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Mosquito immune cells enhance dengue and Zika virus infection in Aedes aegypti
Abstract Mosquito-borne arboviruses cause more than 400 million annual infections, yet despite their public health importance, the mechanisms by which arboviruses infect and disseminate in the mosquito host are not well understood. Here, we provide evidence that dengue virus and Zika virus actively infect Aedes aegypti hemocytes and demonstrate, through phagocyte depletion, that hemocytes facilitate virus infection to peripheral tissues including the ovaries and salivary glands. Adoptive transfer experiments further reveal that virus-infected hemocytes efficiently confer virus infection to naïve recipient mosquitoes. Together, these data support a model of arbovirus dissemination where infected hemocytes enhance virus infection of mosquito tissues required for transmission, which parallels vertebrate systems where immune cell populations promote virus dissemination. This study significantly advances our understanding of virus infection dynamics in the mosquito host and highlights potential conserved roles of immune cells in arbovirus infection across vertebrate and invertebrate systems.
Deep reinforcement learning model for Multi-Ship collision avoidance decision making design implementation and performance analysis
Abstract This paper proposes a novel multi-ship collision avoidance decision-making model based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL). The model addresses the critical challenge of preventing ship collisions while maintaining efficient navigation in complex maritime environments. Our innovation lies in the integration of a comprehensive state representation capturing key inter-ship relationships, a reward function that dynamically balances safety, efficiency, and COLREGs compliance, and an enhanced DQN architecture with dueling networks and double Q-learning specifically optimized for maritime scenarios. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art DRL methods, achieving a 30.8% reduction in collision rates compared to recent multi-agent DRL implementations, 20% improvement in safety distances, and enhanced regulatory compliance across diverse scenarios. The model shows superior scalability in high-density traffic, with only 12.6% performance degradation compared to 18.4–45.2% for baseline methods. These advancements provide a promising solution for autonomous ship navigation and maritime safety enhancement.
Association between adherence to Mediterranean-DASH intervention for neurodegenerative delay diet and disease severity in patients with ulcerative colitis
Global trends, health inequalities, and projections in the burden of neglected tropical diseases and malaria from 1990 to 2021
How content complexity and sensory modality influence student satisfaction in art education
Abstract Art education plays a vital role in preserving cultural heritage and promoting sustainable development. However, growing curricular complexity and abstraction present challenges to student satisfaction, a key metric in educational sustainability. This study investigates how perceived content complexity and modality structure affect student satisfaction in art-related programs, drawing on Construal Level Theory (CLT) to explain the psychological mechanisms involved. Based on aggregated data from 73,368 students across 1524 academic programs in China, the results indicate that higher content complexity significantly reduces satisfaction. Moreover, a lower auditory–visual (A/V) ratio—indicating reduced emphasis on visual input—also decreases satisfaction but moderates the negative effect of content complexity. The findings suggest that cognitive-perceptual mechanisms play a central role in shaping students’ evaluative responses and offer implications for improving curriculum design and institutional strategies in art education.
How different life-history strategies respond to changing environments: a multi-decadal study of groundfish communities
Prevalence and clinical impact of severe anaemia in referral hospitals in southern Benin
Abstract Severe anaemia is a critical public health issue worldwide, disproportionately affecting children in Africa, where approximately 40% of children aged 6 to 59 months are impacted. It leads to significant hospital and post-hospital complications. However, there is a notable lack of research on its burden and clinical impact, particularly in Benin, where existing data are outdated. This study aims to assess the prevalence and impact of severe anaemia in two areas of perennial transmission in southern Benin. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional study at two referral hospitals in Benin, Lagune Mother and Child University Hospital Centre (CHU-MEL) and the Departmental Hospital Centre-Zou (CHD-Z). Sociodemographic, clinical and biological information were extracted from medical records of patients admitted to paediatric ward in 2023, using a standardised questionnaire. Clinical severe anaemia was defined as anaemia with decompensation requiring blood transfusion, and biological severe anaemia as haemoglobin < 5 g/dl. A total of 7152 paediatric hospital records were included in the analysis (CHU-MEL = 4388; CHD-Z = 2764). The median (IQR, range) age was 32 (13–61; 1–228) months. Severe malaria (N = 3653/7152 [51.1%]) and clinical severe anaemia (3586/7152 [50.1%]) were the most common diagnoses with four out of five children (2836/3586 [79.0%]) clinically diagnosed with severe anaemia cases had malaria. In children with severe anaemia, the risk of death decreased slightly with year of age (aOR 0.95, 95% CI 0.92–0.99, p = 0.019). In contrast, severe malnutrition increased the risk of death (aOR 1.80, 95% CI 1.33–2.43, p < 0.001) being significant risk factors. Severe anaemia is a major contributor to paediatric hospital admissions, with severe malaria being a leading cause in these regions. This study highlights the critical need for a comprehensive management strategy for severe anaemia, particularly in the youngest children. An integrated strategy of effective malaria chemoprevention, such as post-discharge malaria chemotherapy combined with targeted nutritional interventions, are essential to mitigate mortality rates in areas with high malaria transmission, where the dual burden of malaria and nutritional deficiencies exacerbates paediatric morbidity and mortality.
Role of lysine acetylation-related genes in the diagnosis and prognosis of glioma
Artificial neural network-driven approaches to improved forecasting of disability care expenditures in an aging Kingdom of Saudi Arabia population
Winters restrict a climate change–driven butterfly range expansion despite rapid evolution of seasonal timing traits
Climate change pushes species toward higher latitudes and altitudes, but the proximate drivers of range expansions vary, and it is unclear whether evolution facilitates climate change–induced range changes. In a temporally replicated field experiment, we translocated wall brown butterflies ( Lasiommata megera ) descending from range interior and range margin populations to sites at 1) the range interior, 2) the range margin, and 3) beyond the current northern range edge. Thereby, we tested for local adaptation in seasonal timing and winter survival and evaluated to what extent local adaptation influences the ongoing, climate-driven range expansion. Almost all individuals from all populations entered diapause at an appropriate time, despite previously identified among-population variation in diapause induction thresholds. Caterpillars of northern descent, however, grew faster than those from southern populations at all field sites. This may be a countergradient adaptation to compensate for the short, northern growing seasons, but we found no evidence for prewinter body mass affecting winter survival. In fact, winter survival was low overall—extremely so at the beyond range site—regardless of population origin, indicating that the primary constraint to range expansion is an inability to adapt to winter conditions. Hence, although range-expanding wall browns show clear local evolution of two traits related to seasonal timing, these putative local adaptations likely do not contribute to range expansion, which is instead limited by winter survival. To predict future range changes, it will be important to distinguish between the traits that evolve during range expansion and those that set the range limit.
Macrophage-induced reduction of bacteriophage density limits the efficacy of in vivo pulmonary phage therapy
Evolutionary regulation of human Fas ligand (CD95L) by plasmin in solid cancer immunotherapy
Abstract Despite sharing >98% genomic similarity, humans are more likely to develop cancers than our closest living ancestors, the nonhuman primates. Here, we unexpectedly discover that, unlike chimpanzee and other primates, a critical embryonic development, immune homeostasis, and general cell-death regulator protein called Fas Ligand (FasL) contains a Pro153-Ser153 evolutionary substitution in humans. The latter renders human FasL preferentially susceptible to cleavage by plasmin, an overly elevated protease in solid tumors. Since FasL-mediated killing of tumor cells by activated T-lymphocytes and chimeric antigen receptor T-cells (CAR-T) is critical for therapeutic efficacy, we find that elevated plasmin levels in certain ovarian tumors interfere with the T-lymphocyte-expressed FasL death signaling. Either targeted inhibition or blocking plasmin accessibility to membrane FasL rescues the FasL cell-death function of activated T-lymphocytes in response to immune-checkpoint receptor targeting antibodies. These findings of evolutionary significance highlight that elevated plasmin in metastatic tumors potentially contributes to differential outcomes of T-cell-based immunotherapies in solid tumors.
Mn-atomic-layered antiphase boundary enhanced ferroelectricity in KNN-based lead-free films
Mendelian randomization study revealed a gut microbiota-immune system-kidney junction axis in chronic kidney disease
Abstract The alterations of the gut microbiome and cytokine profiles and an elevated risk has correlated with kidney disease progression. However, the causal relationship between gut microbiota and chronic kidney disease (CKD) or related kidney function, and whether cytokines and immune cells act as mediators, remains unclear. Using genome-wide association studies (GWAS) data for CKD, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and UACR (urinary albumin to creatinine) from the CKDGen consortium, microbiome data from the MiBioGen consortium and the Dutch Microbiome Project (DMP), 41 cytokine and 731 immune cell traits were identified from large-scale GWAS summary data. We performed two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis to analyses the causal relationships between gut microbiome, circulating cytokines, immune cells and CKD, eGFR and UACR. In addition, we investigated whether cytokines and immune cells are the mediating factor in the pathway from gut microbiome to CKD, eGFR and UACR. We demonstrated the causal relationships between 8 gut microbiotas in MiBioGen and 8 gut microbiota and 6 metabolism pathways in DMP with CKD, 7 gut microbiotas in MiBioGen and 7 gut microbiota and 3 metabolism pathways with eGFR and 4 gut microbiotas in MiBioGen and 10 gut microbiota and 3 metabolism pathways in DMP with UACR. Additionally, we identified 25 cytokine and immune cell characteristics associated with CKD, 18 with eGFR and 22 with UACR. Importantly, we identified no cytokine, but several immune cell properties that mediate the effects of microbiome on CKD, eGFR and UACR through mediation MR analysis. For instance, Alistipes indistinctus and Alistipes putredinis affects CKD via CD28 + CD45RA + CD8 + T cell. The mediation effects highlighted the intricate relationship between gut microbiome exposure, immune cell activity, and their combined influence on CKD. This data supports a causal effect of the gut microbiome on CKD, eGFR and UACR and underscores the value of MR in clarifying causal relationships identified in microbiome-wide association studies. Circulating immune cells may act as mediators in the pathway linking gut microbiota to CKD progression.