Browse Articles

Phytochemical and biological characterization of extracted natural colors from fruits of monotheca buxifolia

Evaluation of health effect on workers exposed to methyl bromide with prefrontal event-related potential

Methyl bromide (MB) is a potent fumigant used to control pests in soil and agricultural products. As an ozone-depleting substance, MB has been largely replaced by safer alternatives. MB is highly toxic to humans and has been shown to adversely affect asymptomatic workers’ central and autonomic nervous systems and vascular health. However, its impact on perceptual and cognitive abilities remains underexplored. In this study, we examined the effects of MB exposure on cognitive functions in asymptomatic workers. Event-related potential (ERP) indices, which reflect perceptual and cognitive processes, and urinary bromide ion (Br-) concentrations were assessed in 32 fumigators (study group) and 18 inspectors (control group) before and after fumigation. Post-work ERP latency and amplitude changes in inspectors were significant (P < 0.01), similar to those observed in healthy individuals. In contrast, ERP changes in fumigators were not significant compared to pre-work values; this suggests that MB negatively impacts cognitive health. Additionally, Br‑ levels in fumigators rose sharply after work (P < 0.001), while inspectors showed no such increase. The elevated Br- levels and nonenhanced ERP indices in fumigators after MB exposure indicate adverse health effects despite the absence of symptoms.

Lycium barbarum glycopeptide mitigates retinal ischemia-reperfusion injury through its anti-inflammatory, anti- senescence, and anti-apoptosis properties

Association between lifestyle-related factors and low back pain: Evidence from a Japanese population–based study

Low back pain (LBP) is a major public health issue, and lifestyle-related factors (LRFs) are increasingly recognized as key contributors to LBP. However, comprehensive studies using recent data concerning the association between LBP and LRFs remain limited. In this study, a nationally representative sample of Japanese adults were surveyed to evaluate the relationship between LRFs and LBP and to explore how these factors relate to both the severity and chronicity of LBP. A cross-sectional nationwide survey was conducted among 5000 randomly selected Japanese adults aged 20–90 years; valid responses were obtained from 2188. Participants were analyzed using three different methods: (1) those with or without current LBP, (2) those with no/mild or moderate/severe pain, and (3) those with or without chronic LBP. Key LRFs included body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking, exercise habits, comorbidities (dyslipidemia, diabetes, and hypertension), and self-image regarding body shape. Multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that current LBP was significantly associated with body mass index (odds ratio [OR]=1.04, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.00–1.07), alcohol consumption (OR=1.37, 95% CI: 1.04–1.80), smoking (OR=1.63, 95% CI: 1.21–2.20), and dyslipidemia (OR=1.51, 95% CI: 1.06–2.13), and the severity of LBP was associated with smoking (OR=1.77, 95% CI: 1.19–2.64), lack of exercise (OR=1.55, 95% CI: 1.10–2.15), and dyslipidemia (OR=1.64, 95% CI: 1.06–2.55). In addition, smoking was the only LRF significantly associated with chronic LBP (OR=1.70, 95% CI: 1.23–2.34). Multiple LRFs are associated with the prevalence of LBP. Stratified analysis provided deeper insight into specific risk factors for LBP. In particular, dyslipidemia is linked to pain severity, whereas smoking is associated with both severity and chronicity. Future longitudinal studies should focus on the influence of these key LRFs on onset, severity, and chronicity of LBP.

Brain functional connectivity characteristics at various levels of inhibitory function in elderly individuals with cognitive impairment

Field study on routine procedures for navel care in neonatal calves on dairy farms in Eastern Germany

Clean conditions and prophylactic measures around calving are essential for the health and welfare of calves. Therefore, the objective of this study was to evaluate the association of different navel care (NC) practices on the occurrence of omphalitis in neonatal dairy calves. Between December 2016 and July 2019, 196 dairy farms in Eastern Germany were visited once within a large-scale cross-sectional study. 1,967 calves aged five to 21 days were clinically examined, including palpation of the external umbilicus for inflammation signs. Furthermore, information on animal health and farm management, including the implementation of NC, was obtained through interviews with the farm or herd manager. Causal diagrams were drawn, containing variables considering NC (practice of NC, method of application, preparation applied, frequency of NC, time of first NC, wearing gloves during NC) as influence variables, omphalitis as target variable, and all potential confounders to perform multivariable statistical analyses at animal level. Over one-fourth of all calves examined showed omphalitis signs (n = 525 calves, 26.7%). The odds of omphalitis tended to increase (OR = 2.3) if no NC was performed compared to regular NC. Almost half of all other variables analysed seemed relevant for the occurrence of omphalitis. Administering the preparation into the umbilical cord reduced the odds of omphalitis by 62% compared to no NC. Repeated applications tended to decrease the odds of omphalitis by 44% compared to single applications. Furthermore, wearing gloves during NC tended to increase the odds of omphalitis by 30% compared to not wearing gloves. Neither the preparation applied, the method of application, nor the timing of NC had an impact on the omphalitis occurrence. Considering these results, different NC practices influence the odds of omphalitis in neonatal dairy calves. Nevertheless, further investigations are necessary regarding the application procedure of NC during the daily farm routine.

Accurate recognition of UAVs on multi-scenario perception with YOLOv9-CAG

Investigating the impact of social media images on users’ sentiments towards sociopolitical events based on deep artificial intelligence

This paper presents the findings of the research aimed at investigating the influence of visual content, posted on social media in shaping users’ sentiments towards specific sociopolitical events. The study analyzed various sociopolitical topics by examining posts containing relevant hashtags and keywords, along with their associated images and comments. Using advanced machine learning and deep learning methods for sentiment analysis, textual data were classified to determine the expressed sentiments. Additionally, the correlation between posted visual content and user sentiments has been studied. A particular emphasis was placed on understanding how these visuals impact users’ attitudes toward the events. The research resulted in a comprehensive dataset comprising labeled images and their comments, offering valuable insights into the dynamics of public opinion formation through social media. This study investigates the influence of social media images on user sentiment toward sociopolitical events using deep learning-based sentiment analysis. By analyzing posts from movements such as Black Lives Matter, Women’s March, Climate Change Protests, and Anti-war Demonstrations, we identified a strong correlation between visual content and public sentiment. Our results reveal that Anti-war Demonstrations exhibit the highest correlation (PLCC: 0.709, SROCC: 0.723), while Climate Change Protests display the lowest alignment (PLCC: 0.531, SROCC: 0.611). Overall, the study finds a consistent positive correlation (PLCC range: 0.615–0.709, SROCC: 0.611–0.723) across movements, indicating the significant role of visual content in shaping the public opinion.

Refined prognostication of pathological complete response in breast cancer using radiomic features and optimized InceptionV3 with DCE-MRI

Positioning of Chinese time nouns and adverbs: Evidence from corpus, acceptability, and processing studies

This study examines the syntactic placement and cognitive processing of time nouns and time adverbs in Mandarin Chinese, a language without overt tense morphology, highlighting how these temporal expressions interface with Chinese grammar. Study 1 analyzed a large-scale natural language corpus (BLCU Chinese Corpus) to determine the typical positions of time nouns and time adverbs relative to the subject. The results revealed distinct distributional patterns: time nouns occurred flexibly either before or after the subject, while time adverbs appeared predominantly in post-subject (sentence-internal) positions. Study 2 investigated native Mandarin speakers’ acceptability judgments of sentences with time expressions in various positions. Sentences in which time nouns followed the subject were rated as more acceptable and supported the canonical word order, whereas pre-subject time nouns were acceptable mainly in topicalized contexts. In contrast, time adverbs were strongly preferred in post-subject positions, with only a few exceptions where certain adverbs could be fronted. Study 3 examined the real-time comprehension of these structures using reaction time and accuracy. Results showed that sentences with time expressions in non-canonical positions incurred greater processing costs, while canonical post-subject placements facilitated faster and more accurate processing. These findings suggest that the human sentence processor is sensitive to structural preferences for temporal expressions, mirroring patterns in natural use and grammatical acceptability. By integrating corpus analysis, acceptability judgments, and psycholinguistic data, this study provides a comprehensive account of how time nouns and time adverbs are positioned and processed in Chinese, offering broader implications for understanding temporal reference in tenseless languages.

Sodium formate-induced mitochondrial impairment and cytotoxicity in neuronal cells reveal crucial pathogenic mechanisms underlying diabetic neuropathy and retinopathy

Expression of Concern: Servant leadership and employee prosocial rule-breaking: The underlying effects of psychological safety and compassion at work

Structurally Dynamic Polyplexes Enhance Sentinel Lymph Node Delivery of Antisense Oligonucleotides to Inhibit Breast Cancer Recurrence and Metastasis

Assessment of a diffusion phantom for quality assurance in brain microstructure diffusion MRI studies

Abstract Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) is a key contrast mechanism in MRI which allows for the assessment of microstructural properties of brain tissues by measuring the displacement of water molecules. Several diffusion models, including the tensor (DTI), kurtosis (DKI), and neurite orientation dispersion and density imaging (NODDI), are commonly used in both research and clinical practice. However, there is currently no standardized method for validating the stability and repeatability of these models over time. This study evaluates the use of a DTI phantom as a standard reference for diffusion MRI model validation. The phantom, along with four healthy volunteers, was scanned repeatedly on different days to assess repeatability and stability. The acquired data were fitted to the diffusion models, with repeatability assessed in the phantom using the coefficient of variation (CoV), while stability in vivo was assessed using the repeatability coefficient (RC). The phantom was consecutively scanned eight times to investigate the impact of gradient coil heating on measurement consistency. Results showed that the phantom provided a highly reproducible reference, with CoVs below 5% across repeated and consecutive acquisitions, confirming the robustness of the diffusion models. In vivo, the low RCs indicated that the models remained stable over time, despite potential physiological variability. This study highlights the essential role of phantoms in diffusion MRI research, providing a reference framework for model validation. Future research will expand on this work to a multi-center study to assess inter-scanner variability, potentially incorporating the phantom into calibration protocols to standardize diffusion MRI measurements across different MRI systems.

STGATN: A novel spatiotemporal graph attention network for predicting pollutant concentrations at multiple stations

Accurately predicting air pollutant concentrations can reduce health risks and provide crucial references for environmental governance. In pollution prediction tasks, three key factors are essential: (1) dynamic dependencies among global monitoring stations should be considered in spatial feature extraction due to the diffusion properties of air pollutants; (2) precise temporal correlation modeling is critical because pollutant concentrations change dynamically and periodically; (3) it is vital to avoid propagation of long-term prediction errors across spatiotemporal dimensions. To address these challenges, we propose STGATN, a novel spatiotemporal graph attention network with an encoder-decoder architecture. Both the encoder and decoder incorporate a spatiotemporal embedding mechanism, a spatiotemporal graph attention block, a gated temporal convolutional network, and a fusion gate. Specifically, the spatiotemporal graph attention module is designed to use temporal and graph attention networks to extract dynamic spatiotemporal correlations. The gated temporal convolutional network is constructed to capture the long-term temporal causal relationships. The fusion gate adaptively fuses the spatiotemporal correlations and temporal causal relationships. In addition, a spatiotemporal embedding mechanism, including positional and temporal information, is added to account for pollutants’ periodicity and station-specific properties. Moreover, this paper proposes a transformer attention that establishes direct dependencies between future and historical time steps to avoid prediction error accumulation in the dynamic decoding process. The experimental results show that the proposed prediction model significantly outperforms the latest baseline methods on the air pollution dataset from actual monitoring stations in Beijing City.

Proteomics analysis reveals FEN1 as a promising therapeutic target against small cell neuroendocrine carcinoma of the cervix

Whole exome sequencing reveals pathogenic variants in CNGA3, CACNA1F, and RPGRIP1 in consanguineous Pakistani families with diverse retinal phenotypes

This study investigates the genetic basis of retinal diseases in four consanguineous families from Pakistan, focusing on mutations in the CNGA3, CACNA1F, and RPGRIP1 genes that are implicated in retinal dysfunctions such as achromatopsia, congenital stationary night blindness, and retinal dystrophies. We identified pathogenic variants in these genes, including the novel missense mutation c.955T > C; p.Cys319Arg in CNGA3 (Family 1), the frameshift mutation c.1443dupT; p.Ile482Hisfs*6 in CNGA3 (Family 2), the missense mutation c.2254G > A; p.Val752Met in CACNA1F (Family 3), and the frameshift mutation c.2789dupT; p.Pro931Thrfs*3 in RPGRIP1 (Family 4). Clinical features associated with these mutations include nystagmus, photophobia, reduced visual acuity, and color vision deficiency, with some patients progressing to complete blindness. The findings were validated through Sanger sequencing, segregation analysis, and in silico prediction tools. Additionally, molecular dynamics simulations were conducted to assess the impact of the CNGA3 p.Cys319Arg mutation on protein structure, revealing significant alterations in protein conformation and dynamics. These results highlight the significance of CNGA3, CACNA1F, and RPGRIP1 in retinal health and provide valuable insights into the genetic underpinnings of retinal disorders. Our findings contribute to improved genetic counseling, potential targeted therapies, and a deeper understanding of inherited retinal diseases.

Deep learning for property prediction of natural fiber polymer composites

Electroacupuncture versus sham electroacupuncture in treating low anterior resection syndrome after rectal cancer surgery: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Purpose Low anterior resection syndrome (LARS), a frequent postoperative complication of rectal resection, has been shown to significantly impact patients’ quality of life. Electroacupuncture (EA), a non-pharmaceutical treatment, ameliorates gastrointestinal symptoms and promotes bowel movement. However, high-quality clinical evidence is lacking. This study aimed to determine whether EA can improve LARS symptoms compared with sham electroacupuncture (SA). Study design and methods This multicenter, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial will be carried out across the outpatient clinics of three tertiary medical centers in China. A total of 136 patients with LARS who meet the inclusion criteria will be randomly allocated, in equal proportions (1:1), to either the EA or SA group. Each patient will undergo treatment three times weekly during the first four weeks and twice-weekly sessions over the subsequent four weeks. After the intervention, a 24-week follow-up period will be conducted. The primary outcome is the change in the LARS score from baseline to the end of week 8. Secondary outcomes include changes in the LARS score at other time points, response rate of patients showing reduced defecation dysfunction, subjective distress related to intestinal symptoms, Wexner Diarrhea score, Bristol Bowel Diary, EORTC-QLQ-C30 Quality of Life Questionnaire, and Fecal Incontinence Quality of Life Scale. Discussion This study will provide evidence of EA from multiple perspectives, investigate its potential application in LARS after rectal cancer surgery, and guide the development of therapy tailored to meet specific individual health needs. Ethics and dissemination Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Ethics Committee of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine (No. 2024BZYLL0402). All participants enrolled in the trial will provide written informed consent prior to randomization. Results will be prepared for submission to a peer-reviewed academic journal. Trial registration ITMCTR2024000195. International Traditional Medicine Clinical Trial Registry (http://itmctr.ccebtcm.org.cn/zh-CN/Home/ProjectView?pid=badb9af5-248b-4818-b3b6-25002f0fa0d5).

Choroidal vascularity index is independent of ocular and image-based factors in healthy eyes: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract Choroidal vascularity index (CVI) has been extensively used to assess choroidal health in posterior eye disease; however, interpretation is hindered by conflicting evidence on effect of normal physiological factors on CVI. Thus, this review aimed to derive a normative value for CVI and understand its relationship with various normal ocular/image-based factors. Studies were screened for eligibility, defined as eyes with normal ocular parameters (refractive error (RxE) < ± 6 DS, intraocular pressure (IOP < 21 mmHg) and no posterior segment disease and 98 studies were included. Pooled weighted average of subfoveal CVI extracted from healthy eyes (n = 5332 eyes) was 66.50% [CI 65.67–67.32]. Secondary stratifications (time of scan, device wavelength, imaging mode, region of interest, systemic factors) and meta regression (age, RxE and IOP) were insignificant on CVI (p = 0.579–0.872), however Best corrected visual acuity showed positive correlation (p = 0.037). Unaltered, narrow confidence interval in sensitivity analysis, complemented by non-significant publication bias indicated robustness of the synthesised data. These results provide the highest-level evidence in hierarchy of the first normative subfoveal CVI value synthesised from literature and that it is not influenced by most person, eye and imaging factors in healthy eyes.