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Voluntary Knowledge Brokering to Promote Evidence-Based Nursing Practice: A Qualitative Study.

Knowledge brokering is a process of connecting knowledge producers with users to facilitate evidence-based practice through relationship building and information sharing. This descriptive qualitative study aimed to clarify knowledge brokering by nurses in Japanese hospitals. Twelve registered nurses in Japanese hospitals participated. They had over 5 years' clinical experience, including experience in conducting research, particularly staff research, and education. Data were collected through semi-structured individual interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The analysis revealed a central theme: continuous efforts to foster empathy among colleagues and spontaneously promote evidence-based practice: multifaceted brokering activities by clinical nurses. Findings identified 10 categories categorized into four interconnected gears: establishing the foundational ground, assessing clinical needs and staff readiness, tailoring and diffusing evidence, and sustaining and evolving evidence-based practice. Even nurses without formal titles voluntarily bridged the research-practice gap, providing new insights into informal brokering. Brokers communicated considerately, balanced evidence with clinical context, negotiated practical compromises, and fostered staff research competency.

Humans

Trade-offs in avian parental care: a review of theory and meta-analysis of brood size manipulations.

The selective forces shaping parental care have been studied for over 50 years. While theoretical and experimental work has yielded qualitative progress, the large body of empirical work testing predictions about parental investment based on life-history trade-offs has yet to be synthesized. We first provide an overview of the core life-history theory exploring how selection might shape parental care. We then conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis on studies that experimentally manipulated brood size in birds, a widely used experimental approach to manipulate parental investment. We extracted 313 estimates from 62 studies representing 31 species of birds from 19 different families and tested key predictions on trade-offs in parental care derived from theory. Our analysis provides strong support for some predictions about life-history trade-offs in parental care, but weak or equivocal support for others. Specifically, we found that overall, avian parents respond to brood size manipulations as predicted by life-history theory: they increased care in response to brood enlargement, and decreased care in response to brood reductions. Furthermore, for the same relative manipulation size, responses to brood reductions were greater than responses to brood enlargements. This finding is consistent with predictions derived from life-history theory based on some types of non-linear utility curves. However, many predictions derived from theory are not well supported by our comparative analysis. Species' life-history traits such as clutch size (a measure of current reproduction), adult survival, and broods per year (two measures of future reproduction), explained little, if any, among-species variation in response to brood size manipulations. Several factors may explain this. We highlight that brood size manipulations may affect more than just perception of the value of current reproduction, such as altering parents' perception of predation risk. Importantly, these unintended consequences could lead to asymmetric responses like those we observed. Other common experimental approaches - such as hormone manipulations, altering a partner's effort, and food supplementation - often affect multiple traits or fitness components simultaneously, or may involve cues that poorly match the evolved mechanisms guiding parental behaviour. Our review of both theory and experimental approaches suggests that there are multiple opportunities for more precise experiments. We offer several recommendations for effective designs. One is improved understanding of the biology underlying the functions relating to costs and benefits, with careful consideration of not only how the manipulation will affect only one of those, but also the mechanisms that might alter how parents perceive the manipulation. We also emphasize general principles, such as assessing alternative hypotheses and devising multiple independent tests. Armed with these recommendations, we believe there are new opportunities to increase the strength of inference achieved from studies aimed at understanding the trade-offs affecting the evolution of parental care.

Animals

Adaptive Sports Exposure Across Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Residency and Sports Medicine Fellowship Programs: A National Cross-Sectional Website Analysis.

Adaptive sports improve health and quality of life for people with disabilities, yet the extent of adaptive sports exposure in physical medicine and rehabilitation (PM&R) training is unclear. This cross-sectional study reviewed the public websites of 115 accredited physical medicine and rehabilitation residency programs and 26 sports medicine fellowship programs for any mention of adaptive sports, characterizing exposure type, target populations, and associated program characteristics. Adaptive sports were mentioned by 32 residency programs (27.8%) and 8 fellowship programs (30.8%). Mention varied significantly by geographic region in both cohorts (residency, West 64% vs. South 19%, P=.017; fellowship, Midwest 80% vs. South 0%, P=.035) and, among residencies, was associated with larger program size and a greater number of associated subspecialty fellowships. Residency exposure was predominantly volunteer-based, whereas fellowship exposure was exclusively clinical or undisclosed; target populations served were frequently unspecified. Programs have an opportunity to expand structured adaptive sports training and to clearly convey these opportunities to applicants and patients.

Adaptive sports

"Orphaned bereavement": Toward a public health model for bereavement.

Bereavement is increasingly recognized as a public health concern, yet support systems in many welfare states continue to allocate support according to the circumstances of death rather than the functional needs of bereaved families. Existing bereavement frameworks have substantially advanced understanding of social recognition and public legitimacy but provide more limited guidance for understanding how institutional responsibility for bereaved families is organized. using Israel as a bereavement-saturated case, this study introduces the concept of orphaned bereavement to describe bereavement in which no institution holds clearly defined and continuing responsibility for identifying needs, coordinating support, and ensuring continuity of care. Drawing on 25 semi-structured interviews with five bereaved family members and 20 professionals, analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, the analysis generated three interrelated themes: institutionalized invisibility and unequal recognition; reorganizing life in the absence of institutional support; and pathways toward a needs-based model of bereavement support. The findings extend existing theories of disenfranchized grief and grievability by introducing institutional responsibility as a complementary lens for understanding bereavement inequality and support a needs-based public health approach in which support is organized according to families' evolving functional needs rather than the circumstances of death.

Journal Article

Analysis of deep learning techniques in computer-aided diagnosis for meniscus injuries: a systematic literature review.

Meniscus informatics is a growing subject of study in the healthcare industry. One of the major hindrances to the healthcare system's transformation is obtaining knowledge and meaningful information from complicated, high-dimensional and diverse sources. Modern biomedical research, for instance, has seen an increase in the use of complex, dissimilar, poorly documented, and generally unstructured electronic health records, imaging, sensor data and text, even after many current techniques have been used to extract more robust and useful elements from the data for analysis. New efficient standards for building end-to-end learning models from complex data are therefore needed. Therefore, the current study aims to examine the most recent research on the use of deep learning techniques for diagnosing meniscus tears and recommend creating comprehensive and meaningful interpretable structures that might benefit the healthcare industry. We also draw attention to shortcomings and the need for better technique development, and we provide new perspectives about this exciting new development in the field.

Humans

Beyond risk factors: A capacity framework for cancer survivorship research.

Cancer survivorship research has identified numerous biological, behavioral, psychosocial, health care, and structural factors that influence recovery. However, these factors are typically studied as separate determinants rather than interacting influences. This commentary proposes available survivorship capacity as a unifying framework that explains how these diverse determinants collectively shape recovery and survivorship outcomes. Concepts from geroscience, health care delivery, rehabilitation, occupational therapy, and human factors science were synthesized to develop a conceptual framework of available survivorship capacity. The framework conceptualizes recovery as a function of the capacity remaining after competing health care and life demands draw upon survivors' finite physical, cognitive, emotional, social, financial, temporal, and health care resources. It generates testable propositions for measurement, intervention research, health care delivery, and implementation science while positioning available survivorship capacity as a common mechanism linking diverse determinants of recovery and identifying actionable targets for intervention. Available capacity offers a unifying conceptual framework for understanding heterogeneity in survivorship outcomes and intervention effectiveness while generating a research agenda for future survivorship science. Measuring and strengthening survivors' available capacity, while reducing unnecessary demands, may improve engagement in care, health behaviors, and long-term recovery.

Humans

Facilitating Thought Progression via a Gamified Mobile Application for Depression: Possible Mediators of Outcomes.

Mobile health interventions represent a scalable and accessible alternative to traditional therapy, which often is out of reach due to high costs and societal stigma. Rumination is considered a key mechanism of emotional disorders and represents a potential treatment target for digital health interventions. The current study investigated the role of rumination as a mediator of the reduction in depression and anxiety reported after the use of a gamified mobile app based on the Facilitating Thought Progression (FTP) framework. One hundred-one adults with mild to moderate depression were randomized to the FTP intervention or a waitlist control group and completed weekly assessments of depression, anxiety, and rumination over 8 weeks. Multilevel structural equation modeling revealed that reduction in rumination significantly mediated decreases in depression and anxiety in the intervention group but not in the waitlist condition. These findings suggest that the FTP app targeted rumination and further highlights its role as a critical target for interventions for depression and anxiety.

Adult

Walking Together: A Cross-Cultural Study of the Relationship Between Religiosity and Substance Use Disorder.

The literature suggests that religiosity is a protective factor for substance use. However, individuals with substance use disorder (SUD) may actively cultivate their religiosity during substance use. This qualitative study analyzed the perceptions and meanings homeless people attribute to their substance use trajectories and religiosity, as well as the potential connections between these two themes. The analysis was conducted based on the content analysis technique proposed by Bardin. A total of 40 semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 Brazilian and 20 Portuguese participants. The present study found that religiosity can play a role in the substance use trajectory and the development of SUD by offering a subjective sense of protection, serving as a marker for the need for change, or providing relief from the suffering associated with SUD. We discuss how homeless people with SUD experience religiosity and how religious aspects traditionally seen as protective in the literature, such as church attendance, may paradoxically become risk factors for these socially vulnerable populations.

Humans

A chromosome-level, haplotype-resolved genome assembly for the barn owl, Tyto alba.

Recent advances in long-read sequencing have enabled near telomere-to-telomere (T2T) assemblies across diverse taxa. However, avian genomes remain challenging due to numerous microchromosomes, small, typically < 20Mb, DNA molecules that are gene-, GC-, and repeat-rich. As a consequence, microchromosomes are often missing from genome assemblies. Here, we present a chromosome-level, haplotype-resolved genome assembly for the Western barn owl (Tyto alba). Using a trio-binning strategy with Illumina parental reads combined with PacBio HiFi and Oxford Nanopore Technologies data, we generated two phased contig sets. These were scaffolded into 40 linkage groups using a linkage map. Comparative analyses identified unplaced HiFi scaffolds corresponding to microchromosomes, which we integrated into six additional microchromosomes using long reads information. The two assemblies present 46 chromosomes, matching the karyotype of the species. They exhibit strong synteny between parental haplotypes, except for a &#x223c;38 Mb complex region on chromosome 7 containing nested inversions. This high-quality reference provides a haplotype-resolved and chromosome-level genome for Strigiformes, enabling fine-scale studies of structural variation and avian genome evolution.

Tyto alba

A Systematic Review of Lived Experiences of Receiving a Diagnosis of ADHD in Adulthood.

OBJECTIVE: With rising numbers of adults seeking and receiving ADHD diagnoses, understanding their first-hand experiences of the diagnostic process is key for sensitive support and service design. This systematic review collates, evaluates and synthesises the existing evidence-base on lived experiences of adult ADHD diagnosis. METHOD: Keyword searches of six databases generated 10,357 citations, which were subjected to a systematic screening process that identified 21 relevant studies. Findings were analysed using thematic synthesis. RESULTS: Analysis generated three overarching themes, elaborating how diagnostic experiences are shaped by adults' Relationship with Self, Relationship with Others, and Relationship with Systems. Personally, diagnosis was widely experienced as a pivotal identity event, triggering biographical reflection that could foster greater self-compassion, but also grief, anger and identity confusion. Socially, diagnosis facilitated interpersonal understanding and communication, but also exposed adults to stigma and introduced dilemmas about diagnostic disclosure. Systemically, adults experienced the diagnostic process as beset by barriers and delays, and reported highly variable access to post-diagnosis supports or treatment. CONCLUSION: Results suggest receiving an ADHD diagnosis in adulthood is a complex relational process that can be both validating and destabilising, with variation in experiences resulting from individual biographies, interpersonal resources, stigma climates, and service structures.

Humans

Exploring Primary Care Clinicians' Sexual and Reproductive Health Care Delivery to Male Adolescents and Young Adults.

INTRODUCTION: Despite existing guidance for adolescent sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care, male adolescent SRH care receipt is inadequate. Limited research has explored factors affecting clinicians' provision of SRH care to male adolescents, specifically. METHODS: This mixed-method study with 12 primary care clinicians included a brief survey assessing care delivery practices and confidence, followed by an in-depth interview to explore factors affecting SRH care delivery. RESULTS: Clinicians reported high confidence delivering male adolescent SRH care (mean &#xb1; SD: 8.31 &#xb1; 1.71 out of 10), but delivered only about half the recommended services (20 items out of 38). Factors influencing care delivery included gaps in education/training, assumptions about male SRH care, and behavioral constraints at various levels. DISCUSSION: Findings underscore the need to strengthen male adolescent SRH care by enhancing provider training, increasing clinic-level supports, and addressing structural barriers. CONCLUSIONS: Findings can inform strategies to improve the quality and comprehensiveness of SRH services for male adolescents in primary care settings.

Humans

Ancient DNA and Human Physiology.

Ancient DNA (aDNA) enables the reconstruction of chronologically sampled genomes from ancient humans, animals, plants, pathogens, and microorganisms, as well as environmental DNA, providing a record of biological changes through time. Improvements in short and degraded DNA extraction methods and low-cost sequencing now enable the generation of broad, cross-regional datasets that expand evolutionary analyses from past population demography to biological mechanisms. By tracking temporal shifts of allele frequencies, integrating functional genomics resources (e.g., gene expression, chromatin structure variation), modeling population demography to separate selection from genetic drift, and aligning genetic changes with archaeological, cultural, and climatic data, aDNA has the potential to link sequence variation to physiological function within their temporal and environmental contexts. In this review, we summarize illustrative case studies from aDNA research spanning complex traits, dietary adaptations, and responses to pathogens and other environmental changes, showing how human biology has evolved under multiple selective pressures through time. These dated signals help triage experimental work and expose mechanisms that are rare or absent in living cohorts. Although some challenges remain, such as geographic and temporal sampling disparities, limitations in data resolution and variant detection, and genotype-phenotype uncertainties, rapid methodological progress and stronger ethical frameworks are expanding what can be inferred, making aDNA a promising tool for refining physiological pathways, their timing, and their drivers.

Humans

Assessment and CommuniCation ExcelLEnce foR sAfe paTient outcomEs (ACCELERATE): A stepped-wedge cluster randomised trial evaluating the effectiveness of a nurse-led assessment and handover communication intervention on patient adverse events.

BACKGROUND: Patients continue to experience harm from undetected deterioration, falls and pressure injuries. We aimed to implement and evaluate an organisational, ward-level nurse-led assessment and communication intervention to proactively reduce patient adverse events. METHODS: A stepped-wedge cluster randomised Trial over 12-months was conducted at three metropolitan hospitals. Our intervention comprised a comprehensive, systematic patient assessment at shift commencement; a structured patient-centred bedside nurse-to-nurse clinical handover; and multidisciplinary communication consisting of nurse participation in medical ward rounds. Evidence-based implementation strategies informed intervention delivery to nine clusters (20-35 bed-wards with &#x2265;70% permanent nurses) over three sequential 14-week steps. Routinely collected patient-level data were used to measure intervention effect. The primary outcome was a composite measure of medical emergency team calls, unplanned intensive care unit admissions, in-hospital falls; and stage 2-4 pressure injuries. Secondary outcomes were: individual measures of the primary outcome; nurse-reported perceptions of safety culture; organisational readiness to change; barriers to physical assessment; staff engagement; and patient-reported experience measures of safety and overall hospital experience. Analyses were adjusted for age, sex, hospital, pre/post intervention, and Trial step (fortnight), with random effects for ward and patient. RESULTS: There were 13,753 eligible admissions. No change was observed in the primary composite outcome measure (odds ratio (OR) [95% confidence interval (CI)]: 0.99 [0.77, 1.28]; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.95). There was no significant difference in medical emergency team calls (OR [95% CI]: 1.02 [0.75, 1.39]; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.91); unplanned intensive care unit admissions (OR [95% CI]: 1.35 [0.57, 3.20]; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.50) and falls (OR [95% CI]: 1.53 [0.96, 2.45]; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.07). However, stage 2-4 pressure injuries significantly decreased by 41% (OR [95% CI]: 0.59 [0.38, 0.93]; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.02); a significant absolute effect improvement of 0.8% ([95% CI: 0.3%-1.3%], p&#xa0;<&#xa0;0.01). There were statistically significant improvements in nurses' overall perceptions of Safety Attitudes (Pre: 74.6, Post: 79.7; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.02), and the Organisational Readiness to Change subscales of, leader culture (Pre: 3.73, Post 3.91; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.02), leadership behaviour (Pre: 3.85, Post: 4.11; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.03), and general resources (Pre: 3.06, Post: 3.30; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.03). A statistically significant decrease in Barriers to Physical Assessment (Pre: 2.48, Post: 2.24; p&#xa0;<0.001) and in six of seven sub-scales was observed. Patients' overall Measure of Safety remained high, but unchanged (Pre: 3.94 Post: 3.92; p&#xa0;=&#xa0;0.07). CONCLUSION: The ACCELERATE Trial demonstrated that nurse-driven initiatives, emphasising structured physical assessments by nurses, patient-centred clinical handovers, and multidisciplinary communication, significantly: reduced pressure injuries; decreased nurses' perceived barriers to performing physical assessments; and improved leadership behaviour, communication, and ward safety culture perceptions. Results highlight the transformative potential of this approach, which now warrants testing at scale for broader implementation. TRIAL REGISTRATION: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ID: ACTRN12621000265875.

Humans

Review of regulatory requirements for benefit-risk assessment for medical devices: uncovering existing methodologies.

INTRODUCTION: A positive benefit-risk profile is a prerequisite for the market approval of medical devices. However, regulations are often criticized for providing limited information on benefit-risk assessment (BRA) despite growing expectations for quantitative methods. A clearer understanding of regulatory requirements, existing methodologies, and unresolved issues is needed. AREAS COVERED: Relevant regulatory documents referencing BRA for medical devices were systematically identified, with a primary focus on the European regulation followed by screening to extract BRA&#x2011;related requirements and any explicitly or implicitly described methods. The findings were analyzed and consolidated by BRA context, type, objective, methodological description, and implementation, thereby establishing a basis for the BRA methodological landscape. EXPERT OPINION: BRA is not a single concept, but a set of context&#x2011;dependent assessments across lifecycle of a medical device. BRA within clinical evaluation framed into BRAs of risk management holds a pivotal role and is supported by the most detailed methodological guidance, although BRAs in other contexts are important. A structured overview of existing BRA requirements clarifies their treatment across regulatory documents. By differentiating BRA contexts, types, objectives, and required methodological detail, the analysis supports a more transparent understanding of BRA and helps identify priorities for methodological refinement and interface clarification.

Risk Assessment

Perioperative care for patients with opioid exposure and opioid use disorder: screening and treatment strategies.

PURPOSE OF REVIEW: The prevalence of opioid tolerance, dependence, and use disorder is increasing among patients presenting for surgical care, yet perioperative management strategies for these patients remain inconsistent. This review examines the impact of preoperative opioid exposure on surgical outcomes, the scope of untreated opioid use disorder (OUD) among surgical patients, and advances in clinical and systems-level approaches to perioperative care. RECENT FINDINGS: Preoperative opioid exposure independently predicts worse surgical outcomes, including higher opioid consumption, readmissions, complications, and mortality, in a dose-dependent manner. Perioperative opioid exposure predicts persistent opioid use after surgery, with the duration of exposure a stronger predictor of subsequent OUD than daily dose. Data-driven prescribing guidelines and structured opioid tapering reduce overprescribing without compromising pain control. Among surgical patients with diagnosed OUD, approximately two-thirds do not receive medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD), though treatment engagement and maintenance substantially improve outcomes. Evidence now clearly supports perioperative buprenorphine continuation over interruption. SUMMARY: Effective perioperative management of opioid-complex surgical patients requires systematic screening, evidence-based prescribing, MOUD continuation, and institutional infrastructure. The primary barrier is shifting from evidence generation to implementation.

Humans

Impaired adaptation to smoke-derived phenolic compounds in Listeria monocytogenes CC204 from smoked salmon and trout.

Listeria monocytogenes is a major foodborne pathogen in ready-to-eat smoked fish products. This study evaluated whether clonal complex affiliation contributes to variability in growth responses to stresses representative of smoked salmon and trout processing. Ten strains were studied, including strains from CC121, CC26 and CC204, the three major clonal complexes reported in the French smoked salmon and trout sectors, together with the EGDe reference strain. Strains were exposed to salt, cold, smoke-derived phenolic compounds and combined stress conditions. Growth responses were compared with whole-genome-based phylogeny, and the impaired phenotype observed under phenolic exposure was further investigated using viable counts, live/dead microscopy and comparative genomics. Growth profiles were partly structured by clonal complex, with strains from the same clonal complex showing similar behaviour across stress conditions. Salt and cold reduced growth globally, while smoke-derived phenolic compounds were the most discriminating conditions. CC204 strains showed markedly lower growth rates under phenolic exposure than CC121, CC26 and EGDe. This phenotype was not associated with loss of cultivability or significant loss of membrane integrity. Comparative genomics did not identify a clear gene-content determinant explaining the CC204 phenotype. These results suggest that CC204 has an impaired adaptive response to smoke-derived compounds, likely involving regulatory or physiological mechanisms.

Listeria monocytogenes

Genetic diversity and recombination of&#xa0;NA-PRRSV field strains in Vietnam: Implications for vaccine efficacy.

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) causes severe reproductive losses in pregnant sows and piglets, resulting in substantial economic impact on the swine industry worldwide. However, due to the significant genetic diversity and rapid evolutionary changes of the pathogen, continuous surveillance and detailed genetic analysis of circulating strains are essential. The current study aimed to evaluate the genetic diversity of the hypervariable (HV) region of non-structural protein 2 (nsp2) among North American PRRSV strains isolated from swine farms in Vietnam. Phylogenetic analysis and multiple sequence alignment were conducted to determine subtype classification and assess genetic variability. A total of 48 field isolates were obtained, of which 12.5% belonged to classical NA-PRRSV, 16.6% to NADC30-like and 70.9% to HP-PRRSV, primarily distributed across sublineages 1.4, 5.1, 8.7 and 8.9. Amino acid comparisons found multiple insertions, deletions and substitutions at various positions within the hypervariable region of nsp2. The study revealed substantial genetic variation in the HV region of nsp2 among NA-PRRSV field strains, largely associated with recombination and immune escape. These findings highlight epidemiological risks to vaccine efficacy and underscore the need for continuous molecular surveillance to support effective PRRSV control in Vietnam.

PRRSV

Beyond Photometric Consistency: Addressing Loss Insensitivity to Depth Noise in Endoscopic Estimation via Error Calibration.

Self-supervised monocular depth estimation in endoscopy is fundamentally constrained by the ill-posed nature of photometric supervision. In this work, we identify a critical yet overlooked cause of this ambiguity: the inherent insensitivity of photometric loss to depth noise. To overcome this intrinsic limitation, we propose Depth Error Calibration Learning (DECL), a two-stage framework that suppresses prediction variance and mitigates residual errors in self-supervised depth estimation. In Stage I (Variance Reduction), a cyclic depth generation strategy produces multiple depth hypotheses for the input image. The per-pixel empirical variance is quantified and integrated into a dedicated variance loss term, which penalizes inconsistent predictions and encourages the network to generate more stable and reliable depth estimates. In Stage II (Bias Calibration), an image-conditioned diffusion model refines the Stage-I depth prior and mitigates structured residuals through iterative denoising, thereby improving geometric accuracy and global consistency. Extensive experiments on three public endoscopic datasets demonstrate that DECL achieves consistent improvements over representative self-supervised monocular depth estimation methods under the evaluated protocols. Moreover, ablation studies on two representative backbones indicate that DECL is not restricted to a single network implementation, while broader validation on additional backbone families remains necessary. The source code is publicly available at https://github.com/DavidLuBit/EndoDenoising.

Journal Article