Environmental perceptions, self-regulation, and coping with noise mediate the associations between children's physical environment and sleep and mental health problems.

Background: Children face various challenges in their home and extended neighborhood settings. In this study, we examine the impact of the built and social environments on sleep/mental health and the potential mediating role of environmental perceptions, self-regulation, and coping with noise.

Methods: Cross-sectional data for 1251 schoolchildren (8-12 years) were sampled in the Tyrol region of Austria/Italy.

Keeping the Distance: Activity Control in Solid-Supported Sucrose Phosphorylase by a Rigid α-Helical Linker of Tunable Spacer Length.

Enzyme immobilization into carrier materials has broad importance in biotechnology, yet understanding the catalysis of enzymes bound to solid surfaces remains challenging. Here, we explore surface effects on the catalysis of sucrose phosphorylase through a fusion protein approach. We immobilize the enzyme via a structurally rigid α-helical linker [EAK] of tunable spacer length due to the variable number of pentapeptide repeats used ( = 6, 14, 19).

Systemic and transcriptional response to intermittent fasting and fasting-mimicking diet in mice.

Background: Dietary restriction (DR) has multiple beneficial effects on health and longevity and can also improve the efficacy of certain therapies. Diets used to instigate DR are diverse and the corresponding response is not uniformly measured. We compared the systemic and liver-specific transcriptional response to intermittent fasting (IF) and commercially available fasting-mimicking diet (FMD) after short- and long-term use in C57BL/6 J mice.

ESM-scan-A tool to guide amino acid substitutions.

Protein structure prediction and (re)design have gone through a revolution in the last 3 years. The tremendous progress in these fields has been almost exclusively driven by readily available machine learning algorithms applied to protein folding and sequence design problems. Despite these advancements, predicting site-specific mutational effects on protein stability and function remains an unsolved problem.

Hearing health literacy among professional and amateur musicians.

Musicians create sound that is enjoyable to themselves and their audience, but this same sound also threatens their hearing health due to high sound pressure levels generated by their own and their fellow musicians' instruments. Here we seek to identify musicians' hearing health awareness in relation to their coping strategies. 370 professional and 401 amateur musicians in total responded to a questionnaire on hearing health, which included quantitative elements and open-ended questions.

The brain under pressure: Exploring neurophysiological responses to cognitive stress.

Stress is an increasingly dominating part of our daily lives and higher performance requirements at work or to ourselves influence the physiological reaction of our body. Elevated stress levels can be reliably identified through electroencephalogram (EEG) and heart rate (HR) measurements. In this study, we examined how an arithmetic stress-inducing task impacted EEG and HR, establishing meaningful correlations between behavioral data and physiological recordings.

MR-zero meets FLASH - controlling the transient signal decay in gradient- and RF-spoiled gradient echo sequences.

Purpose: The complex signal decay during the transient FLASH MRI readout can lead to artifacts in magnitude and phase images. We show that target-driven optimization of individual RF flip angles and phases can realize near-ideal signal behavior and mitigate artifacts.

Methods: The differentiable end-to-end optimization framework MR-zero is used to optimize RF trains of the FLASH sequence.

Silicone-based AC102-loaded cochlear implant coatings protect residual hearing in an animal model of cochlear implantation.

Cochlear implant users with residual hearing benefit synergistically from combined electrical stimulation via the cochlear implant and preserved residual hearing after surgery. However, direct mechanical trauma and subsequent inflammation may deteriorate hearing function. AC102, a novel otoprotective pyridoindole with anti-apoptotic and anti-oxidative properties significantly improved hearing recovery following cochlear implantation when administered intratympanically prior to surgery.

Wild again: recovery of a beneficial Cannabis seed endophyte from low domestication genotypes.

Background: Beyond carrying the plant embryo, seeds harbour intricate microbial communities whose transmission across successive plant generations can significantly influence the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of plant-microbe symbioses. The process of plant domestication has potential repercussions in genes involved in plant-microbiome interactions. However, the extent to which breeding can impact the seed microbiome is sparsely explored.

Complex systems perspective in assessing risks in artificial intelligence.

In this article, we identify challenges in the complex interaction between artificial intelligence (AI) systems and society. We argue that AI systems need to be studied in their socio-political context to be able to better appreciate a diverse set of potential outcomes that emerge from long-term feedback between technological development, inequalities and collective decision-making processes. This means that assessing the risks from the deployment of any specific technology presents unique challenges.

Evaluating audio quality ratings and scene analysis performance of hearing-impaired listeners for multi-track music.

This study assessed musical scene analysis (MSA) performance and subjective quality ratings of multi-track mixes as a function of spectral manipulations using the EQ-transform (% EQT). This transform exaggerates or reduces the spectral shape changes in a given track with respect to a relatively flat, smooth reference spectrum. Data from 30 younger normal hearing (yNH) and 23 older hearing-impaired (oHI) participants showed that MSA performance was robust to changes in % EQT.

Morphology-dependent Li ion dynamics in X-ray amorphous and crystalline LiPS prepared by solvent-assisted synthesis.

Solid-state electrolytes with high ionic conductivity will be crucial for future energy storage systems. Among many possible materials, thiophosphates offer both favourable mechanical properties and fast ionic transport. β-LiPS, as a member of the thiophosphate family, has gained recent attention, due to its remarkable increase in Li ionic conductivity when prepared solvent-assisted synthesis.

Computational Fluid Dynamic Simulations of Cerebral Aneurysms.

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been introduced to enable individualized risk prognosis for patients with unruptured cerebral aneurysms. The present contribution provides an overview of the biomechanical and physiological principles of aneurysm formation and rupture. It describes the computational steps of the CFD and the evaluated parameters.

Expanding the high-pH range of the sucrose synthase reaction by enzyme immobilization.

The glycosylation of an alcohol group from a sugar nucleotide substrate involves proton release, so the reaction is favored thermodynamically at high pH. Here, we explored expansion of the alkaline pH range of sucrose synthase (SuSy; EC 2.4.

Structure of human phospholipase D3, a single-strand exonuclease associated with Alzheimer's disease.

Phospholipase D3 (PLD3) has emerged as an important 5'-exonuclease in charge of removing single-stranded DNA in lysosomes. Rare genetic variants of the gene encoding PLD3 have been implicated in late-onset Alzheimer's disease (AD). Ishii et al.

The terroir of Tempeh: Strong region-specific signatures in the bacterial community structures across Indonesia.

Tempeh, a soybean product from Indonesia, is created through fermentation by spp. and associated bacteria. Here, we aim to get an overview of the variability of the tempeh microbiota across Indonesia and disentangle influencing factors.

Implications of crystal disorder on the solid-state stability of olanzapine.

Mechanical perturbations of drug during solid pharmaceutical processing like milling can often generate crystal disorder posing serious implications to drug's stability. While physical changes like amorphization, recrystallization, polymorphism of the disordered drugs are extensively studied and reported in the literature, the propensities and inter-dependencies of recrystallization and degradation of disordered drugs have seldom received deep attention. Previous investigations from our lab have explored some of these interplays, aiming to develop predictive stability models.

Exploring pharmaceutical powder behavior in commercial-scale bin blending: A DEM simulation study.

Bin blending is one of the main steps in pharmaceutical production processes. Commercial-scale production of expensive products typically does not allow to perform a large number of experiments in order to optimize the process. Alternatively, Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations can be used to evaluate the powder behavior (flow and blending pattern) during blending, identify the risks (e.

Bring your paper into the 'Fast Lane' of the editorial process and increase your changes for final acceptance in Micron, The International Research and Review Journal for Microscopy - Part II.

It has been ten years since the Editors of Micron contributed an editorial offering tips and tricks to help potential contributors navigate the editorial process and improve their chances of manuscript acceptance. In this contribution, we report how the updated guidelines have positively impacted the journal's content and performance over time, and provide new recommendations and insights to ensure your submission receives the attention it deserves from our editorial team.

Computational modeling of the relationship between morphological heterogeneity and functional responses in mouse hippocampal astrocytes.

Recent studies indicate that astrocytes show heterogeneity in morphology and physiological function. They integrate synaptic signals and release calcium in reaction to active neurons. These calcium signals are not yet fully understood as they are highly dependent on the cell's morphology, which can vary across and within brain regions.

CFD investigations of a shape-memory polymer foam-based endovascular embolization device for the treatment of intracranial aneurysms.

The hemodynamic and convective heat transfer effects of a patient-specific endovascular therapeutic agent based on shape memory polymer foam (SMPf) are evaluated using computational fluid dynamics studies for six patient-specific aneurysm geometries. The SMPf device is modeled as a continuous porous medium with full expansion for the flow studies and with various degrees of expansion for the heat transfer studies. The flow simulation parameters were qualitatively validated based on the existing literature.