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Wild gelada monkeys detect emotional and prosocial cues in vocal exchanges during aggression

Recognizing vocal behaviours intended to benefit others is a crucial yet understudied social skill. Primates with rich vocal repertoires and complex societies are excellent models to track the evolution of such capacity. Here, we exposed wild geladas (Theropithecus gelada) to vocal exchanges between unfamiliar female victim screams and male affiliative calls. The stimuli were arranged in sequences either simulating vocal affiliation towards victims (scream-affiliative call) or violating such order (affiliative call-scream), with varying emotional arousal conveyed by the affiliative call type. Measuring gazing activity towards the loudspeaker and the interruptions of feeding, we show that monkeys were sensitive to the sequential order in vocal exchanges as well as to the emotional arousal conveyed by affiliative calls. Our field study suggests a prosocial use of vocalizations in wild monkeys and reveals that foundational cognitive elements for processing vocal exchanges as meaningful third-party interactions may have existed in our common ancestors with monkeys.

Expectations regarding the effectiveness of mask-wearing and pandemic fatigue: The experience in Japan

Even though mask-wearing was merely “recommended” in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic, the mask usage rate was higher than that in other countries. This study conducted an econometric analysis to examine whether expectations regarding the effectiveness of mask-wearing was a motivating factor for Japanese people to wear masks during the prolonged pandemic. The results showed that, even when considering individual factors such as risk aversion, altruism, and social pressure, the motivation of wearing a mask for self-protection had a significant positive effect. This significance was maintained even in the second year of the survey, when pandemic fatigue was occurring. This was a distinctive feature, as the effects of other individual factors on pandemic fatigue had diminished. On the other hand, the motivation for wearing a mask to protect others did not have a significant effect in either year, which contrasted with the results for self-protection. These estimation results indicate that the route of wearing a mask for self-protection was continuously effective during the prolonged pandemic, and that promoting mask-wearing through this route is effective in inducing individual behavioral changes, even during a prolonged pandemic.

Maximum likelihood estimation of age-specific incidence rate from prevalence

Usually, age-specific incidence rates of chronic diseases are estimated from longitudinal studies that follow participants over time and record incident cases. However, these studies can be cost- and time-expensive and are prone to loss to follow up. An alternative method allows incidence estimation based on aggregated data from (cross-sectional) prevalence and mortality studies using relations between incidence, prevalence and mortality described by the illness-death model and a related partial differential equation. Currently, adequate options for the assessment of the accuracy of the achieved incidence estimates are missing and bootstrap resampling methods are used instead. Therefore, we developed novel ways to estimate incidence rates based on the maximum likelihood principle with corresponding confidence intervals. Historical data about breathlessness in British coal miners and diabetes in Germany are used to illustrate the applicability of this method in scenarios with non-differential and differential mortality. We have two scenarios of available data in the case of differential mortality: mortality of diseased and all-cause mortality, or all-cause mortality and mortality rate ratio. Our results show that estimation of incidence rates and corresponding confidence intervals of chronic conditions based on aggregated data with the maximum likelihood method using a binomial likelihood function is possible and can replace resampling techniques.

InterAcT: A generic keypoints-based lightweight transformer model for recognition of human solo actions and interactions in aerial videos

Human action recognition forms an important part of several aerial security and surveillance applications. Indeed, numerous efforts have been made to solve the problem in an effective and efficient manner. Existing methods, however, are generally aimed to recognize either solo actions or interactions, thus restricting their use to specific scenarios. Additionally, the need remains to devise lightweight and computationally efficient models to make them deployable in real-world applications. To this end, this paper presents a generic lightweight and computationally efficient Transformer network-based model, referred to as InterAcT, that relies on extracted bodily keypoints using YOLO v8 to recognize human solo actions as well as interactions in aerial videos. It features a lightweight architecture with 0.0709M parameters and 0.0389G flops, distinguishing it from the AcT models. An extensive performance evaluation has been performed on two publicly available aerial datasets: Drone Action and UT-Interaction, comprising a total of 18 classes including both solo actions and interactions. The model is optimized and trained on 80% train set, 10% validation set and its performance is evaluated on 10% test set achieving highly encouraging performance on multiple benchmarks, outperforming several state-of-the-art methods. Our model, with an accuracy of 0.9923 outperforms the AcT models (micro: 0.9353, small: 0.9893, base: 0.9907, and large: 0.9558), 2P-GCN (0.9337), LSTM (0.9774), 3D-ResNet (0.9921), and 3D CNN (0.9920). It has the strength to recognize a large number of solo actions and two-person interaction classes both in aerial videos and footage from ground-level cameras (grayscale and RGB).

Differences in the functional use of two migratory stopovers by humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae)

Humpback whale migration between tropical breeding grounds and polar feeding grounds is an energy-intensive activity undertaken on finite energy stores. The use of stopover sites to rest reduces energetic expenditure and provides enhanced opportunity for calves to nurse during migration. Moreton Bay is a newly identified migratory stopover for Australia’s east coast humpback whale population. Understanding the functional roles of stopovers is essential for a holistic understanding of population dynamics and connectivity. Therefore, contextualising the significance of Moreton Bay relative to a well-established stopover like Hervey Bay, can provide valuable insights into their functional roles within the broader migratory network, helping to inform targeted conservation efforts. To investigate this, we conducted a total of 865km of systematic, boat-based line transects across the two distinct geographical regions during temporally staggered periods (August and September – October) of the 2021 humpback whale migration. We examined population structure, behaviour, and habitat segregation, and developed spatial density surface models to predict density distribution patterns at each respective site. Our results show that Hervey Bay supports a more heterogenous mix of demographic groups, while Moreton Bay had a significantly greater number of calf-groups (z = 4.53, p = 0.017). Both bays exhibited similar resting behaviours, but social interactions among juveniles were unique to Hervey Bay. These findings suggest Moreton Bay serves a more utilitarian role as a stopover, functioning primarily as a resting site for mother-calf pairs, rather than the multifaceted use described in Hervey Bay. As lactating females and their calves are particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic threats like vessel strike, it is imperative to understand how different habitats contribute to the success of migration and ensure adequate protection is maintained.

Universal health care delivery mitigates socioeconomic-related risk for adverse outcomes in hospitalised patients: Lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia

Background Internationally, socioeconomic disadvantage is related to severe outcomes of COVID-19. We investigated the impact of socioeconomic disadvantage on infection rates, hospitalisation, and in-hospital outcomes for COVID-19 with standardised medical care. Methods This retrospective cross-sectional study included SARS-CoV-2 PCR-confirmed patients ≥18 years, admitted to a major public hospital between January 2020 and December 2021. Severe COVID-19 outcomes were defined by a composite outcome of in-hospital death or other critical complications. A generalised linear regression model of demographic features, co-existing conditions, and socioeconomic status was used to determine the risks of the composite outcome. Results Of 797,343 individuals ≥18 years in the health district, 50,906 (6.4%) were PCR-positive, and 1,962 were hospitalised. Compared with the whole health district population, infected individuals were younger (median [interquartile range] age 35 [25–48] years vs 42 [31–58] years) and from areas with the greatest socioeconomic disadvantage (34.4% vs 20%; both p < 0.0001). Hospitalised patients were older, with more females compared to the PCR-positive group (46 years [33–61], 53.5%, respectively; p < 0.001), and 51.2% were from postcodes with greatest socioeconomic disadvantage (p < 0.0001). The composite outcome occurred in 11.5%, with an in-hospital mortality of 3.8%. Higher risk of the composite outcome was observed in males (OR 1.72, 95% CI [1.26–2.42], p < 0.001), patients aged ≥ 65 years (OR 6.96, [3.3–14.6], p < 0.001), those with ≥ 4 comorbidities (OR 2.67, [1.54–4.63], p < 0.001), and unvaccinated patients (OR 1.57, [1.05–2.38], p < 0.05). The risk of composite outcome did not increase with socioeconomic disadvantage (OR 0.97, [0.68, 1.42], p = 0.64). Conclusion In the absence of capacity restraints, socioeconomic disadvantage was not associated with severe in-hospital outcomes in a well-resourced care environment despite increased rates of infection and hospitalisation. This highlights the impact of universally accessible, standardised, protocolised, high-quality in-hospital care in reducing the risk of adverse in-hospital outcomes in socioeconomically disadvantaged patients.

Rational engineering unlocks the therapeutic potential of WHP1: A revolutionary peptide poised to advance wound healing

Treatment of chronic or non-healing wounds has faced a considerable clinical challenge and impose several detrimental effects on individuals, society, the healthcare system, and the economy. Bioactive peptides have been employed to accelerate wound healing in active wound treatment efficiently and effectively. In the current study, a novel wound-healing peptide, WHP1, was designed from 23 existing wound-healing peptides by a rational template-assisted approach. It demonstrated the ability to enhance migration and proliferation of human keratinocyte cell lines (HaCaT) without exhibiting cytotoxic effects on human red blood cells and HaCaT cells. By quantitative proteomic analysis, WHP1 exerted a multifaceted role on diverse cellular processes in human keratinocyte. Notably, it increased the expression of intracellular proteins of HaCaT cells involved in cell cycle regulation and focal adhesion, including centromeric histone H3 variant CENPA, ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme E2 C, thyroid receptor-interacting protein 6, and ribosomal components essential for cell adhesion and migration. WHP1 upregulated the key enzyme glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase, orchestrating metabolic biosynthesis particularly glycolysis, cell cycle regulation, and cytoskeletal processes. An intriguing observation was the antioxidant activity of WHP1, protecting cells from reactive oxygen species-induced senescence. This is consistent with the upregulation of GAPDH expression and reduction of histone H2A.J levels. WHP1 also stimulated macrophages to secrete transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β), a crucial growth factor necessary for the remodeling phase of wound healing. This investigation highlighted the feasibility of rational design to create novel wound-healing peptides. Such advancements hold promise for improving patients’ quality of life and elevating the standard of care in contemporary healthcare.

Combining N-mixture and occupancy analysis offers a more complete picture of carnivore habitat use in Northeastern Türkiye

Occupancy and N-mixture analyses have been successfully used to understand habitat use in various species. However, since these methods fundamentally answer different questions about wildlife distribution, the results from each modelling approach may provide different insights into species’ habitat use. In this study, we leveraged data from a long-term camera trapping study in northeastern Türkiye to compare the results from occupancy and N-mixture analyses, with the main objective of understanding how the modelling approach used can influence our knowledge of species’ habitat use. Specifically, we compared the habitat use preferences from N-mixture and occupancy analyses for three carnivore species with varying baseline abundances. Our results provide evidence that occupancy and N-mixture analyses provide different insights into species’ sensitivity to environmental and anthropogenic factors. Whereas occupancy analysis provides a relatively broad summary of the factors that affect where a species may or may not be located on a landscape or which areas they may be more likely to use over a certain time period, N-mixture modelling may provide insights into the factors that affect the degree of use at individual sites, with particular emphasis on being able to deduce small-scale changes in habitat use across a landscape. Furthermore, while the detection probability of an occupancy analysis has been formally used as a measure of site use intensity, N-Mixture models may offer higher resolution of the quantity of use. Therefore, as these two methods tend to investigate habitat use at different spatial scales, when used in conjunction they can provide a more refined understanding of species’ habitat use through repeat-survey sampling methods like camera trapping.

DDoS attack detection method based on improved convolutional long short-term memory and three-way decision in SDN

Software Defined Networking (SDN) is an emerging network architecture and management method, whose core idea is to separate the network control plane from the data transmission plane. It is precisely because of this characteristic that SDN controllers are susceptible to external malicious attacks, the most common of which are Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This paper suggests a way to find DDoS attacks called ConvLTSM-MHA-TWD. It is based on the Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory Network (ConvLSTM) and three-way decision (TWD). It solves the problem of insufficient feature extraction in SDN environment and improves classification accuracy. This method uses ConvLSTM to extract data features, and uses multi-head attention (MHA) mechanism to learn the long-distance dependence relationship in the input data, and then constructs multi-granularity feature space. ConvLSTM and MHA outputs are added to form a residual connection to further enhance feature extraction and timing modeling capabilities and solve the problem of gradient disappearance during model training. Then the three-way decision theory is used to make decisions on network behaviors immediately. For the network behaviors that cannot be made immediately, the delayed decision is made, and the feature extraction and decision are made on this part of the network behaviors again. Finally, the classification results are output. This paper conducted experiments on data sets CICIDS2017 and DDoS SDN, with accuracy rates of 0.994 and 0.977, respectively, which has better overall performance, and is suitable for training large amounts of data.

Perceived family support status and associated factors among people with hypertension in Nekemte City public hospitals, Western Ethiopia

Background Though previous studies reported the advantages of family in treating people with hypertension, evidence indicates that family support among people with hypertension was poor. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, no study examined the status of perceived family support and associated factors among people with hypertension in Ethiopia. Therefore, this study assessed perceived family support status and associated factors among people with hypertension in Nekemte City public hospitals, Western Ethiopia, Methods A hospital based cross sectional study on 422 selected adults with hypertension was conducted in public hospitals in Nekemte from June to August 2023. A systemic random sampling technique was used to select eligible participants. Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analyses were carried out, and variables with a p-value < 0.25 in the bivariate analysis were included in the multivariable analysis to identify factors associated with perceived family support at a P-value < 0.05. Results Two hundred ninety two (70.4%), 95% CI (65.7%, 74.7%), of people with hypertension reported perceived strong family support. Having a family history of hypertension [AOR = 3.6, 95% CI (1.266, 10.34)], involvement of families during patient education on HTN [AOR = 3.305, 95% CI (2.306, 8.363)], and good interaction with family [AOR = 2.45, 95% CI (1.002, 5.32)] were positively associated with perceived family support. Whereas, patients who are poorly knowledgeable about hypertension [AOR = 0.3, 95% CI (0.001, 0.542)] were negatively associated with perceived family support, Conclusion Two hundred ninety two people with hypertension reported perceived strong family support. Having a family history of hypertension, involvement of families during patient education on hypertension, and patients’ interaction with family were positively statistically associated with perceived family support and patients who are poorly knowledgeable about hypertension were negatively associated with perceived family support. Hospitals, along with other stakeholders, should strengthen family support by involving families in health education in line with hypertension patients’ lifestyles.

Hypertension as an effect modifier for preterm and small for gestational age births in migrant women in Belgium: A population-based study

Background The association between migration and pregnancy outcomes gives contradictory results. Women’s socio-economic status explains some differences, but its influence may vary according to women’s underlying health conditions. Our aim was to understand how comorbidities modify the relationship between migration and preterm birth or small for gestational age in Belgium. Methods Data are related to all singleton births to women living in Belgium between 2010 and 2019 (n = 1 200 417). Maternal nationalities were grouped as Belgium, European Union, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East. A logistic regression was used to estimate the association between maternal nationalities and perinatal outcomes, taking into account the socio-economic status and maternal comorbidities: hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. The interaction effect between maternal nationalities and comorbidities was tested. Results Migrant women were more socio-economically disadvantaged than Belgian women. All migrant women without hypertension had a significantly lower Odd Ratio of preterm birth and small for gestational age than Belgian (p < 0.001). In contrast, women with hypertension had a higher OR than Belgian women, even after adjustment for socio-economic status and other comorbidities. This difference was more striking among Sub-Saharan African and Middle Eastern women: respectively, aORs 1.45 (95%CI 1.30–1.62) and 1.24 (95%CI 1.01–1.54) for preterm birth, and aORs 1.17 (95%CI 1.03–1.17) and 1.28 (95%CI 1.02–1.60) for small for gestational age. Conclusions Hypertension modifies the association between migration and unfavourable pregnancy outcomes. Although migrant women had a lower risk of preterm birth and small for gestational age than Belgian women, in the presence of hypertension, their risk was significantly higher than Belgian women with the same conditions. Further research is needed to analyse the complex relationships between migration, social status, women’s living conditions, and perinatal outcome.

Tailoring Mesopores on Ultrathin Hollow Carbon Nanoarchitecture with N₂O₂ Coordinated Ni Single-Atom Catalysts for Hydrogen Evolution

Epidemiology and molecular characterisation of multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli isolated from chicken meat

Ensuring the safety of poultry products is critical for public health, particularly due to the rising concern of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in foodborne pathogens. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) patterns of Escherichia coli (E. coli) isolated from broiler chicken meat samples collected from live bird markets (LBMs) and supermarkets (SMs) in the Chattogram Metropolitan Area (CMA), Bangladesh. A total of 430 samples, comprising 215 liver and 215 muscle samples, were collected between October 2020 and February 2021 from nine LBMs and five SMs. Samples were processed and cultured, and E. coli was isolated and identified through phenotypic and molecular techniques, including PCR targeting the uidA and uspA genes. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) was conducted using the Kirby-Bauer disk diffusion techniques with seven antibiotics from six distinct antimicrobial classes. The study found an overall prevalence of 56.28% (95% CI: 51.56–60.89) for E. coli. The prevalence in LBMs (58.33%) was higher than in SMs (54.80%), with liver samples showing a slightly higher rate of contamination (63.33% in LBMs, 55.20% in SMs) compared to muscle samples. AMR profiling revealed high resistance rates to sulfamethoxazole-trimethoprim (88.84%), tetracycline (86.78%), and ampicillin (82.23%). Conversely, cephalexin (63.64%) and gentamicin (57.02%) had the highest susceptibility rates. A significant proportion (84.71%) of isolates were multidrug-resistant (MDR), with some isolates resistant to up to six classes of antimicrobial. The multiple antibiotic resistance (MAR) index ranged from 0.14 to 1.00, indicating substantial antimicrobial exposure. PCR analysis confirmed the presence of the blaTEM gene in all ampicillin-resistant isolates, while 75.35% of sulfamethoxazole-resistant isolates carried the sul2 gene. Correlation analysis revealed a strong association between phenotypic resistance to ampicillin and the presence of the blaTEM gene (r = 1), along with a moderate correlation between sul2 and resistance to sulfamethoxazole (r = 0.5). These findings highlight the widespread presence of multidrug-resistant (MDR) E. coli in broiler meat, posing a significant public health concern.

Heterogeneous Interfaces of Ni_<b>3</b>Se_<b>4</b> Nanoclusters Decorated on a Ni_<b>3</b>N Surface Enhance Efficient and Durable Hydrogen Evolution Reactions in Alkaline Electrolyte

Neuromusculoskeletal modeling of spasticity: A scoping review

Introduction This scoping review aimed to provide an overview of neuromusculoskeletal models used to investigate the mechanisms underlying spasticity and identify issues to be addressed in future models. Materials and methods We followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines and searched four bibliographic databases (PubMed, Compendex Engineering Village, IEEE Xplore, and Science Direct). Inclusion criteria were original studies written in English that investigated the underlying mechanisms of spasticity in humans with no age restrictions. Two independent reviewers selected studies. Results Eighteen studies met the inclusion criteria. Stroke was the neurological condition addressed by most studies, followed by cerebral palsy. The studies focused mainly on passive tasks with the knee joint as the primary target. All studies considered that spasticity was associated with alterations in the stretch reflex loop. Among the parameters tested by the studies, the reflex gains and thresholds were the parameters that could better represent levels of severity or effects of botulinum toxin type-A treatment. Recent studies proposed that stretching acceleration, muscle force, and force rate could be fed back into the feedback loop besides the muscle length and stretching velocity. However, no consensus was found among them. Finally, it has been that stiffness and viscosity of muscle-tendon-unit are also relevant for describing resistance to passive movement. Conclusion In order to provide relevant clinical and physiological information, future modeling should include supraspinal mechanisms in-depth, use image-based data to personalize non-neural parameters, specify models according to etiology and tasks, especially the active tasks of daily life activities.

RETRACTED: Sorbent Mediated Electrocatalytic Reduction of Dilute CO ₂ to Methane

Research on creep characteristics of double fractured rock under freeze-thaw action

Open rock masses are subject to prolonged loading and freeze-thaw cycles in cold regions. In this study, we take saturated fissured red sandstone as object to investigate the long-term mechanical response characteristics of fractured rock under freeze-thaw conditions. Experimental tests were conducted to analyze the creep characteristics of the rock after freeze-thaw cycles, considering different freeze-thaw frequencies and fracture orientations. The results reveal that (1) freeze-thaw cycles exert a significant influence on the rock’s creep behavior, with axial strain, instantaneous strain, and creep strain increasing progressively with the number of freeze-thaw cycles; (2) dual-fractured rock samples with varying fracture angles exhibit distinct differences in creep phenomena, where increased fracture angles result in pronounced increases in instantaneous and creep strains, and higher horizontal stress levels lead to greater strain generation; (3) all rock samples with different pre-existing fractures exhibit rock bridge breakthrough during creep failure, and the variation in fracture angle affects the failure mode; (4) and the long-term strength of the rock varies with changes in fracture angle and freeze-thaw cycle frequency, showing an increasing trend with greater fracture angles but a rapid decrease with increasing freeze-thaw cycles. These findings provide valuable insights for engineering design and risk assessment of open rock masses in cold regions. This study has guiding significance for the safety construction of rock mass engineering in cold regions.

Area-time efficient pipelined number theoretic transform for CRYSTALS-Kyber

CRYSTALS-Kyber has been standardized by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as a quantum-resistant algorithm in the post-quantum cryptography (PQC) competition. The bottleneck in performance of Kyber is the polynomial multiplication based on Number Theoretic transform (NTT). This work presents two parallel architectures adopting Multi-Path Delay Commutator (MDC) approach on target FPGA platform. Resource sharing technique is adopted to perform PWM operations using MDC NTT/INTT architecture. Moreover, we propose various optimizations at architectural level to minimize resource consumption such as FIFO-based memory units for buffering of input output coefficients, LUT-based modular multiplier and distributed-ROM memories for twiddle factor storage. The presented architectures are implemented on Xilinx Artix-7 XC7A100T-3 device using Vivado Design Suite 2022.2 and coded using Verilog HDL. Our BRAM and DSP-free designs achieve 68% improved area-time product with a comparable ATP for PWM operations. Additionally, the two-parallel MDC architecture outperforms state-of-the-art architectures, using 29% fewer resources.

The interplay between body mass index, motivation for food consumption, and noncommunicable diseases in the European population: A cross-sectional study

Introduction Consuming unhealthy foods in emotional states can increase body mass index (BMI), contribute to becoming overweight, and lead to the development of chronic diseases. This study aims to investigate the associations between BMI, emotional motivation for food consumption, and health outcomes. Materials and methods “The Motivations for Food Choices” (EATMOT) questionnaire was used to assess the emotional components of food consumption in 9,036 individuals from 12 European countries. The multivariate analysis included linear and logistic regression to examine associations between variables. Results Regression models confirmed associations between BMI, emotional motivation for food consumption (β = 0.13; p &lt; 0.001), obesity (β = 0.35; p &lt; 0.001), diabetes mellitus, and hypertension (β = 0.04; p &lt; 0.001 for both). Using food as a coping mechanism for stress contributed to an increase in BMI [OR = 1.31 (95% CI 1.14–1.51); p &lt; 0.001]. Emotional consolation was associated with a higher likelihood of an increased BMI [OR = 1.22 (95% CI 1.03–1.44); p = 0.020] and obesity [OR = 1.47 (95% CI 1.06–2.06); p = 0.022]. Participants with obesity had a greater likelihood of developing noncommunicable diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases [OR = 2.18 (95% CI 1.45–3.28); p &lt; 0.001], diabetes mellitus [OR = 2.02 (95% CI 1.31–3.12); p = 0.001], hypercholesterolemia [OR = 1.62 (95% CI 1.13–2.32); p = 0.009], hypertension [OR = 1.85 (95% CI 1.36–2.52); p &lt; 0.001], and gastric disorders [OR = 1.81 (95% CI 1.16–2.85); p = 0.010]. Conclusion These results underscore the need for targeted public health interventions that address emotional eating behaviors and promote healthier coping strategies to mitigate the risk of obesity and related health complications.

Sound symbolism is not “marginal” in Chinese: Evidence from diachronic rhyme books

Contrary to the widespread notion that linguistic signs are arbitrary, researchers have consistently demonstrated the existence of sound symbolism in language, providing evidence for non-arbitrariness in sound-meaning associations. However, much evidence of this kind is based on a limited subset of vocabulary and falls short of systematically demonstrating the pervasive nature of sound symbolism and, especially, its central, rather than marginal, role in language. Furthermore, a historical perspective is lacking to determine whether sound symbolism is merely a feature of archaic languages or has remained a significant element throughout the evolution of languages. This research pioneers a diachronic analysis of sound symbolism in Chinese using historical rhyme books to trace its presence on the vocabulary scale. Employing natural language processing techniques along with statistical methods, it investigates whether phonologically related Chinese characters, as documented in rhyme books, also demonstrate semantic congruence, which would suggest that the phonological aspects of characters are inherently meaningful and hence indicate a systematic, rather than random or purely arbitrary relationship between sounds and meanings. Statistically significant results from our analysis of all four analyzed rhyme books confirm the robustness of sound symbolism over a large span of the Chinese language continuum, and a granular analysis of a representative one of them further reveals that sound symbolism is manifest across various levels of phonological organization, including initials, finals, etc. This study initiates an innovative combination of traditional materials with novel techniques to enrich and expand existing knowledge about sound symbolism, providing both methodological advancement and empirical insights.