Browse Articles

Using machine learning to identify individuals at elevated risk of diabetes from low-cost complete blood count data for opportunistic screening

Eco-epidemiology and zoonotic implication of intestinal nematode parasites in humans and dogs in West Shoa Zone, Ethiopia

Abstract Nematode parasites can lead to severe health complications and have zoonotic potential, especially in areas with close human–animal interactions and poor sanitation. This study investigates the prevalence of nematode parasites, identifies potential risk factors, and examines their zoonotic relationships between humans and domestic dogs. A cross-sectional study was conducted from June 2023 to June 2024. A total of 310 dog fecal samples and 384 human stool samples were selected using a simple random sampling approach. The samples were examined using flotation and sedimentation techniques. Additionally, a questionnaire survey was used to assess dog owners’ awareness of the zoonotic potential of canine intestinal parasites. Out of 310 dogs examined, 171 (55.2%) were positive for zoonotic nematodes. The most commonly detected species were Ancylostoma caninum (31.3%), Toxocara canis (21.9%), Strongyloides stercoralis (11.0%), and Toxascaris leonina (1.3%). Among the 384 children examined, only 3 (0.8%) were infected with Strongyloides stercoralis . No significant difference was found in overall parasite prevalence between local and exotic dog breeds ( p  > 0.05), but Ancylostoma caninum prevalence showed significant variation with age and sex ( p  < 0.05). The detection of Strongyloides stercoralis in children did not correspond with the infection patterns in household dogs, indicating other environmental or behavioral factors may contribute. From the survey, only 26% of respondents were aware of the parasitic zoonotic risk associated with dogs, while 77.9% were aware of rabies. The study shows a high burden of zoonotic nematode infections in dogs and a substantial lack of awareness among dog owners. It underscore the importance of One Health measures; education, hygiene, and regular deworming to curb zoonotic transmission and safeguard public health.

Mechanistic study of HES1/PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway in cisplatin-induced sensorineural hearing loss

Src and β-catenin control a senescence-fibrotic phenotype in uterine fibroid cells

Abstract Uterine fibroids (or leiomyomas) are highly prevalent benign tumors in women of reproductive age and are associated with abnormal uterine bleeding, pelvic pain, and infertility. Fibroid tumors are characterized by excessive extracellular matrix deposition and increased tissue stiffness, however the functional impact of this mechanical property in regulating fibroid cell behavior remains poorly understood. Uterine fibroids feature and increased number of senescent cells accompanied by profibrotic and inflammatory signaling but their contribution to fibroid growth is not fully understood. We observed that mechanical stiffness promoted senescence and fibrotic phenotypes in uterine fibroid cells. Fibroid cells cultured on stiff (⁓ 3 GPa) compared to soft (930 kPa) substrates exhibited elevated expression of senescence markers, including p16 and p21, as well as increased levels of fibrosis associated proteins such as fibronectin, PAI1, and α-SMA. Mechanistically, we identified Src and β-catenin as key regulators of this phenotype. Furthermore, the senolytic Src inhibitor dasatinib reduced senescence and fibrosis markers and attenuated β-catenin activity, suggesting that Src acts upstream of β-catenin in this context. Inhibition of β-catenin using ICG001 or PRI724 suppressed senescence and fibrosis markers and reduced downstream targets including CTGF and cyclin D1. These findings reveal a mechanistic link between mechanical stiffness, cellular senescence, and fibrosis in uterine fibroids, and identify Src and β-catenin as potential therapeutic targets.

A node importance evaluation method integrating static and dynamic indicators with management decision requirements

The influence of bottom-up and top-down effects on the distribution and density of common leopards (Panthera pardus) in an Eastern Himalayan landscape

Abstract Large carnivore populations face numerous threats, yet leopards ( Panthera pardus ) remain understudied in Bhutan, where conservation is primarily focused on tigers ( Panthera tigris ). We evaluated the bottom-up and top-down influences on leopard habitat use, vital rates, and activity patterns, and provide the first nationwide estimate of leopard density in Bhutan. Using nationwide camera trap surveys from 2014–2015 to 2021–2022, we applied spatially explicit capture-recapture (SECR) models to estimate leopard density, dynamic two-species occupancy models to assess leopard-tiger habitat use, colonization, and local extinction, and activity-overlap analyses to evaluate temporal partitioning. Mean leopard density was 1.02 individuals/100 km 2 (95% CI 0.89 −1.16), yielding a national population of 318.73 ± 21.73 SE individuals. Leopard density declined with elevation, stream density, and tree cover, while tiger density, human settlement density, and prey availability had weaker context dependent effects. Estimated site use was higher for leopards than tigers and declined with elevation and stream density for both species, while local extinction declined with increasing prey density. Leopards and tigers showed high diel overlap, suggesting little temporal avoidance. Together, these results suggest that leopard persistence in Bhutan’s montane landscapes is structured more strongly by bottom-up habitat and prey conditions than by tiger suppression.

The thermo-fluid and exergy analysis of a shell and twisted helical tube heat exchanger

Abstract The present study experimentally investigates a shell and twisted helical tube heat exchanger ( STHTHX ), which employs a twisted helical tube configuration to enhance thermofluid performance under turbulent flow conditions. The effects of the twisted helical coil diameter ( D ), inner Reynolds number ( Re i ), and shell Reynolds number ( Re sh ) on the thermal performance ( η ) and exergy characteristics of the STHTHX are examined and compared with those of a conventional shell and smooth helical tube heat exchanger ( SSHTHX ). The twisted helical tube design is expected to intensify the swirl motion of the fluid and induce additional flow disturbances and improve the thermofluid characteristics. Three test specimens were fabricated and tested with twisted coil diameters ( D ) of 0.095, 0.125, and 0.165 m. The experiments were carried out under counter-flow conditions with inner mass flow rates ( ṁ i ) ranging from 0.033 to 0.181 kg/s, corresponding to Reynolds numbers ( Re i ) from 6.1 × 10 3 to 4.4 × 10 4 in the twisted helical coil, and shell-side mass flow rates ( ṁ sh ) between 0.067 and 0.175 kg/s. This study aims to fill the research gap regarding the thermofluid characteristics and exergy analysis of the STHTHX and to provide experimental guidance for its design and optimization. The results reveal that the STHTHX demonstrated superior thermofluid performance compared to SSHTHX . Reducing the twisted coil diameter from 0.165 to 0.095 m increasing $$\overline{{Nu_{i} }}$$ , and f i by 47.9, and 38.77%, respectively. The STHTHX achieved a maximum η of 2.07 at D  = 0.095 m. New correlations are proposed to predict $$\overline{{Nu_{i} }}$$ and f i .

Serum magnesium and adverse prognosis in acute pancreatitis with acute kidney injury: a MIMIC-IV retrospective study

Abstract Acute pancreatitis (AP) concurrent with acute kidney injury (AKI) remarkably elevates the risk of adverse outcomes in affected individuals. Abnormal serum magnesium concentrations have been linked to AKI development across diverse patient populations; however, the prognostic significance of serum magnesium levels at multiple time points (60 days, 90 days, 180 days, and 365 days) remains inadequately explored in AP patients with AKI admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU). This study aimed to assess the dynamic prognostic value of serum magnesium at the aforementioned key time points, clarify its clinical utility for risk stratification in this specific cohort, and investigate prognostic disparities among patients stratified by gender, as well as the presence or absence of diabetes mellitus, congestive heart failure, and pre-existing kidney disease. Study data were extracted from the MIMIC-IV database, which was made publicly available in October 2024. Adult patients (≥ 18 years) diagnosed with AP, who had an ICU length of stay (LOS) exceeding 24 h and complete mortality data, were enrolled. Exclusion criteria included missing serum magnesium measurements, ICU LOS < 24 h, incomplete clinical records, and aberrant survival data. Finally, 492 data samples meeting the inclusion criteria were enrolled in the present study. Serum magnesium levels were stratified into three grades using X-tile software, with stratification thresholds determined based on 60-day survival outcomes. Clinical data were retrieved using SQL and PostgreSQL. Intergroup comparisons were performed using statistical methods including the Wilcoxon rank-sum test, chi-square test, and t-test. Survival analyses were conducted to evaluate the association between serum magnesium levels and prognosis. Univariate Cox regression models were used to initially assess the relationship, and multivariate Cox regression models were constructed to adjust for confounding factors based on key patient characteristics. Among the 492 enrolled patients, males accounted for 53.25%. No statistically significant differences were noted in gender distribution or age across the three groups stratified by serum magnesium levels ( P  > 0.05). The hypermagnesemia group had the longest median ICU length of stay (LOS) (145 h, interquartile range [IQR]: 62–274 h), with intergroup differences approaching statistical significance (H = 5.112, P  = 0.078). The incidence rates of sepsis and hypertension increased significantly with elevated serum magnesium levels (sepsis: χ² = 11.496, P  = 0.003; hypertension: χ² = 6.065, P  = 0.048). Additionally, the utilization rate of continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) in the hypermagnesemia group (20.75%) was significantly higher than that in the hypomagnesemia group (9.15%) and normomagnesemia group (11.48%) (χ² = 6.302, P  = 0.043). In the hypermagnesemia group, serum creatinine, potassium, sodium, and chloride levels were significantly elevated, while serum calcium levels were markedly decreased (all P  < 0.05). Disease severity scores, including the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score, Simplified Acute Physiology Score II (SAPS II), and Logistic Organ Dysfunction System (LODS) score, were significantly higher in the hypermagnesemia group compared to the other two groups (all P  < 0.05). Regarding prognostic outcomes, the hypermagnesemia group had the shortest median survival times at 60, 180, and 365 days, with statistically significant intergroup differences (H-values: 6.75, 6.033, 9.235; all P  < 0.049). Its 365-day mortality rate (37.74%) was more than twice that of the hypomagnesemia group (18.61%). Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that the hypermagnesemia group had significantly lower survival rates at all time points compared to the hypomagnesemia group (log-rank test, P  < 0.05). Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that the risk of death gradually increased with rising serum magnesium levels, and hypermagnesemia was associated with a 54% higher risk of 365-day mortality (HR = 1.54, 95% CI: 0.54–4.43). Restricted cubic spline (RCS) analysis demonstrated a significant increase in mortality risk when serum magnesium levels exceeded 1.9 mg/dL. Subgroup analysis confirmed that the association between serum magnesium levels and prognosis was consistent across different subgroups. Furthermore, during the 365-day follow-up, the hypermagnesemia-related mortality risk was significantly elevated in obese patients and those with sepsis ( P  < 0.05). Elevated serum magnesium levels upon ICU admission are closely correlated with increased risks of adverse events and medium- and long-term mortality in patients with acute pancreatitis complicated by acute kidney injury, and can serve as a valuable early clinical indicator for evaluating disease severity and predicting patient prognosis. Abnormally elevated serum magnesium levels effectively reflect the status of severe concomitant organ dysfunction and possess favorable clinical value for disease assessment and prognostic prediction. The stratified cut-off values of serum magnesium established in this study can be applied to early clinical risk stratification and early warning for such patients. Routine dynamic monitoring of serum magnesium is recommended to facilitate early clinical evaluation and risk assessment. Furthermore, it provides a reliable reference for subsequent mechanistic investigations and prospective clinical trials to explore targeted interventions for improving patient outcomes.

Development and characterization of a functional whey-based beverage enriched with encapsulated elderberry (Sambucus nigra) anthocyanins, Bacillus coagulans GBI-30, and inulin

Isolation, screening, and molecular characterization of indigenous yeast strains from fruits for bioethanol production using molasses

Bifocal Agent: enhancing malicious function detection in malware analysis

Abstract Although numerous solutions have been proposed for the automatic detection of malicious components in executable files, malware analysis remains largely a manual task, with the human analyst often representing the main bottleneck. Recent approaches seek to highlight suspicious code regions to reduce analyst effort, but many still rely on signatures or produce high false-positive rates. To address these limitations within the anomaly-based detection paradigm, we present Bifocal Agent, an unsupervised method that analyzes Windows PE executables at two distinct levels of granularity: functions and basic blocks. Our autoencoder-based architecture leverages semantic-aware features and a new strategy for aggregating reconstruction errors to improve the detection of malicious code regions. Results on a dataset comprising three malware families (Rbot, Pegasus, and Carbanak) show that our proposal increases the ROC AUC by 20% (from 0.73 to 0.88) and improves the area under the precision-recall curve by 154% (from 0.13 to 0.32) compared to the baseline. Furthermore, comparative experiments show that the multi-granularity consensus outperforms the state-of-the-art DeepReflect approach. On a curated dataset of labeled malware samples, it reduces false positives by 52% while strictly maintaining the baseline’s 80% true positive rate. To confirm generalization and prevent overfitting, we validate the framework on a large-scale, cross-dataset corpus of 1.3 million functions. In this realistic scenario, the Bifocal Agent increases the Matthews correlation coefficient by 3.1 times and achieves a higher coverage rate while dropping the false positive rate from 45 to 16%.

Killip class at presentation and immediate versus staged multivessel PCI in patients with STEMI

Abstract Patients with ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) and higher Killip class are at an increased risk of death. We sought to assess outcomes of an immediate or staged multivessel percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) in patients with higher Killip class presenting with STEMI and multivessel coronary artery disease (MVD). We conducted a subgroup analysis of the MULTISTARS AMI trial with stratification of patients according to Killip classes. Outcomes of patients with Killip class I and Killip class ≥ II were compared. The primary end point was a composite of all-cause death, non-fatal myocardial infarction, stroke, unplanned ischemia-driven revascularization, or hospitalization for heart failure at 1 year. The primary end point occurred in 15 (17.9%) patients with Killip class ≥ II and 78 (11.4%) patients with Killip class I (HR, 1.57 [95%CI, 0.92–2.70], p-value = 0.11). Comparing an immediate with a staged multivessel PCI strategy, the immediate strategy reduced the primary endpoint in patients with Killip class I (6.8% vs. 15.8%; HR, 0.40 [95%CI, 0.25–0.65], p-value < 0.01), whereas the difference was not significant in patients with Killip class ≥ II (20.0% vs. 15.4%; HR, 1.37 [95%CI, 0.50–3.78], p-value = 0.55). There was a significant treatment-by-subgroup interaction for the primary endpoint (P interaction  = 0.029), with immediate multivessel PCI not showing an advantage in Killip class ≥ II patients. Conclusively, in the MULTISTARS AMI trial, the benefit of immediate multivessel revascularization strategy observed in patients with Killip class I appeared attenuated in those presenting with Killip class ≥ II, suggesting a potential difference in treatment effect that warrants further investigation. (Supported by Boston Scientific; MULTISTARS AMI, NCT03135275)

Green NiO nanoparticle catalyzed synthesis of novel triazolopyrimidine derivatives with physicochemical characterization and computational evaluation for gout therapy

Abstract A novel series of triazolopyrimidine derivatives (5a–d and 6a–c) was synthesized via a green NiO nanoparticle-catalyzed protocol under mild conditions, affording the target compounds in good to excellent yields. The NiO nanoparticles exhibited high catalytic efficiency, attributed to their nanoscale features and porous structure, as confirmed by physicochemical characterization. Structural elucidation of the synthesized compounds was achieved using standard spectroscopic techniques. Computational studies, including density functional theory and molecular docking, were employed to evaluate the reactivity and potential multi-target activity of the compounds against key proteins involved in gout pathogenesis. The results revealed that selected derivatives exhibited favourable binding affinities toward multiple inflammatory targets, supported by stable protein–ligand interactions in molecular dynamics simulations. These findings suggest that the synthesized compounds may serve as potential multi-target candidates for gout therapy and warrant further biological investigation.

Gut microbiome composition and predicted functions relate to growth and behavior in a Japanese preschool cohort

Abstract Early childhood is a period of rapid brain maturation and gut microbiome assembly, when emerging behavioral difficulties can shape later mental health and learning trajectories. Microbiota–gut–brain communication has been implicated in neurodevelopment through microbial metabolites and immune signaling. However, most pediatric evidence comes from high-risk or clinically referred cohorts, and gut microbiome–related correlates of typical behavioral variation in community-based preschool children remain poorly defined. In a cross-sectional sample of typically developing Japanese preschool children, we observed exploratory nominal associations between behavioral variation within normative ranges and gut microbiome composition and predicted functions. Internalizing domains showed candidate links with taxa and predicted pathways related to inflammatory potential and nucleotide biosynthesis, whereas somatic complaints and withdrawn behavior showed nominal associations with lower predicted respiratory and fermentative activity. Sleep-related difficulties showed multiple representative nominal pathway-level associations, including pathways related to methyl-donor and heme biosynthesis, while externalizing domains showed candidate links with predicted cell-envelope and carbohydrate-remodeling pathways. In contrast, age, height, and weight tracked expected maturation-related microbiome features, indicating that behavioral associations were not simple proxies of growth. Together, these findings provide an exploratory profile of microbiome–behavior correlations in a low-risk Japanese preschool cohort and highlight pathway-level candidates that may interface with neurodevelopment.

Daylight saving time transition and new-onset retinal vascular disease: a nationwide cohort study

Integrating oral health screening into general practice: validation study of the Oral Health Screener

Health prediction of metro platform screen door system based on XGBoost-BiGRU-attention model

Correction: Food reward entrainment increases mealtime anxiety in goldfish via a ghrelin-dependent mechanism

The effect of 2D finite element mesh properties on the dynamic behavior of saturated sands

Abstract Numerical analyses are frequently used to determine the dynamic behavior of soils. In order to obtain correct results, it is extremely critical to establish a suitable finite element mesh. While excessively coarse meshes shorten the calculation time and cause details to be ignored, dense finite element meshes lead to prolonged analysis times and high costs. Therefore, the selection of the optimum finite element mesh density in numerical analyses is a critical issue for the balance between performance and efficiency. The present study studies the effect of 2D finite element mesh properties on the dynamic behavior of saturated sands. Three different sand soils with loose, medium and dense densities were modelled with the PM4Sand constitutive equation, and a total of 96 numerical analyses were performed for four different acceleration-time records. The findings of the analyses provide practical guidance for optimizing mesh selection in numerical analyses performed within the scope of geotechnical earthquake engineering.

Distributable screen-printed soil pH sensor demonstrates robust response across variable soil conditions