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.

(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.

Background and Objectives: ACTION-France (Awareness, Care and Treatment In Obesity MaNagement in France) aims to identify the perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, and potential barriers to effective obesity management in France and guide collaborative actions. Methods: ACTION-France is a cross-sectional survey of people with obesity (PwO) and healthcare professionals (HCPs), in France. The PwO and HCP questionnaires ran from 27/09/2022 to 01/02/2023 and from 19/12/2022 to 31/03/2023, respectively. Results: The study, encompassing 1226 PwO and 166 HCPs, reveals a shared recognition of obesity as a chronic condition. However, despite being requested by most PwO, weight-related discussions are surprisingly infrequent, leading to delayed diagnosis and care. PwO and HCPs held different views as to why: HCPs often attributed it to PwO’s lack of motivation or disinterest, whereas PwO avoided them because they felt weight managing was their own responsibility and were uncomfortable discussing it. When weight was discussed, primarily with general practitioners (GPs), discussions mostly focused on physical activity and dietary. However, results identified a strong psychosocial impact of obesity: 42% of respondents reported anxiety-depressive symptoms, and many more hesitated to engage in certain social activities because of their weight. Psychotherapy was only discussed by 55% of HCPs. Pharmaceutical options were also rarely discussed (19.5% of HCPs), though 56.1% of PwO reported they would want to. Conclusions: HCPs’ and PwO’s perceptions differed significantly and need to converge through enhanced communication. A holistic approach, integrating comprehensive training for GPs and psychological comorbidities, would help to bridge perceptual gaps effectively and foster more empathetic and effective patient care.

Abstract: This article aims to better understand the mechanisms that connect climate change perceptions and general willingness to engage in pro-environmental behavior using Spanish cross-sectional data (N = 403). To do this, we first developed and validated the General Willingness for Environmental Behavior Scale (GWEBS), which includes the classical approach of voluntarily doing new actions but also actions implying not doing things (degrowth) and actions forced by social constraints. The exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed a good fit for the one-factor structure, which had adequate validity based on their relationship with other variables. Additionally, the GWEBS distinguished between women and men, left- and right-oriented people, and people who belonged to pro-environmental groups and people who did not. In the second place, we tested the parallel mediator role of eco-anxiety and trust in science in the relationship between climate change perceptions and the GWEBS. The results showed that eco-anxiety, fully, and trust in science partially mediated such a relationship, making them crucial to mobilize the intention to act following the perception. This study contributes to our understanding of the psychological mechanisms that eventually drive pro-environmental behaviors and provides a clear direction for future research.

The contemporary landscape of education is witnessing a paradigm shift towards innovative instructional methods, with the flipped learning approach gaining considerable attention. The purpose of this research was to investigate the impact of the flipped learning approach on students' perception and acceptance throughout an entire semester in the 'Introduction to Programming with Java' course, using a research design with a quantitative approach, ultimately aiming to inform educational practice and advance our knowledge of innovative teaching methods in higher education. This study was conducted at a university with 174 students involved, divided into two groups, 87 students in the experimental group and 87 students in the control group. The data collected through the scales were analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistical analysis techniques in statistical software. At the end of the measurements, the technology acceptance level and self-directed learning perceptions of engineering students who received education with flipped learning were high. The results suggest that educators should consider students' readiness for self-directed learning when implementing the flipped learning approach and focus on creating an environment that supports their autonomy and engagement. This research offers valuable guidance for instructors, curriculum designers, and educational policymakers seeking to enhance the effectiveness of flipped learning in higher education courses.

The Gestalt psychologists’ theory of insight problem-solving was based on a direct parallelism between perceptual experience and higher-order forms of cognition (e.g., problem-solving). Simi-larly to the sudden recognition of an ambiguous figure, they contended that problem-solving in-volves a restructuring of one's initial representation of the problem’s elements, leading to a sud-den leap of understanding phenomenologically indexed by the "Aha!" feeling. Over the last centu-ry, different scholars discussed the validity of the Gestalt psychologists’ perspective foremost us-ing the behavioral measures available at the time. However, in the last 2 decades, scientists gained a deeper understanding of insight problem-solving due to the advancements in cognitive neuroscience. This review aims to provide a retrospective reading of Gestalt theory based on the knowledge accrued by adopting novel paradigms and investigating their neurophysiological correlates. Among several key points that the Gestalt psychologists underscored, we focus specif-ically on the role of the visual system in marking a discrete switch of knowledge into awareness, as well as the perceptual experience and the holistic standpoints. While the main goal of this paper is to read the previous theory in light of new evidence, we also hope to initiate an academic dis-cussion and encourage further research about the points we raise.

Zoonotic abortive diseases represent a significant health and economic risk for national public health. This cross-sectional survey was conducted from April to October 2021 among 200 selected small ruminant farmers in the three northern regions of Cameroon. Data collection was done through questionnaires administered by exchange with the herder and responses were coded and recorded on an Excel spreadsheet. The data were then analyzed with R software, version 2.13.0. An ANOVA test was used to assess significant differences in mean of Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices and Perception of zoonotic risks (KAPP) scores between regions. Pearson correlations were used to calculate the association between KAPP scores within regions. Small ruminant farmers surveyed had low mean scores for knowledge of abortive Toxoplasmosis and Chla-mydophilosis (0.1 ± 0.2), desirable attitude (0.32 ± 0.07), appropriate practice (0.36 ± 0.13) in managing abortion, and positive perception of zoonotic risks of Toxoplasmosis and Chlamydo-philosis in small ruminants (0.12 ± 0.33), respectively. KAPP was significantly (p<0.01) and posi-tively associated with knowledge (r=0.98) and risk perception (r=0.99). However, attitudes (r=0.06), practices (r=0.05) and risk perception of toxoplasmosis (r=0.07) and Chlamydophilosis (r=0.08) were not associated with farmers' knowledge. This study revealed significant knowledge gaps, low levels of desired attitudes, and high-risk behavioral practices. These results therefore call for capacity building of health professionals and farmers to better integrate the One Health concept in the management of neglected zoonotic diseases.

Mountains can be described as socio-ecological systems (SESs), a complex set of relations that involve natural aspects and human communities. Mountains provide indispensable ecosystem services, but they are affected by climate change. For this, stakeholders’ initiatives to face global warming, particularly farmers, are essential and participatory strategy are largely considered as a best solution to involve them in adopting resilience actions. Despite that, farmers are considered passive actors and their epistemology weak. Investigating mountain actors' vulnerability to climate change in the North of Molise (an Italian region), called «Alto Molise», we suggest considering farmers agency as a result of interconnections among heterogeneous elements present in the SES and their “lay” knowledge and epistemology equally relevant that experts one. Farmers’ perception of climate change impact is appropriate, although they lack a clear understanding of it. Their resilience actions or suggestions are coherent with their resources endowment (financial and knowledge) and their position in the economic system but not necessarily effective. The work contributes to the debate on climate resilience in mountain areas stressing the significance of local actors' agency, the presence of different epistemologies (lay and expert one) and the need to actively involve them in designed effective and suitable initiatives to face climate change.

This research paper examines the evolution of car purchasing behaviour among consumers in India from 2010 to the present. Through extensive literature review and questionnaire survey, it explores the reasons behind the changing preferences and decision-making processes of consumers in the Indian automobile market. The study draws upon various sources, including market research reports, industry publications, academic studies, and consumer surveys, to provide a comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing car purchasing behaviour in India over the last decade. The findings of this research paper can help automakers and marketers better understand consumer preferences and develop effective strategies to cater to the evolving needs of the Indian car market.

Most neuromorphic technologies use a point-neuron model, missing the spatiotemporal nature of neuronal computation performed in dendrites. Dendritic morphology and synaptic organization are structurally tailored for spatiotemporal information processing, enabling various computations like visual perception. Here, we report on a neuromorphic computational model termed ‘dendristor’, which integrates functional synaptic organization with dendritic tree-like morphology computation. The dendristor presents bioplausible nonlinear integration of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic inputs with silent synapses and diverse spatial distribution dependency. We show that the dendristor can emulate direction selectivity, which is the feature to react robustly to a preferred signal direction on the dendrite. We discover that silent synapses can remarkably enhance direction selectivity, turning out to be a crucial player in dendritic computation processing. Finally, we develop neuromorphic dendritic neural circuits that can emulate a cognitive function such as motion perception in the retina. Using dendritic morphology, we achieve visual perception of motion in 3D space by various mapping of spatial information on different dendritic branches. This neuromorphic dendritic computation innovates beyond current neuromorphic computation and provides solutions to explore new skylines in artificial intelligence, neurocomputation, and brain-inspired computing.

Climate change affects both human and natural systems. Afghanistan ranked globally on the top of highly vulnerable countries to the adverse effects of climate change. The agricultural communities of Afghanistan is highly affected by climate change. Understanding farmers’ real experiences on changing climate become crucial in planning the future adaptation strategies. This study assessed the farmers' perception of climate change and its impacts on farming communities. Primary data were collected through face-to-face interviews conducted with 120 household heads. Additional qualitative data were collected by conducting 4 Focus Group Discussions (FGDs), 4 Historical Timeline Calendars (HTCs), 18 Key Informant Interviews (KII), and sketches of 4 Crop Calendars. The study reveals that climate indicators have varied and changed. The farmers express their experiences of decreasing snowfall in winter and annual rainfall in spring and summer, which led to the intensity and frequency of drought and water shortages for agriculture and rangelands in the upper and lower part of the valleys. The temperatures in winter and summer have increased and led to earlier snow melting, earlier blooming, flowering, and greening of the plants. These changes affected both positively and negatively. There is a half-month new opportunity for cultivation and increased earlier animal ranching in the rangelands. These findings can be valuable inputs for developing effective and efficient adaptation strategies.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, urban forest mountains have become important restorative environmental spaces, and demand-customized management based on users’ experiences is needed. We collected 21,557 data points from blogs from January 2020 to December 2021. For data analysis, keyword frequency, term frequency-inverse document frequency, and sentiment analyses were conducted using TEXTOM 4.0, and a semantic linkage network was established and analyzed using Gephi 0.92. In the analyses, the restorative environment components of “being away” “fascination,” “extent,” and “compatibility” were derived from users’ experiences. Fascination, which stems from natural objects such as rocks, valleys, and trails, was derived the most frequently, and being away and compatibility, representing leisure activities such as climbing and walking, formed the largest cluster in cluster analysis. Sentiment analysis revealed a high positive word rate of 91.6%, with favorable feelings accounting for 87.5%, whereas the proportions of joy and interest (12.5%) were relatively low. This study showed that leisure activities related to nature objects had a positive impact. However, joy and interest, which correspond to vitality, were relatively lacking in the restorative experience. To improve restorative experience quality, diversification of leisure activities should be promoted and customized management plans corresponding to restorative environment components developed.

Following the unprecedented and global health crisis of COVID-19, without a doubt, there has been a tremendous impact on international tourism for two reasons: the imposed travel restrictions discourage people from traveling, while travelers watch increased anxiety when responding to the new travel landscape. We address the problem of travelers’ changing travel risk perceptions in the COVID-19 pandemic aftermath. Our main goal is to identify and weigh critical emerging travel risks and create a risk evaluation index in which one can measure the destinations and strategic interventions’ performance for South African travelers. We found that tourist perceived risks are multidimensional, including categories like additional expenses, exchange rates, and refund-related factors. These three criteria are the most important to overall travel risk perception. We applied the developed risk evaluation index to five tourist destinations to evaluate their performance regarding the identified risks, being the UK the country with the best performance.

Abstract Background COVID-19 vaccination program among Adults in India is one of the highly successful vaccination drives globally. Indian children aged 15–18 years old became eligible for COVID-19 vaccination on 3rd January, 2022 followed by 12-14 years old children on 16th March, 2022. As parents are primary decision-makers for their children, we aimed to assess parents' perceptions and intentions regarding COVID-19 vaccination for children in India. Aim To assess parental perceptions and intention to get COVID-19 vaccination for their children (aged<18 years), Materials and Methods A cross-sectional anonymous web-based survey was designed. Healthcare workers of a tertiary care institute in Eastern U.P. having any children aged <18 years were the study population. They were recruited through snowball sampling and were sent the study questionnaire in Google form through email and WhatsApp. Cross-tabulation was performed by parents' intention to vaccinate their children against COVID-19 virus with socio-demographic characteristics and their risk perception toward COVID-19, trust in the healthcare system, and their history of vaccine hesitancy behavior routine childhood immunization. Bi-variate analysis was performed to find out the predictors of child vaccination intention among the parents. Results A total of 388 healthcare workers parents (HCWPs) having A child < 18 years of age completed the survey. Mean age of the parents were 40.28 ±11.34 years with majority(97.0%) completing recommended 2 doses of COVIID-19 vaccine. Around 91% of the parents agreed that COVID-19 vaccines are important for child’s health whereas about 89% agreed to the statement that COVID-19 vaccines are effective. A total 356 (91.7%) participants were willing to vaccinate their child against COVID-19, 91.3% of them liked to do so as soon as possible. The factors significantly associated with the stated likelihood of child vaccination among the participants were younger age, female gender, urban residence, absence of any chronic illness, lower monthly income, history of COVID-19 in child and the child/children completed with routine childhood vaccines. Parental concerns mainly centered around vaccine need, safety and side effects. Conclusion The healthcare worker parents(HCWPs) have good knowledge and positive attitude towards COVID-19 vaccination for children. Around 92% of them were willing to vaccinate their children with COVID vaccine currently, which implies very low vaccine hesitancy among the HCWPs . Further longitudinal studies are required to be conducted to assess the trend of parental acceptance of COVID vaccine.

Healthcare workers (HCWs) are regarded as role models regarding health-related issues including vaccination. Therefore, it is essential to identify the predictors for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance among them. A cross-sectional study to assess the risk perception, attitudes and knowledge of HCWs toward COVID-19 vaccination was carried out. A total of 710 responses were received between September 2021 to March 2022, from HCWs in the Northern, Western and Eastern regions of Nigeria. Cross tabulations were performed to determine statistical relations between sociodemographic variables, knowledge, attitudes and risk perceptions concerning COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Multinomial Logistic Regression analysis was performed to determine the predictive variables for COVID-19 vaccine acceptance. Statistical analyses were performed and P-values less than 0.05 were considered statistically significant at a CI of 95%. Results showed that 59.3% of the participants were amenable to COVID-19 vaccines. Multinomial regression analysis identified 14 variables at α <0.05 as predictors for vaccine acceptance. Male HCWs were 2.8 times more likely to accept the vaccine than their female counterparts. HCWs that were knowledgeable of the different kinds of vaccines, willing to recommend the vaccines to their patients, believe that the timing of COVID-19 vaccination was appropriate and had recent vaccination history within three years were 1.6, 24.9, 4.4 and 3.1 times more likely to take COVID-19 vaccine than those not sure. The study found a relatively high trust (51.3%) in the Nigerian Center for Disease Control (NCDC) for information regarding COVID-19 vaccines. Therefore, the NDCD should disseminate more robust insights regarding the safety profiles of various COVID-19 vaccines.

In many countries, governments have implemented non-pharmaceutical techniques to limit COVID-19 transmission. Restricting human mobility is one of the most common interventions, including lockdown, travel restrictions, working from home, etc. However, due to the strong transmission ability of the virus variants, further rounds of interventions, including a strict lockdown, are not considered as effective as expected. The paper aims to understand how the lockdown policy and pandemics changed human mobility in the real scenario. Here we focus on understanding the mobility changes caused by compliance with restrictions and risk perceptions, using the mobility index from the Google report during three strict lockdown periods in Leeds, the largest city in the county of West Yorkshire, England from March 2020 to March 2021. The research proposed the time-varying z-scores and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to simulate how local people dynamically process and perceive health risk based on multi-dimensional daily COVID-19 reports first. Further modelling highlights exponentially increasing policy non-compliance through the duration of lockdown, probably attributable to factors such as mental anxiety and economic pressures. Finally, the proposed nonlinear regression model examines the mobility changes caused by the population's dynamic risk perceptions and lockdown duration. The case study at Leeds fits data well and shows that the third lockdown policy took effect much slower than the first. At the same time, the negative impact of the epidemic on population mobility decayed 40% in the third lockdown period in contrast with the first lockdown. The risk perception estimation methods could reflect that the local population became increasingly accustomed to the COVID-19 situation, and local people rationally evaluated the risks of COVID in the third lockdown period. The results prove that simulated risk perceptions and policy decay could explain urban mobility behaviour during the mobility well during lockdown periods, which could be a reference for future decision-making processes.

Accurately estimating the current state of local traffic scenes is one of the key problems in the development of software components for automated vehicles. In addition to details on free space and drivability, static and dynamic traffic participants, information on the semantics may also be included in the desired representation. Multi-layer grid maps allow to include all this information in a common representation. However, most existing grid mapping approaches only process range sensor measurements such as LIDAR and Radar and solely model occupancy without semantic states. In order to add sensor redundancy and diversity it is desired to add vision based sensor setups in a common grid map representation. In this work, we present a semantic evidential grid mapping pipeline including estimates for eight semantic classes that is designed for straightforward fusion with range sensor data. Unlike in other publication our representation explicitly models uncertainties in the evdiential model. We present results of our grid mapping pipeline based on a monocular vision setup and a stereo vision setup. Our mapping resulsts are accurate and dense mapping due to the incorporation of a disparity- or depth-based ground surface estimation in the inverse perspective mapping. We conclude this paper by providing a detailed quantitative evaluation based on real traffic scenarios in the Kitti odometry benchmark and demonstrating the advantages compared to other semantic grid mapping approaches.

The hypothesis posed was whether participation in LaLiga Genuine Santander (competitive football) influenced the quality of life (QL) of the people who participated in it, since their perception of themselves is enhanced by all the aformentioned factors (self-determination, social inclusion, emotional well-being, physical well-being, material well-being, rights, personal development, interpersonal relationships). The objective was to evaluate the QL of people with Down's Syndrome (DS) using their self-perception (n=39) and the perception of the informants (family members, teachers) (n=39). The KidsLife-Down Scale, with a few modifications was used. In general, differences of opinion between the subgroups of participants with DS and informants showed that results were higher in terms of perception for participants in the DS subgroup. Scores for all variables were higher for those participants with DS who said they did engage in practicing competitive football. Despite the perception of informants provides a great deal of information regarding the QL of participants with DS, the latter should be involved in the evaluation process and their self perceptions taken into account. Our research shows that participation in the league modifies the perceptions of the participants with Down's Syndrome regarding their quality of life. However, these perceptions are not shared by the informants.

Understanding the strength of the associations between perceived risk and individuals’ behavioral intentions to protect their health is important for determining appropriate risk communication strategies in communities impacted by lead contamination. We conducted a survey within communities of northern Idaho, USA (n = 306) near a Superfund megasite with legacy mining contamination. We empirically test a theoretical model based on the Health Belief Model. Survey respondents had higher intentions to practice health protective behaviors when they perceived the risk of lead contamination as severe, recognized the benefits of health protective behaviors, and considered the risks of lead contamination. Women reported higher behavioral intentions than men, but age and mining affiliation did not have an association. Survey comments indicated that perceptions about the long-term environmental remediation in the region influenced risk perceptions. Understanding risk perceptions, behavioral intentions, and related factors can aid public health agencies in tailoring risk communication for increasing protective behaviors in mining-impacted communities internationally.

Although the positive relationship between religion and environmental behavior is well-argued, empirical research about the relationship between religion and public pro-environmental behavior is relatively lacking. This paper aims to explore the group differences in the influence of religion on public pro-environmental behavior and the mediating role of environmental risk perception in religion and public pro-environmental behavior. Using the Chinese General Social Survey data in 2013 for empirical analysis, this study’s results show that there are group differences in the impact of religion on public pro-environmental behavior. Women with religious beliefs are more willing to engage in public pro-environmental behavior than those without religious beliefs. Religious believers over the age of 45 are more willing to participate in public pro-environmental behavior than those without religious beliefs. Political participants with religious beliefs are more willing to practice public pro-environmental behavior than those without religious beliefs. In addition, we found that environmental risk perception can act as partial mediation in religious and public pro-environmental behavior. In other words, religious beliefs are deeply embedded in local political and social culture. In order to correctly understand the relationship between religion and public pro-environmental behavior, it is necessary to consider religion in a specific cultural background.

The expansion of unconventional oil and gas development (UD) across the US continues to be at the center of debates regarding safety to health and the environment. This study evaluated the water quality of private water wells in the Eagle Ford Shale within the context of community members’ perceptions. Community members (n=75) were surveyed regarding health status and perceptions of drinking water quality. Water samples from respondent volunteers (n=19) were collected from private wells and tested for a variety of water quality parameters. Of the private wells sampled, 8 had exceedances of MCLs for drinking water standards. Geospatial descriptive analysis illustrates the distributions of the well exceedance as well as the well owners’ overall health status. Surveys showed that the majority of respondents received their water from a municipal source and were significantly more distrustful of their water source than of those on private wells. In many cases, there are statistically significant differences between self-reported, provider undiagnosed conditions and self-reported, provider diagnosed conditions. Attitudes and perceptions of water quality may play an important role in the overall perceived health status of community members in high fracking regions.

The goal of this study is both to determine the opinion that professors and students at the University of (details removed for peer review) have of active methodologies and to describe the perception and opinion of the modes of organization, methodological focuses, and evaluation systems that define the teaching-learning process. On surveying the professors and the students in their classes, we found significant differences in 32 of the 92 variables in common. The content of these results shows that professors and students are believe they are making progress toward a learning-centered model, that implementation of active methodologies implies new functions in their teaching practice.

Objective: The goal of this study was to analyse the attitudes and perceptions of emergency and mental health nurses through the validation of the SM-GIBED scale in specialised care in Spain on alcoholics and other drug-dependent patients. Design and Setting: This cross-sectional study was developed using the Spanish hospital version of the Seaman-Mannello scale to denominate the SM-GIBED scale. Participants: 170 Emergency and Mental Health Nursing from five Spanish Hospitals. Intervention: Self-administered questionnaire to analiyse the perceptions and attitudes about the drug addict and the alcoholic. Primary and Secondary Outcome Measures: A descriptive and inferential analysis of the study variables was carried out. A psychometric analysis was performed to validate the scale. Results: A total of 170 questionnaires were collected from 257 healthcare workers. Overall, 99.1% of the participants had contact with drug-dependent patients during their professional experience. Nearly 75% had difficulties in treating them. The psychometric analysis of the SM-GIBED scale in the Spanish context obtained values of KMO = 0.655 and Bartlett's test p < 0.000. Cronbach's alpha of 0.738 was obtained from the reliability analysis. A reliability analysis of each of the SM-GIBED questions found no case with an alpha lower than 0.71. In conclusion, positive aspects include an ingratiating attitude and subject-to-subject communication when nurses self-define as empathic and non-paternalistic. Among the negative aspects, there is a lack of communication skills and assertiveness with these patients. This highlights a certain degree of resignation and dissatisfaction when working with drug addicts.

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.

An event occurring within a stationary environment, in the direction toward which an observer self-rotates, is perceived to precede a simultaneous event, in the direction away from which she moves. When self-rotation results from angular acceleration in the dark, perception of space is also distorted, such that the subjective straight-ahead shifts in the opposite direction to motion and temporal event promotion. A reference frameshift theory, based on the special theory of relativity, is proposed to explain these findings. Here, a hyperbolic tangent transformation of objective angular velocity constrains subjective self-rotation velocity within finite bounds, consistent with it being a limited perceptual resource. Identifying this subjective variable with vestibular nystagmus slow-phase angular velocity, the asymptotic perceived self-rotation velocity is estimated at ~200 °⁄s. When included in the Lorentz transformations of the new formalism, this value predicts experimental simultaneity distortion. Hypothetically, the hyperbolic tangent objective-to-subjective transfer function would maximize the differential entropy of the percept, and thereby also the stimulus/percept mutual information, if angular velocities of body rotation encountered in naturalistic environmental interaction have a logistic probability density distribution of scale 100 °⁄s, a proposed experimental test of the scheme.

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

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: Since 2010, Burkina Faso has developed and initiated community-based management of childhood illnesses. Following the increased presence of community health workers and the adoption of free community health care, this study aims to assess community satisfaction with curative care administered by community health workers. Methodology: It was a descriptive and analytical cross-sectional study. Data were collected in the health districts of Boussé and Boussouma from 20 February to 30 March 2023 for quantitative data and from 12 to 30 January 2024 for qualitative data using a questionnaire (household survey) and an interview grid (focus groups). Analyses were conducted using SPSS IBM 25 and Nvivo 14. Results: Households benefit from oral curative care when using CHWs, but are not satisfied with the temporal accessibility of these community health workers. Temporal accessibility and awareness during care have a significant influence on household satisfaction. Conclusion: Curative care by community health workers is effective, but its use could be improved by addressing the unavailability of community health workers, inputs and better communication during care.

It is known that breastfeeding difficulties are often seen in the first weeks of the postpartum period and that various factors are effective in the mother's early cessation of breastfeeding. Mothers' self-efficacy and perception of insufficient milk are among these factors. This study aimed to examine the effect of hot application applied to the breast with the help of Thera Pearl in the postpartum period on milk perception and postpartum breastfeeding self-efficacy. This is a randomized controlled study. The study was completed with a total of 64 puerperal mothers, 31 of whom were control and 33 were experimental. Personal Information Form, Breastfeeding Observation Form, Breastfeeding Self-Efficacy Scale and Insufficient Milk Perception Scale were used to collect data. As a result, self-efficacy and milk perception are important factors affecting breastfeeding. In this study, we found that Thera pearl application increased breastfeeding self-efficacy, but did not affect milk perception.

The overwhelming evidence supports the assertion that the climate is undergoing change. Understanding the perception of locals of the magnitude of climate change and its influence on non-timber forest products (NTFPs) challenge at a global scale. Although studies on climate change, value addition, and the multiple uses of NTFPs and their impact on local livelihoods have been conducted, locals' perceptions of these factors have not been fully explored. This study aims to assess various social factors, including education, gender, and religion, and their influence on locals' perceptions of the abovementioned factors. The research focused on five regions where NTFPs are prevalent in Ghana (Western North, Bono, Ahafo, Ashanti, and Eastern regions). To investigate the impact of social factors on local perceptions of climate change, value addition, and the multiple values of NTFPs within rural communities, a total of 732 interviews with a team of interviewers across these five regions in Ghana were carried out. We applied a logistic regression model to assess the social factors and their influencing locals’ perceptions of the mentioned variables. It was revealed that age, gender, education, and occupation did not significantly influence locals' perceptions of climate change. However, religion was found to influence locals' perceptions of climate change. Furthermore, the results demonstrated that gender (P<0.000328) and education (P<0.00426) strongly influenced locals' perceptions of value addition to NTFPs. In contrast, religion and constraints (related to time, finance, and skills) did not significantly influence locals' perceptions. Additionally, it was observed that gender (0.00132), education (0.00692), and religion (8.12e-05) significantly influenced how locals perceive and use NTFPs. In conclusion, this study provides valuable insights into the intricate interplay among local perceptions, climate change, value addition, multiple uses of NTFPs, and the capacity of NTFPs to enhance the well-being of forest fringe communities. These findings underscore the importance of comprehensive, tailor-made interventions that consider local perspectives and adhere to sustainable approaches, with the aim of optimising the positive impacts of NTFPs in poverty alleviation and overall community development.

In recent years, vision-centric perception has played a crucial role in autonomous driving tasks, encompassing functions such as 3D detection, map construction, and motion forecasting. However, the deployment of vision-centric approaches in practical scenarios is hindered by substantial latency, often deviating significantly from the outcomes achieved through offline training. This disparity arises from the fact that conventional benchmarks for autonomous driving perception predominantly conduct offline evaluations, thereby largely overlooking the latency concerns prevalent in real-world deployment. While a few benchmarks have been proposed to address this limitation by introducing effective evaluation methods for online perception, they do not adequately consider the intricacies introduced by the complexity of input information streams. To address this gap, we propose the Autonomous-driving Streaming I/O (ASIO) benchmark, aiming to assess the streaming inputs characteristics and online performance of vision-centric perception in autonomous driving. To facilitate this evaluation across diverse streaming inputs, we initially establish a dataset based on the CARLA Leaderboard. In alignment with real-world deployment considerations, we further develop evaluation metrics based on information complexity specifically tailored for streaming inputs and streaming performance. Experimental results indicate significant variations in model performance and ranking under different major camera deployments, underscoring the necessity of thoroughly accounting for the influences of model latency and streaming inputs characteristics during real-world deployment. To enhance streaming performance consistently across distinct streaming inputs features, we introduce a backbone switcher based on the identified streaming inputs characteristics. Experimental validation demonstrates its efficacy in perpetually improving streaming performance across varying streaming inputs features.

Since sensor-based perception systems are used in autonomous vehicle applications, validating such systems is imperative to guarantee the robustness of the systems before they are being put to use. In this study, a comprehensive corruption-related simulation-based robustness verification and enhancement process for sensor-based perception systems is proposed. Firstly, we present a methodology and scenario-based corruption generation tools for creating diverse simulated test scenarios that can analogously represent real-world traffic environments, especially considering corruption types related to safety concern. Then, an effective corruption similarity filtering algorithm is proposed to remove corruption types with high similarity and identify the representative corruption types to represent all considered corruption types. As a result, we can generate efficient corruption-related robustness test scenarios with less testing time and good scenario coverage. Subsequently, we perform the vulnerability analysis of object detection models to identify model weaknesses and construct an effective training dataset for model vulnerability enhancement. This enhances the tolerance of object detection models to weather and noise-related corruptions, ultimately improving the robustness of the perception system. We employ case studies to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed robustness verification and enhancement procedures. Additionally, we explore the impact of different "similarity overlap threshold" parameter settings on scenario coverage, effectiveness, scenario complexity (size of training and testing datasets), and time costs.

The lack of adequate knowledge of the culinary and sensory properties of most indigenous and wild foods hampers their promotion in human diets and the market. In the present study, 80 Burkinabe volunteers evaluated the sensory appeal and attributes of three selected Senegalia seed species (Zamnè, pseudoZamnè or Kumatiya, and S. erythrocalyx) and their food formulas (traditionally cooked, harvested as green and fresh legumes, and fermented as tempeh) using the 9-point hedonic scale and check-all-that-apply questionnaire. They found that the traditionally cooked Zamnè, pseudoZamnè or Kumatiya, and derived tempeh had good sensory appeal (scoring between 5-7) and subtle alkaline and nutty tastes, which will facilitate their blending in cuisines. Yet, an appreciable number (32%) of the participants, as unaccustomed to tempeh, scored all the tempeh products very low (2.5-3.4), suggesting food neophobia. In contrast, the traditionally cooked seeds of Senegalia erythrocalyx and the green and fresh Zamnè evoked bitter and sour off-tastes, respectively, and were not much appreciated (scoring 4). The present study provides unprecedented insight into consumers’ non-sensory perceptions and the culinary and sensory properties of Senegalia seed foods – which will be essential for their valorization, branding, and marketing.

Background: Studying anxiety, stress and the selection of coping strategies in the COVID-19 pandemic is necessary to minimize the adverse changes associated with the risk of infection and the consequences of the disease. Objective: To investigate the level of anxiety, stress perception and coping strategies in relation to the presence of illness. Material and Methods: The anonymous cross-sectional online survey was conducted among 3950 university students of northeastern Poland (1822), Lithuania (232) and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (1896). Due to the almost identically applied anti-epidemic measures, the respondents were treated as a unified group. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Perceived Stress Scale-10 and Coping Orientations to Problems Experienced questionnaires were used. Results: Among 1212 men and 2738 women, COVID-19 was diagnosed in 348 (28.7%) and 1020 (37.3%) individuals, respectively, according to the clinical protocol. The prolonged nature of the process and the longer consequences of the disease were indicated by an increase in anxiety levels. Conclusions: The risk of possible infection and coping with illness required the adoption of active anti-stress strategies, which was observed regardless of going through the disease. Convalescents differed from non-diseased individuals in having higher levels of concern about their own emotions and their more frequent turn to religion, notably among the females. The repertoire of strategies among women was broader, with elevated levels of helplessness and avoidance seen as integral strategies.

Residents’ perceptions on ecosystem services (ESs) provided by urban green spaces (UGSs) are vital for developing sustainable cities. However, there has been limited research on this issue in Malaysia. The aim of this paper is to assess Malaysians’ perceptions on ESs provided UGSs and how their perceptions are influenced by different socio-demographic factors. We used a structured online questionnaire and obtained 645 responses on 16 ESs from regulatory, cultural, and supporting ES categories. Descriptive statistics and binary logistic regressions were used for data analysis. In general, city dwellers have high positive perceptions on ESs provided by UGSs. Their perceptions for global climate regulation, noise buffering, pest regulation, spiritual, and research and education services would likely to significantly increase as they grow older. Households with moderate income have significantly greater perceptions of microclimate regulation, air filtration and aesthetic services. Having non-tertiary level education would significantly lower their perceptions of global climate and microclimate regulation, spiritual, aesthetics, and recreational services. Tertiary educated residents with non-environmental degrees also showed similar associations. Infrequent visits to UGSs would likely to significantly reduce the perception of global climate regulation, noise buffering, runoff reduction, erosion control, spiritual, and aesthetics services. People living far (>5km) from the UGSs also have significantly lower perceptions of microclimate regulation, air filtration services. Suggestions are made to incorporate ESs related content in pre-university curriculum and establishing small parks in neighborhoods to improve knowledge and uses of UGSs. These findings would assist urban planners designing environmentally sound urban policies and thereby improving human wellbeing in the cities.

Airborne wind energy (AWE) systems use tethered flying devices to harvest higher-altitude winds to produce electricity. For a successful deployment of these systems, it is crucial to understand how the public perceives them. If public concerns about the technology are not taken seriously, implementation could be delayed or, in some cases, prevented, resulting in increased costs for project developers and a lower contribution of the sector to renewable energy targets. This literature review assessed the current state of knowledge on public responses to AWE. An exhaustive literature search led to the identification of 40 relevant publications that were reviewed. The literature assumed that the safety, visibility, acoustic emissions, ecological impacts, and the siting of AWE systems shape public responses to the technology. The reviewed literature views people’s responses to AWE very optimistically but lacks scientific evidence to back up its claims. It seems to overlook that the influence of AWE’s characteristics (e.g., visibility) on public responses will also depend on a range of situational and psychological factors (e.g., people’s general attitude towards AWE, the public’s trust in project developers). Therefore, empirical social scientific research is needed to increase the field’s understanding of public responses to AWE and thereby facilitate deployment.

Emotional dysfunction, including flat affect and emotional perception deficits, is a specific symptom of schizophrenia disorder. We used a modified multimodal odd-ball paradigm with fearful facial expressions accompanied by congruent and non-congruent sounds to investigate the impairment of emotional perception and reaction to other people's emotions. We analyzed subjective assessments and ERP data for emotionally charging congruent and non-congruent stimuli in patients with schizophrenia and healthy peers. The results showed the deficit of multimodal perception of fearful stimuli in patients with schizophrenia compared to healthy controls. The amplitude of N50 was significantly higher in subjects of the control group for non-congruent stimuli than congruent and did not differ in patients with schizophrenia. The dynamics of P100 and N200 components confirmed the impaired sensory gating in patients with schizophrenia. The lower amplitude of P3a could be associated with deficits in verbal memory and attention, less emotional arousal, or incorrect interpretation of emotional valence as specific features of patients. The difficulties in identifying the incoherence of facial and audial components of emotional expression could be significant in understanding the psychopathology of schizophrenia.

Despite the successes earned in cataloguing and finding the role of the most of molecular components in living matter, the “biochemical and molecular” perspective, popular in biology, medicine and genetics, is unable to give account for crucial topics as the faculty of living systems to “feel”, to “perceive” what a given stimulus implies (means, indeed) for their survival. Condensed matter physics too, if bounded to a local, short-range, and perturbative approach, fails dramatically. This is also due to the role commonly assigned to water – actually the main constituent of living matter – deemed for long time to be merely chemical (as “solvent” or a reactant/product). Nonetheless, today many evidences show how living matter can be right conceived as a super-structured coherent water-based matrix, suggesting that the characterization of bio(electro)chemical and physical processes undertaken at molecular level in living matter, would let us unable to answer a question like this: what allows an amoeba, moreover without any neurons, to “know” to get closer to a nutrient or escape away from a toxin? I propose that to pursue such a fundamental inquiry it’s necessary an essentially relational approach, that is: to consider the living being at its grounding as the outcome of a physical history of relationships where symmetry-breakings, dissipation and coherence yield the emergence of the living state of matter, conceivable only as a time-dependent open process, and not as a portraited “body”. The effective tools to build up such an approach may be retrieved in far-from-equilibrium thermodynamics (TD), symmetry-breakings and gauge-fields theory, science of complexity, within the framework of a Quantum Field Theory. Indeed, within a field-view of matter, and of water especially, as it has been developed by a Quantum Electrodynamic (QED) description of condensed matter, it’s possible to give account for a physical basis too such an epistemologically elusive, though crucial, feature of living systems (i.e.: perception and meaning). The emerging landscape allows some important meditations about adaptation, evolution, ecodynamics, and about different conceptions of complexity and “information” in living realm. Furthermore, some neuroscientific themes like consciousness, qualia and their links to artificial intelligence could be supplied with due insights.

Understanding tourist behaviour during and after major tourism crises is essential to help destinations recover. The COVID-19 pandemic, a period of uncertainty and risk, makes it relevant to assess factors that influence travel intentions. There has been little research on tourist behaviour during health crises and, in particular, on perceived health risk and uncertainty effects on travel intentions. This study was carried out during the first months of the pandemic in Brazil and aims to investigate the role of health risk perception and intolerance of uncertainty on travel intentions for 2020 and 2021. We applied an online survey to 1,150 Brazilian participants from March to May of 2020. Our findings indicate that perceived COVID-19 severity, perceived probability of contracting it, and expected pandemic duration are significant predictors of travel intentions for both years. This paper sheds new light on tourist behaviour in the context of global health crises.

Purpose: Perceptual learning and production practice are basic mechanisms that children depend on to acquire adult levels of speech accuracy. In this study, we examined perceptual learning and production practice as they contributed to changes in speech accuracy in three- and four-year-old children. Our primary focus was manipulating the order of perceptual learning and baseline production practice to better understand when and how these learning mechanisms interact. Method: Sixty-five typically-developing children between the ages of three and four were included in the study. Children were asked to produce CVCCVC nonwords like /bozjəm/ and /tʌvtʃəp/ that were described as the names of make-believe animals. All children completed two separate experimental blocks: a baseline block in which participants heard each nonword once and repeated it, and a test block in which the perceptual input frequency of each nonword varied between 1 and 10. Half of the participants completed a baseline-test order; half completed a test-baseline order. Results: Greater accuracy was observed for nonwords produced in the second experimental block, reflecting a production practice effect. Perceptual learning resulted in greater accuracy during the test for nonwords that participants heard 3 or more times. However, perceptual learning did not carry over to baseline productions in the test-baseline design, suggesting that it reflects a kind of temporary priming. Finally, a post hoc analysis suggested that the size of the production practice effect depended on the age of acquisition of the consonants that comprised the nonwords. Conclusions: The study provides new details about how perceptual learning and production practice interact with each other and with phonological aspects of the nonwords, resulting in complex effects on speech accuracy and learning of form-referent pairs. These findings may ultimately help speech-language pathologists maximize their clients’ improvement in therapy.

Physics and neuroscience share overlapping objectives, the major of which is probably the attempt to reduce the observed universe to a set of rules. The approaches are complementary, attempting to find a reduced description of the universe or of the observer, respectively. We propose here that combining the two approaches within an observer-inclusive physical scheme, bears significant advantages. In such a scheme, the same set of rules applies to the universe and its observers, and the two descriptions are entangled. We show here that analyzing special relativity in an observer-inclusive framework can resolve its contradiction with the observed non-locality of physical interactions. The contradiction is resolved by reducing the universe (including the observer) to a dynamic distribution of closed strings (“ceons”) whose vibration waves travel at c. This ceons model is consistent with general relativity, non-locality, the holographic principle and loop quantum gravity; it also eliminates Zeno’s motion paradoxes. Yet, the model entails several new empirical predictions. Finally, the ceons model suggests a fundamental physical implementation of active biological perception. Paraphrasing Torricelli, this paper suggests that we live submerged in a c of light.

This paper presents a research carried out in the city of Chillan, a medium size city located on the southern limit of the Chilean Mediterranean domain, at 36º 36`s south latitude. Chillán provides a good representative example of warm summers in central and southern Chilean cities. Five public spaces were selected, representing different typologies and relating to different urban background conditions. Users in these public spaces were observed, counted and photographed five times a day (12, 14, 16, 18 and 20 hours, local time) during a heat wave event in the summer of 2016, while meteorological parameters were established at different points within the public space. The variables evaluated were impervious surfaces, Skyview factor, H/W, azimuth, shadow and radiation. Local public environmental management should pay attention to the complex relations between urban climate, public spaces and thermal comfort since they affect the quality of life of the most vulnerable sectors of the population. This is particularly important given the increasing episodes of high temperatures and intense heat waves occurred in the city of Chillán in recent summers, which are related to urban heat islands and climate change.

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.

Background: Tuberculosis (TB) continues to be a serious public health threat that affects the most vulnerable population. Patients who are LTFU after TB diagnosis still represent one of the biggest challenges to TB control. Method: In this prospective observational study, we aimed to identify and analyse the risk factors associated with LTFU among TB patients who started first-line TB treatment in the Sanatorium Hospital in Luanda. Result: A total of 113 patients with TB were included between August 2018 and September 2019. Seventy-six (67.3%) patients were cured, 27 (23.9%) were LTFU, 5 (4.4%) died, 4 (3.5%) were transferred and 1 (0.9%) presented a treatment failure. After excluding those dead, transferred or who failed to treatment, we observed that severe TB at the time of diagnosis (OR 9.24, 95% CI 2.18-39.04) and food insecurity were significantly associated with LTFU (OR 5.96, 95% CI 1.66-21.41). Conclusion: The findings of our study are of enormous value to understand the reasons for the LTFU of patients with TB and can guide polices and facilitate designing measures to allow better adherence, and therefore, greater treatment success

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.

Urban sprawl is recognized as one of the most critical drivers disrupting the functional integrity of rural and natural landscapes. A systematic multiscale study has yet to be conducted to measure the Megalopolis of Mexico City's regional extent, comprising ca. 23 million inhabitants. This paper investigates land cover, land use, vegetation and soil changes at macro-regional, regional, local and site scales. Land cover/use data from the 1970s and 2018 were used as the primary input to analyze changes using remote sensing and geographical information systems. At the local scale, fieldwork data from the 1970s, 1990s, and 2020 served as the primary input and were subjected to multivariate analyses. At site scale, soils profiles and hydrological balance analyses at micro-basin level were conducted. Furthermore, social perception of changes was investigated among local residents/stakeholders using semi-structured interviews with four communities. Outcomes were validated to reach 85 percent accuracy in cartographic and 95 % statistical outputs. At the regional scale, land-use changes, especially human settlements, increased from about four to almost 40 % between 1970 and 2018 , with significant incursion into rural landscapes. At the local scale, analyses revealed significant decline in predominantly cold-humid vegetation types and conversion of agricultural fields into peri-urban landscapes. Site scale revealed the predominant importance of soils as the core landscape component for water infiltration and carbon sequestration. Nested multi-scale analyses revealed different disrupting processes which are hidden at one scale and evident at another. Poorly implemented, disconnected urban and environmental policies prevail as the main driving force, with implications for the weak local governance of rural communities. Regional integrated analyses are discussed in light of the relevance of urban resilience theory.

Due to the increasing risk of extreme events caused by climate change (i.e. floods, fires, hurricanes) or wars, European veterinary public health may need some improvement. Utilizing a mix of qualitative (participatory observation) and quantitative methods (Internet mining), we analyzed the Greek media responses to the millennial flood in Thessaly (September 2023), focusing on animal health (including wild, companion animals and livestock) and public sentiment towards epizootic/epidemic threats. The study revealed a gap in crisis management plans regarding veterinary-related issues, emphasizing the need for comprehensive emergency response strategies. Our findings show how: (i) lay-referral system is projecting perception of epidemic threats into the population; (ii) emotional load of images of animal carcasses is misused by media creators aiming for big audience; (iii) pets owners are creating on-line communities for searching and treatment of their pets. Our results stress the importance of integrating crisis communication in consecutive phases of the discourse, such as (i) weather change; (ii) acute flood; (iii) recovery; (iv) outbreaks, into veterinary practices to better prepare for such disasters.

Although adults and children differ in self-versus-other perception, the developmental perspective on this discriminative ability is missing. We compared neural activation of self-vs-others in 39 participants of 4 different age groups (4 yo. to adulthood). Two brain regions, the MCC and right postcentral gyrus, exhibited respectively non-linear and gradual gains in discriminative abilities for self-vs-others stimuli. These regions play critical roles in self-referential processing, empathy, and social cognition. Nine brain regions showed linear increase for others-vs-self stimuli. These regions are associated with multisensory processing, somatosensory skills, complex visual stimuli, self-awareness, empathy, theory of mind, and social recognition. Understanding the neural basis of self-vs-others discrimination during development can inform when and how social contexts support learning processes during childhood and adolescence.

As urban populations and transport demand expand, Pakistani metropolitan centers face traffic congestion and environmental challenges. This research aims to assess carpooling (CP) to alleviate traffic congestion, fuel demand, and pollution. This study was conducted in Islamabad, a fast-growing city with a high percentage of personal cars in Pakistan, to assess the travelers’ perceptions, and public acceptance of CP and determine the effects on traffic congestion, fuel consumption, and CO2 emissions. The investigation of travelers' perceptions towards CP was conducted through a stated preference questionnaire survey. A total of 700 responses from one million population of Islamabad were collected as per Sloven's Formula. SPSS and Smart PLS software were used for data analysis. Various factors influencing peoples’ travel perceptions, mode choice, and tendency to carpool, were categorized to evaluate the relationship between travelers’ perception and the tendency to carpool in the presence of mode choice as a mediating variable. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted in SMART PLS to refine the number of scale items for each variable. One-way ANOVA, step-wise and mediated multiple regression analysis was conducted in SPSS to check the direct and mediating relationship between different variables. Moreover, the probability of reducing traffic congestion and assessing fuel reduction resulting from CP was also analyzed. The findings imply that travelers’ mode choice acts as a mediator between the relationship between travelers’ perception and tendency to carpool. Furthermore, results predicted that CP might reduce 0.25 million cars on the road, about 33.6% of the total private vehicles. Thereby, saving up to 546,810 barrels per year, about 3.42% of Pakistan's total petrol consumption. The findings of this study could be helpful for transport planners, environmentalists, and policymakers to implement carpool systems. Thus, reducing traffic congestion and harmful CO2 emissions and maintaining a sustainable environment.

In the context of partial autonomy, where autonomous vehicles and humans share control of the vehicle, bringing out-of-the-loop drivers back into the loop is a significant challenge. While warning signal design guidelines are commonly used to provide alerts, few studies have examined each signal in depth with an emphasis on the autonomous environment. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating visual, auditory, and tactile stimuli and modifying their sub-attributes to explore variations related to age, gender, and other individual backgrounds. A driving simulator was utilized to create a realistic driving environment and measure participants' reaction times in takeover request situations. Analysis of the data revealed correlations between age and reaction times for auditory and tactile signals, with interaction effects observed between age and sub-attribute intensity. Additionally, participants exhibited varying reaction time patterns in response to different sub-attribute intensities. By evaluating individual differences in perception based on modality characteristics, often overlooked in prior research, this study serves as a foundational contribution to future research in the field.

Understanding how the public perceives various risks and hazards associated with our well-being and health is crucial for government and policymakers. The present research aimed to assess the public's perception of various risks and hazards associated with their well-being and health. The study combined two well-known approaches to risk assessment, namely, the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) and the psychometric paradigm. Seven risk attributes were chosen from the risk perception literature to evaluate 27 risks and hazard activities using a survey questionnaire developed based on the psychometric paradigm literature. The collected data was then analyzed using AHP to determine the priority weight for each risk attribute. The results showed that the most important risk attribute was voluntariness of risk, followed by chronic-catastrophic and newness of risk. Furthermore, the study found that natural hazards were ranked the highest, followed by refugee influx and fire hazards. In contrast, the mobile phone was perceived as the lowest type of risk. The findings can be used by policymakers to develop effective and sustainable risk communication strategies. Policymakers can use the research findings to create effective and sustainable risk communication strategies that help the government to inform and educate the public about potential risks, improve coordination among agencies and stakeholders, and enhance public trust in government decision-making.

This study assesses the perception and vulnerability of the farming communities to climate change in the southwestern parts of Ethiopia. Data were collected from 442 households in four districts: Jimma Arjo, Bako Tibe, Chewaka, and Sekoru. The vulnerability of the farming communities was assessed using the households’ livelihood vulnerability index. A total of 40 indicators were applied to calculate household livelihood vulnera-bility to climate change, which were categorized into five major capitals: natural, social, financial, physical, and human. The household percep-tions of climate change results showed that there existed a statistically significant relationship between climate change perceptions and changes in rainfall pattern (75.6%, p<0.001), temperature pattern (69.7%, p<0.001), drought (41.6%, p=0.016), flood (44.1%, p=0.000), and occurrence of early (53.2%, p<0.001) and late rain (55.9%, p<0.001). The results showed that households in Sekoru district were the most vulnerable (0.61), while Jimma Arjo district were less vulnerable (0.47) to the effect of climate change. The vulnerability of the households in the study areas is mainly related to the occurrence of drought, lack of much-needed infrastructure facilities and weak institutional support. Links with the financial organization are also lacking among the household. The findings of this study will support policymakers to design climate change adap-tation strategies to combat climate change impacts. To support disaster risk management on the one hand and increase the resilience of vulnera-ble societies to climate change on the other hand, we recommend a detailed assessment in the remaining districts of the region.

Despite its apparent lack of physicality, the virtual environment produces real experiences to its users. In its intangible context of digital operation, the virtual setting can be a meeting point for individuals to interact and to gain experiences that have an impact upon their lives. After more than three decades of broad accessibility and use of the internet and various digital platforms, the virtual experience has also prompted to rethink many of the assumptions commonly attributed to physical space. From a practical point, the virtual world has been an extension of the real one as a new site that can host people’s activities without many of the limitations associated with the material world. Given its absence of physical restrictions, the virtual space appears as a boundless one, whose potential of evolution is still unclear. This sense of limitedness has caused to shift our common sense about physical space as well, including architectural perception and the methods and practices applied to design it. In response, this present study focuses on the ways in which elements and concepts of the virtual world may be transferred to physical space and enrich architectural aims and the broader design discourse.

Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) is useful in the most dangerous maneuvers such as braking and acceleration. This study assesses how ACC modifies traffic flows by analysing the differences be-tween manual and autonomous driving in connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). Using a platoon of 80 vehicles, tested in pairs on the road, it was possible to define the speed trends during braking and acceleration and the reaction times to the driving maneuvers (PRT, TH, TCC) with a kinematic data detector. The interactions between the CAV and the driver, have been studied in-novatively, i.e through gaze analysis. Situations of potential danger, characterized by the braking of the vehicle that precedes the car with the driver equipped with the eye tracker tool, have been recreated, considering the influence of the driver’s ACC experience. Results statistically confirmed that with the ACC switched on the reaction times are greater than manual driving (2.4/3.8 sec); this can lead to a reduction in road safety, further motivated by the rapid decrease in speed. The interpolation between automated and human data, finally, has allowed the detection of some criticalities of the system that are fundamental in order to reach the second level of automation.

Emojis are colorful ideograms resembling stylized faces commonly used for expressing emotions in instant messaging, in social network sites and in email communication. Notwithstanding their increasing and pervasive use in electronic communication, they are not much investigated in terms of their psychological properties and communicative efficacy. Here we presented 112 different human facial expressions and emojis (expressing neutrality, joy, surprise, sadness, anger, fear and disgust) to a group of 96 female and male university students engaged in the recognition of their emotional meaning. Both Analysis of Variance and Wilcoxon tests showed that men were significantly better than women at recognizing emojis (especially negative ones) while women were better than men at recognizing human facial expressions. Quite interestingly, men were better at recognizing emojis than human facial expressions per se. These findings are in line with more recent evidences suggesting how men may be more competent and inclined to use emojis to express their emotions in messaging (especially sarcasm, tease and love) than previously thought. Finally, the data indicate how emojis are less ambiguous than facial expressions (except for neutral and surprise emotions), possibly because of the limited number of fine-grained details, and the lack of morphological features conveying facial identity.

In 2020, the early Covid-19 lockdown and social distancing induced the abrupt migration of traditionally presential learning activities to online domains. This “new normal” environment affected management not only of training courses, but also educational events whose main added value consisted in providing students with an interactive experience onsite, as it is the case of inter-institutional summer schools. The following research corresponds to a case study in which our organization, a French university, had to reformulate, in less than three months, one of its traditional summer schools while trying to keep the original goals. We aimed at identifying the impact of four managerial decisions by analyzing, through qualitative and quantitative surveys, students’ perception of gained or lost value regarding four topics: a) online teaching, b) pre-recorded busines cases providers, c) online social events, and d) technical solutions. With an emphasis in both didactics (i.e., knowledge) and pedagogics (i.e., learning experience), the analysis of perceived value allowed as to learn about students’ assessment position, which revealed two main issues at stake: belonging, in relation to students’ identity and academic background, and performing, related to students’ expectations.

This study employed a deductive research approach and a survey strategy to assess risk perception and its influencing factors among construction workers in Malawi. Three specific construction hazards and their associated risks were selected. The hazards were ‘working at height (WAH) ‘manual handling of loads (MHL)’ and ‘heavy workload or intense pressure to be more productive (HWP)’. The study engaged multistage sampling of 376 subjects. Univariate analysis, factor analysis and multiple linear regressions were performed in order to determine the main influencing factors among the independent variables. The study established that workers were aware of risks posed by their work. They perceived the risk associated with WAH, MHL and HWP as very high (62.7%, = 8.80 ± 1.95); (48.5%, = 8.10 ± 2.38); (57.9%, = 8.49 ± 2.22) respectively. The study identified six factors as variables that showed significant effect on workers’ perception of risk (p < 0.05). These factors were “dreaded factor”, “avoidability and controllability”, “expert knowledge”, “personal knowledge”, education level and age. It is concluded that contractors in the Malawian construction industry should integrate analysis of behaviors and risk perception of the workers and other players to guide the identification of better health and safety interventions at their worksites.

Green spaces in residential community is important, yet understudied, feature as an urban ecological system. While large urban parks and remnant wildlands in urban areas tend to receive a public attention from conservation and management perspectives, less is known for the importance of spatial and ecological characteristics of the community-scale landscapes. This study investigates natural elements in four planned communities in Phoenix metropolitan area, Arizona, two of which represent conventional type of neighborhood and the other two exemplify the community development with a proclaimed vision of sustainability. These distinct type of communities, which capture variations in age, location, open space type, and a cross-section of housing density, are compared with regard to landscape connectivity as a means of gauging ecological condition for community sustainability. Using Geographical Information System and landscape connectivity indices, each community’s landscape features including size, physical connectedness and ecological potential were examined. Furthermore, a questionnaire survey was performed to examine the perceptional differences between the two types of community residents. The findings demonstrate that the green spaces in conventional communities are more physically connected than the counterparts, but the naturalness and ecological quality manifested by the amount of the land that may serve as potential urban desert habitats were higher in the sustainable communities. The results of the survey indicated that the respondents inhabiting in sustainable communities possess a higher level of satisfaction than the people in conventional type of community due mainly to the amount of, easy access to, and perceived ecological values of, green spaces in their neighborhoods and surrounding areas. The study concludes that careful community design with ecological consideration can help create sustainable communities which can benefit both site-scale ecosystems and perceived human well-being.

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.

The visual perception of leisure spaces between residences in cold regions is important for public health. To compensate for the existing researches` lack of ignoring the cold snow season`s influence, this study selected two types of outdoor leisure space environments in non-snow and snow seasons as research objects. An eye tracker combined with a Semantic Difference (SD) questionnaire was used to verify the feasibility of the application of virtual reality technology, screen out leisure gaze characteristics, and reveal the environmental factors related to leisure visual perception. In snow season, spatial aspect ratio (SAR), building elevation saturation (BS), and grass proportion in the field of view (GP) showed strong correlation to the leisure visual perception scores (W). In non-snow season, apart from the above three factors, roof height difference (RHD), tall tree height (TTH) and color contrast (HC) also influenced W obviously. The effects of factors on W were revealed in immersive virtual en-vironment (IVE) orthogonal experiments and genetic algorithm (GA) and k-nearest neighbor algorithm (KNN) were combined to optimized the environmental factors. The optimized threshold ranges in the non-snow season environment were SAR: 1.82‒2.15, RHD: 10.81 m‒20.09 m, BS: 48.53‒61.01, TTH: 14.18 m‒18.29 m, GP: 0.12‒0.15, and HC: 18.64‒26.83. In the snow season environment, the optimized threshold ranges were SAR: 2.22‒2.54, BS: 68.47‒82.34, and GP: 0.1‒0.14.

Anxiety is a complex emotional state that can arise from the anticipation of a threatening event, and preoperative anxiety is a common experience among adult patients undergoing surgery. In adult patients, the incidence of preoperative anxiety varies widely across different surgical groups, and it can result in a variety of psychophysiological responses and problems. Despite its negative impact, preoperative anxiety often receives insufficient attention in clinical practice. To improve pain management strategies, there is a need for further research on personalized approaches that take into account various factors that contribute to an individual's pain experience. These personalized approaches could involve developing tools to identify individuals who are more likely to experience increased pain and may require additional analgesia. To address this, regular assessments of anxiety levels should be conducted during preoperative visits, and counseling should be provided to patients with high levels of anxiety. Identifying and addressing preoperative anxiety in a timely manner can help reduce its incidence and potential consequences.

Electric stimulation via a Cochlear Implant (CI) enables people with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss to regain speech understanding and music appreciation and thus allowing them to actively engage in social life. Three main manufacturers (Cochlear, MED-EL and Advanced Bionics “AB”) have been offering CI systems, thus challenging CI recipients and Otolaryngologists with a difficult decision, as currently no comprehensive overview or meta-analyses on performance outcome following CI implantation is available. The main goal of this scoping review is to provide evidence that data and standardized speech and music performance tests are available for performing such comparisons. To this end, a literature search was conducted to find studies that address speech and music outcomes in CI recipients. From a total of 1592 papers, 188 paper abstracts were analyzed and 147 articles were found suitable for examination of full text. From which, 42 studies were included for synthesis. A total of 16 studies used the consonant-nucleus-consonant (CNC) word recognition test in quiet at 60db SPL. We found that aside from technical comparisons, only very few publications compare speech outcomes across manufacturers of CI systems. Evidence suggests though, that these data are available in large CI centers in Germany and US. Future studies should therefore leverage large data cohorts to perform such comparisons that could provide critical evaluation criteria and assist both CI recipients and Otolaryngologists to make informed performance-based decisions.