Browse Articles

Behavioral differences between infants at and not at elevated risk for autism during a contingency paradigm

Introduction Motor impairments have been reported in infants at elevated likelihood of autism and those later diagnosed with autism. However, empirical studies comparing higher to lower likelihood infants are lacking, limiting our understanding of these motor impairments. This study aimed to determine and describe the behavioral differences between infants at higher (HLA) versus lower likelihood (LLA) of autism during a contingency learning paradigm. Methods Thirty full-term infants (6–9 months of age) at HLA and LLA (n = 15 per group) participated in a contingency learning paradigm. Movements of the infant’s right leg activated an infant-sized humanoid robot to reinforce production of right leg movements. Gaze behaviors, the number of times the infants activated the robot, and evidence supporting learning were examined and compared between groups. Results Gaze and motor behavioral data suggest no discernable group differences in terms of overall looking duration, anticipatory gazes, and number of robot activations. However, four of the infants at HLA displayed visual motor patterns that were qualitatively different. Conclusion Results from our study suggest that infants at HLA and LLA are using similar behaviors to learn a contingency learning task, but heterogeneity within the HLA group is noted and requires further study.

NatA engages in multi-factor complexes at the ribosomal polypeptide tunnel exit

Abstract N-terminal acetylation (NTA) is the most common protein modification in eukaryotes, playing a crucial role in proteostasis. Almost 40% of the human proteome is acetylated co-translationally by the NatA complex, which requires prior N-terminal methionine excision (NME). Recently, NatA was shown to form multi-enzyme complexes with MAP1/NAC or MAP2, combining the capabilities of NME and NTA into a single complex. Here, we show that NatA can also form ribosome-independent assemblies with several ribosome associated factors (RAFs). At the ribosome, NatA can form a ternary complex with the abundant pseudoenzyme Ebp1 or a second copy of NatA, which can be coordinated from a different binding site with closer access to a potential substrate. Further, we identify a conserved binding site on NatA, which can be accessed by four RAFs - Ebp1, NAC, Naa10 and HypK, allowing the formation of different multi-factor complexes at the ribosomal tunnel exit. Therefore, our data suggest that NatA constitutes an interaction hub, and contributes to the coordination of co-translational protein maturation.

A functional and robust cellular model for high-throughput screening of piezo1 modulators

Comparison of volumes of brain areas in patients with bilateral early high-tension and normal-tension glaucoma in 7 Tesla MRI

Background Glaucoma is an optic neuropathy characterized by progressive retinal ganglion cells degeneration and associated visual field defects. Although elevated intraocular pressure is a major risk factor, glaucoma can also develop in individuals with statistically normal intraocular pressure, implying alternative mechanisms such as neurotrophins deprivation and primary lateral geniculate nucleus injury. These mechanisms may suggest a neurodegenerative aspect of the disease. Methods In this study, we evaluated 15 patients with bilateral early-stage normal-tension glaucoma, 10 with bilateral early-stage high-tension glaucoma, and 15 age-matched controls. All participants underwent standard ophthalmic examinations, including visual field testing and retinal nerve fiber layer assessment. High-resolution brain imaging was performed on a 7 Tesla MRI scanner. Volumes of the lateral geniculate nucleus and additional brain structures were quantified using ITK-SNAP and FreeSurfer. Results Lateral geniculate nucleus volumes were significantly reduced in both normal-tension glaucoma and high-tension glaucoma groups compared to controls for left side, with no significant difference between normal-tension glaucoma and high-tension glaucoma. Average lateral geniculate nucleus volume was significantly lower in the normal-tension glaucoma group relative to controls, but not in high-tension glaucoma. Pearson correlation showed moderate positive associations between lateral geniculate nucleus volume and average retinal nerve fiber layer thickness when all participants were analyzed together, but no significant correlations were observed within individual groups. No significant differences in total brain volume or cortical structures (e.g., primary and secondary visual cortices) were observed among the three groups. Although certain non-visual regions, such as entorhinal cortex and fusiform gyrus, exhibited subtle alterations suggestive of early neurodegenerative processes, these differences did not reach statistical significance. Nevertheless, these findings may justify further investigation in larger cohorts to explore their potential as early indicators of neurodegeneration in glaucoma. Conclusion These findings indicate that the impact of glaucoma might not be limited to the optic nerve but could also involve alterations in central visual and non-visual pathways. The use of 7 Tesla MRI showed promise in detecting early structural changes, highlighting the importance of further developing advanced imaging techniques. This could help expand the clinical use of ultra-high-field MRI, enhancing diagnosis and understanding of glaucoma.

European forest carbon and biodiversity policies have a limited win-win potential

Coating evaluation methodology for low-temperature thermographic application

The impact of macrophage infiltration on [18F]FDG PET accuracy in identifying mediastinal and abdominal lymph node metastases: A retrospective cohort study

This study aimed to comprehensively analyze the complex interaction between the presence of macrophages and [ 18 F]FDG PET findings. This retrospective study enrolled 240 patients with histologically confirmed malignancies. Patients underwent histopathological examinations of excised lymph nodes, with CD163 staining to quantify M2 macrophage infiltration, which was used to stratify patients into high and low infiltration groups. Data collection encompassed demographic, clinical, imaging, and histological data. High infiltration group had a longer disease duration compared to the low infiltration group (p < 0.001). [ 18 F]FDG PET imaging showed that the high infiltration group had significantly higher median SUVmax values compared to the low infiltration group (p < 0.001), and a higher incidence of lymph node metastasis (p = 0.039). Sensitivity and specificity of [ 18 F]FDG PET imaging were 0.795 and 0.619 for the high infiltration group, and 0.582 and 0.785 for the low infiltration group, respectively. ROC analysis demonstrated a higher diagnostic accuracy in the high infiltration group (AUC 0.784) compared to the low infiltration group (AUC 0.737). A strong positive correlation was observed between macrophage infiltration levels and PET SUVmax values (p < 0.001), and a significant correlation was also noted between macrophage infiltration and the presence of lymph node metastasis (p = 0.003). In conclusion, increased CD163+M2 macrophage infiltration correlates with higher SUVmax values and more frequent detection of lymph node metastases. These findings suggest that macrophage infiltration may influence [ 18 F]FDG PET imaging performance, potentially contributing to variations in diagnostic accuracy.

NeoPrecis: enhancing immunotherapy response prediction through integration of qualified immunogenicity and clonality-aware neoantigen landscapes

Abstract Despite the transformative impact of cancer immunotherapy, the need for improved patient stratification remains critical due to suboptimal response rates. While neoantigens are central to anti-tumor immunity, current metrics, such as tumor mutation burden (TMB), are limited by their neglect of immunogenicity and tumor heterogeneity. Here we present NeoPrecis, a computational framework designed to improve immunotherapy response prediction by refining neoantigen characterization across MHC-I and MHC-II pathways and by integrating tumor clonality information. NeoPrecis features an interpretable T-cell-recognition model that reveals the critical influence of MHC molecules on TCR recognition beyond mere antigen presentation. Benefit HLA alleles, identified through model-driven contribution analysis, exhibit significant predictive power for patient outcomes in immune checkpoint inhibitor treatment (melanoma: p -value = 0.04; NSCLC: p -value = 0.01). NeoPrecis, via its clonality-aware neoantigen landscape feature, improves immunotherapy response prediction in tumor types with varying prevalence of neoantigens, including heterogeneous NSCLC, which retains more subclonal neoantigens due to lower immunoediting pressure. We thus propose NeoPrecis as a comprehensive evaluative framework for neoantigen assessment by incorporating both immunogenicity and tumor clonality, offering insights into the link between the collective quality of neoantigen landscapes and immunotherapy response.

Transformer-based intelligent detection model for early dental caries in panoramic radiographs

Abstract Early detection of dental caries in panoramic radiographs remains challenging due to subtle radiographic features and complex anatomical structures. This study develops a Transformer-based intelligent detection model specifically optimized for identifying early-stage carious lesions in panoramic dental images. The proposed architecture integrates enhanced multi-scale feature fusion mechanisms, spatially-aware attention optimization, and improved two-dimensional positional encoding to capture global contextual relationships while maintaining fine-grained feature discrimination. A comprehensive dataset comprising 3,856 panoramic radiographs with 12,847 annotated carious lesions across severity grades (D1-D4) was constructed for model development and validation. The model achieved 87.3% mean average precision (mAP) across all caries stages, with notable sensitivity of 81.3% for D1 lesions and 84.7% for D2 lesions, surpassing conventional CNN-based approaches and average dentist performance. The system processes images in real-time (70 milliseconds per radiograph). This research demonstrates the efficacy of domain-adapted Transformer architectures for early dental caries detection and establishes its potential utility as a decision support tool for enhancing diagnostic accuracy and screening efficiency in dental practice.

RETRACTED: Super-Resolution pedestrian re-identification method based on bidirectional generative adversarial network

In fields such as intelligent security, pedestrian re identification technology is crucial. However, in actual monitoring scenarios, low resolution images generated due to factors such as shooting distance seriously lead to loss of details and decreased recognition performance. To overcome the technical bottleneck of excessive sharpening and artifacts in traditional super-resolution methods for reconstructing pedestrian images, a super-resolution pedestrian re recognition method based on bidirectional generative adversarial networks is proposed. The core innovation of this method lies in the construction of a bidirectional adversarial network architecture that integrates forward super-resolution reconstruction and backward downsampling simulation. By introducing residual residual dense blocks and optimizing the loss function based on ESRGAN, the realism and naturalness of image reconstruction are significantly improved. The experimental results showed that the proposed method (BSRGAN ReiD) achieved leading performance on multiple public datasets: on the Urban100 dataset, its PSNR reached 34.23 and SSIM reached 0.78; The average precision (mAP) on the DukeMTMC reID and CUHK03 datasets reached 91.4% and 82.7%, respectively. In simulated monitoring scenario testing, the research method achieved a correct recognition rate of 90.2%, with both false positive and false negative rates below 7%. At the same time, it demonstrated lower computational resource consumption and faster response speed. The main contribution of the research is to provide an efficient and robust solution for solving the problem of low resolution pedestrian re identification, which has strong theoretical value and practical application potential.

Managing electrolyte flow boosts the efficiency of continuous oxime electrosynthesis to over 95%

Quantifying carbon stock and tree community composition in tropical forests through combining satellite and UAV analyses

Abstract Monitoring tropical ecosystem services such as carbon stock and biodiversity with satellite remote sensing is essential for addressing climate change and biodiversity loss, but collecting ground truth data is costly. We investigated whether Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) can reduce the costs. First, we developed a method to estimate Above-Ground Carbon (AGC) and biodiversity index (mixing ratio of pioneer and late-successional species) based on data derived from UAV-RGB images in four Forest Management Units (FMUs) in Malaysia. Second, we tested whether adding UAV-based ground truth (i.e., estimated carbon and biodiversity index) improves satellite-based models. We built machine learning models to estimate AGC and biodiversity index based on Landsat metrics and inventory data across Malaysia and Indonesia (395 plots). Accuracy was low without local inventory data (287 plots outside the four FMUs; R 2  = 0.43 and 0.46 for AGC and biodiversity, respectively). Adding UAV-based data ( n  = 934) significantly increased the accuracy ( R 2  = 0.51 and 0.48), which was comparable to the model with the full dataset including local inventory data ( R 2  = 0.53 and 0.60). These results underscore that integrating UAV and satellite analyses facilitates the monitoring of ecosystem services in tropical forests by reducing costs while maintaining accuracy.

Do sheep-grazed pastures support insectivorous bat activity and bat species richness?

Arable agriculture is usually associated with monoculture and the usage of pesticides, which jeopardize biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Grazing livestock can potentially benefit bats, however, most studies evaluate cattle, and it is unclear whether the results apply to grazing sheep. We assessed the effects of grazing sheep on insectivorous bat activity and species richness in southern Burgenland, Austria. We conducted acoustic surveys during the summer of 2019 on 49 pastures, which were in each case temporally divided into three categories (pre-grazed, grazed, and post-grazed). During the surveys, 20 of Burgenland’s 24 different bat species were detected. The most prevalent species was Pipistrellus pygmaeus . Small aerial insectivores showed significantly higher activity in grazed and post-grazed pastures compared to pre-grazed pastures, with no difference between grazed and post-grazed conditions. Frequent species (those occurring at ≥30% of sampled pastures) were more active in grazed than pre-grazed pastures but showed similar activity between pre-grazed and post-grazed pastures. At the species level, Nyctalus noctula activity was significantly higher in post-grazed compared to pre-grazed pastures. Overall bat activity, infrequent species activity, and species richness did not differ among grazing phases. Our results capture immediate responses during grazing and brief post-grazing resource pulses within days. Thus, comparisons with cattle should be cautious, as many cattle studies span weeks to months on larger, higher-biomass pastures. Apparent differences likely reflect timeframe, pasture size, stocking rate, and dung processes as much as livestock type, highlighting the need to consider livestock and management context when assessing bat responses and designing conservation-oriented grazing strategies.

Epigenome-wide analysis identifies DNA methylation mediators of treatment-related cardiometabolic risk in survivors of childhood cancer

Baseline characteristics associated with mortality among children living with HIV initiating ART at a rural district HIV clinic of Mozambique

High-throughput single-fly LC–MS/MS for quantitative profiling of biogenic amines in Drosophila

We present an LC–MS/MS method that enables reproducible, quantitative detection of multiple biogenic amines—including octopamine, dopamine, serotonin, and their precursors—from single Drosophila individuals. The workflow involves only a minimal extraction in methanol prior to direct injection, eliminating the need for derivatization or laborious purification steps. Its simplicity ensures high reproducibility and broad applicability across experimental settings. Pilot applications revealed distinct neurochemical responses across biologically relevant conditions: a circadian rise in octopamine at dusk, acute increases in octopamine, dopamine, and serotonin under cold stress, and elevations of octopamine, serotonin, and tryptophan during starvation. These findings highlight the utility of single-head LC–MS/MS for dissecting neuromodulator dynamics at the level of individual organisms.

Plant fucosyltransferase FUT11 distorts the sugar acceptor to catalyze via a transient oxocarbenium intermediate mechanism

ABCC6 pathogenic variants are associated with hemorrhagic phenotypes in Japanese patients with severe cerebral small vessel disease

Pharmacological evaluation of mangrove plant Rhizophora mucronata (Lam.) grown in the coastal area of Sundarbans

Rhizophora mucronata , a mangrove species native to coastal region of Bangladesh, has been drawn significant interests due to its potential ecological and therapeutic values, particularly as antioxidants, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. The current investigation was aimed to identify the bioactive compounds from the different fractions of Rhizophora mucronata and to determine their antioxidants, analgesic, antidiabetic, antimicrobial along with in-vitro and in-vivo anticancer properties. Total three known compounds namely N -trans-para-caffeoyl-tyramine (1) , β-sitosterol (2) and rutin (3) were isolated from the ethyl acetate fractions (ERM) and their structures were elucidated by analyzing 1 H-NMR spectral data. Dichloromethane (DRM) and ethyl acetate (ERM) fractions showed significant free radical scavenging properties (IC 50 value 12.18 and 11.7 μg/mL, respectively) compared to the standard ascorbic acid (6.36 μg/mL) in DPPH free radical scavenging assay. All three fractions exhibited notable analgesic effect in mice compared to standard drug diclofenac sodium in acetic acid induced writhing method. DRM and ERM fractions revealed significant glucose lowering effects compared to standard glibenclamide in streptozotocin induce diabetic mice model. Besides, all the fractions showed remarkable antibacterial effects (zone of inhibition 11.1–17.3 mm) against all selected Gram-positive but showed moderate activity against the Gram-negative bacteria. In-vitro cytotoxicity test of DRM and ERM fractions exhibited cytotoxic effect (IC 50 value 88.94 µg/ml and 127.6 µg/ml, respectively) against HeLa cell. The in-vivo cell growth inhibition of the three fractions on EAC (Ehrlich ascites carcinoma) cell demonstrated that ERM fraction furnished maximum cell growth inhibition (54.61%) compared to 84.83% inhibition by bleomycin. From the above findings, it is evident that ethyl acetate fractions of R. mucronata , can be exploited for future drug development and traditional medicinal applications.

In vivo CRISPR screening identifies SAGA complex members as key regulators of hematopoiesis

Abstract The biological mechanisms that sustain the vast blood production required for healthy life remain incompletely understood. To search for cell intrinsic regulators of hematopoiesis, we perform a genome-wide in vivo hematopoietic stem and progenitor cell (HSPC)-based CRISPR knockout screen. We discover SAGA complex members, including Tada2b and Taf5l , as key regulators of hematopoiesis. Loss of Tada2b or Taf5l strongly inhibits hematopoiesis in vivo, causing a buildup of immature hematopoietic cells in the bone marrow. The SAGA complex deposits histone H3 lysine 9 acetylation (H3K9ac) and removes histone H2B ubiquitination (H2Bub). Loss of Tada2b leads to a reduction in H3K9ac levels and altered H2Bub enrichment in HSPCs, implicating disruption of SAGA complex activity. This is associated with upregulation of interferon pathway genes, reduced mitochondrial activity, and increased megakaryocyte progenitor cell commitment. Loss of these factors also enhances the cell outgrowth and the interferon pathway in an in vivo human myelodysplastic syndrome cell line model. In summary, this study identifies the SAGA complex as an important regulator of hematopoiesis.