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Crustacean methyl farnesoate–binding protein is an insect juvenile hormone–binding protein homolog that inhibits molting

Clinico-pathological and treatment characteristics of HIV and non-HIV related vulvar cancers: Analysis of a South African cohort

Objective The main objective of this study was to describe the clinical, pathological and treatment characteristics of patients with vulvar cancer who had surgery and or radiotherapy at Steve Biko Academic Hospital. The absolute and relative disease burden, trends over the time period were also analyzed. Materials and methods This was a retrospective study that described women with vulvar cancer who presented to the Gynaecology Oncology and Radiation Oncology departments of the hospital between January 2012 and December 2022. Their clinical, pathology and radiotherapy treatment records were reviewed for this study. Results 317 vulvar cancer cases between 2012 and 2022 were included in the analysis. The average age was 45.1±12.7. Forty percent of the participants were younger than 40 years. More than 75% of them were women living with HIV and were all on antiretroviral treatment. The average age of those who were HIV positive was 20 years lower than their HIV negative counterparts, p <0.0001. Their mean haemoglobin (Hb) at presentation was 10.7g/dL. Squamous cell carcinoma was the most common histological type in 96.5% of cases. Sixty four percent of the cases presented in advanced stage. About 48% of those who had primary radiation received curative doses. The median time to completion of radiotherapy treatment was higher among those who received primary radiotherapy as compared to those who received adjuvant treatment, 51.5 vs 46 days, p 0.039. The annual average age decreased from 56 years to as low as 40 years, a mean difference of 16 years, p 0.012. Conclusion It is striking that vulvar cancer is no longer a disease of elderly women. Its incidence is now high among women below 50 years. The study also showed an upward trend in the number of vulvar cancer cases in contrast to the declining average age at diagnosis. There is need for more vulvo-perineal surveillance of HIV positive women to detect early stage of vulvar cancers.

A smartphone application as a promising tool for large-scale collection of participant data on fertility treatment

Thermal bioclimatic transformations in the coastal regions of Ganges delta: insights from CMIP6 multi-model ensemble

Therapeutic thrombocytapheresis short-term efficacy and hematologic impact: comparing MNC procedure of COBE spectra and PLT-5d C5L procedure of COM.TEC

ZFHX3 is integral to androgen/AR signaling involving protein association with AR in prostate cancer cells

Aging-related changes of miR-23b-3p expression in extracellular vesicles from mesenchymal stromal cells affect TGFBR3 signaling

The analysis of dynamic evaluation of online shopping satisfaction based on the recurrent neural network model

Continuously high Wolbachia incidence in flea populations may result from dual-strain infections with divergent effects

Abstract The continuously high incidence of some endosymbionts in arthropods despite potential conflicts with their hosts is often explained by obligatory relationships, in which the host is fully dependent on its endosymbiont, fitness advantages conferred on hosts by facultative endosymbionts, or reproductive manipulation of hosts by endosymbionts (typically facultative). Yet continuously endosymbiont high incidence is sometimes observed without clear evidence supporting any of these mechanisms. This situation could potentially be explained by the presence of several coinfecting strains of the same endosymbiont species, each affecting the host differently such that their effects counteract one another when studied collectively. Here, we investigated Wolbachia endosymbionts of fleas, which stably persist in high loads in all females, with no indication that any of the above mechanisms explain their continuously high incidence. We sequenced fleas and identified two Wolbachia strains, designated as wSc1 and wSc2. We then correlated the strain composition in fleas with measures of their reproductive success. We found that fleas with high wSc1 and low wSc2 loads had a higher reproductive success than fleas that had high loads of both strains, low loads of both strains, or no Wolbachia, suggesting that wSc1 may provide a direct fitness advantage to their hosts. Conversely, the number of males and total offspring was negatively correlated with wSc2 levels, supporting male killing. Our research demonstrates that endosymbionts’ continuously high incidence may persist through intricate relationships in nature.

Identifying the best combination of vegetation and paving materials to improve the outdoor thermal comfort in a campus courtyard

Abstract The urban heat island effect poses significant challenges to urban residents by diminishing thermal comfort and altering outdoor behaviors in hot environments. Although improvements in green space and adjustments to paving materials can alleviate these impacts, their combined effects remain insufficiently studied. This study employed ENVI-met software to simulate nine vegetation-paving material combinations and assess their influence on the thermal environment and thermal comfort of a campus courtyard during summer. Regression analyses were conducted to explore the interactions among these strategies. Air temperature (T a ), surface temperature (T s ), relative humidity (RH) and physiological equivalent temperature (PET) were used as key indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of each scenario. Results showed that “trees + lawn” and “trees + shrubs + lawn” were most effective in reducing T a , T s and PET, while increasing RH. In contrast, the “lawn + shrubs” configuration demonstrated limited effectiveness. Among the paving materials, high-reflectivity concrete yielded the greatest reductions in T a and T s , followed by standard concrete, with asphalt being the least effective. However, high-reflective concrete also led to an increase in PET due to increased radiant heat exposure. These findings provide a valuable foundation for informing microclimate-responsive landscape strategies in campus courtyards under summer conditions.

Unique structural features define the decarboxylation activity of a CYP152 fatty acid decarboxylase from Lacicoccus alkaliphilus

Front-edge erosion impact on landslide stability: A multi-scale monitoring and numerical simulation case study

Airborne LiDAR enables large-scale landslide displacement field monitoring, yet suffers from complex error sources and lower accuracy than contact measurements. While GPS offers higher precision, it fails to capture overall slope displacement. This study proposes a multi-scale LiDAR-GPS fusion technique for bank slope deformation monitoring, applied to the Shuping landslide. A numerical model based on monitoring data reveals how front-edge erosion impacts landslide stability. The results indicate that: (1)Following the implementation of a correction algorithm that integrated GPS monitoring data with the LiDAR monitoring results, a substantial enhancement in the accuracy of the measurement results was observed. This finding suggests that the integrated airborne LiDAR-GPS-based monitoring method is reliable. (2)The front edge of the Shuping landslide displays differential erosion characteristics, with higher erosion levels observed on the east and west sides of the slope in comparison to the central region. (3)The Shuping landslide as a whole exhibits traction deformation characteristics and the decline in reservoir water level is the main controlling factor that induces landslide deformation. However, the continuous development of front-edge erosion has caused the Shuping landslide’s natural stability to decrease. The main reason is that the unloading effect caused by the erosion of the front edge soil redistributes the total stress of the landslide, which is manifested by the tensile stress concentration in the central slope of the landslide, the increase in the maximum total stress, and the increase in deformation.

Development and verification of a novel tiling PCR method for long-range HIV-1 sequencing in a diagnostic setting

Analysis of mid-infrared spectrum characteristics of sandstone with different acidification degrees based on fusion model

The temporal and spatial evolution law of seepage parameters in the filter based on the CFD-DEM coupled flow-solid approach

Atmospheric teleconnection patterns and hydrological whiplashes in the Western U.S.

All-optical convolutional neural network based on phase change materials in silicon photonics platform

Digital inequality and neighborhood divides in online social networks in Chicago

Large-area OLED substrate printing path planning method based on multi-head GAT imitation learning to solve partitioned integer programming

Abstract Inkjet printing is considered a very promising technology in the field of organic light-emitting diode (OLED) substrate manufacturing. Compared with the vapor deposition process, inkjet printing has the advantages of a simple process, high material utilization and applicability to a wide range of display manufacturing processes. However, during the inkjet manufacturing process, the resolution of the printhead (nozzle per inch, NPI) usually does not match the pixel resolution of the substrate (pixel per inch, PPI). Therefore, the travel path of the printhead module must be planned to minimize the number of print cycles required to complete the pattern. This involves a challenging multi-objective optimization process. The difficulty intensifies in large-area OLED production, where angular alignment errors in the substrate are magnified. This results in an exponential increase in pixels requiring planning, with the total pixel pit count reaching hundreds of millions. In addition, the time complexity of the planning problem grows exponentially, denoted as O(m n ), and the space complexity grows rapidly with the matrix dimension. This problem is NP-hard. This problem has a significant impact on the productivity of the manufacturing process. In this paper, a large-area substrate printing planning algorithm based on graph attention networks and integer programming (GIP-LASP) is established. GIP-LASP provides partitioning rules and parallel modeling methods specifically for substrate misalignment angles, and proposes imitation learning based on a multi-head graph attention network on a SCIP solver, which is applied to the solution of the printing planning problem. The planning method was implemented on a G4.5 half-size substrate with a resolution of 394 PPI, and the color filter (CF) layer was successfully printed.

AlphaFold distillation for inverse protein design

Abstract Inverse protein folding, the process of designing sequences that fold into a specific 3D structure, is crucial in bio-engineering and drug discovery. Traditional methods rely on experimentally resolved structures, but these cover only a small fraction of protein sequences. Forward folding models like AlphaFold offer a potential solution by accurately predicting structures from sequences. However, these models are too slow for integration into the optimization loop of inverse folding models during training. To address this, we propose using knowledge distillation on folding model confidence metrics, such as pTM or pLDDT scores, to create a faster and end-to-end differentiable distilled model. This model can then be used as a structure consistency regularizer in training the inverse folding model. Our technique is versatile and can be applied to other design tasks, such as sequence-based protein infilling. Experimental results show that our method outperforms non-regularized baselines, yielding up to 3% improvement in sequence recovery and up to 45% improvement in protein diversity while maintaining structural consistency in generated sequences.