The curious saga of dehydrogenation/hydrogenation for chemical hydrogen storage: A mechanistic Perspective

Hydrogen Storage is an indispensable component of hydrogen based fuel economy. Chemical hydrogen storage relies on development of lightweight compounds which can deliver high weight percentage of H2 at moderate...

Indicated, Internet-based Prevention for Women With Anorexia Nervosa Symptoms: A Randomised Controlled Efficacy Trial (Preprint)

BACKGROUND While preventive interventions for eating disorders in general have shown promise, interventions specifically targeting individuals at risk for anorexia nervosa have not been evaluated. OBJECTIVE To determine the efficacy of a guided, indicated, Internet-based prevention program for women at risk for anorexia nervosa (AN). METHODS Randomized, controlled efficacy trial for women at risk for AN. Assessments at baseline (pre), post-intervention (10 weeks after baseline), 6-, and 12-month follow-up (FU). 168 women with low body weight (17.5≤BMI≤19) and high weight concerns, or with normal body weight 19<BMI≤25, high weight concerns and high restrained eating were recruited from three German universities as well as online, and randomized to Student Bodies-AN (SB-AN) or a waiting list control group (CG). Exclusion criteria were current DSM-IV full-syndrome AN, bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder, serious medical or mental problems, such as current substance abuse, acute or chronic organic or schizophrenic psychosis, severe suicidal ideation or behaviour, no Internet access. Interventions: 1. Cognitive-behavioural, guided, Internet-based prevention program (SB-AN) over 10 weeks (IG); 2. Waiting list control condition (CG). Primary outcomes were clinically significant changes in attitudes and behaviours of disordered eating, and change in BMI in the underweight group of participants at 12-month follow-up. Secondary outcomes are new onset of eating disorders, symptoms of disordered eating, and associated psychopathology. RESULTS Data were available at post-intervention for N=137 women, and for N=116 women at 12-month FU. At 12-month FU, IGs participants showed larger decreases in EDE Total scores (79% vs. 57%) compared to the CG, and underweight IG participants also showed larger clinically relevant increases in BMI (49% vs. 32%) compared with underweight CG participants, but these differences were not significant. In addition, at post-intervention and 12-month follow-up, we found a significant increase in continuously measured BMI for underweight participants and significant improvements in attitudes and behaviours of disordered eating (e.g., restrained eating, weight and shape concerns). At all time points, rates of newly emerging ED onset cases were (non-significantly) lower in the IG compared with the CG and reductions in DSM-5-based ED syndromes were (non-significantly) higher in the IG compared with the CG. CONCLUSIONS SB-AN is the first preventive intervention shown to significantly reduce specific risk factors and symptoms for AN and shows promise for reducing full-syndrome AN onset. CLINICALTRIAL ISRCTN70380261

Anesthesia and Intubation of 10-Day Old C57BL/6J Mouse Pups for Cardiothoracic Surgery

Murine surgical models play an important role in preclinical research. Mechanistic insights into myocardial regeneration after cardiac injury may be gained from cardiothoracic surgery models in 0-14-day-old mice, the cardiomyocytes of which, unlike those of adults, retain proliferative capacity. Mouse pups up to 7 days old are effectively immobilized by hypothermia and do not require intubation for cardiothoracic surgery. Preadolescent (8-14-day-old) mouse pups, however, do require intubation, but this is challenging and there is little information regarding anesthesia to facilitate intubation. Empirical titration of ketamine/xylazine/atropine dosage regimens to body weight indicated the response to anesthesia of 10-day-old C57BL6/J mouse pups of different weights was non-linear, whereby doses of 20/4/0.12 mg/kg, 30/4/0.12 mg/kg and 50/6/0.18 mg/kg, facilitated intubation of pups weighing between 3.15-4.49 g (n=22), 4.50-5.49 g (n=20) and 5.50-8.10 g (n=20), respectively. Lower-body-weight pups required more intubation attempts than heavier pups (p<0.001). Survival post-intubation was inversely correlated with body weight (65, 70 and 80% for low-, mid- and high-weight groups, respectively, R2=0.995). For myocardial infarction surgery after intubation, a surgical plane of anesthesia was induced with 4.5% isoflurane in 100% oxygen and maintained with 2% isoflurane in 100% oxygen. Survival post-surgery was similar for the three weight groups at 92%, 86% and 88% (p=0.91). Together with refinements in animal handling practices for intubation and surgery, and to minimize cannibalization by the dam post-surgery, overall survival for the entire procedure (intubation plus surgery) was inversely correlated with body weight (55%, 60% and 70% for low-, mid- and high-weight groups, respectively, R2=0.978). Given the difficulty encountered with intubation of 10-day old pups and the associated high mortality, we recommend cardiothoracic surgery in 10-day-old pups be restricted to those weighing at least 5.5 g.

INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP INDICES OF VELVET ANTLER PRODUCTION OF MARALS FOR THE PERIOD OF THEIR ECONOMIC USE

Maral breeding is a promising direction of animal hus-bandry in the Altai Region and the Republic of Altai. Breed-ing of highly productive maral stags is based on the proper organization of breeding work which is not possible without an accurate evaluation of individual and group indices of velvet antler weight. In this regard, the research goal is to study individual and group indices of velvet antler produc-tion of marals for the period of their economic use depend-ing on the age. It was found that the velvet antler weight increased by 6.3 kg over the entire study period, and there was a decreasing tendency of the productive index in thir-teen-year-old marals by 800 g. It was found that in the maral stag herd in 2021, the maral stag born in 2008 with velvet antler weight of 18.8 kg became the record holder. The main criteria for culling were decreased velvet antler production and fatness; the age of those animals was from eleven to fourteen years. In this regard, it was found that individual highly productive thirteen-year-old maral stags could consistently produce high-weight velvet antlers dur-ing the period of their economic use. To improve the quali-tative composition of marals, at breeding time, it is neces-sary to evaluate and select high-productive stags from six to twelve years old individually in dynamics and cull low-productive ones regardless of age.

Improvement of Polytetrafluoroethylene Membrane High-Efficiency Particulate Air Filter Performance with Melt-Blown Media

Polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) membrane filters are widely used in low-load application areas, such as industrial cleanrooms, due to their low initial pressure drop. In this study, melt-blown (MB) nonwoven was introduced as a pre-filtration layer at the front end of a high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filter to improve the filter performance of the PTFE membrane. Pre-filtration reduces the average particle size, which reaches the PTFE membrane and reduces the dust load on the HEPA filters. A comparative analysis of the HEPA filters by composite MB and PTFE was conducted. Regarding the MB composite on the PTFE, low-weight and high-weight MB composites were effective in increasing dust filtration efficiency, and the dust loading capacity of the PTFE composite with high-weight MB increased by approximately three times that of the PTFE membrane. In addition, the filter was installed on an external air conditioner in an actual use environment and showed a high efficiency of 99.984% without a change in differential pressure after 120 days.

PerFSeeB: Designing Long High-weight Single Spaced Seeds for Full Sensitivity Alignment with a Given Number of Mismatches

Background: Technical progress in computational hardware allows researchers to use new approaches for sequence alignment problems. A standard procedure is usually based on pre-aligning of short subsequences followed by proper comparison of neighbouring parts. For this purpose index files are created that store all subsequences (or numbers associated with them) and their positions within a reference sequence. Index files designed on subsequences of 32–64 symbols for a human reference genome can now be easily stored without any compression even on a budget computer. The main goal now is to choose a combination of symbols (a spaced seed) that will tolerate various mismatches between reference and given sequences. An ideal spaced seed should allow us to find all such positions (full sensitivity). By increasing the seed’s weight by one we usually reduce the number of candidate positions fourfold. At the same time longer seeds also reduce the number of signatures to be checked. Results: Several algorithms to assist seed generation are presented. The first one allows us to find all permitted spaced seeds iteratively. The results obtained with the algorithm show specific patterns of the seeds of the highest weight. Among the best seeds, there are periodic seeds with a simple relation between the period of a seed, its length and the length of a read. The second algorithm generates blocks for periodic seeds. A list of blocks is found for blocks of up to 50 symbols and up to 9 mismatches. The third algorithm uses those lists to find spaced seeds for reads of an arbitrary length. Conclusions: Lists of long high-weight spaced seeds are found and available in Supplementary Materials. The seeds are best in terms of weights compared to seeds from other papers and can usually be applied to shorter reads. Codes for all algorithms are available at https://github.com/vtman/PerFSeeB.

Deep-Learning-Based Stress Recognition with Spatial-Temporal Facial Information

In recent times, as interest in stress control has increased, many studies on stress recognition have been conducted. Several studies have been based on physiological signals, but the disadvantage of this strategy is that it requires physiological-signal-acquisition devices. Another strategy employs facial-image-based stress-recognition methods, which do not require devices, but predominantly use handcrafted features. However, such features have low discriminating power. We propose a deep-learning-based stress-recognition method using facial images to address these challenges. Given that deep-learning methods require extensive data, we constructed a large-capacity image database for stress recognition. Furthermore, we used temporal attention, which assigns a high weight to frames that are highly related to stress, as well as spatial attention, which assigns a high weight to regions that are highly related to stress. By adding a network that inputs the facial landmark information closely related to stress, we supplemented the network that receives only facial images as the input. Experimental results on our newly constructed database indicated that the proposed method outperforms contemporary deep-learning-based recognition methods.

Predicting High-Risk Groups for COVID-19 Anxiety Using AdaBoost and Nomogram: Findings from Nationwide Survey in South Korea

People living in local communities have become more worried about infection due to the extended pandemic situation and the global resurgence of COVID-19. In this study, the author (1) selected features to be included in the nomogram using AdaBoost, which had an advantage in increasing the classification accuracy of single learners and (2) developed a nomogram for predicting high-risk groups of coronavirus anxiety while considering both prediction performance and interpretability based on this. Among 210,606 adults (95,287 males and 115,319 females) in South Korea, 39,768 people (18.9%) experienced anxiety due to COVID-19. The AdaBoost model confirmed that education level, awareness of neighbors/colleagues’ COVID-19 response, age, gender, and subjective stress were five key variables with high weight in predicting anxiety induced by COVID-19 for adults living in South Korean communities. The developed logistic regression nomogram predicted that the risk of anxiety due to COVID-19 would be 63% for a female older adult who felt a lot of subjective stress, did not attend a middle school, was 70.6 years old, and thought that neighbors and colleagues responded to COVID-19 appropriately (classification accuracy = 0.812, precision = 0.761, recall = 0.812, AUC = 0.688, and F-1 score = 0.740). Prospective or retrospective cohort studies are required to causally identify the characteristics of anxiety disorders targeting high-risk COVID-19 anxiety groups identified in this study.

OPTIMIZATION OF THE UNIVERSAL ROTARY MODULE URM THROUGH ADDITIVE MANUFACTURING OF COMPOSITE MATERIALS

The article deals with the ongoing development of the universal rotary module URM 02. The high weight of the components from which the modules are assembled proved to be a significant problem. As well as the weight of the connecting parts that are needed to assemble the manipulator or robotic arm. Design changes have resulted in a reduction in weight compared to older generations of modules, but in order for the manipulator to function properly, further weight reduction is required. The article describes the procedure for lightening components by changing the material and the design changes that result from it. The original aluminium alloy was replaced by a continuous carbon fibres composite produced using CFR (Continuous Fiber Reinforcement) additive technology. Here you should describe the paper idea in short.