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Climate change and biodiversity loss trigger policies targeting and impacting local communities worldwide. However, research and policy implementation often fail to sufficiently consider community responses and to involve them. We present the results of a collective self-assessment exercise for eight case studies of communications with regard to climate change or biodiversity loss between project teams and local communities. We develop eight indicators of good stakeholder communication, reflecting the scope of Verran's (2002) concept of postcolonial moments as a communicative utopia. We demonstrate that applying our indicators can enhance communication and enable community responses. However, we discover a divergence between timing, complexity and (introspective) effort. Three cases qualify for postcolonial moments, but scrutinising power relations and genuine knowledge co-production remain rare. While we verify the potency of various instruments for deconstructing science, their sophistication cannot substitute trust building and epistemic/transdisciplinary awareness. Lastly, we consider that reforming inadequate funding policies helps improving the work in and with local communities., Competing Interests: Research ethics statementNot applicable to this article.Consent for publication statementThe authors declare that research participants’ informed consent to publication of findings – including photos, videos and any personal or identifiable information – was secured prior to publication.Conflicts of interest statementThe authors declare no conflicts of interest with this work.The authors declare no conflicts of interest with this work., (© 2023 The Authors.)

Recognizing sleep posture is crucial for the monitoring of people with sleeping disorders. Existing contact-based systems might interfere with sleeping, while camera-based systems may raise privacy concerns. In contrast, radar-based sensors offer a promising solution with high penetration ability and the capability to detect vital bio-signals. This study propose a deep learning method for human sleep pose recognition from signals acquired from single-antenna Frequency-Modulated Continuous Wave (FMCW) radar device. To capture both frequency features and sequential features, we introduce ResTCN, an effective architecture combining Residual blocks and Temporal Convolution Network (TCN) to recognize different sleeping postures, from augmented statistical motion features of the radar time series. We rigorously evaluated our method with an experimentally acquired data set which contains sleeping radar sequences from 16 volunteers. We report a classification accuracy of 82.74% on average, which outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Anthropocene, marked by human-induced climate change, necessitates urgent action to address climate goals and respect planetary boundaries. While sustainability research provides knowledge, the first challenge lies in communicating the findings in an adequate manner to the public and several stakeholders, such as economic and political actors. Therefore, this study explores the significance of science communication in sustainability science, focusing on a case study—the True Cost Accounting (TCA) campaign by the University of Greifswald, Technical Institute of Nuremberg, and German retailer PENNY. TCA herein serves as a transparency tool, economic incentive, and discussion basis for sustainable consumption. This study investigates consumer perceptions of ecological prices of foods through a face-to-face survey during the 2023 PENNY campaign, comparing results to an informational campaign carried out in 2021. Findings indicate a high awareness of the true cost campaign in 2023, with 50.8% of participants hearing about it. Consumers' willingness to pay true costs and potential behavior changes were explored. In comparison to results from the informational campaign of 2021, customers showed a decrease in this WTP when the true prices would actually impact their spending, indicating an attitude–behavior gap. In addition, a willingness to reduce the consumption of animal foods—if TCA was implemented—of 60.5% was determined, which suggests that TCA has the potential for sustainable behavior change. This study highlights factors that influence consumer attitudes and preferences regarding the inclusion of TCAs, such as environmental, social, and animal welfare costs. Customers' understanding of increased prices—like, in this case, the compensation for environmental and social costs—is an argument in favor of true prices. The results emphasize the need for differentiated scientific communication strategies to bridge knowledge and action gaps in sustainability science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New D–A indoloquinoxaline functionalized triarylamine semiconductors with various π-bridging motifs were designed and synthesized for p-channel and ambipolar organic transistors. This is the first attempt to use indoloquinoxaline as an effective inbuilt donor system for air-stable organic field-effect transistors (OFETs). The structure–property relationship of triarylamine–indoloquinoxalines (TAA–IQ) is systematically studied in terms of their electrochemical, photophysical, structural, and electrical characteristics. Bottom-gate top contact OFET devices fabricated using TAA–IQ with an ethynyl spacer exhibited p-channel characteristics with a field-effect mobility of 1.50 cm2 V−1 s−1 and an on/off current ratio of 105. The electron-deficient TCBD group, as a central acceptor in the TAA–IQ architecture, exhibited low-lying LUMO energy levels at around −3.96 eV, allowing easy electron injection and stable electron transfer under ambient conditions. The TCBD bridged TAA–IQ compound exhibited ambipolar characteristics with the highest hole mobility μh of 0.35 cm2 V−1 s−1, an on/off current ratio of up to 106 and an electron mobility μe of 2.1 cm2 V−1 s−1. Remarkably, the devices based on IQ–TAA with TCBD showed a much better performance than those based on the related ambipolar compounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixed phenotype leukemia (MPAL) is a rare type of acute leukemia with blasts that co-express antigens of more than one lineage on the same cell or that have separate populations of blasts of different lineages. Here, we report a five-year-old male with inguinal lymphadenopathy diagnosed with MPAL-T/Myeloid MPAL-T/M. The clone demonstrated lineage and immunophenotypically distinct blast populations in the bone marrow and lymph nodes. Bone marrow cytogenetic studies confirmed a rare PICALM::MLLT10 gene fusion. Patients with this fusion gene have been found to have high risk features and poor survival rates in several small case series. Our case report highlights an unusual presentation in medullary and extramedullary sites, within a pediatric patient. At the time of submission of this case report, the patient has shown good response to chemotherapy and continues to be in remission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the city gate gas pressure reduction stations (CGSs), to prevent natural gas from forming a hydrate in the throttle valve, the natural gas is heated by the heater before reaching the pressure relief valve. Heat exchangers are an essential component of industrial processes that contribute significantly to total system energy. Since the element impacting heat exchanger performance is the fouling process, all fouling processes and models were dynamically simulated in this study. Through coding in the C++ language and simultaneous use of fluent functions, or, in other words, user‐defined function (UDF), fouling‐related models were defined for this software. The dynamic simulation was performed, and parameters such as fouling strength and layer thickness were calculated. The effects of changing operating conditions, such as gas inlet velocity, surface temperature, and fouling species concentration on fouling growth, were also evaluated. As the concentration of fouling species increased, the fouling rate also increased. The amount of supersaturation and fouling rate increased as the surface temperature increased. Due to the operational limitations of the system, to reduce the fouling rate, the gas inlet velocity should be as high as possible, and the fluid inlet temperature, surface temperature, and concentration of fouling species should be as low as possible. In this study, the required time to reach the efficiency of 70% of the heat exchanger was calculated using the modelling of this chamber, which was equivalent to 190 days. Additionally, the critical thickness of the fouling layer at this time was 3.5 cm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the field of tissue engineering, the extracellular matrix (ECM) is considered an important element for promoting neural regeneration after spinal cord injury (SCI). Dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs), mesenchymal stem cells that originate from the neural crest, are easy to harvest and culture in vitro, express a variety of neurotrophic factors (NTFs) and deposit a large amount of ECM, making them a good choice for stem cell- or ECM-based treatment of SCI. In the present study, decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) derived from DPSC sheets is used for the treatment of SCI. Optimization experiments reveal that incubating DPSC sheets with 1% Triton X-100 for 5 min is the best procedure for preparing DPSC dECM. It is found that DPSC dECM promotes nerve repair and regeneration after SCI and restores hindlimb motor function in rats. Mechanistically, DPSC dECM facilitates the migration and neural differentiation of neural stem cells, as well as M2 polarization of microglia, and inhibits the formation of glial scars. This study suggests that the use of DPSC dECM is a potential strategy for the treatment of SCI., (© 2024 Wiley‐VCH GmbH.)

Injective thermosensitive hydrogels are considered promising scaffolds to trigger dental pulp regeneration in devitalized human teeth. In this study, we developed a hydroxypropyl chitin (HPCH)/chitin whisker (CW) thermosensitive hydrogel with enhanced mechanical properties and biological activities. Exosomes can serve as biomimetic tools for tissue engineering, but the rapid clearance of unconjugated exosomes in vivo limits their therapeutic effects. To address this challenge, exosomes were isolated from human pulp stem cells (hDPSCs) and directly embedded into the HPCH/CW pre-gel to form an exosome-loaded hydrogel (HPCH/CW/Exo). The exosome-loaded thermosensitive hydrogel can be easily injected into an irregular endodontic space and gelated in situ. In vitro cell experiments proved that the delivery of exosomes significantly improved the ability of hydrogels to promote odontogenesis and angiogenesis. Meanwhile, in vivo animal experiments revealed the formation of new dental pulp-like tissues in an implanted tooth root model. Therefore, the proposed hydrogel provides a great potential alternative to traditional root canal therapy in dental clinics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Oral anticoagulation therapy with warfarin requires frequent monitoring level of anticoagulation by the international normalized ratio (INR). In Africa, studies that explore anticoagulation control, treatment outcomes, and associated factors are reported in various ways in long-term patients receiving warfarin therapy to generate concrete scientific evidence. Methods: The literature search was conducted in PubMed, Cochrane Library, African Journal of Online databases, Google Scholar, and Google. An advanced search strategy was computed to retrieve relevant studies related to anticoagulation control and outcomes. Duplication, title and abstract screening, and full-text assessment were conducted in Covidence software. Study quality was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute Critical appraisal quality assessment tool. The systematic review is registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021260772) and performed based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guideline. Results: Out of 298 identified articles, 18 articles were eligible for the final review and analysis. The mean of 39.4 ± 8.4% time in therapeutic range (TTR) (29.4 to 57.3%), 36.7 ± 11.5% TTR (range 25.2–49.7%) and 46% TTR (43.5–48.5%) was computed from studies that determined TTR by Rosendaal, direct and cross-section-of-the-files methods, respectively. In this review, the lowest percentage of TTR was 13.7%, while the highest was 57.3%. The highest percentage of patients (32.25%) who had TTR ≥ 65% was reported in Tunisia, but the lowest percentages were in Namibia (10%, TTR ≥ 65%) and Kenya (10.4%, TTR ≥ 70%). Most of the included studies (11 out of 18) used Rosendaal's method while the direct method was employed by three studies. Generally, 10.4–32.3% of study participants achieved desired optimal anticoagulation level. Regarding secondary outcomes, 1.6–7.5% and 0.006–59% of patients experienced thromboembolic complications and bleeding events, respectively. Having chronic comorbidities, taking more than two drugs, and presence of medications that potentially interact with warfarin, and patient-related factors (patients aged < 50 years old, female gender, lower education level, smoking history) were the frequently reported predictors of poor anticoagulation therapy. Conclusions: Oral anticoagulation control was suboptimal in patients taking warfarin as evidenced by low TTR in Africa. Therefore, there is an urgent need for further improving oral anticoagulation management services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The KMT2A (MLL) gene rearrangements (KMT2A -r) are associated with a diverse spectrum of acute leukemias. Although most KMT2A -r are restricted to nine partner genes, we have recently revealed that KMT2A - USP2 fusions are often missed during FISH screening of these genetic alterations. Therefore, complementary methods are important for appropriate detection of any KMT2A -r. Here we use a machine learning model to unravel the most appropriate markers for prediction of KMT2A -r in various types of acute leukemia. A Random Forest and LightGBM classifier was trained to predict KMT2A -r in patients with acute leukemia. Our results revealed a set of 20 genes capable of accurately estimating KMT2A -r. The SKIDA1 (AUC: 0.839; CI: 0.799–0.879) and LAMP5 (AUC: 0.746; CI: 0.685–0.806) overexpression were the better markers associated with KMT2A -r compared to CSPG4 (also named NG2 ; AUC: 0.722; CI: 0.659–0.784), regardless of the type of acute leukemia. Of importance, high expression levels of LAMP5 estimated the occurrence of all KMT2A-USP2 fusions. Also, we performed drug sensitivity analysis using IC50 data from 345 drugs available in the GDSC database to identify which ones could be used to treat KMT2A -r leukemia. We observed that KMT2A -r cell lines were more sensitive to 5-Fluorouracil (5FU), Gemcitabine (both antimetabolite chemotherapy drugs), WHI-P97 (JAK-3 inhibitor), Foretinib (MET/VEGFR inhibitor), SNX-2112 (Hsp90 inhibitor), AZD6482 (PI3Kβ inhibitor), KU-60019 (ATM kinase inhibitor), and Pevonedistat (NEDD8-activating enzyme (NAE) inhibitor). Moreover, IC50 data from analyses of ex-vivo drug sensitivity to small-molecule inhibitors reveals that Foretinib is a promising drug option for AML patients carrying FLT3 activating mutations. Thus, we provide novel and accurate options for the diagnostic screening and therapy of KMT2A -r leukemia, regardless of leukemia subtype. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the World Health Organization has found an increase in the death rate due to cardiovascular disease. Calcifications of the coronary arteries are the main sign of any cardiovascular event. Each individual's calcium score helps estimate the severity of the disease. However, the score for each artery is more significant. This study aims to research the segmentation, the labeling, and then the complete and partial quantification of calcium using only native coronary computed tomography with the help of machine-learning algorithms. Our semi-automatic system limited the region of interest by applying a defined preprocessing step. We then implemented two random forest classifiers; the first separated true coronary artery calcification (CAC) from the noise, and the second labeled CAC into the right coronary artery, left coronary artery, left anterior descending artery, and left circumflex artery using specific features. Agatston score and volume score of each CAC, each artery, and all of the arteries were calculated. This method gave promising results, comparable to those found in the literature, with the accuracy of 99.98% and 100% for CAC detection and labeling respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leukemia transformed by the CALM-AF10 chromosomal translocation is characterized by a high incidence of extramedullary disease, central nervous system (CNS) relapse, and a poor prognosis. Invasion of the extramedullary compartment and CNS requires leukemia cell migration out of the marrow and adherence to the cells of the local tissue. Cell adhesion and migration are increasingly recognized as contributors to leukemia development and therapeutic response. These processes are mediated by a variety of cytokines, chemokines, and their receptors, forming networks of both secreted and cell surface factors. The cytokines and cytokine receptors that play key roles in CALM-AF10 driven leukemia are unknown. We find high cell surface expression of the cytokine receptor CXCR4 on leukemia cells expressing the CALM-AF10 oncogenic protein, contributing to the migratory nature of this leukemia. Our discovery of altered cytokine receptor expression and function provides valuable insight into the propagation and persistence of CALM-AF10 driven leukemia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemias (T-ALL) represent 15% of pediatric and 25% of adult ALL. Since they have a particularly poor outcome in relapsed/refractory cases, identifying prognosis factors at diagnosis is crucial to adapting treatment for high-risk patients. Unlike acute myeloid leukemia and BCP ALL, chromosomal rearrangements leading to chimeric fusion-proteins with strong prognosis impact are sparsely reported in T-ALL. To address this issue an RT-MPLA assay was applied to a consecutive series of 522 adult and pediatric T-ALLs and identified a fusion transcript in 20% of cases. PICALM-MLLT10 (4%, n = 23), NUP214-ABL1 (3%, n = 19) and SET-NUP214 (3%, n = 18) were the most frequent. The clinico-biological characteristics linked to fusion transcripts in a subset of 235 patients (138 adults in the GRAALL2003/05 trials and 97 children from the FRALLE2000 trial) were analyzed to identify their prognosis impact. Patients with HOXA trans-deregulated T-ALLs with MLLT10, KMT2A and SET fusion transcripts (17%, 39/235) had a worse prognosis with a 5-year EFS of 35.7% vs 63.7% (HR = 1.63; p = 0.04) and a trend for a higher cumulative incidence of relapse (5-year CIR = 45.7% vs 25.2%, HR = 1.6; p = 0.11). Fusion transcripts status in T-ALL can be robustly identified by RT-MLPA, facilitating risk adapted treatment strategies for high-risk patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the published literature on Atrial fibrillation (AF) originates from the northern hemisphere and mainly involves Caucasian patients, with limited studies in certain ethnicities and races. This scoping review was conducted to collect and summarize the pertinent evidence from the published scientific literature on AF in South Asians and Middle Eastern Arabs. MEDLINE, Embase and CENTRAL databases were included in our search. After screening 8995 records, 55 studies were selected; 42 from the Middle East and 13 from South Asia. Characteristics of the included studies were tabulated, and their data were summarized for study design, setting, enrolment period, sample size, demographics, prevalence or incidence of AF, co-morbidities, risk factors, AF types and symptoms, management, outcomes, and risk determinants. Identified literature gaps included a paucity of community or population-based studies that are representative of these two ethnicities/races. In addition, studies that addressed ethnic/racial in-equality and access to treatment were lacking. Our study underscores the urgent need to study cardiovascular disorders, particularly AF, in South Asians and Middle Eastern Arabs as well as in other less represented ethnicities and races. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bone cancer including primary bone cancer and metastatic bone cancer, remains a challenge claiming millions of lives and affecting the life quality of survivors. Conventional treatments of bone cancer include wide surgical resection, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. However, some bone cancer cells may remain or recur in the local area after resection, some are highly resistant to chemotherapy, and some are insensitive to radiotherapy. Phototherapy (PT) including photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT), is a clinically approved, minimally invasive, and highly selective treatment, and has been widely reported for cancer therapy. Under the irradiation of light of a specific wavelength, the photosensitizer (PS) in PDT can cause the increase of intracellular ROS and the photothermal agent (PTA) in PTT can induce photothermal conversion, leading to the tumoricidal effects. In this review, the progress of PT applications in the treatment of bone cancer has been outlined and summarized, and some envisioned challenges and future perspectives have been mentioned. This review provides the current state of the art regarding PDT and PTT in bone cancer and inspiration for future studies on PT. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]