A new guide for basic psychological support for persons affected by neglected tropical diseases: A peer support tool suitable for persons with a diagnosis of leprosy and lymphatic filariasis.

Background: People with disabilities due to neglected tropical diseases (NTDs), such as leprosy and lymphatic filariasis (LF), often encounter situations of stigma and discrimination that significantly impact their mental wellbeing. Mental wellbeing services are often not available at the peripheral level in NTD-endemic countries, and there is a need for such services. Basic psychological support for persons with NTDs (BPS-N) from peers is an important potential solution for addressing mental wellbeing problems.

Components of Empathy in Children: Factor Structure of the Empathy Quotient for Children (EQ-C).

Empathy is multifaceted, involving sharing and understanding the emotional and mental states of others. This study investigated the factor structure of the English-language version of the Empathy Quotient for Children (EQ-C; Auyeung et al., 2009), an empathy measure previously well-validated only as a global scale.

Between the lines: a discursive analysis of the non-specific low back pain literature.

Background: The term nonspecific low back pain (NSLBP) is often ambiguously defined and inconsistently used in scientific literature. Yet, there is limited discussion and reflection on the meaning of the term and how different meanings influence research and clinical practice.

Aim: The aim of this study was to critically analyze the meaning of NSLBP in scientific literature and its consequent influence on research and clinical practice.

Co-design of "Baatcheet," a peer-supported, web-based storytelling intervention for young people with common mental health problems in India.

Background: Engaging with personal mental health stories has the potential to help people with mental health difficulties by normalizing distressing experiences, imparting coping strategies and building hope. However, evidence-based mental health storytelling platforms are scarce, especially for young people in low-resource settings.

Objective: This paper presents an account of the co-design of 'Baatcheet' ('conversation' in Hindi), a peer-supported, web-based storytelling intervention aimed at 16-24-year-olds with depression and anxiety in New Delhi, India.

Partitioning for Enhanced Statistical Power and Noise Reduction: Comparing One-Way and Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (ANOVA).

Using simulated data with duplicate observational data points, this research aims to highlight the notable efficiency of repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) compared to one-way ANOVA as a more powerful statistical model. One of the principal advantages of repeated measures ANOVA is its design, in which each subject acts as their own control. This methodology allows for the statistical mitigation of individual differences among subjects, thereby reducing extraneous variability (noise) that can obscure the effects of the experimental conditions under investigation.

The use of individualised, media-based sleep hygiene education for professional female footballers.

Sleep hygiene can be defined as practicing habits that facilitate sleep; poor sleep hygiene is common among elite athletes, and improving this can be one way to enhance sleep indices. Given the large inter-individual variability of sleep, there is a need for further investigation into individualised sleep hygiene for elite female athletes, with consideration for the practical application of the method. Using a self-controlled time series design with repeated measures, n = 16 professional female footballers completed a 9-week study during mid-season.

Neural evidence of functional compensation for fluid intelligence in healthy ageing.

Functional compensation is a common notion in the neuroscience of healthy ageing, whereby older adults are proposed to recruit additional brain activity to compensate for reduced cognitive function. However, whether this additional brain activity in older participants actually helps their cognitive performance remains debated. We examined brain activity and cognitive performance in a human lifespan sample ( = 223) while they performed a problem-solving task (based on Cattell's test of fluid intelligence) during functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Pervasiveness of Microprotein Function Amongst Small Open Reading Frames (SMORFS).

Small Open Reading Frames (smORFs) of less than 100 codons remain mostly uncharacterised. About a thousand smORFs per genome encode peptides and microproteins about 70-80 aa long, often containing recognisable protein structures and markers of translation, and these are referred to as short Coding Sequences (sCDSs). The characterisation of individual sCDSs has provided examples of smORFs' function and conservation, but we cannot infer the functionality of all other metazoan smORFs from these.

Domestic Use of E-Cargo Bikes and Other E-Micromobility: Protocol for a Multi-Centre, Mixed Methods Study.

Physical inactivity is a leading risk factor for non-communicable diseases. Climate change is now regarded as the biggest threat to global public health. Electric micromobility (e-micromobility, including e-bikes, e-cargo bikes, and e-scooters) has the potential to simultaneously increase people's overall physical activity while decreasing greenhouse gas emissions where it substitutes for motorised transport.

Robotic Resection of an Ectopic Parathyroid Gland: A Systematic Review.

Ectopic parathyroid glands result from abnormal migration during development. If not detected promptly, they can lead to persistent or recurrent primary hyperparathyroidism (pHPT). Inferior parathyroid glands are typically located in the anterior mediastinum, while superior parathyroid glands are often near the tracheoesophageal groove, both of which contribute to pHPT.

Person-Centredness and Paternalism: The Dance With Power.

Objective: The World Health Organization advocates for person-centredness (PC) as essential for quality care, yet its definitions and interpretations vary widely among professionals. Most qualitative research on PC focuses on physiotherapists in countries such as the UK, Australia, and the US, where PC is explicitly emphasised. In contrast, the term PC is absent in French educational standards, and its promotion is lacking in the French healthcare system.

Update on actinomycetoma treatment: linezolid in the treatment of actinomycetomas due to spp and resistant to conventional treatments.

Introduction: Mycetoma is a chronic granulomatous infection, common throughout tropical regions, and is considered a neglected disease that mostly affects impoverished populations. Mycetoma is divided into eumycetoma, caused by fungi, and actinomycetoma, caused by filamentous bacteria. Clinical presentation is distinctive, and making the diagnosis is usually not difficult; however, access to safe and effective treatments is a major challenge.

Hip Fracture Intervention Study for Prevention of Hypotension Trial: a Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial.

Background: Hypotension during anesthesia for surgery for hip fracture is common and associated with myocardial injury, stroke, acute kidney injury, and delirium. We hypothesized that maintaining intraoperative blood pressure close to patients' preoperative values would reduce these complications compared to usual care.

Methods: A pilot feasibility patient- and assessor-blinded parallel group randomized controlled trial.

Learning delays through gradients and structure: emergence of spatiotemporal patterns in spiking neural networks.

We present a Spiking Neural Network (SNN) model that incorporates learnable synaptic delays through two approaches: per-synapse delay learning via Dilated Convolutions with Learnable Spacings (DCLS) and a dynamic pruning strategy that also serves as a form of delay learning. In the latter approach, the network dynamically selects and prunes connections, optimizing the delays in sparse connectivity settings. We evaluate both approaches on the Raw Heidelberg Digits keyword spotting benchmark using Backpropagation Through Time with surrogate gradients.

The effects of diet enhancement on the health of commercial bumblebee colonies.

Unlabelled: Commercially reared bees provide economically important pollination services for a diversity of crops. Improving their health is important both to maximise their pollination services and to avoid possible pathogen spillover or spillback with wild pollinators. Diet quality may directly or indirectly affect diverse aspects of bumblebee health, including colony development, individual size and immune health, but the impact of this remains unclear.

Neuromuscular fatigue in English Premier League academy football players: Within- and cross-season responses.

Objectives: To examine the within- and cross-season neuromuscular fatigue responses in English Premier League U-18 academy football players.

Design: Twenty-five players from the same team completed weekly countermovement jump and isometric adductor and posterior chain strength tests for a full competitive season.

Methods: Global positioning system measures of training and match total, high-metabolic load and sprint distance were recorded daily and converted into exponentially weighted moving average seven- and twenty-eight-day values.

The functional role of LncRNA HOXA-AS2 in multiple human cancers.

Humans have more than 270,000 lncRNAs. Among these, lncRNA HOXA-AS2 is considered a transformative gene involved in various cellular processes, including cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion. Thus, it can be regarded as a potential tumor marker for both diagnosis and prognosis.

Academic Drug Discovery Units in the UK: Progress and challenges.

The contributions of academic drug discovery are well characterised in the US context but less well understood elsewhere. This paper provides a UK perspective, focusing on the activities of Drug Discovery Units (DDUs). These units have established themselves as coordinators of translational research, working at the early stages of the drug pipeline to link up the academic and industry capabilities needed to take drug candidates towards the market.

Pro-renin Receptor (PRR) as a Target to Reduce Non-alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease Post Liver Transplantation.

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is one of the main causes of chronic liver disorders following liver transplantation. The prorenin receptor (PRR) plays a role in glucose and lipid metabolism, and the hepatic dysregulation of PRR is associated with the upregulation of several molecular pathways, such as the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) and Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) that promotes hepatic lipogenesis and leads to lipid accumulation in hepatocytes by upregulation of lipogenic genes. PRR inhibition leads to a reduction in the hepatic expression of sortilin-1 and low-density lipoprotein receptor (LDLR) levels and down-regulation of pyruvate dehydrogenase (PDH) and acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) and reduces fatty acids synthesis in hepatocytes.

Land Use Change Consistently Reduces α- But Not β- and γ-Diversity of Bees.

Land use change threatens global biodiversity and compromises ecosystem functions, including pollination and food production. Reduced taxonomic α-diversity is often reported under land use change, yet the impacts could be different at larger spatial scales (i.e.

Partitioning of fatty acids between membrane and storage lipids controls ER membrane expansion.

Biogenesis of membrane-bound organelles involves the synthesis, remodeling, and degradation of their constituent phospholipids. How these pathways regulate organelle size remains poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that a lipid-degradation pathway inhibits expansion of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane.

Disentangling Sources of Momentum Fluctuations in Xe+Xe and Pb+Pb Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.

High-energy nuclear collisions create a quark-gluon plasma, whose initial condition and subsequent expansion vary from event to event, impacting the distribution of the eventwise average transverse momentum [P([p_{T}])]. Disentangling the contributions from fluctuations in the nuclear overlap size (geometrical component) and other sources at a fixed size (intrinsic component) remains a challenge. This problem is addressed by measuring the mean, variance, and skewness of P([p_{T}]) in ^{208}Pb+^{208}Pb and ^{129}Xe+^{129}Xe collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.

Emerging Therapeutic Modalities and Pharmacotherapies in Neuropathic Pain Management: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Parallel Randomized Controlled Trials.

Neuropathic pain (NP) is a chronic condition caused by abnormal neuronal excitability in the nervous system. Current treatments for NP are often ineffective or poorly tolerated. Hence, we reviewed the efficacy and safety of novel drugs or devices that target neuronal excitability in NP patients compared with placebo, sham, or usual care interventions.