Abstract: Tumors, especially malignant tumors, are diseases of uncontrolled proliferation. The most fundamental properties of malignant tumors, pervasive nongenetic heterogeneity, the necessity of supporting tissues, rarity of occurrence, and inevitable therapy resistant relapses, remain unexplained by mutation-centric models. Here, we provide a multiscale tumor model rooted in first principles. The central premise of the model is that globally arbitrary accesses of chromatins in a cell unleash a repertoire of stochastic gene expression modules, including proliferation, death, stemness, EMT, angiogenesis, neurogenesis, fibrogenesis, and inflammation, that compete for finite transcriptional resources and are antagonized by the differentiation program that drive the tumor cell along its differentiation pathway from what it originates. A tumor can only become clinically diseases when it successfully self-organizes a complete supporting stroma of blood vessels, nerves, connective tissues, and an inflammation-driven clearance cycle, thereby locking into a self-constructed, noise-driven, evolvable dissipative structure. The model visualizes extremely low probability of tumor formation across pediatric and adult contexts, and the post-treatment recurrence with progressive dedifferentiation and can display testable predictions, such as prognostically favorable and poor tumor cell subpopulations and therapeutic taxic. By providing a unified physical theory of tumors, the model transforms tumor biology from a descriptive science into a predictive one.

Abstract: This paper develops a mathematical model and numerical framework for suspension filtration in a heterogeneous porous medium characterized by multi-stage particle deposition kinetics. The porous medium is represented by two interacting regions—a mobile fluid zone and an immobile fluid zone—with the model accounting for particle deposition, sediment accumulation, and mass exchange between the zones. Both deposition and inter-zone mass transfer are described by first-order kinetic relations. The governing equations are derived from mass conservation principles and numerically solved using a finite difference scheme. Numerical experiments are conducted to examine the spatial and temporal evolution of suspended particle concentration, particle concentration in the immobile zone, and sediment accumulation. The results demonstrate that the intensity of inter-zone mass exchange and the values of kinetic coefficients substantially influence the transport and deposition behavior of suspended particles. In particular, changes in mass transfer intensity alter the propagation and attenuation of concentration profiles and significantly affect the rate of sediment formation. These findings highlight the importance of incorporating multi-stage deposition kinetics and inter-zone mass exchange when modeling filtration processes in heterogeneous porous media.

Abstract: Palatability critically determines pediatric medication adherence, yet the impact of oral cavity dilution and salivary pH on the sensory performance of formulations remains poorly characterized. This study provides the first systematic, biorelevant evaluation of how dilution and physiologically relevant pH affect the palatability of three commercially available hyoscine butylbromide (HBB) syrup brands (X, Y, and Z), extending prior characterization of undiluted formulations. Samples were evaluated using an Alpha Astree II electronic tongue (ChemFET array). Dilution with water and with 2 mL or 5 mL phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) at pH 6.2, 6.8, and 7.4 replicated residual salivary volumes and physiological pH across pediatric and adult populations. Pure HBB API solutions were tested in parallel. Principal component analysis (>85% cumulative variance) confirmed robust discrimination across all conditions. Water dilution increased bitterness across all brands by disrupting excipient matrix integrity, with cellulosic polymer-containing Brands X (HEC) and Y (HPMC) retaining superior taste masking over polymer-free Brand Z. PBS dilution revealed pH-dependent, brand-specific palatability responses: at pH 6.2, 6.8, and 7.4, the hierarchy was consistently Y > X > Z, confirming the robust superiority of Brand Y's HPMC-based taste-masking system across the full physiological salivary pH range. Notably, Brand X exhibited substantially higher ANS sweetness scores than Brand Y at 2 mL pH 7.4 PBS, reflecting differential sweetener system sensitivity to near-neutral PBS ionic conditions. Increasing simulated salivary volume from 2 mL to 5 mL amplified bitterness and attenuated sourness across all brands. Taste-masking strategies that rely solely on sweeteners, without viscosity-building polymers, are inadequate under biorelevant oral conditions. pH-stratified assessment is essential for comprehensive characterization of palatability in pediatric oral liquid formulations.

Abstract: Objectives: Classification of heart failure (HF) by left ventricular ejection fraction and aetiology captures only part of the clinical heterogeneity of the syndrome. We aimed to derive data-driven phenotypes in an unselected cohort of hospitalised HF patients and to assess whether phenotype membership was associated with the cumulative incidence of recurrent HF rehospitalisation once death was modelled as a competing risk. Methods: We retrospectively analysed 1,318 consecutive adults hospitalised with HF in the Cardiology Department of Elias University Emergency Hospital, Bucharest, between 2018 and 2022. Minimum-Redundancy-Maximum-Relevance selection retained 15 non-redundant variables, which were projected into two dimensions by t-distributed Stochastic Neighbour Embedding and clustered with HDBSCAN. The endpoint was multiple HF rehospitalisation (MHR, ≥3 admissions). Results: Five phenotypes emerged (n = 176, 211, 252, 498 and 181) with moderate internal separation (silhouette 0.498; Davies–Bouldin 0.747) and a significant association with MHR (χ² p < 0.0001; Cramér’s V 0.17). The proportion of patients with MHR rose across phenotypes, from 5.1% in Cluster 1 to 24.9% in Cluster 5. The phenotypes were separated principally by documented pulmonary hypertension, loop-diuretic requirement and vitamin K antagonist therapy, with secondary gradients in age, renal function, valvular findings and congestion burden. Cluster 5, characterised by universal vitamin K antagonist use and the highest prevalence of aortic regurgitation, chronic kidney disease and thromboembolic disease, carried the highest readmission burden; Cluster 1, the youngest phenotype and free of loop-diuretic requirement, carried the lowest. Cumulative incidence curves for MHR diverged progressively across phenotypes throughout follow-up. Conclusions: Unsupervised phenotyping of an unselected hospitalised HF population identified five subgroups with a graded burden of recurrent rehospitalisation after formal accounting for competing mortality. This approach isolated different risk phenotypes that conventional classification would obscure, supporting prospective validation.

Abstract: Jump testing is widely used to assess lower-limb power, force absorption, and stretch-shortening cycle (SSC) function; however, lateral cyclic tests remain underexplored despite their relevance to change-of-direction performance. This study determined the intra- and inter-session reliability of a novel cyclic lateral leg power test using an inertial measurement unit (IMU). Seventeen female athletes completed three identical testing sessions separated by seven days. Participants performed 10 consecutive lateral bounds at distances of 1.0x, 1.25x, and 1.5x leg length on each limb. A foot-mounted IMU quantified contact time (CT) and airtime (AT), with the best five repetitions analyzed. Reliability was assessed using percent change in the mean, coefficients of variation (CV), and intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC). Between-session changes were small (-7.9% to 6.6%), with no significant session effects for CT or AT. CVs ranged from 9.2% to 21.8%, with only CT at 1.0x leg length between Sessions 1 and 2 below 10%. ICCs ranged from 0.12 to 0.76, indicating poor-to-good relative reliability. Overall, the IMU-instrumented lateral cyclic test demonstrated largely unacceptable reliability, particularly at greater jump distances, indicating that further protocol refinement is required before implementation in clinical or performance settings.

Abstract: This study assessed how ruminal volatile fatty acid (VFA) biomarkers—acetic acid, propionic acid, the acetate-to-propionate ratio (A:P), and total VFA—relate to average daily gain (ADG) in growing sheep and goats, and whether they add predictive value beyond conventional covariates. A systematic search identified 85 studies with 290 treatment groups; complete data were available for 83 studies with 283 treatment groups (total VFA: 82 studies, 279 treatment groups). Two analytic strategies were used: multilevel meta-regression with inverse-variance weighting and an unweighted mixed linear model as a confirmatory check, with adjustment for dry matter intake, initial body weight, crude protein, neutral detergent fiber, and species. Under inverse-variance weighting with cluster-robust inference, acetic acid (β = 0.00088, robust P = 0.003), propionic acid (β = 0.00188, robust P < 0.001), and total VFA (β = 0.00088, robust P < 0.001) were positively related to ADG, explaining 0.583, 0.621, and 0.625 of heterogeneity, respectively; each added limited but positive explanatory value beyond covariates (0.017, 0.107, and 0.083). A:P did not reach significance under cluster-robust inference (robust P = 0.074) and behaved inconsistently in the mixed linear framework (P = 0.015). Results were consistent in the mixed linear framework (marginal R² = 0.610–0.642). Leave-one-out cross-validation showed propionic acid gave the largest cross-study predictive gain (overall ΔCV-R² = 0.124, 95% CI 0.012–0.326; RMSE reduced 10.84%; goats ΔCV-R² = 0.441, 95% CI 0.035–1.337; RMSE reduced 14.92%). No significant slope difference between sheep and goats was detected. In conclusion, acetic acid, propionic acid, and total VFA are robustly associated with ADG, but their incremental explanatory power for inter-study heterogeneity is modest; propionic acid offers the largest and most stable cross-study predictive increment, whereas A:P is unreliable. The models are suited to estimating mean treatment-group performance under similar conditions, pending external validation.

Abstract: The Source-Environment-Response (SER) framework introduced a decomposition of radon transport into source-driven and environmental components, but treated the environment as a passive correction rather than an active memory accumulator. We present QSER (Generalized Source-Environment-Response), which extends SER by making the memory kernel explicit through the environmental accumulator equation. The QSER framework separates the governing transport operator into conser-vative (advective) and dissipative (diffusive and decay) parts, revealing the observed concentration as the difference between a conservative ghost field S and an environmental memory field E that accu-mulates the history of dissipative interactions. We derive the full three-dimensional time-dependent solution for atmospheric radon transport, including generalizations for stochastic velocity fields and shape-changing plumes while preserving strict mass conservation. The memory kernel “Q”, which is the Green’s function of the system, captures how past emissions influence present concentrations. The QSER decomposition solution successfully recovers industry-standard atmospheric dispersion models (Gaussian plume, RESRAD-OFFSITE, CAP88-PC, ISCLT3, SCREEN3, ALOHA/CAMEO) as special cases. Validation against the Nazaroff solution for soil radon transport demonstrates exact decomposition and recovery of physical parameters (F, v, a, D). Four internal consistency tests pro-vide built-in verification of the decomposition and Physical consistency of results. The framework transforms ill-posed inverse problems into a manageable sequential optimization over conservative source parameters, enabling robust parameter estimation for radon monitoring applications in earth-quake precursor studies, uranium exploration, and atmospheric transport. All implementation code is available at “https://github.com/1030ahmad1030/QSER”.

Abstract: Scanning precession electron diffraction in transmission electron microscopy (TEM-SPED) enables highly accurate nanoscale orientation mapping and facilitates time-resolved tracking of microstructural changes, including grain boundary migration in polycrystalline metallic materials during isothermal or isochronal heat treatments. However, achieving full predicting grain boundary migration behavior requires further advances, including the integration of experimental observations with computational simulations. In this study, we addressed this challenge by directly assimilating TEM-SPED orientation maps into a multiphase-field model using an ensemble Kalman filter, wherein simulation parameters were iteratively updated to reproduce the experimental observations. The same field of view in a 50% cold-rolled pure-aluminum foil was repeatedly observed by TEM-SPED after successive ex situ isothermal annealing at 400 °C for up to 20 min at 5 min intervals. Through the assimilation process, grain boundary mobilities that reproduced the experimentally observed microstructural evolution were identified. A simulation restarted from the initial microstructure using the inferred mobilities achieved approximately 91% agreement with the experimental observations, suggesting that the inferred mobilities were suitable for predicting the observed microstructural evolution. These results demonstrate that the direct assimilation of nanoscale TEM-SPED observations improves the prediction of complex local grain boundary migration and enables the estimation of effective grain boundary mobilities.

Abstract: Fibrotic interstitial lung disease (f-ILD) progresses at variable rates, and bulk cell densities discard the spatial information behind that variation. Free fatty acid receptor 2 (FFAR2) senses microbial short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) and restrains macrophage inflammation, but its position in the human fibrotic lung remains unknown. We tested position rather than abundance. In cryobiopsy specimens from 10 patients with fibrotic idiopathic interstitial pneumonia, we combined chromogenic multiplex immunohistochemistry for FFAR2/Iba1 and CD163/Iba1 with deep learning-based image cytometry, mapped single-cell coordinates, and scored each subset’s proximity to stromal cells and the alveolar epithelium with three indices, including the colocalization index (CLI). Proximity of FFAR2-positive macrophages to stromal cells correlated with the 1-year change in forced vital capacity (FVC) (CLI: ρ=0.80, p<0.01) and in diffusing capacity for carbon monoxide (DLco) (CLI: ρ=0.83, p<0.05). Proximity to the alveolar epithelium correlated still more closely with the FVC change (CLI: ρ=0.87, p<0.01). CD163-positive macrophages showed no such association with FVC, and no index correlated with baseline lung function. In this preliminary cohort, the position of FFAR2-positive macrophages, not their abundance, marks a protective niche and nominates the SCFA-FFAR2 axis as a therapeutic target in f-ILD.

Abstract: Sequence models for RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) are evaluated against constructed negativewindows, but the influence of negative selection on estimated model contribution is poorlycharacterised. I compared GC-matched, dinucleotide-matched and bias-aware negatives across 94ENCODE eCLIP datasets, using the same source peaks and holding the model class, chromosome-blocked folds and estimator fixed. Contribution was defined as incremental AUROC over a19-feature composition baseline.For a 4-mer model, contribution varied 4.84-fold across protocols (95% CI 3.98–5.81) withthe primary cross-fitted estimator and 5.42-fold (4.43–6.58) with the conventional two-stageestimator. Two-stage spans ranged from 3.7- to 7.4-fold across the 4-mer, a convolutional neuralnetwork and SpliceBERT. Replacing GC-matched with dinucleotide-matched negatives reducedthe 4-mer AUROC from 0.798 to 0.688 in all 94 datasets, while increasing its contribution from0.027 to 0.066 in 88 datasets.The conventional estimator also produced a positive null contribution of +0.011 to +0.014for a 2-mer model whose features were contained in the baseline. Cross-fitting the scorecovariate reduced this floor by at least 95% in every protocol. In 135 held-out datasets from anindependently constructed benchmark, the two negative sets produced a 1.66-fold cross-fittedspan (95% CI 1.40–1.98), or 1.67-fold (1.40–2.00) after chromosome-blocked refolding. Protocoldependence replicated, whereas the inverse relation between apparent difficulty and contributiondid not.Incremental performance therefore depends on both the negative-set protocol and the baselineused to define it. I recommend cross-fitting score covariates, reporting composition-only per-formance under the same protocol, and avoiding direct comparisons of contributions estimatedunder different negative-set constructions.

Abstract: Research related to medicine has been centered around testing and finding a cure for diseases. Model organisms such as mice and monkeys have been key to the drug discovery process but the use of these organisms is becoming difficult due to ethical concerns. Tardigrades are a species of invertebrate organisms that could be widely used in drug discovery as they have a complex nervous system for their size, possess a transparent exoskeleton which makes observing neural activity accessible, and there are currently no ethical constraints regarding their use. Analyzing the movement of model organisms in response to stimuli is a very common method in drug discovery, previously used with another invertebrate organism C. elegans. This paper aims to analyze the movement response of tardigrades to electric stimuli to map the neuromuscular response, which can be used as a standard to measure the neurological effect of drug testing.This study shows that tardigrades respond to low-voltage electric fields in a microfluidic environment without long-lasting side effects. The tardigrades were shown to have a neuromuscular response to electric fields, which can be used to test the effects of drug candidates on the organism. The tardigrades were attracted toward the negative electrode in electric field intensities of 3-8 V/cm with average speeds ranging from 154.90-259.00 µm/s.The neuromuscular response seen in tardigrades towards the electric field can be used in drug discovery by tracking its response before and after the drug has been administered. The use of tardigrades in medical research can provide an alternative solution to the ethical dilemma faced with the use of vertebrate organisms.

Abstract: India has not held a decennial census since 2011, leaving the 2015–2025 decade without a population count against which claims of small-town urbanisation can be verified. This study tests whether such growth is empirically demonstrable along a sixty-kilometre stretch of National Highway 63 in Jagtial district, Telangana, covering three corridor towns: Jagtial, Korutla and Metpally. Sentinel-2A and LISS-4 imagery for December 2015, 2020 and 2025 were segmented using Large Scale Mean Shift and classified with nine independently trained Random Forest models, achieving overall accuracies of 72.73 to 90.59 per cent. Results were cross-checked against electricity, motor-vehicle and beedi-establishment records sharing no error structure with the imagery. Built-up area grew 80.2 per cent at Jagtial, 62.6 per cent at Korutla and 31.5 per cent at Metpally between 2015 and 2025, a gradient tracking administrative rank rather than a corridor-wide wave; Korutla combines the fastest growth in service connections and load intensity with the weakest formal streetlight-network expansion, consistent with its home-based beedi cottage-industry base. An XGBoost-anchored trend model extends the built-up, electricity and vehicle series to 2040, corroborated by the Union Cabinet's June 2026 approval of highway widening for the corridor, expressly justified by congestion from this built-up growth.

Abstract: Population-based lung cancer screening with low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) is expanding across Europe, including a publicly funded Polish programme entering the guaranteed-benefits basket in October 2026. Because screening-eligible individuals share substantial tobacco-related cardiovascular risk, LDCT also provides an opportunity for cardiovascular risk assessment without additional radiation. We conducted a structured narrative review of PubMed literature, prioritising guidelines, major cohort studies, systematic reviews and cardiovascular outcome data, with targeted updates for recent regulatory and clinical developments. We summarise clinically actionable findings on non-contrast, non-ECG-gated LDCT: coronary artery calcification, aortic valve and mitral annular calcification, thoracic aortic disease, pericardial effusion, and pulmonary artery enlargement, as well as investigational cardiac volumetry, epicardial adipose tissue and AI-assisted quantification. Screening LDCT can provide robust risk-informative markers and pragmatic visual grading, but it cannot replace dedicated cardiac imaging or establish haemodynamic diagnoses. Standardised reporting, proportionate referral thresholds, and coordinated pathways linking radiology, pulmonology, primary care and cardiology are needed to translate incidental cardiovascular findings into scalable prevention while avoiding unnecessary downstream testing.

Abstract: Cyber-physical convergence in modern power systems has expanded the attack surface available to adversaries capable of manipulating sensor data, spoofing measurements, disrupting communications, or injecting false state estimates, yet publicly available benchmark infrastructure for evaluating AI-based cyber-event detection in smart-grid settings remains scarce relative to the benchmark infrastructure available for forecasting and dispatch tasks. This paper introduces BQEB SecBench, a reproducible cyber-resilience benchmark framework extending the four-layer BQEB architecture (Research Artifact, Reproducibility, Benchmark Evolution, Scientific Lineage) established in a companion paper to a fifth, benchmark-specific layer and a new Threat Layer. SecBench targets the security-relevant fields of the BQEB-Data v1 synthetic smart-grid dataset, which have been publicly available since the dataset's release but have not, to our knowledge, been benchmarked in any prior publication. Inventory inspection of the distributed attack_class field shows severe class imbalance: of 10,512 records, 10,331 (98.28%) carry no attack label, while four documented event types — sensor fault (82), spoofing (37), denial-of-service (34), and false data injection (28) — make up the remainder. We treat this imbalance as the central design problem the framework must solve and specify four benchmark tasks, an imbalance-aware evaluation protocol built on precision-recall and threshold-independent metrics rather than accuracy, and reproducibility and governance mechanisms extending the software architecture of the companion paper. This manuscript introduces the benchmark framework and evaluation protocol; empirical model comparisons are reserved for subsequent experimental validation. No detection results, accuracy figures, or statistical claims are reported: every quantity that would depend on model execution is explicitly marked reserved for future experimental validation. We regard this disclosure as part of the framework's contribution, not a limitation to be minimized.

Abstract: Simulation-based robot learning is gated by a manual step that repeats at every deployment site: constructing a physical digital twin of the scene. This paper measures how far unmodified, off-the-shelf code agents can automate that step, a setting referred to as Frontier Agent as Scene Constructor (FASC). Frontier code agents such as Claude Code and Codex, each used as shipped, rebuild eight BEHAVIOR-1K rooms from one photograph, an asset catalog and the simulator. Each reconstruction is scored against the room’s known 3D layout on ACDC’s sim-to-sim protocol, with memorisation and file-access contamination controlled. The strongest agent on the rooms, Codex with GPT-6 Astra, retrieves the exact asset model for 66% of the scored objects and places objects within 14 cm of ground truth across repeated runs. Claude Code with Opus 5, released a little over one month earlier, retrieves the exact asset model for 52% of the scored objects, against 6% for the same agent with Opus 4.6, released under six months earlier, and places objects within 39 cm against 153 cm, a 4× reduction in placement error over that predecessor. A gap to ACDC’s curated pipeline, at 6 cm, remains. Next, the two strongest agents on the rooms both extend to outdoor farm scenes, where no calibrated camera or 3D ground truth exists, using a procedural plant model and common asset libraries. Validated against their photographs in DINOv2 embedding space, 24 of the 46 GPT-6 Astra twins and 22 of the 46 Opus 5 twins rank their own photograph first among the 46 reference photographs in cosine similarity. Together with prior results on trajectory generation, these findings indicate that a generic code-agent harness covers a growing share of embodied tasks, and that its capabilities improve with each frontier-model generation while requiring no embodiment-specific harness engineering.

Abstract: A (T, I, N, F) neutrosophic quadruple records support, pure indeterminacy, neutrality and refutation as four free intensities. When a panel of sources reports point quadruples and each channel is summarised by an interval, the resulting box contains combinations that no source reported, and an index that adds channels of different sources may overflow the unit although every source is consistent. For the range box, the direct overflow of the box bounds the largest per-source overflow from above, and, as the main result, the marginal ranges of any subset of channels identify the largest per-source sum only up to a sharp interval: sum of lower bounds plus the largest width at one end, sum of upper bounds at the other, every value between them being realisable. The classification of a box by its upper corner into six overflow types is proved to be a partition. A closed-form overflow probability, 1/72 per source under a stated generative model, anchors a simulation in which, for twenty independent sources under the scaled model, range boxes flag a direct overflow in 99% of panels while 25% contain an overflowing source. Panel diagnostics and a reference implementation accompany the results.

Abstract: Agentic AI moves enterprise governance from output review to authorized action. Contemporary state-of-the-art systems now provide pre-action approvals, policy gateways, durable workflows, identity controls, checkpointing, memory, and tracing; the unresolved systems question is therefore not governed versus ungoverned AI, but whether institutional authority itself survives scaling, failure, retry, migration, and executor substitution. This article presents a Mindful Machine architecture in which a ratified Digital Genome encodes purpose, delegated authority, policies, invariants, non-functional requirements, and recovery duties; the Autopoietic and Metacognitive Orchestration System (AMOS) mediates consequential action; an Authorization Warrant carries state-bearing authority; and one authoritative event history supports service-delivery, assurance, and governance views. A synthetic prior-authorization implementation provides the empirical anchor. A read-only query of current graph completion records yielded 25 cases: 10 accepted (40%), 3 denied (12%), and 12 escalated (48%), exercising all three designed authority paths. Escalation is interpreted as explicit transfer of decision custody to accountable human review rather than autonomous commitment. The results demonstrate governance-path execution and completion semantics, not clinical efficacy. Future work extends decision closure to consequence closure across human reviewers, providers, patients, appeals, and other external actors.

Abstract: Gastric cancer incidence is markedly higher among Korean-born and first-generation Korean migrants than among non-Hispanic white populations in the United States, even after relocation to a lower-incidence Westernized environment. This persistent disparity, sometimes termed the “migrant paradox,” raises the question of why elevated risk does not fully resolve despite changes in geography and lifestyle. Helicobacter pylori infection is the dominant etiologic factor in noncardia gastric carcinogenesis and remains central to most prevention strategies, but infection status alone cannot account for the wide variation in cancer risk observed among populations with comparable H. pylori prevalence. This literature review examines factors beyond H. pylori infection that may help explain why elevated gastric cancer risk persists in Korean diaspora populations after migration. Key factors considered include bacterial virulence factors (cagA and vacA genotypes), host inflammatory-response polymorphisms (including interleukin-1 beta and related cytokine pathways), behavioral exposures (high salt intake, preserved and fermented foods, smoking, and incomplete acculturation), and emerging evidence on gastric microbiome shifts beyond H. pylori alone. Across these domains, the literature suggests that no single factor fully accounts for population-level disparities; rather, gastric cancer risk in Korean migrants reflects the interaction of pre-migration exposures, host susceptibility, and post-migration environmental change. These findings have direct implications for prevention: H. pylori eradication, while effective, works best as the anchor of a risk-stratified approach that also incorporates dietary counseling, smoking cessation, and endoscopic surveillance for premalignant gastric lesions.

Abstract: Background/Objectives: Physiotherapy practice involves patient handling, sustained or awkward postures, repetitive manual techniques, and prolonged standing. This study estimated Neck Disability Index (NDI)-defined neck disability among physiotherapists in Saudi Arabia, examined demographic and workplace associations with disability severity, and compared quality of life across NDI levels.Methods: A cross-sectional online convenience survey was conducted from 2 April to 22 May 2024 through email and professional networks. The invitation denominator was not tracked, so a response rate could not be calculated. Eligible participants had at least one year of clinical experience. The NDI and WHOQOL-BREF were administered in English. Associations were evaluated using exact tests for sparse tables, Holm adjustment, and a five-variable multinomial model with HC0 robust standard errors. An expanded 11-factor mean bias-reduced multinomial model was the principal sensitivity analysis; additional analyses examined age stability.Results: Among 367 participants, 197 had NDI-defined disability (53.7%; 95% CI, 48.6%–58.7%), predominantly mild (156, 42.5%), and 41 had moderate-or-worse disability (11.2%; 95% CI, 8.3%–14.8%). In the five-variable model, mild disability was associated with female sex (adjusted relative risk ratio [RRR], 2.49; 95% CI, 1.54–4.03) and BMI ≥25 kg/m² (RRR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.26–3.29); moderate-or-worse disability was associated with non-private employment (RRR, 4.47; 95% CI, 2.06–9.73) and BMI ≥25 kg/m² (RRR, 2.25; 95% CI, 1.05–4.84). The expanded model retained the female-sex/mild and workplace/moderate-or-worse patterns, but the latter BMI interval included 1 (RRR, 2.13; 95% CI, 0.96–4.69). WHOQOL-BREF domain medians were lower across higher NDI levels (all four omnibus Holm-adjusted p < 0.001).Conclusions: Neck disability was common in this convenience sample, and higher NDI severity co-occurred with lower quality-of-life scores. Female-sex and workplace associations were consistent across the principal models; BMI findings require caution. The associations are cross-sectional, exploratory, non-causal, and not nationally representative.

Abstract: The removal of Pb(II) ions from aqueous solution by sorption onto layered double hydroxides (LDHs) is widely documented, yet the reported capacities range from 13 to over 200 mg g⁻¹. The dispersion is usually ascribed to the layer chemistry but cannot be tested because published values come from widely different operating conditions; this work supplies the missing reference member of a single-protocol series. Carbonate-intercalated Mg₂Al–CO₃ was prepared by coprecipitation at constant pH, characterized by XRD, SEM–EDX, N₂ sorption, DSC and pH_PZC, and evaluated as a function of dose, pH, contact time, concentration and temperature. Equilibrium was reached within 60 min, the kinetics were pseudo-first-order, the Redlich–Peterson and Langmuir equations fitted the isotherm best with a monolayer capacity of 59.1 mg g⁻¹, and the uptake was spontaneous and endothermic (ΔH° = 11.1 kJ mol⁻¹). They are then compared with two isostructural phases previously published by our team, Mg₂[FeAl]–CO₃ and Zn₂[FeAl]–CO₃, prepared and tested under strictly identical conditions; no new experiment was performed on these solids, whose values are quoted here for comparison only. Replacing half of the Al(III) by Fe(III) doubles qm to 118.8 mg g⁻¹ and replacing Mg(II) by Zn(II) raises it to 87.9 mg g⁻¹. Normalized to the BET surface area, however, the three capacities converge on 1.55 ± 0.07 mg m⁻²: the layer composition acts on Pb(II) uptake only through the accessible surface area it generates, not through the intrinsic reactivity of the surface. Sorbent design should therefore target textural disorder rather than a particular cation pair.