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Testosterone Replacement Therapy in Hypogonadal Men with a Prostate Cancer Diagnosis: A British Society for Sexual Medicine Consensus Statement
Get PDFHypogonadism in men with a history of prostate cancer presents a complex clinical challenge, with longstanding concerns that testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) could potentially stimulate cancer recurrence or progression. This paper provides an up-to-date review of the evidence on the safety and efficacy of TRT, focusing on its use in key clinical scenarios such as active surveillance, post-radical prostatectomy, and post-radiotherapy. We examine the latest data on oncological safety, including risks of disease progression and biochemical recurrence, alongside the benefits of TRT in addressing hypogonadal symptoms such as fatigue, mood disturbance, and sexual dysfunction. The discussion also considers how TRT safety aligns with advancements in prostate cancer biology, including the saturation model, and how these insights are reflected in guidelines from major organisations such as the British Society for Sexual Medicine (BSSM), American Urological Association (AUA), and European Association of Urology (EAU). Gaps in long-term data and areas for further research are identified, underscoring the need for careful application in clinical practice. This paper emphasises a multidisciplinary approach in patient selection, rigorous monitoring protocols, and fully informed decision-making. By presenting a comprehensive review of the evidence, we aim to clarify the role of TRT in improving quality of life for men in remission from prostate cancer, while ensuring that oncological safety remains the highest priority
Cutting-edge synthetic strategies and interaction mechanisms in polymeric nanostructures: Bridging preformed polymers with polymerization-induced self-assembly
No full textRecent progress in nanosized drug delivery carrier design has immensely contributed to the development of next-generation smart healthcare facilities, offering enhanced solubility, prolonged circulation time, reduced toxicity to healthy cells and real-time monitoring. Among various materials, polymeric nanocarriers (PNCs) stand out due to the customizable properties of polymer molecules, which can further be tailored to fulfill specific requirements. This review provides a comprehensive evaluation of the different intermolecular interactions, such as hydrogen bonding, π-π stacking, electrostatic interactions, hydrophobic/hydrophilic interactions, and host-guest interactions, that influence the self-assembly processes during PNC design. It also explores a range of fabrication techniques for PNCs, including emulsion-evaporation, nanoprecipitation, dialysis, gelation, salting-out, supercritical fluid technology, coacervation, and molecularly imprinted polymerization. Additionally, the impact of experimental conditions on controlling the size of PNCs is analyzed in detail. The review further evaluates the process of polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) in conjunction with various polymerization methods, highlighting the potential for advanced PNC fabrication. Lastly, it discusses the prospects and challenges associated with PNC design, considering both preformed polymers and PISA methodologies
Multifunctional foams with oriented bimodal cellular structure and barbule-like surface fabricated by Bi-thermoplastic expanding microsphere mold-opening foaming
No full textThe growing demand for multifunctional lightweight materials integrating electromagnetic (EM) wave absorption, impact resistance, thermal insulation, and self-cleaning poses significant challenges due to structural and processing trade-offs. This study proposes a bi-thermoplastic expanding microsphere (Bi-TEM) mold-opening foaming (BTMOF) strategy to fabricate polypropylene/carbon nanotube/Fe3O4 (PP/CNT/Fe3O4) composite foams with oriented bimodal cells and barbule-like surface topology in a single step. The synergistic foaming of high- and low-temperature TEMs under mold-opening stress creates an oriented bimodal structure, while in-mold micro-template imprinting spontaneously constructs superhydrophobic surface microstructures. The oriented bimodal cells extend EM wave propagation paths, achieving a reflection loss (RL) of −47.82 dB and an effective absorption bandwidth (EAB) of 5.04 GHz using enhanced interfacial polarization and multiple reflections. The structure also enables 92.06 % impact energy absorption efficiency through progressive folding and reduces thermal conductivity to 0.0336 W/(m K) by phonon scattering. Meanwhile, the barbule-like surface ensures super-hydrophobicity (contact angle of 161.6°; sliding angle of 3°), rendering the foam self-cleaning attributes. This BTMOF approach overcomes traditional scalability limitations, offering a facile route to fabricate multifunctional foams for aerospace, defense, and wearable electronics sectors
Performance Measurement Systems, Organisational Learning, and the Sustainability–Finance Tension
No full textDrawing on organisational information processing theory, this study examines how manufacturing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in emerging economies use performance measurement systems (PMS) to manage the tension between environmental sustainability and financial constraints. Using two-wave survey data from 275 emerging economy SMEs and lagged financial performance data, we find that environmental performance mediates the relationship between both diagnostic and interactive PMS use and financial outcomes. Reconceptualising diagnostic controls as forward-looking tools, our findings challenge the traditional view of these systems as retrospective financial monitors by showing how they support the integration of environmental indicators into strategic decision-making. In contrast, while interactive controls foster sustainability-oriented learning and cross-functional dialogue, their overuse in financially constrained firms can reduce financial performance due to increased complexity and decision-making strain. These findings advance organisational information processing theory by introducing a contingency perspective on interactive controls, showing that their effectiveness depends on firm-specific constraints. The study also highlights a temporal misalignment between learning processes and the timing of financial returns in SMEs
TRANS-DEEP: an optimized deep learning framework for electricity theft detection in smart grids
Get PDFElectricity theft significantly impacts power utilities, causing financial losses and compromising system reliability. Traditional detection methods, such as manual inspections and basic comparisons, lack scalability and accuracy when applied to large datasets. This article introduces TRANS-DEEP, an advanced methodology that integrates sophisticated techniques to effectively detect electricity theft and overcome these limitations. The proposed approach includes data collection and preprocessing, followed by Variational Autoencoder (VAE)-based anomaly detection to identify irregularities in consumption data. The Adaptive Synthetic Sampling (ADASYN) method is employed for data balancing to address class imbalance, complemented by Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) for dataset enrichment. A Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory Network (BiLSTM) is used for feature extraction, capturing sequential and temporal dependencies. Finally, a Transformer-based model leverages self-attention mechanisms for effective theft detection by focusing on the critical features identified by BiLSTM. TRANS-DEEP was trained and tested to evaluate its ability to enhance detection accuracy and robustness, outperforming existing computer-based methods. The experimental results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methodology, achieving high accuracy rates of 94.66% for Smart Meter Datasets (SMD)-I, 96.34% for SMD-II, and 95.12% for SMD-III in detecting electricity theft
Maternal Decision-Making through Temporal Uncertainties: The Anticipatory Biopolitics of Vosoritide in Dwarfism Communities
No full textVosoritide, a biotechnological therapy designed to increase growth in children with achondroplasia, has introduced new pressures and bodily possibilities for families navigating this rare genetic condition. While debates around its use often centre on its efficacy as a non-surgical growth treatment for the most common form of non-lethal human dwarfism, far less attention has been paid to how the medication (re)shapes the temporal landscape of maternal decision-making, children’s bodily autonomy, and community dynamics. Drawing on qualitative interviews with mothers from UK dwarfism communities, comprising both average-stature and dwarf mothers, this research locates maternal decision-making within broader regimes of health governance, biosocial communities, and concepts of ‘good’ mothering. Conceptually, the article foregrounds how Vosoritide functions as a future-oriented health technology and a site of anticipatory biopolitics; governing decision-making through overlapping and complex regimes of temporality, maternal responsibilisation, and biosociality. Vosoritide emerges not only as a site of biomedical possibility, but also as a biopolitical discourse, shaping how mothers of children with dwarfism (re)imagine and manage their child’s body, future, and identity. In doing so, this research advances sociological scholarship by exposing the temporal and anticipatory ‘logics’ through which biopower operates in the governance of dwarfism
The spectrum of autoimmune disorders in chronic immune-mediated neuropathies
Get PDFIntroduction Autoimmune disorders frequently cluster within individuals, a phenomenon known as polyautoimmunity, yet its scope and implications in chronic immune-mediated neuropathies remain underexplored. Areas covered This review examines the association between chronic immune-mediated neuropathies and broader systemic autoimmunity to highlight the immunopathological mechanisms driving these associations, and clinical implications for diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. A comprehensive literature search was conducted using PubMed and Embase databases for studies published up to October 2025 employing terms related to autoimmune neuropathies, polyautoimmunity, and associated systemic autoimmune diseases. Expert opinion While autoimmune comorbidities in CIN are often viewed as confounding conditions for diagnosis, they may indicate a broader, systemic immune dysregulation. Adopting this perspective has direct clinical relevance. Proactive screening for associated autoimmune disorders is essential, as their presence can shape disease trajectory and modify treatment responsiveness. Furthermore, uncovering shared pathological pathways between CIN and these coexisting conditions may open avenues for therapeutic strategies that simultaneously target both neuropathic and systemic manifestations. To advance this field, future research may allow discovery of biomarkers that could stratify patients based on their distinct underlying immune drivers, which may pave the way for a precision medicine approach in this clinically heterogeneous population
Green solvents for the extraction and bioutilisation of metals from coal fly ash by Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense MSR1
Get PDFCoal fly ash (CFA), a metal-rich byproduct of coal combustion is produced in vast quantities and poses significant ecological risks. CFA also contains abundant technologically relevant metal oxides and trace metals, including rare earth elements (REE), often at higher concentrations than in primary ores. This makes sustainable recovery strategies a major industrial opportunity. Here, green solvent systems were applied to leach metals from CFA, and the resulting leachates were added to cultures of Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense (MSR1), a model magnetotactic bacterium that biomineralizes iron into membrane-bound magnetic nanoparticles (magnetosomes) and is capable of interacting with non-iron metals through adsorption and biomineralization. Eleven green solvents, including deep eutectic solvents (DES), were tested for extraction efficiency, with six showing performance comparable to a mineral acid control. Copper (Cu) emerged as the primary toxicant to MSR1, prompting selective precipitation with potassium ferrocyanide trihydrate (PFCT) to reduce its concentration. Cu-depleted lactic acid-based leachates supported MSR1 growth and magnetosome formation even without supplemented iron. Nano-XRF and ICP-MS analysis revealed MSR1 interacts with CFA-derived metals, most significantly showing that produced CFA magnetosomes contained a 5.3–6.1-fold increase in Cu compared to controls. As Cu is both a growth inhibitor and a target pollutant, these findings suggest MSR1 may bioaccumulate Cu within magnetosomes as a detoxification strategy. Overall, this study demonstrates a combined chemical–biological route for CFA valorisation, enabling recovery of diverse metals from waste while producing magnetosomes with distinct compositions
Toward a Multi-Layer Defence Framework for Securing Near-Real-Time Operations in Open RAN
Get PDFSecuring the near-real-time (near-RT) control operations in Open Radio Access Networks (Open RAN) is increasingly critical, yet remains insufficiently addressed, as new runtime threats target the control loop while the system is operational. In this paper, we propose a multi-layer defence framework designed to enhance the security of near-RT RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) operations. We classify operational-time threats into three categories—message-level, data-level, and control logic-level—and design and implement a dedicated detection and mitigation component for each: a signature-based E2 message inspection module performing structural and semantic validation of signalling exchanges, a telemetry poisoning detector based on temporal anomaly scoring using an LSTM network, and a runtime xApp attestation mechanism based on an execution-time hash challenge–response. The framework is evaluated on an Open RAN testbed comprising FlexRIC and a commercial RAN emulator, demonstrating effective detection rates, low latency overheads, and practical integration feasibility. Results indicate that the proposed safeguards can operate within near-RT time constraints while significantly improving protection against runtime attacks, introducing less than 80 ms overhead for a network with 500 User Equipment (UEs). Overall, this work lays the foundation for deployable, layered, and policy-driven runtime security architectures for the near-RT RIC control loop in Open RAN, and provides an extensible framework into which future mitigation policies and threat-specific modules can be integrated
Modeling the Synergistic Integration of Financial Geographic and Virtual Agglomerations: A Systems Perspective
Get PDFDigital technologies have transformed the spatial organization of finance. As a result, geographic and virtual agglomerations co-exist. In this paper, we model the synergistic integration of geographic and virtual agglomerations within China’s financial industry from a systems perspective. Using provincial panel data from 2011 to 2023, we develop an entropy-weighted coupling coordination model to measure the interaction between the two agglomerations. Furthermore, we employ spatial and convergence analyses to reveal their evolutionary characteristics. Our findings reveal three key results. First, financial geographic agglomeration shows an overall increasing trend, with regional levels ranked as follows: eastern region, northeastern region, western region, and central region. It exhibits significant positive spatial correlation and convergence characteristics. Second, financial virtual agglomeration also continues to strengthen, with regional levels ranked as eastern, central, western, and northeastern regions. Its convergence patterns display regional heterogeneity, and no significant spatial correlation is observed. Third, the coupling coordination degree between the two agglomerations has steadily improved nationwide and across all four major regions with convergent trends. By 2023, the eastern region has entered a stage of primary coordination, while the central, western, and northeastern regions remain in a near-dysfunctional state. In terms of driving patterns, most provinces are primarily driven by geographic agglomeration. Hunan, Hainan, and Guizhou are driven by virtual agglomeration, whereas Beijing, Anhui, Shandong, Guangdong, and Yunnan demonstrate a synchronized pattern driven by both agglomeration types. Overall, our findings highlight the systemic nature of financial agglomeration in the digital economy and enrich the theoretical understanding of financial dual-agglomeration synergy. They provide an analytical framework and empirical evidence for designing differentiated regional financial development policies
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