Close relationships with caregivers as protective factor for the mental health and functioning of war-affected Congolese youth.

Background: Supportive social connections are a crucial determinant of the mental health and adjustment of youth in conflict-torn regions. Conflict-affected youth face particular risks to their well-being due to high levels of trauma exposure and perpetration of violent acts as members of armed groups and post-conflict discrimination. However, little is known about the possible protective role of close relationships with caregivers in the aftermath of trauma.

Effectiveness of ex ante honesty oaths in reducing dishonesty depends on content.

Dishonest behaviours such as tax evasion impose significant societal costs. Ex ante honesty oaths-commitments to honesty before action-have been proposed as interventions to counteract dishonest behaviour, but the heterogeneity in findings across operationalizations calls their effectiveness into question. We tested 21 honesty oaths (including a baseline oath)-proposed, evaluated and selected by 44 expert researchers-and a no-oath condition in a megastudy involving 21,506 UK and US participants from Prolific.

Trends in the quality of maternal and neonatal care in Sweden and Norway as compared to 12 WHO European countries: A cross-sectional survey investigating maternal perspectives during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Introduction: Maternal-neonatal healthcare services were severely disrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic in even high-income countries within the World Health Organization (WHO) European Region. The objective of this study was to compare trends in the quality of maternal and neonatal care (QMNC) in Sweden and Norway to 12 other countries from the WHO European Region during the COVID-19 pandemic, and to identify domains for improvement.

Material And Methods: This cross-sectional study included women giving birth in Europe from March 1, 2020 to December 31, 2022.

Transcriptome dynamics in developing leaves from C and C Flaveria species.

C species have evolved more than 60 times independently from C ancestors. This multiple and parallel evolution of the complex C trait suggests common underlying evolutionary mechanisms, which could be identified by comparative analysis of closely related C and C species. Efficient C function depends on a distinctive leaf anatomy that is characterised by enlarged, chloroplast-rich bundle sheath cells and narrow vein spacing.

Waist circumference as a parameter in school-based interventions to prevent overweight and obesity - a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Preventing childhood obesity remains an important public health issue worldwide. Since visceral fat in particular is understood as an important risk factor for many chronic diseases, waist circumference is recommended as a measurement parameter for global obesity surveillance. This systematic review and meta-analysis focused on waist circumference as an outcome parameter for studies of school-based interventions to prevent overweight and obesity.

Recommendations for reviewing manuscripts of the article types "project report" and "how to" for the GMS Journal for Medical Education.

Objective: This position paper of the Committee on Methodology in Educational Research sets out the criteria for the acceptance, revision, or rejection of manuscripts of the article types and in the GMS Journal for Medical Education, as well as outlining the development of these criteria.

Methods: In a workshop with writers, reviewers, and editors, we formulated and discussed common core elements for articles. We did this by consulting the journal's editorial board on the basis of guidelines for authors and reviewers from other journals and by using examples of articles considered less or more successful.

A framework for a low-cost system of automated gate control in assays of spatial cognition in fishes.

Automation of experimental setups is a promising direction in behavioral research because it can facilitate the acquisition of data while increasing its repeatability and reliability. For example, research in spatial cognition can benefit from automated control by systematic manipulation of sensory cues and more efficient execution of training procedures. However, commercial solutions are often costly, restricted to specific platforms, and mainly focused on the automation of data acquisition, stimulus presentation, and reward delivery.

Mercury concentrations in blood and back feathers are repeatable, heritable and correlated in a long-lived seabird.

Mercury pollution is increasing both in the environment and in various organisms, especially top-predators. If variation in individual mercury concentrations is underpinned by genetic among-individual differences in traits related to mercury uptake, storage or excretion, and results in variation in fitness, populations may have the potential to evolve in response to this development. Few studies, however, have been able to collect sufficient information to investigate the genetic basis of pollution levels.

Standardized diagnosis of gastrointestinal tumors: an update regarding the situation in Germany.

To evaluate the current status of the diagnosis of gastrointestinal tumors in Germany by means of a survey of the oncological imaging working group of the German Radiological Society (DRG) with a focus on the CT protocols being used.Radiologists working in outpatient or inpatient care in Germany were invited. The survey was conducted between 10/2022 and 06/2023 using the SurveyMonkey web tool.

Precision Epidemiology: A Computational Analysis of the Impact of Algorithmic Prediction on the Relationship Between Population Epidemiology and Clinical Epidemiology.

Objectives: Precision Medicine (PM) uses advanced Machine Learning (ML) techniques and big data to develop personalized treatments, but healthcare still relies on traditional statistical procedures not targeted on individuals. This study investigates the impact of ML on epidemiology.

Methods: A quantitative analysis of the articles in PubMed for the years 2000-2019 was conducted to investigate the use of statistical methods and ML in epidemiology.

Assessing the Role of GRP7 Arginine 141, a Target of Dimethylation by PRMT5, in Flowering Time Control and Stress Response.

PROTEIN ARGININE METHYLTRANSFERASES (PRMTs) catalyze arginine (R) methylation that is critical for transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation. In Arabidopsis, PRMT5 that catalyzes symmetric R dimethylation is best characterized. PRMT5 mutants are late-flowering and show altered responses to environmental stress.

High sensitivity cameras can lower spatial resolution in high-resolution optical microscopy.

High-resolution optical fluorescence microscopies and, in particular, super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, are rapidly adopting highly sensitive cameras as their preferred photodetectors. Camera-based parallel detection facilitates high-speed live cell imaging with the highest spatial resolution. Here, we show that the drive to use ever more sensitive, photon-counting image sensors in cameras can, however, have detrimental effects on the spatial resolution of the resulting images.

Applying rearrangement distances to enable plasmid epidemiology with pling.

Plasmids are a key vector of antibiotic resistance, but the current bioinformatics toolkit is not well suited to tracking them. The rapid structural changes seen in plasmid genomes present considerable challenges to evolutionary and epidemiological analysis. Typical approaches are either low resolution (replicon typing) or use shared k-mer content to define a genetic distance.

Proteomic Characterization of 1000 Human and Murine Neutrophils Freshly Isolated From Blood and Sites of Sterile Inflammation.

Neutrophils are indispensable for defense against pathogens. Injured tissue-infiltrated neutrophils can establish a niche of chronic inflammation and promote degeneration. Studies investigated transcriptome of single-infiltrated neutrophils which could misinterpret molecular states of these post mitotic cells.

A meta-analysis of the effects of transcranial direct current stimulation combined with cognitive training on working memory in healthy older adults.

Background: Working memory (WM) loss, which can lead to a loss of independence, and declines in the quality of life of older adults, is becoming an increasingly prominent issue affecting the ageing population. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive brain stimulation technique, is emerging as a potential alternative to pharmacological treatments that shows promise for enhancing WM capacity and May enhance the effects of cognitive training (CT) interventions.

Objective: The purpose of this meta-analysis was to explore how different tDCS protocols in combination with CT enhanced WM in healthy older adults.

HyLight: Strain aware assembly of low coverage metagenomes.

Different strains of identical species can vary substantially in terms of their spectrum of biomedically relevant phenotypes. Reconstructing the genomes of microbial communities at the level of their strains poses significant challenges, because sequencing errors can obscure strain-specific variants. Next-generation sequencing (NGS) reads are too short to resolve complex genomic regions.

Environmentally Controlled Microfluidic System Enabling Immune Cell Flow and Activation in an Endothelialised Skin-On-Chip.

Integration of reconstructed human skin (RhS) into organ-on-chip (OoC) platforms addresses current limitations imposed by static culturing. This innovation, however, is not without challenges. Microfluidic devices, while powerful, often encounter usability, robustness, and gas bubble issues that hinder large-scale high-throughput setups.

Mucosa-like differentiation of head and neck cancer cells is inducible and drives the epigenetic loss of cell malignancy.

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a highly malignant disease with high death rates that have remained substantially unaltered for decades. Therefore, new treatment approaches are urgently needed. Human papillomavirus-negative tumors harbor areas of terminally differentiated tissue that are characterized by cornification.