Pregnancy, the post-fertilization period when embryos are incubated within the body, is a dynamic multistage process that has convergently evolved in many vertebrates. To increase independence from environmental fluctuations and protect offspring from predation, challenges had to be initially overcome. The most obvious, when considering such an intimate relation between the parent and its semi-allogenic offspring, was the pressing need to dodge immunity-associated embryo rejection. In mammals, immunological tolerance was found to be dependent on the active modulation of the immune system. Even though supporting much of the current knowledge on vertebrate pregnancy, mammals lack extant transitional stages that could help reconstruct the evolutionary pathway of this fascinatingly complex reproduction mode. In this issue of Molecular Ecology, Parker et al. (2022) selected an untraditional model - the seahorse and pipefish family, whose species evolved male pregnancy across an almost continuous gradient of complexity, from external oviparity to internal gestation. By contrasting gene expression profiles of syngnathids with distinct brooding architectures, this study allowed for the observation of subtle evolutionary adaptations, while confirming the existence of remarkable similarities to ‘female’ pregnancy (e.g., the evolution of male pregnancy in pouched species occurred alongside immune downregulation, and inflammation seems vital during early pregnancy stages). In a world where the debate on sex-roles takes centre stage, Parker et al. (2022) appeasing results hint at the fact that the strongly convergent evolution of vertebrate pregnancy was seemingly unaffected by which sex carries the burden of gestation.

A 63-year-old female presented with massive left pleural effusion with a mediastinal shift to the right. She developed re-expansion pulmonary edema on the right side after drainage of pleural effusion, which is an uncommon complication of thoracentesis.

Acute kidney injury (AKI) affects 10%–50% of rhabdomyolysis patients with a complex etiology. Herewith is a case of a young bodybuilder who reported symptoms after consuming Ibuprofen for a casual fever. Eventually, he was diagnosed with rhabdomyolysis induced by AKI.

Splenic cysts are very rare and are either primary or secondary.It is important to differentiate preoperatively with malignancies and hydatid cysts.Management options are either splenectomy or spleen preserving.We present this case because of its clinical rarity, diagnostic dilemma and histopathological diagnosis of pseudocyst in the absence of trauma.

Myocardial ischemia and hypoxia are one of the main causes of heart failure, and cardiomyocyte apoptosis induced by mitochondrial injury is the basis of poor heart remodeling and heart failure. Upstream stimulatory factor 2 (USF2), a transcription factor involved in multiple cellular processes, has recently been identified as having an active role in mitochondrial function and energy homeostasis; however, the role of USF2 in cardiovascular disease has not been reported. In this study, we demonstrated that the expression of USF2 protein can be degraded by the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway when cardiomyocytes are hypoxic, and the loss of USF2 can lead to mitochondrial dysfunction in cardiomyocytes, aggravating mitochondrial damage and further promoting apoptosis.Mechanistically, we also demonstrate that USF2 deficiency induces mitochondrial autophagy by [regulating](javascript:;) the AMPK/mTOR signaling pathway.Altogether, this study provides new insights into the protective role of USF2 in hypoxic cardiomyocyte injury. USF2 may serve as a potential therapeutic target for myocardial hypoxia.

A document by Fatih Cesur. Click on the document to view its contents.

The assembly process of flareless pipe joints is very important for the sealing performance of hydraulic pipeline system. Based on the theory of contact mechanics, a theoretical model of the assembly process of pipe joints is established to simulate the extrusion molding process of flareless pipe joints. It is found that tightening torque is an important factor affecting the sealing performance of pipe joints. By comparing the changes of the contact stress between the sleeve and the pipe joint under different tightening tortures, combined with the mechanical transfer and deformation results of the contact surface, the results show that the fitting situation of the sleeve and the pipe is good when the expansion pressure is 180Mpa, and the sealing performance of the pipe joint is good when the tightening tortures are between 15N·m and 18N·m.

In order to locate the mobile robots in three-dimensional indoor environment, mostly global navigation satellite system-denied space, a monocular visual space positioning algorithm based on deep neural network is proposed. First, we employ the lightweight YOLOv5 algorithm for target detection, and the LibTorch deep learning framework is used for model deployment to improve the inference speed. Moreover, a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) neural network with four inputs and two outputs is constructed, which regress the coordinates of the robot in the field coordinate system to complete the target localization, and this method is compared with the mathematical model solving algorithm to reflect the accuracy and superiority of positioning algorithm based on deep neural network. The proposed positioning and tracking system has been successfully applied to ICRA robot competition, and results show that the positioning error estimated by our method is within 10cm whilst having good real-time performance.

The data on the intraspecific genetic variation for monitoring and conservation of wild populations is an important link for the assessment of the organisms resistance to changing environmental conditions and anthropogenic pressures. The metabarcoding of DNA from the aquatic environment provides a gradual transition to non-invasive methods of biodiversity research, including within-species level. However, the degradation of DNA under UV light in the aquatic environment limits the choice of markers in favor of short standardized regions. Hence, the consequences of information loss when shifting from barcode to metabarcode are not entirely clear. The efforts on approbation and calibration at the intraspecies level under experimental conditions are limited to molecular genetic markers designed for target species. In this study, we aimed to address these challenges: to assess the intraspecific variation in different taxa based on the COI barcode reduced to Leray region (~313bp), accessible from the GenBank, as well as experimentally evaluate the possibility to identify Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) and Amplicon Sequence Variant (ASVs) in marine eDNA among abundant species of the Zostera sp. community in the northern Sea of Japan: Hexagrammos octogrammus, Pholidapus dybowskii (Teleostei: Perciformes), and Pandalus latirostris (Arthropoda: Decapoda). The three abovementioned species were collected at two distant locations in the Great Bay of the Japan Sea and placed into a separate 150-liter aquaria to produce both – individual and mock communities eDNA samples. Then all individuals were euthanized and genotyped individually for 650 bp and 313 bp COI gene regions. The COI Leray region was amplified based on the eDNA of mock communities and individual specimens. The resulting amplicons were sequenced on the Illumina 250 bp pair-end platform and processed based on the Begum pipeline. Along with the OTUs based on both global and local references we tried to retrieve individual haplotypes from the obtained reads. We found that eDNA samples from the experiment when blasting on local reference produce additional OTUS which we consider to be NUMTS. Surprisingly, the presence of NUMTS in the eDNA samples reduces the detection of ASVs, which may be related both to the low sequencing coverage in the experiment and probably to the natural competition of pseudogenes for primer binding sites during amplification. Perhaps a PCR-free, metagenomic approach, despite poor accessibility, might solve these difficulties. In addition, we have gathered and analyzed natural water samples from one of the sample locations of Zostera sp. community with a little sequence coverage and failed to retrieve any reliable information about OTUs and ASVs of taxa in mock communities, which may indicate much higher biomass of non-target organisms in the studied community. A total of 90 sequence data sets were collected for some common groups of multicellular organisms (Mollusca, Echinodermata, Crustacea, Polychaeta and Actinopterygii) through the search on the mitochondrial COI gene in the popset database of the NCBI. The separate sets of sequences of Leray region were generated. Then, the values of haplotypic variability, as well as the number of population clusters of the same dataset were calculated for the region of original length and Leray region. The produced results reflect the decrease of population diversity by 1 cluster in average while switching from barcode to metabarcode. In addition we found that the length of the Leray fragment can vary in the Echinoderms.

Psychological stress has evolved as an important health concern across the globe. The vulnerability to stress and the ramifications of it have only worsened during the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. This necessitates a timely diagnosis of stress before the condition progresses to chronicity. In this context, the popularity of social media like Twitter, where large numbers of users share opinions without any social stigma, has emerged as a major resource of human opinions. This has led to an increased research interest in social media-based stress detection techniques. However, tweet-level stress detection techniques in the literature have left a void in leveraging the text information in tweets, especially the presence of sarcastic expressions in the tweet’s text content. To this end, a novel method called “Sarcasm-based Tweet-Level Stress Detection” (STSD) is proposed in this work with the modification of the logistic loss function to detect tweet-level stress by availing the information of sarcasm that exists in the tweet-content. The principle of the STSD model is to minimise the loss for non-sarcastic tweets while maximising the loss for sarcastic tweets. Furthermore, an extensive preprocessing and dimensionality reduction is performed using kernel principal component analysis (kernel PCA) to improve the performance by reducing the dimensions. The experimental results show that the proposed STSD model, when applied along with kernel PCA, records a significant improvement in accuracy by a minimum of 5.25% and a maximum of 9.19% over baseline models. Also, there is an increment in F1-score by at least 0.085 points and a maximum of 0.164 points when compared to the baseline models.

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In recent years, healthcare organizations in North America have undergone major structural changes. As research indicates negative impacts of mergers on patient outcomes and difficulties for the nursing work group in particular, the present paper aims to answer calls for more research about the long-term effects of major organizational change on nursing professionals' well-being and professional practice. We used an exploratory qualitative research design and interviewed 43 nursing professionals in various roles, ranging from clinical nurses, nurse practitioners, to head nurses and nursing advisors. Drawing on the job demands-resources model and the person-environment fit theory, our data analysis suggests that the merger has led to a global structural disempowerment, with negative consequences for the nursing practice environment and nurse retention.

Identifying general patterns and trends underlying biological invasion population dynamics and impacts has proven elusive for scientists. Recently, the impact curve was proposed as a means to predict impacts over time from invasive alien species, characterized by a sigmoidal growth pattern in cumulative abundances. While the impact curve has been empirically demonstrated with monitoring data of a single invasive alien species (New Zealand mud snail, Potamopyrgus antipodarum), the broadscale applicability of this trend remains to be tested for other taxa. Here, we examined whether the impact curve can adequately describe the invasion dynamics of 13 other aquatic invasive alien animal species (spanning over different taxa: Amphipoda, Bivalvia, Gastropoda, Hirudinea, Isopoda, Mysida, and Platyhelminthes) at the European scale, employing multi-decadal time series of macroinvertebrate abundances from regular benthic monitoring efforts. For all except one tested species (the ‘killer shrimp’, Dikerogammarus villosus), the sigmoid impact curve was strongly supported (R2 > 0.95), characterized by an exponential increase in cumulative abundance, followed by a subsequent decline in the rate of accumulation and eventually approaching a saturation level in the long term, where impact was maximized. For the D. villosus exception, the impact had not yet saturated, likely reflecting the early phase of an ongoing European invasion. The impact curve further allowed estimation of introduction years and lag phases, as well as parameterisation of growth rates and carrying capacities, providing strong support for the boom-bust dynamics typically observed in several invader populations. These findings suggest that impact can grow rapidly before saturating at a high level, with timely monitoring often lacking for the detection of invasive species post-introduction. We further confirm the applicability of the impact curve to determine trends in invasion stages, population dynamics, and impacts of pertinent invaders, ultimately helping inform timing of management interventions. We hence call for improved monitoring and reporting of invasive alien species over time to permit further testing of large scale impact consistencies across various habitat types.

Tree regeneration is a key demographic process influencing long-term forest dynamics. It is driven by many biotic and abiotic factors. Thus, predictions of tree regeneration are challenging because of complex feedbacks along climatic gradients. The stress gradient hypothesis (SGH) and life-history strategies (LHS) provide a framework for assessing such feedbacks across different species ranges. To address these topics, we analyzed regeneration for 24 tree species in 6,540 plots from 299 unmanaged European forests. Negative interactions predominated, with their intensity decreasing under stressful conditions for most species, as predicted by the SGH. However, positive interactions were only evident for a few species. Our study indicates that SGH and LHS can be combined to partially explain within- and between-species differences in tree recruitment. Moreover, our findings imply that projections of forest dynamics along wide climatic gradients must accommodate both negative and positive biotic interactions, as they strongly affect rates of community turnover.

Ibuprofen (IBU) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). A clinician wishing to avoid opioid pain control may consider a combination of orally administered ibuprofen (IBU) and acetaminophen for pain control. In dentistry, it is commonly recommended to take oral IBU 400-800mg and acetaminophen 325-1000 mg to control postoperative pain following third molar extraction(s). This combination can avoid the use of a narcotic prescription for pain control. However, many patients are taking anticoagulants for a variety of medical conditions and are told not to take IBU fearing an additive effect of IBU with the anticoagulant. This mini-review paper addresses the anticoagulant effects of IBU when administered as a single agent and the interactions with orally administered anticoagulant, antiplatelet, or antithrombotic agents.

Pharmacotherapy is the primary treatment for this Parkinson’s disease, yet 70% of neurologists report that patients do not get their medication properly when hospitalized. The aim of this work was to implement a medication reconciliation protocol that allowed to identify and prevent antiparkinsonian medication errors to promote therapeutic quality and safety in daily practice. This was an interventional, single-center, one-year, prospective study. Medication reconciliation was performed using a three-phased check: inpatient electronic prescription validation after assessing the outpatient medication schedule, review of the latest Neurology report emitted by, and pharmacist-driven interview of the patient and/or caregiver. Of 224 prescription lines involving antiparkinsonian drugs, 179 contained, at least, one medication error (59.8%). Commission errors (91.62%) were more frequent than omitted drugs (8.38%). The most common medication errors were related to timing (41.90%), frequency (21.23%), and dosing (19.55%). Clinical pharmacists prevented the erroneous administration of 2716 antiparkinsonian doses, 60% of the total number of doses prescribed during this period, by performing this protocol. A significant relationship between the number of medication errors and the type of antiparkinsonian prescribed was evidenced (p<0.05). A contraindicated drug was prescribed in almost one-third of the episodes (29.82%), from these, 96% were changed after pharmacists’ recommendation.

Climate change has a profoundly impact on global biodiversity and species geographical distribution, especially in alpine regions. Predicting the effects of climate change on the species’ habitat could help to understand how do these species respond to the potential climate threats. Triosteum is a typical mountain plant with medicinal and ecological value. There are three species of this genus in East Asia. Triosteum Pinnatifidum and Triosteum himalayanum are mainly distributed in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its surrounding areas, and they are sensitive to climate changes. Therefore, these species of Triosteum are excellent material for studying the response of herbaceous plants to climate change in Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and adjacent mountains. In this study, a MaxEnt model was used to predict the potential distribution of T. Pinnatifidum and T. himalayanum in present time and at four different time periods in future under two different Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). In the present study, accuracy of the model’s prediction was verified, and the results indicate that temperature is the key factor that affects the distribution of these two species. Compared with the current distribution, the potential suitable area of T. Pinnatifidum will increase in the future under the two types of SSPs, but the potential suitable area of T. himalayanum will decrease significantly. In addition, the overlap of the potential suitable areas of these two species will also expand, potentially affecting their hybridization and interspecific competition. The centroids of T. Pinnatifidum will migrate to east, but the trajectory of centroids of T. himalayanum is complex. This study could infer the influence mechanism between herbaceous plants and climate, which could provide basic data for resource utilization and biogeography research of Triosteum. It also provides a useful tool for developing adaptive management strategies of conservation and sustainable use of mountain herbaceous plants under climate change.

Human-induced transformations lead to multiple threats to biodiversity in freshwater ecosystems mainly related to climate change, biological invasion, land use change, pollution, and overexploitation. These threats operate through multiple mechanisms, which can be complementary or compensatory. However, the effects of the major threats to biodiversity across ecological scales are still unclear, as well as its operating mechanisms. We performed a meta-analysis on their impacts on freshwater ecosystems to assess their general and relative importance across multiple ecological levels. We demonstrated that pollution was consistently the most important threat to freshwater ecosystems change, but the relative importance of each threat depended on the ecological level. At the population level, nutrient loading driven by pollution and climatic warming had higher relative importance, increasing metabolic rates through a bottom-up effect. However, this effect did not propagate to other ecological scales. Communities were more sensitive to the impacts of biological invasion and land use change, both synergically decreasing their diversity, evenness, and richness. At the ecosystem level, both pollution and land use change impacts were more relevant to eutrophication of freshwater ecosystems. We highlight the lack of information on impacts from overexploitation and studies demonstrating the combined effect among these major threats. We concluded that freshwater ecosystems are prone to these threats by a set of pathways in which their impacts are not equally widespread across the ecological levels, affecting them in a multidirectional way. We reinforce the importance of designing conservation strategies that allow counteracting the impacts of biodiversity loss by multiple pathways and including such multidirectionality to plan global actions to protect freshwater ecosystems.

The three-dimensional rarity typology proposed by Rabinowitz in 1981, based on range size, habitat specificity, and local abundance, is perhaps the most widely used framework for describing rarity in ecological and conservation research. While this framework is descriptive and does not explain the causes of rarity, recent advances in ecology may be leveraged to add explanatory power. We propose a modification of Rabinowitz’s typology to better distinguish between the dimensions of rarity and the processes that drive them and explore the conservation implications of our modified framework. We suggest replacing habitat specificity, which is arguably a cause of rarity, with occupancy (the proportion of occupied sites within a species’ range), yielding a modified classification based on range size, occupancy, and local abundance. Abundant, widespread habitat specialists are no longer considered rare; however, we argue that this modification more accurately identifies truly rare species, as habitat specialists may be common if their habitat is abundant. Finally, we draw on the functional literature to identify the key processes and associated traits that drive each rarity axis. In this respect, we identify four processes (environmental filtering, movement, demography, and interactions), and hypothesise that range size and occupancy are primarily driven by environmental filtering and movement, whereas local abundance is more strongly influenced by demography and interactions. Our work aims at providing a basis for developing hypotheses about the causes of rarity in particular taxa and identifying suitable conservation measures targeting different types of rare species.

The study addresses the following question: what is the source of the Dark Energy? The study provides sound argumentations that Electromagnetic Waves, from separate sources, can consolidate, even though such consolidations seem to embed paradoxes. The study also proposes a physical experiment which might implement consolidations of Electromagnetic Waves, from separate sources. In addition to the above, the study also addresses paradoxes related to the Mutual 15 Annihilation and the Pair Production processes. The study proposes a resolution for all these paradoxes which also concludes that most of the Dark Energy might be related to Electromagnetism and that the Electric Charge is also a form of Energy. One-Sentence Summary: A complement to the Pointing Theorem predicts the source of the 20 Dark Energy, and that the Electric Charges are Energies.

Objectives: To examine the influence of maternal pre-pregnancy body weight on fetomaternal outcomes in twin pregnancies. Study design: Retrospective study. Setting: Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Buergerhospital Frankfurt Population: 2,449 women delivering twins between 2005 and 2020 at the Buergerhospital Frankfurt. Methods: The mothers were categorized according to their pre-gravid body mass index into underweight, normal weight, overweight, obese, and obesity classes I – III. Main outcome measures: Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), preeclampsia/HELLP syndrome, intrauterine death (IUD), cesarean section or vaginal delivery, wound healing disorders, postpartum hemorrhage (PPH), uterine atony, preterm birth, birth weight discordance, admission to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), pH of the umbilical artery, and a 5’-APGAR score <7. Results: Obese mothers had a significantly higher risk for GDM (OR = 0.36; 95% CI 0.19 – 0.7 compared to underweight; OR = 0.32; 95% CI 0.23 – 0.43 compared to normal weight; OR = 0.47; 95% CI 0.33 – 0.69 compared to overweight), and wound healing disorders (OR = 0.19; 95% CI 0.09 – 0.4 compared to normal weight). Neonates of obese mothers showed significant results for umbilical artery pH of 7.01 – 7.1 (OR = 0.45; 95% CI 0.24 – 0.86 compared to overweight). Neonates of obesity class III mothers had a significantly higher risk for NICU admission (OR = 0.38; 95% CI 0.17 – 0.83 compared to obesity class I). No significant results for the remaining main outcome measures. Conclusions: Obesity, and overweight represent risk factors for adverse fetomaternal outcome in twin pregnancies.

Objective: An evaluation of the prognostic factors of patients with surgically treated high-grade neuroendocrine carcinoma of the cervix (NECC). Design: A multi-center, retrospective analysis Setting and Population: 58 cases Methods: 58 patients with stage IIA1-IIIC cervical cancer who had high-grade NECC and were initially treated with surgery between 2009 and 2022 was conducted. We divided them into two groups based on pathology: the pure cohort (only one histological type) and the mixed group (≥2 histological types). All clinicopathological characteristics of patients were reviewed retrospectively using electronic medical records. Main Outcome Measures: Survival outcomes of NECC, clinicopathological characteristics and various related factors were analysed. Results: The median overall survival (OS) was 32.5 months (range: 4.1–60.9). The mixed pathology was a protective factor impacting survival outcomes in NECC (HR,0.02; 95% CI, 0.00~0.45, P=0.014). In contrast, uterus invasion (HR, 24.5; 95%CI, 1.37~439.31, P=0.03) was a poor prognostic factor affecting the survival outcomes in NECC. In addition, among all postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy options, etoposide + platinum (EP) showed better survival outcome (HR,0.04; 95% CI, 0.00~0.89, P=0.041). According to the Kaplan-Meier survival curves, significant differences were observed with respect to mixed pathology (P=0.044), uterus invasion (P＜0.0001), parametrium invasion (P=0.025), surgical margin (P=0.035), and distant metastasis (P＜0.0001). Conclusions: Patients with mixed pathological subtypes who undergo surgery for NECC have a better prognosis. Meanwhile, uterus invasion is a poor predictor of prognosis. In terms of postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy, the EP regimen is superior to other regimens. (The trial registration number: ChiCTR2200063023)

The Digital Delta-Sigma Modulator (DDSM) has the disadvantage of presenting a periodic output for constant inputs, affecting the benefits of noise-shaping modulation. This work uses the linearized model to expose the principal features of the recent solutions. The analysis results in two ideas: the first is a mix of the Song-and-Park Multi-stAge-noise-SHaping (SP-MASH topology) with the appropriate dither elimination, another option is a MASH modified by applying an XOR based dither to the input of the second accumulator. The work validates the proposed solutions with the mathematical, the spectral, and the hardware synthesis showing the benefit of the proposed schemes with the output spectrum using a 9-bit implementation for each case. The results show the idle tones do not appear for all the possible input values. The hardware increase is 3 percent compared to the third order dithered input SP MASH solution.

Objective To clarify the clinical characteristics of pain developing in adenomyosis lesions during pregnancy and the perinatal outcomes associated with this phenomenon. Study Design Retrospective cohort study. Setting A tertiary hospital in Japan. Patients and methods Ninety one singleton pregnancies with adenomyosis who delivered between 2011 and 2021 were retrospectively analyzed. Pain during pregnancy was defined as persistent pain at the adenomyosis site with analgesics administration, and its association with perinatal outcomes was analyzed. Main outcome measures Pain at the adenomyosis lesion and its onset and duration, maximum C-reactive protein level during pain, and perinatal outcomes such as preterm delivery, preeclampsia, and blood loss. Results Among 91 singleton pregnancies with adenomyosis, 12 pregnancies (13.2%) presented with pain at the adenomyosis site. In total, 5 of the 12 pregnancies (41.7%) developed preeclampsia, which resulted in preterm delivery. The incidence of preeclampsia and preterm delivery was higher in those who experienced pain than in those without (41.7% vs. 13.9%; p<0.05, and 66.7% vs. 31.7%; p<0.05, respectively). Among women with pain during pregnancy, the maximum C-reactive protein level was significantly higher in women who developed preeclampsia than in those without (5.45 vs. 0.12 mg/dL, p<0.05). Conclusion Adenomyosis can cause pain in over one of eight pregnancies with adenomyosis, which may be associated with the increased incidence of preeclampsia resulting in preterm delivery. Women with pain at the adenomyosis lesion, especially those with high C-reactive protein levels, may be at high risk for the future development of preeclampsia.