Scientific Research Research Articles

Biases in scientific research on bird biodiversity in central-western Argentina

ABSTRACT This study examines biases in scientific research on bird biodiversity in the provinces of San Juan and Mendoza located in drylands of central-western Argentina. We analyzed the amount, nature, and spatial distribution of research, identifying under- or over-represented topics and trends in sampling design. We found differences in research trends between San Juan and Mendoza, with studies clustered around a limited number of taxa, protected areas, and lower altitudes, highlighting important knowledge gaps. The accessibility and availability of publications, as well as their indexing in national and international databases, were also assessed. The findings reveal a limited and skewed database of temporally and spatially biased data. Furthermore, our results indicate that certain species, taxonomic groups, and IUCN conservation categories are over-represented in the literature. We underline the urgency of promoting primary data generation and focusing on less explored topics and regions. These findings provide valuable insights into research trends and priorities, suggesting the need for more balanced and comprehensive studies to inform conservation strategies in these arid regions. This review emphasizes the need to address these biases to improve understanding and conservation of biodiversity in central-western Argentina, with implications for arid regions globally.

28. CURRENT STATUS OF PARTICIPATION IN SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ACTIVITIES OF STUDENTS OF UNIVERSITY OF MEDICINE AND PHARMACY AT HO CHI MINH CITY

Background: One of the most important activities at universities among students is scientific research, especially with the development of science and technology nowadays. Objectives: To conduct a survey on the rate and readiness level to participate in scientific research activities of the students of the University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City and point out some related factors. Methods: Descriptive cross-sectional study on students of various majors at University of Medicine and Pharmacy at Ho Chi Minh City in the 2024-2025 academic year. We conducted a survey through an online questionnaire. Results: The study recorded 5.312 students taking the survey, showing that 31,08% of students “strongly agree” and 49,83% “agree” with the importance of scientific research activities among students. 90,05% of students had already known about scientific research activities, of which 22,2% of students had participated or were participating in a scientific research activity. Among the group of students who have known and have participated or are participating in scientific research activities, the most popular form of participation is "essays, topics for specialized subjects" with 23,10% of students participating, followed by “graduation thesis, Faculty-level research topics” accounting for 22,34%. Conclusions: Students highly agree with the importance of scientific research (80,91%), over 90% of students know about scientific research activities, but only 22,2% of students have participated or are participating in a scientific research activity, this rate varies between faculties.

Exploring pulse transit time as a potential indicator of blood pressure: a scientific inquiry

Non-invasive continuous blood pressure (BP) monitoring is crucial, especially in critical care settings. While pulse transit time (PTT) has been used for cuffless BP monitoring, it requires accurate detection of pulse waves at arterial sites, which can be uncomfortable for patients. Pulse arrival time (PAT), the interval between the ECG Q-wave and pulse arrival at a distant site, offers a potentially less invasive approach for BP estimation. However, the reliability of PAT as a BP indicator remains uncertain. This study aimed to evaluate the feasibility of using PAT as a continuous, non-invasive BP monitoring method. Data from 37 subjects, including PAT and BP measurements, were analyzed. Statistical analysis revealed a weak correlation (r = 0.17) between PAT and BP, suggesting that PAT may not be a reliable standalone method for BP measurement. These findings indicate that further research is necessary to address the limitations of PAT and explore its potential as a supplementary tool for BP monitoring in clinical settings.

In memory of Mark Widdowson

This section of the journal is dedicated to the memory of Mark Widdowson, a Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst in the field of Psychotherapy (TSTA-P), senior lecturer in counseling and psychotherapy at the University of Salford, Associate Director of The Berne Institute and Director of Manchester Psychotherapy Foundation. Mark Widdowson has made a great contribution to the development of transactional analysis, in particular to the development of research in the field of TA. He was an ambassador for scientific research, primarily on the effectiveness of using transactional analysis to treat depression. He encouraged and motivated many to invest their energy in popularizing scientific research on psychotherapeutic methods. In this section, we have collected the memories of Russian colleagues about Mark, as well as some of his works and recommendations.

Why Early Career Researchers Escape the Ivory Tower: The Role of Environmental Perception in Career Choices

As early career researchers, postdocs play an irreplaceable and crucial role in scientific research, especially in highly competitive fields. Given the importance of the postdoc community, it is essential to explore their engagement in the academic labor market. Employment in academic departments should be the ideal career choice for postdocs, but this is not always the case. In recent years, an increasing number of postdocs have chosen to leave the ivory tower, which is often the result of a dynamic integration of the work environment and individual cognition. This study is based on the public data from the “Nature 2023 Postdoc Survey” and empirically analyzes the predictive relationship between different dimensions of environmental perception and postdoc academic career choices, as well as whether there are differences in predictive relationships across various fields. Difference analysis suggested that males and those working in their native country tend to have greater satisfaction in their environment perception. Correlation analysis revealed that postdocs’ environmental perception is significantly and positively correlated with academic career choices. Regression results indicated that institutional environment, organizational environment, living environment, and support environment can all predict postdoc academic career choices, with significant disciplinary differences in these predictive effects. It is recommended that mental health, salary and benefits, job security, and professional training be focused on to improve the working environment for early career researchers. Additionally, it is necessary to increase inclusive support for vulnerable postdoc groups and enhance their expectations for academic careers.

Co to jest citizen science?

WHAT IS CITIZEN SCIENCE? A DISCUSSION ON THE ELEMENTS OF ONTOLOGY, EPISTEMOLOGY AND METHODOLOGY OF CS IN THE SOCIAL SCIENCES The primary goal of this article is to undertake a critical examination of the Citizen Science (CS) concept, with a specific focus on its comprehension, evolution, as well as its purported and observed role within the realm of social sciences. The authors formulate several research inquiries pertaining to: (1) the contemporary understanding of CS in science; (2) the mechanisms shaping CS as an increasingly recognised approach in scientific research; and (3) the feasibility of applying CS in research within social sciences disciplines. Methodologically, the analysis relies on an interdisciplinary literature review, further enriched by employing the method of critically deliberating with representatives across a broad spectrum of scientific disciplines, showcasing diverse European academic traditions. The derived conclusions shed light on prevalent narratives concerning the core of CS, the mapping of its practical implementation, and both the constraints and opportunities within the field of social sciences.

Magnetic resonance image denoising for Rician noise using a novel hybrid transformer-CNN network (HTC-net) and self-supervised pretraining.

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a crucial technique for both scientific research and clinical diagnosis. However, noise generated during MR data acquisition degrades image quality, particularly in hyperpolarized (HP) gas MRI. While deep learning (DL) methods have shown promise for MR image denoising, most of them fail to adequately utilize the long-range information which is important to improve denoising performance. Furthermore, the sample size of paired noisy and noise-free MR images also limits denoising performance. To develop an effective DL method that enhances denoising performance and reduces the requirement of paired MR images by utilizing the long-range information and pretraining. In this work, a hybrid Transformer-convolutional neural network (CNN) network (HTC-net) and a self-supervised pretraining strategy are proposed, which effectively enhance the denoising performance. In HTC-net, a CNN branch is exploited to extract the local features. Then a Transformer-CNN branch with two parallel encoders is designed to capture the long-range information. Within this branch, a residual fusion block (RFB) with a residual feature processing module and a feature fusion module is proposed to aggregate features at different resolutions extracted by two parallel encoders. After that, HTC-net exploits the comprehensive features from the CNN branch and the Transformer-CNN branch to accurately predict noise-free MR images through a reconstruction module. To further enhance the performance on limited MRI datasets, a self-supervised pretraining strategy is proposed. This strategy employs self-supervised denoising to equip the HTC-net with denoising capabilities during pretraining, and then the pre-trained parameters are transferred to facilitate subsequent supervised training. Experimental results on the pulmonary HP 129Xe MRI dataset (1059 images) and IXI dataset (5000 images) all demonstrate the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods, exhibiting superior preservation of edges and structures. Quantitatively, on the pulmonary HP 129Xe MRI dataset, the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by 0.254-0.597dB in PSNR and 0.007-0.013 in SSIM. On the IXI dataset, the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art methods by 0.3-0.927dB in PSNR and 0.003-0.016 in SSIM. The proposed method can effectively enhance the quality of MR images, which helps improve the diagnosis accuracy in clinical.

A personal account of the history of X-ray crystallography at the University of La Plata, Argentina.

Prompted by visionary political leaders and a flowering economy, the University of La Plata was founded in 1905, the third Argentinian university after the Universities of Cordoba (1613) and Buenos Aires (1821). Differing from the older universities, more prone to professional formation, the new university was oriented towards teaching and scientific research following western European academic tradition. Along with the university was created the Institute of Physics, the first of its kind in Latin America. To pursue the foundational plan, the university recruited distinguished German physicists, some of whom became the first directors. From the start, the institute became acquainted with Röntgen rays, their generation and use, initially for radiographic images and later in occasional diffraction studies. The first dedicated crystallographic X-ray diffraction laboratory was set up in the early 1970s, when it solved the first molecular structures. Soon the fascination brought about by a methodology that afforded the visualization of atoms, molecules and crystals lured the local and national physical chemistry communities. In close partnership with an equally oriented laboratory at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, and in collaboration with several physical chemistry laboratories from Argentina and the Latin American region, and also from Europe, we undertook studies on the crystal structures and physicochemical and spectroscopic properties of a wide range of materials, including inorganic, organic, bioinorganic, metal-organic, organic-metal, supramolecular, pharmaceutical, organic minerals and liquid crystals. The present essay is a personal account of the origin and development of structural X-ray crystallography at the University of La Plata and its impact on the scientific research of Argentina and Latin America.

A Compact Low-Frequency Acoustic Perfect Absorber Constructed with a Folded Slit

Tunable perfect acoustic absorption at subwavelength thickness has been a prominent topic in scientific research and engineering applications. Although metamaterials such as labyrinthine metasurfaces and coiling-up-space metamaterials can achieve subwavelength low-frequency acoustic absorption, efficiently realizing tunable absorption under uniform and limited size conditions remains challenging. In this paper, we introduce a folded slit to enhance the micro-slit acoustic absorber, effectively improving its low-frequency acoustic absorption performance and successfully achieving a perfect acoustic absorption coefficient of 0.99 at a thickness of only 3.1 cm. By adjusting just two parameters of the folded area, we can efficiently achieve a tunable resonant frequency ranging from 525 to 673 Hz and a tunable acoustic absorption bandwidth of 56.5% to 60.2%, simultaneously maintaining uniform external dimensions. Additionally, the folded-slit absorber demonstrates a broader acoustic absorption bandwidth at lower frequencies, enhancing broadband absorption capabilities in the low-frequency domain. These results hold significant potential for the design of highly efficient, thin and tunable acoustic absorbers.

Rational Engineering of a Dynamic, Enzyme-Driven DNA Walker for Intracellular Dual-Enzyme Activity Sequentially Monitoring and Imaging.

Monitoring enzyme activity is crucial in both scientific research and clinical applications. However, abnormalities in a single enzyme's activity can indicate multiple diseases, limiting the specificity of single enzyme activity monitoring in clinical diagnosis. We developed a dynamic DNA walker that can be sequentially activated by two enzymes, enabling the monitoring and imaging of both enzyme activities within cells. Initially, the DNA walker contains a site for apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease 1 (APE1). Upon APE1 activation, the DNA walker forms specific structures recognized and cleaved by Flap endonuclease 1 (FEN1). The temporal disparity between the activities of APE1 and FEN1 allows for the sequential monitoring and imaging of both enzymes, reducing the likelihood of false-positive results. To enhance local concentration and decrease reaction time, the DNA walk sequence was attached to the surface of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). The fruition of this endeavor will facilitate the investigation and advancement of multiple enzyme activity monitoring and imaging methods and technologies, while simultaneously broadening the domains of application for DNA nanotechnology.

Physics-guided deep learning for skillful wind-wave modeling.

Modeling sea surface wind-waves is crucial for both scientific research and engineering applications. Nowadays, the most accurate wave models are based on numerical methods, which primarily concern the wave spectrum evolution by solving wave action balance partial differential equations. These methods are computationally expensive and limited by incomplete physical representations of wave spectral evolution. Here, we present a deep learning-based wave model trained using observation-merged wave hindcasts. Guided by the physics knowledge that waves are either generated by local current winds or by remote historical winds, this method can directly model significant wave height, bypassing the need for wave spectral information. This feature engineering effectively reduces the complexity of model inputs and outputs. The resulting artificial intelligence method can model 1 year of global significant wave heights at a 0.5° × 0.5° × 1-hour resolution within half an hour on a personal computer, achieving higher accuracy than state-of-the-art numerical wave models.

Comparative analysis of stomatal pore instance segmentation: Mask R-CNN vs. YOLOv8 on Phenomics Stomatal dataset

This study conducts a rigorous comparative analysis between two cutting-edge instance segmentation methods, Mask R-CNN and YOLOv8, focusing on stomata pore analysis. A novel dataset specifically tailored for stomata pore instance segmentation, named PhenomicsStomata, was introduced. This dataset posed challenges such as low resolution and image imperfections, prompting the application of advanced preprocessing techniques, including image enhancement using the Lucy-Richardson Algorithm. The models underwent comprehensive evaluation, considering accuracy, precision, and recall as key parameters. Notably, YOLOv8 demonstrated superior performance over Mask R-CNN, particularly in accurately calculating stomata pore dimensions. Beyond this comparative study, the implications of our findings extend across diverse biological research, providing a robust foundation for advancing our understanding of plant physiology. Furthermore, the preprocessing enhancements offer valuable insights for refining image analysis techniques, showcasing the potential for broader applications in scientific domains. This research marks a significant stride in unraveling the complexities of plant structures, offering both theoretical insights and practical applications in scientific research.

International Society on Thrombosis and Haemostasis Clinical Practice Guideline for Treatment of Congenital Haemophilia-A Critical Appraisal.

Evidence-based clinical practice guidelines drive optimal patient care and facilitate access to high-quality treatment. Creating guidelines for rare diseases such as haemophilia, where evidence does not often come from randomized controlled trials but from non-randomized and well-designed observational studies and real-world data, is challenging. The methodology used for assessing available evidence should consider this critical fact. In formulating guidelines, it is essential to include treatment goals and patient preference. This paper comprehensively critiques, against this background, the recommendations of the ISTH clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of haemophilia. Each recommendation was critically reviewed against available evidence as well as existing guidelines and commented upon for its scientific validity, impact on clinical practice and access to care globally. The validity of the way in which the GRADE methodology was applied to existing evidence was also assessed. The critique provided shows that these recommendations have major limitations: they did not state treatment goals and contradict existing guidelines; opportunities for providing access to innovation were missed when the therapeutic benefits of the products approved in the last decades were not included. A major reason for this is the inappropriate adoption of the GRADE methodology without adaptations and without considering treatment goals and patient-relevant outcomes. These recommendations may mislead healthcare professionals, payers and governments and therefore cannot serve the patient community well. They setback the advances made in haemophilia care because they overlook important available evidence and do not guide clinical practice to contemporary standards.

Archive and library special collections as proxy data: reconstructing the American chestnut blight through digitized collections

This paper discusses the design and implications of a study that explored the potential for archives and library special collections to serve as historical environmental proxy data to support the reconstruction of the spatiotemporal spread of the American chestnut blight in Tennessee. By collecting, reconciling, and analyzing heterogeneous mundane primary source materials from 1904 to 1950, the major period of infection and tree loss, the case study reached beyond conventional evidence to ask new questions of nontraditional sources. QGIS and Python were used to reconcile and model nonstandardized and ambiguous natural-language keywords derived from these sources to identify trends and patterns that may not be evident from traditional document analysis. The paper argues that the contributions made by textual and visual information fragments found in these materials support an expansion of the term “proxy data” beyond what is currently understood as paleoclimate archives, i.e., physical, chemical, and biological materials preserved within the geologic record (USGS 2022). Such socially constructed records found in archives and library special collections offer additional qualitative and quantitative information about historical climate change to support modeling variable fluctuations over time. They can also provide a rich and dynamic context for the natural causes and human interventions that, in combination, act on the environment. However, the study also identifies significant limitations in the digital accessibility of relevant archival sources and a lack of specificity in their descriptions. These need to be addressed if integrating such source material into scientific studies is to become more widespread and scalable.

TENOR AS A MULTIMODAL REGISTER CHARACTERISTIC OF THE INSTAGRAM PROFILE (a compared analysis of Queen Rania’s official website and Instagram profile in Arabic and English)

Instagram is currently the object of linguistic research in various fields. For linguistic socio-semiotic research, Instagram is valuable, particularly for its multimodality. The methodological basis of the article is the theory of register, which is a tool of social semiotics. The article specifically examines Instagram as a subject of linguistic socio-semantic research and proposes a general methodology for analyzing the interpersonal function, using Queen Rania’s official Instagram profile as a case study. It explores this profile as a multimodal virtual situational context of communication, comparing it to official websites. As a virtual social context, Instagram provides its users with access to the implementation of three meta-functions: interpersonal, ideational and textual. The purpose of the article is to identify the relevant multimodal parameters of tenor of Instagram profiles and to compare them with websites in Arabic and English. Additionally, the article aims to describe the case characteristics of tenor of the official profile of Queen Rania of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan within the context of social semiotics. To describe tenor of the Instagram profile in comparison with the official websites in Arabic and English of Queen Rania, the following social parameters were stratified: social status, social role, and situational social role. The study has accomplished the following tasks: a review of current socio-semiotic research, which examines the functions of the language system in the context of their emergence; a consideration of M. Halliday’s provisions, which describe variations in language use as a combination of semantic resources influenced by contextual variations; and the practical multidisciplinary application of the theory of register. Additionally, the concept of “multimodal discourse” of Instagram as an object of linguistic socio-semiotic research is examined, and a general methodology for describing the interpersonal function of an Instagram profile as a multimodal virtual situational context of communication is proposed. The article employs various general scientific and linguistic research methods: a deductive method to identify tenor register characteristics as an expression of the interpersonal metafunction of an Instagram profile; a descriptive method, which includes external interpretation (to assess the influence of Instagram’s situational context on the interpersonal function) and internal interpretation. The method of semiotic decoding of visual information was applied for interpretation, and the comparative method was used to analyze the multimodal characteristics of websites in relation to Queen Rania’s Instagram profile. A qualitative method was used to describe the multimodal characteristics of websites in Arabic and English and Queen Rania’s Instagram profile. Additionally, a comparative method was employed to compare the multimodal characteristics of tenor of websites and Instagram profiles. Using the example of Queen Rania’s official profile, the possibility of highlighting the following multimodal parameters of tenor in the situational context of Instagram was demonstrated: visual semiotic (photo); multicultural language of social statuses; popularity; silence (absence of responses to comments); ability to assess a person of royal social status. Instagram is presented as a virtual semiotic space of emotionally significant signs, represented through verbal (text, hashtags), visual (photos), and video channels (short videos, reels). Socio-semantic analysis reveals that tenor, as the interpersonal function of an Instagram profile, is shaped by multimodal semiotic components, each contributing to varying degrees of interpersonal interaction within the communicative space. It has been proven that the components of the interpersonal function, as a register characteristic of tenor of an Instagram profile, include social stratification data and social activity as a variable component. As a register characteristic, tenor is dynamic and influenced by temporal, cultural, and situational contexts — the extralinguistic context in which Instagram’s multimodal meanings are created. The applied socio- semantic analysis of multimodal signs on Queen Rania’s profile revealed a correlation between the interpersonal and ideational functions. The most popular (tenor) hyper-themes (field), include ‘personal life, family, holidays, and children’ which are expressed through bright, emotional photos as multimodal resources. The color of the visual content serves both expressive and social functions, influencing the level of social interaction. The interpersonal, ideational, and textual functions of Instagram as a virtual situational context, with its registers as a configuration of semantic resources, are embodied by multimodal means, demonstrating the multimodality of Instagram registers as a combination of signs from different semiotic systems.

INTERNAL MARKETING TOOLS AS AN ELEMENT THAT RAISES ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITMENT IN MIDDLE HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS IN THE STATE OF HIDALGO, MEXICO

Objective: The objective of this research is to establish a diagnosis on the internal marketing of the Higher Secondary Education institution called the Center for Scientific and Technological Studies of the state of Hidalgo, CECYTEH, Plantel municipality of Agua Blanca, Hidalgo, Mexico with the purpose of visualizing areas of improvement in the organizational climate that contributes to strengthening the work commitment of the staff. Theoretical Framework: Marketing is the process by which companies create value for their customers and generate strong relationships with them. To reciprocate, capture the value of your clients (Kotler, 2013). Internal marketing consists of the design and development of activities similar to those of external marketing, which aims to motivate all personnel who constitute the most important of its assets, with the purpose of marking a competitive advantage over its competitors and achieving customer satisfaction. its clients and users. Method: A quantitative, descriptive, correlational, non-experimental and cross-sectional approach was used. Through a staff census, a Likert-type questionnaire was applied with 23 questions that covered the dimensions of: employee recruitment and retention; organizational development; internal communication; emotional commitment; normative commitment and continuous commitment. Results and Discussion: The results obtained showed areas of improvement in the areas of recruitment and retention, communication and continuous commitment, areas that according to authors such as Paredes (2022), Lucas (2022), Guamaní (2022), Mendoza (2020), González (2021) and Canales (2021) are significantly related to aspects such as commitment, satisfaction, performance and productivity of staff and that the better the organizational climate, the better performance in general, which would place the work environment as an element that Motivating human resources impacts the result towards the end client. Implications of the research: The review of the liteartua shows internal marketing applications especially in private institutions. This research aims to provide knowledge according to the local context and that could be replicated in other schools in the public educational sector with similar characteristics. Originality/Value: Its results provide valuable data on what happens in a non-profit Institution dedicated to the service of Higher Secondary Education, within one of the subsystems that belongs to the Public Sector.

Automatic extraction of fine structural information in angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy by multi-stage clustering algorithm

Unsupervised clustering method has shown strong capabilities in automatically categorizing the ARPES (ARPES: angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy) spatial mapping dataset. However, there is still room for improvement in distinguishing subtle differences caused by different layers and substrates. Here, we propose a method called Multi-Stage Clustering Algorithm (MSCA). Using the K-means clustering results/metrics for real space in different energy-momentum windows as the input of the second round K-means clustering for momentum space, the energy-momentum windows that exhibit subtle inhomogeneity in real space will be highlighted. It recognizes different types of electronic structures both in real space and momentum space in spatially resolved ARPES dataset. This method can be used to capture the areas of interest, and is especially suitable for samples with complex band dispersions, and can be a practical tool to any high dimensional scientific data analysis.

STYLISTIC MEANS OF IMPLEMENTING THE IDEA OF THE WORLD’S IRIDESCENCE IN PH.K. DICK’S “UBIK” IN THE CONTEXT OF TRANSLATION TRANSFORMATIONS

The article deals with the formation means of the idea of the world’s iridescence or illusiveness, its stylistic and translation aspects within the textual framework of Ph.K. Dick’s novel “Ubik” and its translat- ed version in Ukrainian. The relevance of the study is defined by general scarcity of current enquiries highlighting stylistic means of moulding the idea of the world’s iridescence in science fiction as well as translation methods of delivering it from English to Ukrainian. The purpose of this scientific inquiry is to identify the stylistic devices that play a role in the delinea- tion of ways in which reality may be reduced to tatters in comparison with a coherent state of things and to pinpoint the translation techniques of rendering the related contexts from English into Ukrainian. The top- icality of the study is determined by the paucity of relevant research focusing on the kernel of the prevail- ing theme in Dick’s “Ubik”, namely illusiveness of reality, and translation techniques and transformations that help adequately deliver the significant sequences from English into Ukrainian. It is argued that the idea in question being the core of the prevailing theme in Dick’s “Ubik” is at- tained by means of incorporating several ontological planes represented by mental constructs, or reali- ties, focalised through the perceptions and personalities of different characters of the novel. Contextu- al and text interpretation analyses enabled the authors to determine and interpret those semantic domi- nants that underpin the formation of the world’s iridescence effect in the novel, namely: “alternate reali- ties”, “dream as a variant of reality”, “changes in time and space”, “changes of forms of consciousness and existence”. It has been proven these dominants’ diegetic interrelation. The idea of the world’s iridescence in the novel is brought about by the literary work’s fluctuating plot convolutions stemming from seemingly incoherent planes of different sections of the novel: a mosaic of the primary diegesis together with several hypo-diegeses comes across as a kind of an ontic hazy maze building up to an overall effect of the world’s fluidity and oscillation. The method of stylistic analysis was applied to interpret stylistic phenomena inherent in the novel in relation to their contribution to the studied idea as those were found functioning in the relevant textu- al microcontexts and enhancing the aforementioned semantic dominants. It was esti mated that expres- estimated that expres- sive means and devices of stylistic syntax constitute four fifths of the whole researched corpus of units, thus playing a major role in the formation of the idea of the world’s illusiveness (those include aposiopesis, rhetoric questions, asyndeton, and nominative sentences) while expressive means and stylistic devices of stylistic semasiology prove much less numerous, accounting for a fifth of the units analysed (presented by metaphors, epithets, similes, antitheses). Among the typical translation methods, instrumental in the rel- evant textual sequences in “Ubik”, a share of lexical and semantic transformations equals 60.2% of the re- searched sets of translation counterparts, with modulation and specification being the dominant ones and logical synonymy, calquing and lexical compensation trailing behind. Grammatical transformations com- pose nearly two fifths (39.8 %) of the researched body of units, the most efficient ones being substitution and word order change. The results of the study enabled understanding the interaction mechanism of semantics of the leit- motif of a literary work, its stylistic representation and translation solutions of its delivery from English into Ukrainian. We envisage the prospects for further research in studying linguistic aspects of cross-cultural conveying symbolic significance of recurring narrative elements.

The impact of creatine levels on musculoskeletal health in the elderly: a mendelian randomization analysis

BackgroundMusculoskeletal health among the elderly emerges as a pivotal public health concern against the backdrop of a globally aging population. Creatine, popular within fitness circles, has emerged as a subject of scientific inquiry for its potential benefits on elderly’ musculoskeletal well-being. Despite extensive documentation of its effects on athletic performance, investigations into creatine’s long-term contributions to the musculoskeletal health of the elderly are comparatively limited. Utilizing publicly accessible genetic datasets, this study aimed to explore the potential causal link between creatine levels and a variety of musculoskeletal health markers in the elderly population, such as osteoarthritis (OA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), osteoporosis (OP), bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, bone mineral density(BMD), serum calcium levels, and reduced hand grip strength in individuals aged 60 and above.MethodsOur methodological approach was grounded in Mendelian Randomization (MR) analysis, with a primary emphasis on the Inverse Variance Weighted (IVW) technique, to explore potential causal links under specific assumptions and limitations inherent to MR analysis.ResultsA significant inverse relationship was observed between creatine levels and reduced hand grip strength in individuals aged 60 and above (OR = 0.64, b=-0.44, p = 0.01), suggesting higher creatine levels might be beneficial in maintaining hand grip strength. Conversely, analysis of other bone health parameters, including bone-specific alkaline phosphatase, bone mineral density, serum calcium levels, and conditions such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and osteoporosis, yielded p-values exceeding 0.05, denoting no statistically significant associations.ConclusionsThis study provides preliminary evidence indicating a link between creatine levels and decreased hand grip strength among the elderly, notably in individuals aged 60 and older. This finding is significant for understanding the potential impact of creatine supplementation on elderly Musculoskeletal health and underscores the need for evidence-based decision-making in nutritional supplementation. To robustly validate these observations, it is essential to conduct future randomized controlled trials with large sample sizes.

Research on Automatic Detection of Thesis Format Based on Rule Engine

With the increasing development of academic research, thesis writing and publication have become important ways to measure scientific research achievements. However, non-standard thesis formats not only affect the reading experience, but may also lead to a decrease in the evaluation of academic achievements. Therefore, this article proposes a rule engine based automatic paper format detection system, aiming to improve the efficiency and accuracy of thesis format review and reduce manual review costs. This system is built on the basis of the Office Open XML document specification, which formulates a series of format checking rules for the basic format requirements of thesis. Then, the rule engine conducts in-depth checks on the thesis based on the preset format specification, automatically identifies format problems that do not comply with the specification, and outputs a detection report. It provides modification suggestions to assist users in quickly correcting format errors.