Browse Articles

Validation of the Thai World Health Organization Quality of Life-OLD (WHOQOL-OLD) among Thai older adults: Rasch analysis

Machine learning with hyperparameter optimization applied in facies-supported permeability modeling in carbonate oil reservoirs

Serum fibrinogen is not elevated in patients with myasthenia gravis

Correction for Wijnakker et al., Integrin-activating <i>Yersinia</i> protein Invasin sustains long-term expansion of primary epithelial cells as 2D organoid sheets

High frequency traction rod model and its structure-borne sound transmission characteristic of high-speed trains

The living Barents Sea response to peak-warming and subsequent cooling

Abstract The Arctic warms nearly four times faster than the global average, with maximum warming in the Barents Sea. Concurrently, changes in species distribution in this productive and highly exploited sub-Arctic hotspot has been found. However, studies so far have mostly focused on the effect of gradual warming on single species or trophic groups. We assess changes in zooplankton, fish and zoobenthos assemblages (130 species in 23 groups) and found heterogeneous response to ongoing warming. Temporally constrained cluster analysis showed that the warming was not continuous over the study period 2005–2022 but occurred in three phases: an initial period (2005–2011) cooler than the average for the whole study period, followed by a very warm period (2012–2016) and finally a cooler period again (2017–2022). The biotic response was greatest in the areas of largest oceanographic changes: in the northwest, the biomass of biota increased in most groups, including Arctic fish species, whereas in the southeast, the biomass of several fish species declined, while that of jellyfish and invasive snow crab increased. New knowledge is useful for generating scenarios for ecosystem responses to climate change.

Predicting axial load capacity in elliptical fiber reinforced polymer concrete steel double skin columns using machine learning

Genome-wide identification and functional analyses of the TCP gene family in Carthamus tinctorius L.

An efficient electricity theft detection based on deep learning

Abstract Electrical theft is a pervasive issue that has detrimental impacts on both utility companies and electrical consumers worldwide. It undermines the economic growth of utility businesses, poses electrical risks, and affects customers’ expensive energy bills. Smart grids produce vast quantities of data, including consumer usage data which is crucial for identifying instances of energy theft. Machine learning and deep learning algorithms may use this data to identify instances of energy theft. This research presents a new approach using convolutional neural networks and long-short-term memory to extract abstract characteristics from power consumption data, to improve the accuracy of theft detection for electricity users. We mitigate dataset shortcomings, such as incomplete data and imbalanced class distribution, by using LoRAS data augmentation. The method’s efficiency is evaluated by using authentic power usage data obtained from the State Grid Corporation of China. Finally, we demonstrate the competitiveness of our approach when compared to other approaches that have been assessed on the same dataset. During the validation process, we attained a 97% accuracy rate, surpassing the highest accuracy reported in previous studies by 1%. We obtained accuracy values of 98.75%, 95.45%, and 97.7%, along with corresponding recall and F1 scores. The findings indicate that the suggested approach surpasses existing state-of-arts methods.

Association between beauty standards shaped by social media and body dysmorphia among Egyptian medical students

Abstract This study examines the relationship between exposure to unattainable beauty standards via social media and the prevalence of Body Dysmorphic Disorder among medical students in Egypt. The rapid development of digital platforms, particularly social media, has brought about a wider dissemination of unattainable beauty standards that may contribute to body image disorders and psychological problems. Given the unique pressures faced by medical students, who represent both consumers and influencers in health-related content, the current study attempts to ascertain whether excessive engagement with distorted beauty portrayals correlates with higher rates of BDD symptoms in this population. This was a cross-sectional questionnaire-based study consisting of 1126 undergraduate medical students, with a mean age of 20.8 years enrolled in any Egyptian medical school registered in the academic year 2023–2024, specifically from August–October 2024, except non-medical, graduate, and non-Egyptian students who met the exclusion criteria. We privately gathered answers via colleagues and electronically via online Google forms posted on social media groups. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the relationship between social media use and BDD among medical students. According to social media practices, WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok were mostly used for 4–7 h daily. Most rarely or sometimes, take selfies, edit them with filters, and share them with others. The summary of BDDQ answers demonstrated that 6.3% of Egyptian medical students enrolled met the criteria for BDD. The majority reported that they do not like their face, and this leads to suffering from bullying in school or work, resulting in avoiding certain clothes as an avoidance behavior. The majority reported engaging in positive self-talk, participating in offline activities or hobbies, and unfollowing accounts promoting unattainable beauty standards as a coping strategy against unattainable beauty standards shaped by social media. Our study found that BDD is highly prevalent among social media users, especially on text-based platforms. The prevalence of BDD among Egyptian medical students is 6.3%, which is higher than worldwide. Interestingly, Egyptian medical students enrolled in our study believe that promoting body positivity, educating users about the risks of body dysmorphia, restricting content that promotes unrealistic body standards, and providing resources and support for those affected, respectively, are the critical measures that social media platforms should take to address body dysmorphia.

Piezoelectric properties improvement in soft membrane with wet-spinning prepared barium titanate/polyvinylidenefluoride composites fiber

Lysosomal lipid peroxidation contributes to ferroptosis induction via lysosomal membrane permeabilization

Weyl phonons: the connection of topology and chirality

Correcting for volunteer bias in GWAS increases SNP effect sizes and heritability estimates

Abstract Selection bias in genome-wide association studies (GWASs) due to volunteer-based sampling (volunteer bias) is poorly understood. The UK Biobank (UKB), one of the largest and most widely used cohorts, is highly selected. Using inverse probability (IP) weights we estimate inverse probability weighted GWAS (WGWAS) to correct GWAS summary statistics in the UKB for volunteer bias. Our IP weights were estimated using UK Census data – the largest source of population-representative data – made representative of the UKB’s sampling population. These weights have a substantial SNP-based heritability of 4.8% (s.e. 0.8%), suggesting they capture volunteer bias in GWAS. Across ten phenotypes, WGWAS yields larger SNP effect sizes, larger heritability estimates, and altered gene-set tissue expression, despite decreasing the effective sample size by 62% on average, compared to GWAS. The impact of volunteer bias on GWAS results varies by phenotype. Traits related to disease, health behaviors, and socioeconomic status are most affected. We recommend that GWAS consortia provide population weights for their data sets, or use population-representative samples.

Coincident onset of charge order and pseudogap in a homogeneous high-temperature superconductor

Abstract Understanding high-temperature superconductivity in cuprates requires knowledge of the metallic phase it evolves from, particularly the pseudogap profoundly affecting the electronic properties at low carrier densities. A key question is the influence of chemical disorder, which is ubiquitous but exceedingly difficult to model. Using resonant X-ray scattering, we identified two-dimensional charge order in stoichiometric YBa2Cu4O8 (T c = 80 K), which is nearly free of chemical disorder. The charge order amplitude shows a concave temperature dependence and vanishes sharply at T* = 200 K, the onset of a prominent pseudogap previously determined by spectroscopy, suggesting a causal link between these phenomena. The gradual onset of charge order in other cuprates is thus likely attributable to an inhomogeneous distribution of charge ordering temperatures due to disorder induced by chemical substitution. The relationship between the pseudogap and the disorder-induced gradual freeze-out of charge carriers remains a central issue in research on high-T c superconductors.

A redox-active polymeric network facilitates electrified reactive-capture electrosynthesis to multi-carbon products from dilute CO2-containing streams

Reward integration in prefrontal-cortical and ventral-hippocampal nucleus accumbens inputs cooperatively modulates engagement

Crystal structure of Isthmin-1 and reassessment of its functional role in pre-adipocyte signaling

Expanding the chemical space of flavins with pentacyclic architecture

Photocatalytic C-N coupling from stable and transient intermediates for gram-scale acetamide synthesis

Abstract Electro/photocatalytic C-N coupling acts as a key build-block to the next generation of chemicals like amides for wide applications in energy, pharmaceuticals and chemical industries. However, the uncontrolled intermediates coupling challenges the efficient amide production regarding yield or selectivity. Here we propose a photocatalytic radical addition route, where the fundamental active species, including oxygen and photogenerated electron-hole pairs, are regulated for selective intermediates generation and efficient acetamide synthesis from mild co-oxidation of CH3CH2OH and NH3. Sufficient CH3CH2OH is provided to accumulate the stable intermediate (CH3CHO). Meanwhile, the limited NH3 concentration ensures the controllable generation and fast addition of the transient radical (●NH2) on CH3CHO. Through the directed coupling of stable-transient intermediates, the acetamide synthesis rate is pushed forward to a hundred-mmol level (105.61 ± 4.86 mmol·gcat −1·h−1) with a selectivity of 99.17% ± 0.39%, reaching a gram-scale yield (1.82 g) of acetamide. These results illuminate valuable opportunities for the photocatalysis-driven synthetic industry.