Browse Articles

Validating a willingness to share measure of a vignette experiment using real-world behavioral data

Abstract Willingness measures are widely employed in vignette and conjoint experiments. However, the predictive validity of these measures relies on the degree to which expressed intentions correspond with behavior in the real world. This study uses a unique research design that enables to validate an intention measure. In a 2022 online survey, respondents expressed their willingness to donate their social media data in hypothetical scenarios. Nine months later the same respondents were invited to participate in a genuine data donation study. The results show that the correlation between willingness and actual donation was moderate ( $$\eta$$ : 0.28). Additionally, the determinants of self-reports and sharing behavior did not overlap. The willingness to donate was more strongly associated with softer attitudinal variables, whereas actual data sharing was linked more closely to harder demographic variables. These findings challenge the predictive validity of willingness to share measures and highlight the need for realistic scenarios in survey experiments, minimizing participants’ perceived risks of the task in question, and addressing social desirability bias.

Infant EEG microstate dynamics relate to fine-grained patterns of infant attention during naturalistic play with caregivers

As infants grow, they develop greater attentional control during interactions with others, shifting from patterns of attention primarily driven by caregivers (exogenous) to those that are also self-directed (endogenous). The ability to endogenously control attention during infancy is thought to reflect ongoing brain development and is influenced by patterns of joint attention between infant and caregiver. However, whether measures of infant attentional control and caregiver behavior during infant–caregiver interactions relate to patterns of infant brain activity is unknown and key for informing developmental models of attentional control. Using data from 43 infant–caregiver dyads, we quantified patterns of visual attention with dyadic, head-mounted eye tracking during infant–caregiver play and associated them with the duration of infant EEG microstate D/4 measured during rest. Importantly, microstate D/4 is a scalp potential topography thought to reflect the organization and function of attention-related brain networks. We found that microstate D/4 associated positively with infant-led joint attention rate but did not associate with caregiver-led joint attention rate, suggesting that infant-led coordination of joint attention during play may be critical for the neurobiological development of attentional control, or vice versa. Further, we found that microstate D/4 associated negatively with infant attention shift rate and positively with infant sustained attention duration, suggesting that increased stability of microstate D/4 may reflect maturation of attentional control and its underlying neural substrates. Together, our findings provide insights into how infant attentional control abilities and infant–caregiver visual behavior during play are associated with the spatial and temporal dynamics of infant brain activity.

Genome-wide characterization and expression profiling of MADS-box family genes during organ development and drought stress in Camelina sativa L

Positive effects of species mixing on biodiversity of understory plant communities and soil health in forest plantations

Mixed-species plantations are increasingly recognized for their potential to maintain forest biodiversity and soil health; however, a comprehensive assessment of their global effectiveness is lacking. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a meta-analysis of 7,045 paired observations between mixed-species and monoculture plantations, derived from 311 studies across diverse forest ecosystems worldwide. Our results show that mixed-species plantations significantly increased understory plant biomass, cover, and species richness by 32.6%, 55.4%, and 32.2%, respectively, compared to monocultures. Furthermore, the Shannon and Pielou diversity indices increased by 28.2% and 8.6%, respectively, and the Simpson index increased by 9.6%. When understory shrub and herbaceous species were considered separately, species mixing had significantly positive effects on shrub diversity but had no effect on herbaceous diversity. Moreover, mixed-species plantations markedly improved soil physical and chemical properties compared to monocultures. These improvements include increases in soil nutrient content (9.6 to 17.8%) and nutrient availability (14.7 to 33.5%), soil microbial biomass (17.2 to 28.8%), and soil carbon sequestration (7.2 to 19.9%). These enhancements were particularly pronounced in plantations that included legumes. Our findings reveal that the benefits of species mixing are influenced by climatic conditions, geographic location, and stand age, with the most substantial effects observed in temperate regions and mature stands. This study underscores the critical role of mixed-species plantations in promoting sustainable forest management and mitigating the ecological limitations of monocultures.

Association of waist circumference with all cause mortality in Parkinson’s disease

Asymmetric bending boundary layer: The <i>λ</i> -test

We investigate the mechanics of two asymmetric ribbons bound at one end and pulled apart at the other ends. We characterize the elastic junction near the bonding and conceptualize it as a bending boundary layer. While the size of this junction decreases with the pulling force, we observe the surprising existence of the binding angle as a macroscopic signature of the bending stiffnesses. Our results thus challenge the standard assumption of neglecting bending stiffness of thin shells at large tensile loading. In addition, we show how the rotational response of the structure exhibits a nonlinear and universal behavior regardless of the ratio of asymmetry. Leveraging the independence of the binding angle to the pulling force, we finally introduce the λ -test—a visual measurement technique to characterize membranes through simple mechanical coupling.

Stand-alone MRI tool for semiautomatic volumetry of abdominal adipose compartments in patients with obesity

Abstract Abdominal adipose tissue (AT) amounts are increasingly considered as potential biomarkers for a variety of diseases and clinical questions, for instance, in diabetology, oncology or cardiovascular medicine. Despite the emergence of automated deep-learning methods for tissue quantification, interactive (supervised) segmentation tools will typically be used for model training. In comparison with CT-based approaches, MRI segmentation tools are more complex and less common. This work aims to validate a novel MRI-based tissue volumetry against a reference method in patients with (pre-) obesity. The new tool (segfatMR) was developed under a Matlab-based, open-source software framework and combines fast automatic pre-segmentation followed by manual (expert) corrections where needed. Analyses were performed retrospectively on a subset of clinical research MRI datasets (1.5 T Achieva XR, Philips Healthcare) and involved the segmentation of datasets from 20 patients (10 women/men) aged 25.1–63.1 (mean 48.5) years with BMIs between 28.3 and 58.8 (mean 36.8) kg/m2. Two independent expert readers analyzed the abdominopelvic data (30–40 slices, mean 35.8) with segfatMR and a widely used commercial tool (sliceOmatic). Coefficients of determination (R 2), bias and limits of agreement (Bland Altman) were determined. Segmentation performance (R 2 between methods) was excellent for both readers for SAT (&gt; 0.99) and very high for VAT (around 0.90). The novel method was almost twice as fast as the reference standard – 25 and 19 s/slice (R1 and R2) vs. 40 and 34 s/slice. The presented semiautomatic segmentation tool enables a fast and accurate quantification of whole abdominopelvic adipose tissue volume in obesity studies. Use, adjustments and extensions of the MRI volumetry tool are facilitated by the open-source design on a standard PC.

Numerical Fresnel models of Fresnel zone plates for plane wave at angle of incidence

How spatiotemporal dynamics can enhance ecosystem resilience

We study how self-organization in systems showing complex spatiotemporal dynamics can increase ecosystem resilience. We consider a general simple model that includes positive feedback as well as negative feedback mediated by an inhibitor. We apply this model to Posidonia oceanica meadows, where positive and negative feedbacks are well documented, and there is empirical evidence of the role of sulfide accumulation, toxic for the plant, in driving complex spatiotemporal dynamics. We describe a progressive transition from homogeneous meadows to extinction through dynamical regimes that allow the ecosystem to avoid the typical ecological tipping points of homogeneous vegetation covers. A predictable sequence of distinct dynamical regimes is observed as mortality is continuously increased: turbulent regimes, formation of spirals and wave trains, and isolated traveling pulses or expanding rings, the latter being a harbinger of ecosystem collapse, however far beyond the tipping point of the homogeneous cover. The model used in this paper is general, and the results can be applied to other plant–soil spatially extended systems, regardless of the mechanisms behind negative and positive feedbacks.

Author Correction: Evaluation of serum galectin-3 concentration as a potential biomarker in exudative-type age-related macular degeneration

Publisher Correction: New geographic information system based sustainability metric for isolated photovoltaic systems

VSS-SpatioNet: a multi-scale feature fusion network for multimodal image integrations

Mechanism and application of competitive fracture propagation in layered group fracturing of massive thick overburden strata

RGMb drives macrophage infiltration to aggravate kidney disease

The importance of macrophages in kidney diseases has been well established; however, the mechanisms underlying the infiltration of macrophages into injured kidneys are not well understood. RGMb is a member of the repulsive guidance molecule (RGM) family. RGMb can be expressed on the cell surface but a large portion of RGMb is localized intracellularly. Among various immune cell types, macrophages express the highest levels of RGMb, but the biological functions of RGMb in macrophages remain largely unknown. We find that RGMb promoted macrophage migration in vitro and that in vivo, RGMb enhanced infiltration of macrophages into injured kidneys and aggravated kidney inflammation and injury in mice. Mechanistically, RGMb bound to TAB1 inside the cell and facilitated the interaction between TRAF6 ubiquitin ligase and TAB1, thereby promoting TRAF6-mediated K63-linked polyubiquitination and phosphorylation of TAK1, followed by increased αTAT1 phosphorylation and α-tubulin acetylation. The resulting changes in the cytoskeleton promoted macrophage migration in vitro and in vivo. Deletion of Rgmb in macrophages markedly reduced TAK1 phosphorylation, αTAT1 phosphorylation, and α-tubulin acetylation and attenuated macrophage infiltration, renal inflammation, tubular injury, and interstitial fibrosis during kidney injury. Our results suggest that macrophage RGMb promotes kidney disease by increasing macrophage infiltration via the TRAF6-TAB1-TAK1/αTAT1/α-tubulin cascade.

Production characteristics and adsorption control mechanism of CO2-rich CBG wells

Topologically reconfigurable nematic emulsions

In emulsions of multicomponent fluids, the dispersed phase forms tiny droplets in the continuous phase. In situ control and manipulation to achieve diversity in emulsion droplets for emerging applications is challenging. In a liquid crystal-based emulsion, the surface anchoring of the molecules at the isotropic fluid-liquid crystal interface introduces elastic distortions that result in anisotropic interparticle interactions, similar to electrostatic interactions between multipoles, which also lends a naming analogy as elastic dipoles, quadrupoles, and higher. However, controlling the anchoring condition at the interface at will is rarely achieved. Here, we present an emulsion system in which silicone oil droplets in a nematic liquid crystal spontaneously induce conic surface anchoring, forming elastic hexadecapoles without any surfactant. The conic degenerate surface anchoring shows continuous reversible anchoring transition to tangential and homeotropic below and above the ambient temperature, respectively. We introduce a physical design principle and in situ control to achieve three-phase compound droplets with diverse morphologies and topologies by fusing elastic hexadecapoles of oil droplets with elastic dipoles of glycerol droplets. The surrounding director field and the resulting defect structure of the compound droplets are analyzed by numerical simulations. Our approach to forming compound droplets will allow the on-demand design of building blocks for engineered emulsions for reconfigurable composite materials.

Multicenter study on the distribution and prevalence of human papillomavirus types in Hangzhou, Zhejiang from 2017 to 2023

The role of excitations in supercooled liquids: Density, geometry, and relaxation dynamics

Low-energy excitations play a key role in all condensed-matter systems, yet there is limited understanding of their nature in glasses, where they correspond to local rearrangements of groups of particles. Here, we introduce an algorithm to systematically uncover these excitations up to the activation energy scale relevant to structural relaxation. We use it in a model system to measure the density of states on a scale never achieved before, confirming that this quantity shifts to higher energy under cooling, precisely as the activation energy does. Second, we show that the excitations’ energetic and spatial features allow one to predict with great accuracy the dynamic propensity, i.e., the location of future relaxation dynamics. Finally, we find that excitations have a primary field whose properties, including the displacement of the most mobile particle, scale as a power-law of their activation energy and are independent of temperature. Additionally, they exhibit an outer deformation field that depends on the material’s stability and, therefore, on temperature. We build a scaling description of these findings. Overall, our analysis supports that excitations play a crucial role in regulating relaxation dynamics near the glass transition, effectively suppressing the transition to dynamical arrest predicted by mean-field theories while also being strongly influenced by it.

A hybrid re-fusion model for text classification

Brain-wide dynamic coactivation states code for hand movements in the resting state

Resting brain activity, in the absence of explicit tasks, appears as distributed spatiotemporal patterns that reflect structural connectivity and correlate with behavioral traits. However, its role in shaping behavior remains unclear. Recent evidence shows that resting-state spatial patterns not only align with task-evoked topographies but also encode distinct visual (e.g., lines, contours, faces, places) and motor (e.g., hand postures) features, suggesting mechanisms for long-term storage and predictive coding. While prior research focused on static, time-averaged task activations, we examine whether dynamic, time-varying motor states seen during active hand movements are also present at rest. Three distinct motor activation states, engaging the motor cortex alongside sensory and association areas, were identified. These states appeared both at rest and during task execution but underwent temporal reorganization from rest to task. Thus, resting-state dynamics serve as strong spatiotemporal priors for task-based activation. Critically, resting-state patterns more closely resembled those associated with frequent ecological hand movements than with an unfamiliar movement, indicating a structured repertoire of movement patterns that is replayed at rest and reorganized during action. This suggests that spontaneous neural activity provides priors for future movements and contributes to long-term memory storage, reinforcing the functional interplay between resting and task-driven brain activity.