RIFNET. A new agenda for the Irish family: messy realities & messier lives

© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1080/1081602X.2024.2321129This special issue introduces new research on historical approaches to the Irish family. The articles in this collection have grown out of the Reconstituting the Irish Family Research Network (RIFNET), an interdisciplinary research cluster of scholars working on the Irish family. Covering families and family life from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, the issue explores several themes, including marriage, divorce, and separation; queer families and queer approaches to the family; pets, kinship, and non-human families; sibling relationships and migrating families. The publication of this special issue provides a timely reassessment of meanings and experiences of family in Ireland, coinciding with the March 2024 referendum on the Irish Constitution. The articles in this collection stand testament to the rich diversity of family forms and family experiences in Ireland, both past and present, and chart new pathways to guide future research.Peer reviewe

Tissue factor pathway inhibitor and interleukin-1 receptor levels in COVID-19

© 2024. Thieme. All rights reserved. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1055/a-2315-8278The observation that SARS-CoV-2 predisposes patients to pulmonary immunothrombosis and venous thromboembolism (VTE), and furthermore, that the risk of VTE is directly proportional to the severity of COVID-19disease, has been recognised since early in the pandemic.1 Guidelines recommend the use of prophylactic anticoagulation in hospitalised patients with COVID-19, 2–4 yet despite this, trials report a VTE incidence of 6–10% with prophylactic and 4–8% with treatment-dose anticoagulation.5, 6 Amongst critically-ill patients with COVID-19, 28-46% of patients may experience VTE.7–9 The mechanism of thrombosis in patients with COVID-19 involves an excessive inflammatory response, that is manifested through an endotheliopathy, enhanced platelet activation and coagulation, and reduced endogenous fibrinolysis.7, 10, 11 Early on in the pandemic, it was recognised that common markers of coagulation, namely d-dimer, fibrinogen, prothrombin time, as well as platelet count, could be used to assess the severity of COVID-19 and help triage patients for admission, guide prognosis and assess the risk of VTE.12 Over time, other markers of thrombosis risk have emerged, that can guide prognosis and potentially guide therapy.7, 13–16 These include, inter alia, interleukin (IL)-6, von Willebrand factor (vWF) antigen or the ratio of vWF antigen to ADAMTS13, as well as markers of platelet activation, hypofibrinolysis and neutrophil extracellular traps. In this issue of Thrombosis and Haemostasis, Li et al. provide further insight into biomarkers of thrombosis in patients with COVID-19.17 In a retrospective analysis using two-sample Mendelian randomisation, they evaluated the relationship between 20 biomarkers in patients with COVIDThis19 of varying severity, including non-hospitalised, hospitalised, and critically-ill patients. Data from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) were analysed from 38, 984 patients from 37 studies with COVID-19 and from a GWAS meta-analysis of 9, 986 hospitalized COVID-19 patients from 22 cohorts and from 5, 101 and 4, 792 critically-ill COVID-19 patients from 15 and 14 studies, respectively. The main finding was that patients with COVID-19 had lower levels of tissue factor pathway inhibitor (TFPI) and lower levels of IL 1 receptor type 1 (IL-1R1). Additionally, patients with COVID-19 exhibited a trend towards lower levels of multiple coagulation factor deficiency protein 2 and increased C–C motif chemokine 3. Furthermore, patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had lower levels of plasminogen activator, tissue type plasminogen activator and Pselectin glycoprotein ligand 1. Finally, the authors confirmed earlier findings that critically-ill patients had higher mean platelet volume and lower platelet count. The authors provide information from a very large data set that appears to yield new insight into the mechanism of thrombosis and inflammation in patients with COVID-19. TFPI is the key inhibitor of the tissue factor-induced coagulation pathway. Findings in animal models indicate a role of TFPI in attenuating arterial thrombus formation, 18 and TFPI has also been implicated VTE including in patients with cancer.18, 19 In animal models of sepsis, coagulation in the lung was associated with decreased TFPI in the lung endothelium.20 However, prior studies evaluating TFPI in COVID-19 patients have shownconflicting results. Some small studies showed significantly elevated TFPI levels in patients with COVID-19, 21 which did not relate to disease severity, whilst others found reduced TFPI in patients with moderate to severe disease.22 Other studies have found increased TFPI associated with the severity of COVID-19.23, 24 Likewise, TFPI has been directly correlated with d-dimer levels, which were associated with high mortality, 21 whilst others showed an inverse correlation of TFPI with d-dimer levels.25 The finding of lower TFPI levels in COVID-19 patients by Li et al. supports the possible contribution of TF pathway activation to COVID-19 coagulopathy.22 Although about 10% of circulating TFPI is stored in platelets, the largest pool of TFPI exists bound to endothelial surfaces. Therefore, in light of the endotheliopathy associated with COVID-19, one would expect an increase in TFPI levels in those with severe disease. In addition, heparin infusion has been shown to displace endothelial TFPI resulting in a 2-4 fold increase in circulating TFPI levels, 26 and may explain the increased plasma TFPI reported in some studies in COVID-19 patients.21, 24 However, the reduced TFPI shown in the present study indicates that a procoagulant phenotype, without endotheliopathy, is prevalent in the majority of patients with COVID-19 patients. It is recognised that a subgroup of patients with severe COVID-19 show hyperinflammatory features, with increased circulating levels of cytokines, including IL–1 and IL-6, which are significantly upregulated in patients with severe disease and associated with adverse outcomes.27–29 IL-1 is a highly potent proinflammatory mediator, comprised of cytokines IL-1α and IL-1β, whose biological effects are predominantly mediated by binding to IL-1R1. Pharmacological blockade of IL-1R signalling, for example with anakinra, would be expected to lead to reduced inflammation, but the observed low levels of IL-1R shown in the study by Li et al. in patients with COVID-19 could explain the observed lack of significant benefit of anakinra in many COVID-19 studies.30 The antagonism of PSGL-1 by COVID-19 requires further investigation given the key role of PSGL-1 in platelet-leukocyte interactions and hence, the regulation of immunothrombosis at a cellular level. However, there are important caveats when interpreting the findings of the current paper. First, the timing of blood sampling was not standardised, and could have occurred at any stage of the disease. Second, treatment with prophylactic or treatment dose anticoagulation of hospitalised COVID-19 patients may have impacted on the results. Further, several patients were taking part in clinical trial interventions for COVID-19 with subsequent impact on the biomarkers measured. Finally, whilst the authors examine how genetic variants affect the outcome of interest i.e. thrombotic markers and suggest minimal horizontal pleiotropy, it is likely that there may still be undetermined associations. In particular, MR analyses provide estimates of associations over a lifetime and hence, how these markers relate to age-related changes in biomarkers of thrombosis is unknown. Indeed, whether they provide additive value, or could guide response to treatment, requires further assessment.Peer reviewe

LCADNet: A Novel Light CNN Architecture for EEG-based Alzheimer Disease Detection

© 2024 Australasian College of Physical Scientists and Engineers in Medicine. This is the accepted manuscript version of an article which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1007/s13246-024-01425-wAlzheimer’s disease (AD) is a progressive and incurable neurologi- cal disorder with a rising mortality rate, worsened by error-prone, time-intensive, and expensive clinical diagnosis methods. Automatic AD detection methods using hand-crafted Electroencephalogram (EEG) signal features lack accuracy and reliability. A lightweight convolu- tion neural network for AD detection (LCADNet) is investigated to extract disease-specific features while reducing the detection time. The LCADNet uses two convolutional layers for extracting complex EEG features, two fully connected layers for selecting disease-specific fea- tures, and a softmax layer for predicting AD detection probability. A max-pooling layer interlaced between convolutional layers decreases the time-domain redundancy in the EEG signal. The efficiency of the LCADNet and four pre-trained models using transfer learning is com- pared using a publicly available AD detection dataset. The LCADNet shows the lowest computation complexity in terms of both the num- ber of floating point operations and inference time and the highest classification performance across six measures. The generalization of the LCADNet is assessed by cross-testing it with two other publicly available AD detection datasets. It outperforms existing EEG-based AD detection methods with an accuracy of 98.50%. The LCADNet may be a valuable aid for neurologists and its Python implemen- tation can be found at github.com/SandeepSangle12/LCADNet.git.Peer reviewe

Transcriptomic Analysis Reveals Molecular Mechanisms Underpinning Mycovirus-Mediated Hypervirulence in Beauveria bassiana Infecting Tenebrio molitor

© 2025 The Author(s). Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Mycoviral infection can either be asymptomatic or have marked effects on fungal hosts, influencing them either positively or negatively. To fully understand the effects of mycovirus infection on the fungal host, transcriptomic profiling of four Beauveria bassiana isolates, including EABb 92/11-Dm that harbors mycoviruses, was performed 48 h following infection of Tenebrio molitor via topical application or injection. Genes that participate in carbohydrate assimilation and transportation, and those essential for fungal survival and oxidative stress tolerance, calcium uptake, and iron uptake, were found to be overexpressed in the virus-infected isolate during the mid-infection stage. Mycotoxin genes encoding bassianolide and oosporein were switched off in all isolates. However, beauvericin, a mycotoxin capable of inducing oxidative stress at the molecular level, was expressed in all four isolates, indicating an important contribution to virulence against T. molitor. These observations suggest that detoxification of immune-related (oxidative) defenses and nutrient scouting, as mediated by these genes, occurs in mid-infection during the internal growth phase. Consequently, we observe a symbiotic relationship between mycovirus and fungus that does not afflict the host; on the contrary, it enhances the expression of key genes leading to a mycovirus-mediated hypervirulence effect.Peer reviewe

An exploration of mindfulness during the Islamic prayer in British and Pakistani Muslims

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK limited, trading as Taylor & Francis group. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The present study employed a mixed-method approach to explore Muslims’ experiences of the role of attention and mindfulness during the Islamic prayer (i.e. salah). A total of 78 Muslim participants took part in the online study, of which 38 were UK-based and 40 were based in Pakistan. Four themes were generated from the qualitative results: (1) Salah is used to build and nurture a relationship with Allah; (2) Salah as a reminder of the big picture; (3) Salah helps lighten the burdens of everyday life; (4) Paying attention enhances the experience of salah. The quantitative results showed that prayer frequency, importance of paying undivided attention to prayer, and the religious orientation of quest scores positively predicted 36% (adjusted R2) of the variance in mindfulness during worship scores, F (3, 76) = 14.94, p < .001. The study has identified a number of psychological functions of the salah. The implications of these findings for research and theory within the field of the psychology of prayer are discussed.Peer reviewe

Influence of Spinacia oleracea leaf extract concentration on silver nanoparticle formation and evaluation of antimicrobial properties

© 2025 The Royal Society of Chemistry. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 3.0 Unported Licence (CC BY-NC), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/Plant mediated nanofabrication is a sustainable strategy for generating biocompatible nanomaterials with diverse industrial applications. Despite growing interest, there remain notable gaps in the understanding of the influence of plant extract concentration on the physiochemical properties of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), particularly regarding their size. Conflicting reports suggest an increase in AgNP size with increased extract concentration, and others suggest the opposite. To address this, this study explores the influence of varying Spinacia oleracea (S. oleracea) leaf extract concentrations on the physiochemical properties of AgNPs and their antimicrobial activity against Gram negative (Escherichia coli), Gram positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pyogenes) bacteria and Fungi (Candida albicans). Hence, our investigation encompasses persistent infection-causing microorganisms currently plagued with drug resistance issues. This study's findings will enhance understanding of this sustainable nanofabrication approach, highlighting AgNP's potential application as novel antimicrobial agents. Results confirmed spherical nanoranged AgNPs were synthesised, obtaining AgNP-2%, AgNP-3%, AgNP-4%, AgNP-7%, and AgNP-10% v/v S. oleracea leaf extract. Our analysis revealed a consistent trend of size reduction with increasing extract concentration: AgNP-2% (173 nm), AgNP-3% (211 nm), AgNP-4% (148 nm), AgNP-7% (120 nm), and AgNP-10% (109 nm). Regarding antimicrobial activity, the lower concentration AgNPs (AgNP-2% and AgNP-3%) showed no activity, while all the higher concentrations AgNPs displayed full inhibition of all tested microbes. In summary, our research emphasises the significance of plant extract concentration in optimising AgNP synthesis and size reduction. The demonstrated antimicrobial properties suggest promising applications in industries such as environmental (water purification), biomedical (wound healing, drug delivery), and agricultural (pesticides, water remediation).Peer reviewe

From Galaxy Zoo DECaLS to BASS/MzLS: detailed galaxy morphology classification with unsupervised domain adaption

© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/The DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys (DESI-LIS) comprise three distinct surveys: the Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey (DECaLS), the Beijing-Arizona Sky Survey (BASS), and the Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS). The citizen science project Galaxy Zoo DECaLS 5 (GZD-5) has provided extensive and detailed morphology labels for a sample of 253,287 galaxies within the DECaLS survey. This dataset has been foundational for numerous deep learning-based galaxy morphology classification studies. However, due to differences in signal-to-noise ratios and resolutions between the DECaLS images and those from BASS and MzLS (collectively referred to as BMz), a neural network trained on DECaLS images cannot be directly applied to BMz images due to distributional mismatch. In this study, we explore an unsupervised domain adaptation (UDA) method that fine-tunes a source domain model trained on DECaLS images with GZD-5 labels to BMz images, aiming to reduce bias in galaxy morphology classification within the BMz survey. Our source domain model, used as a starting point for UDA, achieves performance on the DECaLS galaxies' validation set comparable to the results of related works. For BMz galaxies, the fine-tuned target domain model significantly improves performance compared to the direct application of the source domain model, reaching a level comparable to that of the source domain. We also release a catalogue of detailed morphology classifications for 248,088 galaxies within the BMz survey, accompanied by usage recommendations.Peer reviewe

Eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing for survivors of life‐threatening medical events (Protocol)

© 2024 The Cochrane Collaboration. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.This is a protocol for a Cochrane Review (intervention). The objectives are as follows: To assess the effects of eye movement desensitisation and reprocessing (EMDR), a psychological intervention programme, on symptoms related to traumatic stress in survivors of life-threatening medical events. Secondary objectives: to evaluate whether the effects of EMDR differ according to the nature of the medical event (associated diagnosis or setting), measured outcome (post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, or quality of life), or intervention (online, face-to-face, group or individual sessions).Peer reviewe

Radio Galaxy Zoo Data Release 1 : 100185 radio source classifications from the FIRST and ATLAS surveys

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Royal Astronomical Society. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Radio galaxies can extend far beyond the stellar component of their originating host galaxies, and their radio emission can consist of multiple discrete components. Furthermore, the apparent source structure will depend on survey sensitivity, resolution and the observing frequency. Associated discrete radio components and their originating host galaxy are typically identified through a visual comparison of radio and mid-infrared survey images. We present the first data release of Radio Galaxy Zoo, an online citizen science project that enlists the help of citizen scientists to cross-match extended radio sources from the Faint Images of the Radio Sky at Twenty Centimeters (FIRST) and the Australia Telescope Large Area Survey (ATLAS) surveys, often with complex structure, to host galaxies in 3.6 m infrared images from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and the SpitzerSpace Telescope. This first data release consists of 100 185 classifications for 99 146 radio sources from the FIRST survey and 583 radio sources from the ATLAS survey. We include two tables for each of the FIRST and ATLAS surveys: (1) the identification of all components making up each radio source and (2) the cross-matched host galaxies. These classifications have an average reliability of 0.83 based on the weighted consensus levels of our citizen scientists. The reliability of the DR1 catalogue has been further demonstrated through several parallel studies which used the pre-release versions of this catalogue to train and prototype machine learning-based classifiers. We also include a brief description of the radio source populations catalogued by RGZ DR1.Peer reviewe

Decluttering Minds: Psychological interventions for hoarding disorder - A systematic review and meta-analysis

© 2024 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Background Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) is conventionally considered the primary intervention for Hoarding Disorder (HD), yet various psychological interventions have recently emerged. This study, pre-registered at Prospero (CRD42023427534), aims to comprehensively assess a range of psychological interventions, including CBT, for reducing HD symptomatology. Methods A systematic literature search using PubMed and SCOPUS identified 41 eligible studies comprising 47 samples (N = 1343). Risk of bias for RCTs was assessed using the Cochrane RoB2 tool, and methodological quality for all studies was evaluated using the Psychotherapy Outcome Study Methodology Rating Form (POMRF). Results Pre-post effects revealed a large reduction in HD symptomatology (g = −1.09), sustained at follow-up in 18 studies (g = −1.12, N = 588). Additionally, 8 Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) demonstrated a substantial end-of-trial reduction in HD symptoms compared to controls (g = −0.75). Meta-regression found no moderating effects for: demographics, medication use, number of treatment sessions, or study quality. Similarly, no differences were observed between group and individual therapy, therapy with or without home visits, or CBT versus other psychological interventions. Conclusion This study confirms psychological therapies are effective in reducing hoarding symptoms, while indicating no superiority for CBT. Despite the benefits, symptoms often persist above the clinical cut-off for HD, highlighting the enduring clinical challenges in achieving symptomatic remission. The findings underscore the need to address methodological limitations and possible age and gender bias in future research to enhance the efficacy and inclusivity of psychological interventions for HD.Peer reviewe