Emotional–behavioral difficulties and maternal psychosocial factors in preschool children with food allergy: a cross-sectional case–control study

Food allergy (FA) is a common chronic condition, yet its behavioral and psychosocial impact in early childhood remains insufficiently understood. This cross-sectional study assessed emotional-behavioral outcomes, maternal anxiety, and perceived child vulnerability (PCV) in preschoolers with FA versus healthy controls, with subgroup analyses for food-related anaphylaxis and...

Hepatic FGF21 is not required for fasting metabolism but guides protein appetite post energy depletion

Fasting initiates a coordinated metabolic response to preserve energy balance. As glycogen stores are depleted, the body transitions to mobilizing fatty acids from adipose tissue and generating ketone bodies in the liver to sustain the function of vital organs. A network of hormonal signals and transcriptional programs coordinate these adaptations. Among these, the hepatokine...

From Ancient Athens to Modern Spain: Sortition, Poll Workers, and the Legitimation of Democracy

Elections are the most visible expression of democracy, yet their functioning, particularly the staffing and organization of polling stations, remains understudied. Departing from this gap in the literature, this paper examines the use of lottery-based recruitment of poll workers as a mechanism to strengthen democratic legitimacy, impartiality, and civic equality. By comparing...

Separation of Time Scales in Weakly Interacting Diffusions

We study metastable behaviour in systems of weakly interacting Brownian particles with localised, attractive potentials which are smooth and globally bounded. In this particular setting, numerical evidence suggests that the particles converge on a short time scale to a “droplet state” which is metastable, i.e. persists on a much longer time scale than the time scale of...

Innovation in antifungal therapy

With a steady increase in the number of at-risk patients, invasive fungal infections now represent a significant public health problem. These infections, caused by major pathogens such as Aspergillus, Candida, Cryptococcus, and Pneumocystis, affect increasingly diverse patient profiles, primarily immunocompromised individuals, with mortality rates often exceeding 50%. Managing...

The relationship between quality of work life and distractions in operating room nurses: a correlational study

Background The operating room is a work environment where nurses perform high-risk and complex procedures, requiring situational awareness, focus, information sharing, and effective communication skills. Therefore, a positive work environment that impacts the quality of work life is critical for nurses to provide quality and safe care. Objective The research aimed to examine the...

Impact of appendicular skeletal muscle mass on Alzheimer’s disease in relation to age and comorbidities: an 8-year longitudinal follow-up study of a nationwide cohort

Background This study investigated whether low appendicular skeletal muscle mass (ASM) was associated with an increased risk of developing dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) and examined the potential moderating effects of age and comorbidities. Methods This study analyzed anonymized health examination data from the Korean National Health Insurance Service, including 1,897,197...

Self-care, burnout, emotion regulation, and self-efficacy beliefs among psychologists

Psychologists face occupational risks that lead to personal and professional strain, affecting their self-care, vulnerability to burnout, emotion regulation, and self-efficacy beliefs. This study aimed to build on the existing quantitative research on these variables and provide scientific evidence regarding them among Portuguese psychologists. Specifically, it aimed to explore...

Cavity QED beyond the Jaynes–Cummings model

As atom-cavity systems are becoming more sophisticated, the limitations of the Jaynes–Cummings model are becoming more apparent. In this paper, we therefore take a more dynamical approach to the modelling of atom-cavity systems and do not reduce the electromagnetic field inside the resonator to a single mode. Our approach shows that the decay rate \(\Gamma _{\textrm{cav}}\) of an...

Correction: Morphological Examination and Molecular Characterization of Theileria spp. From Dairy Cattle in Lingwu, Ningxia, China

The application of digital technology in nursing quality management: a scoping review

Background Digital technology integrates information and communication tools such as electronic health records, wearable devices, and artificial intelligence, which has become an important driving force for optimizing nursing quality management. However, existing studies on the application of digital technology in nursing quality management are fragmented, with unclear conceptual...

Response to letter: Methodological considerations for interpreting a scoping review of pediatric long COVID biomarkers

Counterion condensation, ion pairing and scattering properties of carboxymethyl cellulose with mono- and di-valent ions

We study the scattering and conductometric properties of a semiflexible polyelectrolyte, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC), with monovalent and divalent counterions in aqueous media without added salts. The scattering patterns for the magnesium salts of CMC display a broad shoulder instead of the scattering peak observed for the monovalent salts. This suggests weaker electrostatic...

Competent and compassionate, but not leading? A cross-sectional study of nursing’s brand image in the German public

Background Nursing’s public image influences workforce sustainability and broader professional and care-related outcomes. While international research has advanced understanding of nursing’s public image, population-based evidence for Germany remains scarce and methodologically limited. Drawing on brand image theory, this study assessed nursing’s brand image in the German public...

Quantitative EEG in post-stroke delirium: Spectral and Functional Connectivity Analyses in a Case-Control Study

Delirium is a common complication of ischemic stroke (IS). Previous quantitative EEG (qEEG) studies have linked delirium to increased delta and theta power and reduced alpha band functional connectivity. Most excluded patients with structural brain lesions, limiting extrapolation to post-stroke delirium (PSD). This study aims to compare qEEG measures in IS patients with and...

Zero as a semantic boundary: Rethinking the mental number line

Zero poses a unique challenge for numerical cognition because it denotes absence in cardinal contexts, yet functions as a formal entity in ordinal or interval systems. We examined how adults compare zero to positive single-digit numbers across symbolic, nonsymbolic, and mixed formats. Results replicated classic distance and end effects for positive numbers. However, the cognitive...

High Serum IgE is Associated with Risk of Severe Exacerbations Among Non-Eosinophilic Bronchiectasis

Purpose Bronchiectasis has traditionally been characterized as a neutrophil-driven disease, yet emerging evidence suggested inflammatory heterogeneities. The prognostic significance of elevated serum immunoglobulin E (IgE) in patients without peripheral eosinophilia remains unclear. Methods We conducted a multicenter prospective cohort study between 2017 and 2020 across 16...

Catheter-directed thrombectomy in acute pulmonary embolism and angiographic signs of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary disease

Background Angiographic signs of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension or disease (CTEPH/D) are frequently found during large-bore thrombectomy (LBT) in acute pulmonary embolism (PE). Data on the incidence of CTEPH/D signs and outcome after LBT are lacking. These angiographic signs are not equivalent to a confirmed diagnosis of CTEPH/D. Aims To investigate the efficacy...

Gut microbiota-modulated glutamic acid rejuvenates the quality of oocytes deteriorated by advanced reproductive age

The gut microbiota plays a vital role in maintaining the physiological function of host health and the pathogenesis of various diseases. However, its relationship with maternal age-associated decline in oocyte quality remains elusive. Here, we report that establishment of gut microbiota from young donors in aged mice by fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is an effective...

Nurses’ knowledge, attitude, and practice towards immobility complications

Background High-quality preventive nursing care and improved patient safety outcomes are more likely to be achieved by nurses who are knowledgeable about the risks associated with immobility and the evidence-based strategies for preventing and managing immobility-related complications. However, previous studies have reported variations in nurses’ knowledge and attitudes regarding...

Development and psychometric validation of a novel, self-report visual processing questionnaire (ViPro-SR) for neurodivergent adults

Differences in visual sensory sensitivity/reactivity are documented in autism and ADHD. Measuring these differences could guide interventions and accommodations, improving quality of life. No current self-report questionnaires focus specifically on the range of affective and behavioural responses to visual stimuli reported in autism and ADHD. This study aimed to develop such a...

Efficacy and safety of N-acetylcysteine in patients with mild cognitive impairment undergoing exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation program: a randomized controlled trial

Background Oxidative stress is implicated in the etiology of mild cognitive impairment. We hypothesized that oral supplementation with N-acetylcysteine, a precursor to the antioxidant glutathione, would improve cognitive outcomes among individuals with mild cognitive impairment. Methods n this 24-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, participants enrolled in an...

Mitochondrial protein import stress causes lysosomal damage and progressive tissue atrophy

Mitochondrial and lysosomal abnormalities co-occur in aging-related diseases with progressive tissue atrophy. It remains unclear whether these two pathogenic pathways affect tissue homeostasis independently, convergently or epistatically. We show that mitochondrial protein import stress causes vacuolar damage in yeast, manifested by V-ATPase disassembly, and vacuolar...

Knowledge, attitudes, and practices of pediatricians in Crete, Greece, regarding RSV immunization: a cross-sectional study

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a leading cause of severe lower respiratory tract infections in early infancy, and the recent introduction of two novel immunoprophylaxis tools—maternal vaccination with the RSVpreF vaccine and infant protection with the long-acting monoclonal antibody nirsevimab—represents a major advancement in RSV prevention. The successful implementation...

Genome-wide meta-analysis of quantitatively measured generalized anxiety symptoms in individuals of European ancestry

Anxiety is heritable and exists on a continuum, with symptoms ranging from adaptive threat response to clinical disorder. Here we performed a genome-wide association meta-analysis of generalized anxiety symptom severity in 693,869 individuals of European ancestry from 14 cohorts. We identified 80 independent genome-wide significant variants within 74 loci, 39 of which were newly...

A deep neural network and AIS-integrated method for ship trajectory prediction and yaw warning in cross-river power transmission line protection

Dynamically tunable membrane metasurfaces for infrared spectroscopy and strong light-matter interactions

Mid-infrared spectroscopy enables biochemical sensing by identifying vibrational molecular fingerprints, but it faces limitations in instrumentation portability and analytical sensitivity. Optical metasurfaces with strong mid-infrared photonic resonances provide an attractive solution towards on-chip spectrometry and sensitive molecular detection, yet their static nature hinders...

Structural insights into YheS-mediated release of SecM-arrested ribosome

ATP-binding cassette subfamily F (ABCF) proteins interact with the ribosome to resolve translation defects near the peptidyl transferase center (PTC). In Escherichia coli, four ABCF proteins (EttA, Uup, YbiT, and YheS) selectively promote translation of distinct problematic nascent peptide sequences, but their molecular mechanisms remain unclear. Here, we present a 2.8 Å cryo-EM...

Automated pupillometry for the prediction of neurologic outcomes in children requiring extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)

Neurologic injury is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in pediatric extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Noninvasive neurologic monitoring is important for early detection and management of neurologic injury. Automated infrared pupillometry (AP) provides accurate and repeatable bedside quantitative measurements of pupil reactivity via the Neurological Pupil...

Mapping psychosocial risk structures in cigarette use patterns: a multicenter network analysis of non-smokers, exclusive users, and dual users among Brazilian and Canadian University Students

This study examined the psychosocial profiles of Brazilian and Canadian university students based on their smoking status (i.e., smoker vs. non-smoker). It also compared exclusive electronic cigarette (EC) users, exclusive traditional cigarette (TC) users, and dual users (those who use both EC and TC). Additionally, we investigated the relationships among psychosocial variables...