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Extramedullary hematopoietic niches support the initiation and progression of myeloid malignancy in the murine spleen

Exploring the toxicological effects of Di-O-benzoyldiethylene glycol plasticizer on allergic rhinitis through network toxicology combined with molecular docking and molecular simulation

Fluctuations of end-to-end delays in low-latency WebRTC-based UAV-borne internet of things operating in an urban environment

Earliest direct evidence of trophic interactions between terrestrial apex predators and large herbivores

Correction: Predictors of anemia among lactating women in Ethiopia: using 2016 EDHS; application of ordinal logistic regression model

A multilevel analysis of mortality and determinants among patients with acute respiratory distress syndrome in Ethiopia

A fractional-order vaccination model to analyze the dynamics of Mpox Clade I and II with real data

Functional changes of precuneus architecture across newborns, infants, and early adolescents

Analysis of delay differential equations with dual caputo-type fractional derivatives using laplace transform methods

Smoking among adolescents in Jordan: Prevalence, associated factors, and its relation to mental health outcomes

Purpose This study aimed to explore the prevalence of various forms of smoking among adolescents in Jordan, identify associated factors, and examine their relationships with mental and psychosocial problems. Methods Data were obtained from a large-scale, nationally representative, school-based survey conducted between December 2022 and April 2023 among children and adolescents aged 8–18 years in both host and refugee populations in Jordan. A multi-stage stratified cluster sampling design was employed to ensure national representativeness. The study utilized internationally recognized and validated tools that assessed several mental and psychosocial problems. The present analysis was restricted to adolescents only. Results Among the 4,407 adolescents included in the study, the most prevalent form of tobacco use was waterpipe (shisha) at 19.2%, followed by e-cigarettes (15.1%) and cigarettes (9.8%). In multivariate analysis, smoking odds increased significantly with age. Notably, compared with 12-year-olds, adolescents aged 18 had significantly higher odds of smoking cigarettes or waterpipe (OR = 5.9, 95% CI 3.8–9.2) and using e-cigarettes (OR = 4.5, 95% CI 2.7–7.4). Adolescents whose mothers had less than a diploma had lower odds of e-cigarette use (OR = 0.8, 95% CI 0.6–0.9). Compared with adolescents in central Jordan, those in the northern region had significantly lower odds of both cigarette/waterpipe use (OR = 0.8, 95% CI 0.6–0.9) and e-cigarette use (OR = 0.7, 95% CI 0.6–0.9). Palestinian camp refugees were significantly less likely than Jordanians to smoke cigarettes or waterpipe (OR = 0.4, 95% CI 0.2–0.9) but did not differ significantly in e-cigarette use. Smoking cigarettes or waterpipe was significantly associated with higher levels of several mental and psychosocial problems symptoms, including separation anxiety, emotional and behavioral difficulties (emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, relationship problems with peers, lower sociability, general behavioral difficulties), and PTSD, along with a higher risk of problematic Internet use. Also, smoking cigarettes or waterpipe was significantly associated with poorer quality of life across all dimensions (overall, physical health, psychosocial health, emotional functioning, social functioning, and school functioning). Adolescents who reported using e-cigarettes had significantly higher conduct problems, hyperactivity symptoms, and total difficulties scores, as well as lower prosocial behavior and poorer school functioning. Conclusion Adolescent smoking in Jordan remains a pressing public health issue, with waterpipe use emerging as the most common form and increasing with age across different nationalities. Smoking, whether in the form of cigarettes, waterpipe, or e-cigarettes, was associated with increased vulnerability to a range of mental health issues and diminished health-related quality of life. Addressing this issue requires a multifaceted and evidence-based approach, including developing school-based prevention and control programs, incorporating social competence and social influence curricula, enforcing existing tobacco laws, and introducing updated regulations in response to emerging trends and evidence, particularly targeting flavored products. Furthermore, prevention and control strategies need to implement targeted interventions that address both the psychosocial roots of smoking and its consequences.

Association of Life’s Essential 8 with albuminuria in a Northern Chinese population: a cross-sectional study

Hepatitis B immunity and vaccine completion among adults at increased risk for hepatitis B infection in Zambia

Background Because of its low cost and lasting effects, hepatitis B virus (HBV) vaccination of adults in Africa could significantly contribute to viral elimination. Among at-risk adult populations there are few data to inform vaccine implementation, including on pre-existing immunity and vaccine uptake. We serologically profiled adults with specific risk factors for HBV infection in urban Zambia and evaluated their uptake of vaccine. Methods At a tertiary hospital in Lusaka, we recruited hepatitis B surface antigen-negative adult (age 18+) contacts to people with chronic HBV, health workers (HCWs), and people with HIV (PLWH). After we jointly collected blood and gave the first HBV vaccine dose (blind to the full serological profile), we called back those whose results showed insufficient surface antibodies (anti-HBs) to complete the 3-dose series at 1 and 6 months, and we reimbursed transport costs. Stratified by group, we described the proportions of participants with past vaccination, resolved infection (anti-HBc-positive regardless of anti-Hbs status), isolated core antibodies (anti-HBc-positive and anti-HBs-negative), and neither antibody. We described the correlates of resolved infection. We described completion of the vaccine series in anti-HBs-negatives. In those with isolated core antibodies, we explored the incidence of an anamnestic response based on post-first-dose anti-HBs > 10 IU/ml and>= 1-log increase from baseline. Results 616 adults (median age, 32.2 years, IQR [26.7–43.8]; 61.2% women) enrolled, including 333 contacts, 213 HCWs, and 70 PLWH. Half had neither antibody, including 68.5% of health workers. Prior vaccination was seen in 8.3% overall, including 11.3% of HCWs. Resolved infection was present for 39.3% and was more prevalent with increased age and among contacts. Isolated core was present in 59 (9.6% overall and 24.7% of those with resolved infection) participants. Among the 383 participants eligible for vaccination, 377 (98.4%) received 1 dose, 190 (49.6%) received 2 doses, and 54 (14.1%) completed the series. Among 18 individuals with isolated core antibodies, none had detectable HBV DNA, and 9 (50%) had an anamnestic response. Discussion Most adults at risk for HBV in Lusaka, Zambia, had inadequate immunity, which could undermine HBV elimination. High resolved infection rate in contacts supports the role of index testing in HBV case finding. Low vaccine completion, despite vaccine access and addressing transportation costs, was striking and underscores the need for integrated behavioral science approaches to improve implementation of this potentially cost-effective intervention. Low rates of anamnestic response in people with anti-HBc-positivity should be further studied in Africa.

Dogs (Canis familiaris) distinguish conspecific emotional chemosignals

Abstract Emotional communication facilitates social interactions among animals. While dogs can discriminate and exhibit context-appropriate behaviors in response to odor samples from stressed and non-stressed humans, their capacity to differentiate emotional odors from conspecifics—and the broader function of these cues in intraspecific communication—has not been investigated. Using a habituation-discrimination paradigm, 43 dogs were presented with odor samples from an unfamiliar dog collected after events marked as joyful, stressful, and baseline (relaxing). Subjects showed longer investigation time for novel versus repeated odors, indicating successful discrimination and dishabituation. Specifically, subjects distinguished between joy and baseline odors and between joy and stress odors. Additionally, dogs exhibited distinct behavioral responses depending on the emotional content of the odor, including differences in stress- and joy-related behaviors, proximity to targets (owner, stranger, and odor source), and body posture. Exposure to stress odors elicited the predicted attachment-related behaviors—characterized by increased proximity to their owners and reduced proximity to strangers—suggesting a response to conspecific emotional states that may reflect emotional contagion. These results demonstrate that dogs can perceive and behaviorally respond to emotional odors from conspecifics, underscoring the role of olfaction in canine intraspecific emotional communication.

Effect of formic acid treatment on Apis mellifera foraging behavior using nanopore metabarcoding technologies

The Western honeybee ( Apis mellifera ) is a crucial contributor to worldwide agriculture and ecological health but is experiencing wide population declines linked to Varroa mite infection. Formic Acid (FA) has been increasingly used to control for Varroa , yet its effects on A. mellifera hives, particularly their foraging preferences, remain unclear. In this study, we used a combination of pollen DNA metabarcoding with real-time nanopore sequencing to assess how FA treatment influences A. mellifera foraging preferences. DNA sequencing was performed on pollen samples from six University of Utah campus honeybee hives (n = 6) separated into FA and control treatments. Samples were collected before, during, and after FA application. We amplified trnL, a chloroplast DNA region useful for plant identification using portable sequencers from Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT). We detected a significant difference in foraging composition between FA-treated and placebo-treated hives at the end of the experiment. Control hives foraged from a more diverse array of plant genera. We also found individual hives to have unique foraging preferences independent of treatment. These findings suggest that FA treatment is associated with detectable differences in A. mellifera foraging behavior. The magnitude of FA impact, however, on hive foraging repertoire remains unclear. Pollen DNA metabarcoding with nanopore technology is an effective method for analyzing bee foraging patterns and holds significant potential for advancing ecological research on pollination health.

Gaze transition entropy and automation trust in a multitasking workspace

A comparative analysis of vibrational spectra for odorant classification

The olfactory characteristics of flowers have diverse biological and industrial applications. The physicochemical properties of odorants can reveal information about the molecules responsible for a flower’s scent. In particular, the distinct molecular characteristics are revealed by vibrational spectra in the fingerprint region. In this study, we calculate the vibrational spectra of compounds from two flower families: Orchidaceae and Apocynaceae. We classified these molecules based on their vibrational spectra using a spectral clustering algorithm and analyzed the most representative vibrational modes. This method effectively clusters molecules with distinctive odors, such as garlic, decay, and sweetness, which are associated with compounds containing heteroatoms (N and S) or conjugated systems. The clustering obtained by infrared spectroscopy reflected a better classification by compound odor compared to Raman spectroscopy and vibrational density of states. Hence, some vibrational modes, particularly those associated with specific functional groups, may play a major role in odor discrimination. These findings suggest that vibrational spectra can offer odor-relevant information for olfactory categorization.

Adsorption of heavy metal ions and organic pollutants from refining wastewater by magnetically synthesized silver nanoparticles coated with graphene oxide

Bangla MedER: Multi-BERT ensemble approach for the recognition of Bangla medical entity

Medical Entity Recognition (MedER) is an essential NLP task for extracting meaningful entities from the medical corpus. Nowadays, MedER-based research outcomes can remarkably contribute to the development of automated systems in the medical sector, ultimately enhancing patient care and outcomes. While extensive research has been conducted on MedER in English, low-resource languages like Bangla remain underexplored. Our work aims to bridge this gap. For Bangla medical entity recognition, this study first examined a number of transformer models, including BERT, DistilBERT, ELECTRA, and RoBERTa. We also propose a novel Multi-BERT Ensemble approach that outperformed all baseline models with the highest accuracy of 89.58%. Notably, it provides an 11.80% accuracy improvement over the single-layer BERT model, demonstrating its effectiveness for this task. A major challenge in MedER for low-resource languages is the lack of annotated datasets. To address this issue, we developed a high-quality dataset tailored for the Bangla MedER task. The dataset was used to evaluate the effectiveness of our model through multiple performance metrics, demonstrating its robustness and applicability. Our findings highlight the potential of Multi-BERT Ensemble models in improving MedER for Bangla and set the foundation for further advancements in low-resource medical NLP.

Amivantamab–Lazertinib in <i>EGFR</i> -Mutated Advanced NSCLC

Small-nucleolar RNA host gene3 (SNHG3) and leukemia-associated non-coding IGF1R activator RNA 1 (LUNAR1) correlated with CRC patients’ clinical features: a step-toward ncRNA-precision

Abstract Notch-signaling is implicated in tumorigenesis as well as Notch-associated long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) small nucleolar RNA host gene3 (SNHG3) and leukemia-associated non-coding IGF1R activator RNA 1 (LUNAR1) are highly expressed in various malignant tissues including colorectal cancer (CRC). However, the clinical and prognostic utility of these lncRNAs in CRC patients’ blood is still lacking. The aim of this study was to assess the expression patterns of circulatory Notch-associated lncRNAs SNHG3 and LUNAR1 and to explore their relevance for CRC follow up and risk assessment. Subject and methods: Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to quantify the expression levels of SNHG3 and LUNAR1 in sera of 70 Egyptian CRC patients’ and to compare them with 26 age- and sex-matched apparently healthy volunteer control group. Results: Serum fold-change expression of SNHG3 and LUNAR1 were up-regulated in CRC patients compared to the apparently healthy controls ( p  &lt; 0.0001). SNHG3 lncRNA fold expression levels were positively correlated with advanced CRC stage (III-IV) ( p  = 0.0175) being highly related to poorer clinicopathological features of CRC patients including extensive tumor invasion ( p  = 0.0046), vascular invasion (p  = 0.0015), and lymph node metastasis ( p  = 0.0175). Likewise, LUNAR1 lncRNA fold-expression level was significantly positively associated with larger tumor size (p  = 0.0033) and deeper tumor invasion ( p  = 0.042). The two lncRNAs had higher discriminative utility than either CEA or CA19-9 per the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, with higher sensitivities and specificities ( p  &lt; 0.0001). A significant positive correlation between SNHG3 and LUNAR1 lncRNAs fold expressions (r = 0.4615, p  &lt; 0.0001). Conclusion: SNHG3 and LUNAR1 might be useful non-invasive bio-molecular markers for CRC monitoring. Being correlated with poorer CRC patients’ clinical features, SNHG3 and LUNAR1 lncRNAs might constitute potential putative therapeutic targets for CRC, per identified downstream genes or proteins in silico, a step toward ncRNA-based precision medicine.