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Retrofitting PMMA with a Thermal Trigger for Efficient Depolymerization

Understanding the needs of family caregivers of stroke patients with disabilities: A phenomenological study using the timing it right theory

Background Stroke is a leading cause of disability worldwide, significantly impacting patients and their families. Family caregivers, as the primary providers of care for stroke patients, face dynamic and evolving challenges throughout the patient’s recovery journey. Objective This study aims to explore the comprehensive care needs of family caregivers of stroke patients with disabilities within the Chinese cultural context. The study is guided by the “Timing It Right” (TIR) theory, a conceptual model emphasizing dynamic support aligned with caregivers’ evolving needs across distinct care phases. Methods Using a phenomenological qualitative design, this study recruited 48 family caregivers of stroke patients with disabilities from a tertiary hospital in Xiangtan City, China, from February 2024 and November 2024. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and were analyzed thematically using NVivo 12 software. This study explored caregivers’ experiences and needs across five key phases of care: diagnosis, stabilization, discharge preparation, adjustment, and adaptation. Results In this study, family caregivers of stroke patients with disabilities expressed diverse needs across different phases of the patient’s illness. (1) Diagnosis phase: hospital environment adaptation, examination navigation and disease knowledge acquisition. (2) Stabilization phase: rehabilitation skill development and caregiver well-being support. (3) Discharge preparation phase: home care readiness and health behavior guidance. (4) Adjustment phase: sequelae management and care continuity needs. (5) Adaptation phase: obtaining follow-up resources and safety management. Caregivers’ needs were influenced by cultural expectations(e.g., Chinese traditional filial piety norms requiring family-based caregiving), resource limitations, and their evolving role over time. Conclusion The findings emphasize the necessity of developing culturally sensitive interventions that are specifically tailored to meet the needs of family caregivers across distinct phases of care. Consideration should be given to integrating multidisciplinary teams, leveraging telemedicine for continuity of care, and designing caregiver education programs aligned with Confucian family values. These strategies can reduce caregiver burden and improve stroke rehabilitation outcomes in resource-limited settings.

Navigating complex decision in a new setting; perspectives of Arabic-speaking migrant men in Sweden on family planning decision making

Background Male partners’ involvement in family planning can be crucial for women’s contraceptive choices. Limited research exists on migrant men’s experiences and perceptions of family planning and associated decisions. The study aims to investigate experiences and perceptions of family planning use and decision-making among Arabic-speaking men living in Sweden. Methods This qualitative study utilized reflexive thematic analysis of eighteen in-depth interviews. The participants aged 22–43 years, had relocated to Sweden within the past decade, and represented various countries of origin (e.g., Syria, Iraq, Palestine) with most participants having 13 or more years of education. Results We identified an overarching theme, “Navigating the complex family planning decision-making in a new setting” supported by four sub-theme; 1) “The new living conditions influencing family planning decision-making” described how financial (in)stability, childcare responsibilities, personal development goals, and the impact of changing circumstances shaped family planning choices; 2) “Social norms affecting family planning decision-making” emphasized the diversity of gender roles and norms within Arabic-speaking communities, with an emphasis on joint decisions and shared responsibility. Instances of controlling behaviour and the role of beliefs and extended family members were also noted; 3) “Challenges in accessing contraceptive services free of discrimination” underscored the need for and importance of access to comprehensive information and culturally sensitive services in shaping family planning decisions; 4) “Conflicting considerations when deciding on contraceptive method” addressed factors such as familiarity with the methods, perceived effectiveness and safety, fear of side-effects, and taboos associated with the methods. Conclusions The findings highlight the diverse factors influencing family planning decisions. The study underscores men’s willingness to be active partners for family planning and highlights the need for improved information provision and services to empower informed decision-making.

Chinese medical named entity recognition based on multimodal information fusion and hybrid attention mechanism

Chinese Medical Named Entity Recognition (CMNER) seeks to identify and extract medical entities from unstructured medical texts. Existing methods often depend on single-modality representations and fail to fully exploit the complementary nature of different features. This paper presents a multimodal information fusion-based approach for medical named entity recognition, integrating a hybrid attention mechanism. A Dual-Stream Network architecture is employed to extract multimodal features at both the character and word levels, followed by deep fusion to enhance the model’s ability to recognize medical entities. The Cross-Stream Attention mechanism is introduced to facilitate information exchange between different modalities and capture cross-modal global dependencies. Multi-Head Attention is employed to further enhance feature representation and improve the model’s ability to delineate medical entity boundaries. The Conditional Random Field (CRF) layer is used for decoding, ensuring global consistency in entity predictions and thereby enhancing recognition accuracy and robustness. The proposed method achieves F1 scores of 65.26%, 80.31%, and 86.73% on the CMeEE-V2, IMCS-V2-NER, and CHIP-STS datasets, respectively, outperforming other models and demonstrating significant improvements in medical entity recognition accuracy and multiple evaluation metrics.

Tailored knowledge distillation with automated loss function learning

Knowledge Distillation (KD) is one of the most effective and widely used methods for model compression of large models. It has achieved significant success with the meticulous development of distillation losses. However, most state-of-the-art KD losses are manually crafted and task-specific, raising questions about their contribution to distillation efficacy. This paper unveils Learnable Knowledge Distillation (LKD), a novel approach that autonomously learns adaptive, performance-driven distillation losses. LKD revolutionizes KD by employing a bi-level optimization strategy and an iterative optimization that differentiably learns distillation losses aligned with the students’ validation loss. Building upon our proposed generic loss networks for logits and intermediate features, we derive a dynamic optimization strategy to adjust losses based on the student models’ changing states for enhanced performance and adaptability. Additionally, for a more robust loss, we introduce a uniform sampling of diverse previously-trained student models to train the loss with various convergence rates of predictions. With the more universally adaptable distillation framework of LKD, we conduct experiments on various datasets such as CIFAR and ImageNet, demonstrating our superior performance without the need for task-specific adjustments. For example, our LKD achieves 73.62% accuracy with the MobileNet model on ImageNet, significantly surpassing our KD baseline by 2.94%.

Optimization of monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic module assembly lines based on simulation model

This study presents a systematic approach to enhance the efficiency of monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic module assembly lines using advanced simulation modeling. The research focuses on developing a high-fidelity virtual model of the production line to replicate its physical layout, workflow sequences, and equipment interactions. Key assembly stages—including string welding, stacking, laminating, framing, and performance testing—are rigorously simulated to identify operational bottlenecks and inefficiencies. By analyzing workflow dynamics and resource utilization, targeted optimizations are proposed to streamline processes, reduce idle times, and improve throughput. Practical validation demonstrates that implementing these optimizations increases daily production output by over 6% and raises the production line balance rate by 5%, significantly lowering manufacturing costs while maintaining product quality. The methodology provides actionable insights for manufacturers to reconfigure production layouts, allocate resources effectively, and adapt to fluctuating market demands. This work bridges the gap between theoretical simulation and industrial implementation, offering a scalable framework for enhancing productivity, reducing waste, and advancing sustainable manufacturing practices in the photovoltaic sector. The findings highlight the critical role of simulation-driven strategies in addressing real-world engineering challenges and fostering cost-effective, high-efficiency production systems.

Remimazolam-etomidate versus remimazolam-propofol for gastrointestinal endoscopy: A randomized controlled trial

Objective The optimal sedation strategy for gastrointestinal endoscopy remains debated. This study compared the efficacy and safety of remimazolam combined with etomidate versus propofol for procedural sedation during gastrointestinal endoscopy. Methods This single-center, randomized controlled clinical trial was performed from March 2024 to April 2024. A total of 262 patients scheduled to undergo gastrointestinal endoscopy were randomly assigned to receive remimazolam-etomidate (RE) or remimazolam-propofol (RP). The primary outcome was the incidence of respiratory depression. Secondary outcomes included the results of sedation and recovery. The safety results mainly include the incidence of hypotension, bradycardia, tachycardia, painful injection and muscular tremor. Statistical analyses included t-tests, Mann-Whitney U tests, and χ² tests for group comparisons, with subgroup analyses and multivariable logistic regression to assess the robustness of primary outcome. Results Respiratory depression occurred in 20.0% (25/125) of RE patients versus 32.3% (40/124) of RP patients (OR=0.52; 95% CI = 0.29–0.93; p = 0.028). There was a statistically significant difference in the distribution of the number of airway interventions between the two groups (p = 0.043), with 18 patients (14.5%) in the RP group requiring three airway interventions and only seven patients (5.6%) in the RE group. Hypoxemia occurred in three patients (2.4%) in the RE group and in five patients (4.0%) in the RP group. Hypotension was observed in 23.2% of patients sedated with RE versus 36.3% of patients sedated with RP (p = 0.024). Conclusion Remimazolam-etomidate demonstrated a superior safety profile, with reduced respiratory depression and hemodynamic instability compared to remimazolam-propofol, suggesting its potential as a safer alternative for gastrointestinal endoscopy sedation. Registration information This trial was prospectively registered at the Chinese Clinical Trial Registry (ChiCTR2400085904) prior to patient enrollment.

Assembly and analysis of the complete mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes of Vigna reflexo-pilosa

Vigna reflexo-pilosa can be found in both wild and cultivated forms. It is the only tetraploid species in the genus Vigna in Fabaceae, occurring through hybridization between Vigna hirtella and Vigna trinervia, with the chromosome number of 2n = 4x = 44. V. reflexo-pilosa provides an invaluable gene pool for improving cultivated Vigna crop varieties. This study aimed to report the complete mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes of V. reflexo-pilosa. A total of 6,496,297 raw reads were generated from V. reflexo-pilosa using the long-read PacBio technology. The complete mitochondrial genome was assembled into a linear structure with a total length of 370,913 base pairs (bp) with 45.20% GC content. It contains 32 protein-coding genes, 18 transfer RNA genes, and 3 ribosomal RNA genes. A total of 520 RNA editing sites were detected in 30 protein-coding genes. The V. reflexo-pilosa mitochondrial genome shared large colinear blocks with Vigna radiata as compared to nine other mitochondrial genomes in Fabaceae. In addition, Vigna hirtella (male parent) and Vigna trinervia (female parent) were sequenced using the MGI sequencing technology. The complete chloroplast genome of V. reflexo-pilosa, V. hirtella, and V. trinervia was assembled into a circular structure with a total length of 150,967, 151,915 and 151,226 bp, respectively. All three chloroplast genomes consist of 128 genes. We found no evidence of shared genes between the mitochondrial and chloroplast genomes of V. reflexo-pilosa. Comparison of the three Vigna chloroplast genomes showed high levels of similarity between V. reflexo-pilosa and V. trinervia, revealing maternal inheritance of the chloroplast genomes. Based on both mitochondrial and chloroplast genes, phylogenetic trees showed that V. reflexo-pilosa is closely related to V. radiata. These genomes enhance our understanding of mitochondrial and chloroplast evolution of V. reflexo-pilosa and are valuable genetic resources in legumes.

Status of endangered large prey predators following civil unrest in a biodiversity hotspot of India

Correlation of microbilirubin with total serum bilirubin and transcutaneous bilirubin

Jaundice is a common condition in newborns that requires early detection. Screening for neonatal jaundice involves measuring microbilirubin (MB), total serum bilirubin (TSB), and transcutaneous bilirubin (TcB). This study aimed to examine the correlation between bilirubin levels obtained from these three measurements: MB, TSB, and TcB. The cross-sectional study included infants with a gestational age (GA) of 35 weeks or more who met the criteria for jaundice screening or exhibited signs of jaundice. Bilirubin levels were simultaneously measured using MB, TSB, and TcB at both the forehead and sternum. Statistical analysis was performed using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficient and a Bland-Altman plot. The study included 212 newborns, with 876 measurements (219 datasets). The mean GA ± standard deviation (SD) was 38.31 ± 1.14 weeks, the mean birth weight ± SD was 3094.17 ± 382.18 grams, and the mean age at the time of bilirubin measurement ± SD was 59.8 ± 16.3 hours. The mean ± SD of TSB were 10.42 ± 2.75 mg/dL, with a range of 1.75–20.52 mg/dL. Strong correlations were observed between MB and TSB (r = 0.96, p < 0.001), MB and TcB at the forehead (r = 0.85, p < 0.001), and MB and TcB at the sternum (r = 0.88, p < 0.001). TSB showed good correlations with TcB at both the forehead (r = 0.87, p < 0.001) and sternum (r = 0.90, p < 0.001), as well as correlation between TcB measurements at the forehead and sternum (r = 0.91, p < 0.001). The Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated good agreement between paired bilirubin measurements. The areas under the curve (AUC) for MB and TcB at both the forehead and sternum across three TSB thresholds (>10 mg/dL, > 12 mg/dL, and >15 mg/dL) were all above 0.9, with sensitivity and specificity ≥ 80%. These findings suggest that MB and TcB are useful screening tools in routine practice; however, TSB should still be used to confirm results for the clinical management of neonates with jaundice. Trial registration: Thai Clinical Trials Registry TCTR20231101004

Correction: Numerical and experimental study on smoke diffusion characteristics of tunnel with ceiling beams

Genomic insights into runs of homozygosity, effective population size and selection signatures in Iranian meat and dairy sheep breeds

Genome-wide scan for run of homozygosity (ROH) stretches, effective population size (Ne) and selection signatures can help to elucidate mechanisms of selection and pinpoint genomic regions linked with phenotypic traits. This study aimed to identify the genomic patterns of ROH, Ne and selection signatures in two Iranian main sheep breeds including Afshari and Qezel (known as meat and dairy sheep, respectively) using 49,017 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) generated using the ovine 50K SNP BeadChips. Analysis of ROH in Iranian sheep breeds revealed the differences in the pattern of ROH length and burden in these breeds. Inbreeding estimated based on ROH stretches showed very low amount of inbreeding in these indigenous sheep breeds. The Qezel breed displayed a higher Ne than Afshari breed. Furthermore, the potential selection was detected in genomic regions using three complementary approaches including FST (fixation index), XP-EHH (cross-population extended haplotype homozygosity), and hapFLK (haplotype differentiation). Our results identified the genomic regions that were enriched with the genes associated with immune response (e.g., IL23A, STAT2 and DOCK5), milk traits (e.g., PCCA, ACAP3, TTK and BTG3), energy metabolisms (e.g., GLS2), reproduction (e.g., ANGPT2), fecundity (e.g., BMP5), nervous system (e.g., DLG2, PCDH9, and FRMPD4), growth traits and muscle formation (NPY, MYF5 and PPP1R12A), and sweat gland development (SCNN1D). Some regions were also detected for the first time and overlapped with no genes suggesting novel loci associated with traits that differentiate these breeds. Overall, the finding of this study may shed light on the genomic regions linked to economically important traits in sheep as well as for developing the conservation and selection breeding programs.

Correction: Low coverage of species constrains the use of DNA barcoding to assess mosquito biodiversity

Failure probability and location identification of damaged insulators using normal function and monitored leakage current

The main task of insulators is to isolate the conductor from the tower. These insulators must be able to isolate the high voltages of the transmission lines from the tower without having a leakage current (LC). These insulators get damaged over time and may not work properly. Currently, identifying and replacing defective insulators, in addition to being time-consuming, requires frequent and long blackouts to be imposed on the customers. For this reason, this paper examines the problems and failures caused by the use of insulators in networks with different voltage levels and suggests the failure rate for planning the maintenance of these electrical network equipment. Based on this, according to the insulator leakage current data, the failure or damage rate of the insulator equipment will be investigated using the normal distribution. This distribution function will calculate the probability of insulator failure using LC data, and then the failure rate and the priority of insulator maintenance will be measured compared to other data. According to this article, the final goal of the proposed methodology will be to determine the failure rate as well as decision-making for the maintenance of the insulator equipment and finally determine the damaged insulator among all the insulators of the electrical network. By identifying the insulators with a higher failure rate, the maintenance team will decide to repair or replace the damaged insulator before the insulator failure and the fault in the power grid.

Publisher Correction: Effect of vaccination against HPV in the HPV-positive patients not covered by primary prevention on the disappearance of infection

Saturation kinetics and specificity of transporters for L-arginine and asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) at the blood-brain and blood-CSF barriers

Nitric oxide synthases (NOS) synthesize nitric oxide (NO) from L-arginine in endothelial and neuronal cells. Asymmetric dimethylarginine (ADMA) is a homologue of arginine and an endogenous inhibitor of NOS. As NO is a critical signalling molecule and influences physiological pathways in health and disease, the transfer of arginine and ADMA across the blood-CNS barriers is of interest. Our research group have previously demonstrated the presence of saturable transporters for [ 3 H]- arginine and [ 3 H]-ADMA at the blood-brain and blood-CSF barriers using in vitro and in situ methods. In this study, we determine the identity and kinetic characteristics of these transporters by means of the in situ brain/choroid plexus perfusion technique in anaesthetised mice. Results indicated that [ 3 H]-arginine and [ 3 H]-ADMA could be transported across blood-brain and blood-CSF barriers by the cationic amino acid transporter, system-y + . In contrast to the results obtained with arginine where transport was predominately by a single transport system (system-y + ), ADMA delivery to the CNS was more complex and involved multiple transport systems (system y + , B 0,+ , y + L and b 0,+ ) suggesting its concentration is tightly regulated . System y + and system y + L transporters could be involved in the CNS to blood efflux of ADMA that we have previously observed. The half-saturation constant (K m ) and maximal influx rate of the saturable component (V max ) for [ 3 H]-ADMA transport into the frontal cortex was 29.07 ± 7.19 μM and 0.307 ± 0.017 nmol.min -1 .g -1 , respectively, and into the CSF was 30.59 ± 25.41 μM and 2.07 ± 0.38 nmol.min -1 .g -1 , respectively. This information could help explain the arginine paradox providing evidence that ADMA interacts with transporters that can remove ADMA from cells. These removal mechanisms could be stimulated by excess arginine in the plasma resulting in increased NO production. It remains to be seen if arginine supplementation could be used to increase NO production and improve hypoperfusion observed in disease states such as Alzheimer’s and stroke.

Diagnostic value of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid metagenomic next-generation sequencing for pulmonary infections in patients with connective tissue disease: A retrospective study

Improving lung cancer diagnosis and survival prediction with deep learning and CT imaging

Lung cancer is a major cause of cancer-related deaths, and early diagnosis and treatment are crucial for improving patients’ survival outcomes. In this paper, we propose to employ convolutional neural networks to model the non-linear relationship between the risk of lung cancer and the lungs’ morphology revealed in the CT images. We apply a mini-batched loss that extends the Cox proportional hazards model to handle the non-convexity induced by neural networks, which also enables the training of large data sets. Additionally, we propose to combine mini-batched loss and binary cross-entropy to predict both lung cancer occurrence and the risk of mortality. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of both the mini-batched loss with and without the censoring mechanism, as well as its combination with binary cross-entropy. We evaluate our approach on the National Lung Screening Trial data set with several 3D convolutional neural network architectures, achieving high AUC and C-index scores for lung cancer classification and survival prediction. These results, obtained from simulations and real data experiments, highlight the potential of our approach to improving the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer.

Correction: Phenolic profiles and antioxidant activity of Morus alba L. infusions prepared from commercially available products and naturally collected leaves

Longitudinal effect of HCV cure on markers of kidney disease

Chronic hepatitis C infection has been linked to chronic kidney disease. Despite availability of all oral highly curative direct acting antiviral treatment for more than a decade, impact of HCV cure on extrinsically measured iohexol glomerular filtration rate (iGFR), a marker of kidney function, has not been rigorously evaluated. Over two recruitment periods (October 14, 2010 – July 23, 2012 and December 15, 2015 – September 12, 2019), we enrolled 208 participants with chronic HCV infection, 63% of whom were co-infected with HIV. We conducted linear mixed effects modeling to evaluate the change in iGFR slope among participants who were and were not cured from chronic HCV. Secondary outcomes included albuminuria (urine albumin-creatinine-ratio ≥30 mg/g). At baseline, the median age was 51 years (interquartile range: 47–56), most of whom were Black (85%), and male (71%). In the multivariable-adjusted model, including baseline iGFR and other covariates, the adjust difference in iGFR slope was 2.37 mL/min/1.73 m2 per year (95% CI: 0.72, 4.03, p = 0.0051) higher among HCV treated participants compared to untreated. HCV treatment status was not associated with probability of albuminuria. Among participants chronically infected with HCV, we identified a significant positive impact of HCV cure on kidney function over time. While iGFR declined overall, declines were attenuated among participants treated for HCV compared to participants who remained untreated.