PLoS ONE最新文献

Objective was to investigate the health practices and knowledge among quilombola woman in the 'Baixada Maranhense' region, to understand how these practices are transmitted, transformed, and integrated into well-being and community identity. |Qualitative study was conducted using a hermeneutic-dialectical approach in the Quilombola community of Estiva dos Mafras, Mirinzal, Maranhão, Brazil. Thirteen quilombola woman selected by snowball sampling until theoretical saturation. Data were produced semi-structured interviews period September-December 2024, audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The textual corpus was processed in software and thematically interpreted from a hermeneutic-dialectical perspective. Ethical approval was obtained in accordance with Brazilian regulations for social and human sciences research. Five major themes emerged. (1) Health promotion: walking, Zumba, and healthy eating anchored in community life and locally grown foods, alongside spiritual practices for emotional and psychological balance. (2) Intergenerational practices: dialogue as a vehicle for transmitting ancestral knowledge, alongside concern about its erosion, especially the decline of midwifery. (3) Integrative and complementary practices: extensive use of medicinal plants, teas, and "home remedies" combined with biomedical treatments, amid limited recognition by health professionals. (4) Agriculture and healthcare: family farming and extractivism as foundations for healthy eating, income, autonomy, and the inseparability of land, culture, and health. (5) Social movements and territorial legitimation: woman's leadership in community associations as central to securing rights, infrastructure, and territorial recognition. Care practices among quilombola woman articulate body, spirituality, territory, and ancestry, constituting powerful community health technologies that coexist, often tensely, with biomedical care. Strengthening intercultural, intersectional, and territorially grounded health policies requires recognizing quilombola woman as key political and epistemic actors and integrating their knowledge into primary health care and broader health promotion strategies.

Human perception of a surrounding environment comes from our senses. Among these, vision has been considered the most important but, nowadays, the hearing perception features are attracting even more the attention of researchers. This study, based on five soundwalks conducted in the university district of Milano-Bicocca, compared subjective emotional responses evoked by the soundscape with psychoacoustic parameters determined from binaural recordings. Furthermore, a focus group discussion conducted at the end of each soundwalk made it possible to explore participants' in-depth perceptions and to collect their accounts of everyday life in the neighbourhood, their geographical backgrounds, and their habitual and preferred soundscapes. From the survey analysis, a consistent preference emerged for green areas, which were also statistically clustered based on psychoacoustic indices, as well as the squares and the two sites most exposed to traffic, indicating alignment between subjective responses and psychoacoustic structure. Moreover, sites with comparable A-weighted sound pressure levels (dBA) elicited different perceptual evaluations: environments featuring water sounds were systematically perceived as less noisy, while the sites with the highest dBA levels were perceived either as chaotic or monotonous, depending on the listener's subjective interpretation and the perceived meaning of the dominant noise source. These results reinforce the hypothesis that sound perception is shaped by contextual and semantic factors, and cannot be fully captured by conventional acoustic metrics alone.

Albumin is one of the most abundant and physiologically important blood protein in horses due to its ability to regulate vascular volume and transport blood metabolites or drugs. Despite the importance of this protein, in Colombia there is no previous reference of the use of equine albumin in horses as a pharmacological therapy and there is no available any pharmaceutical preparation of this protein to be administrated in horses. This study aims to evaluate for first time the preliminary clinical response of healthy adult Colombian Creole horses after the intravenous administration of an equine albumin preparation, manufactured in Colombia. Equine albumin was prepared from the plasma of healthy horses and obtained through the modified Salting Out technique. The Standard Quality Characterization was carried out following World Health Organization standards which included physicochemical, sterility and hemotropics tests before being administered to the horses. Albumin was administered at a concentration of 5,334 mg per animal to 3 healthy horses that were clinically evaluated before, during and after albumin administration, recording different paraclinical and clinical parameters. After manufacturing, the equine albumin obtained fulfilled the quality characteristics to be administered intravenously. After the administration, the product did not generate any adverse reactions or adverse clinical alteration at the concentration used. During the clinical evaluation we were able to observe a plasma volume expansion. Results indicates the ability to obtain a high quality product that can potentially be used as a pharmacological therapy in horses.

Purpose: To examine recent nationwide trends in cataract surgeries and laser peripheral iridotomy (LPI) in Korea, and to assess their temporal association and patient-level characteristics influencing procedure patterns.

Methods: This retrospective cohort study used data from the Korean National Health Information Database. Individuals aged 65 years and older who underwent cataract surgery or LPI between 2016 and 2021 were analyzed. Primary outcomes included the annual volumes of cataract surgeries and LPIs, their temporal association, patient demographics, the proportion of LPI patients subsequently undergoing cataract surgery, and the interval to surgery.

Results: Cataract surgeries increased annually until 2019, declined in 2020, and rose again in 2021, whereas LPI procedures steadily decreased after 2017. A negative correlation was observed between annual cataract surgeries and LPIs (r = -0.657, P = 0.156), although not statistically significant. Among patients aged 65-74 years, the correlation was significant (r = -0.943, P = 0.005). Among those who underwent LPI, 92.1% subsequently received cataract surgery, with a median interval of 121 days between procedures.

Conclusion: This nationwide study demonstrated a temporal association and demographic characteristics underlying the recent increase in cataract surgeries and the concurrent decline in LPI procedures in Korea. Notably, most patients who underwent LPI subsequently received cataract surgery within a relatively short interval, suggesting a possible clinical shift toward earlier lens extraction in the management of angle closure.

Cyanoglobules are lipid droplets of cyanobacteria that share compositional and functional features with plastoglobules of plant chloroplasts. However, their roles in stress physiology remain poorly defined, particularly in filamentous cyanobacteria. Here, we characterize cyanoglobule dynamics and composition during nitrogen starvation in a non-diazotrophic derivative of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120. This experimental context enables analysis of sustained nitrogen deprivation in vegetative cells without the transient and heterogeneous effects of heterocyst differentiation and nitrogenase activity, while recognizing that the strain does not represent wild-type physiology. Nitrogen starvation induced striking morphological remodeling, including increased cyanoglobule size and abundance. Proteomic analysis revealed a cyanoglobule proteome enriched in homologs of the plant plastoglobule proteome as well as other redox regulators and isoprenoid metabolism enzymes, pointing to roles in pigment turnover and stress adaptation. Lipidome profiling revealed high levels of plastoquinone derivatives and other prenyl-lipid species. Collectively, our findings establish cyanoglobules as dynamic and stress-responsive compartments associated with redox and lipid remodeling during nutrient limitation. By leveraging a non-diazotrophic and comparative analysis, we show that key features of cyanoglobule formation and composition are observed independently of heterocyst differentiation and parallel those described in other cyanobacterial species and plant plastoglobules.

Research shows that when seeking information about others, people prioritize information about warmth and competence. In those studies, target persons were adults. How might information-seeking priorities differ when that person is a child? In a pilot study (N = 303), topic modeling of free response data showed that participants expressed relatively less interest in children's (vs. adults') dispositions and greater interest in their temperament, health, and needs. In two subsequent experiments (N's = 241 and 717), participants were presented with adult, infant, or non-infant child target persons and rated their interest in obtaining specific information about them. Participants expressed relatively less interest in children's-especially infants'-warmth and competence, and greater interest in their physical health and curiosity. These results indicate that perceivers' inferential priorities differ when perceiving persons of different ages. Results are interpreted within a functional perspective on social cognition. Future studies might assess the generalizability of these results across social contexts, cultural contexts, and in elderly targets.

Objective: The aim of this study is to explore the moderating role of different affective temperaments in the relationship between Borderline Personality traits (BPT) and Mood Instability (MI) among a sample of Lebanese adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Lebanon in May 2025. An online survey that included the Mood Instability Questionnaire - Trait Short Form (MIQ-T-SF), Temperament Evaluation of Memphis, Pisa, Paris, and San Diego - Modified (TEMPS-M), and McLean Screening Questionnaire for Borderline Personality Disorder (MSI-BPD) was used to collect data.

Results: A total of 872 participants completed the survey, with 66.9% being females and a mean age of 26.97 years. The interactions between borderline personality traits and depressive/cyclothymic/hyperthymic/anxious temperaments were associated with increased mood instability. Higher borderline personality scores were associated with lower (Beta = -0.50; p < 0.001) and higher (Beta = 0.39; p = 0.016) mood instability scores at low and high levels of depressive temperament respectively. Higher borderline personality scores were associated with lower mood instability scores (Beta = -0.51; p < 0.001) at low levels of cyclothymic temperament respectively. At moderate (Beta = 0.67; p < 0.001) and high (Beta = 1.41; p < 0.001) levels of hyperthymic temperament, higher borderline personality scores were associated with higher mood instability scores. Higher borderline personality scores were associated with lower (Beta = -0.37; p = 0.008) and higher (Beta = 0.40; p = 0.012) mood instability scores at low and high levels of anxious temperament respectively. The irritable temperament did not moderate the relationship between borderline personality traits and mood instability.

Conclusion: This study emphasizes the nature of the relationship between affective temperaments, BPT, and MI. These findings are especially important for the Lebanese population, threatened by a rising psychopathology prevalence.

Dialogue systems and conversational assistants are promising technologies given their general accessibility and appeal, but longer-term adoption often falters. Creating systems that engage users over the long term is a challenging design problem, largely because it depends on relationship formation between user and agent. Self-disclosure, or the act of revealing information about oneself, is a fundamental component of relationship building and maintenance between humans, and it has been shown to occur in interactions between humans and language-based systems as well. Disclosure on the part of users is an exceptionally rich source of information that has the potential to shape everything from user modeling to conversational experience design; however, that same richness makes interpreting disclosure difficult. Although some research has examined different sources of meaning such as topic and intimacy, the convergence of these sources of meaning under one umbrella has yet to be considered. We propose an ontology of self-disclosure with dialogue systems as a means to address this gap. The proposed ontology encapsulates previously explored dimensions of self-disclosure, such as topic and intimacy, as well as some additional novel layers of meaning, such as the separation of topic from the mental verb referred to in the disclosure (e.g., habit vs. preference vs. memory), in order to further discretize the separate dimensions of this complex phenomenon and make explicit potentially valuable sources of information for agents. We demonstrate an application of this ontology to instances of self-disclosure, drawn from real dialogues between users and a task-oriented conversational assistant, and examine the observed relationships between different dimensions of meaning. The practical implications of these findings, as well as the potential for further developing the ontology, demonstrate the usefulness and value of approaching self-disclosure as a multi-faceted, interconnected phenomenon.

Prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster) are a semi-fossorial rodent that are an emerging model in social neuroscience. Comparing laboratory-reared and wild-caught individuals is essential for understanding how environmental history shapes neural and sensory traits and for assessing the ecological validity of laboratory findings. Despite this, relatively few studies have taken this approach. We used auditory brainstem responses (ABRs) to compare ABR thresholds and ABR wave characteristics between laboratory-reared and wild-caught prairie voles. ABR recordings show that, similar to other semi-fossorial rodents, M. ochrogaster exhibit a hearing range of 1-46 kHz with peak sensitivity between 8-24 kHz in wild-caught and 8-32 kHz in laboratory-reared voles. However, wild-caught prairie voles displayed significantly lower ABR thresholds at 1, 4, 8, 16, and 24 kHz compared to laboratory-reared prairie voles. There were significant differences in interpeak latency between both tested groups, with laboratory-reared prairie voles showing faster interpeak latency responses than wild-caught voles. However, there were no differences in amplitude ratios between groups. Laboratory-reared prairie voles showed faster normalized latencies and higher relative amplitude of the binaural interaction component (BIC) of the ABR than wild-caught voles. There were no significant differences in ABR thresholds, interpeak latency, amplitude ratio, normalized latency, and relative amplitude between the sexes. These differences in auditory processing support the importance of integrating both wild and captive populations to advance comparative auditory research.

Complex III of the malaria parasite mitochondrial electron transport chain (mtETC) has been validated as an attractive target for currently used antimalarials. We previously showed that the main function of mtETC in blood stage Plasmodium falciparum is to regenerate ubiquinone, which serves as an obligatory co-substrate of dihydroorotate dehydrogenase (DHOD), an essential mitochondrial enzyme for pyrimidine biosynthesis. P. falciparum can be rendered resistant to all mtETC inhibitors by provision of a bypass mediated by cytosolic yeast DHOD, a fumarate-reducing enzyme. Malaria parasite mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) encodes only 3 proteins, each a component of mtETC. However, attempts to eliminate mtDNA in transgenic parasites expressing yDHOD have been unsuccessful, suggesting the possibility that essential function(s) other than the canonical redox reactions of the mtETC also require mtDNA maintenance. Here we have tested the hypothesis that Complex III serves the dual functions of processing imported mitochondrial proteins, as well as ubiquinone regeneration. We have generated transgenic lines that conditionally express mitochondrial processing peptidase a (MPPα), which is also a component of Complex III. Using these parasites, we have determined that MPPα is essential even when the need for mitochondrial electron transport is bypassed. MPPα knockdown also resulted in hypersensitivity of the parasites to proguanil, a drug that synergizes with mtETC inhibitors such as atovaquone. Pulldown with MPPα followed by proteomics revealed the association of multiple mitochondrially targeted proteins, in addition to all components of Complex III. These results are consistent with the suggestion that Complex III in P. falciparum serves both mtETC and protein processing functions in mitochondrial physiology.