Low and high glycemic index drinks differentially affect sleep polysomnography and memory consolidation: A randomized controlled trial.

Limited research has examined the effect of meal composition on sleep. Based on previous research, we hypothesized that a low glycemic index (LGI) drink containing 50 g isomaltulose (Palatinose, GI = 32) would result in more N3 sleep, less rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and better memory consolidation than a high glycemic index (HGI) drink containing 50 g glucose (GI = 100). Healthy males (n = 20) attended the laboratory on three occasions at least a week apart (one acclimatization night and two test nights).

Safety of topical estrogen therapy during adjuvant endocrine treatment among patients with breast cancer: A meta-analysis based expert panel discussion.

Importance: Endocrine treatments, such as Tamoxifen (TAM) and/or Aromatase inhibitors (AI), are the adjuvant therapy of choice for hormone-receptor positive breast cancer. These agents are associated with menopausal symptoms, adversely affecting drug compliance. Topical estrogen (TE) has been proposed for symptom management, given its' local application and presumed reduced bioavailability, however its oncological safety remains uncertain.

Responses of fish to nationwide improvements in the water quality of a densely populated and heavily modified country over four decades.

Globally, fish have been severely affected by the widespread, chronic degradation of fresh waters, with a substantial proportion of species declining in abundance or range in recent decades. This has especially been the case in densely populated countries with an industrial heritage and intensive agriculture, where the majority of river catchments have been affected by deteriorations in water quality and changes in land use. This study used a spatially and temporally extensive dataset, encompassing 16,124 surveys at 1180 sites representing a wide range of river typologies and pressures, to examine changes in the fish populations of England's rivers over four decades (1980s-2010s).

What about the Workers? An Update.

Epidemiological studies of nuclear industry workers are of substantial importance to understanding the risk of cancer consequent to low-level exposure to radiation, and these studies should provide vital evidence for the construction of the international system of radiological protection. Recent studies involve large numbers of workers and include health outcomes for workers who accumulated moderate (and even high) doses over prolonged periods while employed during the earlier years of the nuclear industry. The interpretation of the findings of these recent studies has proved to be disappointingly difficult.

Effect of Multimodal App-Based Interventions on Glycemic Control in Patients With Type 2 Diabetes: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Digital technologies for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) care hold great potential to improve patients' health in the long term. Only a subset of telemedicine offerings are digital interventions that meet the criteria for prescribable digitale Gesundheitsanwendung (digital health apps; DiGAs) in Germany. Digital treatments further provide vast amounts of patient data that are important to generate evidence.

A C4 plant K+ channel accelerates stomata to enhance C3 photosynthesis and water use efficiency.

Accelerating stomatal kinetics through synthetic optogenetics and mutations that enhance guard cell K+ flux has proven a viable strategy to improve water use efficiency and biomass production. Stomata of the model C4 species Gynandropsis gynandra, a relative of the C3 plant Arabidopsis thaliana, are similarly fast to open and close. We identified and cloned the guard cell rectifying outward K+ channel (GROK) of Gynandropsis and showed that GROK is preferentially expressed in stomatal guard cells.

Radar versus optical: The impact of cloud cover when mapping seasonal surface water for health applications in monsoon-affected India.

Surface water plays a vital role in the spread of infectious diseases. Information on the spatial and temporal dynamics of surface water availability is thus critical to understanding, monitoring and forecasting disease outbreaks. Before the launch of Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) missions, surface water availability has been captured at various spatial scales through approaches based on optical remote sensing data.

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.

The X chromosome's influences on the human brain.

Genes on the X chromosome are extensively expressed in the human brain. However, little is known for the X chromosome's impact on the brain anatomy, microstructure, and functional networks. We examined 1045 complex brain imaging traits from 38,529 participants in the UK Biobank.

Low oxygen but dynamic marine redox conditions permitted the Cambrian Radiation.

Whether metazoan diversification during the Cambrian Radiation was driven by increased marine oxygenation remains highly debated. Repeated global oceanic oxygenation events have been inferred during this interval, but the degree of shallow marine oxygenation and its relationship to biodiversification and clade appearance remain uncertain. To resolve this, we interrogate an interval from ~527 to 519 Ma, encompassing multiple proposed global oceanic oxygenation events.

Quantum-enhanced time-domain spectroscopy.

The time-resolved detection of mid- to far-infrared electric fields absorbed and emitted by molecules is among the most sensitive spectroscopic approaches and has the potential to transform sensing in fields such as security screening, quality control, and medical diagnostics. However, the sensitivity of the standard detection approach, which relies on encoding the far-infrared electric field into amplitude modulation of a visible or near-infrared probe laser pulse, is limited by the shot noise of the latter. This constraint cannot be overcome without using a quantum resource.

An ancient apical patterning system sets the position of the forebrain in chordates.

The evolutionary origin of the vertebrate brain remains a major subject of debate, as its development from a dorsal tubular neuroepithelium is unique to chordates. To shed light on the evolutionary emergence of the vertebrate brain, we compared anterior neuroectoderm development across deuterostome species, using available single-cell datasets from sea urchin, amphioxus, and zebrafish embryos. We identified a conserved gene co-expression module, comparable to the anterior gene regulatory network (aGRN) controlling apical organ development in ambulacrarians, and spatially mapped it by multiplexed in situ hybridization to the developing retina and hypothalamus of chordates.

Diabetes Risk After Treatment for Childhood and Young Adult Cancer.

Objective: Diabetes is a potential late consequence of childhood and young adult cancer (CYAC) treatment. Causative treatments associated with diabetes have been identified in retrospective cohort studies but have not been validated in population-based cohorts. Our aim was to define the extent of diabetes risk and explore contributory factors for its development in survivors of CYAC in the United Kingdom.

A haplotype-resolved chromosome-level genome assembly of Urochloa decumbens cv. Basilisk resolves its allopolyploid ancestry and composition.

Haplotyped-resolved phased assemblies aim to capture the full allelic diversity in heterozygous and polyploid species to enable accurate genetic analyses. However, building non-collapsed references still presents a challenge. Here, we used long-range interaction Hi-C reads (high-throughput chromatin conformation capture) and HiFi PacBio reads to assemble the genome of the apomictic cultivar Basilisks from Urochloa decumbens (2n = 4x = 36), an outcrossed tetraploid Paniceae grass widely cropped to feed livestock in the tropics.

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).

Young, female and scientist: exploring barriers, challenges and opportunities.

Different societal, systemic and personal barriers exist at various stages along a female researcher's career that can potentially undermine their success. The equation for women to reach higher positions in STEM is a multivariable one, and while there has been considerable progress towards addressing some of these compared with the past, current solutions are inadequate and do not address all facets. Here, we asked female winners of the FEBS Open Bio poster prize about their experiences regarding barriers they have faced at the predoctoral and postdoctoral stages, their opinions on how these can be addressed and their advice to new students entering a PhD degree.

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.

Analysis of Drug Molecules in Living Cells.

Cells are the fundamental units of life, comprising a highly concentrated and complex assembly of biomolecules that interact dynamic ally across spatial and temporal scales. Living cells are constantly undergoing dynamic processes, therefore, to understand the interactions between drug molecules and living cells is of paramount importance in the biomedical sciences and pharmaceutical development. Compared with traditional end-point assays and fixed cell analysis, analysis of drug molecules in living cells can provide more insight into the effects of drugs on cells in real-time and allowing for a better understanding of drug mechanisms and effects, which will contribute to the development of drug developing and testing and personalize medicine.

Establishment of an Ex Vivo Human Corneal Endothelium Wound Model.

Purpose: A human model able to simulate the manifestation of corneal endothelium decompensation could be advantageous for wound healing and future cell therapy assessment. The study aimed to establish an ex vivo human cornea endothelium wound model where endothelium function can be evaluated by measuring corneal thickness changes.

Methods: The human cornea was maintained in an artificial anterior chamber, with a continuous culture medium infusion system designed to sustain corneal endothelium and epithelium simultaneously.

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.

Inulin Dehydration to 5-HMF in Deep Eutectic Solvents Catalyzed by Acidic Ionic Liquids Under Mild Conditions.

Valorization of carbohydrate-rich biomass by conversion into industrially relevant products is at the forefront of research in sustainable chemistry. In this work, we studied the inulin conversion into 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, in deep eutectic solvents, in the presence of acidic task-specific ionic liquids as catalysts. We employed aliphatic and aromatic ionic liquids as catalysts, and choline chloride-based deep eutectic solvents bearing glycols or carboxylic acids, as solvents.

A 5-year Single-center Experience on the Use of Emicizumab Prophylaxis in Children With Severe Hemophilia A With and Without Factor VIII Inhibitors.

Objective: Emicizumab promotes efficacious hemostasis in persons with hemophilia A persons with hemophilia A with and without inhibitors. Primary analyses of real-world data and clinical trials have shown emicizumab efficacy and safety; however, long-term data are limited.

Methods: This retrospective study was conducted to assess real-world long-term outcomes of pediatric patients on emicizumab in our hemophilia center between the period of February 2018 and September 2023.

Is Social Jetlag Associated With Physical Fitness Among Spanish Adolescents? Insights From the EHDLA Study.

Background: The misalignment of sleeping times during weekdays/weekends (i.e., social jetlag) is particularly common among adolescents and plausibly associated with their physical fitness.

Factoring fu Variability Into Estimates of Unbound Drug Concentrations Negatively Biases the MIC Versus % Probability of Target Attainment Relationship of Antimicrobial Agents.

The clinical breakpoint for a drug-pathogen combination reflects the drug susceptibility of the pathogen wild-type population, the location of the infection, the integrity of the host immune response, and the drug-pathogen pharmacokinetic (PK)/pharmacodynamic (PD) relationship. That PK/PD relationship, along with the population variability in drug exposure, is used to determine the probability of target attainment (PTA) of the PK/PD index at a specified minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) for a selected target value. The PTA is used to identify the pharmacodynamic cutoff value (CO), which is one of the three components used to establish the clinical breakpoint.