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GLOSSAQUA: A global dataset of size spectra across aquatic ecosystems
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The dataset is available as Supporting Information in Data S1. Additionally, data and the R code used for data processing are available in Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14701391.Supporting Information is available online at: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ecy.70050#support-information-section .Author Contributions:
Zeynep Ersoy, Charlotte Evangelista and Ignasi Arranz contributed equally to the preparation of this dataset.Body size is a key trait in ecology due to its influence on metabolism and many other life-history traits that affect population and community responses to environmental variation as well as ecosystem properties. The size spectrum represents the relationship between abundance (or biomass) and body size, independent of species identity. Size spectrum parameters, such as the slope or intercept, have been applied extensively as indicators of ecological status across multiple ecosystem types. The GLOSSAQUA dataset includes data from mainly heterotrophic communities composed of single (e.g., zooplankton, macroinvertebrates, or fish) to multiple taxonomic groups (e.g., from primary consumers to apex predators, and phytoplankton to large zooplankton), across diverse spatial and temporal scales, from surveys in freshwater (43% studies), marine (52% studies) and brackish (5% studies) ecosystems. In total, we compiled a unique global dataset of 8459 size spectrum slopes or exponents, 5237 intercepts, and 4,497 linearity coefficients (i.e., defined by the R2 of the linear fit of the size spectrum) from 127 articles and gray literature (i.e., unpublished datasets). The current dataset aims to help identify the main drivers shaping aquatic size spectrum parameters at a global scale and contribute to cross-ecosystem comparisons. GLOSSAQUA can serve to explore questions such as factors influencing spatial and temporal dynamics of community size structure, comparing the response of community size structure between natural versus human-impacted sites, and comparing global patterns in different aquatic ecosystems. We encourage researchers, especially those from underrepresented geographical areas (e.g., South Hemisphere and Asia) to fuel this dataset in the future. The dataset is provided under a CC-BY-NC-S4 4.0 license, and users are encouraged to cite this data paper when using the data.Iberian Society of Ecology;
Programa Atracción del Talento. Grant Number: 2022-T1/AMB-24100;
Beatriu de Pinós program. Grant Number: E-OR609BP54221
A Review of Smart Healthcare: Concept, Drivers, Characteristics, and Challenges
No full textData Availability Statement:
No new data were created or analyzed in this study.Technological advancements driving smart healthcare transformation need new models and solutions for emerging technology challenges. The objective of this review paper is to introduce the concept of smart healthcare, identify its main characteristics, highlight the key drivers of its adoption (“Technological Advancements, Digital Citizen Societies, Shifting Models of Patient Care, Healthcare Workforce Shortages, Rising Costs of Healthcare Delivery, and Impacts of COVID-19”), and present the primary challenges associated with its implementation (“Reduced Human Interaction and Patient Monitoring, Data Accuracy and Reliability, Data Security and Privacy, Interoperability and System Performance, Ethical Concerns and Trust in AI, High Financial Costs”). The paper is written in simplified language to enable a wide range of healthcare stakeholders—particularly healthcare professionals with limited technical backgrounds—to develop a foundational understanding of smart healthcare. This knowledge can foster greater engagement in efforts to transform healthcare systems into smarter, more efficient models. Furthermore, the findings of this review may support future research efforts, especially those aimed at developing models or frameworks that facilitate the practical integration of smart healthcare beyond theoretical concepts, by offering a synthesized framework for SHC.This research received no external funding
Neural Correlates of Reward Processing: Impact of Individual Differences in Preference for Prosocial Interactions
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All stimuli, behavioral data, and the fMRI data with analysis codes will be available from the Brunel University London research repository (https://doi.org/10.17633/rd.brunel.29852201). Legal copyright restrictions prevent public archiving of the SRQ, which can be obtained from the copyright holders in the cited references. We reported how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all inclusion/exclusion criteria established prior to data analysis, all manipulations, and all measures in this study. No part of this study (procedures or analyses) was pre-registered prior to the research being conducted.Supporting Information is available online at: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/brb3.70776#support-information-section .Introduction:
There is an ongoing debate about the neural mechanisms and subjective preferences involved in the processing of social rewards compared to non-social reward types.
Methods:
Using whole-brain functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined brain activation patterns during the anticipation and consumption phases of monetary and social rewards (using the Monetary and Social Incentive Delay Task—MSIDT, featuring human avatars) and their associations with self-reported social reward preferences measured by the Social Reward Questionnaire (SRQ) in 20 healthy right-handed individuals.
Results:
In the anticipation phase, all reward types activated the dorsal striatum, middle cingulo-insular (salience) network, inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), and supplementary motor areas. The consumption phase primarily engaged posterior cortical areas. Higher preference for prosocial interactions (as assessed by SRQ) was associated with increased right posterior cingulate activity during monetary reward anticipation and enhanced activity in the left striatum and salience network activation during social reward anticipation. In the consumption phase, higher prosociality was associated with stronger activation in frontal regions, the dorsal striatum, and the thalamus for monetary rewards and stronger putamen activity for social rewards.
Conclusions:
Individual differences in social reward preferences, particularly prosocial tendencies, are associated with distinct neural activations during reward processing. These findings have potential implications for understanding altered reward processing in clinical populations.Funding: This research was funded by Brunel University of London, College of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences Doctoral Scholarships
Cost-Effectiveness of Community-Based Interventions for Hypertension Prevention and Management: A Protocol
Get PDFData Availability Statement: The data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.Introduction: Hypertension presents a global health challenge, contributing significantly to household and health system costs. While clinical effectiveness of hypertension interventions is well documented, evidence on the cost-effectiveness of community-based interventions remains limited. This review aims to evaluate the economic evidence of community-based interventions for hypertension prevention and management and compare cost-effectiveness estimates across diverse geographical and implementation settings. Methods: A systematic search will be conducted across databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature Plus, American Psychological Association PsycINFO, National Health Service Economic Evaluation Database, and Cochrane Central, covering literature up to January 2025. Grey literature and preprints will also be included. Eligible studies will be full economic evaluations comparing two or more community-based interventions, in any language. Two reviewers will independently screen studies using RAYYAN software. Quality assessment will be performed using validated checklists. A meta-analysis will be undertaken contingent upon the presence of adequate homogeneity in outcomes and methodologies. Discussion: This review will highlight cost-effectiveness estimates and identify methodological and subject-specific gaps in the literature which can provide comprehensive insights to inform policy decision on CBIs for HTN. While focusing on adult populations may introduce publication bias, this will be considered during interpretation. Systematic review registration: This review is registered under PROSPERO, Indentifier: CRD420246129.This work is part of the corresponding author’s PhD research, jointly funded by the NIHR Global Health Research Centre for Multiple Long-Term Conditions (NIHR203257) using UK Aid from the UK Government to support global health research, and Brunel University London
Elliptic anisotropy measurement of the f0(980) hadron in proton-lead collisions and evidence for its quark-antiquark composition
No full textData availability:
Release and preservation of data used by the CMS Collaboration as the basis for publications is guided by the CMS data preservation, re-use and open access policy (https://cms-docdb.cern.ch/cgi-bin/PublicDocDB/RetrieveFile?docid=6032&filename=CMSDataPolicyV1.2.pdf&version=2).Code availability:
The CMS core software is publicly available in our GitHub repository (https://github.com/cms-sw/cmssw).A preprint version of the article is available at arXiv:2312.17092v2 [nucl-ex], https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.17092 . Comments: Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/HIN-20-002 (CMS Public Pages). Report number: CMS-HIN-20-002, CERN-EP-2023-294. Journal reference: Nature Communications 16 (2025) 7990. Submission history
From: The CMS Collaboration: [v1] Thu, 28 Dec 2023 16:11:07 UTC (1,159 KB); [v2] Mon, 1 Sep 2025 15:29:10 UTC (1,192 KB).Despite the f0(980) hadron having been discovered half a century ago, the question about its quark content has not been settled: it might be an ordinary quark-antiquark ( q q ¯ ) meson, a tetraquark ( q q ¯ q q ¯ ) exotic state, a kaon-antikaon ( K K ¯ ) molecule, or a quark-antiquark-gluon ( q q ¯ g ) hybrid. This paper reports strong evidence that the f0(980) state is an ordinary q q ¯ meson, inferred from the scaling of elliptic anisotropies (v 2) with the number of constituent quarks (n q), as empirically established using conventional hadrons in relativistic heavy ion collisions. The f0(980) state is reconstructed via its dominant decay channel f0(980) → π + π −, in proton-lead collisions recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC, and its v 2 is measured as a function of transverse momentum (p T). It is found that the n q = 2 ( q q ¯ state) hypothesis is favored over n q = 4 ( q q ¯ q q ¯ or K K ¯ states) by 7.7, 6.3, or 3.1 standard deviations in the p T c ranges, respectively, and over n q = 3 ( q q ¯ g hybrid state) by 3.5 standard deviations in the p T c range. This result represents the first determination of the quark content of the f0(980) state, made possible by using a novel approach, and paves the way for similar studies of other exotic hadron candidates.SCOAP3
Search for production and constraints on the Yukawa couplings of light quarks to the Higgs boson
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Release and preservation of data used by the CMS Collaboration as the basis for publications is guided by the CMS data preservation, re-use and open access policy [122. CMS data availability statement, 10.7483/OPENDATA.CMS.1BNU.8V1W.].A version of the article is available at arXiv:2502.05665v2 [hep-ex], https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.05665 . Comments: Replaced with the published version. Added the journal reference and the DOI. All the figures and tables can be found at https://cms-results.web.cern.ch/cms-results/public-results/publications/HIG-23-011 (CMS Public Pages). Report number: CMS-HIG-23-011, CERN-EP-2025-007. Journal reference: Phys. Rev. D 112 (2025) 112001. Submission history: From: The CMS Collaboration: [v1] Sat, 8 Feb 2025 18:45:05 UTC (710 KB); [v2] Tue, 2 Dec 2025 20:25:19 UTC (628 KB).A search for production is performed with data from the CMS experiment at the LHC corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 138 fb^{−1} at a proton-proton center-of-mass collision energy of 13 TeV . The analysis focuses on the topology of a boosted Higgs boson recoiling against a high-energy photon. The final states of → ¯ and → 4ℓ are analyzed. This study examines effective and anomalous couplings within the context of an effective field theory. In this approach, the production cross section is constrained to be at 95% confidence level (CL). Simultaneous constraints on four anomalous couplings involving and are provided. Additionally, the production rate for → 4ℓ is examined to assess potential enhancements in the Yukawa couplings between light quarks and the Higgs boson. Assuming the standard model values for the Yukawa couplings of the bottom and top quarks, the following simultaneous constraints are obtained: =(0.0 ±1.5) ×103, =(0.0+6.7) ×102, =0+30−32, and =0.0+2.3−2.8. This rules out the hypothesis that up- or down-type quarks in the first or second generation have the same Yukawa couplings as those in the third generation, with a CL greater than 95%.SCOAP3
Exploring household waste management behavior through the stimulus-organism-response model
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The datasets used in the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Waste is one of the most pressing global issues that demands urgent action and innovative solutions, this problem growing and requires increased attention. This study proposed a conceptual framework based on the stimulus-organism-response model, incorporating waste sorting knowledge, awareness, and environmental concerns to understand this issue. The proposed framework was tested with structural equation modeling (SEM), and the internal validity and reliability of the measurements and measures were evaluated with confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). This research use data collected from 131 household in Banyuwangi, Indonesia, using a purposive sampling. The results reveal that knowledge significantly influences awareness (β = 0.679, t = 8.232) and environmental concern (β = 0.105, t = 2.811). However, its effect on waste-sorting behavior (β = −0.053, t = −0.324) is not supported. Waste-sorting behavior is determined by environmental concern (β = 0.883, t = 3.37) but not by awareness (β = 0.342, t = 1.835). Furthermore, the findings confirm the full mediation of environmental concern in the relationship between knowledge and waste-sorting behavior. This study provide insight driven from stimulus-organism- response model and its implication in household waste management behavior research in developing country. This research offers several theoretical and practical implications, contributing to the existing literature and aiding practitioners in designing effective intervention campaigns to promote household waste sorting.This research is part of a System Analysis Approach to Reduce Plastics Waste in Indonesia Society project funded by UK Research and Innovation, Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), project reference NE/V006428/1
Insects as models to study burn wound infection and wound microbiome
No full textThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonBurns are one of the most common and morbid of injury types. It leads to a multitude of complications, of which burn wound infection is the leading cause of mortality among burn patients. Due to the complexity of burn wound trauma and infection it cannot be accurately studied in vitro. Currently available animal models are costly, high maintenance and strictly ethically regulated. We developed an insect-based burn wound model using wax moth, Galleria mellonella has recently been established. It follows many of the hallmarks of burn wound trauma seen in humans and mammalian models, such as increase in survival after the administration of fluid resuscitation which involves giving the patient intravenous fluids to restore the fluid loss during the burn wound injury, increase in mortality with the increase of the burn surface area and a decrease in survival after a topical burn infection. This model is affordable, easy to maintain and handle and has no ethical regulation associated with it. The G. mellonella burn wound model has a potential to reduce and replace the use of mice in burn research.
In this work, we established the G. mellonella burn wound model as a model for high throughput screening of probiotic bacteria. We showcase that application of both colonies and supernatant of Lactobacillus spp increases the survival in the G. mellonella burn wound model. Furthermore, we show that this model is capable of distinguishing between more and less therapeutically effective strains. The therapeutic efficacy was determined by comparing the effect of the treatment the wound with the probiotic bacteria on the survival of the wound infection in the G. mellonella.
Additionally, we characterise a new burn wound probiotic C. acnes using this model and propose the carbon source competition as a potential strategy to modulate and treat wound infections by showcasing the importance of the glucose availability effect on the virulence of P. aeruginosa PA14 infection in the G. mellonella burn wound infection model. Lastly, we characterise the transcriptomic response of P. aeruginosa PA14 and A. baumannii AB5075 in the G. mellonella burn wound infection model and in the G. mellonella injection model, showcasing multiple overlaps of this model with other animal models and the transcriptomic response observed in human associated models and clinical isolates.
The findings presented in this work not only further develop the G. mellonella burn wound model and establish it as a valid tool for high-throughput screening of burn wound probiotic treatments but also advance our understanding of the host-pathogen interactions in the burn wound infections which provides an alternative route to infection management. Furthermore, this research using G. mellonella will facilitate further replacement of the use of higher animals in research as well as facilitating more efficient mining for novel burn wound treatments
Factors Influencing UK Medical Students’ Choice of General Practice: A Systematic Review
Get PDFHow this fits in: The UK faces a projected shortage of approximately 15,000 GPs by 2036/37, with a declining proportion of UK medical graduates pursuing general practice. Previous research has identified various contributing factors but lacked a contemporary synthesis within a coherent theoretical framework. This systematic review examines factors influencing UK medical students' career decisions, finding three critical influences: curricula that inadequately represents general practice, a persistent negative hidden curriculum, and the impact of clinical placement quality. Our revised Bland-Meurer model incorporates these findings, providing a comprehensive framework to improve GP recruitment. This systematic review identifies the factors that shape UK medical students’ intentions toward general practice.Background: There are currently concerns about recruitment to UK general practice. There have been various efforts and approaches to increase recruitment to general practice, and we lack contemporary insights and knowledge about the factors that shape medical students’ career intentions. Aim: To identify and analyse the key factors influencing UK medical students' choice of general practice as a career pathway. Design and Setting: A systematic review of empirical literature about factors influencing career choice in UK undergraduate medical education synthesising both quantitative and qualitative evidence across UK medical education contexts. Method: We conducted a systematic review following the PRISMA guidelines. Systematic searches of seven electronic databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, ERIC, Web of Science, British Education Index, and EconLit) were conducted to identify primary research published from 1990-2024. The Bland-Meurer theoretical framework structured the analysis. Results: The systematic review identified 29 studies. Three critical factors emerged: (1) An educational disconnect between GP recruitment needs and medical curricula; (2) The persistent negative hidden curriculum experienced by students in various settings; and (3) The important role of authentic clinical placements and positive role models in challenging negative stereotypes. Conclusion: The findings from this review suggest that medical education structures and institutional cultures influence medical students’ decisions about general practice careers. Medical schools and policymakers can improve recruitment by addressing the educational factors that shape career choice. Increasing high-quality general practice exposure in the curriculum, actively countering negative perceptions of GP, and promoting positive GP role models are all crucial.CS is funded via the Industrial CASE Studentship award, a Doctoral Training Partnership supported by both the Medical Research Council and Optum. SPa is supported by the NIHR School for Primary Care Research (SPCR). StPe receives support as a National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Senior Investigator (NF-SI-0616-10103) and from the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration Oxford and Thames Valley. SdL is supported by the Wellcome Trust and the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research programme. CN receives support from the NIHR Health Services and Delivery Research (HS&DR) programme. JEM is supported in part by departmental grants. NWR and LPIS have no specific funding to report for this work
Novel cross-domain analysis of cyber-physical power systems using enhanced modelling and simulation techniques
Get PDFThis thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe modern power grid demands advanced modelling and simulation methods to address its evolving nature and increasing complexity. A critical focus is the appli-cation of cyber-physical systems (CPS) theory, especially with the rise of 5G, smart inverter-based resources (IBRs) and the prevalence of extreme weather events and cyber incidents. Research in cyber-physical power systems (CPPS) is pivotal for en-hancing grid reliability and resiliency by enabling for the design and analysis of future grid-applicable cyber technologies.
While power system and communication network simulators suffice in their re-spective domains, integrated analysis is required. Consequently, this thesis pro-poses a whole-system graph-based CPPS model that links reduced power systems with abstracted communication networks, enabling cross-domain analysis. A novel Cyber Node Importance Index (CNII) assesses the criticality of cyber nodes by con-sidering factors such as cascading failures and centrality measures. The CNII is applied on a GB-based CPPS model, demonstrating its applicability in identifying vulnerabilities and informing mitigation strategies for real and large infrastructure.
This thesis further details a methodology for the conversion of power system mod-els from offline to real-time to enable real-time testing and dynamic CPPS analysis under communication contingencies. Also, the architecture of a real-time testbed is proposed. This testbed aims to evaluate CPPS resilience to cyberattacks and com-munication disruptions, integrating power system simulation, communication emula-tion, control schemes and industrial control system (ICS) protocols.
Key contributions of the thesis focus on improvements in taxonomy, vulnerability analysis, offline to real-time power system model conversion and real-time testbed design, collectively advancing CPPS modelling and simulation approaches.UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), High Voltage Sub-station Services Ltd (HVSS) and Brunel University of London
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