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This study proposes a novel hybrid method, FVMD-WOA-GA, for enhancing traffic flow prediction in 5G-enabled intelligent transportation systems. The method integrates fast variational mode decomposition (FVMD) with optimization techniques, namely, the whale optimization algorithm (WOA) and genetic algorithm (GA), to improve the accuracy of overall traffic flow based on models tailored for each decomposed sub-sequence. The selected predictive models—long short-term memory (LSTM), bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM), gated recurrent unit (GRU), and bidirectional GRU (BiGRU)—were considered to capture diverse temporal dependencies in traffic data. This research explored a multi-stage approach, where the decomposition, optimization, and selection of models are performed systematically to improve prediction performance. Experimental validation on two real-world traffic datasets further underscores the method's efficacy, achieving root mean squared errors (RMSEs) of 152.43 and 7.91 on the respective datasets, which marks improvements of 3.44% and 12.87% compared to the existing methods. These results highlight the ability of the FVMD-WOA-GA approach to improve prediction accuracy significantly, reduce inference time, enhance system adaptability, and contribute to more efficient traffic management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) rely heavily on effective feature selection (FS) for enhanced efficacy. This study proposes a novel approach called Genetic Sacrificial Whale Optimization (GSWO) to address the limitations of conventional methods. GSWO combines a genetic algorithm (GA) and whale optimization algorithms (WOA) modified by applying a new three-population division strategy with a proposed conditional inherited choice (CIC) to overcome premature convergence in WOA. The proposed approach achieves a balance between exploration and exploitation and enhances global search abilities. Additionally, the CatBoost model is employed for classification, effectively handling categorical data with complex patterns. A new technique for fine-tuning CatBoost's hyperparameters is introduced, using effective quantization and the GSWO strategy. Extensive experimentation on various datasets demonstrates the superiority of GSWO-CatBoost, achieving higher accuracy rates on the WSN-DS, WSNBFSF, NSL-KDD, and CICIDS2017 datasets than the existing approaches. The comprehensive evaluations highlight the real-time applicability and accuracy of the proposed method across diverse data sources, including specialized WSN datasets and established benchmarks. Specifically, our GSWO-CatBoost method has an inference time nearly 100 times faster than deep learning methods while achieving high accuracy rates of 99.65%, 99.99%, 99.76%, and 99.74% for WSN-DS, WSNBFSF, NSL-KDD, and CICIDS2017, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological developments coupled with socioeconomic changes are driving a rapid transformation of the fifth-generation (5G) cellular network landscape. This evolution has led to versatile applications with fast data-transfer capabilities. The integration of 5G with wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has rendered the Internet of Things (IoTs) crucial for measurement and sensing. Although 5G-enabled IoTs are vital, they face challenges in data integrity, such as mixed noise, outliers, and missing values, owing to various transmission issues. Traditional methods such as the tensor robust principal component analysis (TRPCA) have limitations in preserving essential data. This study introduces an enhanced approach, the weighted robust tensor principal component analysis (WRTPCA), combined with weighted tensor completion (WTC). The new method enhances data recovery using tensor singular value decomposition (t-SVD) to separate regular and abnormal data, preserve significant components, and robustly address complex data corruption issues, such as mixed noise, outliers, and missing data, with the globally optimal solution determined through the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Our study is the first to address complex corruption in multivariate data using the WTRPCA. The proposed approach outperforms current techniques. In all corrupted scenarios, the normalized mean absolute error (NMAE) of the proposed method is typically less than 0.2, demonstrating strong performance even in the most challenging conditions in which other models struggle. This highlights the effectiveness of the proposed approach in real-world 5G-enabled IoTs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Drug resistant epilepsy (DRE) is a major hurdle in epilepsy, which hinders clinical care, patients' management and treatment outcomes. DRE may partially result from genetic variants that alter proteins responsible for drug targets and drug transporters in the brain. We aimed to examine the relationship between SCN1A, GABRA1 and ABCB1 polymorphism and drug response in epilepsy children in Vietnam. Materials and Methods: In total, 213 children diagnosed with epilepsy were recruited in this study (101 were drug responsive and 112 were drug resistant). Sanger sequencing had been performed in order to detect six single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) belonging to SCN1A (rs2298771, rs3812718, rs10188577), GABRA1 (rs2279020) and ABCB1 (rs1128503, rs1045642) in study group. The link between SNPs and drug response status was examined by the Chi-squared test or the Fisher's exact test. Results: Among six investigated SNPs, two SNPs showed significant difference between the responsive and the resistant group. Among those, heterozygous genotype of SCN1A rs2298771 (AG) were at higher frequency in the resistant patients compared with responsive patients, playing as risk factor of refractory epilepsy. Conversely, the heterozygous genotype of SCN1A rs3812718 (CT) was significantly lower in the resistant compared with the responsive group. No significant association was found between the remaining four SNPs and drug response. Conclusions: Our study demonstrated a significant association between the SCN1A genetic polymorphism which increased risk of drug-resistant epilepsy in Vietnamese epileptic children. This important finding further supports the underlying molecular mechanisms of SCN1A genetic variants in the pathogenesis of drug-resistant epilepsy in children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-access edge computing (MEC) brings computations closer to mobile users, thereby decreasing service latency and providing location-aware services. Nevertheless, given the constrained resources of the MEC server, it is crucial to provide a limited number of services that properly fulfill the demands of users. Several static service caching approaches have been proposed. However, the effectiveness of these strategies is constrained by the dynamic nature of the system states and user demand patterns. To mitigate this problem, several investigations have been conducted on dynamic service caching techniques that can be categorized as centralized and distributed. However, centralized approaches typically require gathering comprehensive data from the entire system. This increases the burden on resources and raises concerns regarding data security and privacy. By contrast, distributed strategies require the formulation of complicated optimization problems without leveraging the inherent characteristics of the data. This paper proposes a distributed service caching strategy based on federated learning (SCFL) that works efficiently in a distributed system with user mobility. An autoencoder model is utilized to extract features regarding the service request distribution of individual MEC servers. The global model is then generated using federated learning, which is utilized to make service-caching decisions. Extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate that the performance of the proposed method is superior to that of other methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Antibiotic-free approaches are more important than ever to address the rapidly growing problem of the antibiotic resistance crisis. The photolysis of the bacterial virulence factor staphyloxanthin using blue light at 460 nm (BL460 nm) has been found to effectively attenuate Staphylococcus aureus to chemical and physical agents. However, phototherapy using BL640 nm still needs to be investigated in detail for its safety in eradicating Staphylococcus aureus in vitro and in vivo. In this study, we employed a 460 nm continuous-wavelength LED source and a low concentration of hydrogen peroxide to treat S. aureus under a culturing condition and a wound abrasion mouse model. The results demonstrated the safety of the combined therapy when it did not modify the bacterial virulence factors or the susceptibility to widely used antibiotics. In addition, the results of the mouse model also showed that the combined therapy was safe to apply to mouse skin since it did not cause adverse skin irritation. More importantly, the therapy can aid in healing S. aureus-infected wounds with an efficacy comparable to that of the topical antibiotic Fucidin. The aforementioned findings indicate that the concurrent application of BL460 nm and hydrogen peroxide can be used safely as an alternative or adjunct to antibiotics in treating S. aureus-infected wounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ulvan, a sulfated heteropolysaccharide with structural and functional properties of interest for various uses, was extracted from the green seaweed Ulva papenfussii. U. papenfussii is an unexplored Ulva species found in the South China Sea along the central coast of Vietnam. Based on dry weight, the ulvan yield was ~15% (w/w) and the ulvan had a sulfate content of 13.4 wt%. The compositional constitution encompassed L-Rhamnose (Rhap), D-Xylose (Xylp), D-Glucuronic acid (GlcAp), L-Iduronic acid (IdoAp), D-Galactose (Galp), and D-Glucose (Glcp) with a molar ratio of 1:0.19:0.35:0.52:0.05:0.11, respectively. The structure of ulvan was determined using High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR), and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance spectroscopy (NMR) methods. The results showed that the extracted ulvan comprised a mixture of two different structural forms, namely ("A3s") with the repeating disaccharide [→4)-β-D-GlcAp-(1→4)-α-L-Rhap 3S-(1→]n, and ("B3s") with the repeating disaccharide [→4)-α-L-IdoAp-(1→4)-α-L-Rhap 3S(1→]n. The relative abundance of A3s, and B3s was 1:1.5, respectively. The potential anticarcinogenic attributes of ulvan were evaluated against a trilogy of human cancer cell lineages. Concomitantly, Quantitative Structure–Activity Relationship (QSAR) modeling was also conducted to predict potential adverse reactions stemming from pharmacological interactions. The ulvan showed significant antitumor growth activity against hepatocellular carcinoma (IC50 ≈ 90 µg/mL), human breast cancer cells (IC50 ≈ 85 µg/mL), and cervical cancer cells (IC50 ≈ 67 µg/mL). The QSAR models demonstrated acceptable predictive power, and seven toxicity indications confirmed the safety of ulvan, warranting its candidacy for further in vivo testing and applications as a biologically active pharmaceutical source for human disease treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The endothelial cell lining creates an interface between circulating blood and adjoining tissue and forms one of the most critical barriers and targets for therapeutical intervention. Recent studies suggest that fucoidans, sulfated and fucose-rich polysaccharides from brown seaweed, show multiple promising biological effects, including anti-inflammatory properties. However, their biological activity is determined by chemical characteristics such as molecular weight, sulfation degree, and molecular structure, which vary depending on the source, species, and harvesting and isolation method. In this study, we investigated the impact of high molecular weight (HMW) fucoidan extract on endothelial cell activation and interaction with primary monocytes (MNCs) in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced inflammation. Gentle enzyme-assisted extraction combined with fractionation by ion exchange chromatography resulted in well-defined and pure fucoidan fractions. FE_F3, with a molecular weight ranging from 110 to 800 kDa and a sulfate content of 39%, was chosen for further investigation of its anti-inflammatory potential. We observed that along with higher purity of fucoidan fractions, the inflammatory response in endothelial mono- and co-cultures with MNCs was reduced in a dose-dependent manner when testing two different concentrations. This was demonstrated by a decrease in IL-6 and ICAM-1 on gene and protein levels and a reduced gene expression of TLR-4, GSK3β and NF-kB. Expression of selectins and, consequently, the adhesion of monocytes to the endothelial monolayer was reduced after fucoidan treatment. These data indicate that the anti-inflammatory effect of fucoidans increases with their purity and suggest that fucoidans might be useful in limiting the inflammatory response of endothelial cells in cases of LPS-induced bacterial infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Galectin-3 is a biomarker that has been demonstrated to play a significant role in myocardial fibrosis and remodeling in the pathogenesis of heart failure. Furthermore, spironolactone has the ability to control galectin-3 levels in heart failure patients. Objectives: The aim of our study was to determine the factors associated with the increase in galectin-3 and the alteration of galectin-3 concentration in patients with heart failure with a reduced ejection fraction after 12 weeks of treatment with spironolactone. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted on 122 patients with heart failure with a reduced ejection fraction. Those patients were nonusers of spironolactone and presented for examination or had been hospitalized at the Can Tho Cardiovascular Hospital in Vietnam. The demographic and cardiovascular risk factor details were obtained at baseline, and galectin-3 levels were measured at baseline and also 12 weeks after taking spironolactone 25 mg once daily vs. 50 mg once daily. Results: The median baseline galectin-3 was 54.82 ± 26.06. Galectin-3 levels were positively correlated with age, NT-proBNP, and negatively correlated between EF and galectin-3 levels (p < 0.05). After 12 weeks of treatment with spironolactone, the galectin-3 concentration decreased from 54.82 ± 26.06 to 44.20 ± 24.36 (p < 0.05). According to the subgroup analysis, the average concentration of galectin-3 decreased the most in the group of patients with grade 3 hypertension and NYHA class III heart failure. The 50 mg once-daily dose of spironolactone significantly improved galectin-3 concentrations compared with the 25 mg once-daily group, at 17.11 ± 20.81 (p < 0.05) (reduced 29.05%) and 3.46 ± 6.81 ng/mL (p < 0.05) (reduced 6.87%), respectively. Conclusion: Treatment with spironolactone played an essential role in reducing galectin-3 concentrations, especially spironolactone 50 mg once daily, which showed a significant effect on reducing galectin-3 compared with a 25 mg once-daily dose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Elevated levels of blood total homocysteine is one of the cardiovascular risk factors in hypertensive patients. Objectives: Determine the prevalence of hyperhomocysteinemia and its associated factors in newly diagnosed primary hypertension patients. Materials and methods: A cross-sectional descriptive study on 105 patients with newly diagnosed primary hypertension at Can Tho University of Medicine and Pharmacy Hospital from May 2017 to May 2018. Total homocysteine levels and related factors were collected at the study time. Results: The mean plasma total homocysteine level was 16.24 ± 4.49 µmol/L. There were 78 patients with elevated plasma total homocysteine levels ≥15 µmol/L, accounting for 74.3% of all patients. Being elderly, gender, hypertension stage, and diabetes were factors associated with hyperhomocysteinemia (p < 0.05). Total homocysteine levels were positively correlated with SBP, DBP, and age with r(SBP) = 0.696, r(DBP) = 0.585, and r(age) = 0.286. Conclusion: Research on the subpopulation of Vietnamese people shows that hyperhomocysteinemia is common in patients with newly diagnosed primary hypertension, and high blood total homocysteine levels are often related to age, sex, hypertension stage, and diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The application of chest X-ray imaging for early disease screening is attracting interest from the computer vision and deep learning community. To date, various deep learning models have been applied in X-ray image analysis. However, models perform inconsistently depending on the dataset. In this paper, we consider each individual model as a medical doctor. We then propose a doctor consultation-inspired method that fuses multiple models. In particular, we consider both early and late fusion mechanisms for consultation. The early fusion mechanism combines the deep learned features from multiple models, whereas the late fusion method combines the confidence scores of all individual models. Experiments on two X-ray imaging datasets demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method relative to baseline. The experimental results also show that early consultation consistently outperforms the late consultation mechanism in both benchmark datasets. In particular, the early doctor consultation-inspired model outperforms all individual models by a large margin, i.e., 3.03 and 1.86 in terms of accuracy in the UIT COVID-19 and chest X-ray datasets, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigated the effects of plasma duration and different reactive species ratios of cold atmospheric-pressure plasma treatment on both physical and endogenous hormone changes in enhancing the germination and growth of mung bean seeds. Seed germination and sprout stem length were significantly enhanced after plasma treatment. The germination rate increased eleven times after 12 h, while the radicles' length increased ~3 times after 96 h with optimal plasma treatment parameters. SEM images showed that the plasmas directly induced gradual changes in the seed coating, including deformed and shrunken epidermis, and cracks with sizes varying from 0.2 to 1.5 µm after 4 min of plasma treatment. Water contact angle was reduced from 73° with untreated seed to almost 0° with 4 min treated seed. These effects could lead to better water absorption on the surface of treated seeds. We found that a plasma energy dosage of 0.08 Wh per seed and NO concentration between 20–95 ppm were the optimal enhancement conditions. We also showed that, for the first time, through delicate extraction, separation, and quantification processes, NO-induced upregulation of the natural growth hormone gibberellic acid could be the dominant phytochemistry pathway responsible for the enhancement effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Robots interacting with humans in assistive contexts have to be sensitive to human cognitive states to be able to provide help when it is needed and not overburden the human when the human is busy. Yet, it is currently still unclear which sensing modality might allow robots to derive the best evidence of human workload. In this work, we analyzed and modeled data from a multi-modal simulated driving study specifically designed to evaluate different levels of cognitive workload induced by various secondary tasks such as dialogue interactions and braking events in addition to the primary driving task. Specifically, we performed statistical analyses of various physiological signals including eye gaze, electroencephalography, and arterial blood pressure from the healthy volunteers and utilized several machine learning methodologies including k-nearest neighbor, naive Bayes, random forest, support-vector machines, and neural network-based models to infer human cognitive workload levels. Our analyses provide evidence for eye gaze being the best physiological indicator of human cognitive workload, even when multiple signals are combined. Specifically, the highest accuracy (in %) of binary workload classification based on eye gaze signals is 80.45 ∓ 3.15 achieved by using support-vector machines, while the highest accuracy combining eye gaze and electroencephalography is only 77.08 ∓ 3.22 achieved by a neural network-based model. Our findings are important for future efforts of real-time workload estimation in the multimodal human-robot interactive systems given that eye gaze is easy to collect and process and less susceptible to noise artifacts compared to other physiological signal modalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vimentin, a type III intermediate filament protein, is found in most cells along with microfilaments and microtubules. It has been shown that the head domain folds back to associate with the rod domain and this association is essential for filament assembly. The N-terminally tagged vimentin has been widely used to label the cytoskeleton in live cell imaging. Although there is previous evidence that EGFP tagged vimentin fails to form filaments but is able to integrate into a pre-existing network, no study has systematically investigated or established a molecular basis for this observation. To determine whether a tag would affect de novo filament assembly, we used vimentin fused at the N-terminus with two different sized tags, AcGFP (239 residues, 27 kDa) and 3 × FLAG (22 residues; 2.4 kDa) to assemble into filaments in two vimentin-deficient epithelial cells, MCF-7 and A431. We showed that regardless of tag size, N-terminally tagged vimentin aggregated into globules with a significant proportion co-aligning with β-catenin at cell–cell junctions. However, the tagged vimentin aggregates could form filaments upon adding untagged vimentin at a ratio of 1:1 or when introduced into cells containing pre-existing filaments. The resultant filament network containing a mixture of tagged and untagged vimentin was less stable compared to that formed by only untagged vimentin. The data suggest that placing a tag at the N-terminus may create steric hinderance in case of a large tag (AcGFP) or electrostatic repulsion in case of highly charged tag (3 × FLAG) perhaps inducing a conformational change, which deleteriously affects the association between head and rod domains. Taken together our results shows that a free N-terminus is essential for filament assembly as N-terminally tagged vimentin is not only incapable of forming filaments, but it also destabilises when integrated into a pre-existing network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated changes in some laboratory indices and the liver histology of chronic hepatitis patients who were exposed to dioxin. In 2014, we collected liver biopsy samples for histopathological examination from 33 chronic hepatitis patients living around the Da Nang Airbase, which is a dioxin-contaminated area due to the herbicide spraying in Vietnam. Dioxin exposure was measured by its levels in the blood. METAVIR classification was used to clarify the liver fibrosis stage. Laboratory tests included ten biochemical and six hematological indices that were measured in the blood. A regression linear model and binary logistic regression were used for data analysis. The observed alterations in the liver at the histological level mainly comprised hydropic degenerative hepatocytes, lymphocytes and polynuclear leukocytes surrounding the liver cells and granular and lipoic degeneration. In addition, increased TCDD levels were associated with increasing aminotransferase (AST), alanine aminotransferase, protein and total bilirubin levels and liver fibrosis stage. Similarly, increased TEQ-PCDD/Fs levels were associated with higher levels of AST and protein and liver fibrosis stage. In conclusion, dioxin exposure altered the liver histology and increased some biochemical marker indices and the liver fibrosis stage of chronic hepatitis patients living in dioxin-contaminated areas in Da Nang, Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fucoidans are complex bioactive sulfated fucosyl-polysaccharides primarily found in brown macroalgae. Endo-fucoidanases catalyze the specific hydrolysis of α-L-fucosyl linkages in fucoidans and can be utilized to tailor-make fucoidan oligosaccharides and elucidate new structural details of fucoidans. In this study, an endo-α(1,3)-fucoidanase encoding gene, Mef2, from the marine bacterium Muricauda eckloniae, was cloned, and the Mef2 protein was functionally characterized. Based on the primary sequence, Mef2 was suggested to belong to the glycosyl hydrolase family 107 (GH107) in the Carbohydrate Active enZyme database (CAZy). The Mef2 fucoidanase showed maximal activity at pH 8 and 35 °C, although it could tolerate temperatures up to 50 °C. Ca2+ was shown to increase the melting temperature from 38 to 44 °C and was furthermore required for optimal activity of Mef2. The substrate specificity of Mef2 was investigated, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to determine the enzymatic activity (Units per μM enzyme: Uf/μM) of Mef2 on two structurally different fucoidans, showing an activity of 1.2 × 10−3 Uf/μM and 3.6 × 10−3 Uf/μM on fucoidans from Fucus evanescens and Saccharina latissima, respectively. Interestingly, Mef2 was identified as the first described fucoidanase active on fucoidans from S. latissima. The fucoidan oligosaccharides released by Mef2 consisted of a backbone of α(1,3)-linked fucosyl residues with unique and novel α(1,4)-linked fucosyl branches, not previously identified in fucoidans from S. latissima. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Universities can contribute to the solutions of major challenges of the 21st century such as increasing environmental and socio-economic crises, inequalities of income and wealth and political instabilities by integrating the concept of sustainable development (SD) in research, organization, and by educating future decision makers. For instance, by integrating sustainability into the organization, universities can lead by example. Furthermore, through the curriculum, future decision makers can learn the competences needed to solve ecological, social, and economic problems in societies. However, despite their possible importance, universities in Germany fall behind internationally in implementing sustainable strategies. Therefore this paper presents/introduces an approach to how universities can implement the holistic concept of SD that considers all three dimensions (economic, ecological, and social) relating to their main functions of research and education in addition to their organization. Additionally this paper analyzes the current state of implementing sustainability strategies at universities, and how the success of these implementation efforts can be evaluated and be fostered further. We find that assessment systems enable universities to systematically use their potential for action for SD by initiating, evaluating, and accelerating the sustainability process. This also applies in the case of German universities, where the implementation of SD is still in the early stages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Vimentin is an important filamentous protein providing structural and functional support to the cell. During initial stages of cancer development, vimentin concentration is very low, however, it increases when cancer starts to invade the surrounding areas. This review highlights the varied roles of vimentin in cancer growth and its spread to distant areas of the body. We have tried to explore the potential new areas of research related to the role of vimentin in cancer progression. We have also highlighted the reported damage to the vimentin gene in cancers, although how the damaged vimentin helps in cancer growth and spread is not known. We propose that latest technologies should be employed to medicinally target vimentin to reduce the cancer growth and its spread thereby helping to increase treatment outcomes and patients' survival. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a reversible plethora of molecular events where epithelial cells gain the phenotype of mesenchymal cells to invade the surrounding tissues. EMT is a physiological event during embryogenesis (type I) but also happens during fibrosis (type II) and cancer metastasis (type III). It is a multifaceted phenomenon governed by the activation of genes associated with cell migration, extracellular matrix degradation, DNA repair, and angiogenesis. The cancer cells employ EMT to acquire the ability to migrate, resist therapeutic agents and escape immunity. One of the key biomarkers of EMT is vimentin, a type III intermediate filament that is normally expressed in mesenchymal cells but is upregulated during cancer metastasis. This review highlights the pivotal role of vimentin in the key events during EMT and explains its role as a downstream as well as an upstream regulator in this highly complex process. This review also highlights the areas that require further research in exploring the role of vimentin in EMT. As a cytoskeletal protein, vimentin filaments support mechanical integrity of the migratory machinery, generation of directional force, focal adhesion modulation and extracellular attachment. As a viscoelastic scaffold, it gives stress-bearing ability and flexible support to the cell and its organelles. However, during EMT it modulates genes for EMT inducers such as Snail, Slug, Twist and ZEB1/2, as well as the key epigenetic factors. In addition, it suppresses cellular differentiation and upregulates their pluripotent potential by inducing genes associated with self-renewability, thus increasing the stemness of cancer stem cells, facilitating the tumour spread and making them more resistant to treatments. Several missense and frameshift mutations reported in vimentin in human cancers may also contribute towards the metastatic spread. Therefore, we propose that vimentin should be a therapeutic target using molecular technologies that will curb cancer growth and spread with reduced mortality and morbidity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Malaria elimination in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region is challenged by a rising proportion of malaria attributable to P. vivax. Primaquine (PQ) is effective in eliminating the parasite's dormant liver stages and can prevent relapsing infections, but it induces severe haemolysis in patients with Glucose-6-Phosphate Dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency, highlighting the importance of testing enzyme activity prior to treatment. A mixed-method study was conducted in south-central Vietnam to explore the factors that affect acceptability of G6PD testing, treatment-seeking behaviors, and adherence to current regimens. The majority of respondents (75.7%) were unaware of the different parasite species and rather differentiated malaria by perceived severity. People sought a diagnosis if suspected of malaria fever but not if they perceived their fevers as mild. Most respondents agreed to take prescribed medication to treat asymptomatic infection (94.1%) and to continue medication even if they felt better (91.5%). Health professionals did not have G6PD diagnostic tools nor the means to prescribe PQ safely. Adherence to treatment was linked to trust in public providers, who were perceived to make therapeutic decisions in the interest of the patient. Greater focus on providing acceptable ways of assessing G6PD deficiency will be needed to ensure the timely elimination of malaria in Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a highly effective method of installing both capacitors and PV systems in distribution systems for the purpose of reducing total power loss in branches. Three study cases with the installation of one capacitor, two capacitors and three capacitors were implemented and then the optimal solutions were used to install one more photovoltaic (PV) system. One PV system with 20% active power of all loads and less than active power of all loads was tested for two different conditions: (1) with geography location constraint and (2) without geography location constraint for PV system placement. The results from two systems consisting of 33 and 69 nodes were obtained by using the Stochastic Fractal Search Optimization Algorithm (SFSOA). Simulation results show that this method can determine the appropriate location and size of capacitors to reduce the total power losses more effectively than other existing methods. Furthermore, the paper also demonstrates the real impact of using both capacitors and PV systems to reduce active power loss as well as improve the voltage profile of distribution systems. This paper also finds that if it is possible to place PV systems in all nodes in distribution systems, the benefit from reducing total loss is highly significant and the investment of PV system placement is highly encouraged. As a result, it is recommended that capacitors and PV systems be used in distribution networks, and we claim that two important factors of the installed components consisting of location and size can be determined effectively by using SFSOA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper proposes a new hybrid method based on cuckoo search (CSA) and sunflower optimization (SFO) approach (called HCSA-SFO) for improving the performance of solutions in the optimization power system operation problem. In the power system, the optimal power flow (OPF) problem is one of the important factors which usually minimizes total cost and total active power losses while satisfying all constraints of the output power of generators, the voltage at buses, power flow on branches, the capacity of capacitor banks and steps of transformer taps. HCSA-SFO utilizes the mutation and selection mechanism in the SFO algorithm to replace the Lévy flights function in CSA. Hence, this makes HCSA-SFO avoid the fixed step size in the CSA from that can reduce run time and improve the quality of solution for the HCSA-SFO algorithm in the OPF problem. The proposed hybrid technique is simulated on the 30-buses and 118-buses systems. The obtained simulation results from the suggested technique are compared to many other approaches. The result comparisons in different cases showed that the suggested HCSA-SFO can achieve a better result than many other optimization approaches. Therefore, the suggested HCSA-SFO is also an effective approach for dealing with the OPF problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fucoidans from brown macroalgae (brown seaweeds) have different structures and many interesting bioactivities. Fucoidans are classically extracted from brown seaweeds by hot acidic extraction. Here, we report a new targeted enzyme-assisted methodology for fucoidan extraction from brown seaweeds. This enzyme-assisted extraction protocol involves a one-step combined use of a commercial cellulase preparation (Cellic®CTec2) and an alginate lyase from Sphingomonas sp. (SALy), reaction at pH 6.0, 40 °C, removal of non-fucoidan polysaccharides by Ca2+ precipitation, and ethanol-precipitation of crude fucoidan. The workability of this method is demonstrated for fucoidan extraction from Fucus distichus subsp. evanescens (basionym Fucus evanescens) and Saccharina latissima as compared with mild acidic extraction. The crude fucoidans resulting directly from the enzyme-assisted method contained considerable amounts of low molecular weight alginate, but this residual alginate was effectively removed by an additional ion-exchange chromatographic step to yield pure fucoidans (as confirmed by 1H NMR). The fucoidan yields that were obtained by the enzymatic method were comparable to the chemically extracted yields for both F. evanescens and S. latissima, but the molecular sizes of the fucoidans were significantly larger with enzyme-assisted extraction. The molecular weight distribution of the fucoidan fractions was 400 to 800 kDa for F. evanescens and 300 to 800 kDa for S. latissima, whereas the molecular weights of the corresponding chemically extracted fucoidans from these seaweeds were 10–100 kDa and 50–100 kDa, respectively. Enzyme-assisted extraction represents a new gentle strategy for fucoidan extraction and it provides new opportunities for obtaining high yields of native fucoidan structures from brown macroalgae. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]