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Environmental safety of electronic and construction and demolition waste based geopolymer breakwaters under simulated marine leaching

Abstract This study presents the evaluation of the environmental performance of a geopolymer based breakwater using a novel dual-waste valorisation approach that combines electronic waste (e-waste) derived sodium silicate from cathode ray tube glass (CRT) as a geopolymer activator, and construction and demolition waste (C&DW) aggregates. It will systematically investigate the leaching of major (Ca, Si, Al, Mg, Na) and trace/heavy metals (Cr, As, Zn, Fe, Pb, Ni, Cd, Cu) under simulated marine exposure. Geopolymer blocks incorporating e-waste derived sodium silicate and C&DW aggregates were compared with ordinary Portland cement (OPC) concrete and commercial silicate-based geopolymers. Standard dynamic surface leaching tests were performed in deionized water (DIW) and seawater (SW) for 64 days, with extrapolated predictions for a 50-year service life. Cumulative release of major ions during 64-day immersion ranged from 3.5 to 700 gm −2 , while trace/heavy metals remained within 30–150 mgm −2 . Extrapolation over 50 years indicated that all trace/heavy metals, including Pb, Cd, Ni, Cu, Mn, As, Cr, Zn, and Fe, would remain below 1 gm −2 , while abundant elements such as Al, Mg, Si, Na, and Ca would remain below 1 kgm −2 in seawater. Higher Na (in GEO-RSiA-NA) and Ca (in NC-NA and GEO-RSiA-RA) releases were observed in DIW compared to SW, confirming its more aggressive leaching environment. Overall, trace/heavy metal concentrations remained well below Dutch regulatory thresholds, confirming the environmental safety of geopolymer breakwaters. These findings demonstrate the feasibility of recycled silicate–aggregate geopolymers as a sustainable breakwater material with reduced carbon footprint and controlled environmental impact. Further field validation under real hydrodynamic forces is recommended.

Innovative screening for OSAS in patients with head and neck cancer using the apneal application: Protocol for a prospective single-centre study

Introduction OSAS is a common yet underdiagnosed condition, particularly among patients with head and neck cancers (HNC). Anatomical changes caused by the tumor or its treatments—surgery, radiotherapy, or chemotherapy—can promote the onset of OSAS. However, fatigue in these patients is often attributed solely to the cancer treatment itself, which may delay appropriate diagnosis and management. Methods This prospective single-center study aims to assess the clinical feasibility of OSAS screening in patients with HNC using an innovative mobile application, Apneal , which uses smartphone sensors to detect nocturnal respiratory events through an artificial intelligence algorithm. Fifty adult patients diagnosed with HNC will be included. Each patient will perform two home-based overnight recordings using the Apneal application: one at the time of diagnosis and another six months after local treatment. Clinical and quality-of-life questionnaires will be completed. The estimated AHI will be compared with symptomatology and, if necessary, confirmed by a standard respiratory polygraphy. Expected Results The primary outcome is the proportion of patients for whom Apneal data are usable at the 6-month follow-up after treatment. Secondary objectives include assessing the incidence of OSAS according to the oncologic treatments received, identifying high-risk profiles, and evaluating the impact of OSAS on quality of life. Discussion This study could pave the way for a systematic, simple, low-cost, and non-invasive OSAS screening in patients with HNC. Ultimately, the goal is to enable a more personalized and comprehensive approach to care in this vulnerable population.

Epidemiological and genetic characteristics of a sapovirus GI.6 acute gastroenteritis outbreak in Jiangxi, China

Omipalisib reduces hyperphosphorylated tau protein by modulating mTOR-autophagy pathway

Tauopathies are neurodegenerative diseases characterized by the presence of hyperphosphorylated tau (p-tau) and neurofibrillary tangles. Autophagy is a critical self-degradation mechanism that preserves cellular homeostasis and function, including the clearance of misfolded proteins. Autophagy is impaired in tauopathies, resulting in excessive accumulation of p-tau. Omipalisib, a dual phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/mammalian target of rapamycin (PI3K/mTOR) inhibitor, was explored in a phase I clinical trial involving solid tumors and lymphoma. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of omipalisib on tauopathy both in vitro and in vivo . Omipalisib increased the levels of protein LC3B and decreased that of p62 in human tau (P301L)-expressing SH-SY5Y stable (SH-Tau) cells by inhibiting mTOR activation in a time-dependent manner. In our study, we hypothesized that omipalisib, a PI3K/mTOR inhibitor, could remove accumulated tau and inhibit memory decline by activating autophagy. Additionally, omipalisib reduced tau phosphorylation in SH-Tau cells without inducing cytotoxicity. Upon administration of 6-month-old PS19 mice with omipalisib (1 mg/kg) for 2 months, the levels of both RIPA-soluble and RIPA-insoluble p-tau were decreased, and spatial memory dysfunction was alleviated in omipalisib-treated PS19 mice. Overall, these results show that omipalisib decreases the expression of p-tau by modulation mTOR-autophagy pathway, resulting in the amelioration of spatial memory deficits. This study highlighted the potential of omipalisib as a candidate treatment for tauopathies.

Flower visitors and pollinator interactions on mustard (Brassica juncea): yield increase potential of stingless bees (Tetragonula pagdeni) across field systems

Abstract Pollinator–crop interactions are crucial for yield. Brown mustard is widely grown as an oilseed crop, yet declining pollinator populations can lead to pollination deficits and reduced yields. Although some studies have reported mustard flower visitors, details of plant–pollinator interactions and the effectiveness of bee management practices remain poorly understood. We aimed to uncover the dynamics of the flower resource, pollination ecology, and the potential for yield increases by stingless bees. We measured floral resources, conducted field surveys, and implemented five pollination treatments: open pollination, pollinator exclusion, and managed stingless bee treatments in open fields, netted fields, and greenhouse conditions. Mustard flowers opened throughout the daytime and peaked between 8.00 and 10.00 h. The availability of floral resources (nectar/spike and pollen/spike) remained higher from 8.00 to 12.00 h, and during this time, the abundance, richness, and diversity of flower visitors were also higher. Diverse insect groups pollinated mustard flowers, and effective native pollinators (based on the pollination service index values) were Apis cerana , Apis florea , Ceratina binghami , Lasioglossum cavernifrons , and Tetragonula pagdeni . Pollination modes remained diverse, as sternotribic, noto-sternotribic, and appendage-mediated. The installation of Indian stingless bees in mustard fields optimised yields, and the open field installation practice remained superior (seed yield: 1311.66 ± 88.12 kg/ha) to caged practices (netted fields: 856.23 ± 68.23 kg/ha and greenhouse fields: 901.86 ± 74.15 kg/ha). Based on these findings, it is suggested that farmers utilise supplementary stingless bees in mustard cultivation (via open field application) to enhance sustainable agricultural outputs.

Are pulmonary neuroepithelial bodies sensors for acute airway hypoxia implicated in the central regulation of breathing?

Although their functions have long been disputed, pulmonary neuroepithelial bodies (NEBs) are now considered complex, multifunctional units implicated in vagal sensory signaling within the brain–lung axis. A widely proposed function of NEBs is that their neuroendocrine cells would be able to sense acute airway hypoxia, triggering Ca² ⁺ -dependent transmitter release and the subsequent activation of vagal afferents that transfer the hypoxic information to the central nervous system (CNS). However, physiological evidence for the latter well-documented hypothesis is so far inconclusive. Using a confocal live-cell imaging model, based on murine precision-cut lung slices (PCLSs), this study was designed to directly visualize hypoxia-induced activation of NEB cells, including associated Ca² ⁺ -mediated exocytotic events that would support CNS-directed signaling. In PCLSs from prenatal and postnatal C57BL/6 mice, including GAD67-GFP mice, we monitored changes in intracellular Ca²⁺ ([Ca²⁺] i ), mitochondrial membrane potential, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) during acute and intermittent hypoxia, as well as after ROS scavenging. Whole-mount mouse carotid bodies served as positive controls. Carotid body glomus cells showed robust hypoxia-induced [Ca²⁺] i rises, confirming assay sensitivity. In contrast, neither acute (2 or 12% O₂) nor intermittent hypoxia elicited [Ca²⁺] i increases in NEBs or delayed activation of adjacent Clara-like cells at any developmental stage. NEBs remained responsive to K + -induced depolarization, though excitability appeared to decrease during hypoxia. Hypoxia caused rapid, reversible mitochondrial depolarization in NEBs and ciliated epithelial cells, accompanied by a modest ROS increase in all airway epithelial cells. Tempol did not uncover any [Ca²⁺] i responses. Whereas control airway epithelium and carotid body expressed all NADPH oxidase subunits, the NEB microenvironment appeared to lack clear expression of several components. We conclude that mouse NEBs do not exhibit Ca² ⁺ -mediated exocytotic responses to hypoxia and that NADPH oxidase is unlikely to function as their O₂ sensor. These findings challenge a direct NEB-to-brain signaling pathway for acute hypoxia, but support local, paracrine functions related to airway oxygenation.

Optimized stacked ensemble approach for detecting position falsification in VANETs

Correction: A protocol for using human genetic data to identify circulating protein level changes that are the causal consequence of cancer processes

Sleep-wake and circadian behavior in brain-specific sirtuin 1 knockout mice and effects of nicotinamide mononucleotide supplementation

Abstract Sirtuin 1 (SIRT1) is implicated in sleep regulation, but there have been a limited number of sleep studies related to SIRT1. We aim to determine the impacts of the brain-specific loss of SIRT1 on sleep and circadian rhythm. We first characterized circadian periods and sleep phenotypes in baseline and recovery sleep in brain-specific Sirt1 knockout (BKO) and littermate wild-type (WT) mice. We found that there were no differences in sleep architecture, amount of each vigilance state, and sleep homeostasis between genotypes, suggesting that brain SIRT1 functionally plays minor roles in sleep-wake regulation. However, in accordance with prior work, loss of Sirt1 caused decreased delta power during non-REM sleep. In addition, there was no difference in intrinsic circadian periods between genotypes. We also provide the first preclinical evidence of whether nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN) treatment directly improves sleep by administering it acutely (intraperitoneally for 10 days) and chronically (orally for 2 months). However, neither acute nor chronic treatment changed sleep duration and quality compared to the control session in middle-aged WT and BKO mice. Considering our findings and previous studies, the clinically reported improvement in muscle function and energy metabolism may indirectly contribute to the potential benefits of NMN on sleep quality and fatigue in the elderly.

Exploring the validity and internal consistency of the 12-point Mediterranean Diet Adherence Screener among Lebanese pregnant women

Although 14-MEDAS is widely used for dietary assessment, it has not been validated in pregnant Lebanese women. This study assesses its validity and internal consistency against a Food Frequency Questionnaire (FFQ) and 24-hour recalls (24HR). A cross-sectional study with 500 pregnant women was conducted between March and October 2023. Food consumption data were gathered using a validated FFQ and three non-consecutive 24-HR to validate the 14-MEDAS. Adherence thresholds were adjusted for the removal of the alcohol item (contraindicated during pregnancy) and olive oil quantity (low communalities: < 0.30), leading to a maximum score of 12 (12-MEDAS). Internal consistency, as measured by KR-21, was acceptable (0.76) reflecting the formative nature of the scale. Factor analysis revealed a four-factor structure explaining 46.28% of the variance. The 12-MEDAS demonstrated suboptimal relative validity. While it provides a quick assessment of adherence to the Mediterranean Diet, discrepancies between the 12-MEDAS and reference methods (FFQ and 24HR) likely stem from the tool’s inability to account for pregnancy- and locally-specific food groups and habits, as well as measurement errors inherent to self-reported methods. The results warrant a cultural and physiological adaptation, such as adjusting for the recommended alcohol abstinence, and considering local food sources and eating habits.

Sodium nitroprusside and chitosan alleviate drought stress in spinach by modulating nutrient balance, phenolics production, and photosynthesis

Potential intervention targets to promote physical activity among people with multiple sclerosis: A scoping review protocol for evidence of moderation

Introduction Although currently available behavioral interventions can be effective at promoting physical activity among people with multiple sclerosis (MS), there is inconsistency in the magnitude of reported intervention effects. This highlights the importance of exploring the available evidence of moderation, which can help inform decisions about whether a specific set of behavior change techniques and strategies should be adopted for different contexts or segments of the population. Therefore, we propose a scoping review protocol to guide a summary of the body of work that has attempted to understand, explain, predict, or change physical activity behavior (context) among people with MS (population), with an eye on evidence of moderation (concept). Methods and analyses Studies that report on a sample of people with MS in the context of physical activity will be included for review. The search strategy includes the combing of eight electronic databases, a hand search of the reference lists for all included studies and relevant knowledge syntheses, and a citing reference search for all included studies using Web of Science. Two reviewers will single-screen titles and abstracts and independently assess each study based on a full text review. Types of multiple sclerosis populations included, and types of research methodologies used in the studies will be presented using a waffle chart. Results pertaining to the evidence of moderation will be presented using a tree graph. Dissemination Results will be published in a peer-review journal.

SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Barcelona and Catalonia (Spain) after the 2020 lockdown

Abstract The study aimed to assess seroprevalence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Barcelona city (SRCOV2-BCN study) and the region of Catalonia, Spain (SRCOV2-CAT study) prior to the availability of coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccines. Humoral response to SARS-CoV-2 infection was assessed by detection of total antibodies (IgG, IgA and IgM) in surplus specimens from routine blood draw in the biochemistry laboratories of the participant hospitals. In Barcelona city, SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence was 10.2% both in April and July 2020, without differences between men and women. The highest seroprevalence was found in individuals between 50 and 64 years old (13.7%). In Catalonia, SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence in July 2020 was 9.2% and it was higher in women (10.1%) than in men (7.5%) ( P  = 0.0066), especially in the 50–64 age group (12.7% in women vs. 5.4% in men, P  = 0.00051). The highest prevalence by age groups was 10%, found in individuals between 35 and 64 years old. Seroprevalence in the Barcelona province (11.7%) was higher than in the other provinces. In conclusion, SAR-CoV-2 seroprevalence in Catalonia during the first months of COVID pandemics was moderately high. There were differences by age, sex and geographical location that should be investigated.

Reliability and construct validity of the Hungarian version of Skindex-Mini

The Skindex-Mini is a brief 3-item dermatology-specific quality-of-life tool, that has been previously validated in English and Spanish. This study evaluated the reliability and construct validity of the Hungarian version in patients with skin diseases. In a cross-sectional study, 578 patients with inflammatory or noninflammatory conditions completed the Hungarian Skindex-Mini alongside established measures including the Dermatology Life Quality Index–Revised, Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale-16, and Stigmatization Scale for Chronic Illnesses–8 Questionnaire. Validity was assessed using and Spearman correlations. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a unidimensional structure, while Item Response Theory analyses indicated strong item discriminatory power and measurement invariance across groups. The tool demonstrated moderate convergent validity with stigma and distress, and acceptable discriminant validity with well-being. The Hungarian Skindex-Mini exhibits robust psychometric properties, supporting its use for rapid screening of dermatology-related quality-of-life burden. Its brevity makes it suitable for diverse clinical and research applications.

GCMR-IMA: graph-based cross-modal retrieval with incomplete modality awareness

Abstract Cross-modal retrieval, especially for image-text pairs, plays a vital role in areas such as medical image analysis, multimedia search, and personalized recommendations. However, challenges like modality heterogeneity, missing data, and noise still limit its effectiveness. Traditional methods often suffer from high computational complexity, while deep learning-based approaches struggle to capture long-range semantic relationships and handle missing modalities. To address these issues, we propose a graph-based Incomplete Modality Awareness Cross-Modal Retrieval method (GCMR-IMA) with four key innovations: (1) A dual-layer semantic architecture with image-text dual embedding for global semantic graph learning and long-range semantic capture; (2) A sparsified modality adjacency graph to model latent inter-modality relationships, improving modality association awareness; (3) A graph-guided missing modality awareness method, providing semantically consistent guidance for missing modalities using the global semantic graph’s sparsified adjacency matrix; (4) An adaptive loss function that optimizes modality projections for context-aware missing modality detection. Extensive experiments demonstrate that GCMR-IMA continues to perform well in the presence of missing modalities. This framework enhances the robustness and effectiveness of cross-modal retrieval systems, supporting better decision-making in real-world applications.

Association between distributed leadership and teachers’ organizational commitment: Evidence from public and private schools in the United Arab Emirates

Distributed Leadership (DL) has become an important approach in contemporary school reform, promoting teacher agency, shared responsibility, and inclusive decision-making. While DL is linked to school effectiveness, its relationship with teachers’ Organizational Commitment (OC), including Affective (AC), Normative (NC), and Continuance Commitment (CC), remains underexplored, particularly in multicultural contexts such as the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This study’s main purpose was to examine how teachers’ perceptions of DL are associated with their OC in UAE schools. A quantitative, correlational design was employed with a stratified random sample of 1,040 teachers from public and private schools across all seven Emirates. Data were collected using the Distributed Leadership Scale and the TCM Employee Commitment Survey. To support the study objective, measurement analyses were conducted to clarify the structure of the scales. Confirmatory Factor Analysis indicated that a bifactor model provided the best representation of OC across the examined models. Based on consistent empirical results across subsamples and conceptual considerations, two weak CC items were removed, resulting in a more coherent operationalization of the construct. Demographic variables were also examined as contextual factors that may shape the relationship between DL and OC. The findings showed that DL was widely perceived across schools, with public schools reporting slightly higher levels. Structural Equation Modeling indicated a strong positive association between DL and overall OC, particularly for affective and normative commitment, while the association with continuance commitment was weaker. School type showed a limited association with commitment, indicating that DL is more strongly related to teachers’ OC than school type. Demographic variations emerged for nationality, qualifications, experience, school cycle, and school location, but not for gender. The study provides theoretical and practical insights into how DL is associated with teachers’ OC in culturally diverse educational systems and contributes to international literature by supporting the use of these instruments in non-Western settings.

Correction: Doping induced enhancement for acetone sensing in ceria

Retraction: Multi-modal deep learning methods for classification of chest diseases using different medical imaging and cough sounds

Brusatol enhances the chemotherapy efficacy of Cisplatin and Gemcitabine in KKU-100 cholangiocarcinoma cells through ROS-mediated apoptosis

A lightweight hybrid deep learning approach for fashion mnist classification with explainable attention visualization

The classification of fashion images is an essential task in the e-commerce sector, where accurate categorization improves user experience and refines product discovery. Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) and Transformers have demonstrated strong performance in image classification tasks due to their ability to learn complex visual features. However, deep variants of these architectures, such as VGG-19, ResNet-50, Vision Transformer (ViT), and Swin Transformer, contain tens of millions of parameters, requiring high memory and powerful GPUs for training, which makes them less suitable for low-resource and edge device environments. To address these limitations, this research proposes a lightweight hybrid architecture, TinyCNN with Linear Self-Attention (LSA), optimized for resource-constrained settings. The proposed model contains fewer than half a million parameters and is trainable on a CPU, achieving a classification accuracy of 91.47% on the Fashion-MNIST dataset. In addition, multiple Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) techniques are implemented, including Self-Attention visualization, Multi-Head Attention, Attention Flow, Attention Rollout, Fixed query position attention maps, Integrated Gradients, LIME, and SHAP, to provide visual interpretability of the model’s predictions and enhance transparency in its decision-making process.