Browse Articles

Assessing attention towards plants: Development and first steps to the validation of the Hidden Object Picture Instrument (HOPI)

Public awareness of plants remains limited despite their essential ecological and societal roles. A major challenge in addressing this issue is the absence of validated instruments that measure attentional-memory processes regarding plants. This study introduces the Hidden Object Picture Instrument (HOPI), a novel visual tool designed to assess plant-directed attention in complex natural scenes. The development involved three sub-studies: (1) designing and validating a landscape image based on biodiversity data, (2) examining attentional mechanisms using eye-tracking, recall, and species identification, and (3) testing known-groups validity among students and botanical experts. Free listing combined with salience analysis revealed cognitive prominence and recall patterns for different object types. Eye-tracking showed no correlations between object size, time to first fixation, total fixation duration, average fixation time, and number of fixations and recall salience for plants and animals. Experts exhibited higher plant salience and more specific naming, while students mainly used general terms (e.g., “tree,” “field”). These findings indicate that plants are often perceived as background elements rather than distinct entities. The HOPI provides a transparent, replicable method for assessing visual attention to plants and offers valuable applications for research and education. It represents a first step towards understanding and fostering plant awareness as part of environmental education and biodiversity conservation.

Chromosome 5q deletion drives evolution of aneuploidy in myeloid neoplasms with complex karyotype

Clonal acquisition of multiple chromosomal abnormalities in hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells (HSPCs) is a hallmark of high-risk acute myeloid leukemias with complex karyotype (AML-CK). AML-CK is associated with TP53 mutations and chromosome 5q deletions (del5q); however, the drivers and clonal trajectories of aneuploid evolution in HSPCs remain unknown. We have developed a patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) model in which preleukemic HSPCs clonally evolve to distinct, highly aneuploid states following transient mitotic inhibition. By tracking chromosome evolution at single cell resolution, we show that TP53-mutant HSPCs with del5q, but not TP53­ mutation alone, evolved complex chromosomal changes. Clonal evolution was marked by stepwise acquisition of numerical and structural chromosome changes seen in AML-CK patients, with individual abnormalities conferring fitness advantage. iPSC-derived aneuploid HSPCs and primary AML-CK patient samples exhibited a conserved gene expression signature marked by upregulation of PTEN, cohesins, and anti-apoptotic factor BCL2, indicative of a shared aneuploid cell state in HSPCs. Clinical BCL2 inhibitor venetoclax eradicated BCL2-dependent aneuploid clones, with resistant clones undergoing a lineage switch to upregulate alternative BCL2 factors. In summary, we demonstrate that mutant TP53 and del5q drive chromosome evolution marked by stepwise acquisition of individual abnormalities. Moreover, aneuploid HSPCs exhibit a shared gene expression state which confers unique targetable therapeutic vulnerabilities in AML-CK.

Spheroids reveal hypoxia‑driven spatial restriction of adenoviral infection

Abstract Hypoxia is a hallmark of solid tumors and represents a major barrier for effective cancer therapies, including oncolytic virotherapy. While adenoviruses are widely studied as oncolytic agents, the impact of tumor-associated hypoxia on viral infection and spatial spread remains incompletely understood. Here, we investigated how oxygen availability influences adenovirus infection in two-dimensional (2D) cultures and three-dimensional (3D) tumor spheroids. We confirmed that cell lines commonly used in adenovirus research (HEK293A, A549), as well as KP4 pancreatic cancer cells, exhibited a physiological response to hypoxia. In KP4 monolayers, hypoxia strongly reduced adenoviral protein production. To model oxygen gradients found in solid tumors, we established stable KP4 spheroids and performed spatial analysis of HAdV5_GFP infection. When virus was added during spheroid formation and hypoxia development, infection was largely restricted to the well-oxygenated outer rim. In contrast, inoculation of virus under normoxia prior to spheroid formation resulted in a more uniform distribution of infected cells throughout the spheroid. Together, our findings demonstrate that hypoxia not only suppresses adenoviral replication in cell culture but also shapes the spatial pattern of infection in 3D tumor models, highlighting the importance of hypoxia-relevant 3D systems in preclinical evaluation of oncolytic adenoviruses.

STGAD: Self-temporal generative adversarial framework with transformer attention for unsupervised multivariate time-series anomaly detection and localization

Unsupervised anomaly detection in multivariate time series is important for maintaining the reliability of complex cyber-physical systems. However, existing methods often face practical challenges in adversarial stability, temporal dependency modeling, and anomaly-score calibration across datasets. We present STGAD, a dual-score generative-adversarial framework for anomaly detection and localization in multivariate time series. STGAD employs a WGAN-GP critic with a Transformer encoder to perform self-temporal modeling of within-window dependencies and cross-variable interactions, and uses a stochastic generator trained under adversarial supervision with sample-level proximity regularization to model normal temporal patterns. During inference, multiple generated candidates are sampled for each input window, and the minimum residual is used as a sample-matching anomaly cue. This residual-based score is fused with the critic-based score after normalization, and final anomaly decisions are produced by distribution-adaptive thresholding. Experiments on five benchmark datasets spanning server monitoring, aerospace telemetry, industrial control, and ECG signals (SMD, SMAP, MSL, SWaT, and MIT-BIH) show that STGAD achieves strong and consistent performance against representative baselines. Ablation and robustness analyses further demonstrate the effectiveness of critic-side temporal modeling, stable adversarial learning, and dual-score fusion in the proposed framework.

A retrospective, real-world study of IV iron use to treat iron deficiency anemia during acute infection

Abstract The administration of IV iron to treat anemia during acute infection remains controversial owing to concerns of exacerbating the infection. We conducted a retrospective cohort study using the TriNetX Research Network (2000 to June 2025) to evaluate the safety and efficacy of IV iron administration in adults with iron deficiency anemia and infection (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus [MRSA] bacteremia, pneumonia, urinary tract infection [UTI], colitis, or cellulitis). Patients must have received antibiotic agents within 2 days of infection for inclusion and were stratified by IV iron exposure. Propensity matching (1:1) was performed within each cohort. Survival was significantly higher (P< .001 for each infection type) at both 14 and 90 days in patients who received IV iron (MRSA bacteremia, 97.6% vs 95.0% and 88.6% vs 83.8%; pneumonia, 95.7% vs 91.5% and 84.7% vs 78.1%; UTI, 97.6% vs 95.7% and 89.1% vs 85.6%; colitis, 97.6% vs 95.5% and 89.7% vs 83.8%; and cellulitis, 98.5% vs 97.4% and 92.2% vs 89.2%). Hemoglobin recovery 60 to 90 days after infection was significantly greater (all P< .001) when IV iron was administered across all subgroups (MRSA bacteremia, +1.3 vs +1.0 g/dL; pneumonia, +1.3 vs +1.0 g/dL; UTI, +1.4 vs +1.0 g/dL; colitis, +1.5 vs +0.7 g/dL; and cellulitis, +1.4 vs +0.9 g/dL). The findings observed for each infection type studied suggest that IV iron administration during acute infection does not exacerbate infection and is associated with improved survival and enhanced recovery from anemia in hospitalized patients. Prospective studies are needed to confirm these findings and expand their applicability.

Optimized nuclei isolation and snRNA-seq reveal oligodendrocyte pathway dysregulation in MOGHE brain tissue from pediatric patients

HIV-1 genetic diversity and reverse transcriptase resistance mutations in Benin before dolutegravir era, West Africa

Benin adopted the World Health Organization’s (WHO) “Test and Treat” recommendation in 2016 and, since 2019, has updated this protocol by including dolutegravir (DTG) as the preferred first-line treatment. Study aimed to assess the prevalence of virological failure (VL > 3log copies/mL) and review genetic diversity and antiretroviral resistance mutations in patients on antiretroviral treatment for at least 12 months before dolutegravir Era in Benin. Cross-sectional study included patient plasmas from antiretroviral treatment sites nationwide. Viral load was performed in National Reference Laboratory of Health Program Fighting Against AIDS using the Cobas® 5800 HIV-1 assay. For plasmas those VL above 1000 copies/mL, nested PCR were done along the entire protease and part of reverse transcriptase. The DNA obtained by the Sanger method was used to determine the subtypes of HIV-1 after editing with DNASTAR SeqMan Pro™ and alignment with ClustalW2 version 2.1. Phylogenetic trees were constructed by the Neighbor-Joining method and recombinants were investigated by bootscanning with Seaview software version 2.1. DNA was subjected to the Stanford University Antiretroviral Resistance Mutation Interpretation Algorithm ( https://hivdb.stanford.edu/ ) to identify the positions of drug-associated resistance mutations. (178/253; 70.35%) of the samples were correctly amplified and sequenced. CRF02_AG (n = 104) was the predominant strain observed followed by CRF06_cpx (n = 21), G (n = 5), CRF43_02G (n = 2), CRF37_cpx (n = 2), A1 (n = 1) and unique recombinant forms (URFs) (n = 34) among the 169 samples sequenced on entire protease combined with part of the reverse transcriptase. (164/178; 92.1%), (141/178; 79.2%), (160/178; 89.9%) and (7/169; 4.1%) patients carried at least one drug resistance associated to NRTIs, NNRTIs and PIs respectively. M184I/V, TAMSI: (M41L, L210W, T215Y) and TAMSII: (D67N, K70R, K219Q/E, T215I/V) represented (71.3%), (21.9%), (35.4%) respectively. K103N/S was the most preponderant mutations encountered with a proportion of 64.6% followed by V179E (21.3%), P225H (20.2%), V108I (19.1%), Y181C (16.3%), A98G (15.2%), V106I/M/A (10.1%). I84V (1.8%) mutation was the major associated PIs encountered followed by L90M, V82A, M46I each encountered twice (1.2%) and I47A, V32I, I54V, G48A, each encountered once (0.6%). Study shows a high genetic diversity with the presence of new strains and underlines the need to regularly review data on genetic diversity and resistance among patients receiving antiretroviral therapy in the country.

No need to wait: treat iron deficiency in the hospital

Lack of association between ADRB2 (Gln27Glu) variant with susceptibility, severity and salbutamol response in South Indian asthmatics

Evaluation of the effect of refined management of prospective prescription review rules for antimicrobial agents in an outpatient setting of a county-level hospital in China

Objective To explore the impact of implementing a refined management system for prospective prescription review and to provide evidence for improving the rational use of antibiotics in county-level hospitals. Methods Using the prospective prescription review system at Affiliated Yangming Hospital of Ningbo University, China, we performed a refined management of the review rules targeting major issues identified in outpatient antibiotic prescriptions. A comparative analysis was conducted to evaluate the rationality of prescriptions before and after the implementation of this refined management. Results Comparison of prescription data before and after the refined management showed that the rate of irrational outpatient antibiotic prescriptions decreased from 20.46% to 7.80%. Specifically, the proportion of prescriptions with inappropriate indications decreased from 2.65% to 0.67%. The rate of prescriptions with an inappropriate frequency of administration or unsuitable solvent decreased from 4.63% to 0.79%. Prescriptions with an inappropriate dosage or route decreased from 8.14% to 2.09%. Irrational prescriptions for special populations decreased from 1.36% to 1.21%, and those involving potential drug-drug interactions decreased from 3.68% to 3.03%. Conclusion The refined management of prospective antibiotic prescription review rules in the outpatient department of this county-level hospital significantly reduced the rate of irrational prescriptions. This strategy is worthy of promotion and application in other similar hospitals.

Multiomic study of cutaneous T-cell lymphoma reveals single-cell clonal evolution in progression and therapy resistance

Abstract Cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (CTCL) remains a challenging disease due to its significant heterogeneity, therapy resistance, and relentless progression. Multiomics technologies offer the potential to provide uniquely precise views of disease progression and response to therapy. Here, we present a comprehensive multiomics view of CTCL clonal evolution, incorporating exome, whole-genome, epigenome, bulk, single-cell T-cell receptor, and single-cell RNA sequencing of 99 clinically annotated serial skin, peripheral blood, and lymph node samples from 34 patients with CTCL. We leveraged this extensive data set to define the molecular underpinnings of CTCL progression in individual patients at single-cell resolution with the goal of identifying clinically useful biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Our studies identified recurrent progression-associated clonal genomic alterations; we highlight mutation of CCR4, phosphoinositide 3-kinase inhibitor signaling, and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) checkpoint pathways as evasion tactics deployed by malignant T cells. We identified a gain-of-function mutation in STAT3 (D661Y) and demonstrated, using cleavage under targets and release using nuclease (CUT&RUN) and RNA sequencing, that it enhances binding to and transcription of genes in Rho GTPase pathways. With our previous work implicating this pathway in histone deacetylase inhibitor–resistant CTCL, these data provide further support for a previously unrecognized role for Rho GTPase pathway dysregulation in CTCL progression. Recurrent progression-associated mutations were common in the epigenetic modifier EZH2, suggesting that EZH2 inhibition may benefit patients with CTCL. Our findings support an approach in which genomic analysis is widely used for improved disease monitoring, biomarker-informed clinical trial design, and genome-guided therapeutic decision-making. Moreover, these molecular changes present new opportunities for therapeutic targeting in this challenging and incurable cancer.

Developing aluminum molecular plating for neutron-induced reaction target fabrication

Learning semantic similarity from sentence pairs using hybrid features centric approach and explainable siamese neural networks

Semantic embeddings play an important role in modern natural language processing because they help models understand meaning beyond individual words. Accurate text similarity is essential for many applications such as search, automated scoring, summarization, and question answering. However, existing methods based on Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) or simple lexical overlap often fail when sentences differ in length, structure, or word choice. These methods are less in performance, especially when working with short or medium-length sentences where meaning is expressed in different ways. This study explores sentence-level similarity using a Siamese BiLSTM model that learns deep semantic patterns and relationships between two sentences. The model captures contextual meaning, word interactions, and paraphrastic variations more effectively than traditional approaches. Experimental results show that the proposed model achieves the highest performance among machine-learning regressors, with lower errors and improved stability. Compared to TF-IDF, cosine similarity, and feature-based regressors, the Siamese model provides more accurate judgments of semantic closeness with RMSE of 0.16 and MAE of 0.107. Feature-level analysis using TF-IDF, Jaccard similarity, and embedding distances further supports these findings. Explainable AI techniques (SHAP, LIME) confirm model transparency by highlighting meaningful semantic cues and distributing attention across important linguistic features.

Defective cerebrovascular development in mice lacking TFPI is restored by activated protein C

Abstract Mice lacking tissue factor pathway inhibitor (Tfpi−/−) succumb to embryonic lethality from excess thrombin production and associated cerebrovascular defects called glomeruloid bodies. A transgene-producing hyperactivatable mouse protein C (hMPC) was bred into Tfpi+/− mice to determine whether excess activated PC would correct the cerebrovascular defects in Tfpi−/− embryos. Tfpi−/−/hMPC+ embryos survived to adulthood. Despite the rescue of embryonic lethality, hMPC reduced glomeruloid body numbers by only 36% and did not prevent fibrin deposition or disruption of the blood-brain barrier within glomeruloid bodies. However, decreased hypoxia and cellular death in Tfpi−/−/hMPC+ brains suggest that cytoprotective effects of hMPC contributed to Tfpi−/− rescue. The glomeruloid bodies were completely resolved in Tfpi−/−/hMPC+ postnatal day 10 pups revealing a distinct temporal effect of TFPI on embryonic cerebrovascular development. Bulk RNA sequencing of embryonic day 15.5 brain tissue identified increased angiogenesis as the overwhelming biological process altered in Tfpi−/− brain. This included changes in genes encoding apelin, adrenomedulin, and UNC5b, which was consistent with abundant endothelial tip cells within glomeruloid bodies. The increased expression of these angiogenic genes was reversed by the hMPC transgene. These findings define TFPI as an essential inhibitor of thrombin generation during embryonic angiogenesis that acts temporally within or around developing cerebral vasculature in a manner that is not compensated for by other anticoagulant proteins. The findings emphasize the importance of blood coagulation proteases and regulation of their activity in diverse biological processes.

Detection and mitigation of abusive web traffic using convolutional neural networks

Non-targeted metabolomics reveals myocardial metabolic alterations in epileptic rats

Sudden unexpected death in epilepsy (SUDEP) is closely associated with cardiovascular dysfunction, yet its mechanisms remain unclear. Emerging evidence suggests that epilepsy-induced cardiac dysfunction may play a central role. Metabolomics provides a powerful approach to comprehensively characterize these metabolic alterations, enabling biomarker discovery and mechanistic insight into epilepsy-related cardiac injury. Here, we used UHPLC-OE-MS-based non-targeted metabolomics to systematically characterize myocardial metabolism in epileptic rats, aiming to identify epilepsy-related myocardial metabolic biomarkers, explore their biological significance, and elucidate mechanisms underlying epilepsy-induced cardiac dysfunction. In this study, we employed UHPLC-OE-MS-based non-targeted metabolomics to systematically profile myocardial metabolic changes in a pentylenetetrazol (PTZ)-induced epileptic rat model. Myocardial tissues from epileptic and control rats were analyzed using multivariate statistical methods, including principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA), to identify significantly altered metabolites. KEGG pathway enrichment analysis was performed to elucidate the biological relevance of these metabolic disturbances. Histopathological examination revealed marked neuronal disorganization and myocardial injury in epileptic rats, characterized by cardiomyocyte swelling, nuclear pyknosis, and interstitial edema. Metabolomic analysis identified 127 differential metabolites, primarily involved in amino acid metabolism, glycerophospholipid metabolism, and energy metabolism. Notably, L-glutamine, L-phenylalanine, L-alanine, and β-alanine were significantly reduced, potentially contributing to glutamate/GABA imbalance, excitotoxicity, and oxidative stress. Additionally, dysregulated glycerophospholipids (e.g., LysoPC, PC, and PE) and altered pantothenate and CoA biosynthesis indicated compromised membrane integrity and impaired energy metabolism in epileptic myocardium. ROC analysis demonstrated excellent diagnostic performance of key metabolites (AUC > 0.98), highlighting their potential as biomarkers for epilepsy-related cardiac dysfunction.

Funk CR, Wang S, Chen KZ, et al. PI3Kδ/γ inhibition promotes human CART cell epigenetic and metabolic reprogramming to enhance antitumor cytotoxicity. <i>Blood</i> . 2022;139(4):523-537.

Ultrastructural changes and defense strategy of yellow lupine during silver nanoparticle and Fusarium oxysporum interaction

Benefits and harms of copyright restrictions and conditions on burnout and other psychometric assessment scales

Introduction Copyright conditions can hinder the scientific and usage impact of essential assessment tools in healthcare, organizational psychology, and other fields. The stories of the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) are well-documented. Despite decades-old recommendations to blend copyright restrictions of intellectual property when used for commercial purposes with permissive but distinct copyright terms for non-commercial and scholarly use, few authors of assessment tools do so. Objective To assess whether restrictive copyrights limit the long-term scientific impact of copyright holders (often medical schools/faculty), by inhibiting downstream use, research, and improvement of measurement tools by other researchers. Methods We compared MEDLINE citation trends of two restrictive surveys (requiring royalty payments, prohibiting item modifications) – the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and the Mini-Mental Status Examination (MMSE) – against four free-to-use and adapt surveys. Our outcome was the annual, theme-relevant citation ratio of each survey since publication. The ratio was the number of publications featuring the scale name in the title or abstract divided by total publications addressing the original theme (purpose) of the scale. We performed paired comparisons of the most recent slopes of the annual citation ratio, pairing each restrictive scale with a permissive scale, totaling eight comparisons. Results The restrictive MBI and MMSE initially showed rising slopes of annual citation ratios, and a decline in later years with negative slopes. Further, the final slope segments for all four permissive surveys were positive, vs. negative for the restrictive surveys, the slope difference being statistically significant for six out of eight comparisons. Conclusions Restrictive copyright conditions on assessment scales risk undermining their long-term scientific and functional relevance. Previously recommended blended copyright approaches can facilitate survey creators’ revenues via commercial use royalties, while sustaining continued scholarly development and noncommercial usage to improve long-term relevance.

No TFPI? APC to the rescue!