Factors associated with uptake and acceptability of cervical cancer screening among female sex workers in Northeastern Uganda: A cross-sectional study.

Background: Cervical cancer screening program in Uganda is opportunistic and focuses mainly on women aged 25-49 years. Female sex workers (FSWs) are at increased risk of developing invasive cervical cancer. There is limited data regarding the uptake and acceptability of cervical cancer screening among FSWs in Uganda.

Examining hurricane-related social media topics longitudinally and at scale: A transformer-based approach.

Instead of turning to emergency phone systems, social media platforms, such as Twitter, have emerged as alternative and sometimes preferred venues for members of the public in the US to communicate during hurricanes and other natural disasters. However, relevant posts are likely to be missed by responders given the volume of content on platforms. Previous work successfully identified relevant posts through machine-learned methods, but depended on human annotators.

Diverse and highly differentiated lava suite in Jezero crater, Mars: Constraints on intracrustal magmatism revealed by Mars 2020 PIXL.

The Jezero crater floor features a suite of related, iron-rich lavas that were examined and sampled by the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance, and whose textures, minerals, and compositions were characterized by the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry (PIXL). This suite, known as the Máaz formation (fm), includes dark-toned basaltic/trachy-basaltic rocks with intergrown pyroxene, plagioclase feldspar, and altered olivine and overlying trachy-andesitic lava with reversely zoned plagioclase phenocrysts in a K-rich groundmass. Feldspar thermal disequilibrium textures indicate that they were carried from their crustal staging area.

Cryo-EM structure and regulation of human NAD kinase.

Reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) is a crucial reducing cofactor for reductive biosynthesis and protection from oxidative stress. To fulfill their heightened anabolic and reductive power demands, cancer cells must boost their NADPH production. Progrowth and mitogenic protein kinases promote the activity of cytosolic NAD kinase (NADK), which produces NADP, a limiting NADPH precursor.

Bioprinted optoelectronically active cardiac tissues.

Electrical stimulation of existing three-dimensional bioprinted tissues to alter tissue activities is typically associated with wired delivery, invasive electrode placement, and potential cell damage, minimizing its efficacy in cardiac modulation. Here, we report an optoelectronically active scaffold based on printed gelatin methacryloyl embedded with micro-solar cells, seeded with cardiomyocytes to form light-stimulable tissues. This enables untethered, noninvasive, and damage-free optoelectronic stimulation-induced modulation of cardiac beating behaviors without needing wires or genetic modifications to the tissue solely with light.

Usual prevention in unusual settings: A scoping review of place-based health interventions in public-facing businesses.

Place-based health interventions may help reach underserved populations. This scoping review summarizes the peer-reviewed literature on the type and effects of place-based health interventions in unconventional public-facing business settings (e.g.

The measurement reliability and equivalence of print versus online versions of the Youth Activity Profile.

Purpose: The Youth Activity Profile (YAP) is a 7-day self-report designed to quantify physical activity and sedentary behaviors among youth. This study evaluated the reliability of the online version of the YAP and equivalence with the paper-based version.

Method: A total of 2,490 participants from 17 schools in Iowa and Texas completed the YAP.

Romosozumab Improves Tissue Thickness-Adjusted Trabecular Bone Score in Women With Osteoporosis and Diabetes.

Context: Trabecular bone score (TBS), a gray-level texture index derived from lumbar spine (LS) dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans, is decreased in patients with diabetes and is associated with increased fracture risk, independent of areal bone mineral density (aBMD), but potentially influenced by abdominal fat tissue.

Objective: Evaluate effect of romosozumab (210 mg monthly) for 12 months followed by alendronate (70 mg weekly) for 24 months vs alendronate alone (70 mg weekly) for 36 months on LS aBMD and TBS in women with type 2 diabetes (T2D) enrolled in the ARCH study.

Methods: This post hoc analysis included women from ARCH who had T2D at baseline and LS DXA scans at baseline and ≥1 postbaseline visit (romosozumab-to-alendronate, n = 165; alendronate-to-alendronate, n = 195).

Ensifentrine in COPD patients taking long-acting bronchodilators: A pooled post-hoc analysis of the ENHANCE-1/2 studies.

Background: The efficacy and safety of ensifentrine, a novel PDE3/PDE4 inhibitor, were previously evaluated in the ENHANCE-1 (NCT04535986) and ENHANCE-2 (NCT04542057) trials. Here, we present a pooled post-hoc subgroup analysis of patients according to background chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) maintenance medication regimens.

Objective: This analysis aimed to explore the efficacy and safety of ensifentrine in patients receiving long-acting muscarinic antagonists (LAMA) or long-acting beta-agonists with inhaled corticosteroids (LABA + ICS).

An open chat between Prof Asifa Akhtar and Klaudia Jaczynska.

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science 2025, we invited Prof Asifa Akhtar, Vice President of the Max Planck Society's Biology and Medicine section, Director at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Honorary Professor at the Albert Ludwigs University and recipient of the 2025 FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award to meet and chat with Klaudia Jaczynska, final year PhD student at Jose Rizo's laboratory in UT Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, and 2024 FEBS Open Bio Article Prize winner. We invited them to talk about challenges limiting equal representation in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, initiatives to foster supportive environments as a research institute and the importance of highlighting diverse examples of success.

Representational geometry explains puzzling error distributions in behavioral tasks.

Measuring and interpreting errors in behavioral tasks is critical for understanding cognition. Conventional wisdom assumes that encoding/decoding errors for continuous variables in behavioral tasks should naturally have Gaussian distributions, so that deviations from normality in the empirical data indicate the presence of more complex sources of noise. This line of reasoning has been central for prior research on working memory.

Variants in the SOX9 transactivation middle domain induce axial skeleton dysplasia and scoliosis.

SOX9 is a crucial transcriptional regulator of cartilage development and homeostasis. Dysregulation of is associated with a wide spectrum of skeletal disorders, including campomelic dysplasia, acampomelic campomelic dysplasia, and scoliosis. Yet how variants contribute to the spectrum of axial skeletal disorders is not well understood.

Pathogenesis of Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis and Related Disorders.

Focal segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is the morphologic manifestation of a spectrum of kidney diseases that primarily impact podocytes, cells that create the filtration barrier of the glomerulus. As its name implies, only parts of the kidney and glomeruli are affected, and only a portion of the affected glomerulus may be sclerosed. Although the diagnosis is based primarily on microscopic features, patient stratification relies on clinical data such as proteinuria and etiological criteria.

Associations between the gut microbiome, inflammation and cardiovascular profiles in people with HIV.

Background: Inflammation and innate immune activation are associated with chronic HIV infection, despite effective treatment. Although gut microbiota alterations are linked to systemic inflammation, the relationships between the gut microbiome, inflammation and HIV remain unclear.

Methods: The UPBEAT-CAD sub-study, examining cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in HIV, enrolled participants matched on HIV status and traditional CVD risk factors.

Abnormal Esophageal Scintigraphy Associates With a Distinct Clinical Phenotype in Patients With Systemic Sclerosis.

Objective: In systemic sclerosis (SSc), absent contractility (AC) rather than ineffective esophageal motility on manometry is associated with a severe esophageal and extraintestinal phenotype. We sought to determine whether slow esophageal transit on scintigraphy associates with a comparable clinical phenotype to that of AC on manometry, as scintigraphy may serve as a noninvasive approach to risk-stratify patients with SSc.

Methods: Clinical, demographic, and serologic features were compared between patients with and without delayed esophageal transit on scintigraphy.

Examining the influence of encoding and retrieval contexts on 2- to 4-year-olds' acquisition of nouns and verbs.

This study investigates whether the context in which a word is learnt affects noun and verb learning. There is mixed evidence in studies of noun learning, and no studies of background perceptual context in verb learning. Two-, three-, and four-year-olds (n = 162) saw a novel object moved in a novel way while hearing four novel words, either nouns or verbs.

Metabolic Scaling: Exploring the Relation Between Metabolic Rate and Body Size.

We present an alternative to the traditional classroom lecture on the topics of metabolic scaling, allometric relationships between metabolic rate (MR) and body size, and reasons for rejecting Rubner''s surface "law," concepts that students have described as challenging, counterintuitive, and/or mathematical. In groups, students work with published data on MR and body size for species representing all five vertebrate groups. To support the exercise, we developed a worksheet that has students define the concept in their own words, compare different measures of MR, and evaluate plots of MR and mass-specific MR versus body mass for both homeotherms and poikilotherms.

Automation of Ultrasonographic Optic Nerve Sheath Diameter Measurement: A Scoping Review.

Intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring is a cornerstone of neurocritical care in managing severe brain injury. However, current invasive ICP monitoring methods carry significant risks, including infection and intracranial hemorrhage, and are contraindicated in certain clinical situations. Additionally, these methods are not universally available.

Mcl-1 is a Gatekeeper Molecule to Regulate the Crosstalk Between Ferroptotic Agent-Induced ER Stress and TRAIL-Induced Apoptosis.

We previously reported that ferroptosis interplays with apoptosis through the integration of two independent pathways: the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress signaling pathway and the mitochondria-dependent apoptotic signaling pathway. In this study, we investigated a potential gatekeeper molecule, Mcl-1, between the two signal transduction pathways. Morphology studies and cell death analyses confirmed that a combination treatment of ferroptotic agent erastin (ERA) and apoptotic agent TRAIL (tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand) synergistically enhances TRAIL-induced apoptosis in human pancreatic adenocarcinoma BxPC3 and human colorectal carcinoma HCT116 cells.

Effects of Environmentally Relevant Concentrations of Roundup on Oxidative-Nitrative Stress, Cellular Apoptosis, Prooxidant-Antioxidant Homeostasis, Renin and CYP1A Expressions in Goldfish: Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Kidney Damage During Roundup Exposure.

Roundup is one of the most widely used glyphosate-based harmful herbicides in the United States as well as globally, which poses a severe risk for terrestrial and aquatic organisms. In order to identify the detrimental effects of Roundup exposure in aquatic organisms, we investigated the environmentally relevant concentrations of Roundup exposure (low dose: 0.5 μg/L and high dose: 5.

Evaluation of the analytical and clinical accuracy of four blood glucose meters in pregnant women with hyperglycaemia.

Aims: Physiological changes during pregnancy can infuence the performance of blood glucose meters. This study aimed to evaluate the analytical and clinical accuracy of glucose meters in pregnant women with hyperglycaemia.

Materials And Methods: Glucose was measured by four commonly used meters among consecutive women with diabetes in pregnancy.

A Generalized Bayesian Stochastic Block Model for Microbiome Community Detection.

Advances in next-generation sequencing technology have enabled the high-throughput profiling of metagenomes and accelerated microbiome studies. Recently, there has been a rise in quantitative studies that aim to decipher the microbiome co-occurrence network and its underlying community structure based on metagenomic sequence data. Uncovering the complex microbiome community structure is essential to understanding the role of the microbiome in disease progression and susceptibility.

Nitrogen fixation may not alleviate stoichiometric imbalances that limit primary production in eutrophic lake ecosystems.

Ecosystem-scale primary production may be proximately limited by nitrogen (N) but ultimately limited by phosphorus (P) because N fixation contributes new N that accumulates relative to P at ecosystem scales. However, the duration needed to transition between proximate N limitation and ultimate P limitation remains unknown for most ecosystems, including lakes. Here we present the results of a fully replicated, multi-annual lake mesocosm experiment that permitted full air-water-sediment interactions that mimicked lake ecosystem ecology.

International Validation of a Novel PEACE Scale to Improve the Quality of Upper Gastrointestinal Mucosal Inspection During Endoscopy.

Introduction: The performance of a high quality esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) is dependent on the mucosal cleanliness. Recently, the Polprep: Effective Assessment of Cleanliness in EGD (PEACE) scale was created to assess the degree of mucosal cleanliness during EGD. The aim of this study was to validate this scoring system in a cohort of international endoscopists.

A phase 2 basket study of talabostat, a small-molecule inhibitor of dipeptidyl peptidases, administered in combination with pembrolizumab in patients with advanced solid cancers.

Background: Talabostat, an oral small molecule inhibitor of dipeptidyl peptidases (DPP4 and DPP8/9), has shown synergistic activity with immune checkpoint inhibitors in preclinical studies. This open label, phase 2 basket trial assessed the antitumor activity of combining talabostat and pembrolizumab (anti-programmed death-1 antibody) in advanced solid tumor patients.

Methods: The primary objective was assessment of dose-limiting toxicity (DLT) rates in the first six patients (lead-in stage) and response rate (efficacy stage; included cohort A [checkpoint inhibitor (ICI) naive] and cohort B [ICI pretreated]) for the study treatment using the Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) v1.