The aim of this article is to review hydrogen combustion applications within the energy transition framework. Hydrogen blends are also included, from the well known hydrogen enriched natural gas (HENG) to the hydrogen and ammonia blends whose chemical kinetics is still not clearly defined. Hydrogen and hydrogen blends combustion characteristics will be firstly summarized, in terms of standard properties like the laminar flame speed and the adiabatic flame temperature, but also evidencing the critical role of hydrogen preferential diffusion in burning rate enhancement and the drastic reduction in radiative emission with respect to natural gas flames. Then, combustion applications in both thermo-electric power generation (based on internal combustion engines, i.e., gas turbines and piston engines) and hard-to-abate industry (requiring high temperature kilns and furnaces) sectors will be considered, highlighting the main issues due to hydrogen addition related to safety, pollutant emissions, and potentially negative effects on industrial products (e.g., glass, cement and ceramic).

This paper offers a set of comprehensive guidelines aimed at facilitating the widespread adoption of hydrogen in the industrial hard-to-abate sectors. The authors begin by conducting a detailed analysis of these sectors, providing an overview of their unique characteristics and challenges. The paper delves into specific elements related to hydrogen technologies, shedding light on their potential applications and discussing feasible implementation strategies. By exploring the strengths and limitations of each technology, the paper offers valuable insights into its suitability for specific applications. Finally, through a particular analysis focused on the steel sector, the authors provide in-depth information on the potential benefits and challenges associated with hydrogen adoption in this particular context. By emphasizing the steel sector as a focal point, the authors contribute to a more nuanced understanding of hydrogen's role in decarbonizing industrial processes and inspire further exploration of its applications in other challenging sectors.

Hip replacement has significantly improved the quality of life of patients with symptomatic hip osteoarthritis. Metal-on-metal (MoM) bearings have been used with conventional total hip re-placement (THR) for several decades with promising results from early applications. Wear and corrosion of these implants may lead to a release of metal products into surrounding tissue and body fluids. From the 1980s onwards, the search for increasingly better coupling materials with low levels of wear led to the rise of hard-on-hard couplings such as ceramic-on-ceramic (CoC). The latter is currently the coupling with the longest known duration and with a wear rate close to zero. MoM coupling has been for a long time the most significative alternative, but systemic and local complications linked to the release of chromium and cobalt ions, determine the withdrawn from the market. One other alternative proposed over the time has been Ceramic-on-Metal (CoM) bearing. Preliminary results have been described as favourable, but due to the failures of metal on metal it has been withdrawn from the market, without causing significant clinical complications. In this narrative review, we analysed risks and benefits associated with the implantation of hybrid hard-on-hard bearings, such as CoM.

Venous leg ulcers still pose a significant medical problem worldwide. The complexity of the problem determines the need for further interdisciplinary activities that will improve the quality of life of treated patients. The study compared the quality of life of patients with venous leg ulcers who received local hyperbaric oxygen therapy or local ozone therapy procedures as a part of comprehensive treatment. The study included 129 patients (62 men and 57 women) with venous leg ulcers. Group I underwent local hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT), group II - local ozone therapy (OZONE). In both groups, the patients' quality of life was assessed before the start of treatment cycle, as well as 10 weeks and 6 months after the completion of the treatment, by using the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire and the Polish shortened version of the SF-36 scale. After completing the respective therapeutic cycle, both groups showed a statistically significant (p<0.001) improvement the quality of life according to the EQ-5D-5L questionnaire and the SF-36 scale. Differences were noted between 1st examination (before treatment) and 2nd examination (10 weeks after treatment), as well as 3 examination (6 months after treatment). In the EQ-5D-5L assessment of anxiety and depression, self-care and activities of daily living 6 months after the end of treatment, better results were found in the group of patients treated with local hyperbaric oxygen therapy (p<0.001). In this group, 6 months after the end of the treatment, a statistically significantly higher result on the EQ-VAS scale was also obtained (73.09±19.8 points vs. 68.03±17.37 points, p=0.043). However, in the SF-36 assessment 6 months after the end of treatment better results - a statistically significantly lower value of the quality of life index - were recorded in the group of patients treated with local ozone therapy (103.13±15.76 points vs. 109.89±15.42 points, p<0.015). Hyperbaric oxygen therapy and local ozone therapy procedures have a beneficial effect on improving the quality of life of patients with venous leg ulcers.

Keratoconus is a condition that causes progressive thinning and anterior protrusion of the cornea. Because of its irregular astigmatism, mild to moderate keratoconus is corrected with hard contact lenses (HCL), but blepharoptosis due to long-term wear is often a problem. In this study, we investigated blepharoptosis in hard contact lens wearers with keratoconus. Thirty seven keratoconic eyes were enrolled and divided into several groups according to their wearing history or age. Eyelid margin distance (EMD), margin light reflex distance-1 (MRD-1) and eyelid elevator muscle function were measured by ruler or anterior segment optical coherence tomography. EMD decreased with years of HCL wear but showed no correlation with age; MRD-1 decreased with years of wear and with older age; LF showed no relationship with either years of wear or age. In the classification of ptosis, there was no severe ptosis in the present sample. Long-term wear of HCLs is likely to cause blepharoptosis even in keratoconic eyes, but its degree may be mild.

New multilayer 3D nanocomposite wear-resistant ion-plasma hard and superhard coatings Avinit [(TiN-AlN)(Mo-Cr-V-Si)]_n have been developed.The introduction of additional alloying elements (Mo, Cr, V, Si) into the Ti-Al-N coating composition, which have a high affinity for nitrogen and are capable of forming strong nitride nanoparticles in the Ti-N and Al-N layers.This makes it possible to obtain hard and superhard hardening coatings.The metallographic and tribological studies carried out indicate the prospects of the developed multicomponent multilayer nano- and microstructured Avinit coatings for increasing wear resistance and reducing friction coefficients.This paper is devoted to the development and implementation of Avinit vacuum plasma technologies for strengthening cutting and forming tools to improve tool performance.Production tests of cutting tools with Avinit's developed multilayer wear-resistant ion-plasma coatings in production conditions at many large machine-building enterprises have shown their high efficiency.In serial production, the wear resistance of tools increases by 3 to 30 times, stamps by 5 to 100 times, and parts rubbing against abrasive materials by 10 to 100 times.Avinit's vacuum plasma technologies have been successfully implemented in production in the aggregate and engine building, transport engineering, and power engineering industries.Positive experience in applying multicomponent coatings has been gained not only when applying hardening coatings to manufactured cutting tools, but also after regrinding to regrindable carbide cutting tools from domestic and foreign manufacturers.

This paper presents the case of a 75-year-old female with an extensive lesion located in the hard palate. Intraoral examination revealed an exophytic white lesion that extended from the entire left maxillary alveolar ridge to the palate beyond the midline. A thorough clinical, radiological, and histopathological examination confirmed the diagnosis of oral verrucous carcinoma.

New proposals for the equation of state of four- and five-dimensional hard-hypersphere mixtures in terms of the equation of state of the corresponding monocomponent hard-hypersphere fluid are introduced. Such proposals (which are constructed in such a way so as to yield the exact third virial coefficient) extend, on the one hand, recent similar formulations for hard-disk and (three-dimensional) hard-sphere mixtures and, on the other hand, two of our previous proposals also linking the mixture equation of state and the one of the monocomponent fluid but unable to reproduce the exact third virial coefficient. The old and new proposals are tested by comparison with published molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulation results and their relative merit is evaluated.

The residual multiparticle entropy (RMPE) of a fluid is defined as the difference, Δs, between the excess entropy per particle (relative to an ideal gas with the same temperature and density), s_ex, and the pair-correlation contribution, s₂. Thus, the RMPE represents the net contribution to s_ex due to spatial correlations involving three, four, or more particles. A heuristic “ordering” criterion identifies the vanishing of the RMPE as an underlying signature of an impending structural or thermodynamic transition of the system from a less ordered to a more spatially organized condition (freezing is a typical example). Regardless of this, the knowledge of the RMPE is important to assess the impact of non-pair multiparticle correlations on the entropy of the fluid. Recently, an accurate and simple proposal for the thermodynamic and structural properties of a hard-sphere fluid in fractional dimension 1 < d < 3 has been proposed [Santos, A.; López de Haro, M. Phys. Rev. E 2016, 93, 062126]. The aim of this work is to use this approach to evaluate the RMPE as a function of both d and the packing fraction ϕ. It is observed that, for any given dimensionality d, the RMPE takes negative values for small densities, reaches a negative minimum Δs_min at a packing fraction ϕ_min, and then rapidly increases, becoming positive beyond a certain packing fraction ϕ₀. Interestingly, while both ϕ_min and ϕ₀ monotonically decrease as dimensionality increases, the value of Δs_min exhibits a nonmonotonic behavior, reaching an absolute minimum at a fractional dimensionality d ≃ 2.38. A plot of the scaled RMPE Δs/|Δs_min| shows a quasiuniversal behavior in the region −0.14 ≲ ϕ − ϕ₀ ≲ 0.02.

The purpose of this article is to present the COVID-19 pandemic disruptions occurring in the supply chain of automotive companies, taking into account the type of business. The specific objectives are: to identify and characterise the types of enterprises operating in automotive supply chains, to identify changes during the pandemic in automotive enterprises, depending on the type of activity, to show disruptions in automotive supply chains and ways to counteract these disadvantages depending on the type of activity. Automotive enterprises operating in Poland were selected for the study purposefully. A random selection method was used to select 500 automotive companies for the study. The data sources were surveys conducted in June 2023 among 500 enterprises in the form of a face-to-face telephone interview. Automotive companies experienced supply chain disruptions, regardless of the type of business. Most often, these were caused by lockdowns and official closures, low stocks of materials and products, and problems with employees. There was no difference by type of business. Disruptions were most often short-lived, up to 1 year. Companies countered disruptions by using mostly operational measures, which were short-lived. Only a small percentage of operators made strategic decisions and countered disruptions over a longer period. The scale of these actions was greater among manufacturers than among dealers and car service companies.

Abstract: The establishment of a circular economy in the mining sector, taking advantage of innovations in the exploration and development of hydrocarbon reserves, [ ], their [ ], transportation [ ] and subsequent processing [ ] are significant concerns. The issues surrounding the employment of technology targeted at enhancing environmental safety to increase the productivity of the reproduction process of the natural gas and oil resource base are equally important. The paper discusses the use of green seismic technology of survey to determine the oil and gas potential of the subsoil. A methodological toolkit is proposed for carrying out technical and economic calculations to determine indicators of the environmental and economic efficiency of using innovative resource-saving technology for geological survey in areas densely planted with forests. The purpose of the work is to establish the viability of employing resource-saving technology known as Green Seismic to search for promising hydrocarbon objects in forested areas and determine the expected environmental and economic benefits of geological exploration using the suggested enhanced methodology for their evaluation. The tasks set to achieve the goal were solved using methods of geological and economic assessment of the hydrocarbon raw material potential of territories and water areas, environmental assessment of the negative influence of anthropogenic environmental impact on the natural environment, economic and statistical methods of performing technical and economic calculations to determine performance indicators for the implementation of innovative projects in the field of geological exploration. The novelty of the results obtained lies in the proposed improved algorithm for conducting an environmental and economic assessment of geological exploration for hydrocarbon raw materials, a conceptual description of the Green Seismic technology, systematization of technical, economic, and environmental risks, justification of new regional directions for geological exploration using resource-saving seismic exploration technology.

Dielectric elastomers, such as thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU), are widely used as dielectric layer, emulation layer and substrate of flexible and stretchable devices. To construct capacitors and actuators that work stably upon deformation, it has become an urgent need to investigate the evolution of dielectricity under stress and strain. However, the lack of effective methods for estimating the dielectric constant of elastomers under strain poses a big challenge. This article reports a device for in-situ measuring the dielectric constant of TPU under strain. It is found that upon stretching TPU to a strain of 400%, its dielectric constant decreases from 8.47 to 2.94. In addition, combined Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray scattering technique, and atomic force microscopy have been utilized to characterize the evolution of microstructure under strain. The investigation under tensile strain reveals that a decreased density and average size of polarized hard domains, along with a tendency of the molecular chains to align in parallel with the tensile stress. The evolution of the microstructures results in a reduction of the dielectric constant parallel to the electric field in TPU. Our work provides valuable experimental reference for improving the stability of flexible sensors and actuators based on dielectric elastomers.

The option of decarbonizing urban freight transport using Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV) seems promising.However, there is currently a strong debate whether Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) might be the bettersolution. The question arises as to how a fleet of FCEV influences the operating cost, the Greenhouse Gas(GHG) emissions and primary energy demand in comparison to BEVs and to Internal Combustion EngineVehicle (ICEV). To investigate this, we simulate the urban food retailing as a representative share of urbanfreight transport using a multi-agent transport simulation software. Synthetic routes as well as fleet size andcomposition are determined by solving a Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). We compute the operating costsusing a total cost of ownership (Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)) analysis and the use phase emissions as wellas primary energy demand using the Well To Wheel (WTW) approach. While a change to BEV results in 17 -23% higher costs compared to ICEV, using FCEVs leads to 22 - 57% higher costs. Assuming today’s electricitymix, we show a GHG emission reduction of 25% compared to the ICEV base case when using BEV. Currenthydrogen production leads to a GHG reduction of 33% when using FCEV which however cannot be scaled tolarger fleets. Using current electricity in electrolysis will increase GHG emission by 60% compared to the basecase. Assuming 100% renewable electricity for charging and hydrogen production, the reduction from FCEVsrises to 73% and from BEV to 92%. The primary energy requirement for BEV is in all cases lower and forhigher compared to the base case. We conclude that while FCEV have a slightly higher GHG savings potentialwith current hydrogen, BEV are the favored technology for urban freight transport from an economic andecological point of view, considering the increasing shares of renewable energies in the grid mix.

Due to the high temperature limitation associated with silicon, SiC, Si₃N₄, TiC, TiN, TiB₂, cBN, CNx, SiO₂, Al₂O₃ and novel multicomponent nanocomposites polymer derived ceramics (PDC) based thin films like Si-C-N, Ti-Si-B-C-N and Si-O-CN that are compatible with silicon and have a wider range of operation in ambient conditions are being investigated. Apart from small scale electro-mechanical devices like N/MEMS, sensors, areas like metallurgical protection, water purification, energy storage, bio medical implants and aerospace have been benefited. The cross-sectional study involving the role of oxygen and nitrogen dissolution at different interfacial configurations has been presented.

Global warming has led to the increase in chalky grains of rice, which has also caused the deteriorations of physicochemical and cooking qualities of rice grains. These chalky rice grains are characterized by high α-amylase activity, high protease activity, and low apparent amylose contents, low degree of hardness and stickiness of boiled rice than those of the whole rice grains. In the present paper, we evaluated 14 Japonica unpolished rice grains harvested in Japan in 2021, and these samples (original grains) were divided to two groups (whole grain group and chalky grain one). We found that the chalky rice grains showed higher values of xylanase activity than those of the whole rice grains, while cellulase activity were lower than that of whole rice grains. Using rice grains blended with 30 % of chalky grains as material, we compared sugar and mineral contents and textural properties of the boiled rice grains soaked and boiled in the ordinary water or in the hard water, such as Evian or Contrex. It was shown that the hard water is useful for the prevention of the texture deterioration of the boiled rice grains due to the inhibition of the reduction of endogenous hydrolytic enzymes, such as amylase, proteinase, and xylanase. Furthermore, we found that hard water is useful for the increase of calcium and magnesium intake through the meal with the boiled rice grains soaked and cooked using hard water.

Soybean is one of the world’s most economically significant crops and is widely utilized as an essential source of vegetable protein and edible oil. Cultivated soybean is domesticated from its annual counterpart, wild soybean, which is considered valuable germplasm for soybean breeding. However, wild soybean accessions generally produce seeds with impermeable coats, a trait known as hard seededness (HS), which is beneficial for long-term seed survival but is undesirable for the uniform water absorption and germination of seeds, thus limiting the utilization of wild soybeans in breeding. However, moderate HS can isolate the embryo from the surrounding environment and is thus beneficial for long-term seed storage and germplasm preservation. The HS trait is primarily associated with the structure and chemical composition of the seed coat. However, its development is also influenced by various environmental conditions, such as water and temperature. Genetic analysis has revealed that HS of soybean is a complex quantitative trait controlled by multiple genes or minor quantitative trait loci (QTL), with many QTLs and several causal genes currently identified. Investigating the physiological and molecular mechanisms underlying this trait is crucial for soybean breeding, production, and food processing. For this article, the literature was reviewed and condensed to create a well-rounded picture of the current understanding of internal and external factors, QTLs, causal genes, and the regulatory mechanisms related to the HS of soybean, with the aim of providing reference for future research and utilization of this trait.

A reliable and affordable energy supply is a fundamental prerequisite for reducing poverty, promoting investment, and boosting economic growth in the developing world. Among the different challenges that developing countries face, chronic energy crises are harrowing. The crises result from the unsatisfactory state of the central grid, a misguided energy mix, and ill-informed policies, among other things. The possibility of solving energy crises through a variety of alternative solutions is worth exploring. This review discusses two paths of energy development side by side: a traditional “hard” path of energy development (i.e., central grid extension powered by fossil fuels and nuclear energy expansion) and a relatively recent “soft” path of energy development, which is based on energy conservation and the deployment of renewable energy resources. This paper focuses on one central axis of the discussion: centralization vs. decentralization. This discussion, in turn, has technological, economic/business, and political dimensions. Finally, the paper discusses the significance of the debate from meeting the developing world’s energy demands. The paper intends not to prefer one or another path of energy development, nor it gives recommendations on diffusing or adopting those development paths. Instead, it explores the literature’s central arguments that might help frame the questions for further research. While this debate could be used to ask interesting questions that might help solve the energy crisis in the developing world, the discussion informs countries to advance policies specific to their circumstances under the umbrella of a sound and thoughtful energy productivity policy framework.

In the present paper, Co-B/SiC composite coatings were obtained via electrodeposition from colloidal suspensions with different concentrations of SiC particles and subsequent heat treatments at 350 °C. The composition, morphology and structure of the Co-B/SiC composite coatings were analyzed using glow discharge spectrometry (GDS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) coupled with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Hardness and tribological properties were also studied. The results showed that an increase in the SiC concentration in the colloidal suspensions resulted in both an increase in the SiC content and a decrease in the B content in the obtained Co-B/SiC coatings. The Co-B/SiC coatings were adherent, glossy and soft and exhibited a homogeneous composition in all thicknesses. By contrast, an increase in the SiC particle content of the Co-B/SiC composite coating from 0 to 2.56 at.% SiC reduced the hardness of the film from 680 to 360 HV and decreased the wear volume values from 1180 to 23 mm³ N^-1 m^-1, respectively (that is, the wear resistance increased). Moreover, when the Co-B/SiC coatings with SiC content ranging from 0 to 2.56 at.% SiC were subjected to a heat treatment process, the obtained coating hardness values were in the range of 1200 to 1500 HV and the wear volume values were in the range of 382 to 19 mm³ N^-1 m^-1.

People wore clothes for warmth, survival and necessity in modern life as well but in modern era, eco-friendliness, shorten production time, design, and intelligence also matters. The seamless bonding technology strengthen the bond between fabrics in textiles, while Grey relational analysis (GRA) can be applied to fabrics to measure the relationship between data series and determine the closeness of each data series. In this study, polyurethane prepolymer, 2-Hydroxyethyl acrylate (2-HEA) as an end-capping agent, and n-octyl acrylate (ODA) as a photo-initiator were used to synthesize dual-curing polyurethane hot-melt adhesive. The Taguchi quality engineering and grey relational analysis used to discuss the influence of different mole ratio of NCO:OH, and the effect of the molar ratio of addition of octyl decyl acrylate on the mechanical strength. The Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) results showed the termination of prepolymer's polymerization reaction and the C=O peak intensity at 1730 cm-1 indicating the efficient bonding to main chain. The high molecular weight polymer (20,000-30,000) described by advanced polymer chromatography (APC) confirmed the polyurethane polymer bonded with octyl decyl acrylate to achieve the photo-thermosetting effect. The thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) results showed the thermal decomposition temperature of polyurethane hot melt adhesive also increased and highest pyrolysis temperature (349.89℃) for the polyhydric alcohols. The high value of shear strength (34.94 kg/cm2) as well as peel strength (1.68 kg/cm) were also observed in dual-cure photo-thermosetting polyurethane hot melt adhesive. The signal-to-noise ratio also used to generate the grey relational degree. It was observed that the best parameter ration of NCO: OH was 4:1 with 5 moles of monomer. The Taguchi quality engineering method was used to find the parameters of single quality optimization, and then the grey relation calculation was used to obtain the parameter combination of multi-quality optimization for thermosetting polyurethane hot melt adhesive. The study aims to meet the requirements of seamless bonding in textile factories and optimized experimental parameter design by setting target values can effectively increase production speed, reduce processing time and costs as well.

Measuring pulmonary nodules accurately can help with early diagnosis of lung cancer, which can improve a patient’s chances of survival. Many methods for segmenting nodules have been developed, but they all rely on input from radiologists in the form of a 3D volume of interest (VOI) or use a constant region of interest (ROI) and only consider the presence of nodule within the given VOI. These approaches limit the networks’ ability to detect nodules outside the given VOI and can also include unnecessary structures in the VOI, leading to potentially inaccurate segmentation. In this work, we propose a novel approach for 3D lung nodule segmentation by using 2D region of interest (ROI) inputted from radiologist or computer-aided detection (CADe) system. Particularly, we design a dual-encoder-based hard attention network (DEHA-Net) which incorporates the full slice of thoracic computed tomography scan along with the ROI mask to produce an accurate segmentation mask of lung nodule in the given slice. The proposed architecture exploits the adaptive region of interest (A-ROI) algorithm to automatically investigates the penetration of lung nodule into surrounding slices while eliminating the need to drawing separate ROIs in each slice. Further, the framework performs the multi-view analysis, i.e., in sagittal and coronal views, to improve the segmentation performance. The proposed scheme has been rigorously evaluated on the lung image database consortium and image database resource initiative (LIDC/IDRI) dataset and an extensive analysis of results have been performed. The quantitative analysis shows that the proposed method not only improves the existing state-of-the-art in term of dice score but also, significantly robust against the different types, shape and dimensions of lung nodules.

The purpose of the present study is survey of extraction conditions and exploring antioxidant potential of the non-traditional for the Bulgarian ethno-medicine wild herb Cistus incanus widespread in Strandja Mountain. The influence of the extraction time (0–500 min) and solvent composition (0–50% ethanol in water) on the polyphenols, flavonoids yields and on antioxidant capacity of the extracts of leaves, stalks (wood parts) and buds mixture were studied. The antioxidant capacity (AOC) was evaluated by use of scavenging assays of 2,2-diphenyl-1-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radicals. Total polyphenol and flavonoid contents were quantified using UV–vis spectrometry. Optimal yield of desired components has been obtained with 30% ethanol in water solvent at 390^th min extraction time. In addition, the influence of the seasonality (winter and summer Cistus incanus), and of the different areal parts - hard-coated seeds; buds, and mixture of leaves and stalks of the wild plant on the presence of polyphenols, flavonoids and AOC were investigated. Present work revealed the high values of the polyphenols, flavonoids, the high AOC not only in the summer leaves, but also found in the winter leaves, hard-coated seeds, buds and stalks. Based on the obtained results the Cistus incanus from Strandja mountain could be a new excellent source of natural antioxidants in food and pharmaceutical industries.

This review article deals with the design of bioactive calcium phosphate coatings deposited on metallic substrates to produce bone implants. The bioceramic coating properties are used to create a strong bonding between the bone implants and the surrounding bone tissue. They provide a fast response after implantation and increase the lifespan of the implant in the body environment. The first part of the article describes the different compounds belonging to the calcium phosphate family and their main properties for applications in biomaterials science. The calcium to phosphorus atomic ratio (Ca/P)at. and the solubility (Ks) of these compounds define their behavior in a physiological environment. Hydroxyapatite is the gold standard among calcium phosphate materials, but other chemical compositions/stoichiometries have also been studied for their interesting properties. The second part reviews the most usual deposition processes to produce bioactive calcium phosphate coatings for bone implant applications. Plasma spraying is the main industrial process, but magnetron sputtering, pulsed laser deposition, electrospray deposition, electrophoretic deposition, and electrodeposition are also widely studied in academic and industrial research. The last part describes the main physicochemical properties of calcium phosphate coatings and their impact on the bioactivity of bone implants in a physiological environment.

Coasts are characterized by high biological and ecological productivities, and are theatre of strategic economic activities, including tourism, fishing and aquaculture. Both anthropic and natural hazards can thus affect coasts, causing their deterioration. The monitoring of coasts in terms of evolution, adaptation, contamination and resilience, is a pivotal point composed of both classic measurement approaches, and innovative approaches as remote sensing and the use of unmanned aerial vehicles. In the last years, climate change is increasing its effects all over the world and coasts are a delicate system suffering these effects particularly. Climate change has important impacts on coasts, with a serious consequence represented by sea level rise. The latter causes coastal erosion, leading to ecological and economic issues and with consequences for human health. The Mediterranean Basin, which has always represented an important crossroads of different civilizations and economic and cultural exchanges, is now threatened by the consequences of climate change. This area is decribed as an example of coastal system of strategic importance and subjected to serious challenges. Engineering interventions are countermeasures to cope with coastal erosion and coastal degradation. These countermeasures are aimed at protecting the coasts and the populations living on the coasts. The types of intervention can be defined of hard engineering, as in the case of fixed structures in concrete, and of soft engineering, with structures of protection builted according to the principles of nature. Engineering procedures provide coastal benefits, although they can cause further coastal damage. It is thus necessary to protect the coasts and the same time actions aimed at mitigating climate change must be implemented, according to the rules of sustainability.

The hard bottom layer of paddy field has a great influence on the driving stability and operation quality and efficiency of intelligent farm machinery, and the continuous improvement of unmanned precision operation accuracy and operation efficiency of paddy field operation machin-ery is the support to realize unmanned rice farm. In this paper, in view of the complicated hard bottom layer situation of unmanned operation farm machinery driving is difficult to realize to quantify the local characteristics of hard bottom layer of paddy field, the unmanned rice direct seeding machine chassis is used to operate the operation field and collect the hard bottom layer information simultaneously, and the data processing method of automatic calibration of sensor installation error, abnormal value rejection and 3D sample curve denoising of contour trajectory is designed; a hard bottom layer surface profile evaluation method based on the local sliding surface roughness is proposed. The local characteristics of the hard bottom layer were quantified, and the quantified results of the local characteristics of the hard bottom layer in the test plots showed that the mean value of the local roughness was 0.0065, 68.27% was distributed in the variation range of 0.0042~0.0087, and 99.73% was distributed in the variation range of 0~0.0133. Based on the test field data, the surface roughness features are verified to describe the variability of representative working conditions such as transport, downfield, operation and trapping of unmanned operation of intelligent farm machinery. The method of quantifying the hard-bottom local features of farm machinery driving can provide feedback on the local environmental features of intelligent farm machinery driving at the current position, and provide a reference basis for the design optimization of unmanned system for improving the quality of intelligent farm machinery operation.

Hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) can be produced by plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) of SiH4 (Silane) mixed with Hydrogen. The resulting material shows outstanding radiation resistance properties and can be deposited on a wide variety of different substrates. These devices have been used to detect many different kinds of radiation namely: MIPs, x-rays, neutrons and ions as well as low energy protons and alphas. However, MIP detection using planar diodes has always been difficult due to the unsatisfactory S/N ratio arising from a combination of high leakage current, high capacitance and a limited charge collection efficiency (50% at best for a 30 µm planar diode). To overcome these limitations the 3D-SiAm collaboration proposes to use a 3D detector geometry. The use of vertical electrodes allows for a small collection distance to be maintained while conserving a large detector thickness for charge generation. The depletion voltage in this configuration can be kept below 400 V with consequent reduction in the leakage current. In this paper, following a detailed description of the fabrication process, the results of the tests performed on the planar p-i-n structures made with ion implantation of the dopants and with carrier selective contacts will be illustrated.

Coating of suitable materials having thickness of few atoms to several microns on a substrate is of great interest to the scientific community. Hard coatings develop under the significant composition of suitable-natured atoms where their force-energy behaviors when in certain transition state favour binding. In the binding mechanism of suitable atoms, electron belonging to outer ring filled state of gas-atom undertakes another clamp of energy knot belonging to outer ring unfilled state of solid-atom. Set process conditions develop the binding of different-natured atoms when processing their suitable composition in a system. Atoms of different nature develop structure in the form of hard coating by locating their ground points between the original ones. Here, gas-natured atoms increase the potential energy under decreasing levitational force of electrons, whereas, solid-natured atoms decrease the potential energy under decreasing gravitational force of electrons. In TiN coating, Ti–Ti atoms bind under the difference of expansion of their lattices, called nets of energy knots, where one atom just lands on the already landed atom. An adhered N-atom to a Ti-atom forms its position among four Ti-atoms where N-atom occupies the interstitial site of Ti-atoms. Two oppositely working force-energy behavior atoms deposit in the form of coating at substrate surface as per set conditions of the process. The rate of ejecting (or dissociating) solid-natured atoms depend on the nature of their source (target), process parameters and processing technique. In random arc-based vapor deposition system, depositing differently natured atoms at substrate surface depends on the input power. In addition to intrinsic nature of atoms, different properties and characteristics of coatings emerge as per engaged forces under their involved energy. The present study sets new trends in the field of coatings involving the diversified class of materials and their counterparts.

Large Language Models (LLMs) have proved significant proficiency when comes to code generation especially in Structured Query Language (SQL) for databases and recent successful Text-to-SQL method involves fine-tuning pre-trained LLMs for SQL generation tasks. Transforming natural language text into SQL queries, has been attempted to solve with various learning techniques including Few-shot learning[1], fine tuning. In this paper we propose Supervised fine-tuning (SFT) as a better alternative for learning technique for text-to-SQL generation task using Code-Llama that pushes state of art accuracy on spider test suite to 89.6% on dev set which represent first instance of surpassing the earlier best-in-class with 5.5% higher score and 86.8% of exact match accuracy on dev set. Furthermore, we demonstrate that properly prompted LLM along with SFT provides far fewer hallucinations and much more robust LLM that can be used as a general tool for any text-to-SQL generation use case.

Usually, towed hydrophone arrays are instrumented with a set of compasses. Data from these sensors are utilized while beamforming the acoustic signal for target bearing estimation. However, elements of the hydrophone array mounted in the neighborhood of a compass can affect the Earth’s magnetic field detection. The effects depend upon the kind of elements present in the platform hosting the compass. If the disturbances are constant in time, they can be compensated for by means of a magnetic calibration. This process is commonly known as soft and hard iron compensation. In this paper, a solution is presented to carry out the magnetic calibration of a COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) digital compass without unattainable sensor motion. This approach is particularly suited in applications where a physical rotation of the platform that hosts the sensor is unfeasible. In our case, the platform consists in an assembled and operational towed hydrophone array. A standard calibration process relies on physical rotation of the platform and thus on the use of the geomagnetic field as a reference during the compensation. As a variation on this approach, we provide to the sensor an artificial reference magnetic field to simulate the unfeasible physical rotation. We obtain this by using a tri-axial Helmholtz coil, which enables programmability of the reference magnetic field and assures the required field uniformity. In our work, the simulated geomagnetic field is characterized in terms of its uncertainty. The analysis indicates that our method and experimental set-up represent a suitably accurate approach for the soft and hard iron compensation of the compasses equipped in the hydrophone array under test.

Image compression is a top priority today due to the need for faster encoding and decoding. To achieve this, the present study has proposed the use of Canonical Huffman Coding (CHC) as an entropy coder, which has a lower decoding time complexity than binary Huffman codes. For image compression, combining of the Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) and CHC with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) has been recommended. The lossy method has been introduced by using PCA, followed by DWT and CHC to enhance compression efficiency. By using DWT and CHC instead of PCA alone, the reconstructed image has been found to have a better peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) value. This study has developed a hybrid compression model combining the advantages of DWT, CHC and PCA. With the increasing use of image data, better image compression techniques are necessary for efficient use of storage space. The proposed technique has achieved up to 60% compression while maintaining high visual quality. This method has also outperformed the currently available techniques in terms of both PSNR (in dB) and bit-per-pixel (bpp) scores. This approach has been tested on various color images, including Peppers 512×512 and Couple 256×256, showing improvement by 17 dB and 22 dB, respectively, while reducing bpp by 0.56 and 0.10, respectively. For grayscale images, i.e., Lena 512×512 and Boat 256×256, the proposed method has shown an improvement by 5 dB and 8 dB, respectively, with a decrease of 0.02 bpp in both cases.

In the extra-thick coal seams and multi-layered hard roofs, the longwall hydraulic support yielding, coal face spalling, strong deformations of goaf-side entry, and severe ground pressure dynamic events typically occur at the longwall top coal caving longwall faces. Based on the Key strata theory an overburden caving model is proposed here to predict the multilayered hard strata behaviour. The proposed model together with the measured stress changes in coal seam and underground observations in Tongxin coal mine provides a new idea to analyse stress changes in coal and help to minimise rock bursts in the multi-layered hard rock ground. Using the proposed primary Key and the sub-Key strata units the model predicts the formation and instability of the overlying strata that leads to abrupt dynamic changes to the surrounding rock stress. The data obtained from the vertical stress monitoring in the 38 m wide coal pillar located adjacent to the longwall face indicates that the Key strata layers have a significant influence on ground behaviour. Sudden dynamically driven unloading of strata was caused by the first caving of the sub-Key strata while reloading of the vertical stress occurred when the goaf overhang of the sub-Key strata failed. Based on this findings several measures were recommended to minimise the undesirable dynamic occurrences including pre-split of the hard Key strata by blasting and using the energy consumption yielding reinforcement to support the damage prone gate road areas. Use of the numerical modelling simulations was suggested to improve the key theory accuracy.

The research examines the relationship between self-rated health situation and personal percep-tion of heat waves, and how social linkage of communities would be a moderator variable in residents’ perception of heat waves in Taiwan. This study uses the questionnaire conducted by Sinica “Responsive Capacity under Heat Wave: The Perspectives of the Locals”(2019), using OLS method for estimating the unknown parameters in multiple regression model. The author finds that the correlation of self-rated health situation and perception toward heat is significantly posi-tive. Also, social linkage in communities affects strongly as a moderator variable: While the sat-isfaction to with their community could reduce negative reaction to heat, contacts with neighbors could increase possibility people feel uncomfortable in high-temperature situation. This study ex-hibits the effects of social environment on community, and expects further related researches or practices to strengthen capability to resist heat wavesƒ for Taiwanese residents.

Amebiasis is a disease caused by the unicellular parasite Entamoeba histolytica. In most cases, the infection is asymptomatic but when symptomatic, the infection can cause dysentery and invasive extraintestinal complications. In the gut, E.histolytica feeds on bacteria. Increasing evidences support the role of the gut microbiota in the development of the disease. In this review we will discuss the consequences of E.histolytica infection on the gut microbiota. We will also discuss new evidences about the role of the gut microbiota in regulating the resistance of the parasite to oxi-dative stress and its virulence.

Objective: To explore three novel fasting blood glucose (FBG)-based novel indicators, including FBG-to-albumin ratio (FAR), FBG-to-lymphocytes ratio (FLR), and FBG-to-hemoglobin ratio (FHR), in predicting prognosis and detecting metastasis for patients with pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms after resection. Materials and methods: A total of 178 pNEN patients underwent surgical resection were included in this study. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate the diagnosis values of FAR, FLR, and FHR, and the cut-off values were obtained for further analyses. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted to determine the independent predictors. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to evaluate the progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) of the pNEN patients. Results: The optimal cut-off values of FAR, FLR, and FHR were 0.17, 2.85, and 0.028, respectively. As for PFS, the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.693 for FAR, 0.690 for FLR, and 0.661 for FHR, respectively. The AUC was 0.770, 0.692, and 0.715 accordingly for OS. The groups with lower FAR, FLR, and FHR were significantly associated with prolonged PFS and OS (p < 0.05). In patients with metastasis, the lower FAR group was correlated with significantly longer PFS and OS (p = 0.022 and 0.002, respectively). The FLR was an independent predictor of PFS in pNEN patients, and the FAR was a predictor of OS. FAR was an independent indicator of PFS in patients with metastasis. Conclusion: Preoperative FAR, FLR, and FHR are effective in predicting the prognosis of pNEN patients and detecting the synchronous metastases.

Objective: The current study aimed to delineate the relationship of furin with inflammation while cervical intraepithelial neoplasia progresses to cancer. Study Design:This cross-sectional study included 81 women who required colposcopic examinations. The study groups were formed based on pathological results: Group I included women with cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) I (n=30); Group II included women with CIN II-III (n=28); and Group III included women with cervical cancer (CC) (n=23). Furin, ki-67, and p16 levels were evaluated based on immunostaining intensity. The inflammatory indices were calculated parallel with the literature from routine blood samples retrieved within one week before the procedure. Results:Furin expression gradually increased from CIN I to CIN II-III and from CIN II-III to CC, respectively (p < .001, p = .005). The NLR, MLR, PLR, and SII were significantly higher in the CC group (p < .001). ROC curve analysis unveiled that NLR, MLR, PLR and SII predicted the presence of CC with a cutoff value of 2.39 for NLR (sensitivity: 91.3%, specificity: 63.8%, AUROC: 0.79, p < .001); a cutoff value of 0.27 for MLR (sensitivity: 78.3%, specificity: 72.4%, AUROC: 0.77, p = .009); a cutoff value of 123 for PLR (sensitivity: 100%, specificity: 41.4%, AUROC: 0.70, p = .04); and a cutoff value of 747 for SII (sensitivity: 69.6%, specificity: 90.7%, AUROC: 0.71, p = .014). Conclusion:Furin expression increased gradually in parallel to the severity of cervical intraepithelial neoplasia. The inflammatory indices were higher in the presence of CC and denoted good discrimination ability for predicting cervical cancer.

Because of hyper complexity, difficulty to define, multiple stakeholders with conflicting perspectives, and lack of clear-cut solutions, wicked problems necessitate innovative and adaptive strategies. Operations Research has been a valuable tool for managers to make informed decisions for years. However, as we face increasingly complex and messy problems, it has become apparent that relying solely on either hard or soft OR approaches is no longer sufficient. We need to explore more innovative methodologies to address these wicked problems effectively. This study has bridged the research gap by proposing a structured process encompassing a subdivision-based problem structuring method for defining the wicked problem, a multi-attribute decision-making (MADM) for prioritizing sub-problems, and a hard OR technique, data envelopment analysis (DEA) for tackling one of the most critical sub-divisions. The proposed methodology, implemented in a case study, focuses on a higher education institution experiencing a decline in student admissions and involves five steps. First, a diverse group of stakeholders is formed to ensure comprehensive consideration of perspectives. Second, the wicked problem is defined, considering long-term consequences, multiple stakeholders, and qualitative stakeholder opinions. Third, a hierarchical structure is created to break down the wicked problem into manageable sub-problems. Fourth, a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method prioritizes sub-problems. Finally, the sub-problems are addressed one by one using a combination of soft and hard OR tools. The findings highlight the benefits of integrating hard and soft OR approaches. The article concludes with reflections on the implications of using a combined OR approach to tackle wicked problems in higher education and beyond.

An explosive growth in vehicular wireless services and applications gives rise to spectrum resource starvation. Cognitive radio has been used to vehicular networks to mitigate the impending spectrum starvation problem by allowing vehicles to fully exploit spectrum opportunities unoccupied by licensed users. Efficient and effective detection of licensed user is a critical issue to realize cognitive radio applications. However, spectrum sensing in vehicular environments is a very challenging task due to vehicles mobility. For instance, vehicle mobility has a large effect on the wireless channel, thereby impacting the detection performance of spectrum sensing. Thus, gargantuan efforts have been made in order to analyze the fading properties of mobile radio channel in vehicular environments. Indeed, numerous studies have demonstrated that the wireless channel in vehicular environments can be characterized by a temporally correlated Rayleigh fading. In this paper, we focus on energy detection for spectrum sensing and a counting rule for cooperative sensing based on Neyman-Pearson criteria. Further, we go into the effect of the sensing and reporting channels condition on spectrum sensing performance under temporally correlated Rayleigh sensing channel. For local and cooperative sensing, we derive some alternative expressions for average probability of miss detection. The pertinent numerical and simulating results are provided to further validate our theoretical analyses under a variety of scenarios.

(1) Background: Little research has been done on professionals' perceptions of institutions and governments during epidemics. We aim to create a profile of physicians who feel they can raise public health issues with relevant institutions during a pandemic. (2) Methods: A total of 1285 Romanian physicians completed an online survey as part of a larger study. We used binary logistic regression to profile physicians who felt able to raise public health issues with relevant institutions; (3) Results: Five predictors could differentiate between respondents who tended to agree with the trust statement and those who tended to disagree: feeling safe at work during the pandemic, considering the financial incentive worth the risk, receiving training on the use of protective equipment, having the same values as colleagues, and enjoying work as much as before the pandemic; (4) Conclusions: Physicians who trust the system to raise public health issues with the appropriate institutions feel they share the same values as their colleagues, say they were trained in the use of protective equipment used during the pandemic, felt they were safe at work during the pandemic, enjoyed their work as much as before the pandemic, and felt the financial bonus justified the risk.

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.

Economic development and population growth lead to increased production of chicken manure (CM), which is a problematic organic waste for its amount, environmental threats, and moisture content. There are different ways of CM, namely anaerobic digestion, composting, combustion, and direct land spreading. Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) is another emerging way, however. In this study, the HTC of CM was performed to produce energy-rich material called hydrochar (HC). The effects of HTC temperature (180, 240, 300 C) and process time (30, 90, 180 min) were summarized. Proximate and ultimate analysis, as well as heating values (HHV, LHV), have been performed both on raw CM and derived HC. Additionally, the process performance has been examined. The obtained results show that HTC is a feasible method for CM disposal and valorization. Although process time did not influence considerably fuel properties of CM, higher temperature led to significantly higher HHV, reaching 23,880.6734.56 Jg-1 at 300 C and 180 min with an improvement of 8,329 Jg-1 compared with raw CM (15,551.67 Jg-1). The process conducted at 240 C in 30 min has been specified as the most favorable, due to the highest energy gain of HC and relatively low energy consumption.

The increase in the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) is one of the most important world problems. Decreasing of GHG emission is a big challenge in the future. Transportation sector uses a significant part of petroleum production in the world and it leads to an increase in the emission of GHG. The result of this issue is that population of the world befoul environment of transportation system automatically. Electric Vehicles (EV) have a potentiality to solve a big part of the GHG emission and energy efficiency issues such as stability and reality of energy. The energy actors and their research team determine some targets for 2050; hence, they hope to decrease the world temperature to 6 °C in the best and 2 °C in the normal condition. Fulfillment of these scenarios needs suitable grid infrastructure but in most of the countries, the grid does not have a suitable background to apply those scenarios. In this paper, some problems about energy scenarios, energy storage systems, grid infrastructure and communication systems in supply and demand side of the grid and its solutions have been investigated.

Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) or briefly V2X communications are the one of hot topics in automotive industry. Therefore, this situation is providing many advantages of connected vehicles and infrastructures which bring to human life. For instance, vehicles and road infrastructures which shares information with each other, provides a neat flow regulation, more ordered traffic flow and therefore jammed traffic dependent accident’s percentage will be decreased. On the other hand, security is the most important issue for these systems because the operation of V2X networks is completely dependent on uninterrupted and accurate information sharing. In the light of these information, in this paper we review security issues and current solution architectures. We also propose some open problems in this lively field.

Sustaining learners’ motivation to keep learning has been concerned for over 60 years in education and SLA. Most research focusing on Japanese university students has contributed lots of theoretical and practical developments, but research focusing on motivations of non-traditional adult learners and those under 18-year-old to learn Chinese is still little even though previous research findings have proved age is one of the key variables influencing learning besides nationalities and Chinese language levels. In order to find an effective treatment for sustainable Chinese language learning in Japan, this study utilized a survey method to analyze the types of Japanese learners’ motivation to learn Chinese via analysis of a moment structures (AMOS), and to compare the differences of the motivation via one-way ANOVA. This study revealed that Japanese learners’ motivation to learn Chinese consists of eight common types, which are “instrumental motivation”, “personal orientation”, “identified regulation”, “Chinese cultural productions”, “integrating into Chinese community”, “external regulation”, “social responsibility”, and “Chinese for academic purposes”. Also, there are similarities and differences existing in the eight motivation types among the Japanese children, adolescents, (non-) traditional adult learners of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The findings contribute the understanding of motivation types and differences among the four aged Japanese learners to teachers of teaching Chinese to speakers of other languages (TCSOL), and to future research further exploring how differently aged Japanese learners can have and use a higher motivation as a main drive to learn Chinese language as a lifelong business.

A community-level nutrition intervention was implemented among tribal children (3 to 6 years) in Telangana, India. The one-year intervention involved six nutrient-rich formulations of millet-pulse-groundnut based products, suited to local taste preferences. Anthropometric measurements of height, weight and Mid-Upper-Arm -Circumference (MUAC) along with haemoglobin (Hb) levels were monitored at baseline and endline. The treatment group showed considerable gain in height (3.2 cm), weight (1.68 kg) and MUAC (0.33 cm), over the control group. Paired t-test indicated significant differences (p<.01) between pre- and post-intervention anthropometric measurements. Positive shifts were observed in wasting (WHZ; -1.2 ±1.3 to -0.9± 1), stunting (HAZ; -1.8±1.6 to -0.3±1.3) and underweight (WAZ; -1.9±1.2 to -0.7±1) among treatment group. Hb levels in the treatment group also improved significantly from 9.70 ± 0.14 g/dl (moderately-anaemic) to 11.08 ± 0.13 g/dl (non-anaemic). Post-intervention Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) involving mothers and teachers confirmed the positive impact. Thus, nutritional intervention formulated using climate resilient millets, pulses and groundnut, promotes dietary diversity and improves the nutrition & health status of children.

Access to medicines is one of the essential problems in Public Health of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The World Health Organization (WHO) defines access to medicines as the possibility of "having continuously accessible and affordable medicines in public or private health facilities that are within a kilometer of the place of residence." Access to medicines, as defined by the WHO, is not fully guaranteed in many LMICs and even in many regions of high-resource countries. The WHO identifies several factors as determinants of limitations in the access to medicines: rational selection, affordable prices, sustainable financing, and reliable health services. The action on these factors makes it possible to improve universal access to medicines with consequent improvement in Public Health. Adequate access to antibiotics and vaccination will avoid a large part of the deaths caused by infectious diseases in the LMICs. However, the emergence of resistance and the difficulties in vaccination campaigns due to socio-political or cultural problems make it challenging to fight many easily treatable infectious diseases. The use and abuse of antibiotics are inevitably associated with the appearance of resistances that make them ineffective. Thus, whereas limited access to antibiotics raises mortality rates from infectious diseases, generalized open access to them ends up eliminating their clinical value. Moreover, the contraction of research in this field for many years has reduced the success in discovering new drugs. Additionally, local market regulations, inadequate selection, inaccessible prices, especially for those of second and third-generation, inefficient health systems, and difficulties of administration and control of prescription compliance, especially in the case of combined therapies, are additional obstacles to universal access to antibiotics. In order to simultaneously improve access to antibiotics and keep resistances under control, it is necessary to develop training and education activities at different social levels (from patients to various Health Care Providers) to complement the national or supranational strategic plans.

Neuropsychiatric manifestations of COVID-19 include delirium, general malaise, headache, and psychiatric symptoms. These manifestations are related to the neuroinflammatory response to viral antigens and proinflammatory mediators/immune cells. Tetracyclines, such as minocycline, have antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. Saiko-keishi-to, a traditional Japanese Kampo medicine, also has anti-inflammatory properties. Given the anti-inflammatory properties of minocycline and Saiko-keishi-to, we describe two cases of COVID-19 with prolonged headaches and general malaise successfully treated with these medications.

This study aims to describe the commitment to national heritage, patriotism, nationalism of elementary school students in the border areas between Indonesia and Timor Leste. This research was conducted in three elementary schools, they are SD Inpres Moto Ain, SD Inpres Class Jau Halimuti, SD Kristen Nanaeklot, and SD Negeri Motabenar from June to August 2018. The subjects of this study were elementary students in the Indonesia-Timor Leste border areas precisely around Motaain City, Belu Regency, East Nusa Tenggara. The research questionnaire was adapted from Karazawa and analyzed with descripriptive statistics. The results of this study showed that the commitment to national heritage, patriotism, and nationalism of elementary students on the Indonesian border areas with Timor Leste is in the very high level.

Aim: To investigate inflammation indices and erythropoietin (EPO) levels for their potential role in distinguishing polycythemia vera (PV) from secondary polycythemia (SP), and to compare different parameter combinations in terms of diagnostic accuracy. Methods: This retrospective cohort was created from patients assessed for polycythemia from January 2020 to December 2023. PV diagnosis was made according to the 2016 WHO criteria (n=145). Those who did not fulfill the criteria were defined as having SP (n=84). Results: NLR, PLR and SII were significantly higher in the PV group (p

Forensic anthropologists play a key role in skeletal trauma analysis and commonly use macroscopic features to distinguish between trauma types. However, this approach can be challenging, particularly in cases of highly comminuted or incompletely recovered fractures. Histological analysis of microscopic fracture characteristics in fractured bones may thus help provide additional information on trauma type and bone fracture biomechanics in general. This study analysed the extent of microcrack damage to osteons in long bones with blunt force trauma (BFT) and gunshot trauma (GST), from both traumatic death cases and post-mortem experimental fractures. We identified four types of osteonal damage (OD). In traumatic death cases, OD affecting the inside of the osteon and compromising the Haversian canal (type 1) was found to be indicative of BFT. Moreover, OD affecting the cement line (type 3) and interstitial lamellae (type 4) was more common in the GST samples. OD affecting the inside of the osteon without compromising the Haversian canal (type 2) was not found to be indicative of either trauma type. In cases of experimental fractures, our study revealed that post-mortem fractures in dry bone samples featured the highest amount of OD, particularly of type 4. This study also found that the experimentally produced GST featured similar OD pattern to GST death cases. These findings support our hypothesis that there are distinct osteonal damage patterns in human long bones with BFT and GST, which are of relevant value for trauma analysis in forensic anthropology.

Cemented rock fill (CRF) is commonly used in cut-and-fill stoping operation in underground mining. This allows for the maximum recovery of ore. Backfilling can improve stope stability in underground workings, and then improve ground stability of the whole mine site. Backfilling step scenarios vary from site to site. This paper presents the investigation of five different backfilling step scenarios and their impacts on the stability of stopes at four different mining levels. A comprehensive comparison of displacements, major principal stress and stress concentration factor (SCF) was conducted. The results show that different backfilling step scenarios have little influence on the final displacement for displacement in the stopes. Among the five backfilling scenarios, the major principal stress and stress concentration factor (SCF) have almost the same final results. The backfilling scenario SCN-1 is the optimum option among these five backfilling scenarios. It can immediately prevent the increase of the displacement and reduce the sidewall stress concentration, thereby preventing possible failures. Using the same strength of CRF can achieve same effects among the four mining levels. Applying backfilling CRF of the same strength at different mining depths is acceptable and feasible to improve the stability of the stopes.

There exists an implicit potential limitation in every physical discoveries that has been implemented and understood. However, the limitations can be bounded within a safe limit to prevent any constructing theory to be free from errors. As, it’s the inert nature of the humans, to go far beyond the scope of experimental findings in order to pursue any studies with the sole help of logical reasoning and mathematics, the argument can be prevailed in the form of WEAK Clampdown Effect & STRONG Clampdown Effect. More, the theories are constructed out of physical nature, more the theory gets hypothetical without any finding evidence, but that does or doesn’t actually justify the phenomenon, that too with the more increment of KARDASHEV Scale, more moderate ways of experimentation got developed curbing down the limitations within the human limit of ‘ERRORS’, that does can be neglected by approximation. Relationship being cross-judgmental on the basis of the computational limits and calculation accuracy, leading to a soft singularity, as a warning, that if computer powers cannot be checked on the basis of error approximations, then this may lead to the hitting of a hard singularity, that in phase with the forbidden gap (or after the optimum limit that arises at the core constraints of nature) to prevent the computation being carried off with respect to super-intelligence machines that are cognitive capability oriented future computers responsible for self growth & reproduction with more improvement algorithm, restricting all forms of humanity & constraints the human growth by virtue of limiting capacities of the humans as compared to computers.

The study comprehensively evaluated the prognostic roles of PLR, NLR, MLR, BLR, and ELR in patients with acute exacerbation chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD). 619 patients with AECOPD and 300 healthy volunteers were retrospectively included into the study. The clinical characteristics containing laboratory findings of the AECOPD patients and the blood cell counts (CBCs) of the healthy volunteers were collected. Compared with the healthy volunteers, PLR, NLR, and MLR were elevated in COPD patients in stable condition, and were further ele-vated during exacerbation. ELR showed the opposite trend. PLR, NLR, and MLR were all posi-tively correlated with hospital LOS as well as CRP. In contrast, ELR was negatively correlated with hospital LOS as well as CRP. Elevated PLR, NLR, and MLR were all associated with more serious airflow limitation in AECOPD. Elevated PLR, NLR, and MLR were all associated with increased in-hospital mortality while Elevated ELR was associated with decreased in-hospital mortality in AECOPD. A nomogram was construct to predict in-hospital mortality in AECOPD. The nomo-gram had a C-index of 0.850 (95% CI: 0.799 – 0.901) with good predictive value and clinical ap-plicability. In summary, PLR, NLR, MLR, and ELR served as predictors for clinical outcomes in patients with AECOPD.

Background. IgA nephropathy (IgAN) is associated with chronic inflammation. Platelet-related parameters, such as platelet (PLT) count, platelet-to-albumin ratio (PAR) and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), were examined as potential prognostic indicators for renal and cardiovascular (CV) outcomes in IgAN. Methods. 150 IgAN patients were devided into two groups based on the cut-off value of PAR. All-cause mortality, major CV events and end-stage renal disease were the primary combined endpoints. Secondary endpoints, such as CV or renal endpoints, were also analyzed separately. Results. The patient’s mean age was 43.7 ± 13.5 years, and the follow-up time was 124 ± 67 months. The K-M curve showed that PLR, PAR and PLT were strongly associated with primary combined (p = 0.002, p = 0.004, p = 0.001) and renal outcomes (p < 0.001, p < 0.001, p < 0.001), but not with CV outcomes in IgAN. However, when combined with left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH) or metabolic syndrome (MetS) PAR was found to be a significant predictor of both primary (p < 0.001, p < 0.001) and secondary outcomes (p = 0.001 and p = 0.038; p = 0.001 and p = 0.015). Additionally, PLR correlated with microalbuminuria (r = -0.165, p = 0.033) and LVH (r = -0.178, p = 0.025), while PLT correlated with eGFR (r = 0.158, p = 0.040). Conclusion. Elevated PAR and PLR may predict progression to end-stage kidney disease, but in combination with LVH and MetS, they showed CV events also in IgAN. The determination of PAR and PLR can be useful and cost-effective parameters for assessing both cardiovascular and renal risks in CKD.

Background: The aim of this study has been to investigate if inflammatory biomarkers such as the systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet to lymphocyte ratio (PLR) have any correlation with the recurrence of pleomorphic adenomas (PA) in patients afflicted by this disease. Methods: A retrospective multicentre study involving two Italian centres, the Maxillofacial Sur-gery at the Policlinico Federico II in Naples and the ENT and Maxillofacial Surgery at the IRCCS G. Pascale National Cancer Institute in Naples, has been performed. The study, involving 608 pa-tients who had received a diagnosis of PA, was conducted between January 2000 and January 2020. A Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curve was used to calculate the optimal cut-off values for the SII, PLR and NLR. A linear regression model (LRM) and a non-linear logistic re-gression model (NLRM) were realized with respect to the NLR, PLR and SII. Results: The highest performance was achieved by the NLR (cut-off 2.960) with the AUC = 0.91, with an accuracy of 96.1%, sensitivity of 78.4% and specificity of 97.2%, PPV = 64.4% and NPV = 98.6%. The LRM and NLRM including all the haematological parameters did not increase the per-formance in terms of recurrence detection. Conclusion: The NLR is an excellent support tool in predicting the recurrence of PA with a cut-off of 2.960. It can be a good reference point for surgical decision-making and follow-up in clinical practice.

Vacuum drying can dehydrate materials further than dry heat methods while protecting sensitive materials from thermal degradation. Many industries have shifted to vacuum drying as cost- or time-saving measures. Small-scale vacuum drying, however, has been limited by high costs of specialty scientific tools. To make vacuum drying more accessible, this study provides design and performance information for a small-scale open source vacuum oven, which can be fabricated from off-the-shelf and 3-D printed components. The oven is tested for drying speed and effective-ness on both waste plastic polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and a consortium of bacteria developed for bioprocessing of terephthalate wastes to assist in distributed recycling of PET for both additive manufacturing as well as potential food. Both materials can be damaged when exposed to high temperatures, making vacuum drying a desirable solution. The results showed the open source vacuum oven was effective at drying both plastic and biomaterials, drying at a higher rate than a hot-air dryer for small samples or for low volumes of water. The system can be constructed for less than 20% of commercial vacuum dryer costs for several laboratory-scale applications including dehydration of bio-organisms, drying plastic for distributed recycling and additive manufacturing, and chemical processing.

Breast cancer (BC) affects millions of women; it is the leading cause of death by neoplasia in wom-en worldwide, with at least 500 thousand deaths each year, 70% of which occur in developing countries. Elastography evaluates tissue stiffness, making this a promising non-invasive real-time technique. BI-RADS is recognized as a standard and helpful technique for establishing BC risk. This study aimed to determine, by strain elastography (SE), the fat-to-lesion index (F/L index), sen-sitivity, specificity, and optimal cut-off to diagnose BC. This prospective study included 216 wom-en who underwent SE, ultrasound, mammography, and breast biopsy; according to mammogra-phy, we recruited BI-RADS category 2 (n= 5), category 3 (n=29), category 4 (n= 94), category 5 (n= 71) and category 6 (n=17); after biopsy, 108 women were classified as negative, and 108 were pos-itive for BC. Three expert BC radiologists performed all imaging interpretations and biopsies. Our results show mean values of the F/L index for negative biopsies of 3.70±2.57 and positive biopsies of 18.10±17.01; we developed two models for the prediction of BC, a logistic regression model with an AUC of 0.893 and a neural network with an AUC of 0.902. The Youden index yielded a F/L index cut-off >5.76, with a sensitivity and specificity of 84.26%. Positive Spearman's Rho cor-relation coefficient was observed between the F/L index and BI-RADS, r=.073 (p< 0.001). ANOVA test showed a difference between F/L index vs. molecular subtypes (p=0.002). SE is helpful as a di-agnostic complement to mammography, or in cases where the latter is contraindicated, elas-tography has an adequate predictive capacity and is a fast and minimally invasive procedure.

It has been proposed that upregulation of the noradrenergic (NA) system through exposure to novelty might be one of the key components for building cognitive reserve and resilience to neurodegeneration. A personality trait that promotes greater interest in novel experiences is Openness to Experience (OE). Individuals who are high in OE exhibit strong curiosity towards novelty and are more likely to be exposed to novel stimuli throughout the lifespan.Performing voxel-based morphometry analyses, we examined whether OE in 135 healthy young adults was associated with Locus Coeruleus (LC) - the main core of the noradrenergic system. We also investigated whether LC mediates the relationship between OE and a key measure of reserve, I.Q. In comparison with other neuromodulators’ seeds (Dorsal and Median Raphe [DR-MR] -5-HT, Ventral Tegmental Area [VTA] -DA- and Nucleus Basalis of Meynert [NBM] -Ach-), results show that greater LC integrity was related to greater OE and IQ. Additionally, mediation analyses revealed that only LC mediated the relationship between OE and IQ. Furthermore, a Bayesian multiple regression was conducted to model the contribution of both isolated and combined neuromodulator seeds to OE trait express. This approach found that the LC + VTA could account for more variance in OE expression compared to the LC alone. Other weaker but significant associations were observed between DR and OE, between LC + NBM and Conscientiousness and between DR + NBM and Extraversion. These results are together suggestive that OE is primarily underpinned by monoaminergic functioning, and that the LC-NA system plays a central role mediating the interdependence between OE expression and cognition (IQ level). While offering further understanding of the neurobiology of human personality, these findings indicate a pivotal role of LC-NA system integrity in novelty seeking in daily life. This provides a psychobiological account for how OE expression may be beneficial for maintaining the noradrenergic system to facilitate cognitive reserve and resilience to neurodegenerative conditions.

This paper compares the performance of three text-to-speech (TTS) models released from June 2021 to January 2022 in order to establish a baseline for Brazilian Portuguese. Those models were trained using dataset for Brazilian Portuguese. The experimental setup considers tts-portuguese dataset to fine-tune the following TTS models: VITS end-to-end model; glowtts and gradtts acoustic models both using hifi-gan vocoder. Performance metrics are arranged into objective and subjective metrics. As subjective metrics, the naturalness and intelligibility are measured based on the mean opinion score (MOS). Results shows that gradtts+hifigan model achieved naturalness of 4.07 MOS, close to performance of current commercial models.

Background: Vaccinating children against COVID-19 is an essential public health strategy in order to reach herd immunity and prevent illness among children and adults. Parents are facing tremendous stress in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccination program for children. In this study, we aimed to investigate parents’ willingness to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 in North Kivu province (DRC). Methods: A cross-sectional survey between December 01, 2021 to January 20, 2022 in 6 health zones (Goma, Karisimbi, Butembo, Beni, Kamango and Katwa) was conducted in the province of North Kivu. In each health zone, we selected 5 clusters (Health area) using the method of probabilistic selection proportional to population size. In total, 522 parents participated in our study. Results: Overall, 32.8% of parents intended to vaccinate their children. In the multivariate analysis, younger age of parents (aOR : 2.40, CI : [1.50-3.83]), higher level of fear that “a member of my family” could contract COVID-19 (aOR : 2.35, CI : [1.38-4.02]), higher level of perceived vulnerability to COVID-19 within the family (aOR : 1.70, CI : [1.005-2.2881]), higher level of perceived susceptibility to COVID-19 within the family (aOR : 3.07, CI : [1.80-5.23]), and history of vaccination against COVID-19 among parents (aOR : 16.47, CI : [8.39-32.33]), were significantly associated with the intention to have their children or adolescents vaccinated. Conclusion: Willingness of parents to vaccinate their children against the COVID-19 vaccination was low in North Kivu. There is undeniably in this region a need to reinsure the populations about vaccine safety for both children and adults. Public health authorities should also address widespread misinformation about vaccines in a timely manner.

With the COVID-19 pandemic continuing and the resulting economic burden increasingly apparent, the Indonesian government began to prepare a "new normal" phase and make peace with COVID-19. From this new decision arises the question of the readiness of businesses and the industrial sector to resume operations amid COVID-19. This article aims to provide concise and precise information about the preparations that can be made by businesses to operate safely amid COVID-19 based on existing scientific studies and literatures. From the literature visits it can be concluded that transmission and danger of a COVID-19 pandemic can be prevented through: creation of infectious disease prevention and response plan, implementing basic infection prevention measures, policies and procedures for proper identification and isolation of sick people, applying flexibilities in policies, and protections in the workplace.

Here we review and describe a set of research priorities to meet present and future challenges posed to farmed animal production that build on progress, successes and resources from the Functional Annotation of ANimal Genomes (FAANG) project.

South America has become the new epicenter of the coronavirus, especially in Brazil where the disease continues to spread exponentially across the country. This text aims to analyze the psychosocial factors of Covid-19 on back to school strategies in Brazil from a bioecological perspective. At the microsystem level, the population is experiencing different levels of stress and fear; at the mesosystem level, changes in routines, separation from family and friends, and closure of schools; and at the macrosystem level, national guidelines to control the pandemic, institutional standards on a national and international scale. Therefore, the main focus for the success of school return must be in the prevention of contagion and with physical and psychological health, and should not only consider the demands of curricula, financial or administrative management. For this reason, it is paramount that greater female representativeness is increased in decision-making levels of the meso and macrosystem, regarding the resumption of school and academic activities in the pandemic period, since the number of female leaders in decision-making, is still insufficient.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented the world with increased challenges. The response to this pandemic has led to a sudden disruption of routine medical and elective surgical care. Most hospitals across the globe have had to change the way outpatient clinics are carried out and postpone non-urgent elective surgical procedures. NHS England ceased all elective general surgeries to train and re-deploy their staff to support the increased pressures from COVID-19 in an intensive care setting. However, with a decline of reported cases and deaths, the return to undertaking non-urgent elective services is imminent. In May 2020, Radha and Afzal published the first evidence-based guidelines for the resumption of elective orthopaedic services titled “Evidence based suggestions for the return to elective orthopaedic surgery following the COVID-19 Pandemic”. The pathway presented is adapted from the “Evidence based suggestions for the return to elective orthopaedic surgery following the COVID-19 Pandemic” and could potentially be used as a model for other surgical specialities. We present a three-phased return back to urological services. Safe resumption of elective care is possible but needs to be carefully planned.

Most large fibers in central nervous system of vertebrates are decussated. The cause or the evolutionary force of this phenomenon is not convincingly described. Here we show a pattern for this nervous system property that simultaneously is found to a more basic rule in evolution.The idea here is the "function to anatomy" theorem. We claim that functions of physical, biochemical, enzymatic, etc., in lower scale of living organisms "emerge" to anatomy in larger scales. And reversely, the anatomy we see in multicelular organisms are/were functions in microscopic scales.We propose descriptions, predictions, and a probable road map to what this can implicate in biological and medical issues.

In 2014, the outbreak of adenoviral pneumonia occurred in Korean military training center. However, there is limited data on characteristics of fever and its response to antipyretics therapy in immunocompetent adults with adenoviral positive community-acquired pneumonia (CAP). Medical records of patients who were admitted to Armed Forces Chuncheon Hospital for treatment of CAP between January 2014 and December 2016 were retrospectively analyzed. We evaluated demographics, clinico-laboratory findings and radiologic findings at admission were compared between adenovirus positive (Adv) group and adenovirus negative (non-Adv) group. Out of 251 military personnel with CAP during the study periods, 67 were classified into Adv group while 184 were Non-Adv group. Patients with Adv group had a longer duration of fever after admission and symptom onset. Adv group patients had a higher mean temperature at admission and more observed over 40 and 39 to 40℃. Adv group patients had more commonly observed no response to antipyretic treatment and adverse events after antipyretics use. Length of hospital stay had no significant difference between two groups and no patient died in both groups. In our study, Adv positive CAP in patients with immunocompetent military personnel had distinct characteristics of fever and response to antipyretic treatment.

An understanding of the cultural conditions that determine the factors affecting nurses’ intention to leave is important for countries suffering from nurse shortage. Aim: to examine factors influencing intention to leave among female hospital nurses in a large Japanese sample, classified into four generations by age considering economic conditions. Methods: a cross-sectional survey with convenience sampling was conducted. Anonymous self-administered questionnaires were distributed to all nurses in 30 hospitals. To assess intention to leave, basic attributes, life conditions, work characteristics, and factors of psychosocial work environment were addressed. After classifying data into four generations based on age cohorts, we conducted multivariate logistic regression analysis using the completed data (N = 5,074, mean age = 36.24). Results: regardless of generational characteristics influenced by economic conditions, effort and monetary reward were generation-common factors. Over-commitment, social support, and the presence of a role model were generation-common factors in three generations. While having children increased intention to leave in the generation born 1965–1979, having family members in need of caregiving other than children decreased the risk in the generation born in the 1980s. Conclusion: generational countermeasures considering factors of psychosocial work environment and life conditions are needed to avert female nurse turnover.

Microaggressions are subtle verbal and non-verbal slights based on group membership, and they are ubiquitous in the lives of racial minorities, women, and LGBTQ individuals (Sue, 2010). The goal of the current paper is to introduce a role-playing based exercise on effective responses to microaggressions. The workshop draws on the prejudice responding workshops of Plous (2000) and Lawson, et al. (2010) but integrates research-based strategies. The activity was tested in two groups of undergraduate students, and the findings suggested that both groups felt more prepared to deal with microaggressions after participating.

Monochromatic documents claim for much less computer bandwidth for network transmission and storage space than their color or even grayscale equivalent. The binarization of historical documents is far more complex than recent ones as paper aging, color, texture, translucidity, stains, back-to-front interference, kind and color of ink used in handwritting, printing process, digitalization process, etc. are some of the factors that affect binarization. This article presents a new binarization algorithm for historical documents. The new global filter proposed is performed in four steps: filtering the image using a bilateral filter, splitting image into the RGB components, decision-making for each RGB channel based on an adaptive binarization method inspired by Otsu's method with a choice of the threshold level, and classification of the binarized images to decide which of the RGB components best preserved the document information in the foreground. The quantitative and qualitative assessment made with 21 binarization algorithms in three sets of “real world” documents showed very good results.

HER2/neu positive breast tumors predict a high mortality and comprise 25-30% of breast cancer. We have shown that Flavokawain A (FKA) preferentially reduces the viabilities of HER2 overexpressing breast cancer cell lines (i.e. SKBR3 and MCF7/HER2) versus those with less HER2 expression (i.e. MCF7 and MDA-MB-468). FKA at cytotoxic concentrations to breast cancer cell lines also has minimal effect on the growth of non-malignant breast epithelial MCF10 cells. FKA induces G2M arrest in cell cycle progression of HER2 overexpressing breast cancer cell lines through inhibition of Cdc2 and Cdc25C phosphorylation and down-regulation of Myt1 and Wee1expression leading to increased Cdc2 kinase activities. In addition, FKA induces apoptosis in SKBR3 cells by increasing the protein expression of Bim and BAX and decreasing expression of Bcl₂, Bcl_x/L , XIAP and survivin. FKA also down-regulates the protein expression of HER-2 and inhibits AKT phosphorylation. Herceptin plus FKA treatment leads to enhanced growth inhibitory effect on HER-2 overexpressing breast cancer cell lines through down-regulation of Myt1, Wee1, Skp2, Survivin and XIAP. Our results suggest the promise of FKA as a novel apoptosis inducer and G2 checkpoint abrogating agent in combination with Herceptin for treatment of HER2 overexpressing breast cancer.

Neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR) is a promising predictive and prognostic factor in breast cancer. We investigated its ability to predict disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in patients with luminal A or luminal B-HER2-negative breast cancer who received neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT). Pre-treatment complete blood cell counts from 168 consecutive patients with luminal breast cancer were evaluated to assess NLR. The study population was stratified into NLRlow or NLRhigh according to a cut-off value established by receiving operator curve (ROC) analysis. Data on additional pre- and post-treatment clinical-pathological characteristics were also collected. Kaplan-Meier curves, log-rank tests, and Cox proportional hazards models were used for statistical analyses. Patients with pre-treatment NLRlow showed a significantly shorter DFS (HR 6.97, 95% CI 1.65-10.55, p= 0.002) and OS (HR 7.79, 95% CI 1.25-15.07, p= 0.021) compared to those with NLRhigh. Non-ductal histology, luminal B subtype, and post-treatment Ki67≥ 14% were also associated with worse DFS (p= 0.016, p= 0.002, and p= 0.001, respectively). In multivariate analysis, luminal B subtype, post-treatment Ki67≥ 14%, and NLRlow remained independent prognostic factors for DFS, while only post-treatment Ki67≥ 14% and NLRlow affected OS. The present study provides evidence that pre-treatment NLRlow helps identify women at higher risk of recurrence and death among patients affected by luminal breast cancer treated with NACT.

Hybrid carbon-silicon, carbon-nitrogen, and carbon-boron clathrates are new classes of Type I carbon-based clathrates that have been identified by first-principles computational methods by substituting atoms on the carbon clathrate framework with Si, N, and/or B atoms. The hybrid framework is further stabilized by embedding appropriate guest atoms within the cavities of the cage structure. Series of hybrid carbon-silicon, carbon-boron, carbon-nitrogen, and carbon-silicon-nitrogen clathrates have been shown to exhibit small positive values of the energy of formation, indicating that they may be metastable compounds and amenable to fabrication. In this overview article, the energy of formation, elastic properties, and electronic properties of selected hybrid carbon-based clathrates are summarized. Theoretical calculations that explore the potential applications of hybrid carbon-based clathrates as energy storage materials, electronic materials, or hard materials are presented. The computational results identify compositions of hybrid carbon-silicon and carbon-nitrogen clathrates that may be considered candidate materials for use as either electrode materials for Li-ion batteries or as hydrogen storage materials. Prior processing routes for fabricating selected hybrid carbon-based clathrates are highlighted and difficulties encountered are discussed.

The migration from MATLAB to Python (M-to-PY) has gained significant traction in recent computational research. While MATLAB has long served as a linchpin in myriad scientific endeavors, there's an emerging trend to rejuvenate these projects using Python's extensive AI tools and libraries. This study presents a semi-automated process for M-to-PY conversion, using a detailed case study of an image skeletonization project comprising fifteen MATLAB files and a 1404-image dataset. Skeletonization is foundational for ongoing 3D motion detection research using AI transformers, predominantly developed in Python. The utilization of ChatGPT-4, acting as an AI co-programmer, is pivotal in this conversion. By leveraging the public OpenAI API, we developed an M-to-PY converter prototype, evaluated its efficacy using test cases from the Bard bot, and subsequently employed the converted code in an AI application. The dual contributions encompass a well-tested M-to-PY converter and a Skeleton App capable of sketching and skeletonizing any given image, enriching the AI toolset. This study accentuates how AI resources, like ChatGPT-4, can simplify code transitions, opening doors for innovative AI implementations using primarily MATLAB-coded scientific research.

Waterbomb structures are origami-inspired deformable structural components used in new types of robots. They have a unique radially deployable ability that enables robots to better adapt to their environment. In this paper, we propose a series of new waterbomb structures with square, rectangle, and parallelogram base units. Through quasi-static axial and radial compression experiments and numerical simulations, we prove that the parallelogram waterbomb structure has a twist displacement mode along the axial direction. Compared with the square waterbomb structure, the proposed optimal design of the parallelogram waterbomb structure reduces the critical axial buckling load-to-weight ratio by 55.4% and increases the radial stiffness-to-weight ratio by 67.6%. The significant increase in the radial stiffness-to-weight ratio of the waterbomb structure and decrease in the critical axial buckling load-to-weight ratio make the proposed origami pattern attractive for practical robotics applications.

The world has been highly impacted by the COVID-19 as the virus has spread to all continents – about 200 countries in total. The latest update claims about 4,000,000 confirmed cases and about 300,000 confirmed deaths owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. This probably makes the COVID-19 as the most dangerous contagious disease in the era 2000s. Apart from massive publications on this topic, there is no available qualitative analysis that describes the dynamic spreads of the COVID-19 and its impacts on healthcare and the economy. Through the system archetypes analysis, this paper explains that the dynamic spread of the COVID-19 consists of the limits to growth and the success to successful structures. The limits to growth elucidates that more symptomatic and asymptomatic patients owing to infected droplets may be bounded by self-healing and isolated treatments. The success to successful structure explains that once the COVID-19 affects the economy through the lockdown, there will be a limited fund to support the government aids and the aggregate demand. In overall, this paper gives readers simplified holistic insights into understanding the dynamic spread of the COVID-19.

Background Telomere shortening is related to aging and unfavourable health outcomes. Obesity and metabolic diseases are important factors for accelerating aging. This study aimed to find out the association between obesity, metabolic disease, and telomere length in metabolically healthy adults. Methods 237 adults were enrolled with written consents at a health promotion centre of a tertiary hospital from February 2014 to March 2015. After excluding 99 subjects who met the exclusion criterion, a total of 130 metabolically healthy subjects were selected for final analysis. The subjects were divided into quartile groups according to the telomere lengths of their oral mucosal cells. Results The subjects consisted of 66 (50.8%) males with a mean age of 58.59 years. The body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) increased significantly along with the quartile groups (Q1, 23.00; Q2, 23.96; Q3, 23.70; Q4, 25.20; P-for trend=0.008). Waist circumference (WC, P-for trend=0.022), waist-to-hip ratio (WHR, P-for trend=0.005), and waist-to-height ratio (WHtR, P=0.001) also increased along with the quartile groups. Obesity prevalence (BMI ≥25 kg/m2), abdominal obesity (WC ≥90 cm for men, ≥85 cm for women), WHR 〉1.0 for men or 〉0.85 for women, and WHtR ≥0.5 increased significantly as the telomere length increased (P-for trend <0.05). After adjusting for covariates, the ORs for each obesity markers increased as the telomere length increased (P-for trend <0.05); and the ORs of WHtR were especially meaningful (Q1, 1.00; Q2, 2.53; Q3, 2.97; Q4, 7.81; P-for trend = 0.001). There were no significant trends for metabolic syndrome and its components along with the prevalence of fatty liver disease. Conclusion Obesity markers and telomere length had significant positive correlation despite the established theory. The obesity paradox may exist in metabolically healthy adults with regard to telomere length, However, further studies with larger sample sizes for the association between obesity and telomere length are needed.

Background: The risk to physicians who worked with patients without confirmed COVID-19 testing during the pandemic has been little studied. However, they were at high risk. Methods: A total of 1285 Romanian physicians completed an online survey. We performed Mann-Whitney comparisons between physicians who reported that they knowingly had direct contact with COVID patients and those who didn't regarding their willingness to work. Results: Compared with their colleagues, physicians who reported not knowingly having direct contact with COVID patients reported less access to protective equipment, less overall willingness to respond when asked to work with infected patients, more likely to work out of fear of losing their jobs, and fear of legal repercussions. They received less training in the use of protective equipment. Conclusions: Physicians who worked with patients not yet diagnosed with COVID-19 were significantly less willing to work. The perception of invisible risk may explain the observed differences.

The challenge of accessing finance by entrepreneurs from traditional financial sources is pervasive. The COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated the problem of limited access to finance from banks. Against this backdrop, the objective of the study was to determine the factors driving crowdfunding success during the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa. The ordinary least squares (OLS) and probit regression models were estimated to analyse 216 crowdfunding projects in Africa. The results of the study documented that targeted amount (TA), and COVID-19 pandemic were negative and significant drivers of crowdfunding success. Furthermore, comments (CMM) and duration (DRN) were negative and significantly affected crowdfunding success. Conversely, images (IM), videos (VD), backers (BCK), and updates (UPD) were positive and significantly affected crowdfunding success. The study contributes to the body knowledge by investigating the drivers of crowdfunding success during the COVID-19 pandemic period which hitherto had not been researched on extenisvely.

Background: Smart transport plays a crucial role in urban planning and the transition from traditional to smart cities in developing countries with sustainability requirements.Traditional cities in developing countries often suffer from traffic congestion,air pollution, and inadequate public transportation systems,which can impede economic growth and negatively impact the quality of life for residents. Smart transport solutions can address these challenges by providing more efficient, sustainable.Here is a possible business model for an ITS system in a high-potential city in Iran,Based on IoT analysis, Mashhad city in Iran selected as a high-potential city to be changed to a smart city in the transportation sector.In the localization business model,the Uber smart transportation business model as a successful world experience is considered the base model. Methods: Based on the literature review,various criteria and sub-criteria were identified and determined in designing a new localized transportation business model.A questionnaire was prepared and filled with the help of 11 experts,method IAHP technique; Results:The present study showed the possibility of monthly payments for customers,software development, and the addition of luxury cars are among the most important sub-criteria with high weights;Conclusions: Working with transport companies,schools and universities as key partners solves reaching a strong and sustainable smart transportation system.

We aimed to explore symptoms severity and adherence to therapy for patients with myelofibrosis treated with ruxolitinib in Bulgaria. It is a prospective, non-interventional study performed at the Specialized hospital for active treatment of hematological diseases in Sofia during 2022 - 2023. Date of diagnosis, demographic characteristics, clinical indicators, ruxolitinib dose, and other data points were collected. Clinical indicators were assessed at baseline, in the middle and at the end of observation. Severity of symptoms was measured with MPN-SAF TSS and adherence to therapy with the Morisky 4 questionnaire 6 times during the observation. The mean age of diagnosis was 58.5 years, with the average duration of disease of 3 years. Pa-tients’ laboratory results were within physiological ranges, with spleen size experiencing a con-stant decrease. The average value for the severity of the symptoms per MPN-SAF TSS results decreased significantly, indicating better disease control. The average adherence to therapy did not change and remained high at around 9 points, except for one patient. In conclusion the treatment of myelofibrosis patients with ruxolitinib decreased symptoms se-verity and spleen size. Patients were adherent to the therapy over the observed period but as treatment duration increases the risk of adherence decreasing.

Recent advances in deep learning technology have led to increased interest in text-to-image technology, which enables computers to create images from text by simulating the human process of forming mental images. The GAN-based text-to-image technology involves the extraction of features from input text, which are combined with noise and then used as input to a GAN that generates images that are similar to the original images through competition between the generator and discriminator. Although generating images from English text is a mature area of research, text-to-image technology based on multilingualism, such as Korean, is still in its early stages of development. Webtoon is a digital comic format that allows comics to be viewed online. The creation process for webtoons is divided into story planning, content/sketching, coloring, and background drawing. Since each stage of webtoon production requires human intervention, it is both time-consuming and expensive. As a result, deep learning technologies such as automatic coloring and automatic line drawing are being used to reduce human involvement. However, there is a shortage of technology that can assist authors with story creation in webtoon production. Therefore, this study proposes a multilingual text-to-image model capable of generating webtoon images when presented with multilingual input text. The proposed model employs Multilingual BERT to extract feature vectors for multiple languages, and trains a DCGAN in conjunction with the images. The experimental results demonstrate that the model can generate images that are similar to the original images when presented with multilingual input text after training.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) help and support the country in financial and business aspects and employs in the country, overcomes unemployment, and creates job opportunities in different sectors of the country. The study aims to know the entrepreneurial-specific factors like age, gender, education, experience, and skills used as predictors for access to financing of small firms in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The questionnaire is used for data collection, and about 204 questionnaires were distributed, of which 192 returned and analyzed through binary logistic regression. The study results reveal that age and level of education have been found significant while gender, experience and skills have insignificant with the access to finance in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan.

Circular Economy involves structural changes in traditional business models and consumers’ behaviour toward recycled products. The recycling of PET products has been increasing but there is still a gap between consumption and demand for PET packaging in Brazil. In this research, the waste reduction was examined under a projective scenario to the current ecological purposes in Brazil for reducing environmental pollution. In that manner, this paper aimed to comprehend the intention to purchase recycled PET products of Brazilian consumers. With a non-probabilistic and convenience sample, the study counts 422 participants. The method employed was based on Structural Equation Modelling and Partial Least Squares, used to test the hypotheses of causality among the variables. Results showed the perception of low quality about recycled products reduced consumers’ intention to purchase. Also, the sustainability of recycled products positively influenced the intention to purchase. In addition, recycled products presented a negative impact on the perceived safety, which could influence the purchase of recycled products in Brazil. We conclude that the image that Brazilian consumers have about recycled products positively affects the intention to purchase.

The origin of cancer remains one of the most important enigmas in modern biology. The prevailing paradigm has failed to grasp a comprehensive view of the disease. Naturally, therapies developed under the current assumptions are inadequate and cancer is practically an incurable disease. Meanwhile, descriptive studies continuously extend the molecular complexity of cancer without an equivalent advancement in its understanding. Furthermore, they tend to accumulate inconsistencies inexplicable under the classical view. This paper presents a compelling theory of the origin of carcinomas. By hypothesis, a series of generic events in epithelial tissues promoted by cellular aging and inflammation enables the reactivation of developmental programs. The origin of carcinomas in vivo is described as the time-ordered cell state transitions undergone by epithelial cells in the hyperplasia due to replicative senescence and inflammation towards a mesenchymal undifferentiated endogenous cell state with cancerous behavior. In support of the theory, the molecular, cellular, and histopathological evidence is critically reviewed. A plausible model for the origin of carcinomas is presented to explain the mechanism underlying carcinogenesis from an evolutive and developmental perspective. The implications of the hypothesis in the current strategies for cancer prevention and treatment are discussed along with rational alternatives and some predictions for possible experimental validation.

Microbial symbioses exhibit astounding adaptations, yet all symbionts face the problem of how to reliably associate with host offspring every generation. A common strategy is vertical transmission, in which symbionts are directly transmitted from the female to her offspring. The diversity of symbionts and vertical transmission mechanisms is as expansive as the diversity of eukaryotic host taxa that house them. However, there are several common themes among these mechanisms based on the degree to which symbionts associate with the host germline during transmission. In this review, we detail three distinct vertical transmission strategies, starting with associations that are transmitted from host somatic cells to offspring somatic cells, either due to lacking a germline or avoiding it. A second strategy involves somatically-localized symbionts that migrate into the germline during host development. The third strategy we discuss is one in which the symbiont maintains continuous association with the germline throughout development. Unexpectedly, the vast majority of documented vertically inherited symbionts rely on the second strategy: soma-to-germline migration. Given that not all eukaryotes contain a sequestered germline and instead produce offspring from somatic stem cell lineages, this soma-to-germline migration is discussed in the context of multicellular evolution. Lastly, as recent genomics data have revealed an abundance of horizontal gene transfer events from symbiotic and non-symbiotic bacteria to host genomes, we discuss their impact on eukaryotic host evolution.

Bidirectional gene promoters affect the transcription of two genes, leading to the hypothesis that they should exhibit protection against genetic or epigenetic changes in cancer. Therefore, they provide an excellent opportunity to learn about promoter susceptibility to somatic alteration in tumors. We tested this hypothesis using data from genome-scale DNA methylation (14 cancer types), simple somatic mutation (10 cancer types), and copy number variation profiling (14 cancer types). For DNA methylation, the difference in rank differential methylation between tumor and tumor-adjacent normal matched samples based on promoter type was tested by Wilcoxon rank sum test. Logistic regression was used to compare differences in simple somatic mutations. For copy number alteration, a mixed effects logistic regression model was used. The change in methylation between non-diseased tissues and their tumor counterparts was significantly greater in single compared to bidirectional promoters across all 14 cancer types examined. Similarly, the extent of copy number alteration was greater in single gene compared to bidirectional promoters for all 14 cancer types. Furthermore, among 10 cancer types with available simple somatic mutation data, bidirectional promoters were slightly more susceptible. These results suggest that selective pressures related with specific functional impacts during carcinogenesis drive the susceptibility of promoter regions to somatic alteration.

The traditional herbal medicine, Hochu-ekki-to, has been shown to have preventive effects on viral infection and stress. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical effects of Hochu-ekki-to on two stress-related rat models of polycystic ovarian syndrome. Female Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into control and treatment groups, the latter of which were subjected to stress induced by exposure to adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) or cold temperatures. After these stress inductions, rats were orally treated with dissolved Hochu-ekki-to once per day for 7 days. Rats subjected to the two different stressors exhibited upregulation of steroid hormone receptors (in ovaries) and reproductive hormones (in blood), and consequent stimulation of abnormal follicle development accompanied by elevation of Hsp 90 expression (in ovaries). Treatment with Hochu-ekki-to for 7 days after stress induction increased immune functions, reduced the stress-induced activation of Hsp 90, and normalized the levels of the tested steroid hormone receptors and reproductive hormones. Our findings suggest that stress stimulations may promote the activation of Hsp 90 via the dysregulation of steroid hormone receptors and reproductive hormones, but that post-stress treatment with Hochu-ekki-to improves reproductive and immune functions in the ovaries of stressed rats.

CT scans are currently the most common imaging modality used for suspected stroke patients due to their short acquisition time and wide availability. However, MRI offers superior tissue contrast and image quality. In this study, eight deep learning models are developed, trained, and tested using a dataset of 181 CT/MR pairs from stroke patients. The resultant synthetic MRIs generated by these models are compared through a variety of qualitative and quantitative methods. The synthetic MRIs generated by a 3D UNet model consistently demonstrated superior performance across all methods of evaluation. Overall, the generation of synthetic MRIs from CT scans using the methods described in this paper produces realistic MRIs that can guide the registration of CT scans to MRI atlases. The synthetic MRIs enable the segmentation of white matter, gray matter, and cerebrospinal fluid using algorithms designed for MRIs, exhibiting a high degree of similarity to true MRIs.

The number of people owning vehicles has been steadily growing, resulting in increased numbers of vehicles on the roads, making roads more congested, and increasing the risk of accidents. In addition, heavy rain, snow, and fog have increased due to abnormal weather caused by global warming. These bad weather conditions can also affect the safety of vehicles and drivers. The need to disseminate safety messages on the social internet of vehicles due to these problems has been steadily increasing. In this paper, we propose an efficient safety message dissemination scheme that focuses on urban environments with high vehicle density and mobility to address these problems. The proposed scheme reduces packet loss by considering frequent cluster departures and subscriptions through an efficient cluster management technique. In a vehicle-to-vehicle environment, the dissemination of safety messages is divided into an intra-cluster and an inter-cluster emergency as well as general safety message dissemination technique. In a vehicle to infrastructure environment, the proposed scheme reduces the number of processing requests and duplicate messages made to roadside units (RSUs) through a request operation process for each vehicle and an RSU scheduling technique. We conducted several performance evaluations of message packet loss and the number of RSU processing requests to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme.

Peat is the main type of peloid used in Polish cosmetic/healing spa facilities. Depending on treatment and origin, peat waste can be contaminated microbiologically, and as result, it has to be incinerated in medical waste incineration plants without energy recovery (local law). Such a situation leads to peat waste management costs increase. Therefore in this work, we checked the possibility of peat waste upcycling to carbonized solid fuel (CSF) using torrefaction. Torrefaction is a thermal treatment process that removes microbiological contamination and improves the fuel properties of peat waste. In work torrefaction conditions (temperature and time) on CSF quality were tested. Parallelly, peat decomposition kinetics using TGA, and torrefaction kinetics with lifetime prediction using macro-TGA were determined. Furthermore, torrefaction theoretical mass and energy balance were determined. The results of the tested peat were compared with reference material (wood), and as result, obtained data can be used to adjust currently used wood torrefaction technologies for peat torrefaction. The results show that torrefaction can improve the high heating value of peat waste from 19.0 MJ x kg-1 to 21.3 MJ x kg-1, peat main decomposition takes place at 200-550 °C following second reaction order (n=2), with an activation energy of 33.34 kJ x mol-1 and pre-exponential factor of 4.40 x 10-1 s-1. Moreover, DSC analysis revealed that peat torrefaction required slightly more energy than wood torrefaction, and macro TGA showed that peat torrefaction has lower torrefaction constant reaction rates (k) than wood 1.05 x 10-5 - 3.15 x 10-5 vs 1.43 x 10-5 - 7.25 x 10-5 s-1.

The objective of this paper is to investigate the convergence of coupling-parameter expansion-based solutions to Ornstein-Zernike equation in liquid state theory. The analytically solved Baxter's adhesive hard sphere model is analyzed first using coupling-parameter expansion. It is found that the expansion provides accurate approximations to solutions - including the liquid-vapor phase diagram - in most parts of the phase plane. However, it fails to converge in the region where the model has only complex solutions. Similar analysis and results are, then, obtained using analytical solutions within the mean spherical approximation for the hard-core Yukawa potential. Next, convergence of the expansion is analyzed for the Lennard-Jonnes potential using an accurate density-dependent bridge function in the closure relation. Numerical results are presented which show convergence of correlation functions, compressibility versus density profiles, etc., in the single as well as two phase regions. Computed liquid-vapor phase diagrams, using two independent schemes employing the converged profiles, compare excellently with simulation data. Results obtained for the generalized Lennard-Jonnes potential, with varying repulsive exponent, also compare well with simulation data. All these results together establish the coupling-parameter expansion as a practical tool for studying single component fluid phases modeled via general pair-potentials.

Several studies have shown that physical activity (PA) is related to physical and mental health. Yet, there are few studies on the frequency of PA as it relates to health and a healthy lifestyle. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between the frequency of practicing different types of physical activities (dependent variables), living a healthy lifestyle (BMI, smoking and alcohol consumption), physical health (sum of all doctor visits except psychiatrists) and mental health (a sum of visits to psychiatrists) at different ages (independent variables). We fo-cused on three types of PA: (1) medium to high-intensity aerobic exercises; (2) low to medium intensity relaxing and stretching exercises, (3) outdoor leisure PA. 9,617 participants (ages: 19 -81) were included in the study (with health registries over a period of 10 years prior to a cross-sectional survey). Descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression on frequencies of three types of PA and factors related to health and healthy lifestyles, as well as age and sex, were performed in this study. The results indicate that a higher frequency of practicing PA had a higher probability of association with the following factors: lower BMI, less or non-smoking behavior (types 1 & 3); higher education (types 1 & 2); higher age (types 2 & 3) and better physical health (type 1). Occasional (practicing sometimes) PA, type 2, was positively associated with poorer mental health (higher number of psychiatrist visits). Women were more likely to practice PA type 2, and men – PA types 3 & 1. Conclusion: In general, a higher frequency of PA is related with better health and healthy life styles; with the exception of PA type 2 that is related to poorer mental health.

The classification of tumors in subtypes, characterized by phenotypes determined by specific differentiation pathways, aids diagnosis and directs therapy towards targeted approaches. However, with the advent and explosion of next-generation sequencing, cancer phenotypes are turning out to be far more heterogenous than initially thought, and the classification is continually being updated to include more subtypes. Tumors are indeed highly dynamic and they can evolve and undergo various changes in their characteristics during disease progression. The picture becomes even more complex when tumor responds to a therapy. In all these cases, cancer cells acquire the ability to trans-differentiate, changing subtype, and adapt to changing microenvironments. These modifications affect the tumor's growth rate, invasiveness, response to treatment, and overall clinical behavior. Studying tumor subtype transitions is crucial for understanding tumor evolution, predicting disease outcomes, and developing personalized treatment strategies. We discuss this emerging hallmark of cancer and the molecular mechanisms involved at the crossroads between tumor cells and their microenvironment, focusing on four different human cancers in which tissue plasticity causes a subtype switch: breast cancer, prostate cancer, glioblastoma and pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

We have previously developed several successful decellularization strategies yielding porcine cardiac extracellular matrices (pcECMs), which exhibit tissue-specific bioactivity and bioinductive capacity when cultured with various pluri- and multipotent stem cells. Here, we studied the tissue-specific effects of the pcECM on seeded human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) phenotype using reverse transcribed quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) arrays for cardio-vascular related genes. We further corroborated interesting findings at the protein level (flow cytometry and immunological stains) as well as bioinformatically using several mRNA sequencing and protein databases of normal and pathologic adult tissue expression, as well as during human embryonic organogenesis. We discovered that upon seeding of human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) on the pcECM they displayed partial MET toward endothelial phenotypes (CD31+) and morphologies, which were preceded by an early spike (~day 3 onward after seeding) in HAND2 expression at both the mRNA and protein levels compared to plate controls. CRISPR-Cas9 knockout (KO) of HAND2 and its associated antisense long non-coding RNA (HAND2-AS1) regulatory region resulted in proliferation arrest, hypertrophy, and senescent-like morphology. Bioinformatic analyses revealed that HAND2 and HAND2-AS1 are highly correlated in expression, are expressed in many different tissue types albeit at distinct yet tightly regulated expression levels. Deviation (down or up regulation) from these basal tissue expression levels are associated with a long list of pathologies. We thus suggest that HAND2 expression levels may finetune cell plasticity possibly affecting senescence and mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition states, through yet unknown mechanisms. Targeting this pathway may represent a promising new therapeutic approach for a wide range of diseases, including cancer, degenerative disorders, and aging. Nevertheless, further investigations are required to better understand the molecular players involved, potential inducers and inhibitors of this pathway, and eventually potential therapeutic applications.

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a reversible cellular program that transiently places epithelial (E) cells into pseudo-mesenchymal (M) cell states. The malignant progression and resistance of many types of carcinomas depends on EMT activation, partial EMT and hybrid E/M status in neoplastic cells. EMT is activated by tumor microenvironmental TGFβ signal and EMT-inducing transcription factors, such as ZEB1/2 in tumor cells. However, reverse EMT factors are less studied. We demonstrate that transcription factor SCAND1 can revert mesenchymal and hybrid E/M phenotype of cancer cells to a more epithelial, less invasive status and inhibit their proliferation and migration. SCAND1 is a SCAN domain-containing protein and hetero-oligomerizes with SCAN-zinc finger transcription factors, such as MZF1, for accessing DNA and transcriptional co-repression of target genes. We found that SCAND1-MZF1 co-expression and interaction correlated with maintaining epithelial features, whereas the simultaneous loss of SCAND1 and MZF1 correlated with mesenchymal features of tumor cells. Overexpression of SCAND1 over endogenous MZF1 in DU-145 prostate cancer cells reverted their hybrid E/M status into cobblestone morphology with increased epithelial adhesion by E-cadherin and β-catenin relocation. Consistently, co-expression analysis in TCGA PanCancer Atlas revealed that both SCAND1 and MZF1 co-express and are negatively correlated with EMT driver genes, including CTNNB1, ZEB1, ZEB2 and TGFBR, in prostate tumor specimens. In addition, SCAND1 overexpression suppressed tumor cell proliferation by reducing the MAP3K-MEK-ERK signaling pathway. Of note, SCAND1-overexpressing DU-145 cells migrated slower than control cells with decreased lymph node metastasis of prostate cancer in a mouse tumor xenograft model. Kaplan-Meyer analysis showed high expression of MZF1 and SCAND1 to correlate with better prognoses in pancreatic cancer and head and neck cancers, although with poorer prognosis in kidney cancer. Overall, these data suggest that the combination of SCAND1-MZF1 complexes may revert the EMT mechanism in cancer to establish an epithelial phenotype. These effects seem to include co-repression of EMT-driver genes and suppression of tumor cell proliferation via inhibition of the MAP3K-MEK-ERK signaling pathway.

Blockchain technology has emerged as a necessity for the decentralization of payment methods and transactions, but it has brought with it many properties of distributed systems that have made it a crucial technology for overcoming some of society's challenges, especially in the context of decentralizing services, transparency of information, availability, and security. Its architecture and communication methods, although possessing some complex nuances to understand, particularly for the lay audience in the field of distributed systems, protocols, and computer networks. In this article, we will explore some topics of distributed systems related to blockchain technology.

The use of friction-based Beam-to-Column Connections (BCC)s for earthquake-resistant Moment Resistant Frames (MRFs), aiming at eliminating damage to beam end sections due to the development of plastic hinges, has taken hold since the early eighties. Different technical solutions were proposed for steel structures, some were also designed for timber structures, while few more recent studies concern friction joints employed in reinforced concrete structures. Research aimed at characterizing the behavior of joints has focused on the evaluation of the tribological properties of the friction materials, coefficient of friction, shape and stability of the hysteresis cycles, influence of the temperature, speed of load application, effects of the application method, stability of preload, the influence of seismic excitation characteristics on the structural response, statistical characterization of amplitude and frequency of the slip excursion during seismic excitation. Studies aimed at identifying the design parameters capable of optimizing performance have focused attention mainly on the slip threshold, device stiffness, and deformation capacity. This review compiles the main and most recent solutions developed for MRFs. Furthermore, the pros and cons for each solution are highlighted, focusing on the dissipative capacity, shape and stability of hysteresis loops. In addition, the common issues affecting all friction connections, namely characteristics of friction shims and the role of bolt preload, are discussed. Based on the above considerations, a guideline can be outlined, which can help to choose the appropriate solutions for beam-to-column connections for MRFs.

Psychiatric nurses were challenged with high levels of stress, which in turn lower their professional quality of life (ProQoL) and job satisfaction and increase their intention to leave job at psychiatric settings. Adequate level of ProQoL improve patient care provision. The purpose is to assess the levels, relationships, and predictors of professional quality of life of Jordanian psychiatric nurses and their job satisfaction and intention to leave job. A descriptive cross-sectional design was used to collect data using the Professional Quality of Life Scale-5 from a convenience sample of 144 psychiatric nurses. Results showed that the mean score of compassion satisfaction (CS), burnout (BO), and secondary traumatic stress (STS) were 35.21, 27.0, and 26.36, respectively. The mean scores of intention to leave and job satisfaction were 2.33, and 3.7, respectively. Income level, educational level, intention to leave, and job satisfaction were significantly differing in CS dimension. Nurses’ age, intention to leave, and job satisfaction were significantly differing in BO. Nurses’ age, years of experience, frequent C-shift worked, and work affiliation were different in STS. Burnout, STS, and educational level predicted CS. CS, STS, job satisfaction, and level of education predicted BO. BO, CS, and frequent working night C-shift predicted STS. More studies are needed to assess the factors that affect ProQoL among psychiatric nurses, and to evaluate interventional programs that improve quality of life of psychiatric nurses. This is important in retaining nurses and increasing their job satisfaction. Jordanian psychiatric nurses reported moderate level of (ProQoL), high level of job satisfaction, and low intention to leave job. There is a need to enhance (ProQoL).

We used ab initio molecular dynamics simulations to compare the activation of 2-propanol on the low index Co3O4 (111), (110) and (001) surfaces in dry conditions. The thermal and surface assisted decomposition of a film of 2-propanol to 2-propoxide on the B-termination of each surface was monitored and analyzed. The investigations suggest an activity order of Co3O4 (111) > (110) > (001). On the B-terminated (111) surface, full dissociation of all 2-propanol molecules at the interface is observed, accompanied by a Mars-van Krevelen-type mechanism upon hydroxylation of the surface. On the (110) surface, 2-propanol dissociation is driven by temperature, which activates the two-fold coordinatively unsaturated surface oxygens. The (001) surface on which almost no dissociation occurs is the least active. No formation of acetone is observed in the simulations conditions.

In colorectal cancer (CRC) patients, apart from fatigue, psychological and physical symptoms often converge, affecting their quality of life and ability to work. Our objective was to ascertain symptom clusters within a year following CRC treatment and their longitudinal association with persistent fatigue and reduced work ability at the 3-month follow-up. We used data from MIRANDA, a multicenter cohort study enrolling adult CRC patients who are starting a 3-week in-patient rehabilitation within a year post-curative CRC treatment. Participants completed questionnaires evaluating symptoms at the start of rehabilitation (baseline) and after three months. We performed an exploratory factor analysis to analyze the clustering of symptoms at baseline. Longitudinal analysis was performed using a multivariable linear regression model with dichotomized symptoms at baseline as independent variables, and the change of fatigue and ability to work from baseline to 3-month-follow-up as separate outcomes, adjusted for covariates. We identified six symptom clusters: fatigue, gastrointestinal symptoms, pain, psychosocial symptoms, urinary symptoms, and chemotherapy side effects. At least one symptom from each factor was associated with higher fatigue or reduced ability to work at the 3-month follow-up. This study highlights the interplay of multiple symptoms in influencing fatigue and work ability among CRC patients post rehabilitation.

Veterans face difficulties accessing vital health and community services, especially in rural areas. Autonomous vehicles (AVs) can revolutionize transportation by enhancing access, safety and efficiency. Yet, there is limited knowledge about how Veterans perceive AVs. This study fills this gap by assessing Veterans' AV perceptions before and after exposure to an autonomous shuttle (AS). Using a multi-method approach, 23 participants completed pre- and post-AS Autonomous Vehicle User Perception Survey (AVUPS), with 10 participants also taking part in post-AS focus groups. Following exposure to the AS, differences were observed for three out of the four AVUPS domains: an increase in Intention to Use (p &lt; 0.01), a decrease in Perceived Barriers (p &lt; 0.05), and an increase in Total Acceptance (p = 0.01); Well-being remained unchanged (p = 0.81). Feedback from focus groups uncovered six qualitative themes: Perceived Benefits (n=70), Safety (n=66), Shuttle Experience (n=47), AV Adoption (n=44), Experience with AVs (n=17), and Perception Change (n=10). This study underscores AVs' potential to alleviate transportation challenges faced by Veterans, contributing to more inclusive transportation solutions. The research offers insights for future policies and interventions aimed at integrating AV technology into the transportation system, particularly for mobility-vulnerable Veterans in rural and urban settings.

The methanation of CO2 is of great interest in power-to-gas systems and contributes to the mitigation of climate change through carbon dioxide capture and the subsequent production of high value-added products. This study investigated CO2 methanation with three Ni catalysts supported on Al2O3 and ZrO2, which were simulated using a mathematical model of a packed bed reactor designed based on their chemical kinetics reported in the literature. The simulated reactive system was fed with syngas obtained from residual coffee pulp, obtained after solvent phytochemical extraction process, under several gasification conditions. The results reflect a high incidence of catalyst support, preparation method, and syngas composition on CO2 conversion and CH4 selectivity. For all the syngas compositions, Ni/ZrO2 catalysts show the best values for CO2 conversion and CH4 selectivity for Ni/Al2O3 catalyst.