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This study aimed to systematically review the prospects and challenges associated with adopting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in teaching and learning at rural universities in South Africa. To achieve this aim, a systematic review methodology was employed. The systematic review findings revealed a multifaceted landscape wherein opportunities for enhancing education through ICT exist alongside significant challenges. Prospects include the potential for technology to bridge educational gaps, increase accessibility, and provide innovative learning experiences. However, challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, limited connectivity, and varying levels of digital literacy pose significant impediments. The study emphasizes the need for targeted interventions to address these challenges, including infrastructure development, capacity building, and localized content creation. Additionally, recommendations for flexible learning models and collaborative partnerships are outlined to facilitate effective ICT adoption in the unique context of rural South African universities. Continuous research and evaluation are advocated to inform future strategies and ensure sustainable improvements in rural education through ICT integration.

Background and objective: Guideline recommendations regarding early management of grade group (GG) 2 prostate cancer with confirmatory biopsy (cBx) are not well established. Our aim was to determine which patients with GG 2 cancer should undergo cBx before treatment decision-making by evaluating the probability of downgrading to GG 1 or no cancer on cBx. Methods: This was a single-institution retrospective analysis of patients with GG 2 prostate cancer who underwent cBx. We modeled the probability of having no Gleason pattern 4 on cBx according to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) Prostate Imaging-Reporting and Data System (PI-RADS) score, presence of extraprostatic extension (EPE) on MRI, total length of pattern 4 across all cores on initial Bx, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) density. Key findings and limitations: Among 301 patients, 62 (21%) were downgraded to GG 1 and 23 (8%) had no cancer on cBx. For patients with nonsuspicious MRI findings (PI-RADS 1–3; n = 123), the probability of having no pattern 4 on CBx was 34%, 20%, and 11% for 1, 2, and 3 mm of pattern 4 at initial Bx. For PI-RADS 4–5 without EPE on MRI (n = 146), the corresponding probabilities were 18%, 10%, and 5%. Patients with EPE on MRI (n = 32) had low probability (

Many governments around the world have taken action to utilise carbon capture (CC) technologies to reduce CO2 emissions. This technology is particularly important to reduce unavoidable emissions from industries like cement plants, oil refineries, etc. The available literature in the public domain explores this theme from two distinct perspectives. The first category of papers focuses only on modelling the CC plants by investigating the details of the processes to separate CO2 from other gas components without considering the industrial applications and synergies between sectors. On the other hand, the second category investigates the required infrastructure that must be put in place to allow a suitable integration without considering the specific particularities of each carbon capture technology. This review gives a comprehensive guideline for the implementation of CC technologies for any given application while also considering the coupling between different energy sectors such as heating, power generation, etc. It also identifies the research gaps within this field, based on the existing literature. Moreover, it delves into various aspects and characteristics of these technologies, while comparing their energy penalties with the minimum work required for CO2 separation. Additionally, this review investigates the main industrial sectors with CC potential, the necessary transportation infrastructure from the point sources to the end users, and the needs and characteristics of storage facilities, as well as the utilisation of CO2 as a feedstock. Finally, an overview of the computation tools for CC processes and guidelines for their utilisation is given. The guidelines presented in this paper are the first attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the technologies, and their requirements, needed to achieve the cross-sector coupling of CC plants for a wide range of applications. It is strongly believed that these guidelines will benefit all stakeholders in the value chain while enabling an accelerated deployment of these technologies.

Nowadays, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)-patient therapies are mainly based on corticosteroid, thiopurine, and immunomodulator treatments. Patients with active disease, that do not respond to corticosteroid and/or thiopurine treatment, can switch to the usage of the chimeric monoclonal antibody infliximab (IFX). However, to date, no treatment appeared to be conclusive in lowering the incidence of IBD relapses. With the aim to increase the effectiveness of IFX treatment, we combined it with an adjuvant purple corn supplementation enriched in anthocyanins. IBD-patients were enrolled before they underwent to the IFX-infusion, and they were allocated in 2 different study arms. Patients in the intervention-arm followed a dietary supplementation with purple corn water-soluble extract, whereas control patients had a daily consumption of red fruit tea. 16S rDNA gene-sequencing and high-resolution mass-spectrometry metabo-lipidomics analyses were conducted on stool and sera samples, respectively. As a result, the experimental intervention mainly affected the serum metabolome of IBD-patients by decreasing the concentration of specific lipids. Focusing on IBD patient annotated taxa, a significant decrease in Lactobacillus and Bifidobacterium relative abundances was found. As far as it concerns the ulcerative colitis patient subset, the experimental intervention led to a decrease in Alistipes and Erysipelotrichaceae UCG-003 genus abundances and a concomitant Parabacteroides increase. On the contrary, after treatment, Crohn’s disease patients did not exhibit metataxonomics differences at the genus level. At the end of the treatment that led to a reshaped microbiota community, the gathered data paves the way for the usage of a specifically designed probiotic supplementation as a valuable strategy for IBD-patients under IFX infusion.

Background: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) show promise as blood-based tumor markers for germ cell tumors (GCTs), with miRNA-371-3p being the most studied. The marginal benefit of including other candidate miRNAs to aid with the management of testicular GCTs remains unclear. Objective: To assess the performance of our combined miRNA assay (371a-3p and 372-3p) in patients with clinically localized testicular masses. Design, setting, and participants: This was a retrospective review of patients prospectively enrolled in an ongoing protocol collecting serum miR-371a-3p and miR-372-3p levels (together, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center [MSK] miRNA assay [MMA]) in patients with a suspected or diagnosed testicular GCT. Outcome measurements and statistical analysis: The coprimary outcomes of interest were sensitivity and specificity of miR-371a-3p and 372-3p, individually and together, to detect nonteratomatous GCTs in the orchiectomy specimen. Secondary outcomes included additional assay diagnostic parameters, the relationship of patient and disease factors with variations in miRNA levels, and temporal patterns of miRNA normalization after orchiectomy. Results and limitations: Sixty-two patients were included, 52 had a viable GCT at orchiectomy, and ten had no cancer or a non-GCT. Forty-six patients with a GCT had positive preorchiectomy MMA (sensitivity 88.5% [95% confidence interval {CI}: 79.8, 97.2]), and one patient had positive preorchiectomy MMA but no GCT (specificity 90.0% [95% CI: 71.4, 100]). The diagnostic performance of miR-371a-3-p and miR-372-3p was similar. The time for miRNA to decrease to undetectable levels varied, with some patients having positive levels up to 3 wk after orchiectomy. Conclusions: The biomarkers miR-371a-3p and miR-372-3p demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity for localized testicular GCTs, but causes of variation in relative miRNA levels and time to normalization for individual patients remain unclear. Patient summary: We studied the ability of the blood-based biomarkers miR-371a-3p and miR-372-3p to detect testicular cancer (germ cell tumors) in patients with small testicular masses. We found that together and individually these were sensitive and specific for testicular cancer.

Flammable liquids typically adopted in chemical and industrial processes can be subjected to intense heat radiation due to nearby hot surfaces or fires. A second cascading event is then likely because the flash point can be easily reached and the surrounding environment can provide sufficient energy for ignition. Nevertheless, the flaming condition is not necessarily reached instantaneously if no direct (e.g., spark) ignition is present. Hence, a time to flaming, i.e., in the absence of an ignition source, is extremely relevant for the active and passive fire protection of flammable liquid, as the minimum time for intervention can be defined before developing a pool fire and for the correct evaluation of domino effects, in analogy with gas fires. In addition, a complete characterization of liquid behaviour under radiant heating is essential to guarantee safe operations, prevention measures, robust databases and optimized design. Therefore, this work reports the results for three liquid solvent representative classes of substances: i) hexane, ii) ethyl acetate, and iii) ethanol. A bench scale facility was adopted for the characterization of mass and energy aspects involving a pool fire of the investigated substances. Among the others, the ignitability and the intensity of the generated pool fires were evaluated experimentally in terms of mass burning rate, heat release rate, and combustion efficiency. Different boundary conditions were tested to identify the optimized set of conditions for a robust evaluation of the safety aspects of liquid. Results showed the most relevant trends in terms of ignitability of liquid species and combustion intensity during the pseudo-steady state regime of a pool fire. In addition, indications on the boundary conditions to be considered for a robust and consistent dataset were provided in this work.

Background and objectivesBRAT1 encephalopathy is an ultra-rare autosomal recessive neonatal encephalopathy. We delineate the neonatal electroclinical phenotype at presentation and provide insights for early diagnosis.MethodsThrough a multinational collaborative, we studied a cohort of neonates with encephalopathy associated with biallelic pathogenic variants in BRAT1 for whom detailed clinical, neurophysiologic, and neuroimaging information was available from the onset of symptoms. Neuropathologic changes were also analyzed.ResultsWe included 19 neonates. Most neonates were born at term (16/19) from nonconsanguineous parents. 15/19 (79%) were admitted soon after birth to a neonatal intensive care unit, exhibiting multifocal myoclonus, both spontaneous and exacerbated by stimulation. 7/19 (37%) had arthrogryposis at birth, and all except 1 progressively developed hypertonia in the first week of life. Multifocal myoclonus, which was present in all but 1 infant, was the most prominent manifestation and did not show any EEG correlate in 16/19 (84%). Video-EEG at onset was unremarkable in 14/19 (74%) infants, and 6 (33%) had initially been misdiagnosed with hyperekplexia. Multifocal seizures were observed at a median age of 14 days (range: 1-29). During the first months of life, all infants developed progressive encephalopathy, acquired microcephaly, prolonged bouts of apnea, and bradycardia, leading to cardiac arrest and death at a median age of 3.5 months (range: 20 days to 30 months). Only 7 infants (37%) received a definite diagnosis before death, at a median age of 34 days (range: 25-126), and almost two-thirds (12/19, 63%) were diagnosed 8 days to 12 years postmortem (median: 6.5 years). Neuropathology examination, performed in 3 patients, revealed severely delayed myelination and diffuse astrogliosis, sparing the upper cortical layers.DiscussionBRAT1 encephalopathy is a neonatal-onset, rapidly progressive neurologic disorder. Neonates are often misdiagnosed as having hyperekplexia, and many die undiagnosed. The key phenotypic features are multifocal myoclonus, an organized EEG, progressive, persistent, and diffuse hypertonia, and an evolution into refractory multifocal seizures, prolonged bouts of apnea, bradycardia, and early death. Early recognition of BRAT1 encephalopathy allows for prompt workup, appropriate management, and genetic counseling.

This study sought to examine the factors that influence women’s health in conflict zones for the period spanning 1975–2018. The investigation was motivated by the fact that war and violent conflict strain already underdeveloped healthcare systems and frequently put disadvantaged groups—particularly women and children—at risk of being denied access to essential services like healthcare. Living in or close to conflict zones puts women at a higher risk for sexual assault, poor reproductive health, unwanted pregnancy, and poor maternal health outcomes. By destroying infrastructure, food, water, and sanitation systems, armed conflict reduces access to healthcare. The results showed that the remittances and life expectancy have a negative relationship with maternal mortality. Development assistance, the number of refuges, and military expenditure were seen as having a positive relationship with maternal mortality, but no significant relationship was found with either economic growth or internet usage. This calls for new policy and self-care interventions. There is also a need to explore how to maximise the benefits of technology in delivering health interventions to hard-to-reach populations. There is also a need for policymakers to explore how to maximise the benefits of technology in delivering health interventions to hard-to-reach populations.

Desertification is among the most severe environmental problems in many countries at present, and threatens the integrity of natural environments and the sustainability of related natural resources. This work aims to assess proneness to desertification in the Alta Murgia karst plateau (Apulia, Southern Italy) through the integration of the modified Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use model (MEDALUS) with a GIS-based approach. The model includes indexes for climate, vegetation, soil, and management, all combined to assess environmentally sensitive areas (ESAs) regarding desertification. Given the karst features of the study area, the management index was modified and renamed the Karst Management Quality Index (KMQI). This modification was made by incorporating the Karst Disturbance Index (KDI), based on a series of indicators divided into five categories: geomorphology, hydrology, atmosphere, biota, and cultural factors. According to the model, the results indicated that the whole area (97%) is within the Critical type of ESA, with no area being assessed as the “Non-Affected” or “Potential” type. A total of 57% of the study area falls into Critical sub-type 2, 32% falls into sub-type 3, and 8% falls into sub-type 1. The remaining percentage (3%) belong to a non-optimal category, i.e., the Fragile type (sub-type F3) class. The obtained results could be explained, more than by climatic or ecological factors, by a series of anthropogenic activities carried out over the years that strongly modified and disturbed the original karst landscape, with a highly negative impact on the Alta Murgia karst.

In this paper, we present the design of a teacher training sequence, emphasizing supporting pre-service teachers to reflect on their knowledge, skills, and emotions experienced when engaging in scientific practices. We consider such reflections being crucial in initial teacher training because they can make pre-service teachers aware of the cognitive, procedural and emotional process that their students are bound to experience in the class. The importance of this work lies in the fact that emotions, even though important, are relatively underexplored. Furthermore, the way the sequence is developed can be used with students, both to promote scientific practices and explore their emotions, to give evidence to pre-service teachers of the effectiveness of this, and make them reflect on how scientific practices work, and the advantages of learning science implementing scientific practices.

The organization of knowledge influences how effectively students learn, so that if the information is well structured and the knowledge acquisition process is carried out in a systemic way, one can more effectively retrieve pieces of knowledge. To tackle this problem a common document format used in academia, IMRaD (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion), can help students in natural science and engineering education to approach the problem of knowledge organization in a systemic way from the beginning of the learning process. In this study, we explore the use of the IMRaD format for students pursuing undergraduate and master's degrees as a tool for learning whilst making the project report more comprehensible for readers. The predefined document structure cannot be considered the solution to all learning issues and it should not limit the unpredictability, which is necessary during the creative thinking typical of the research environment.

In a previous study we detected that a number of inquiry stages (data collection, analysis and conclusions) went unnoticed by the students of an in situ joint online/onsite master's degree via online teaching. In this paper we analyse the effect of improved instruction, in which students fully experienced and became aware of all the stages that comprise the inquiry-based teaching approach. In the article we show the differences between the initial and improved instruction. The comparison of student comments as exhibited in the online class diary forum between the initial and improved instruction has allowed us to analyse the influence of this improvement in the level of depth of the students' discourse. Two codings have been employed to analyse the forums: the first (deductive) detected which stages of inquiry appeared in the comments. The second (inductive) involved the recoding of each of the previously classified comments based on five levels of communicative quality that emerged. Our main finding was that as well as being more aware of the different stages of inquiry, the students of the improved investigation were able to explain and identify them with specific examples. In other words, the investment of time in developing each of the stages in question helped them to define, afford reality to, and increase the explicative quality of their comments.

Abstract Despite the study of subterranean biodiversity facing harsh sampling and mapping challenges, the huge diversity of taxa, ecological adaptations and evolutionary trajectories in subterranean environments is gaining increasing attention. Yet, the spatial and environmental factors driving the composition of groundwater communities are still poorly understood. To partially fill this knowledge gap, we collected copepod crustaceans from 12 caves along the Italian peninsula between 2019 and 2022, sampling each cave twice. The resulting presence-absence data were analysed to assess: (i) between-cave taxonomic beta diversity, also partitioning between turnover and nestedness-resultant dissimilarity; (ii) the relative weight of geographic distance and climatic differences in shaping observed beta diversity. Seventy-one species of copepods were collected overall. Pairwise beta diversity was high for most pairs of caves, with turnover being the major component. Geographic distance-decay models partially explained total beta diversity and turnover patterns. However, in Generalized Dissimilarity Models (GDM), including surface climatic conditions as predictors, the contribution of seasonal temperature averages was generally higher than that of geographic distance. Further, the explanatory and predictive performance of the GDMs notably increased, along with temperature contribution, when widening the spatial extent from which climate data were gathered. Our results confirmed a high spatial turnover in groundwater copepods’ assemblages and strengthened the link between regional climate and subterranean biodiversity.