planning area contributes to the strengthening of awareness of heritage and its institutional protection. However, the vitality of the area, which is key to its sustainable development, comes from the local level. Planning documents contribute to the inte-gration of local values and local communities into development programs and projects.

In order to shorten the detection time and improve the average precision on embedded devices, A lightweight and high accuracy model is proposed for passion fruit in complex environments (backlight, occlusion, overlap, sunny, cloudy, rainy). Firstly, replacing the backbone network of YOLOv5 with a lightweight GhostNet model reduces the number of parameters and computation while improving detection speed. Secondly, a new feature branch is added to the GhostNet network, and the feature fusion layer in the neck network is reconstructed to effectively combine the lower-level and higher-level features, which not only improves the accuracy of the model but also maintains its lightweight. Finally, the knowledge distillation methods are used to transfer the knowledge from the more capable teacher model to the less capable student model, which significantly improving the detection accuracy. The improved model is denoted as G-YOLO-NK. The average accuracy of the G-YOLO-NK network is 96.00%, which is 1.00% higher than the original YOLOv5s model. Furthermore, the improved model size is 7.14MB, reduced to half of the original model, and the real-time detection frame rate is 11.25 FPS on the Jetson Nano. Compared to the state-of-the-art model, the proposed model outperforms them in terms of average precision and detection performance. The present work provides an effective model for real-time detection of passion fruits in complex orchard scenes, which can provide valuable technical support for the development of orchard picking robots and greatly improve the intelligence level of orchards.

The impact of interaction SS with MJO on rainfall along Java Island to East Nusa Tenggara has been studied using daily rainfall observation data from 2140 weather observation stations, which are also equipped with GSMaP, OLR, and ERA5 data. There were 61 SS events found, 17 during active MJO and 44 in inactive MJO. Rainfall increases more in the western study area when the active MJO and more in the eastern study area when the inactive MJO is due to SS. SS reduces rainfall in the Jakarta region, regardless of the activity or inactivity of the MJO. SS causes extreme rainfall to only occur in a small part of certain areas, so it tends to significantly reduce the possibility of extreme rainfall. In the southern part of the IMC, SS predominates over MJO in supporting increased water vapor transport. Large-scale synoptic circulations like the monsoon, SS, and MJO can interact with local land-sea wind circulation to produce spatiotemporal variability in rainfall on Java Island. Rainfall mostly increases in the afternoon and decreases in the morning when SS occurs, whether there is MJO or not. Convective instability analysis indicates that SS increases precipitation, most likely by lowering CIN and raising VIMFC.

The Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) scanner is an easy and portable Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR) data acquisition device. Its main output is a 3D point cloud covering the scanned scene. Regarding the importance of accuracy in the survey domain, this paper aims to assess the accuracy of two SLAM scanners: the NavVis VLX and the BLK2GO Scanner. This assessment is conducted for both outdoor and indoor environments. In this context, two types of reference data are used: the Total Station (TS) and the static scanner Z+F Imager 5016. To carry out the assessment, four comparisons are tested: cloud to cloud, cloud to mesh, mesh to mesh, and edge detection board assessment. However, the results of the assessments confirm that the accuracy of indoor SLAM scanner measurements (5 mm) is greater than that of outdoor ones (between 10 mm and 60 mm). Moreover, the comparison of cloud to cloud provides the best accuracy regarding direct accuracy measurement without manipulations. Finally, based on the high accuracy, scanning speed, flexibility, and the accuracy differences between tested cases, it is confirmed that SLAM scanners are effective tools for data acquisition.

In recent years, electroencephalogram (EEG) emotion recognition has emerged as a research hotspot in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite advancements in EEG-based emotion recognition, room for enhancing performance persists due to EEG signal redundancy and limitations in feature extraction, leading to inefficient models and emotional information loss. To fully utilize EEG's emotional information and improve recognition accuracy while reducing computational costs, this paper proposes a Convolutional-Recurrent Hybrid Network with a dual-stream adaptive approach and an attention mechanism (CSA-SA-CRTNN). Firstly, the model utilizes a CSAM module to assign corresponding weights to EEG channels. Then, an adaptive dual-stream convolutional-recurrent network (SA-CRNN and MHSA-CRNN) is applied to extract local spatial-temporal features. After that, the extracted local features are concatenated and fed into a temporal convolutional network with a multi-head self-attention mechanism (MHSA-TCN) to capture global information. Finally, the extracted EEG information is used for emotion classification. We conducted binary and ternary classification experiments on the DEAP dataset, achieving 99.26% and 99.15% accuracy for arousal and valence in binary classification, and 97.69% and 98.05% in ternary classification, surpassing relevant algorithms. Additionally, the model's efficiency is significantly higher than other models, achieving better accuracy with lower resource consumption.

Glycosidic linkage analysis was conducted on the unfractionated polysaccharides in the alcohol-insoluble residues (AIRs) prepared from six red seaweeds (Gracilariopsis sp., Prionitis sp., Mastocarpus papillatus, Callophyllis sp., Mazzaella splendens, and Palmaria palmata) using GC-MS/FID analysis of partially methylated alditol acetates (PMAAs). The cell walls of P. palmata primarily contained mixed-linkage xylans and small amounts of sulfated galactans and cellulose. In contrast, the unfractionated polysaccharides of the other five species were rich in galactans displaying diverse 3,6-anhydro-galactose and galactose linkages with varied sulfation patterns. Different levels of cellulose were also observed. This glycosidic linkage method offers advantages for cellulose analysis over traditional monosaccharide analysis that is known for underrepresenting glucose in crystalline cellulose. Relative linkage compositions calculated from GC-MS and GC-FID measurements showed that anhydro sugar linkages generated more response in the latter detection method. This improved linkage workflow presents a useful tool for studying polysaccharide structural variations across red seaweed species. Furthermore, for the first time, relative linkage compositions from GC-MS and GC-FID measurements, along with normalized FID and total ion current (TIC) chromatograms without peak assignments, were analyzed using principal component analysis (PCA) as a proof-of-concept demonstration of the technique's potential to differentiate various red seaweed species.

Background: Educating college students about the importance of good sleep habits could lead to the adoption of healthier sleep routines, including sufficient sleep duration and sleep quality. The current pre-post study examines the impact of completing a sleep education program called “Sleep 101” on (1) sleep hygiene practices, (2) sleep quality, and (3) weekday and weekend sleep behaviors among college students. “Sleep 101” is an interactive online course developed to educate college students about the importance of sleep by addressing basic sleep physiology, the impact of sleep on mood, academic and physical performance, the interactions between sleep and various substances, and common sleep disorders. Methods: 338 college students were recruited from a midsized public university in the US and invited to participate in “Sleep 101”, of which 25 participants completed the baseline and post-intervention questionnaire. The Sleep Hygiene Index (SHI) was utilized to evaluate sleep hygiene practices, while standard questions were employed to assess weekday and weekend sleep behaviors and overall sleep quality. Results: Those who completed the study demonstrated a significant increase in weekday sleep duration and were less likely to engage in negative prior bedtime activities. In addition, 40% of those who completed baseline and post-intervention assessments noticed improvements in their sleep quality. Conclusion: These findings suggest that a brief online program is beneficial in improving sleep behaviors among college and could be a scalable approach to addressing current sleep issues and preventing future sleep problems in college students.

The profile of secondary metabolites occurring in apple cuticular layer is not only characteristic for particular apple cultivar, but also dynamically reflects various external factors in growing environment. In this study, the possibility to authenticate apple samples based on analysis of their cuticular layer extracts was investigated. Ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution tandem mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS/MS) was employed for obtaining metabolomic fingerprints. In total, 274 authentic apple samples, four cultivars harvested within the seasons 2020 to 2022 in the Czech Republic and Poland were analysed. The generated complex data processed by univariate and multivariate statistical methods enabled to build classification models for discrimination of apple cultivars as well as their geographical origin. The models showed very good performance in differentiation of Czech and Polish samples for three of four cultivars: ‘Gala’, ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘Idared’, moreover, the validity of the models was verified over harvest seasons. The diagnostic markers, besides metabolites of triterpene biosynthetic pathway, mainly represented wax esters. ‘Jonagold’, which is known to be susceptible to mutations, was the only cultivar for which the unambiguous classification of geographical origin was not possible.

Superior fiber quality is one of the most important objectives in cotton breeding. To detect the genetic basis underlying fiber quality, an F2 population containing 413 plants was constructed by crossing Jifeng 914 and Jifeng 173, both of which have superior fiber quality, with Jifeng 173 being better. Five fiber quality traits were investigated in the F2, F2:3, F2:4, and F2:5 populations. Quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping was conducted based on a high-density genetic map containing 11,488 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and spanning 4,202.12 cM in length. Transgressive segregation patterns and complex correlations in the five tested traits were observed. A total of 108 QTLs were found, including 27 for fiber length (FL), 16 for fiber strength (FS), 24 for micronaire (MC), 17 for fiber uniformity (FU), and 24 for fiber elongation rate (FE). Chromosome A7 contained 12 QTL, ranking the first. No QTL was found on chromosome D1 and D11. Each QTL contributed 1.98%–21.45% to the phenotypic variation (PV), including 13 major effect QTLs that contributed more than 10% toward PV. Two QTLs could be repeatedly detected in three populations, including qFL-D3-2 in F2, F2:4, and F2:5 with 9.18%–21.45% of PV, qFS-A11-1 in F2:3, F2:4 and F2:5 with 6.05%–10.41% of PV. Another seven stable QTLs could be detected in two populations, including four major effect QTLs: qFL-A12-3, qFS-D10-2, qMC-D6-2, and qMC-D8-1. Fourteen QTL-overlapping regions were found, which might explain the complex correlations among the five phenotypic traits. Four regions on chromosome A11, D3, D6, and D10 covered by both stable and major effect QTLs are promising for further fine mapping. The genomic regions of the two QTLs detected in three populations and the four major effect QTLs contain 810 genes. Gene functional analysis revealed that the annotated genes are mainly involved in protein binding and metabolic pathways. Fifteen candidate genes in the qFL-D3-2 region are highly expressed in fiber or ovules during fiber initiation, elongation, secondary cell wall thickening, or maturation stages. qRT-PCR revealed that Ghir_D03G005440.1 and Ghir_D03G011310.1 may play a role in promoting fiber initiation, Ghir_D03G006470.1 may be beneficial for promoting fiber elongation. This study provides more information for revealing the molecular genetic basis underlying cotton fiber quality.

Currently there are fewer depth models applied to pepper picking detection, while the existing generalized neural networks have problems such as large model parameters, long training time, and low model accuracy.In order to solve the above problems, this paper proposes a Yolo-chili target detection algorithm for chili pepper detection. First, the classical target detection algorithm yolov5 is used as a benchmark model, and an adaptive spatial feature pyramid structure combining the attention mechanism and the idea of multi-scale prediction is introduced to improve the model's detection effect on occluded peppers and small target peppers. Secondly, a three-channel attention mechanism module is introduced to improve the algorithm's long-distance recognition ability and reduce the interference of redundant testers. Finally, the quantized pruning method is used to reduce the model parameters and realize the lightweight processing of the model. Applying the method to the homemade chili pepper dataset, the AP value of chili pepper reaches 93.11%; the accuracy rate is 93.51% and the recall rate is 92.55%.The experimental results show that yolo-chili is able to achieve accurate and real-time pepper detection under complex orchards.

The temporary immersion system bioreactor named GreenTray®[2], [3]presents advantages over the existing ones. Firstly, there is no need to use forceps to move the shoots or plantlets in or out of the recipient, neither the use of scalpel to divide them. Secondly, the basis of the shoot can remain in the GreenTray® and can sprout again in several cycles of growth. These two characteristics reduce the costs in the process of micropropagation. Besides, shoots or plantlets development is enhanced by the aeration of the recipient, thus enriching with CO2 the recipient atmosphere. The chapter describes and provides images and values of interest in (1) the micropropagation process of some commercial Prunus or Pyrus rootstocks; (2) the plantlet growth under autotrophic conditions; and (2) the inoculation of plants with pathogens that reproduce in vitro the symptoms observed in vivo, using the GreenTray® bioreactor.

Aiming at the problems of inaccurate segmentation of long object and information loss of small object in real-time semantic segmentation algorithm, this paper proposes a lightweight multi-branch real-time semantic segmentation network based on BiseNetV2. The new auxiliary branch makes full use of spatial details and context information to cover the long object in the field of view. Meanwhile, in order to ensure the inference speed of the model, the asymmetric convolution is used in each stage of the auxiliary branch to design a structure with low computational complexity. In the multi-branch fusion stage, the alignment and fusion module is designed to provide guidance information for deep and shallow feature mapping, so as to make up for the problem of feature misalignment in the fusion of information at different scales, and thus reduce the loss of small target information. In order to further improve the model’s awareness of key information, a global context module is designed to capture the most important features in the input data. The proposed network uses NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Laptop GPU experiment, on the road street view data set Cityscapes and CamVid average occurring simultaneously ratio reached 77.1% and 78.4% respectively, with running speed of 127 frames/s respectively and 112 frames/s. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can achieve real-time segmentation and improve the accuracy significantly, showing good semantic segmentation performance

Excess nitrogen in agricultural drainage poses a serious threat to the water quality safety of the Yellow River basin. Utilizing aquatic plants to modify the rhizosphere microbial community structure and facilitate nitrogen transformation is a crucial strategy for mitigating regional water eutrophication. Our results revealed that the denitrification rate (DR), dissimilatory nitrate reduction to ammonium rate (DNRAR) and nitrogen fixation rate (NFR) of rhizosphere sediments exhibited a significant increase in artificially cultivated ditch. Compared with those in natural ditches, the richness of the bacterial community and the relative abundances of Bacteroidota, Verrucomicrobiota, Firmicutes, Anaeromyxobacter and Geobacter, which are involved mainly in the nitrogen cycle, in the rhizosphere sediments of artificially cultivated ditch were significantly greater due to improvements in environmental conditions. In artificially cultivated ditch, the dominant functional genes affecting DRNARs in the rhizosphere sediments of P. australis were nrfC and nrfA, while DRs were driven mainly by norB and napA, which were influenced by the nitrogen and carbon levels; and the dominant functional genes affecting NFRs in the rhizosphere sediments of T. orientalis were nifD, nifK and nifH. Our results provide a scientific basis for the use of aquatic plants for mitigating excess nitrogen levels in agricultural drainage.

Strawberry root rot caused by Neopestalotiopsis clavispora is one of the main diseases of strawberry and significantly impacts the yield and quality of strawberry fruit. There are now no effective control techniques available except for fungicide sprays, which may directly impact consumers. Biological control is becoming an alternative method for the control of plant diseases to replace or decrease the application of traditional synthetic chemical fungicides. Trichoderma is widely used as a biological agent for controlling strawberry root rot. In order to provide resources for screening the highly effective biocontrol fungus for controlling strawberry root rot caused by Neopestalotiopsis clavispora, the biocontrol mechanism,the control effects of Trichoderma asperellum CMT10 against strawberry root rot and growth-promoting effects on strawberry seedlings were investigated by plate culture, microscopy observation and root drenching methods.The results showed that CMT10 had obvious competitive, antibiotic and hyperparasitism effects on Neopestalotiopsis clavispora CMGF3. The CMT10 could quickly occupy nutritional space, and the inhibition rates of CMT10 against CMGF3 in confrontation culture on 7 d was 65.49%. The inhibition rates of volatile metabolite and fermentation metabolite produced by CMT10 against CMGF3 were 79.67% and 69.84%, respectively. The mycelium of strain CMT10 can act as hyperparasites by making contacting, winding and penetrating hyphae of CMGF3. Pot experiment showed that the biocontrol efficacy of CMT10 on strawberry root rot caused by Neopestalotiopsis clavispora was 63.00%. CMT10 had obvious promotion effect on strawberry growth, the plant height, root length, total fresh weight, root fresh weight, stem fresh weight and root dry weight, with the promotion rates were 20.09%, 22.39%, 87.11%, 101.58%, 79.82% and 72.33%, respectively. Overall, this study showed the ability of Trichoderma asperellum CMT10 to control strawberry root rot and their potential to develop as novel biocontrol agents to replace chemical fungicides for eco-friendly, sustainable agriculture.

In this paper we study a class of impulsive delayed neural networks with parameter uncertainties and reaction-diffusion terms. Using the properties of M-matrices and some inequality techniques, some sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee the global exponential stability of the given system. The results obtained are presented by simple algebraic inequalities, which are certainly more concise than previous methods. Finally, the validity and usefulness of our results are illustrated by arithmetic examples.

Pyrops candelaria is one of the common pests of fruit trees, but the research on the pathogenic microorganisms it may carry is very limited. Therefore, it is essential to reveal the pathogenic microbes it carries and their potential hazards. This study found a new virus from the transcriptome of P. candelaria, which was first reported in P. candelaria and named as PyCaV (Pyrops candelaria associated virus). RACE and bioinformatics assay revealed that the full-length of PyCaV is 10855 bp with the polyA tail, containing a single open reading frame (ORF) encoding a polyprotein consisting of 3171 amino acid (aa). The virus has a typical Iflavirus structure, including two rhv domains, a RNA helicase domain (HEL), a 3C cysteine protease domain (Pro), and a RNA-dependent RNA polymerase domain (RdRp). Further phylogenetic analysis revealed that this virus belongs to family Iflaviridae and sequence alignements analysis suggedted PyCaV is new member in unassigned genus of family Iflaviridae. Further in-depth analysis of virus-infection-part showed that PyCaV is distributing in the whole longan lanternfly, including its head, chest, and abdomen, but more PyCaV was identified in the chest. The distribution of PyCaV in different parts of P. candelaria was further explored, which showed that more PyCaV were detected in its piercing-sucking mouthparts and chest viscera. Statistical analysis showed that the PyCaV infection was affected by time and locations.

Apis mellifera, especially weak ones, are highly vulnerable to Carpoglyphus lactis mites, which can rapidly infest and consume stored pollen, leading to weakened colonies and potentially colony collapse. This study aimed to ascertain and investigate the prevalence of this mite in honeybee colonies across 9 provinces in the Republic of Korea (ROK). A total of 615 honeybee colonies were collected, from 66 apiaries during the spring and 58 apiaries during the summer of 2023. A 1,242 bp segment of the the Cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) gene was amplified using the polymerase chain reaction method. The detection levels of C. lactis in the honeybees were compared between winter and summer. Based on the COI sequence analysis, the nucleotide sequence similarity of C. lactis mites isolated in the ROK with those from China (NC048990.1) was found to be 99.5%, and with those from the United Kingdom (KY922482.1) was 99.3%. This study is the first report of C. lactis in Korean apiaries. The findings in this study demonstrate a significantly higher detection rate in winter, which is 4.1 times greater than that in summer (p &lt; 0.001). Furthermore, the results underscore the usefulness of molecular diagnostic techniques for detecting C. lactis mites.

With the burgeoning growth of online retail, the issue of counterfeit products has become a significant threat to both consumer trust and brand integrity, posing challenges to sustainable market practices. Online retail platforms are promoted to redesign their channel structures and enhance brand traceability to tackle counterfeits using blockchain technology. To investigate the interactions between blockchain technology and the channel structures of online retail platforms, we design a game theory model incorporating a manufacturer with(out) blockchain participation selling products via an online retail platform that operates an agency channel and/or a reselling channel. We show that the critical trade-off of blockchain participation comprises the brand assurance effect of the blockchain, the channel competition intensification effect, and the blockchain adoption cost. The platform is capable of strategically designing the channel structure to encourage (while discouraging) blockchain participation by the manufacturer. Our analysis highlights the complementarity between blockchain participation and the channel structure. Furthermore, the effect of the consumer’s belief in the reselling channel, the commission fee in the agency channel, and the substitutability between channels are investigated in depth. The research provides valuable insights for online retail platforms and policymakers seeking to foster a sustainable and trustworthy e-commerce ecosystem.

In this paper, we extend the KdVSKR equations in (1+1)-dimension and (2+1)-dimension to fractional KdVSKR equations with modified Riemann-Liouville derivative. The (2+1)-dimensional KdVSKR equation, which is a recent extension of (1+1)-dimensional KdVSKR equation, can model the resonances of solitons in shallow water. By means of the Hirota bilinear method, finite symmetry group method and consistent Riccati expansion method, many new interaction solutions have been derived. Soliton-cnoidal interaction solution of the (1+1)-dimensional fractional KdVSKR equation has been derived for the first time. For the (2+1)-dimensional frac-tional KdVSKR equation, two-wave interaction solutions and three-wave interaction solutions, including dark-soliton-sine interaction solution, bright-soliton-elliptic interaction solution, and lump-hyperbolic-sine interaction solution, have been derived. Impact of the fractional order on the shapes of these solutions has been illustrated by figures. Three-wave interaction solutions of fractional systems have not been reported in the existing references. The research idea in this paper can be applied to other fractional differential equations.

COX II containing a dual core CuA active site is one of the three core subunits of mitochondrial Cco, which plays a significant role in the physiological process. In this report, the full-length cDNA of COXⅡ gene was cloned from Sitophilus zeamais, which had an ORF of 684 bp encoding 227 amino acids residues. The predicted COXⅡ protein had a molecular mass of 26.2 kDa with pI value of 6.37, and multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic analysis indicated that Sitophilus zeamais COXⅡ had high sequence identity 78.51% with the COXⅡ of other insect species, especially similarity to sitophilus oryzae. This gene was subcloned into the prokaryotic expression vector pET-32a, and induced by IPTG in E.coli Transetta (DE3) expression system. Finally the COXⅡ with 6-His tag was purified using affinity chromatography with Ni²⁺-NTA agarose. WB showed the recombinant COXⅡ was about 44 kD, and the concentration of fusion protein was 50μg/mL. UV-spectrophotometer and infrared spectrometer analysis showed that recombinant COXⅡ could catalyze the oxidation of substrate Cytc, and influenced by AITC. It was found that AITC could form a hydrophobic region with COXⅡ protein via molecular docking, besides, a sulfur atom of AITC structure could form a length of 2.9 Å hydrogen bond with Leu-31. These results will provide valuable information for elucidating the role of COXⅡ in Sitophilus zeamais responses to AITC, meanwhile, it will helpful to carry out a point mutation in AITC binding sites for the future research.

The properties of the annual, semiannual and triennial oscillations (AO, SAO and TO) in the middle atmosphere have been investigated using the TIMED/SABER temperature data. The Lomb-Scargle and wavelet spectra were used to determine the dominant oscillations in the background temperature field. The AO is prominent at the mid-latitudes. The AO amplitudes present an asymmetry between the two Hemispheres, being larger in the mesosphere than in the stratosphere. The SAO dominates the tropical regions, with three amplitude maxima at altitudes of 45, 75, and 85 km. The SAOs in the upper mesosphere (75 km) are out of phase with those in the mesopause (85 km) in the tropical regions, which can generate an enhancement of 11 K at each equinox, contributing to the lower mesospheric inversion layer. The TO is significant in the tropical region, with amplitude being maximum at 35, 45 and 85 km. Result shows that there may be potential interaction by the TO with SAO at 85km at the equator. The relation between ENSO and TO has also been discussed. The ENSO signal may modulate the amplitude of the TO, mainly in the lower stratosphere. The real origin of the TO may lie in the wave-mean-flow interaction.

As the world population grows, fulfilling the need for biomaterials in the healthcare system becomes increasingly important. Biomaterials, which include metals, polymers, ceramics, and composites, play an important role in the creation of medical devices that improve people's lives. The European Society for Biomaterials described biomaterials as non-biological materials used in medical devices to interact with biological systems. This definition has developed to encompass materials that treat, assess, or replace tissues or bodily functions. Biocompatibility, as defined by the FDA, is a key feature of biomaterials, as is the requirement to fulfil design requirements such as mechanical performance, geometry, and electrical control. Over the last decade, advances in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering have boosted biomaterials' usage in medical applications dramatically. Despite its promise, scientists, engineers, and physicians continue to face significant challenges due to the complexity of biomaterials. Biomaterials have various benefits, including biodegradability, non-toxicity, and biocompatibility, making them extremely useful for replacing, sustaining, or improving biological activities in damaged tissues. They are used in a wide range of applications, including tissue engineering implants, human tissue healing and regeneration, medication delivery systems, and biosensors. This study gives insights into the fundamental characteristics, case studies, and ethical issues associated with the usage and use of biomaterials, further examining their potential and significance in healthcare and medicine.

The paper describes the new method for image compression based on coordinated group signal transformation. The algorithm is a type of difference coding. Coordinated processing significantly simplifies the difference signal conversion scheme using a single group codec for all signals. The described method considers color channels as correlated signals of a multi-channel communication system. The specifics of the processed data required modification of the coordinated group processing algorithm. First, we changed how to calculate the difference signals to prevent data loss. Secondly, the group codec was supplemented with a neural network to improve the quality of reconstructed images. We considered the following types of neural networks: fully connected, recurrent, convolution, and convolution in the Fourier space. Based on the simulation results, it is best to use fully connected neural networks if the goal is to minimize processing delay time. These networks have a response time of 13 ms. On the other hand, if the priority is to improve quality in cases where delays are not critical, then convolution neural networks in the Fourier space should be used. These networks have a response time of 140 ms and are of significant interest.

In electromagnetic ultrasonic testing, it is difficult to recognize small-size bottom cracks by time of flight (ToF), and the lift-off fluctuation of the probe affects the accuracy and consistency of the inspection results. In order to overcome the difficulty, a novel EMAT (electromagnetic acoustic transducer)-PEC (pulse eddy current) composite sensor is designed. We use amplitude of bottom echo recorded by EMAT to identify the tiny bottom crack as well as the amplitude of PEC signals picked up by the integrated symmetric coils to measure the average lift-off of the probe in real time. Firstly, the effects of lift-off and bottom cracks on amplitude of bottom echo are distinguished combining the theoretical analysis and finite element method (FEM). And then an amplitude correction method based on the fusion of EMAT and PEC signals is proposed to reduce the impact of lift-off on the defect signal. The experimental results demonstrate that the designed composite sensor can effectively detect the bottom crack as small as 0.1mm* 0.3mm. The signal fusion method can accurately correct the amplitude of defect signal and the relative error is less than ±8%.

The studied solar pot is a recent invention, which gained a utility model protection in 2021 from the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office under patent number 5489. The device is made for environmentally friendly cooking or heating (by utilizing solar energy) of foods and liquids. Its structure is similar to a double pipe heat exchanger, it has an outer mantle and an inner cooking tank. The goals of the paper are proposing a new physically-based mathematical model describing the solar pot and carrying out computer experiments with it, assembling an experimental system of the pot connected with a solar collector and performing measurements on it. Based on the results, the solar pot can successfully be used for cooking or sterilizing foods or liquids during the studied time period, in Hungary.

The research reported on this paper was aimed at improving the overall efficiency of a PDO certified artisanal cheese production process. Being a PDO certified foodstuff by the EU, it is considered to have properties and qualities determined by the geographical environment in which is made, with its production taking place in a specific and determined geographical location, in this case the Serra da Estrela region. In that sense, the authors conducted a mapping according to a systemic perspective of the processes involved in the context of manufacturing and distribution of certified Serra da Estrela cheese. Numerous methods were used throughout the process, such as a systemic design analysis, and techniques derived from ethnographic methods, which led to the collection of data in the field and consequently provided the immersion of the researcher in genuine work situations. Critical points were identified and emphasized in the systemic map with the purpose of encouraging initiatives to address and overcome the gaps and inefficiencies detected. The systemic design analysis triggered the development of design work. Observations following an ethnographic approach identified ergonomic risks in cheese making during the process of cutting excess chips, fostering the emergence of musculoskeletal disorders at the wrist. A tool that fits best to the task at hand was developed. A prototype of the new tool enabled collecting feedback from use in the work context, in order to inform product development. The domains of agricultural production and microbiology, considering the specific microorganisms developed trough the ripening process of the cheese, turned out to be aspects of high importance for the issue under focus, contributing to a broader understanding of the ripening process and its risks, simultaneously improving the efficiency and success of cheese production. If it were not for the systemic analysis, which served as a link between the boundaries of distinct domains such as the risk of microorganism contamination, ergonomics, energy efficiency, legislation and regulation policies, transportation challenges and economic viability, approached throughout the research. Simultaneously creating bridges between them, the various problems might not have been detected in the first place, as they are usually addressed in specialized disciplines, predetermined by the restrictions of each specific area of knowledge. As a consequence of the development of this research, which was based on an analysis that sought to establish possible connections between various disciplines and tried to constantly maintain a holistic perspective, making new connections and observing the issues from a new angle, apart from the already established methodologies. All this allowed to lay out the seeds for the development of a plan to tackle the critical points identified by the systemic analysis reported in this paper.

Abstract: Transcription factors are crucial pre-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms that can modulate the expression of downstream genes by binding to their promoter regions. DOF (DNA binding with One Finger) proteins are a unique class of transcription factors with extensive roles in plant growth and development. Our previous research indicated a decrease in iron content in chlorotic bamboo leaves. However, to our knowledge, genes related to iron metabolism pathways in bamboo species have not yet been studied. Therefore, in the current study, we identified iron metabolism-related (IMR) genes in bamboo and determined the transcription factors that significantly influence them. Among these, DOFs were found to have widespread effects and potentially significant impacts on their expression. We identified specific DOF members in Dendrocalamus latiflorus with binding abilities through homology with Arabidopsis DOF proteins, and established connections between some of these members and IMR genes using RNA-seq data. Additionally, molecular docking confirmed the binding interactions between these DlDOFs and the DOF binding sites in the promoter regions of IMR genes. The co-expression relationship between the two gene sets was further validated using q-PCR experiments. This study paves the way for research into iron metabolism pathways in bamboo and lays the foundation for understanding the role of DOF transcription factors in D. latiflorus.

This paper is focused on typical rural settlements in the Stara Planina Mountain area in Serbia. They are distinguished by their authenticity, identity and character, and they have still not been destroyed by inappropriate development as is the case in some other mountain areas in Serbia, where the effects of urbanization, globalization and homogenization are obvious. Consequently, there is a need to prevent these effects in mountain areas where there is a threat of disbalance between development and the inherited natural and cultural values. The paper starts from several important concepts that relate contemporary approaches to cultural heritage preservation, place morphology and planning future development. The concept definitions from recent documents from related fields are used. These concepts are then applied to the area of Stara Planina Mountain and its rural settlements. The necessity for an integrative approach to planning this area with significant natural and anthropogenic potential is pointed out, including its integration into international programs of sustainable development.

The wetlands in northeastern Bangladesh are home to some of the most prolific and valuable ecosystems on the planet, offering a wide range of benefits to both the local and wider communities. A limited number of research on this topic have been carried out in various wetlands in coastal hilsa, but none have been located in the northeastern region of Bangladesh. Thus, the goal of this study was to better understand the most commercially relevant species (anadromous hilsa) in northeastern Bangladesh as well as to assess the wetland ecosystem services more thoroughly with the contribution of their fish genetic resources. In addition to laboratory studies, fieldwork was done in the fishing settlements along the Surma River, Hakaluki Haor, and Tanguar Haor. The study classified 77 fish species into 21 subcategories of ecosystem services, of which 56% were not threatened, 17% were vulnerable, and 10% were highly endangered. The species Hilsa was found to be the most economically significant, accounting for 1% of the GDP overall. The study determined if the hilsa stock of the examined wetlands maintains a single or several subpopulations in comparison to other parts of the country when they migrate from saline water to northeastern Bangladesh (freshwater). But when compared to other groups, the FST score was between 0.000 to 0.017, indicating that the populations are identical and that there is genetic material sharing between them. Additionally, these statistics imply that the Sylhet haor and adjacent river systems contain a single stock of Hilsa fish. Nevertheless, a number of stresses and risks, including overexploitation, illicit and destructive fishing, siltation, and natural disasters like flash floods, have been linked to changes in the supply of hilsa and other ecosystem services. This study also emphasizes the necessity of policy attention and research to address the concerns.

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus type 2 (SARS-CoV-2) continues to be a global threat due to its ability to evolve and generate new subvariants, leading to new waves of infection. Additionally, other coronaviruses like Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV, formerly known as hCoV-EMC) which first emerged in 2012, persists and continues to present a threat of severe illness to humans. The continued identification of novel coronaviruses, coupled with the potential for genetic recombination between different strains, raises the possibility of new coronavirus clades of global concern emerging. As a result, there is a pressing need for pan-CoV therapeutic drugs and vaccines. After extensive optimization of an HCV protease inhibitor screening hit, a novel 3CLPro inhibitor (MK-7845) was discovered and subsequently profiled. MK-7845 exhibited nanomolar in vitro potency with broad spectrum activity against a panel of clinical SARS-CoV-2 subvariants and MERS-CoV. Furthermore, when administered orally, MK-7845 demonstrated a notable reduction of viral burdens by &gt;6 log orders in the lungs of transgenic mice infected with SARS-CoV-2 (K18-hACE2 mice) and MERS-CoV (K18-hDDP4 mice).

The continuous casting process of helical fiber reinforced metal matrix composites was proposed, and the experimental equipment was designed and manufactured. The relationship model be-tween the process parameters and the helical shape of the fibers in the metal matrix is analyzed by differential geometry. Helical carbon fiber reinforced lead matrix composites were prepared under different conditions. When the melting temperature and cooling intensity were increased, the helical radius of helical carbon fiber in lead matrix was increased. When the fiber rotation speed was increased, the helical radius was decreased, and the helical pitch was de-creased proportionally. The experimental results are consistent with the process model. Carbon fiber rein-forced aluminum composites were prepared. Scanning electron microscopy showed that the infiltration between the aluminum matrix and the carbon fiber was not complete. As the volume fraction of carbon fiber which was added in composites is too small, the mechanical properties of the composites have not been significantly improved.

This article presents an innovative approach to the design of a safe adaptive backstepping control system. Tailored specifically for underactuated marine robots, the system utilizes simple sensors for enhanced practicality and efficiency. Given their operation in diverse oceanic environments fraught with various sources of uncertainties, ensuring the system's safe and robust behavior holds paramount importance in the control literature. To address this concern, this paper introduces a control strategy designed to ensure robustness at both the kinematic and dynamic levels. By emphasizing the compensation for the system uncertainties, the design integrates a straightforward fuzzy system structure. To further ensure the system's safety, a funnel surface is defined, followed by the design of a suitable nonlinear sliding surface as a function of the funnel and tracking error. Specifically leveraging the Lyapunov function, the study formally establishes the Semi-globally Practically Finite-time Stability of the closed-loop system, validated through simulations conducted on underactuated marine robots.

Several types of guided bone regeneration materials are available with various properties and clinical indications. Among them, dentin-derived matrix from extracted teeth is an excellent alternative to traditional graft materials, such as allografts and xenografts. Different clinical preparation protocols exist: block form versus powder form, demineralized versus non-demineralized form. Out of these methods, demineralization protocols for dentin-derived matrix from extracted teeth have been noted for a wide range of successful clinical outcomes. The purpose of this animal study was to find out the most effective method of demineralizing dentin-derived matrix to result in the highest regenerative ability in the bone graft material in rabbit calvaria. The study conducted a comparative histomorphometric analysis of four groups in distinguished matrix conditions: a control group without graft placement, a non-demineralized dentin-derived matrix graft placement group, a 15-minute demineralized dentin-derived matrix graft placement group, and a 30-minute demineralized dentin-derived matrix graft placement group. Regenerative processes were evaluated three times at 2, 4, and 8 weeks post-graft placement. These groups of rabbits were evaluated randomly in a blinded setting to prevent bias. Among the four groups compared, the group with a 15-minute demineralized dentin-derived matrix graft showed the most efficient bone regeneration in the histomorphometric analysis. Based on this animal study, it was apparent that a 15-minute demineralization of dentin-derived matrix is the preferred preparation protocol to maximize the regenerative potential in the matrix.

Promoting green development has become an important way to optimize the ecological and economic structure and promote sustainable development. The Yangtze River Economic Belt is an important economic corridor in China, and it remains to be examined whether the implementation of environmental regulations has enhanced the green total factor productivity (GTFP) of cities. This paper calculates the green total factor productivity of 107 cities within the Yangtze River Economic Belt by using the super-efficient SBM model and the GML index with Chinese city panel data from 2007-2019 and measures the intensity of environmental regulations through textual analysis. The bidirectional fixed-effects model constructed in this paper suggests an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and GTFP, which is confirmed by a series of robustness tests. Green technology innovation and advanced industrial structure play a mechanism role in this. In regions with lower levels of green technology and industrial structure, the inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental regulation and green total factor productivity is more significant. In addition, the phenomenon of GTFP rising and then falling because of environmental regulation is more obvious in cities in the middle and upper reaches of the Yangtze River and outside the urban agglomerations. Therefore, when formulating environmental regulation policies, it is necessary to balance the relationship between economic development and environmental protection and harmonize the environment and economic development of the entire Yangtze River Basin.

The main purpose of this study is the determination of the optimal data acquisition and processing parameters of electric and seismic tomographic techniques, for the investigation of complex geological environments. Two different study areas, in central-east Peloponnese and SW Attica were selected, where a detailed geological mapping and surface geophysical survey were carried out. The applied geophysical survey included the application of electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) and seismic refraction tomography (SRT). The geoelectrical measurements were acquired with different arrays and electrode configurations. Moreover, various types of seismic sources were used at seventeen shot locations along the seismic arrays. For the processing of geoelectrical data, clustered datasets were created increasing the depth of investigation and the discriminatory capability. The seismic data processing included: (a) creation of synthetic models and seismic records to determine the effectiveness and capabilities of the technique, (b) spectral analysis of the seismic records to determine the optimal seismic source type and (c) inversion of the field data to create representative subsurface velocity models. The results of the two techniques successfully delineated the complex subsurface structure that characterizes these two geological environments. The application of the ERT combined with the SRT, are the two dominant, high-resolution techniques for the elucidation of complex subsurface structures.

Cocoa (Theobroma Cacao, L.) represents an important market that gained relevance and became an esteemed commodity thanks to cocoa powder, chocolate, and other related products. This work has analyzed 59 cocoa powder samples from the European market. Three distinct subgroups were identified: organic or conventional, alkalized or not alkalized, and raw or roasted processing. The impact of the technological process was evaluated on the pH, color, and compositional traits, as content of biogenic amines and salsolinol. The phenolic fraction was also investigated trough both common and emerging methods. Results depict that the influence of the agronomical practices (organic/conventional) did not affect significatively (p&lt;0.05) the composition of cocoa powders; similarly, the roasting process was not discriminative for the compounds traced. On the other hand, the alkalinization process greatly impacted on color, and pH, no matter of cocoa provenience, obtention, or other processes, also resulting reducing the phenolic fraction of treated samples. Principal components analysis confirmed that the alkali process acts on pH, color, and phenolic composition, but not on other bioactives molecules (BAs and salsolinol). All samples resulted safe while alkalized powders have a great reduction in beneficial biocompounds. A novel strategy could be to emphasize non-alkalized powders in the label, to meet the demand for more beneficial products.

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is a highly prevalent and aggressive malignancy, with mortality rates that reach 60%, mainly due to an excessive diagnostic delay. MiRNAs, a class of crucial epigenetic gene-expression regulators, have emerged as potential diagnostic biomarkers, with >200 molecules reported to be dysregulated in OSCC. We had previously established an in silico methodology for the identification of the most disease-specific molecules by bridging genetics and epigenetics. Here, we identified the stage-specific miRNAs that govern the asymptomatic early stages of oral tumorigenesis by exploiting the reverse interplay between miRNA-levels and their target-genes’ expression. Incorporating gene expression data from our group’s experimental hamster model of sequential oral oncogenesis, we bioinformatically detected the miRNAs that simultaneously target/regulate >75% of the genes that are characteristically upregulated or downregulated in the consecutive stages of hyperplasia, dysplasia and early-invasion OSCC, while exhibiting the opposite expressional dysregulation in OSCC-derived tissue and/or saliva specimens. We found that all stages share the downregulation of miR-34a-5p, miR124-3p, and miR-125b-5p, while miR-1-3p is underexpressed in dysplasia and early-invasion. Malignant early-invasion stage is distinguished by the downregulation of miR-147a and the overexpression of miR-155-5p, miR-423-3p and miR-34a-5p. The identification of stage-specific miRNA molecules may facilitate their utilization as biomarkers for presymptomatic OSCC diagnosis.

Hydrogen sulfide is present in active or extinct volcanic areas (mofettas). The habitable premises in these areas are affected by the presence of hydrogen sulfide, which, even in low concentrations, gives off a bad to unbearable smell. If the living spaces considered are closed enclosures, then a system can be designed to reduce the concentration of hydrogen sulfide. This paper presents a membrane way to reduce the hydrogen sulfide concentration to acceptable limits using a cellulosic derivative-propylene hollow fiber based composite membrane module. The cellulosic derivatives considered were carboxymethyl–cellulose (NaCMC), cellulose acetate (CA), methyl 2–hydroxyethyl–cellulose (MHEC), and 2–hydroxyethyl–cellulose (HEC). In the permeation module, hydrogen sulfide is captured with a solution of cadmium that forms cadmium sulfide, usable as a luminescent substance. The composite membranes were characterized by SEM, EDAX, FTIR, FTIR 2D maps, thermal analysis (TG and DSC) and from the perspective of hydrogen sulfide air removal performance. To determine the process performances, the variables were: the nature of the cellulosic derivative–polypropylene hollow fiber composite membrane, the concentration of hydrogen sulfide in the polluted air, the flow rate of polluted air, and the pH of the cadmium nitrate solution. Pertraction efficiency was maximum for the sodium carboxymethyl–cellulose (NaCMC)-polypropylene hollow fiber membrane, a hydrogen sulfide concentration in the polluted air of 20 ppm, polluted air flow rate of 50 L/min, and a pH of 2 and 4.

The normal growth and development of skeletal muscle is essential for the health of the body. The regulation of skeletal muscle by intestinal microorganisms and their metabolites has been continuously revealed. Acetate is the predominant short-chain fatty acid synthesized by gut microbiota through the fermentation of dietary fiber, however, the underlying molecular mechanisms governing the interaction between acetate and skeletal muscle during rapid growth stage remain to be further elucidated; Here, specific pathogen-free (SPF) mice, germ-free (GF) mice, and germ-free mice supplemented with sodium acetate (GS) were used to evaluate the effects of acetate on skeletal muscle growth and development of young mice with gut microbiota deficiency; We found the concentration of serum acetate, body mass gain, succinate dehydrogenase activity and expression of myogenesis maker gene of skeletal muscle in the GS group was higher than GF group following sodium acetate supplement. Furthermore, the transcriptome analysis revealed that acetate activated biological processes regulating skeletal muscle growth and development in GF group that are inhibited due to gut microbiota deficiency. In vitro experiment, we proved that acetate up-regulated Gm16062 to promote skeletal muscle cell differentiation; Overall, our findings proved that acetate promote skeletal muscle growth and development in young mice via increase Gm16062 expression.

Estimating the ocean’s subsurface thermohaline information from satellite measurements is essential for understanding ocean dynamics and El Niño phenomenon. This paper proposes an improved double-output Residual Neural Network (DO-ResNet) model to concurrently estimate the ocean subsurface temperature (OST) and ocean subsurface salinity (OSS) in the tropical Western Pacific using multi-source remote sensing data, including sea surface temperature (SST), sea surface salinity (SSS), sea surface height anomaly(SSHA), sea surface wind (SSW), and geographical information (including longitude (LON) and latitude (LAT)). In the model experiment, Argo data were used to train and validate the model, and the root mean square error (RMSE), normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) and coefficient of determination (R²) were employed to evaluate the model's performance. The results showed that the sea surface parameters selected in this study have a positive effect on the estimation process, and the average RMSE and R² values for estimating OST (OSS) by the proposed model are 0.34 °C (0.05 psu) and 0.91 (0.95), respectively. Under the data conditions considered in this study, DO-ResNet demonstrates superior performance relative to the extreme gradient boosting model, random forest model, and artificial neural network model. Additionally, this study evaluates the model’s accuracy by comparing its estimations of OST and OSS across different depths with Argo-derived data, demonstrating the model's ability to effectively capture the most spatial features, and by comparing NRMSE across different depths and seasons, the model displays strong seasonal adaptability. In conclusion, this research introduces a novel artificial intelligence technique for estimating OST and OSS in the tropical Western Pacific Ocean.

Phased injection of natural gas into internal combustion marine engines is a promising solution for optimizing performance and reducing harmful emissions, particularly unburned methane, a potent greenhouse gas. This innovative practice distinguishes itself from continuous injection because it allows for more precise control of the combustion process with only a slight increase in system complexity. By synchronizing the injection of natural gas with the intake and exhaust valve opening and closing times while also considering the gas path in the manifolds, methane release into the atmosphere is significantly reduced, making a substantial contribution to efforts to address climate change. Moreover, phased injection improves the efficiency of marine engines, resulting in reduced overall fuel consumption, lower fuel costs, and increased ship autonomy. This technology has been tested on a single-cylinder, large-bore, four-stroke research engine designed for marine applications, operating in dual-fuel mode with diesel and natural gas. Performance was compared with that of the conventional continuous feeding method. Evaluation of the effect on equivalent CO2 emissions indicates a potential reduction of up to approximately 20%. This reduction effectively brings greenhouse gas emissions below those of the diesel baseline case, especially when injection control is combined with supercharging control to optimize the air-fuel ratio.

In numerical simulations, achieving high accuracy without significantly increasing computational costs is often challenging. To address this, this paper presents an improved finite volume weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme tailored for applicability in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and implemented in the flow solver NUAA-Turbo for simulating turbomachinery flows using both RANS and RANS/LES coupling. Firstly, the new WENO scheme is validated against classic numerical test cases to assess its stability and reliability in handling discontinuities, the Double problem, and Raleigh-Taylor (RT) instability issues. Compared to the original format, this enhanced finite volume WENO scheme demonstrates superior stability near discontinuities and resolves flow features with the same grid resolution more effectively. Next, for engineering applications related to turbomachinery, such as compressor and turbine characteristics, computations are performed using RANS, and the results obtained using WENO-ZQ3 and WENO-JS3 are compared. Finally, the new fifth-order WENO scheme is applied to RANS/LES coupled simulations of turbine wakes and film cooling. The results show that the enhanced finite volume WENO scheme offers improved stability and accuracy in engineering applications, allowing for high-precision calculations with fewer grid points to capture more detailed flow physics, thereby reducing computational costs in aerodynamic applications.

To conduct high-precision and high-resolution numerical simulation of complex flow structures in turbomachinery, a high-order finite volume weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) scheme for the large eddy simulation (LES) is improved and embedded into the three-dimensional viscous unsteady CFD solver NUAA-Turbo. Firstly, the spectral characteristics and unsteady convergence of the improved WENO scheme are studied. Compared with the classical WENO scheme, the improved WENO scheme has better dissipation and dispersion characteristics and faster convergence speed. Then, the coefficient CW of the Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-viscosity (WALE) model is calibrated by decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence (DHIT) test case. Finally, the scheme is applied to conduct high-precision LES calculations of turbulent boundary layer flow, supersonic compression corner flow, and low-pressure turbine cascade separation flow. The numerical simulation results show that this WENO scheme has excellent shock wave capture ability and turbulence resolution and can capture more flow field details with less mesh size, greatly reducing the computational cost and laying a foundation for large-scale engineering application of LES.

To secure logic circuits against the illegal copying the insertion of the so-called key bit inputs using XOR/XNOR gates has been proposed in . The inserted gates modify (lock) the behavior of the original circuit and only the correct choice of the secret key bits guarantees the equivalent behaviour of the locked circuit to the original circuit. To break this kind of security, i.e. to find the secret key bits, there was a SAT solver based attack proposed in . The aim of this work is to experimentally verify this attack on several locked circuits with various number of primary inputs and outputs and with various number of gates. Except for the random placement of the key gates we evaluate also the positioning with chaining elimination. The obtained and presented results show that we were able to unlock 10 of 11 circuits within few minutes on a common PC.

Intermetallic compounds are increasingly being expected to utilize in tribological environments, but to date the works are hindered by insufficient ductility at low and medium temperature. This paper presents a novel multiphase intermetallic alloy with the chemical composition of Mo-40Ni-13Si (at.%). Microstructure characterization reveals that a certain amount of ductile Mo phases formed during the solidification process of ternary Mo-Ni-Si alloy melt, which is undoubtedly beneficial to the ductility improvement of intermetallic alloy. Tribological properties of the designed alloy, including wear resistance, friction coefficient and metallic tribological compatibility, were evaluated under dry sliding wear test conditions at room temperature. Results suggested that the multiphase alloy possesses an excellent property for room-temperature wear applications, which is attributed to the unique microstructural features and thereby good combination in hardness and ductility. The corresponding wear mechanism is also reported by observing the worn surface, subsurface and wear debris of alloy, which to be found is soft abrasive wear.

With the integrated development of the Internet, wireless sensor technology, cloud computing, and mobile Internet, there has been a lot of attention given to research about and applications of the Internet of Things. A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is one of the important information technologies in the Internet of Things; it integrates multi-technology to detect and gather information in a network environment by mutual cooperation, using a variety of methods to process and analyze data, implement awareness, and perform tests. This paper mainly researches the localization algorithm of sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network. Firstly, a multi-granularity region partition is proposed to divide the location region. In the range-based method, the RSSI (Received Signal Strength indicator, RSSI) is used to estimate distance. The optimal RSSI value is computed by the Gaussian fitting method. Furthermore, a Voronoi diagram is characterized by the use of dividing region. Rach anchor node is regarded as the center of each region; the whole position region is divided into several regions and the sub-region of neighboring nodes is combined into triangles while the unknown node is locked in the ultimate area. Secondly, the multi-granularity regional division and Lagrange multiplier method are used to calculate the final coordinates. Because nodes are influenced by many factors in the practical application, two kinds of positioning methods are designed: the unknown node is in the positioning unit or not. When the unknown node is on the side of the positioning unit, we use the method of vector similarity. Moreover, we use the centroid algorithm to calculate the ultimate coordinates of unknown node. When the unknown node is not on the side of the positioning unit, we establish a Lagrange equation containing the constraint condition to calculate the first coordinates. Furthermore, we use the Taylor expansion formula to correct the coordinates of the unknown node. In addition, this localization method has been validated by establishing the real environment.

The electroencephalogram (EEG) is a record of brain activity. Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology formed by the EEG signal has become one of the hotspots at present. How to extract the feature signal of EEG is the most basic research of BCI technology. In this paper, A new method of recognizing fatigue, conscious, concentrated state of human brain is proposed by the combination of discrete wavelet transform and the neural network based on EEG signal. First of all, the law signal is preprocessed by the wavelet denoising method because the law EEG signal contains a large number of high frequency noise, which is decomposed into multi-layer high frequency signal and low frequency signal. thus, δ wave, θ wave, α wave, β wave are obtained by the wavelet transform. And then, frequency band energy of the different wave is regards as the feature signal of EEG. In the experiment, the feature signal is classified by radial basic function (RBF) and annealed chaotic competitive learning network (ACCLN). RBF and ACCLN networks are trained with 500 sets of sample data and are tested by 100 sets of samples in different mental states. The experimental results show that the average accuracy of RBF network under three conditions are 88.75%, 88.25%, 88.5%, respectively, and the correct rate of ACCLN network is 97%, 98%, 98%, respectively.

This study aimed to identify whether gyrate atrophy of the choroid and retina (GACR) heterozygous individuals have possible clinical manifestations and to explore the potential pathogenic mechanism. In this retrospective study, we surveyed a two-generation pedigree of an individual diagnosed with GACR. Two family members underwent ophthalmological, hematologic, and genetic tests. An arginine-restricted diet with vitamin B6 supplementation was implemented; clinical assessments were repeated every 3 months during follow-up. Relative OAT mRNA expression was determined using real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The 19-year-old compound heterozygous daughter (OAT: c.1186C&gt;T; c.748C&gt;T), had bilateral high myopia, posterior staphyloma, chorioretinal atrophy, macular abnormalities, and elevated hematologic ornithine. The 54-year-old heterozygous mother (OAT: c.1186C&gt;T), presented with bilateral severe myopia, asymmetric posterior staphyloma, retina and choroidal capillary layer atrophy, retinal pigment epithelium abnormalities, and mildly elevated hematologic ornithine. Compared to normal individuals, the daughter and mother had 29% and 46% relative OAT mRNA expression, respectively (P&lt;0.001). We believe that this is the first report of a carrier of one OAT variant allele with mild phenotypes, suggesting that family members should be aware of the possible involvement of autosomal recessive conditions. Additional data suggests nonsense mediated decay-initiated mRNA degradation may cause GACR.

Early discharge after childbirth has led to a rise in neonatal readmission, becoming a major concern in recent decades. Our research aimed to identify the risk factors and incidence of neonatal readmission, as well as explore preventive measures. Our study at the Clinical Hospital of Pediatrics in Ploiești, Romania included 108 neonates admitted during the neonatal period. This accounted for 2.06% of all admissions (5226). The most prevalent cases were malnutrition (25%), fever (20.3%) and bronchiolitis (17.5%). Diarrhea and infectious gastroenteritis were also observed (14.8%), along with acute rhinoconjunctivitis (9.2%) and late onset sepsis (3.7%). No deaths were recorded. The most significant characteristics identified were number of children (p&lt;0.001) and age at maternity discharge (p&lt;0.001). By following the prevention rules, malnutrition, feeding errors, and infections can be avoided. This includes practicing proper hand hygiene for both mothers and medical staff, as well as educating and demonstrating to mothers the benefits of breastfeeding. In addition, all newborns discharged from the maternity ward should benefit from follow-up at 7-10 days of life. Our results confirm the effectiveness of a multidisciplinary team and endorse promoting breastfeeding. Implementing quality control measures and regularly evaluating the surveillance program will help improve its effectiveness.

Wearable technology has been proposed as a potential tool to change the way of human life, such as the smart bracelet and the Google Glass. In the wearable technology, the inertial sensor has great significance in tracking the object movements. The paper focused on detecting the movements of user’s finger based on the inertial sensor to give the control signals. Firstly, the attitude matrix, which represented the transformation relation of carrier coordinate system and the navigation coordinate system, was obtained. Secondly, the attitude matrix was expressed based on the quaternions. Thirdly, the finger gesture was processed by the attitude matrix to get the attitude angle. Finally, the robot was controlled by attitude angle to make the moving action. The experimental results showed the detection of the finger movement is effective.

The prevalence of sexual harassment and abuse in school sport, specifically from coaches to their athletes remains a concerning and pervasive issue. In an attempt to better understand and prevent specific coach-behaviours associated with such sexual misconduct, researchers have developed the Sexual Violence Questionaire in Sport. While the reliability of this measurement tool has been tested in anglo-saxon cultural contexts, it is not known whether the questionnaire is applicable to other cultural contexts. A sample of 146 (52 female, 94 male) Bachelor students from a university in the Basque Country participated in this cross cross-sectional study. The questionnaire was administered twice over a two-week period to assess test-retest reliability. The internal consistency of the Sexual Violence Questionaire in Sport was high, with Cronbach's alpha values of 0.891 for perceptions and 0.813 for experiences across all participants. Gender-specific analysis showed similar reliability, with females having slightly lower alpha values for perceptions. Significant differences between test and retest were found (10 from perceptions 2 from experiences). However, Cohen’s Kappa analysis showed significant agreement across all items. In conclusion, the study highlights the questionnaire’s overall reliability and suggests its effectiveness as a tool for measuring sexual violence in sports within the Spanish context. Nonetheless, the findings of this study underscore the need for further research to enhance the instrument's stability and to better understand gender differences in perceptions and experiences of sexual violence in sports contexts.

Diabetes is a major health concern that the next-generation of on-demand insulin releasing implants may overcome for personalized therapy. Therein, 3D-printed phenylboronic acid-containing subcutaneous implants with on-demand glucose-triggered drug release abilities are produced using high resolution stereolithography technology. To that end, the methacrylation of phenylboronic acid is targeted following a two-step reaction. The resulting photocurable phenylboronic acid derivative is accordingly incorporated within bioinert polyhydroxyethyl methacrylate-based hydrogels at varying loadings. The end result are sub-centimeter scaled 3D-printed bionert implants that can be remotely activated with 1,2-diols and 1,3-diols such as glucose for on-demand drug administration such as insulin. As a proof of concept, varying glucose concentration from hypoglycemia to hyperglycemia levels readily allow the release of pinacol, i.e. a model molecule with similar release properties than insulin, at respectively low and high rates. In addition, the results demonstrated that adjusting the geometry and size of the 3D-printed part is a simple and suitable method for tailoring the release behavior and dosage.

In this paper, we introduce a specialized, fully automated experimental arrangement designed for assessing the effectiveness of augmented and virtual reality technologies in healthcare setting and explore its design principles focusing on depth sensor characterization. The main goal of this project is to establish a robust benchtop platform for the quantitative evaluation of extended reality technologies in a controlled environment, emphasizing the practical assessment of augmented reality head-mounted devices. We outline a design concept and considerations for an experimental configuration aimed at creating a realistic testing environment. This apparatus comprises an observation platform mounted on a three-degree-of-freedom motorized system and a test phantom stage. Focusing on real-case scenarios, we utilized a range of sensors, including readily available range-sensing cameras and commercial augmented reality headsets, such as the Intel RealSense L515 LiDAR camera, mounted on the motion control system. The setup enabled automated data collection and facilitates controlled assessments and validation of various facets of augmented reality technologies, including object, hand, and head tracking, as well as static and dynamic image registration. This paper describes the system architecture, the process of automated data collection, and presents several evaluation studies conducted with this setup, providing insights into the quality and temporal noise associated with static or moving objects or observers in augmented reality applications.

(1) Background: The RDW-CV has predictive value in many pregnancy-related conditions. Re-search question: Can the RDW-CV be utilized predictively in pregnant patients with thrombo-philia? Aim of the study: To carry out a detailed analysis of the RDW-CV in pregnant patients with treated thrombophilia as compared with pregnant patients without thrombophilia who de-livered via cesarean section at term. (2) Methods: We studied 160 pregnant patients, including 80 pregnant patients with treated thrombophilia in the study group, and another 80 patients of a similar age and parity. The patients were referred to our hospital for delivery at term by means of a cesarean section between 1/10/2017 and 1/12/2021. Every patient received a sonogram during the first 1–2 days after the cesarean section, and their uterine evaluation was interpreted using the PUUS (Postpartum Uterine Ultrasonographic Scale). (3) Results: Our PUUS≥1 pregnant and postpartum patients with treated thrombophilia were the only group with an RDW-CV value over 14. No deep vein thrombosis was observed during hospitalization, showing that the antico-agulant treatment was necessary and effective. An RDW-CV of 14.5 was the highest value in the Rh-negative group of pregnant patients with treated thrombophilia. An RDW-CV of 14.48 was the highest level in the Rh-negative postpartum patients with treated thrombophilia. (4) Conclu-sion: An RDW-CV of ≥14 can predict uterine hematometra (PUUS≥1). The RDW-CV values were higher in Rh-negative patients.

Refractoriness to antiseizure medications is still a major concern in the pharmacotherapy of epilepsy. For this reason, we decided to evaluate the combination of levetiracetam and cannabidiol, administered at a subthreshold dose, to limit the possible adverse effects of this phytocannabinoid. We administered levetiracetam (300 mg/kg/day, via osmotic minipumps), cannabidiol (120 mg/kg/day, injected once a day subcutaneously), or their combination for one week in epileptic rats. Saline-treated epileptic rats were the control group. Animals were monitored with video electroencephalography the week before and after the treatment. No changes were found in the controls. Levetiracetam did not significantly reduce the total seizure number or the overall seizure duration. Still, the overall number of seizures (p&lt;0.001, Duncan’s new multiple range test) and their total duration (p&lt;0.01) increased in the week following treatment withdrawal. Cannabidiol did not change seizures when administered as a single drug. Instead, levetiracetam combined with cannabidiol resulted in a significant reduction in the overall number and duration of seizures (p&lt;0.05), when comparing values measured during treatment with both pre- and post-treatment values. These findings depended on changes in convulsive seizures, while non-convulsive seizures were stable. These results suggest cannabidiol determined a remarkable potentiation of levetiracetam antiseizure effects at a subthreshold dose.

With the increasing concern of environment, the energy-efficiency scheduling of manufacturing industry is becoming urgent and popular. In turning processes, both spindle speed and processing time can affect the final energy consumption and thus the spindle speed and scheduling scheme need to be optimized simultaneously. Since the turning workshop can be regarded as the flexible flow shop, this paper formulates a mixed integer linear programming model for energy-efficient scheduling of flexible flow shop. Accordingly, a new decoding method is developed by considering of the optimization of spindle speed and scheduling scheme simultaneously, and an estimation of distribution algorithm adopting the new decoding method is proposed to solve large-size problems. The parameters of this algorithm are determined by statistical technique with a simplified practical case. In order to validate the proposed method, a case from practical factories is studied, in which the makespan can be shortened by 25.22%, and the consumed energy can be saved by 5.48%. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed mathematical model and algorithm.