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Cyclophosphamide (CPE) is an alkylating agent that has shown to have a wide range of applications in dermatology. Although not a first-line drug for any of the dermatological disorders, it has been found to be useful as a second-line drug in unresponsive cases. A major drawback of CPE is its toxicity profile. Nevertheless, if used with caution, it can prove to be of immense value in dermatologic practice.

Intussusception in adults represents 1% of bowel obstructions and up to 0.02% of all hospital admissions. Amongst these, colo-colic intussusception of the descending colon forms the rarest of causes due to the fixed nature of the descending colon. Most of adult intussusceptions follow a lead point and are commonly due to colonic malignancy which may get missed on pre-operative evaluation. Surgery is usually warranted as these patients are usually symptomatic and at risk of vascular compromise, leading to perforations and obscure malignancies. We present a case of laparoscopic limited hemicolectomy and primary anastomosis in a middle-aged male who presented with colo-colic intussusception, which appeared to be following a malignant mass on imaging and lipoma on colonoscopic biopsy done twice. Keeping in mind the possibility of a malignant lead point, no attempt was made to reduce the intussusception and a vessel first approach with 5 cm margin on either side was performed.

This paper introduces a novel computational strategy for addressing challenges in approximation theory. It focuses on the use of first-kind pseudo-Chebyshev wavelet approximations and the methodology and evaluation of the error for a specific function are outlined, along with practical instances to showcase the method’s effectiveness and efficiency. This approach is motivated by the need for highly efficient and precise methods for function representation and the error reduction in this domain. The paper also establishes the error of a function associated with the class of absolutely continuous functions using first-kind pseudo-Chebyshev wavelets via orthogonal projection operators, highlighting their precision and theoretical optimality within the domain of wavelet analysis. Additionally, the use of wavelet approximation to solve Abel’s integral equation is demonstrated by computing the approximate solution using first kind pseudo-Chebyshev wavelet.

The dense and dynamic environments within active galactic nuclei (AGN) accretion disks may serve as prolific birthplaces for binary black holes (BBHs) and one possible origin for some of the BBHs detected by gravitational-wave (GW) observatories. We show that a considerable fraction of the BBH in AGN disks will be strongly lensed by the central supermassive black hole (SMBH). Thus, the nonobservation of lensed GW signals can be used to constrain the fraction of BBH binaries residing in AGN disks. The nondetection of lensing with current ${ \mathcal O }(100)$ detections will be sufficient to start placing constraints on the fraction of BBHs living within accretion disks near the SMBH. In the next-generation detectors era, with ${ \mathcal O }(1{0}^{5})$ BBH observations and no lensed events, we will be able to rule out most migration traps as dominant birthplaces of BBH mergers; moreover, we will be able to constrain the minimum size of the accretion disk. On the other hand, should AGNs constitute a major formation channel, lensed events from AGNs will become prominent in the future.

Belite calcium sulfoaluminate cement (CSAB), an alternative to Portland cement, exhibits excellent strength at both early and later ages. However, due to its high belite content, the carbon reduction from this type of cement is not sufficient when compared to other alternative cements. To further enhance CSAB’s sustainability, this study investigates the performance of CSAB when partially replaced by low-carbon mineral additives (i.e., limestone and gypsum). The primary objective is to identify the optimal mixture design by incorporating gypsum and limestone to formulate a sustainable binder that maintains high compressive strength. The CSAB is replaced (with both additives) by up to 51% at two different liquid-to-solid ratios of 0.4 and 0.5. gypsum replacements ranging from 0% to 27%, resulting in three unique gypsum-to-ye’elimite molar ratios (M). Limestone replacements range from 0% to 30% in 10% increments. The investigation focuses on the development of hydrates, hydration kinetics, and compressive strength of the sustainable binders after 3 days. The results indicate that a higher replacement level of limestone provides more free water to react with ye’elimite and belite, thereby enhancing the hydration kinetics, but decreasing the compressive strength. It also shows that the addition of gypsum enhances the formation of ettringite, enabling the maintenance of great compressive strength within the binder even at high limestone replacement levels. The binder containing 12% gypsum and 20% limestone was identified as the optimal mixture, yielding a compressive strength of 39 MPa. This performance, when compared to the plain CSAB (compressive strength of 49 MPa), demonstrates that the optimized binder achieves adequate sustainability while maintaining mechanical properties without significant compromise.

This study presents a robust and imperceptible image watermarking method combining Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT), Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), and quantum-inspired optimization. The approach applies DWT to decompose the image into subbands and embeds the watermark in the low-frequency subband. DCT is used to identify Alternating Current (AC) coefficients, with Quantum-Inspired Annealing (QIA) optimizing their selection and Quantum Variational Circuits (QVC) dynamically adjusting the embedding intensity (α) for each block. The novelty of this study lies in integrating QIA and QVC to optimize both the embedding position and intensity, enabling a more adaptive and robust watermarking mechanism compared to existing quantum-inspired methods. Experimental results in standard images show high imperceptibility, with average Peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index Measurement (SSIM) values of 46.93 dB and 0.9979, respectively. The method demonstrates strong robustness, achieving an average Normalized Correlation (NC) of 0.9752 across various attacks, including JPEG compression, noise addition, and cropping. Compared to existing methods, the proposed approach performs better in maintaining watermark quality and robustness. This study highlights the potential of quantum-inspired techniques in watermarking, offering a promising direction for further research and real-world applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article in Neurology India discusses a rare case of vasculitis neuropathy following the Covishield COVID-19 vaccine in a 65-year-old man. The patient developed pain, paraesthesia, and weakness after vaccination, leading to a diagnosis of vasculitis neuropathy. Treatment with prednisolone showed marked improvement in symptoms, suggesting a potential link between the vaccine and neuropathy. The article emphasizes the importance of documenting and monitoring neuropathies following COVID-19 vaccinations to evaluate any potential associations accurately. [Extracted from the article]

Vertical transmission of SARS-CoV-2 during human pregnancy remains highly controversial as most studies have focused on the third trimester or the peripartum period. Given the lack of early trimester data, determining the prevalence of vertical transmission during early pregnancy and assessing the potential risks for fetal morbidity and mortality pose a challenge. Therefore, we analysed the impact of SARS-CoV-2 infection on an endometrial 3D spheroid model system. The 3D spheroids are capable of decidualization and express angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) as well as transmembrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2), rendering them susceptible to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Employing this 3D cell model, we identified that SARS-CoV-2 can infect both non-decidualized and decidualized endometrial spheroids. Infection significantly increased the chemokine Monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (MCP-1) compared to non-infected spheroids. Decidualized spheroids exhibited upregulated Interleukin (IL)-8 levels. Furthermore, RNA sequencing revealed dysregulation of several genes involved in tissue-specific immune response, Fc receptor signalling, angiotensin-activated signalling and actin function. Gene expression changes varied between SARS-CoV-2 infected non-decidualized and decidualized spheroids and genes associated with the innate immune system (CD38, LCN2 and NR4A3) were dysregulated as a potential mechanism for immune evasion of SARS-CoV-2. Altogether, our study demonstrates that endometrial spheroids are a useful model to examine the clinical implications of SARS-CoV-2 vertical transmission, warranting further investigations., (© 2025 The Author(s).)

Introduction: Micro ribonucleic acids (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs that modulate the expression of various genes. They have an important role in cancer pathogenesis. Differential expression of multiple miRNAs have been used as potential diagnostic and prognostic markers., Methods: Various cancers have lately been employed as therapeutic targets. This prospective study included untreated pediatric neuroblastoma (NB) patients. In the discovery phase, global miRNA profiling was done using next-generation sequencing (NGS) on biopsy tissue samples of NB patients. In this phase, the top expressing miRNA was identified and chosen for further validation as circulating miRNA in blood samples of a different set of NB patients by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR)., Results: Based on the read counts on the global miRNA profiling in the discovery phase, we found that the miRNA that consistently had high reads across the majority of the NB samples were miRNA 451-a, 19b-3p, 106b-5p, and 21-5p. Of these, we selected miRNA 451-a and 19-b for the validation phase of the study as they had consistent overexpression. In the validation phase, the expression of the circulating miRNA 451-a in the blood was found to be higher. The average value for the relative fold (RF) expression for miRNA 451-a was 1.52., Conclusion: miRNA 451-a is overexpressed both in the cancer tissue and the blood of NB patients. It can serve as a potential diagnostic marker. Further studies can elucidate its role in the pathogenesis of NB and it can have utility as a therapeutic target., (Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.net.)