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Demand-side management of smart grid with electric vehicles (EVs) is overviewed in this review paper. The major objective of the work is to reduce the hourly peak load to obtain a steady load schedule, maximize user satisfaction and reduce cost. This review allows for the probability of leveling the everyday energy load arc and unstable demand response to hourly prices from one time period to another. To obtain a balanced everyday load schedule, increase user satisfaction, and cut costs, the main aim is to reduce peak hourly load. A management system for an EV connected to the national grid for a future household with controllable electric loads. The approach that has been presented enables the integration of EVs and renewable resources while also optimizing the demand and generation in hourly distribution. The agents are taken into account for managing load, storage, and generation; specifically, they are EV aggregators. The vehicle-to-grid (V2G) combination of electric vehicles is a key aspect of this study; with this capability, EVs may offer power grid-specific services like load shifting and congestion management. By maximizing the hourly distribution of demand as well as generation, accounting for technical limitations, and enabling the addition of EVs and RES. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The magnetothermoconvective instability of blood in the presence of gold and iron oxide nanoparticles has an important role in the medical field for efficient and targeted drug delivery. In the present work, the Casson fluid model is incorporated to study the starting of convection current in the blood due to the presence of Au–Fe3O4 nanoparticles. The fluid layer is assumed to be internally heated, due to the plausibility of chemical reaction in blood and heat production ability of gold nanoparticles. Normal mode analysis is done and the resulting eigenvalue problem has been solved using Chebyshev spectral method. The effect of Lorentz force, nanoparticle volume fraction, spherical size of nanoparticles, and heat source parameter on the instability of fluidic system has been depicted graphically. The strengthening of Lorentz forces has a stabilizing impact on convection current whereas the heat source parameter, the diameter of the nanoparticle, and the Casson parameter have destabilizing effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Herbal treatments are nowadays considered dietary supplements and nutraceuticals for health maintenance and alternative/complementary therapy. A large range of herbal medications worldwide can easily be accessible in the local market. The polyherbal formulation (Stress WIN) containing Ashwagandha (Withania somnifera L. Dunal), Pushkarmoola (Inula racemosa Hook. F.), and Jatamansi (Nardostachys jatamansi (D. Don) DC.) root has been used empirically in the management of hypertension. However, toxicity data for the StressWIN is not available yet. The present study aims to evaluate the StressWIN’s safety profile by 28 days of repeated dose oral toxicity in Wistar rats. Rats received different doses (500 mg/kg/day, 1000 mg/kg/day, and 2000 mg/kg/day) of StressWIN, for 28 days. The study was conducted in compliance with the OECD guideline 423. No significant differences were observed in hematological and biochemical parameters as compared to the control group (p > 0.05). Histopathological studies revealed no significant alterations in the macroscopic and microscopic architecture of the liver, kidney, heart, and spleen of the StressWIN treated groups in comparison to the control group (p > 0.05). Findings from the present study suggest that StressWIN supplementation has not shown any side effects in terms of sub-acute toxicity in both male and female rats. These findings indicated no observed adverse effect level (NOAEL) of StressWIN was higher than 2000 mg/kg/day.Article highlights: Provides valuable data on the sub-acute toxicity of Stress WIN in rats. Stress WIN is a safe drug up to a dose of 2000 mg/kg body weight in sub-acute toxicity study. Histopathological examinations showed no alterations in the tissues were found in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Surface water pollution is a critical and urgent global issue that demands immediate attention. Surface water plays a crucial role in supporting and sustaining life on the earth, but unfortunately, till now, we have less understanding of its spatial and temporal dynamics of discharge and storage variations at a global level. The contamination of surface water arises from various sources, classified into point and non-point sources. Point sources are specific, identifiable origins of pollution that release pollutants directly into water bodies through pipes or channels, allowing for easier identification and management, e.g., industrial discharges, sewage treatment plants, and landfills. However, non-point sources originate from widespread activities across expansive areas and present challenges due to its diffuse nature and multiple pathways of contamination, e.g., agricultural runoff, urban storm water runoff, and atmospheric deposition. Excessive accumulation of heavy metals, persistent organic pollutants, pesticides, chlorination by-products, pharmaceutical products in surface water through different pathways threatens food quality and safety. As a result, there is an urgent need for developing and designing new tools for identifying and quantifying various environmental contaminants. In this context, chemical and biological sensors emerge as fascinating devices well-suited for various environmental applications. Numerous chemical and biological sensors, encompassing electrochemical, magnetic, microfluidic, and biosensors, have recently been invented by hydrological scientists for the detection of water pollutants. Furthermore, surface water contaminants are monitored through different sensors, proving their harmful effects on human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Sarcopenia in cirrhosis is associated with poor survival and adverse pre and post-transplant outcomes. The study aimed at determining the prevalence of sarcopenia and its association with the severity, complications and etiology of liver disease. Methods: As many as 416 cirrhotic patients who met the inclusion criteria underwent muscle strength testing using a dynamometer. As many as 109 probable sarcopenia patients underwent computed tomography (CT) scan to measure skeletal muscle index (SMI) at the L3 vertebral level and gait-speed testing. The gender-specific cut-offs used to define sarcopenia were an SMI of 36.54 cm2/m2 in males and 30.21 cm2/m2 in females. A gait speed ≤ 0.8 m/s was taken as a cut-off to define severe sarcopenia in both genders. Results: The mean age was 54.7 ± 9.51 years and male:female ratio was 2.2:1.The mean body mass index (BMI) was 24.2 ± 1.34 kg/m2. Alcohol and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) were the two most common etiologies (45.9% and 31.2%). The proportion of patients belonging to Child-Pugh class A, B and C was 26.6%, 48.6% and 24.8%, respectively. Forty out of 109 (36.7%) patients had a model for end-stage liver disease (MELD) > 14. Ascites, upper gastrointestinal bleeding and hepatic encephalopathy (HE) were present in 59 (54.1%), 60 (55.0%) and 24 (22.0%) patients, respectively. The prevalence of probable sarcopenia, sarcopenia and severe sarcopenia was found to be 26.20%, 10.09% and 6.73%, respectively. Sarcopenia and severe sarcopenia were associated with Child-Pugh class (p < 0.001, p < 0.001), MELD (p = 0.007, 0.002), upper gastrointestinal bleed (p = 0.007, 0.004), ascites (p = 0.038, 0.025) and HE (0.001, < 0.001). Conclusion: The prevalence of sarcopenia and severe sarcopenia was found to be 10.09% and 6.73%, respectively. Sarcopenia and severe sarcopenia had a significant association with the severity and complications of cirrhosis. However, no association was observed with etiology of liver disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Abiotic stresses lead to drastic changes in functional and physiological anatomy in plants such as generation of reactive oxygen species, loss of photosynthetic efficiency, membrane damage etc resulting in a slower expansion and causing a significant harvest penalty. Methodologies like conventional breeding or the use of transgenics are in trend to abate stress impacts on plants, however, alternatively, the use of simple and cost-effective solutions to this problem are also popular. This review focuses on the amelioration of four chief abiotic stressors in plants with reference to priming by H2O2 and H2S. In light of this, the mechanism of resilience to abiotic stress is thoroughly elucidated from past to current scientific efforts in addition to elaborating the critical knowledge gaps and bridging those as well. There are reviews on the use of these two molecules in agronomic systems for drought, and, heat stresses, however, the present review differs in reviewing their impacts on very less addressed UV and ozone stress, including their parallel view of action in terms of similarities and dissimilarities elaborating the interconnection with other signaling molecules. Conclusion: Recently, pre-treatment with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and hydrogen sulfide (H2S) has emerged as an economic, feasible, and efficient approach to abate the various abiotic stresses. H2O2 and H2S are multitasking cell signaling molecules in plants. Chemical priming with H2O2 and H2S helps in acclimation of seedlings by hardening and activating antioxidant machinery and thus, in stress tolerance to deal with numerous abiotic stress exposures like drought, temperature, UV, and ozone stress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fake news being spread on social media platforms has a disruptive and damaging impact on our lives. Multimedia content improves the visibility of posts more than text data but is also being used for creating fake news. Previous multimodal works have tried to address the problem of modeling heterogeneous modalities in identifying fake news. However, these works have the following limitations: (1) inefficient encoding of inter-modal relations by utilizing a simple concatenation operator on the modalities at a later stage in a model, which might result in information loss; (2) training very deep neural networks with a disproportionate number of parameters on small multimodal datasets result in higher chances of overfitting. To address these limitations, we propose GAME-ON, a Graph Neural Network based end-to-end trainable framework that allows granular interactions within and across different modalities to learn more robust data representations for multimodal fake news detection. We use two publicly available fake news datasets, Twitter and Weibo, for evaluations. GAME-ON outperforms on Twitter by an average of 11% and achieves state-of-the-art performance on Weibo while using 91% fewer parameters than the best comparable state-of-the-art baseline. For deployment in real-world applications, GAME-ON can be used as a lightweight model (less memory and latency requirements), which makes it more feasible than previous state-of-the-art models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Stomach cancer is a global health problem and is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths worldwide. This study investigates the spatial and temporal patterns of stomach cancer burden in 204 countries in the last three decades. Data and Methods: The estimates of stomach cancer burden and its risk factors were obtained from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2019 study, covering the years 1990 to 2019, across 204 countries within 21 world regions. GBD employs the cause-of-death ensemble modeling framework to calculate disease-specific mortality estimates. Estimated average percent change (EAPC) of absolute counts (incidence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs)) and age-standardized rates (age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR), age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR), and age-standardized DALYs rate (ASDALR)) was calculated in the regions to illustrate the relative changes between 1990 and 2019. Joinpoint regression was used to analyze global trends of stomach cancer burden in the last three decades. Results: Incidence of stomach cancer globally increased from 883,396 cases in 1990 to 1.3 million cases in 2019 and number of deaths due to stomach cancer rose from 788,317 in 1990 to 957,185 in 2019. Between 1990 and 2019, the global ASIR decreased from 22.4 per 100,000 to 15.6 per 100,000, the ASMR decreased from 20.5 per 100,000 to 11.9 per 100,000 and the ASDALR declined from 493.4 per 100,000 to 290.6 per 100,000. Trend analysis using joinpoint regression revealed the slowest rise in incident cases and largest decline in ASIR between 2004 and 2016. In 2019, East Asia had the highest number of incident cases, totaling 626,489, followed by high-income Asia-Pacific (128,168) and South Asia (99,399). The ASIR was the highest in East Asia (30.2/100,000) followed by high-income Asia-Pacific (28.2/100,000) and Andean Latin America (22.4/100,000), while high-income North America had the lowest ASIR at 6.1/100,000. In terms of absolute counts, the top three countries in 2019 were China, India, and Japan together accounting for 61.5% of global incident cases, 58.6% of deaths, and DALYs. Mongolia had the highest ASIR (43.7 per 100,000), followed by Bolivia (34.0 per 100,000) and China (30.6 per 100,000) in 2019, while the lowest ASIR was 3.3 per 100,000 in Malawi. Globally, for both sexes combined, 7.8% of stomach cancer DALYs were associated with a diet high in sodium and 17.2% were linked to smoking. Among males, 24.0% of stomach cancer DALYs were attributable to smoking, compared to only 4.3% in females in 2019. Conclusion: Significant progress has been made globally in the fight against stomach cancer, with the ASIR decreasing by 30.3% and the ASMR by 41.2% between 1990 and 2019. To further reduce the burden of stomach cancer, it is essential to address factors such as Helicobacter pylori prevalence, obesity, and smoking. Additionally, improvements in early detection, socioeconomic development (including better public sanitation, hygiene, and drinking water), and dietary habits are imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this digital era, images are the major information carriers of contemporary society. Several multimedia manipulation tools like CorelDRAW, GIMP, Freehand, Adobe Photoshop, etc. are being used to forge the visual media for malicious reasons. It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish forged images from pristine images as a result of new manipulation techniques that have emerged over the past time. The most intriguing area of multimedia forensics research is image forgery detection. In the field of forensic image analysis, the most important task is to verify the authenticity of digital media. A novel passive approach for detecting digital image forgery is proffered in this manuscript. It is a sequential framework that uses a deep convolutional neural network to differentiate between original and altered images. On the COVERAGE dataset, numerous experiments have been evaluated in order to construct an effective and robust model, achieveing AUC value of 0.85 and F-measure of 0.70. The comparative results have been represented in summarized form and the results perform better than the state-of-the-art techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The geometric condition that n complex numbers are the vertices of a regular polygon is translated into algebraic equations that symmetric polynomials in these numbers must satisfy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-trivial spin textures driven by strong exchange interaction, magneto-crystalline anisotropy, and electron correlation in a low-dimensional magnetic material often lead to unusual electronic transitions. Through a combination of transport experiments in exfoliated nanoflakes down to 16 layers and first principle calculations, we unravel emergent electronic phases in quasi-2D van der Waals ferromagnet, Fe4GeTe2, possessing ferromagnetic TC ~ 270 K, along with a spin-reorientation transition (TSR ~ 120 K) with the change of magnetic easy axis. Two electronic transitions are identified. The first transition near TSR exhibits a sharp fall in resistivity, followed by a sign change in the ordinary Hall coefficient (R0), together with, maximum negative magnetoresistance (MR) and anomalous Hall conductivity. Another unusual electronic transition, hitherto unknown, is observed near ~ 40–50 K (TQ), where R0 again changes sign and below which, the resistivity shows a quadratic temperature dependence, and MR becomes positive. An analysis of the experimental data further uncovers the role of competing inelastic scattering processes in anomalous magnetotransport behavior. The density-functional theory based first-principle calculations unveil two possible magnetic phases, followed by a low-energy model Hamiltonian which captures the essence of these phases as well as explains the observed magnetotransport behavior. Thus, we demonstrate an interplay between magnetism and band topology and its consequence on electron transport in Fe4GeTe2, important for spintronic applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a frequent complication of acute liver failure (ALF) and it worsens the already worse prognoses of ALF. ALF is an uncommon disease, with varying etiologies and varying definitions in different parts of the world. There is limited literature on the impact of AKI on the outcome of ALF with or without transplantation. The multifaceted etiology of AKI in ALF encompasses factors such as hemodynamic instability, systemic inflammation, sepsis and direct nephrotoxicity. Indications of renal replacement therapy (RRT) for AKI in ALF patients extend beyond the conventional criteria for dialysis and continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) may have a role in transplant-free survival or bridge to liver transplantation (LT). LT is a life-saving option for ALF, so despite somewhat lower survival rates of LT in ALF patients with AKI, LT is not usually deferred. In this review, we will discuss the guidelines' recommended definition and classification of AKI in ALF, the impact of AKI in ALF, the pathophysiology of AKI and the role of CRRT and LT in ALF patients with AKI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Up to one third of the food that is purposely grown for human sustenance is wasted and never consumed, with adverse consequences for the environment and socio-economic aspects. In India, managing food waste is a significant environmental concern. Food waste output is increasing in Indian cities and towns as a result of the country's urban expansion, modernization, and population growth. Poor management of food waste can have negative consequences for the environment and pose a risk to the public's health issues. This review focuses on the current challenges, management strategies, and future perspectives of food waste management in India. The efficient management of food waste involves a comprehensive study regarding the characterization of food waste and improved waste management methods. In addition, the government policies and rules for managing food waste that is in effect in India are covered in this review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mitochondrial electron transport chain (ETC) is a highly adaptive process to meet metabolic demands of the cell, and its dysregulation has been associated with diverse clinical pathologies. However, the role and nature of impaired ETC in kidney diseases remains poorly understood. Here, we generate diabetic mice with podocyte-specific overexpression of Ndufs4, an accessory subunit of mitochondrial complex I, as a model investigate the role of ETC integrity in diabetic kidney disease (DKD). We find that conditional male mice with genetic overexpression of Ndufs4 exhibit significant improvements in cristae morphology, mitochondrial dynamics, and albuminuria. By coupling proximity labeling with super-resolution imaging, we also identify the role of cristae shaping protein STOML2 in linking NDUFS4 with improved cristae morphology. Together, we provide the evidence on the central role of NDUFS4 as a regulator of cristae remodeling and mitochondrial function in kidney podocytes. We propose that targeting NDUFS4 represents a promising approach to slow the progression of DKD. Mitochondrial Ndufs4, a subunit of complex I, is a regulator of the electron transport chain. Here, the authors show that forced expression of Ndufs4 in podocytes improves the assembly of respiratory supercomplexes, maintains cristae integrity, and mitigates the progression of diabetic kidney disease [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mustard (Brassica juncea L.) plant is a well-known and widely accepted hyper-accumulator of heavy metals. The genetic makeup of mustard's cultivars may significantly impact their phytoremediation capabilities. The present study aimed to investigate the growth performance, yield attributes, and heavy metal accumulation potential of B. juncea cv. Varuna, NRCHB 101, RH 749, Giriraj, and Kranti, cultivated in soil irrigated with wastewater (EPS) and bore-well water (MPS). EPS contributed more Cr, Cd, Cu, Zn, and Ni to tested mustard cultivars than the MPS. EPS reduced morphological, biochemical, physiological, and yield attributes of tested mustard cultivars significantly (p < 0.05) than the MPS. Among the tested cultivars of mustard plants, Varuna had the highest heavy metal load with the lowest harvest index (35.8 and 0.21, respectively). Whereas NRCHB 101 showed the lowest heavy metal load with the highest harvest index (26.9 and 0.43, respectively). The present study suggests that B. juncea cv. Varuna and NRCHB 101 could be used for the phytoextraction of heavy metals and reducing their contamination in food chain, respectively in wastewater irrigated areas of peri-urban India. The outcomes of the present study can also be utilized to develop a management strategy for sustainable agriculture in heavy metal polluted areas resulting from long-term wastewater irrigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aim: Breast cancer (BC) is one of the leading causes of cancer deaths in females in South America. This study aims to examine the BC burden in 12 South American countries between 1990 and 2019. Data and methods: The estimates of BC burden and risk factors were procured from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study for the period 1990–2019. Development levels of countries were gauged using socio-demographic index (SDI). Decomposition analysis was employed to categorize the change in incidence between 1990 and 2019 into three factors: population growth, population aging and age-specific incidence rate. Estimated annual percent changes were calculated for each country and bivariate association between country-level age-standardized rates and SDI was examined using pooled regression. Results: The age-standardized rates of breast cancer were the highest in Uruguay [incidence: 72.65 per 100,000 (55.79–92.57); mortality: 29.97 per 100,000 (27.54–32.27); disability-adjusted life years (DALYs: 810.49 per 100,000 (746.22–884.55)] and lowest in Peru [incidence: 27.63 per 100,000 (20.44–36.85); mortality: 10.79 per 100,000 (8.14–14.11); DALYs: 318.27 per 100,000 (234.47–421.16)]. Mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) across countries varied from 0.30 in Colombia to 0.55 in Bolivia in 2019. SDI had a positive and strong association with age-standardized incidence rate R 2 = 0.27 and weaker positive association with age-standardized mortality rate R 2 = 0.07 and age-standardized DALYs rate R 2 = 0.04 . Most countries experienced more than 70% increase in incident cases owing to population aging and age-specific incidence rates. Alcohol Use, diet high in red meat and smoking contributed the maximum DALYs in most countries in 2019 whereas DALYs due to high body-mass index and high fasting plasma glucose increased most substantially between 1990 and 2019. Conclusion: With increasing incidence, high MIR and rising BC burden due to modifiable risk factors, several public health interventions are required in South America focusing on prevention, BC awareness among general public, cost-effective early detection and treatments that suit the socio-economic setup of South American countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cardiac rhythm regulated by micro-macroscopic structures of heart. Pacemaker abnormalities or disruptions in electrical conduction, lead to arrhythmic disorders may be benign, typical, threatening, ultimately fatal, occurs in clinical practice, patients on digitalis, anaesthesia or acute myocardial infarction. Both traditional and genetic animal models are: In-vitro: Isolated ventricular Myocytes, Guinea pig papillary muscles, Patch-Clamp Experiments, Porcine Atrial Myocytes, Guinea pig ventricular myocytes, Guinea pig papillary muscle: action potential and refractory period, Langendorff technique, Arrhythmia by acetylcholine or potassium. Acquired arrhythmia disorders: Transverse Aortic Constriction, Myocardial Ischemia, Complete Heart Block and AV Node Ablation, Chronic Tachypacing, Inflammation, Metabolic and Drug-Induced Arrhythmia. In-Vivo: Chemically induced arrhythmia: Aconitine antagonism, Digoxin-induced arrhythmia, Strophanthin/ouabain-induced arrhythmia, Adrenaline-induced arrhythmia, and Calcium-induced arrhythmia. Electrically induced arrhythmia: Ventricular fibrillation electrical threshold, Arrhythmia through programmed electrical stimulation, sudden coronary death in dogs, Exercise ventricular fibrillation. Genetic Arrhythmia: Channelopathies, Calcium Release Deficiency Syndrome, Long QT Syndrome, Short QT Syndrome, Brugada Syndrome. Genetic with Structural Heart Disease: Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy/Dysplasia, Dilated Cardiomyopathy, Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy, Atrial Fibrillation, Sick Sinus Syndrome, Atrioventricular Block, Preexcitation Syndrome. Arrhythmia in Pluripotent Stem Cell Cardiomyocytes. Conclusion: Both traditional and genetic, experimental models of cardiac arrhythmias' characteristics and significance help in development of new antiarrhythmic drugs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Retained products of conception (RPOC) generally result after first half of pregnancy termination and also may occur after vaginal or cesarean delivery. It frequently presents with irregular or continuous vaginal bleeding, lower abdominal and pelvic pain, and discharge per vaginum due to infection; it can also cause late complications like formation of intrauterine adhesions and subfertility. The diagnosis of the RPOC along with the symptoms is generally supported by ultrasonography with or without colour Doppler. The patient also undergoes uterine vasculature assessment to diagnose arteriovenous malformation (AVM). The management of RPOC has been conventionally done with blind dilation and suction curettage (D and C); however, expectant management, uterine artery embolization, and hysteroscopic resection of RPOC are safe and efficient alternatives. Materials and methods: In this review, we analyse the current available evidence regarding the clinical presentation, diagnosis and treatment of RPOC comparing the sensitivity, specificity, outcomes, pros and cons of various methods. Conclusion: RPOC is a common complication associated with early and late complications. The judicious use of antibiotics along with interventional radiology and hysteroscopy forms the backbone for the treatment of this condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Himalayacalamus falconeri is a socio-economically important temperate woody bamboo of north-western Himalayas, which has been investigated for genetic diversity and population genetic structure across distribution range in western Himalayas using genomic STMS markers. The calculated diversity measures have indicated a high gene diversity in H. falconeri at population level (Ho = 0.637; He = 0.714; Ar = 5.05). Despite the larger proportion of genetic variation (88%) confined within the populations, a moderate level of genetic differentiation (FST = 0.121) was detected with relatively lower gene flow (Nm = 1.891). Furthermore, clustering and STRUCTURE analysis displayed high genetic heterogeneity in a metapopulation, where populations in both the spatially disconnected regions of the Uttarakhand state, Garhwal and Kumaon, were clustered in different groups. Whereas, nested sub clustering and between-population genetic admixing were not correlated to their physical proximity. Also, the Mantel test supports the isolation by distance model showing a significant correlation between genetic and horizontal geographic distances. For conservation implications, diverse hotspots with high allelic richness were also identified in both the geographical regions of Uttarakhand state. To the best of our knowledge, it is a pioneer study presenting in depth knowledge of metapopulation in any Indian temperate bamboo, which will be of paramount importance to the researchers, foresters, and policymakers for guiding future conservation decisions of H. falconeri in the Indian Himalayan Regions (IHRs). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and aims: Nowadays, there are contradicting opinions about the benefits and risks of COVID-19 vaccine, which lead to the hesitance among recipients to receive the vaccine. This study aims to evaluate the university student's attitude toward COVID-19 vaccine, preventative measure, and status of their psychological wellbeing. Methods: This was a cross-sectional study among Vietnamese students aged ≥ 18 years to evaluate their willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccine, psychological wellbeing status, and preventive measure compliance. The participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire via Google Form. Descriptive and analytical statistics were performed with p < 0.05 being considered as statistically significant. Results: A total of 2998 randomly selected participants in Vietnam completed the questionnaire with participants' mean age of 20.26 ± 1.84. The mean score for the willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccination was 46.13 ± 19.03 (the highest point was 54). Regarding preventative measures, the mean score of compliance was 7.15 ± 1.98 over a 10 points scale and "being vaccinated or not" did not affect their compliance. 56.94% participants were having normal psychological wellbeing at the time of survey and rest 43.06% reported to have experienced stress, varying from slight to severe level. There might be a trend that those studying medicine or those with higher educational level had higher rate of stress than others. Conclusion: The study showed a positive result of Vietnamese students' willingness to receive COVID-19 vaccine and compliance towards preventive measures. Besides, we also reported that almost half participants had experienced stress during the pandemic. Developing proper interventions to deal with factors contributing to psychological wellbeing and related problems are essential to deal with and overcome the pandemic or post-pandemic struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study was conducted to understand the key ecological and biological questions of conservation importance in Drepanostachyum falcatum which aimed to map potential distribution in the western Himalayas and decipher spatial genetic structure. Eco-distribution maps were generated through ecological niche modelling using the Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) algorithm implemented with 228 geocoordinates of species presence and 12 bioclimatic variables. Concomitantly, 26 natural populations in the western Himalayas were genetically analysed using ten genomic sequence-tagged microsatellite (STMS) markers. Model-derived distribution was adequately supported with appropriate statistical measures, such as area under the 'receiver operating characteristics (ROC)' curve (AUC; 0.917 ± 0.034)", Kappa (K; 0.418), normalized mutual information (NMI; 0.673) and true skill statistic (TSS; 0.715). Further, Jackknife test and response curves showed that the precipitation (pre- and post-monsoon) and temperature (average throughout the year and pre-monsoon) maximize the probabilistic distribution of D. falcatum. We recorded a wide and abundant (4096.86 km2) distribution of D. falcatum in the western Himalayas with maximum occurrence at 1500 to 2500 m asl. Furthermore, marker analysis exemplified high gene diversity with low genetic differentiation in D. falcatum. Relatively, the populations of Uttarakhand are more genetically diverse than Himachal Pradesh, whereas within the Uttarakhand, the Garhwal region captured a higher allelic diversity than Kumaon. Clustering and structure analysis indicated two major gene pools, where genetic admixing appeared to be controlled by long-distance gene flow, horizontal geographical distance, aspect, and precipitation. Both the species distribution map and population genetic structure derived herein may serve as valuable resources for conservation and management of Himalayan hill bamboos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mn- and Ce-doped CaS monolayer structures are placed in the category of dilute magnetic semiconductors where the computation of the energy band gap, impurity states, and position of band edge states must be performed with accuracy so that the materials can show improved absorption and transport characteristics for various optoelectronic applications. Therefore, the influence of Mn and Ce dopants in CaS monolayer structures has been investigated by using first-principles calculations with the generalized gradient, Perdew–Burke–Ernzerhof (PBE), and PBE0 hybrid functional approximations. In the case of the hybrid functional, PBE0, density functional theory (DFT) calculations, the energy band gap values of CaS, CaS:Mn, and CaS:Ce monolayer structures were found to be lower in comparison to the results computed by PBE-GGA approximations. The phonon modes at the Γ -point have been computed for CaS, CaS:Mn, and CaS:Ce monolayer structures, which indicate a dynamical stable pristine and Mn-doped CaS monolayer structure. The electrical conductivity of the undoped monolayer structure of CaS is higher than that of the doped structure, which shows that the Ce and Mn dopants in CaS monolayer structures are not suitable for electronic applications. Nevertheless, one can exploit these dopants to increase the photoluminescence quantum yield which is beneficial in optoelectronic applications. Thise point is further verified from the depicted results where the reflectance value is reduced in the case of doped monolayer structures of CaS. Further, the Ce-doped CaS confined structures can be tuned for required combinations of red, blue, and green colors which can be quite useful for future white light-emitting diode fabrication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study empirically investigates the effects of poverty and urbanization on environmental degradation for a sample of 43 sub-Saharan African (SSA) economies from 1995 to 2018. The major contribution of the study lies in examining the existence of non-linear effects of poverty and urbanization on environmental degradation. We considered a set of institutional and demographic factors to explain the dynamics among poverty, urbanization, and environmental degradation. Findings suggest that an increase in the poverty gap significantly contributes towards intensifying environmental degradation in SSA countries. Results also show the existence of a non-linear relationship between poverty and environmental degradation. The findings purpose several crucial policy recommendations which necessitate the participation of different stakeholders such as government, institutions, researchers, non-profit organizations and citizens for the effective implementations of environment-friendly policies. A battery of robustness tests confirms the validity of the main findings of the study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of diffuso-thermal (Dufour effect) and thermo-diffusion gradients (Soret effect) on the magneto-hydrodynamic (MHD) unsteady incompressible free convection flow with heat and mass transfer past a semi-infinite vertical porous plate in a Darcy–Forchheimer porous medium in the presence of heat absorption and first order homogenous chemical reaction are analyzed. The governing mathematical model is nondimensionalized using a similarity transformation rendering a system of nonlinear coupled partial differential equations. The nondimensional governing equations along with the boundary conditions are solved by using element-free Galerkin method. The effect of different pertinent flow parameters on velocity, temperature, and concentration distributions and the numerical outcomes are examined and revealed graphically. The velocity of fluid flow is enhanced with weak chemical action. The heat absorption effect reduces the temperature and hence, useful to control the temperature in many chemical engineering applications. A rise in dufour number with simultaneously reducing the soret number (to ensure that the product of soret and dufour numbers remains constant), boots up the temperature of fluid in the porous medium. The heat transfer rate increases with higher chemical reaction parameter and also with an increase in heat absorption parameter. Thus, fast chemical reaction rate and heat absorption parameter can be used to enhance heat transfer rate in many industrial problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Aims: The major challenge for the anesthetist in endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) procedures is to provide moderate to deep levels of sedation in prone position with preservation of spontaneous respiratory efforts in shared airway scenario with an endoscopist. These patients have other comorbidities, making them vulnerable to complications during the routinely used sedation with propofol. We compared the entropy-guided efficacy of combination of etomidate-ketamine to dexmedetomidine-ketamine in patients undergoing ERCP. Methods: This prospective single blind randomized entropy-guided trial was conducted on 60 patients with etomidate-ketamine in group I (n = 30) and dexmedetomidine-ketamine in group II (n = 30). The purpose was to compare etomidate-ketamine versus dexmedetomidine-ketamine for ERCP in terms of intraprocedural hemodynamics with desaturation, onset of sedation, recovery time and endoscopist's satisfaction. Results : Hypotension was observed only in six (20%) patients of group II (p < 0.009). Two patients of group I and three in group II desaturated (Spo2 < 90) briefly during the procedure, but none of the patient required intubation (p > 0.05). The mean time in minutes of onset of sedation was 1.15 in group I and 5.6 in group II (p < 0.001). Endoscopists' satisfaction was better in group I (p ≤ 0.001) and length of recovery room stay was shorter in group I as compared to that in group II (p ≤ 0.007). Conclusion: We conclude that entropy-guided intravenous procedural sedation with etomidate-ketamine combination provides faster onset of sedation, stable periprocedural hemodynamics, rapid recovery and fair to excellent endoscopist satisfaction compared to dexmedetomidine-ketamine combination for ERCP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the preceding years, the rapid industrial growth in the BRICS nations has widened the scope for imported technology and other factor inputs. The literature suggests that these kinds of economic developments often exert negative pressure on the established ecosystem. In order to confirm this notion, therefore, in the present study, we examined the impact of import product diversification and import concentration on ecological footprint in the BRICS nations using the annual data ranging from 1995 to 2018. By addressing the possibility of cross-country convergence, the elasticity coefficients are calculated using the cross-sectional augmented autoregressive distributed lag procedure. Industrial value-added, technological innovations and renewable energy solutions are considered as the controlled variables. The empirical results revealed that diversified imports led to an increase in ecological footprints, whereas concentrated imports helped in controlling ecological footprints. As expected, the increased industrial production elevated ecological footprints, whereas the association between renewable energy solutions and ecological footprints is found negative and significant. Based on the association between ecological footprint and its drivers, we endorsed an SDG-based policy framework where interdependency among various SDGs is being considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A basic theorem in linear algebra says that if the eigenvalues and the diagonal entries of a Hermitian matrix A are ordered as λ 1 ≤ λ 2 ≤... ≤ λ n and a 1 ≤ a 2 ≤... ≤ a n , respectively, then λ 1 ≤ a 1 . We show that for some special classes of Hermitian matrices this can be extended to inequalities of the form λ k ≤ a 2 k - 1 , k = 1 , 2 ,... , ⌈ n 2 ⌉ . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Asia accounts for the largest burden of colorectal cancer (CRC) worldwide. This study examines the temporal patterns of CRC in Asia in the last three decades. Methods: The data pertaining to CRC burden measured by incidence, mortality, and disability-adjusted-life-years (DALYs) and its risk factors for 49 countries in the Asian continent were drawn from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study between 1990 and 2019. Mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) was employed as a proxy indicator of 5-year survival rates. Results: In Asia, incident cases more than tripled from 270,851 to 1.1 million, deaths tripled from 183,252 to 560,426, and DALYs more than doubled from 5 million to 13.4 million between 1990 and 2019. The age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) increased from 14.0/100,000 to 23.9/100,000, age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) increased from 10.1/100,000 to 12.5/100,000, and MIR decreased from 0.68 to 0.50 between 1990 and 2019. ASIR varied 10-folds across countries from 5.6/100,000 in Bangladesh to 62.0/100,000 in Taiwan in 2019 and ASMR from 4.9/1000 in Bangladesh to 30.3/100,000 in Brunei. In 2019, diet low in milk (18.7%) and whole grains (15.2%) and calcium (16.6%) were the major contributory risk factors in CRC DALYs in 2019. Conclusion: CRC is a fast-rising neoplasm in Asia and its burden can be curtailed by focusing on primary prevention (e.g., diet and physical activity) and secondary prevention through screening. The policy focus and resources must be directed towards capacity building, including cancer infrastructure and quality data availability from cancer registries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A solar collector is a simple and cheap device that converts solar radiation into valuable heat energy. The thermal performance of the solar collectors can be enhanced significantly with the suspension of nanoparticles in the base fluid. A novel design for a solar-assisted water heater (SWH) is proposed in the current study, and the effect of nanofluid has been investigated on the thermal efficiency of the SWH. The use of nanofluid is one of the prominent methods in comparison to other techniques for improving the performance of solar collectors. Therefore, the base working fluid, i.e., water is mixed with the alumina nanoparticles of average particle size of 30 nm, and they are assumed to be spherical. The flow and thermal characteristics of nanofluid through the solar water heater are simulated numerically with the help of the Eulerian–Eulerian two-phase model using the finite volume method (FVM). The commercial package ANSYS Fluent, is used for modeling the problem under transient conditions with a pressure-based solver. In comparison to a conventional flat plate collector, the proposed solar water heater consists of a corrugated absorber-plate and the effect of the radius of curvature has been investigated on the heat transfer and collector efficiency. With the proposed design, the heat transfer area available with the riser tubes increases remarkably and it leads to a 43% and 14% increase in heat transfer augmentation and collector efficiency, in comparison to the conventional solar water heater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online activism has been pivotal for anti-government protests all around the world. A lot of existing research studies how people use social media to mobilize and coordinate protests. However, some platforms offer more than one kind of medium for communication, in particular, Telegram. We found that a lot of research literature focuses on either one or another medium or sometimes merges them together. In this research, we performed a comparative analysis of three communication mediums in this platform: channels, groups, and local chats during protests in Belarus in 2020. We first collected a dataset which follows six months of protest, which allows us to study the temporal variation of online activism. We find that in Telegram, these three modes of communication are not equally important. Furthermore, they are responsible for different types of communication. For example, in groups, people discuss significant protests that occurred nationwide. In comparison, people discuss local and small demonstrations and protests in chats. Finally, Telegram channels are very distinct from local chats and channels in terms of content. Our finding suggests that future research should consider these modes of the communication independently rather than blending them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, variability in the incidence and mortality of kidney cancer (KC) has been reported. This study aimed to compare trends in incidence, mortality, and disability-adjusted life years (DALY) of KC between the European Union (EU) 15 + countries and 6 World Health Organization (WHO) regions. The data of KC Age-standardized incidence rates (ASIRs), age-standardized mortality rates (ASMRs), and age-standardized DALYs were extracted from the Global Burden of Disease database. Joinpoint regression was employed to examine trends. From 1990 to 2019, the ASIR increased in most countries except for Luxembourg (males), the USA (females) and Austria and Sweden (both sexes). ASIR increased across all 6 WHO regions for both sexes except for females in Americas. The ASMR increased in 10/19 countries for males and 9/19 for females as well across most WHO regions. The mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) decreased in all countries and WHO regions. Trends in DALYs were variable across countries and WHO regions. While the incidence and mortality from KC rose in most EU15 + countries and WHO regions from 1990 to 2019, the universal drop in MIR suggests an overall improvement in KC outcomes. This is likely multifactorial, including earlier detection of KC and improved treatments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Acute kidney injury (AKI) in children with Transposition of Great arteries (TGA) undergoing Arterial Switch operation (ASO) is an important complication in the post-operative period associated with worse outcomes. AKI in children post open cardiac surgery has been well studied, with lesser data in literature pertaining to TGA and its sub-types specifically. This was a prospective, observational study enrolling infants with TGA undergoing ASO at a single center over a span of a decade from January 2010 to December 2020. The infants were followed during the duration of ICU and hospital stay, with documentation of baseline and intraoperative parameters as well as post-operative course. Out of 145 infants enrolled in the study, 83.1% developed AKI with majority (83.9%) having stage 1 AKI. Higher odds of AKI were seen in infants requiring Norepinephrine [odds ratio − 16.76 (95% CI 2.19–128.2), p < 0.001] and those who developed gram-negative infections [2.81 (1.04–7.56), p − 0.036]. Infants with AKI had significantly higher vasoactive-inotropic support at day 1 than those without AKI [16 (12.5–21.50 vs 13 (10.25–15.75), p − 0.014]. Seventeen infants in the AKI group (14%) died as opposed to none in the non-AKI group (p = 0.076). Median hours of ventilator support required were significantly higher in those with AKI than those who did not develop AKI (48 vs 45.5 p = 0.015). The infants with ASO + ASD + PDA (53% of neonates who died) were younger, had less weight at admission, more gram-negative sepsis and need for dopamine, as compared to ASO + VSD + ASD (23.5% of mortality) and ASO + ASD + VSD + aortic arch repair (23.5% of mortality). AKI in infants with TGA undergoing ASO is common and associated with poorer outcomes. In this subpopulation, AKI development is associated most commonly with hemodynamic instability and infections. This is the first study, looking at outcomes of TGA depending on the sub-types of ASO surgeries done in the infants [ASO with ASD + PDA or ASD + VSD or ASD + VSD + Arch Repair]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reversible saturable optical fluorescence transition (RESOLFT) super-resolution microscopic technique can produce high-resolution images of organic and semiconductor materials by breaking the conventional diffraction limit. In the present paper, we investigate the graphene like zinc sulfide (ZnS) doped with Mn two-dimensional (2D) sheet by using density functional theory computation which is further applied to identify the excitation and depletion laser beam wavelengths for the RESOLFT microscopic applications. The calculated band structure analysis indicates the semiconducting nature of pristine 2D graphene like ZnS with direct energy band gap of 2.60 eV in Γ direction which is consistent with recent reports of the literature. Further, Mn dopant in 2D graphene like ZnS has shown the reduction in the energy band gap in spin up channel and increase in bond lengths adjacent to the dopant in comparison with the undoped ZnS monolayer system. The origin of absorption peak at 2.31 eV is obtained owing to the typical 4T1 and 6A1 spectroscopic transition of Mn dopant in the 2D graphene like ZnS:Mn which is further explored for the RESOLFT measurements by selecting the appropriate excitation and depletion beam wavelengths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dielectric and thermodynamic properties of cholesteryl oleyl carbonate (COC) liquid crystal are studied at 9.0 GHz using the cavity perturbation technique. The observed values of frequency shift and width of the resonance profile are analysed using the Slater perturbation equations for dielectric permittivity and dielectric loss, respectively, and the Debye method is used to calculate relaxation time. The thermodynamic parameters including change in activation energy, enthalpy and entropy are calculated for heating and cooling cycles. The transition temperatures for S–Ch and Ch–I show close agreement with the literature values. The response of COC for heating and cooling cycles at 9.0 GHz shows fruitful results for both dielectric and thermodynamic parameters at transition temperatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the association between income inequality and environmental degradation has been researched extensively by various scholars, the impact of income inequality on the consumption of renewable energy, however, remains unanswered in the existing literature, the reason why the investigation of the same has been attempted through this study. Apart from income inequality, this paper also explores the impact of per capita income, consumption of nonrenewable energy and human capital development on the consumption of renewable energy, using a Nonlinear Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag (NARDL) model on the data pertaining to India for the period 1980–2016. This study concludes that while the increased income inequality results into reduction in the renewable energy consumption, the increased per capita income and human capital development, on the contrary, lead to an increase in the renewable energy consumption. Similarly, the impact of decrease in per capita income on renewable energy consumption was found to be negative and significant. Lastly, the nonrenewable energy consumption, showing the characteristics of a substitute, was found to have an inverse & significant relationship with renewable energy consumption in both upward as well as downward direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Newer American College of Gastroenterology (ACG) and Canadian Association of Gastroenterology (CAG) guidelines do not suggest endoscopy to investigate alarm features for dyspepsia patients under the age of 60 to exclude upper gastrointestinal (GI) neoplasia. The validity of this recommendation has not been evaluated in our population. So, this study was conducted to assess the utility of upper GI endoscopy to investigate alarm features in dyspepsia patients less than 60 years of age to exclude upper GI neoplasia. Methods: This prospective observational study evaluated consecutive patients of dyspepsia between 18 and 60 years of age, with at least one or more of the alarm symptoms (unintentional weight loss; loss of appetite; GI bleeding; anemia; recurrent or persistent vomiting; dysphagia with predominant epigastric pain; and family history of upper GI cancer) with upper GI endoscopy to exclude any organic lesion and malignancy. Results: Of total 294 patients evaluated with endoscopy, 34.7% (n=102) had normal endoscopy (functional dyspepsia [FD]) while 65.3% (n=192) had abnormal endoscopic findings (organic dyspepsia [OD]). Of 192 patients with OD, 146 patients (49.6% of the total study population) had benign abnormality (benign OD) while 46 patients (15.6% of the total study population) had malignancy of the upper GI tract (malignant OD). Conclusion: The investigation of alarm features in dyspepsia patients less than 60 years of age with upper GI endoscopy leads to detection of organic lesion (65.3%) including malignancy (15.6%) in a significant percentage of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nanoindentation studies on bulk and epitaxial semiconductor crystals have been reviewed in general. The common materials of technological interest such as Si, Ge, GaAs, GaN, InP, CdZnTe, HgCdTe etc. have been included. Issues related with the measurement and analysis of load–displacement characteristics have been discussed in detail, including those for cyclic nanoindentation and continuous stiffness measurements. Common mistakes/oversights in the extraction of mechanical properties, particularly for the elastic modulus, have been highlighted. Various features observed in load–displacement curves are discussed in connection with different semiconductor materials. These include pop-in/pop-out events and serrations observed in general, and the open-jaw and hysteresis like features in cyclic nanoindentation. Cathodoluminescence studies on indented surfaces have also been included to highlight the deformation behaviour of some of the crystalline semiconductor materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comprehensive summary of how candidates running in the 2020 US Presidential Elections used Twitter to communicate with the public. More specifically, it aims to uncover elements linked to public engagement and internal cooperation (in terms of content and stance similarity among the candidates from the same political front, and with respect to the official Twitter accounts of their political parties). Our main subjects are the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates who contested for the 2020 US Elections from the two major political fronts—Republicans and Democrats. Their tweets were evaluated for social reach, content similarity and stance similarity on 22 topics. According to the findings, Joe Biden had the highest engagement and impact (user impact: 177.08k, normalized to 0.99), followed by Donald Trump (user impact: 164.19k, normalized to 0.92). The Democrats depicted a clearer understanding of their audience, portraying an essential link between public participation, internal cooperation and the electoral campaign. The results also demonstrate that specific topics (like US Elections, and Inauguration Ceremony) were more engaging than others (Trump Healthcare Plan, and The Supreme Court Appointments). This study adds to the existing work on using social media platforms for electoral campaigns and can be effectively utilized by contesting candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Type-2 diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is one of the leading causes of death and disability worldwide. This study examines temporal patterns of the global, regional, and national burden of T2DM in the last three decades. Data and methods: The estimates of age, sex and location-wise incident cases, deaths, prevalent cases, and disability-adjusted-life-years (DALYs) and risk factors for 21 regions and 204 countries are retrieved from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study from 1990 to 2019. Socio-demographic index (SDI) is used as the indicator of the development status of countries, and quadratic regression is employed to examine the relationship between country-level age-standardized rates and SDI. Results: Globally, incident cases of T2DM more than doubled from 8.4 million[95% uncertainty interval, 7.8–9.1 million] in 1990 to 21.7 million[20.0–23.5 million] in 2019, and deaths more than doubled from 606,407[573,069–637,508] to 1.5 million[1.4–1.6 million] between 1990 and 2019. Global T2DM prevalence increased from 148.4 million[135.5–162.6 million] in 1990 to 437.9 million[402.0–477.0 million] in 2019. In 2019, global age-standardized prevalence rate stood at 5282.8/100,000[4853.6–5752.1], varying from 2174.5/100,000[1924.3–2470.5] in Mongolia to 19876.8/100,000[18211.1–21795.3] in American Samoa. SDI exhibited inverted-U shaped relationship with country-level age-standardised rates. Globally, high body-mass-index (51.9%), ambient particulate matter pollution (13.6%), smoking (9.9%) and secondhand smoke (8.7%) were the major contributing risk factors towards T2DM DALYs in 2019. Conclusion: With ubiquitously rising prevalent cases globally, particularly in low and middle-income countries and regions, T2DM requires immediate attention and targeted policy response worldwide centered on lifestyle interventions (e.g., physical activity, smoking, diet, and obesity), air pollution control and cost-effective timely treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade, online social media has become the primary platform for protesters to organize and express their agenda in various parts of the world. Despite the topic of protests being extensively studied, the question of language preference behaviour in online social media during the protests in multilingual countries is not covered enough. Most of the previous studies regarding language change either lack panel data or report simple aggregated statistics such as the number of comments in the particular language before and after some significant event. To fill this gap, we analyze a new dataset of the Facebook group called EuroMaydan that was explicitly created to facilitate the protest in Ukraine from November 2013 to February 2014. Moreover, our analysis follows the group even after the end of the protest till June 2014. This group had more than 300,000 subscribers when the data was collected. We use this panel data to test how users switched between two dominant languages in Ukraine: the Ukrainian language (the first language for most of the population and the official state language of Ukraine) and Russian (the second most common after Ukrainian). We also investigate the triggers of these changes to understand why some people change their language on social media to Russian from Ukrainian and vice versa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: This study examines the burden of colorectal cancer (CRC) in European Union (EU) countries in the last 3 decades. Methods: The data pertaining to CRC burden were procured from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 Study for 28 EU countries (including United Kingdom) for the period 1990–2019. The age-standardized rates of CRC were utilized to compare the country-wise burden and joinpoint regression models were applied to examine the trends. Results: In EU, CRC incident cases increased by 70.2% from 261,306 to 444,872 and deaths increased by 36.8% from 155,823 to 213,174 between 1990 and 2019. The age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) increased by 11.9% from 37.8/100,000 to 42.3/100,000 between 1990 and 2019; in contrast, the age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) decreased by 16.9% (1990: 22.4/100,000; 2019: 18.6/100,000) and age-standardized DALYs rate (ASDALR) decreased by 18.6% (1990: 472.9/100,000; 2019: 385.1/100,000) in the study period. In 2019, Hungary was the leading country in terms of ASMR (28.6/100,000) and ASDALR (630.3/100,000), and Lithuania (29.2/100,000) had the lowest ASIR, whereas Finland had the lowest ASMR (12.3/100,000) and ASDALR (253.6/100,000) in 2019. Conclusion: CRC incidence is increasing in EU and mortality rates, although decreasing, are still unacceptably high. CRC control efforts must be focused around early detection using screening and prevention through reduction of modifiable risk factors. Increasing CRC incidence rates in young adults in recent years requires more research to pinpoint risk factors, and there must be more awareness of this recent development among general public and clinicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the burden of leukemia and its subtypes at the global, regional, and national levels in 21 world regions and 204 countries in the last three decades. The estimates of incidence, deaths, and age-standardized rates of leukemia for 21 regions and 204 countries for 1990–2019 were extracted from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study. Average annual percentage change in 1990–2019 for 21 regions was utilized for projecting leukemia burden in 2030. Globally, there were 643,579 [586,980–699,729] incident cases and 334,592 [306,818–360,214] deaths in 2019 due to leukemia, up from 474,924 [388,559–560,550] cases and 263,263 [233,664–298,696] deaths in 1990. Between 1990 and 2019, the age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) decreased from 9.6 [8.1–11.0] in 1990 to 8.2 [7.5–8.9] per 100,000 person-years in 2019, and the age-standardized mortality rate (ASMR) decreased from 5.8/100,000 [5.2–6.4] in 1990 to 4.3/100,000 [3.9–4.6] in 2019. Between 1990 and 2019, the ASIR decreased in majority of regions except Western Europe and high-income Asia Pacific, whereas the ASMR decreased in all 21 regions. In 2019, country-wise, the ASIR varied from 3.0/100,000 [2.3–3.7] in Palau to 35.1/100,000 [26.4–47.2] in San Marino and the ASMR spanned from 2.3/100,000 [1.7–2.8] in San Marino to 15.8/100,000 [12.0–20.4] in Syria. As per our projections, globally, there will be 720,168 incident cases and 367,804 deaths due to leukemia in 2030. Substantial improvements have been witnessed in leukemia mortality rates in all regions, especially high-income regions and countries. Health care policies focusing on diagnostic improvements, cancer registration, and newer therapeutics at reduced cost or with insurance coverage are needed in low and middle-income countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lobbying activity is subject to strict disclosure requirements in the USA. Failure to comply with these requirements can lead to criminal and civil penalties. It is claimed that these tight lobbying disclosure measures resulted in an increase in 'underground lobbying'. This research proposes a method to discover non-compliance in lobbying disclosure and gauge the magnitude of underground lobbying. We start from the premise that lobbying changes the text of the bills it targets. If these changes happen to some extent systematically, then the texts of lobbied bills should be discernible from non-lobbied bills. We combine the corpus of US legislative bills with a large dataset of lobbying activity to give us a partially labelled dataset, where a positive label indicates a lobbied bill, and the lack of a label indicates either that the bill was lobbied, or was lobbied but not disclosed. To address this partial labelling problem, we first set up a naive classification task, where we assume all unlabelled bills to have a negative label and train a model on a large corpus of US bills. By finding the best performing model, we then design a bagging method and collect out of fold predictions, to predict for each unlabelled bill whether it was lobbied or not. From these predictions, we infer that there are a sizable number of bills that are likely to have been lobbied, but this lobbying activity was not disclosed. We then investigate how the political affiliation of the sponsoring senators and congressmen relates to these probabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide. This study examines the current and future burden of lung cancer at global, regional, and national levels. Methods: The estimates of lung cancer incident cases, deaths, and their age-standardized rates are drawn from GLOBOCAN 2020 for 21 regions and 185 countries. Mortality-to-incidence ratio (MIR) is considered as a proxy indicator of 5-year survival rates. Lung cancer burden in 2050 is projected using age-specific incidence and death rates in 2020. Results: In 2020, there were 2.21 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths due to lung cancer worldwide with age-standardized incidence rate (ASIR) of 22.4/100,000 (male: 31.5; female: 14.6) and age-standardized mortality rates (ASMR) of 18.0/100,000, (male: 25.9; female: 11.2/100,000). Global MIR of lung cancer was 0.82 (males 0.83; females: 0.79), varying from 0.59 (Japan) to 1.0 (Belize). Hungary had the highest age-standardized rates (ASIR: 50.1/100,000; ASMR: 42.4/100,000) and Nigeria (ASIR: 0.88; ASMR: 0.86) had the lowest age-standardized rates in 2020. Both ASIR and ASMR were positively correlated with country-level tobacco smoking prevalence and human development index (HDI), whereas MIR exhibited a negative correlation with HDI. As per our projections, there will be 3.8 million incident cases and 3.2 million deaths globally due to lung cancer in 2050. Conclusion: With close to 2 million cases and deaths already in 2020, lung cancer has already become a global public health threat. Even with current risk levels and age-specific rates, lung cancer annual cases are expected to reach 3.8 million in 2050. Until smoking prevalence is reduced and ambient air pollution levels are checked, particularly in low/medium HDI countries, the lung cancer epidemic will continue unfolding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) has been reported in association with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). However, SNHL as an extraintestinal manifestation of IBD is frequently underreported. In the present study, we compared the prevalence and severity of SNHL among patients with IBD–ulcerative colitis (IBD-UC) in remission with controls to find out any association between SNHL and IBD-UC in remission compared to controls. Methods: This single-center hospital-based prospective observational study included outdoor patients with IBD-UC in remission and healthy age- and sex-matched controls. Eligible patients and healthy participants were subjected to a battery of audiological tests (otoscopy, tympanometry and pure tone audiometry [PTN]) after thorough systemic and ear, nose and throat (ENT) examination. Results: A total of 100 patients were enrolled in the study: 50 in IBD-UC in the remission group and 50 in the control group. None of the demographic variables (age, gender, residence and habits) were significantly different between the two groups. Otoscopy and tympanometry were normal in all patients and controls. The difference between the two groups in respect to frequency and severity of SNHL on PTA and in respect to unilateral and bilateral distribution of the hearing loss was not statistically significant. Conclusion: There is no statistically significant difference in frequency and severity of SNHL between patients with ulcerative colitis in remission and healthy age- and sex-matched controls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: AKI is an important complication post cardiac surgery in children. An early diagnosis can help in mitigating complications and allow for prognostication. Urinary albumin:creatinine ratio (ACR) as a biomarker can provide a cheaper and more accessible AKI risk assessment and prediction. There is a paucity of paediatric literature regarding its utility. Methods: This was a prospective observational study, enrolling all children aged 1 month to 18 years, who underwent cardiac surgery, with use of cardiopulmonary bypass. Cohort was divided into groups < 2 years and ≥ 2 years for analyses to account for differences in physiological albumin excretion with age. Results: Of 143 children enrolled in the study, 36 developed AKI. In both age groups, the post-operative ACR was higher than pre-operative ACR among patients with and without AKI. In the group aged ≥ 2 years, the highest first post-operative ACR tertile (> 75.8 mg/g) predicted post-operative AKI after adjusting for clinical variables (adjusted RR, 11.71; 1.85–16.59). In the group aged < 2 years, the highest first post-operative ACR tertile (> 141.3 mg/g) predicted post-operative AKI in unadjusted analysis but not after adjusting for clinical variables (RR, 2.78; 0.70–6.65). For AKI risk prediction, AUC (95% CI) was highest after combining clinical model and pre-operative ACR for groups aged < 2 years [0.805 (0.713-0.896)] and ≥ 2 years [0.872 (0.772–0.973)]. Conclusions: This study provides evidence for use of albuminuria as a feasible biomarker in AKI prediction in children post cardiac surgery, especially when added to a clinical model. A higher resolution version of the Graphical abstract is available as Supplementary information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of devices to amplify the terahertz (THz) radiations is a subject of intense research among the scientific community owing to its interdisciplinary applications. We explore the possibility of amplification of THz radiations by investigating the transport measurements of GaN/AlGaN structures. We investigate the transport characteristics of AlGaN/GaN high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT), transmission lines model (TLM), and interdigitated finger (IDF) structures as functions of geometry, temperature, and operating conditions. In the transport measurements of HEMT structure at 300 K, the pulsed mode operation attains higher value of the drain current in comparison to the continuous-wave operation mode of the relatively larger geometries which is typically related to the self-heating effect. Nevertheless, the pulsed mode operation transport measurements of the relatively smaller HEMT structures overlap and attain even lower drain current values than that of the CW operation mode measurements whose origin is attributed to the trap manifestation at low temperatures. The major part of the applied voltage on the symmetric IDF structure is spread over the contacts whilst less than 10 % will effectively be applied on the channel. Moreover, the transport measurements of 5 μ m long TLM structure at 7 K show a kink at 0.1 V which is originated from the onset of the optical phonon transit time resonance mechanism. The present investigations of AlGaN/GaN structures should be helpful to obtain terahertz amplification in the electronic devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ventricular septal defect with pulmonary atresia and major aortopulmonary collateral arteries is a complex congenital cardiac anomaly with a wide spectrum of anatomical variations. Akin to the same, the management options are also very diverse ranging from aggressive single-stage repair with unifocalisation to surgical palliation and/or staged repair and also heart transplant. There is no consensus on the best management option. This review aims at highlighting the various surgical options and proposing a management pathway suited for the subcontinent patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]