In this manuscript, we elucidate essential connections associated with the ( α , k ) − gamma and ( α , k ) − beta functions, initially introduced by Sarikaya et al. in their work as referenced in [14]. Our investigation includes the establishment of numerous conformable fractional integral inequalities, extending those previously established for the k−gamma and k−beta functions. Furthermore, we provide rigorous proofs affirming the log-convex nature of both the ( α , k ) − gamma and ( α , k ) − beta functions.

1.1. Introduction This study compares the impact of two surgical treatments for endometriosis—hysterectomy with laparoscopic salpingo-oophorectomy (radical surgery) versus conservative laparoscopic surgery—on chronic pelvic pain and sexual quality of life in women aged 40 to 50. 1.2. Methods In a prospective cohort study, 145 women diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis were recruited from the endometriosis clinic at Hazrat Rasool Hospital, Tehran. Participants were randomly assigned to undergo either radical surgery (75 patients) or conservative surgery (70 patients). Data were collected through physical exams, interviews, surveys, and lab tests. Primary outcomes included chronic pelvic pain measured by the Visual Analog Scale (VAS) and sexual quality of life assessed using the Sexual Quality of Life Questionnaire for Women (SQOL-F). Patients were evaluated at baseline, and then at 6 and 12 months post-surgery. 1.3. Result Baseline comparisons showed significant differences between the two groups in terms of age, BMI, and number of children. Radical surgery resulted in greater long-term pain reduction but was associated with lower overall patient satisfaction compared to conservative surgery. Six and twelve months post-operation, the radical surgery group reported zero dissatisfaction, whereas the conservative group had higher dissatisfaction rates (25.7% and 27.1%, respectively). The conservative group showed a significant improvement in sexual quality of life scores one year post-surgery, despite initial lower scores. Radical surgery was more effective in reducing chronic pelvic pain over the study period. 1.4. Conclusion While radical surgery offers superior pain relief for stage 4 endometriosis, conservative surgery may provide better outcomes in terms of sexual quality of life and patient satisfaction. The findings highlight the importance of individualized treatment plans for women with severe endometriosis.

There is increasing evidence for the co-occurrence of adaptive within-generation (WGP) and transgenerational (TGP) plasticity and the ecological scenarios driving both types of plasticity. However, some aspects of their transcriptional mechanisms, such as the role of alternative splicing and the gene regulation involved in the compensatory effect of parental acclimation on the offspring’s fitness in relation to life stages, have remained elusive. We explore these fundamental questions by considering the desert endemic Drosophila mojavensis for which prior evidence indicates adaptive thermal acclimation within and across generations. We implement a full factorial design to estimate genome-wide patterns of differential gene expression (DE) and alternative splicing (AS) in response to acclimation treatments performed in the parental and offspring generations, as well as considering larva and adult stages. Our results demonstrate that mechanisms of alternative splicing represent a substantial difference between WGP and TGP. These mechanisms contribute substantially to transcriptional plasticity within generations but not across generations. We found a great number of genes associated with transcriptional TGP, which is exclusive to larva stages and not adult samples. Finally, we provide evidence demonstrating that parental acclimation in TGP triggers a great number of the same genes normally down-regulated in WGP. Thus, parental acclimation appears to compensate for the down-regulation of genes during thermal stress in the offspring generation. This result might be one of the mechanisms explaining the compensatory effect of parental acclimation in the offspring generation.

The growing recognition of the importance of microbial communities in shaping plant health and ecosystem function underscores the potential value of metagenomic analysis for plant conservation. We analyzed the bacterial diversity present in the leaves of ebony, a vulnerable species endemic to Sulawesi, Indonesia and one of the most expensive woods worldwide. The bacterial diversity was compared between symptomatic and asymptomatic leaves from two developmental categories, young plants (pole) and mature plants (tree). The microbial communities in asymptomatic and symptomatic leaves of D. celebica were analyzed using the 16S rRNA metagenomics to identify differences associated with the fitness of D. celebica. The results showed that the contributing factors to bacterial diversity in asymptomatic and symptomatic leaves were the plant’s developmental stage, environmental conditions, and the severity of pathogen attacks. Abundant bacteria at the phylum level across samples were Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Firmicutes, whereas at the genus level were Sphingomonas, Jatrophihabitants, Bacillus, Methylobacterium, and Methylocella. At the genus level, a higher abundance of potentially beneficial bacteria was more evident in symptomatic leaves than their asymptomatic counterparts, specifically during the pole phase (young plant) than the tree phase (mature plant). This suggests that plants, particularly the young ones, activate defence mechanisms to ward off pathogen invasion by recruiting antipathogenic bacteria to fortify their less developed defence systems than mature plants. This research offers valuable insights into the potential roles of bacteria in D. celebica fitness.

Abstract Background: The incidence of small intestine neuroendocrine neoplasms (SI-NEN) has increased significantly, posing challenges in early diagnosis and effective management due to non-specific symptoms and complex tumor biology, especially in predicting distant metastasis (DM). Methods: This retrospective study analyzed 3,157 patients diagnosed with SI-NEN from 2005 to 2015 using the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database. We employed multifactorial logistic regression to identify independent risk factors for DM and developed several machine learning models to predict its occurrence. These included a suite of nine key models: XGBoost, Logistic Regression, LightGBM, Random Forest, Complement Naive Bayes, Multi-Layer Perceptron Classifier, Decision Tree, Gradient Boosting Decision Tree, and Support Vector Machine, all validated through k-fold cross-validation and hyperparameter optimization. Furthermore, we extended our analysis to survival studies to identify prognostic factors that may significantly influence patient outcomes. Results: Logistic regression demonstrated the highest efficacy, achieving an AUC of 0.774 in the training set and 0.747 in the validation set, values which are considered high, indicating superior performance in detecting early DM. Additionally, a machine learning-enhanced clinical nomogram was constructed, incorporating individual patient characteristics for personalized treatment planning. Survival analysis identified key prognostic indicators, and the resulting prognostic nomogram displayed high predictive accuracy, validated through calibration curves and decision curve analysis. Conclusion: The study underscores the utility of advanced predictive models in enhancing the diagnostic and prognostic assessment of SI-NEN, suggesting a framework for future clinical application and continuous improvement of these models. The developed predictive and prognostic nomograms provide crucial tools for clinical decision-making, potentially improving overall survival and quality of life by facilitating personalized treatment strategies based on detailed risk profiles. Keywords: SI-NEN, distant metastasis, machine learning, logistic regression, prognostic nomogram, survival analysis, SEER database.

The spatial pattern and community assembly of soil microbial taxa have notable meanings for biodiversity shaping and maintaining mechanisms. Important for ecosystem functionality and equilibrium, the microbial rare taxa may have distinct spatial patterns and community assembly mechanisms from those of abundant taxa. However, such information is lacking, especially for rare fungal taxa at large scales. Here, we investigated distance-decay patterns and underlying assembly mechanisms for abundant and rare fungal taxa in 129 soil samples collected across 4,000 km in Chinese Northern grasslands, based on high-throughput sequencing data. A total of 208 abundant OTUs (relative abundance > 0.1%) and 5,779 rare OTUs (relative abundance < 0.01%) were obtained, accounting for 2.73% and 75.85% of entire OTUs, respectively. Community similarities of abundant and rare fungal taxa both declined significantly (P < 0.001) with the increasing geographic distance, following the distance-decay relationship. However, the turnover rate for rare fungal taxa (0.0024 per 100 km) was almost half of that for the abundant taxa (0.0054 per 100 km) based on the binary Bray-Curtis distance. Such lower turnover for rare fungal taxa was likely due to their community assembly mechanism dominated by stochastic processes, which were less influenced by environmental variance along the geographic distance. In contrast, the assembly of abundant fungal taxa was dominated by deterministic factors including soil variables and plant traits, which changed greatly along the geographic distance. Consistently, the rare fungal taxa were less sensitive to environmental changes spatially since their turnover rate by the environmental distance was much lower than that of abundant taxa (0.0027 Vs 0.0099). In summary, our findings revealed that rare fungal taxa shaped mainly by stochastic processes had lower spatial turnover than abundant fungal taxa shaped by deterministic processes, which enhanced our understanding of the biogeography for rare microbial taxa.

We describe a workshop which prompts chemistry students in the final two years of secondary school to apply their understanding of modern analytical chemistry techniques to a ‘real world’ example. The scenario used is that of a forensic science laboratory that has been asked to determine the structure of an illicit compound, Revisomed (methamphetamine) being sold as a revision aid, and seized by police. Over the course of an hour, the students use a combination of infrared (IR) spectroscopy, liquid chromatography (LC), high resolution mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy data to determine the structure of Revisomed from first principles. The bulk of the workshop is spent reviewing MS data and using m/z, the isotope pattern, elemental composition and product ion data to reach three plausible isomeric structures for Revisomed which are then distinguished by NMR spectroscopy. More broadly, the workshop focusses on the use of the scientific method and the concept that ‘no ideas are bad’ when exploring hypotheses. We describe the structure of the workshop, and our experience delivering it to a local academy over the last 9 years.

In alpine ecosystems, greater overlap in flowering phenology among species at higher elevations could be due to evolutionary convergence among lineages or environmental filtering for taxa preadapted to colder conditions. We hypothesize that the flowering phenology of high alpine communities, subjected to colder and shorter reproductive seasons, is the result of convergence due to strong selective pressure imposed by the environment rather than environmental filtering for conservated traits. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed phylogenetic signal for first flowering date, peak flowering date, flowering duration and thermal sums to first and peak flowering and community phylogenetic structure considering Mean Nearest Taxon Distance (MNTD) and Mean Pairwise Distance (MPD) on four sites encompassing a total of 86 species derived from the subalpine and high alpine in the central Chilean Andes. After discarding possible richness effects on phylogenetic signal, the high alpine sites continued to show significant phylogenetic signal for a smaller number of floral traits than the subalpine sites. This was particularly evident for thermal sums. The two high elevation communities show significant values of SES(MNTD) but not for SES(MPD), indicating clustering related to the tips of the phylogeny. Overall, results suggest that environmental filtering for preadapted lineages is not the main driver of the phylogenetic structure and composition in high alpine communities. Rather, species at higher elevation have been subjected to greater environmental pressures leading to trait convergence. We conclude that phylogenetic conservatism in floral phenology has been overridden by the harsh environmental conditions in the high Andes. The high alpine environment can be seen as an evolutionary promoter rather than a gatekeeper of lineages preadapted to cold conditions.

This paper studies the problem of obstacle avoidance and trajectory tracking for a class of uncertain nonlinear systems with unmeasured states and actuator faults. The main difficulty is that actuator faults may cause significant transient tracking errors, which might lead to collisions. To overcome this difficulty, an adaptive observer is developed to estimate system states and compensate for actuator faults. Additionally, the integral-multiplicative Barrier Lyapunov function (BLF) is integrated into the backstepping procedure to overcome the dynamics mismatching problem of the existing SUM-type BLF. The proposed adaptive scheme can avoid collisions in a multi-obstacle environment even if the actuator faults occur, and all the signals are uniformly ultimately bounded. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach.

Objectives: Thousands of Veterans file claims for military sexual trauma (MST)-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) disability through the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) annually to receive covered healthcare benefits and monthly nontaxable compensation for MST-related conditions. Although 72% of MST claims in 2021 were granted, prior reporting found claims had been erroneously denied due to insufficient evidence-gathering and scheduling of disability exams for sufficiently developed claims. The present study explores decision-making processes around evidence-gathering for MST-related disability claims through interviews with VBA and Veterans Health Administration (VHA) staff who develop, rate, and evaluate MST disability claims ( n = 21). Methods: Interviews occurred from October 2021-January 2024 and were analyzed using rapid qualitative methods and inductive coding, revealing themes of ambiguity, beliefs, and discretion. Results: Participants described MST “markers”(e.g., behavioral events or patterns indicating effects of MST) as difficult to reliably identify and demonstrated disagreements about what constituted a marker. Within this ambiguity, factors that shaped participants’ decision-making included beliefs about the MST and its impacts, the veracity of Veteran PTSD and/or MST claims, and the role of VA staff. Participants’ judgments appeared to depend in part on personal beliefs; those who generally believed Veterans advocated for and centered survivors, whereas those who endorsed sexual assault myths or that Veterans were not truthful about PTSD and/or MST were skeptical and tended to gatekeep VA resources for those deserving. Conclusion: Future policy and programming around MST claim processing should focus on reducing ambiguity and impacts of personal beliefs on discretion and objectivity.

A practical molecular editing strategy has been established for the direct and consecutive C-3 diazenylation and C-2 arylation of indoles with aryltriazenes under metal-free and ambient conditions. A sequence of tandem reactions has been developed via the sustained release of aryldiazonium species from aryltriazenes to achieve the controlled multiple bonds sequential cleavage and formation. This strategy enables the regio- and chemo-controlled consecutive C−H functionalization of indole at two adjacent reactive sites (C-2 versus C-3) without pre-functionalization of the reactive sites and even without the assistance of the directing group, metal catalyst or ligand. Detailed mechanistic experiments and DFT calculations along with supported a sequence of tandem reaction mechanisms. The synthetic importance of this methodology is evident from the simple operation, good functional group tolerance, gram-scale synthesis, late-stage modification of pharmaceuticals and in vitro cytotoxicity evaluation.

A document by Michael Blatt. Click on the document to view its contents.

Objective: To determine if pediatric patients who have laterality defects and meet the diagnostic criteria for Primary Ciliary Dyskinesia (PCD) evaluation are being referred to and evaluated by pediatric pulmonologists. Subjects and methods: A retrospective chart review using the electronic medical record was conducted at Dallas Children’s Health for patients with laterality defects who met two or more of the PCD evaluation criteria: laterality defect, chronic daily cough, and chronic daily nasal congestion starting in infancy, and neonatal respiratory distress of unclear etiology requiring oxygen or positive pressure for 24 hours or longer. The referral rates to pediatric pulmonary, genetics, and whether patients were evaluated for PCD were determined. Results: The electronic medical record search for laterality defects identified 433 patients. Of these, 14 patients were excluded because they were found not to have a laterality defect, and 38 because they did not have enough data (birth history, onset, and or characteristics of cough) for analysis. Neonatal respiratory distress was excluded as a symptom for those patients with a known etiology for their respiratory distress. Of the 381 patients who met the criteria for analysis, 192 (50%) met only one criteria for PCD evaluation (laterality defect), and 50% met 2 or more of the criteria. Of the 84 patients who met the minimum 2 criteria for PCD evaluation, 45% were referred to pulmonary, 14% to genetics, and only 15% were evaluated for PCD. Of the 27 patients who met all 4 PCD criteria for evaluation, 96% were referred to pulmonary, 85% to genetics, and 85% were evaluated for PCD. Among the 381 patients studied, there were no significant differences in the referral rate by the patient’s demographics, including sex, race, ethnicity, and insurance type. The sensitivity of referrals increased with the number of PCD criteria. Conclusions: A substantial number of pediatric patients meeting the criteria for PCD evaluation with 2 PCD referral criteria are not referred to pediatric pulmonologists, and a larger number are not being evaluated for PCD. As expected, patients with 3 or 4 PCD referral criteria have a higher rate of referral to pulmonary than those meeting the required 2 criteria. Nonetheless, a substantial number of patients who meet all 4 criteria for evaluation are not being evaluated for PCD even when referred to pulmonary or genetics. This highlights the importance of PCD education and awareness efforts for Pediatric specialists and subspecialists, including pediatric pulmonologists.

We compared times series for rock ptarmigan densities (20032019) derived from walked transects and road transects in Mosfellsheiði and Slétta in southwest and northeast Iceland, respectively. The walked transects were laid out according to a random rule, but the road transects were not. Data from both survey types were analysed according to the distance sampling methodology. The purpose was to compare results derived from the two survey types. Road transects are easier to conduct than walked transects, but they break a fundamental rule of distance sampling, namely random placement of transects. Our results show that road transects are more than five times faster to conduct than walked transects. There were no indications that ptarmigan avoided roads. Population indices were similar for the two survey methods in both study areas. Density estimates in Mosfellsheiði were identical for the two survey methods but not in Slétta, where density estimates for road transects were lower. The Slétta road transects were biased low because parts of the road transect intersected habitat that ptarmigan do not occupy. This bias can be remedied at least partially by considering non-habitats by applying multipliers in the distance analysis.

The ability to perceive environments supports an important foundation for our self-developed robotic rat to improve kinematic performance and application potential. However, the most existing visual perception of quadruped robots suffers from poor perception accuracy in real-world dynamic environments. To mitigate the problem of erroneous data correlation, which is the main cause of low accuracy, the work presents an approach that combines leg odometry (LO) and IMU measurements with VSLAM to provide robust localization capabilities for small-scale quadruped robots in challenging scenarios by estimating the depth map and removing moving objects in dynamic environments. The method contains a depth estimation network with higher accuracy by combining the attention mechanism in the Transformer with the RAFT-Stereo depth estimation algorithm. Besides, the method combines target identification and segmentation with 3D projection of feature points to remove moving objects in dynamic environments. In addition, LO and IMU data are fused in the modified framework of ORB-SLAM3 to achieve highly accurate localization. The proposed approach is robust against erroneous data correlation due to moving objects and wobbles of quadruped robots. Evaluation results on multiple stages demonstrate that the system performs competitively in dynamic environments, outperforming existing visual perception methods in both public benchmarks and our costumed small-scale robotic rat.

The increase in the use of trails for outdoor recreation observed in recent decades has led to greater pressure on existing trails and the creation of informal new trails, resulting in damage and degradation of these infrastructures. This degradation is concerning because many of these trails are located in protected natural areas, which aim to conserve natural resources and associated biodiversity. Concurrently, ecosystems worldwide have also been experiencing increased degradation, prompting the United Nations to declare the current decade as the Decade for Ecosystem Restoration. In this context, through a systematic review of the scientific literature, we aimed to better understand what science has discovered to enhance the management of degraded trails in protected natural areas worldwide. We observed that the number of research studies has been growing, particularly in the last decade, and is concentrated in countries with developed economies and by researchers from these countries. The terms used to describe a trail are quite diverse in the literature. Furthermore, some terms used in trail management, such as building or construction, maintenance, and repair, are uniformly utilized by authors. However, terms to address the reversal of trail degradation, such as restoration, recovery, and rehabilitation, are used quite variably among authors. Thus, future research could help clarify the use of these terms. We also noted that many studies have been dedicated to investigating the state of degradation of the trails in protected areas. However, only a minority of articles have addressed strategies to reverse the scenario of trail degradation, especially through experiments to identify the most effective strategies for different situations. This observation is concerning since the degradation of ecosystems and trails can become extremely costly or even irreversible. Therefore, further scientific studies are crucial to improve trail management, especially to reverse the scenario of trail degradation in protected natural areas.

Sustainable landscape management requires accurately identifying the trade-offs and synergies among ecosystem services (ES). Three commonly utilized approaches to quantify ES trade-off/synergy relationships include the space-for-time approach, landscape background-adjusted space-for-time approach, and temporal trend approach. However, the similarities and differences among these three approaches in identifying ES relationships in the same area remain unclear. Thus, we conducted a case study in the rapidly urbanizing Yangtze River Delta region, comparing the three approaches based on annual data spanning from 2001 to 2020 for 12 types of ES. We found that: (1) the ES trade-off/synergy relationships detected by the three approaches exhibit significant divergencet, with only 1.45% consistency among the 66 pairs of ES relationships. (2) All three approaches can overlook ES trade-offs, miss ES synergies, and erroneously detect interactions where none exist. (3) The mechanisms contributing to the misidentification of ES relationships by the three approaches include: neglecting the underlying assumptions of different approaches, insufficient time interval length, short time series of ES data, data aggregation effects, non-linear changes in ES, time lag effects of ES relationships, among others. Our results indicate that each of the three approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages in identifying ES relationships. Prior to selecting an approach for identifying relationships between ES in a specific study area, careful consideration of the availability of time series data, the characteristics of the chosen ES type, and thorough examination of the underlying assumptions and uncertainties of each approach are imperative.

Genomic projections of (mal)adaptation under future climate change, known as genomic offset, faces limited application due to challenges in validating model predictions. Individuals inhabiting regions with high genomic offset are expected to experience increased levels of physiological stress as a result of climate change, but documenting such stress can be challenging in systems where experimental manipulations are not possible. One increasingly common method for documenting physiological costs associated with stress in individuals is to measure the relative length of telomeres – the repetitive regions on the caps of chromosomes that are known to shorten at faster rates in more adverse conditions. Here we combine models of genomic offsets with measures of telomere shortening in a migratory bird, the yellow warbler (Setophaga petechia), and find a strong correlation between genomic offset, telomere length, and population decline. While further research is needed to fully understand these links, our results support the idea that birds in regions where climate change is happening faster are experiencing more stress and that such negative effects may help explain the observed population declines.