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Review
Biology and Life Sciences
Life Sciences

Jayesh Patil

Abstract: Background and Aims: Diabetic neuropathy (DN) is the most prevalent chronic complication of diabetes mellitus and a major cause of nontraumatic lower-limb amputation. Despite increasing research activity, the structural dynamics, thematic evolution, collaboration patterns, and institutional landscape of DN research remain incompletely characterized. This study aimed to map global DN research using bibliometric and network visualization analyses of PubMed-indexed publications from 2000 to 2025. Methods: A systematic PubMed search using MeSH and free-text terms identified 11,405 eligible publications. Annual publication trends were assessed, and VOSviewer v1.6.20 was used for author co-authorship, keyword co-occurrence, and institutional collaboration analyses. Modularity-based clustering identified major research themes. Results: Annual publications increased from 182 in 2000 to 1,055 in 2025, representing a 5.8-fold increase. Publications from 2021–2025 accounted for 36.6% of the corpus. The author network identified 37 clusters, with Malik, Rayaz A (137 publications; TLS = 738) as the most productive author, followed by Feldman, Eva L (100; TLS = 355) and Tesfaye, Solomon (86; TLS = 325). Keyword analysis identified nine clusters, with experimental/preclinical research dominating. Advanced diagnostics showed the most recent thematic orientation. Institutional analysis identified Denmark, particularly Aalborg and Aarhus universities, as a prominent research hub, whereas LMICs remained underrepresented. Conclusions: DN research has expanded substantially, with increasing emphasis on corneal confocal microscopy, neuroinflammation, and pharmacological pain management. Major gaps include LMIC underrepresentation, inadequate sex-disaggregated research, and limited translation of preclinical findings into disease-modifying therapies.

Article
Computer Science and Mathematics
Applied Mathematics

Evgeny Kagan

,

Alexander Rybalov

Abstract: In the paper, we suggest a definition of the entropy of oriented fuzzy graphs, which characterizes the fuzziness of the sets of vertices and edges and the flows on the graphs. We consider the properties of the suggested entropy and its relations with the Rashevsky entropy of the crisp graphs.

Review
Public Health and Healthcare
Health Policy and Services

Hélène Rossinot

,

Mickael Worms Ehrminger

Abstract: Background: Informal carers provide most long-term care in Europe, and supporting them recently became a political topic. Yet two foundations policy remain unstable: knowing who is considered a carer and what support they need. Objective: To examine how the absence of a consensual definition of the informal carer and the limited operational value of burden measurement hinder designing, targeting and evaluating public support policies. Methods: A critical review of the concepts of burden and informal carers, primary conceptual, psychometric and empirical studies, and policy documents. Results: Definitions of the informal carer converge on non-professional help to a person with long-term needs within a personal relationship, but diverge on several aspects. Prevalence estimates consequently vary across surveys and are partly artefacts of definition. Burden is alternately treated as a stressor, an appraisal or an outcome, and is conflated with stress, strain and burnout. Instruments are numerous, capture mainly subjective strain, have rarely been developed with carers, and seldom demonstrate content validity or responsiveness; none offers thresholds anchored to specific support needs. Policies therefore rely on proxies, typically the care recipient’s dependency level. The French daily carer allowance illustrates this mismatch: nearly 270,000 private-sector employees were eligible, whereas 6,626 entitlements had been opened after 18 months. Conclusions: Conceptual ambiguity is not merely an academic concern: it propagates into identification, targeting and evaluation failures. We propose a definition with explicit reporting of boundaries, separation of objective load, subjective strain and consequences, and the development of COSMIN-compliant, context-specific instruments.

Review
Public Health and Healthcare
Other

Alfredo Ovalle

,

Enrique Oyarzún

Abstract: Spontaneous preterm birth and preterm premature rupture of membranes (pPROM) remain the primary challenges in perinatal medicine. Traditional approaches frequently underestimate the microenvironmental shifts within the intrauterine cavity. This review synthesizes four decades of research from the Hospital Clínico San Borja-Arriarán (HCSBA) group, establishing a comprehensive pathophysiological model of Ascending Bacterial Infection (ABI) in preterm birth between 24 and 34 weeks of gestation. We detail the sequential transition from vaginal dysbiosis—characterized by the loss of protective Lactobacillus species and the emergence of high-risk community state types (CST III/IV)—to cellular invasion. Key molecular virulence factors of prominent pathogens (Streptococcus agalactiae, non-typeable Haemophilus influenzae, and extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli) are evaluated, highlighting their mechanisms to evade host innate immunity, disrupt the cervical mucosal barrier, and trigger intrauterine inflammation via the TLR4/NF-κB and TNF-α signaling pathways. Furthermore, we examine the clinical implications of biological compartmentalization and synergistic systemic triggers, such as periodontal disease. Finally, we analyze how transitioning from reactive, symptom-based protocols toward precision perinatology—utilizing ultra-rapid quantitative PCR (qPCR) and histopathological evaluation (CORM method)—can optimize targeted antimicrobial and immunomodulatory interventions before irreversible fetal injury occurs.

Review
Medicine and Pharmacology
Pharmacology and Toxicology

Zaynab Arowosegbe

,

Chukwunonso K. Nwabufo

,

Michael Irem

,

Yusra Zuberi

,

Anna O. Edu

,

Ganiyat Adekemi Adeshina

,

Boluwatife Jimoh

,

Chidiogo Nwabufo

Abstract: The underrepresentation of Nigerian genetic diversity in global databases presents an evidence gap in the population-specific effects of pharmacogenotypes on the therapeutic efficacy and safety within the country and relative to other populations. We investigated the implementation of pharmacogenetics in clinical trials and conducted a systematic review to identify clinical pharmacogenetic studies in Nigerians. Out of 11 clinical trials that have pharmacogenetic implications per U.S. FDA guidelines, only two implemented pharmacogenetics, predisposing participants to potential adverse drug effects and efficacy issues. Nigerian pharmacogenetic studies are limited, as fewer studies investigated the clinical significance of allele frequencies. Distribution of allele frequencies varied significantly within Nigerians and between other populations in high-impact variants, including CYP2C9*8, CYP2D6*29, and CYP3A5*7. CYP2C8*2 was observed at 17.9-19.5% in Nigerians compared to <2% in Europeans and Asians and resulted in lower imatinib concentrations in homozygous carriers, raising concerns about efficacy and safety. Marked ethnic differences within Nigerians (1% in Esan and 4.2% in Yoruba), compared to 2.6% in Sub-Saharan Africans, were observed in the African-ancestry DPYD 557A>G variant, which is not always present in UK and European genotyping panels, raising concerns about fluorouracil toxicity in Nigerians in diaspora and mixed-race populations. In conclusion, we found poor implementation of pharmacogenetics in clinical trials within the country and limited understanding of allele frequencies and their clinical implications. Therefore, it is important to investigate intra-Nigerian and intercontinental differences between genotypes and phenotypes to advance global precision medicine initiatives.

Article
Biology and Life Sciences
Aging

Jianghui Xiong

Abstract: Longevity medicine needs ways to identify a small number of candidate intervention targets that might affect several functions at once. Protein–protein interaction (PPI) networks help map molecular connections and rank candidate drugs, but they do not show which maintenance states are associated with age-related patterns in particular organs. We introduce RootMap, a blood DNA-methylation framework for mapping these conditional dependencies, and apply it to 656 discovery and 1,394 replication participants. Each of 332 gene modules is scored as a module-level intrinsic capability (mIC). We define a conditional dependency as a difference in an organ module’s association with age between participants with higher versus lower age-adjusted mIC for a hallmark module. Twenty-two hallmark–organ pairs passed four artifact checks; 17 of 20 pairs on the replication list kept their direction in the second cohort, including all 10 testable organ-line pairs. The pattern was asymmetric: hallmark modules more often marked differences in organ–age associations than organs marked differences in hallmark–age associations. Stem-cell maintenance was the broadest marker in the discovery cohort, relating to 12 organ modules; senescence regulation was broadest in the replication cohort. The meaning of dependency is illustrated by bone marrow: among people with higher age-adjusted stem-cell-maintenance mIC, bone-marrow mIC was negatively associated with age (r = −0.241), while among those with lower mIC the association was close to zero (r = +0.005). The map also distinguishes organs by their patterns of dependencies: for example, the liver had several hallmark associations, including associations in opposite directions. These are patterns in blood-based scores, not proof of biological control. The map may help drug screening by adding information about biological layer and dependency to molecular proximity. In a benchmark, filtering a protein-interaction (PPI)-ranked anti-aging candidate list by functional-layer labels made the list 2.8 times more compact and increased hit enrichment from 3.19-fold to 8.87-fold. This gain was not distinguishable from draws matched for the number of drug targets (p = 0.18), and the filter used layer labels rather than learned dependency edges. Thus, the result supports testing layer information alongside PPI—not claiming that dependency edges have already improved drug discovery. Separately, discovery dependency effect sizes were associated with replication dependencies (ρ = +0.153, p = 0.005), whereas the tested PPI-proximity measures were not. Functional modules also showed intervention-associated changes more often than hallmark modules (25.4% versus 14.4% of tests); this measures response in the studied intervention series, not clinical benefit. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) concepts were analyzed separately within the same framework. Essence was the largest hub, contributing 5 of 10 significant fundamental-substance pairs. The TCM concept “liver” corresponded more strongly to lymph and immune modules than to the anatomical liver (r = −0.15), illustrating that a traditional concept need not map onto the organ with the same name. RootMap offers longevity medicine a framework for connecting foundational maintenance states with organ-aging patterns. By distinguishing capabilities associated with broad reach from functions that showed more frequent score changes in the intervention series, it gives researchers a practical basis for deciding what to measure, which candidate targets to investigate, and which functions to follow in longitudinal and N-of-1 studies. The dependency measures carried modest but reproducible information across cohorts beyond the PPI-proximity measures tested here, while layer-label filtering compacted a PPI-ranked candidate list in the screening benchmark. Together, these findings position RootMap as an evidence-graded map for prioritizing hypotheses in longevity research and as a foundation for future individual-level biomedical world models. Learned dependency edges and absolute mIC values remain priorities for further validation and calibration.

Communication
Medicine and Pharmacology
Clinical Medicine

Robert T. O'Leary

Abstract: A functional score is usually read as a property of the person measured. Increasingly it is produced by the person and an assistive environment together: a cane, a caregiver, a cueing system, a rehabilitation robot, or an artificial-intelligence system may supply part of it. The score is real. It answers a different question from the same score without the assistance.The distinction is not new. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health separates capacity from performance in the current environment, with and without assistance. Motor learning has known for forty years that guidance raises performance during practice and lowers it on the unguided retention test. Rehabilitation separates the orthotic effect of a device from its therapeutic effect. Human factors describes the operator who performs better with automation and worse when it fails. These literatures rarely cite one another, and the rule has not been stated as a general principle across them.This paper states it. Assistance state is a condition of functional measurement, as supplemental oxygen is a condition of a six-minute walk. A score under one assistance state cannot be read as a change in what the person supplies when compared with a score under another, unless the change in assistance is what is studied. Where assistance is meant to leave the person more capable, the evaluation includes a prespecified assessment at a lower assistance state, a handback, under a criterion that does not move when the assistance does. Assistance state travels with the observation.

Article
Computer Science and Mathematics
Other

Muhammad Hassan

,

Susan Landau

,

Carl Gunter

,

Masooda Bashir

Abstract: The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is increasingly used in connected homes. These medical devices share networks and ecosystems with consumer Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Matter is a consumer IoT standard, focusing on interoperability and technical security for smart-home devices. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations for medical devices address safety, clinical validation, and compliance. Yet it remains unclear how these approaches apply to security, privacy, and governance in home IoMT adoption. We conducted scenario-based interviews with 40 participants (20 aged 18--30 and 20 aged 60+). Participants evaluated Matter-related features, including rapid over-the-air updates, local-first connectivity, and ecosystem integration. They also considered FDA-related expectations for tested updates, clinician-oriented connectivity, and cautious integration. Participants valued accuracy, transparency, and simple control, but did not want responsibility for complex configurations. They preferred slower, well-explained updates for safety-critical functions and context-aware connectivity with more sharing during emergencies. They also preferred selective integration that enables emergency access without broadly exposing household data. These results show that user mental models and risk tolerances can diverge in important ways from both current IoT standards and medical device regulation. Future home IoMT designs should support user-centered interoperability, security, and data governance.

Article
Biology and Life Sciences
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Volodymyr Tytar

Abstract: Sea skaters of the genus Halobates (Heteroptera: Gerridae) are the only insects known to inhabit the open ocean, yet the relative importance of the environmental factors shaping their distributions remains poorly resolved. Prior work has emphasized sea-surface temperature as the primary constraint, but temperature, salinity, productivity, and ocean dynamics are tightly coupled in the ocean, and conventional importance metrics struggle to disentangle their contributions under collinearity. Here we apply SHAP (SHapley Additive exPlanations) analysis — combined with pairwise permutation testing and false discovery rate (FDR) correction — to quantify and compare the environmental drivers of distribution in three Halobates species: the widespread oceanic H. micans, the range-restricted H. sobrinus, and the coastal/neritic H. sericeus. Using spatially thinned occurrence records and eleven environmental predictors organized into physiological, physical habitat, and trophic tiers, we built species-specific Maxent models and decomposed their predictions into mean absolute and mean signed SHAP values. Contrary to the temperature-first emphasis of the prior literature, temperature, chlorophyll-a, and dissolved oxygen showed no significant pairwise differences between species in their net directional effects. Instead, only wind speed, annual variance in sea-surface salinity, and sea-surface height differed significantly between species after the FDR correction.

Article
Physical Sciences
Fluids and Plasmas Physics

Guangyi Pu

Abstract: The description of time in modern physics has been built almost exclusively around translational motion, leaving rotational dynamics in an asymmetric position within the standard single-time framework. This work presents an operational definition of angular time τ as an independent temporal dimension within the angular displacement spacetime framework φ(τ) [1], and provides two complementary lines of investigation.First, a ‌zero-parameter‌ turbulent scaling law, derived solely from the intrinsic 2π periodicity of τ, reproduces all high-precision, high–Reynolds-number DNS data up to order p=9 with absolute errors below 0.0107. This is one of the first scaling law for turbulent intermittency that requires no adjustable parameters [2,3]. The agreement provides an indirect consistency check for the φ(τ) hypothesis, rather than definitive experimental proof for the physical reality of τ.Second, a binary crucial experiment under the zero-area limit (r=0) is proposed: at the rotation center, where both special and general relativity predict zero frequency shift, the φ(τ) framework predicts a non-zero shift proportional to ω². This geometric test draws upon existing clock‑comparison technology for its feasibility, though it has not yet been implemented in laboratory measurements, and provides an unambiguous falsification pathway.This work does not contradict established relativity; rather, it introduces a complementary geometric framework for rotational dynamics that yields falsifiable experimental predictions, and may provide a conceptual bridge between the continuum spacetime of relativity and the discrete nature of quantum mechanics.

Article
Biology and Life Sciences
Cell and Developmental Biology

Yanxun Zhou

,

Shutong Liu

,

Zhihui He

Abstract: Pannexin 1 (Panx1) participates in ATP release, purinergic signaling, and neuroinflammation, but its cellular context in ischemic stroke remains incompletely defined. We integrated bibliometric analysis with single-cell and bulk transcriptomic analyses to characterize Panx1-associated biological and cellular states. Bibliometric trends showed increasing emphasis on ischemia, inflammation, mitochondrial stress, calcium signaling, and regulated cell death. In GSE174574, Panx1 transcript detection was sparse but more frequent after MCAO than in sham brain and was associated with disease-remodeled myeloid populations, including activated microglial and monocyte/macrophage states. Pseudotime analysis placed Panx1-detected cells along an MCAO-associated myeloid activation structure without a strictly monotonic increase in Panx1 detection. Independent validation in GSE58720 further supported enrichment of Panx1-associated myeloid/stress and inflammatory signatures after MCAO. Together, these findings identify an injury-associated inflammatory/myeloid context for Panx1 in ischemic stroke and provide a basis for future mechanistic investigation.

Article
Computer Science and Mathematics
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Chunlei Li

,

Xin Yuan

,

Junpu Wang

,

Ruimin Yang

,

Hongling Zhao

Abstract: Knowledge distillation-based unsupervised anomaly detection has achieved strong performance in industrial inspection. However, existing Reverse Distillation (RD) methods suffer from two fundamental limitations: the bottleneck compresses semantically entangled CNN features into a one-class representation that inadequately characterizes normal structural regularity, and the pairwise distillation objective leaves the co-learned teacher-student geometry semantically underconstrained. To address these issues, we propose Semantically Grounded Reverse Distillation (SGRD), which integrates a frozen vision foundation model (DINOv2 in this work) as a fixed semantic reference into the RD framework. Specifically, a foundation-aware semantic bottleneck conditions the bottleneck encoding pathway with foundation-model patch semantics to produce a structurally coherent one-class code. Furthermore, a foundation-semantic representation anchoring module jointly constrains both teacher and student representations toward the foundation-model semantic subspace, preventing semantically arbitrary representation geometry. Experiments on MVTec AD achieve 98.5% image-level AUROC and 98.3% pixel-level AUROC, while experiments on VisA achieve 99.8% image-level AUROC and 94.2% pixel-level AUPRO, with the proposed method attaining the strongest overall average performance among the compared methods on both benchmarks.

Review
Social Sciences
Library and Information Sciences

Alon Korngreen

Abstract: The scientific paper is a compression technology built for one reader: the human nervous system, with its bounded attention, limited memory, and need for low-dimensional input. The same constraint shapes scientific practice, from the one-variable-at-a-time experiment to reducing raw data to a few figures and a short narrative in a standard format. This review asks what happens to that artifact as two of its premises dissolve. Digital infrastructure now lets science store and share raw data, code, and executable analyses rather than prose summaries alone. More radically, artificial intelligence supplies non-human readers and writers: agents that can work over far larger and less pre-compressed records than any person, and that can generate text, experiments, and entire papers. The human-facing paper was already strained before AI, as output outgrew any reader, texts grew less readable, the unit of publication fragmented, and the narrative omitted what was needed to verify it. Drawing these literatures together, this review sets out seven design challenges that AI poses to scientific writing. It concludes not that the paper is obsolete, but that its monopoly is ending, and that its human-facing functions, namely certification, explanation, and understanding, must be deliberately preserved as compression passes to machines.

Review
Medicine and Pharmacology
Immunology and Allergy

Jingyu Yang

,

Yuehong Chen

,

Yulin Zhang

,

Qibing Xie

,

Geng Yin

Abstract: Interferon (IFN)-induced protein 6 (IFI6) is an important member of the IFN-stimulated gene (ISG) family, mainly enriched in the inner mitochondrial membrane and endoplasmic reticulum (ER). It plays significant roles in anti-apoptosis, immune regulation, maintenance of mitochondrial homeostasis, antiviral defense, and promotion of tumor progression. At the molecular mechanism level, IFI6 inhibits mitochondrial membrane depolarization, cytochrome c release, and caspase activation. It also regulates the B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2)/Bcl-2 interacting mediator of cell death (Bim) expression balance, activates the janus kinase (JAK)/signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) and phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase-protein kinase B (PI3K-AKT) pathways, and inhibits the degradation of ferroptosis-related proteins solute carrier family 7 member 11 (SLC7A11) and glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4), thereby enhancing cell survival and proliferation through multiple pathways. In terms of immune regulation, IFI6 also affects immune cells (such as T/B cells, etc.) and the tumor microenvironment. IFI6 regulates mitochondrial reactive oxygen species (mtROS) and mitochondrial calcium homeostasis, influencing respiratory chain assembly and metabolism. In terms of virus regulation, IFI6 may inhibit the replication of multiple viruses (such as hepatitis B virus (HBV), hepatitis C virus (HCV), SARS-CoV-2, etc.) by inhibiting flavivirus-induced ER invagination, interfering with retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I)-like receptor signaling pathways, and inhibiting epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) kinase activity. In addition, IFI6 is highly expressed in autoimmune diseases and malignant tumors and is associated with proliferation, metastasis, and poor prognosis. In this review, we aim to highlight IFI6 as a potential key target in disease diagnosis and treatment.

Review
Medicine and Pharmacology
Pathology and Pathobiology

Enrique Bernal-Morell

,

Francisco Martínez-Díaz

,

Francisco García-Molina

Abstract: Tumor budding, defined as single tumor cells or clusters of up to four cells at the invasive front, is a morphological marker of tumor-cell dissociation and stromal invasion in colorectal cancer. Standardization by the International Tumor Budding Consensus Conference (ITBCC) established a reproducible hematoxylin-and-eosin-based method and enabled broader incorporation of budding into pathology reporting and clinical risk assessment. Intermediate- and high-grade budding are associated with lymph node metastasis in pT1 colorectal cancer, while high-grade budding identifies a subgroup of stage II colon cancers with increased recurrence risk. Adverse prognostic associations have also been reported in stage III disease and in rectal cancer after neoadjuvant therapy, although evidence that budding predicts benefit from a specific treatment is still insufficient. At the biological level, budding is linked to partial epithelial-mesenchymal transition, altered cell adhesion, cytoskeletal remodeling, and interactions with fibroblasts, extracellular matrix, and immune cells. Digital pathology and artificial intelligence may improve hotspot selection, quantification, and spatial characterization, but their clinical use depends on external validation, control of domain shift, and continued pathologist oversight. Tumor budding is therefore best interpreted as a complementary morphological biomarker alongside TNM stage, established histopathological risk factors, molecular features, and clinical context.

Article
Biology and Life Sciences
Animal Science, Veterinary Science and Zoology

Jerome A. Hogsette

,

Gregory A. Ose

,

Justin P. Graves

Abstract: The stable fly is a cosmopolitan blood-feeding pest of livestock and other large and small animals. Their bites are painful and cause predicted defensive behaviors, particularly cattle, which can result in animal discomfort and decreased weight gains. Some of the most efficacious traps attract stable flies by reflecting light in attractive wavelengths. Flies are then captured when they contact an adjacent sticky surface. These traps must be serviced, but the sticky surfaces can fill with flies in less than a week when fly populations are high. To reduce the amount of servicing required, an attract and kill system was developed to attract the flies but kill them before they reach the sticky surface. Traps were placed inside of a cylinder of D-Terrence pesticide-treated netting. Size and numbers of openings in the netting were decided upon by watching flies pass through a variety of openings. An array of openings allowed for maximum attraction to the trap and maximum fly contact to the netting. The attract and kill devices must also be serviced, but not as often as other traps. D-Terrence contains deltamethrin and some stable flies may be resistant. However, the system can be used with alternative toxicants.

Article
Chemistry and Materials Science
Materials Science and Technology

Akshay Deshpande

Abstract: High configurational entropy is a route to ultralow lattice thermal conductivity: chemicallydisordered, multi-cation lattices scatter phonons strongly, and low κ_lattice is the singlehardest term to suppress in the thermoelectric figure of merit ZT = S²σT/κ. Mosthigh-entropy thermoelectric work, however, is metallic-alloy-centric and proceeds onecomposition at a time. Here we screen a large computational materials space — the~51,000 stability-filtered GNoME candidates for which we have computed a full anharmonicthermal-transport layer — for high-entropy semiconductor thermoelectric candidates: band-gap-bearing, multi-cation compounds selected by configurational entropy, anentropy-corrected stability criterion, and directly computed low lattice thermal conductivity,rather than by the metallic solid-solution rules (Yang Ω/δ, Miedema ΔH_mix) that do notapply to semiconductors. Of 44,110 four-or-more-element GNoME candidates, 26,890already have a Slack lattice thermal conductivity below 1 W m⁻¹K⁻¹. Imposing anear-equimolar configurational-entropy cut (ΔS_config ≥ 1.5R), a hard κ_L < 1 W m⁻¹K⁻¹screen, and entropy-corrected thermodynamic stability at 1000 K yields a focused shortlistof 922 quinary candidates, every one of which is entropy-stabilized at 1000 K and carriesa calibrated predicted ZT (median 0.45, up to 0.75) from our gradient-boosted quantilemodel. The shortlist is dominated by heavy multi-cation pnictides and chalcogenides (e.g.La₄Th₂Sc₂(BiSb)₅ at κ_L ≈ 0.02 W m⁻¹K⁻¹; Li₂TbPrBiPb at predicted ZT ≈ 0.75). Thecontribution is a differentiated, physically-grounded, pre-screened candidate set forhigh-entropy-semiconductor thermoelectrics, released openly for first-principles andexperimental follow-up.

Article
Biology and Life Sciences
Biology and Biotechnology

Thanakorn Moktip

,

Thidarat Boonlert

,

Lakha Salaipeth

,

Sangchai Akeprathumchai

,

Ken-Lin Chang

,

Takashi Watanabe

,

Paripok Phitsuwan

Abstract: Efficient microbial conversion of chicken-feather keratin into value-added products offers a sustainable approach to waste valorization. Bacillus sp. strain 46-2, isolated from a hot spring in Thailand, produced extracellular caseinolytic and keratinolytic enzymes capable of degrading keratinous and non-keratinous protein substrates. The crude enzyme preparation remained active over a broad pH range of 6.0–11.0 and exhibited maximal caseinolytic and keratinolytic activities at 50 °C. Certain metal ions, including Cu²⁺, Ni²⁺, and Zn²⁺, reduced one or both activities, while SDS, Tween 20, and Triton X-100 also caused varying degrees of inhibition. The addition of reducing agents enhanced feather degradation, with β-mercaptoethanol and Na₂SO₃ increasing chicken-feather mass loss to 73% and 47%, respectively, after 24 h. SDS–PAGE and zymographic analyses revealed multiple proteolytic and keratinolytic activity bands, while inhibition by PMSF and EDTA suggested contributions from serine proteases and metal-dependent proteases. Peptide-rich fractions obtained from the culture supernatant exhibited ABTS radical-scavenging activity, with IC₅₀ values of 506.25, 449.70, and 190.10 µg mL⁻¹ for the >10 kDa, 3–10 kDa, and <3 kDa fractions, respectively. Thin-layer chromatography detected spots corresponding to leucine, valine, glutamic acid, serine, and glycine in the hydrolysate. Overall, Bacillus sp. strain 46-2 is a promising source of alkaline-active and moderately thermostable proteolytic and keratinolytic enzymes for the bioconversion of keratin-rich waste into amino acids and antioxidant peptide-rich fractions with potential value for cosmetic and healthcare-related applications.

Article
Biology and Life Sciences
Agricultural Science and Agronomy

Emigdio De La Cruz-De La Cruz

,

María I. Badillo-Campos

,

Viviana A. Carvajal-Salazar

,

Gustavo Almaguer-Vargas

,

Gustavo Almaguer-Mejía

,

Georgina Almaguer

Abstract: Citrus fruits are considered the most consumed fruits in the world; however, their production is becoming less efficient and their cost has increased, mainly due to the rapid spread of Huanglongbing (HLB), a disease whose vector is an insect called Diaphorina citri. Controlling this vector is essential to controlling the disease, which is complicated by the lack of knowledge about the population dynamics of D. citri. Mexico is the fourth largest citrus producer internationally. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the popula-tion dynamics and aggregation indices of D. citri in “Valencia Late” orange crops in three locations in northern Veracruz State, Mexico. To achieve this, minimum and maximum temperatures, precipitation, and relative humidity were recorded. Linear regression mod-els were developed between these environmental parameters and the number of adult psyllids and nymphs. The results showed a positive association between the development of new outbreaks and the presence of population peaks of nymphs and adults in Febru-ary-March and July-August. Therefore, it is suggested that broad-spectrum insecticides and mineral oils be applied during this period. Rainfall reduced the presence of nymphs at the three locations. The calculated aggregation indices showed that the distribution of nymphs was aggregated, and that of adults tended to be so, but during periods of low density, their distribution was random.

Review
Medicine and Pharmacology
Clinical Medicine

Xiang Ji

Abstract: Echocardiography is an important imaging modality in the assessment of cardiovascular diseases. Several echocardiographic signs have been described to aid in the diagnosis of specific clinical conditions and to help clinicians remember the key sonographic features. This review summarizes five classic signs in echocardiography, including the McConnell's Sign, the D-Sign, the 60:60 Sign, the SAM Sign, and the Swinging Heart Sign, as well as three novel signs, the Three Pipes Sign, the LTS Sign, and the LTI Sign. This review aims to provide an overview of the classic echocardiographic signs, focusing on their naming logics, definitions, and clinical implications to facilitate a better understanding of them, and to first propose three novel signs, the Three Pipes Sign, the LTS Sign, and the LTI Sign, which may aid in diagnosis and serve as teaching aids in echocardiography.

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