PeerJ

The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) recommends that publishers do not charge for corrections to published papers. Until late 2024 the Journal of Cancer levied a charge on authors (50% of the original article processing charge, APC) for publication of a correction. Herein, it was hypothesized this could disincentivize the discovery and removal of problematic data prior to publication, since post-publication discovery and correction would generate additional revenue. The correction charge policy at J. Cancer was rescinded in 2025, permitting a test of the hypothesis by comparing the prevalence of problematic image data in the journal before and after the policy change. Recently developed artificial intelligence (AI) tools afford the ability to screen scientific publications for problematic image data. As such, the 2024-2025 output of J. Cancer was analyzed using ImageTwin-AI, followed by human verification and annotation of identified problems. Of 754 papers analyzed, 510 contained image data. Of these, 95 (18.6 %) showed evidence of inappropriate image manipulation, with 19 papers (3.7 %) having images that overlapped with unrelated papers. The prevalence of papers with problem images was 20.3% in 2024, and 15.9% in 2025, suggesting only a modest impact of the policy change on pre-publication handling of such problems.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) remains one of the most aggressive breast cancer subtypes and lacks durable targeted therapies. Dysregulation of cell-cycle control, particularly through CDK4/6 signaling, is a defining feature of TNBC biology (Garrido-Castro et al., 2019). Extracts of Moringa oleifera have repeatedly been shown to induce G1-phase arrest in breast cancer models, yet the molecular basis of this phenotype remains unclear (Al-Asmari et al., 2015) (Gaffar et al., 2019). Emerging work on cross-kingdom regulation has raised the possibility that plant-derived microRNAs may, under specific conditions, interact with mammalian transcripts (Zhang et al., 2012) (Chin et al., 2016). Sequence shuffling for the negative control was performed with set.seed(42) to ensure reproducibility. Additional visualisations (nucleotide alignment and thermodynamic analyses) were generated using Python 3 (matplotlib v3.7). Here, we performed a high-stringency computational screen of conserved Moringa microRNAs against 30 genes implicated in TNBC pathogenesis using local sequence alignment. We identify a predicted high-affinity interaction between mol-miR156 and the human CDK4 3' untranslated region (3'UTR), characterized by an uninterrupted 12-nucleotide complementary motif that exceeds canonical mammalian microRNA seed requirements. These findings support the hypothesis that conserved plant microRNAs may exhibit latent structural compatibility with oncogenic human transcripts. While physiological delivery and functional repression are not demonstrated here, this work establishes a molecular framework for future experimental investigation into cross-kingdom RNA interactions relevant to cancer cell-cycle regulation. Impact StatementA high-stringency computational screen identifies latent molecular compatibility between a conserved plant microRNA and the human CDK4 oncogene, establishing a testable framework for cross-kingdom RNA interference in triple-negative breast cancer.

BackgroundIn microbiome research, differential abundance analysis aids in identifying significant differences in microbial taxa across two or more conditions. Statistical approaches used for this purpose include classical tests such as the t-test and Wilcoxon test, as well as methods designed to account for the compositional nature of microbiome data, including ALDEx2, ANCOM-BC2, and metagenomeSeq. In addition, methods originally developed for RNA sequencing data, such as DESeq2 and edgeR, have been frequently applied to microbiome studies. However, the use of these methods has been controversial. One area of concern is whether different modeling frameworks produce accurate p-values when the null hypothesis is true. ResultsWe evaluated eight methods across six publicly available datasets. Four permutation strategies were applied to generate data under the null hypothesis: shuffling sample names, shuffling counts within samples, shuffling counts within taxa, and fully randomizing the counts table. Methods based on the negative binomial distribution (DESeq2 and edgeR) produced p-values that were consistently smaller than expected under the null hypothesis. In contrast, methods that attempt to correct for compositionality (ALDEx2, ANCOM-BC2, and metagenomeSeq) tended to produce larger-than-expected p-values, even when only sample labels were shuffled, a permutation strategy that does not alter compositional structure. These deviations were dependent on dataset characteristics and permutation strategy, suggesting complex interactions between underlying data structure and algorithm performance. Generating data to follow the expected negative binomial distribution did not eliminate the tendency of DESeq2 and edgeR to exaggerate statistical significance. Although similar patterns were observed in RNA sequencing (RNAseq) datasets, the deviations were less pronounced than in microbiome data. In contrast, the classical t-test and Wilcoxon test yielded p-value distributions consistent with theoretical expectations across datasets and permutation strategies. ConclusionsThese results indicate that the performance of several widely used differential abundance methods can be problematic under null conditions and may affect biological interpretation. Our findings emphasize the importance of careful method selection and highlight the robustness of simpler statistical approaches for reliable inference.

Co-contraction--the simultaneous activation of opposing muscles--influences movement efficiency, joint stability, and motor learning. While consensus exists for EMG acquisition and processing, comparable guidance for quantifying co-contraction is lacking. This study evaluated the behavior and interrelationships of six commonly used co-contraction indices (CCIs) to develop practical recommendations for their selection, calculation, and interpretation. Synthetic EMG-like signals were generated and used to evaluate CCI behavior across a range of conditions that would be difficult to achieve experimentally. Based on their formulas and observed behavior, CCIs were sorted into three categories: shape-based, amplitude-driven, and temporal indices. Shape-based CCIs increase when two EMG signals have similar shapes, regardless of amplitudes. Amplitude-driven CCIs increase when activation is high in both muscles. Temporal CCIs increase as the duration of EMG overlap increases, regardless of signal shape or amplitude. Correlation analyses showed stronger associations within-category than between-category, supporting the proposed classification scheme. CCI behavior yielded three principal findings, each paired with a practical recommendation. First, EMG amplitude normalization techniques altered co-contraction estimates, and the effect varied by index. Researchers should therefore test whether their conclusions hold across normalization methods. Second, because CCIs differ in scale and theoretical maxima, their values are not directly comparable across indices. Comparisons should instead focus on relative trends interpreted within each indexs bounds. Third, each CCI category was sensitive to different EMG features (e.g., amplitude versus shape). The choice of CCI should therefore align with hypothesized differences in EMG signals - use shape-based CCIs when waveform similarity is of interest, and amplitude-driven CCIs when differences in activation magnitude are expected. These results provide initial guidance for selecting, calculating, and interpretating CCIs, and they establish a framework for testing the robustness of these theoretical findings using experimental EMG from diverse tasks, muscle pairs, and populations.

BackgroundPancreatic cancer is a leading cause of cancer mortality, and early recognition is challenging. To achieve early diagnosis using symptoms alone, we examined patterns across different stages using network analysis to derive clinically useful insights. MethodsSymptom variables from a de-identified dataset of 50,000 pancreatic cancer patients were analyzed. Stratification by stage was done, followed by bootstrap resampling to address imbalances across strata. Symptom networks were then constructed with nodes representing symptoms and edges representing conditional dependencies estimated via an Ising-style neighborhood selection approach implemented through L1-regularized logistic regression. Strength, betweenness, and closeness centrality indices were then calculated, and their stability was analyzed using the case-dropping bootstrap. Network comparison tests were done, and difference networks were analyzed. Spring-layout algorithm was used for visualization, with node size being the predictability (pseudo-R{superscript 2}), and the edge weight being the mean partial correlation magnitude. ResultsOn average, symptoms were present in about one out of four patients (M = 0.26). Weight loss and abdominal discomfort were the most prevalent of the symptoms, followed by jaundice and back pain. Network structures became sparser across stages with a decreasing number of edges and centrality indices. Jaundice emerged as the dominant hub in Stage I, but shared dominance with Weight Loss in Stage II. Node predictability (pseudo-R2) was effectively zero across all disease stages. ConclusionOur network analysis of pancreatic cancer symptomatology across stages revealed distinct patterns that may improve understanding of its clinical presentation and support earlier recognition.

Monomorium pharaonis is one of the many invasive ant species which can be found associated with the endosymbiont bacteria of the genus Wolbachia. The association of M. pharaonis ants with Wolbachia is still being studied but is already known for giving the colony a reproductive advantage. The present work aimed to use biodemography analysis to check the effect of Wolbachia in the colonies of M. pharaonis ants, regarding its reproductive potential and rate of fertility (fertility pace). We took advantage of Birch (1948) methods to assess the effect of the bacteria in the whole colony, using data of the Dryad project. We evaluated the mean length of the generation, its capacity to multiply and the intrinsic rate of increase (r) and if the presence of the bacteria favors the longevity of the colony. The results obtained in the present work confirmed our initial hypothesis that the presence of the endosymbiont bacteria Wolbachia increased the reproductive rates of M. pharaonis colonies. We also found that the employment of interdisciplinary approaches highly contributes to obtaining more accurate and quantifiable results. The application of this methodological approach, highly contributed to obtain more accurate and directly driven results. For example, colonies infected with Wolbachia showed higher intrinsic growth rate (r) and thus enlightening with a new methodological approach results already presented in previous research. This "new" methodological approach revealed itself as a new tool extendible to other ants colonies or even other species. The use of statistical and biodemographic formulas and the adaptation of classical demography concepts for the study of the growth and reproduction of ant colonies revealed to be very useful.

The potential usage of genomic open data can help us to understand patterns in biodiversity. They can also be helpful for identifying morphologically similar species. An example of taxon in which this can be useful is Nematomorpha, one of the less studied animal phyla, for which data has started to be available recently and where species identification can be hard. In this study, I planned initially to evaluate the usage of mitochondrial data for population analyses using an RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) dataset labelled as belonging to Chordodes fukuii. After surprising results using extracted sequences from the barcoding gene cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COXI), I evaluated species delimitation using a mix of a previously released double-digest restriction-site-associated DNA sequencing (ddRADseq) SRA dataset plus the RNA-seq one. PCA, R analyses through "adegenet" and ADMIXTURE confirmed the presence of two species in the RNA-seq dataset, which should be labelled as C. formosanus and C. japonensis; however, some individuals labelled as C. japonensis according to COXI clustered with C. formosanuss specimens or had some C. formosanus ancestry when more data was used, indicating potential introgression or incomplete lineage sorting. The study shows how previously released data can be used for evaluating species delimitation, potential previous demographic events and potential needs in DNA barcoding and genomics for avoiding future misidentification of morphologically similar species.

Noise pollution is an increasing threat to soniferous fishes, however, research on noise pollution impacts is limited to few species and rarely studied in situ. Red Drum (Sciaenops ocellatus) is an estuarine, fishery species that choruses during spawning. We tested predictions of the hypothesis that Red Drum alter sound production in response to vessel noise. We used passive acoustic monitoring in 2021 and 2022 at an estuarine inlet and Generalized Least Squares (GLS) models to assess vessel sound exposure levels over time (SEL) and other abiotic parameters on Red Drum chorus SELs. GLS models of daily crepuscular choruses indicated a >5% reduction in proportion to crepuscular vessel noise in 2021. GLS models testing influence of abiotic variables and prior vessel noise, predicted reduced chorus SELs proportional to prior noise SEL: ca. 5% and 3% of vessel SEL in 2021 and 2022, respectively. In some instances, SEL during vessel noise was lower than fish chorus SEL immediately prior, indicating instances when fish reduced chorus amplitude during vessel noise or fled the immediate area. In cases when SEL of vessel noise periods exceeded fish calling SEL immediately prior, it is not known if fish modulated calling amplitude because the portion of combined vessel noise and fish chorus amplitude from vessels is unknown. In peak spawning season (September-October) vessel noise was frequent, detected in >31% of recordings in both years and up to 100% of recordings on some dates. Observations of disrupted choruses and high vessel noise prevalence suggest spawning behavior may be impacted by abundant vessel noise.

BackgroundPacific saury Cololabis saira is one of the important food resources drawing attention for its recent rapid decline of catch. Their life cycle and embryonic development have been largely unknown. It is important to clarify how the habitat and reproduction of this species have been affected by the global changes of aquatic environment. ResultsWe obtained fertilized eggs of C. saira, by spontaneous spawning and artificial fertilization, and observed the embryonic development up to larval stages. Embryonic stages are documented with major periods of developmental events; cleavage, gastrulation (epiboly) and somitogenesis and organogenesis. Remarkably, segmentation of somites starts in the middle of epiboly, unlike other well-documented teleost species such as zebrafish and medaka. Morphological changes in larval stage up to feeding juvenile is also described. Growth speed of larval Pacific saury is dramatically rapid, in comparison to closely related beloniform fish such as medaka. ConclusionsIn comparison to medaka, early embryogenesis of saury proceeds slowly, although being followed by early onset of somitogenesis. This might be partly responsible for the rapid growth into adult (larger than 20 cm in body length) in only half a year. Further studies on embryonic development will uncover the molecular mechanisms underlying the characteristics of Pacific saury as an excellent source of nutrition and as an indicator of major environmental changes such as global warming.

Melanophryniscus moreirae is a diurnal species endemic to the high-altitude grasslands of the Serra da Mantiqueira mountain range, currently classified as "Near Threatened" (NT) by the IUCN. Knowledge about its distribution and natural history is fundamental for conservation plans, especially in the face of the threats of climate change. This study presents a new record of the species in the state of Sao Paulo, at an altitude of 1,904 m, expanding the known distribution in the southwestern portion of the Serra da Mantiqueira. In addition to fieldwork, a spatial and temporal review of data available on the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility) platform was carried out. The temporal analysis confirmed observation peaks in November, coinciding with the reproductive period, and an absence of records in the colder months, consistent with the species dormancy behavior. The study demonstrates that the integration of citizen science data, when properly validated, is an effective tool to fill knowledge gaps about biodiversity and assist in the monitoring of threatened species.

Dams can significantly alter natural riverine systems, but their impact on movement across rivers for most terrestrial vertebrates is poorly known. The completion of Glen Canyon and Flaming Gorge dams in Arizona and Utah (southwestern United States) profoundly changed the Colorado and Green Rivers and have altered habitat for many species. The common side-blotched lizard (Uta stansburiana) offers an excellent opportunity to examine the effects of riverine impoundments on migration and gene flow in terrestrial biodiversity. To assess these effects, we collected tissue samples from 241 Uta stansburiana above and below Glen Canyon Dam and on both sides of the Colorado river at three separate study areas. We used eight microsatellite loci to estimate genetic exchange in the context of genetic diversity and structure. One study area below Flaming Gorge Dam and above Glen Canyon Dam has annual periods of warmer water temperatures and lower flows that are closer to pre-dam conditions, whereas two study areas below Glen Canyon Dam have cold water temperatures year-round, and less pronounced seasonal low flow episodes. We predicted that warmer water temperatures above Glen Canyon Dam would promote greater genetic exchange among populations than below the dam. However, we found evidence for low levels of genetic exchange between sites both above and below Glen Canyon Dam, and a moderate amount of exchange at a site below this dam where lizards could conceivably move from one side to the other. Our results imply that 1) the changes in water temperature and hydrology in dam-altered rivers are a barrier for this species even when the distance from the dam is great; and 2) genetic exchange may be dependent on river morphology. These results are relevant to other small vertebrates, particularly ectotherms, that occupy habitat proximal to a dammed river and has implications for the conservation management of impounded river systems.

BackgroundQuality-of-life (QoL) assessment is essential in breast cancer care, yet limited evidence describes how interrelated QoL domains change during pharmacotherapy. This study aimed to evaluate correlations among functional and symptom scales using the EORTC QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BR23, highlighting their ability to reveal multidimensional QoL patterns. MethodsA prospective observational study was conducted in two second-referral hospitals in Indonesia, enrolling 106 female breast cancer patients. QoL was assessed before and after pharmacotherapy using QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BR23. Changes in scores ({Delta}) were computed, and interdomain relationships were analyzed using Spearmans rho. ResultsPhysical functioning correlated with role functioning ({rho} = 0.55, p <0.001), emotial functioning ({rho} = 0.33, p <0.001), and social functioning ({rho} = 0.31, p = 0.002). Role and social functioning were likewise correlated ({rho} = 0.32, p = 0.001), indicating that improvements across functional domains tended to occur in parallel. Symptom scales showed strong positive clustering, including fatigue with pain ({rho} = 0.37, p <0.001), insomnia ({rho} = 0.35, p <0.001), and systemic side effects ({rho} = 0.48, p <0.001). Functional and symptom domains generally exhibited inverse relationships: physical functioning negatively correlated with fatigue ({rho} = -0.40), pain ({rho} = -0.43), both p <0.001, and systemic side effects ({rho} = -0.26; p = 0.01). ConclusionThe QLQ-C30 and QLQ-BR23 instruments effectively captured structured, clinically meaningful interdependencies. Functional improvements consistently aligned with symptom reductions, revealing coherent functional-symptom clustering. These findings underscore the sensitivity of QoL instruments to detect multidimensional patient-reported changes during breast cancer pharmacotherapy.

Justification: Accidental lab-acquired infections (LAIs) with potential pandemic pathogens (PPPs) in high-biosafety research facilities risk causing a pandemic. Routine testing of lab workers for LAIs coupled with isolation of infected workers could reduce the risk, but the impact of such an intervention may depend on pathogens' epidemiological characteristics. Objective: This study aims to understand how the epidemiological characteristics of PPPs moderate the efficacy of a routine testing and isolation intervention in preventing larger outbreaks after an LAI. Methods: We employed a discrete-time stochastic network infectious disease model to run 625,000 epidemic simulations encompassing 625 unique combinations of five parameters of interest: test frequency, pathogen transmissibility, the self-isolation rate for symptomatic cases, the percentage of cases that are asymptomatic, and the percentage of infectious time that is spent in the pre-symptomatic state among those who show symptoms. To summarize the Monte Carlo simulations, we paired visual analysis with logistic regression for formal hypothesis testing, with an emphasis on the interaction terms that capture the moderating effect of epidemiological parameters on the impact of test frequency. Main Results: There were four main findings. First, the relative reductions in risk of outbreak that were caused by increased test frequency were inversely correlated with pathogen transmissibility. Second, the effect of test frequency was magnified at higher asymptomatic shares when the symptomatic self-isolation rate was high, but minimally when the self-isolation rate is low. Third, the direction of how the symptomatic self-isolation rate moderated the effect of increased test frequency depended on the asymptomatic share. Fourth, as the pre-symptomatic share of infectious time increased, the effect of test frequency on the probability of an outbreak was strongly magnified largely independent of symptomatic self-isolation rates. Conclusions: Routine testing and isolation could significantly mitigate the risk of catastrophic PPP escapes, with the intervention's success varying based on pathogen characteristics. High shares of asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission notably increased the relative risk reductions achieved by the intervention. These findings suggest prioritizing testing interventions for pathogens with high asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission and highlight the symptomatic self-isolation rate as a policy intervention target.

Ethyl-iophenoxic acid (Et-IPA) is widely recognized as a useful biomarker to confirm oral bait consumption in eutherian species. In historical studies on marsupials, Et-IPA was rapidly eliminated from brushtail possums (Trichosurus vulpecula) and swamp wallabies (Wallabia bicolor) suggesting limited use for marsupial species. However, a 1 mg oral dose of Et-IPA was detectable in the marsupial Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) for [&ge;] 56 days suggesting the biomarker can be used in a devil bait vaccine program. To assess Et-IPA marking in off-target marsupials that may consume baits, we administered 1 mg oral doses of Et-IPA to brushtail possums, forester kangaroos (Macropus giganteus tasmaniensis), spotted-tailed quolls (Dasyurus maculatus) and eastern quolls (Dasyurus viverrinus). Liquid chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry was used to detect and quantify serum Et-IPA. Et-IPA was detected in the serum on day 2 but was not detected by day 14 in any of the species tested, including the two quoll species which are in the same carnivorous Dasyuridae family as the devils. The rapid elimination of Et-IPA in the marsupials included in this study suggests it is not useful as a biomarker for these species. Furthermore, rapid elimination in the kangaroos and possums suggests that Et-IPA is unlikely to accumulate in the food chain following distribution of Et-IPA-marked oral bait vaccines for Tasmanian devils. Short summary for non-expertsA recent study in Tasmanian devils (Sarcophilus harrisii) challenged the concept that ethyl iophenoxic acid (Et-IPA) is not a useful serum biomarker for marsupials. Using the same sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method we detected serum Et-IPA in four marsupial species on day two post-ingestion but by day 14, serum Et-IPA was undetectable. These findings indicate that Et-IPA is an unsuitable biomarker for these species and suggest that Et-IPA from devil bait vaccines is unlikely to bioaccumulate in the Tasmanian environment.

The role of passive muscle mechanical properties in explosive performance is important to understand to maximize training and performance in strength sports. The objective of this study was to create and test a Structural Equation Model (SEM) to analyze the interrelations between muscle mechanical properties and neuromuscular performance in competitive weightlifters. The MyotonPRO was used to measure muscle stiffness, muscle tone, muscle elasticity, relaxation time and creep of four major muscles: Quadriceps Femoris, Hamstrings, Trapezius and Biceps Brachii, on thirty elite male weightlifters. This involved performance metrics of the rate of force development (RFD), countermovement jump (CMJ) and time to contraction threshold (TCT). AMOS was used to analyze the direct and indirect relationships between variables through SEM analysis. These findings indicated that muscle stiffness and relaxation time were significant predictors of explosive performance measures (p < 0.05) but there were weak or no relationships between tone, elasticity and creep. The model proposed had good fit indices (CFI = 0.97, RMSEA = 0.049) indicating its structural soundness. These results present the significance of muscle stiffness and relaxation time as important predictors of neuromuscular performance. The proposed model suggests an effective structure of monitoring athletes, their performance optimization, and individual training design in strength-based sports.

Understanding behavioral differences between non-native and closely related endangered species could be important to aid conservation management. In volume 169 of Zoology, Bels et al. (2025) reported on their comparison of display-action-patterns (DAP) between native Iguana delicatissima and non-native iguanas present on islands of the Guadeloupe Archipelago in the Caribbean Lesser Antilles. Here, we address conceptual and methodological concerns about their work and reanalyze their data given our proposed corrections, primarily a literature-informed adjustment of their "species" category. We additionally utilize online videos from South American mainland I. iguana populations, from where the non-native iguanas in the Guadeloupe Archipelago originate, to better understand the different DAPs between native and non-native iguanas in the Guadeloupe Archipelago. Significant differences in DAP characteristics among "species" categories (native I. delicatissima, non-native iguanas, and hybrids) show that Bels et al. (2025) oversimplified their data analyses by merging all non-native populations into one group. This result indicates the presence of behavioral variation among subpopulations within widely hybridizing iguanid populations, which has been poorly studied. Additionally, videos from mainland populations across two major mitochondrial clades of Iguana iguana show that non-native iguanas on Guadeloupe retained DAP characteristics of those populations from which they originate. We discuss these findings in light of the proposed hypotheses put forward by Bels et al. (2025), of which two can be excluded. Overall, our reanalysis shows that studies focusing on characteristics within settings of complex hybridization in diverse species should acknowledge this complexity.

Invasive alien species (IAS) expansions are increasingly impacting the biodiversity and economy of Europe. To more effectively allocate the limited resources available for their management, it is pertinent to accelerate detection of IAS spread and distribution. One largely untapped secondary data source showing much potential lies in the automated tracking of internet activity such as IAS search intensity or mentions across different internet platforms. In this study, we tested if internet activity increases systematically when IAS expand into new EU countries utilizing the combined data of 88 invasive species from various internet platforms. In total, 14 internet platforms were screened and evaluated based on their database accessibility, mined data quality and utility for systematic IAS expansion tracking. We found that the procedure to obtain researcher access to minimal data required for IAS tracking (i.e., information about location, time and place) varies widely across platforms, and is particularly difficult without incurring significant costs for many of the larger ones (X, Google and Tiktok). From the explored species, more charismatic species (i.e., mammals) overall gained more online traction than more cryptic ones (i.e., plants), though online activity of the first proved a worse representation of real-world occurrence patterns. Moreover, while the final five selected internet platforms showed increased activity surrounding the year of invasion in many of the explored invasion scenarios (particularly Wikipedia and Facebook), inconsistencies between species groups, trends per platform and the large variability in data quality currently still hampers systematic integration of such data into existing databases. We conclude that combining IAS activity data from various internet platforms shows potential to accelerate IAS expansion detection across the EU (especially for fish, crustaceans, reptiles, birds and plants). However, incorporation in automated early warning systems is currently hampered by variable data quality, limited researcher access to online data and the few open, accurate and generalizable species classification algorithms with API access.

Increasing human activities along the US west coast are of concern for populations of cetaceans and particularly for a number of large whale species that are recovering from overexploitation during the era of commercial whaling. New rapid monitoring tools, such as satellite imagery analysis powered by recent advances in artificial intelligence, have potential to provide additional broad-scale and near real-time capacities for survey and monitoring. This paper investigates and demonstrates the feasibility of automatic detection of gray whales in sub-meter satellite imagery off the coast of California, USA. Observations and statistical analysis of regional imagery allowed not only an assessment of their detectability but also the development of robust signal processing and machine learning-based solutions for automated detection. To that end, a regional dataset of 221 gray whales was created using signal processing to inform a deep-learning-based detection framework, and 20 different large neural network architectures for feature extraction followed by a support vector machine algorithm for classification were evaluated for their detection performance. Neural network backbones included 19 convolutional neural networks and 1 transformer network. The best architecture generally achieved satisfying performance with an average balanced accuracy reaching up to 99.90%. It is also demonstrated that panchromatic imagery, in spite of the lesser amount of information provided, can be used to perform detection with a relatively high accuracy of 87.05%, allowing wider spatial and temporal coverage. Large-scale deployment of the best performing models over a broad range of regional satellite imagery resulted in the detection of 3353 gray whales, as well as opportunistic detections of humpback, blue and fin whales, in and going from December 28th 2009 to March 26th 2023. It also provided meaningful data points concerning the migration routes of gray whales within the Channel Islands and Southern California Bight. The large number of high-confidence detections indicates the capacity for a large-scale monitoring approach to support state and federal conservation policies such as gear mitigation, vessel speed reduction programs, or shipping lane redefinition that could also be expanded to other areas and for other species.

Purpose This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) combined with the programmed death protein 1 (PD-1) inhibitor sintilimab versus NAC alone in patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). Materials and Methods In this retrospective cohort study, we collected clinical data from 61 patients with triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) who received neoadjuvant therapy at The First Hospital of Lanzhou University between July 2024 and July 2025. These patients were divided into two groups: the neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) plus sintilimab group (n=27) and the NAC-alone group (n=34). The primary endpoint was the pathological complete response (pCR) rate. Secondary endpoints included objective response rate (ORR), safety, and changes in tumor markers. Results The combination therapy group showed significantly higher ORR (85.2% vs. 58.8%) and pCR rates (59.3% vs. 32.4%) compared to the NAC alone group (both P<0.05). Post-treatment Ki-67 levels were also significantly lower in the combination group (P<0.05). The overall incidence of adverse events was comparable between groups (P>0.05), although leukopenia was more frequent with sintilimab (P<0.05). Conclusion In the neoadjuvant setting for TNBC, the addition of sintilimab to NAC significantly improves ORR and pCR rates, effectively reduces the tumor proliferation index Ki-67, and does not significantly increase the overall burden of adverse events. The combination regimen shows a manageable safety profile and demonstrates positive clinical value. Keywords Triple Negative Breast Cancer, Immunotherapy, Sintilimab, Combination neoadjuvant chemotherapy, Efficacy, Real-World data.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play essential roles in the posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression in organisms. In the process of synthesizing mature miRNAs from miRNA precursors, the miRNA precursors are cleaved via Dicer at their loop structure, after which the miRNA precursors become mature and regulate transcription. However, the consequences of altering the loop sequence are not fully understood. The silkworm Bombyx mori is a lepidopteran insect with many genetic strains. We identified a mutant of the miRNA miR-3260 whose the part of the loop structure was lacking in a silkworm strain with translucent larval skin. Here, we aimed to analyze the role of wild-type miR-3260 and the influence of the mutation of the loop structure in B. mori. First, we identified the genomic region responsible for the translucent larval skin phenotype and determined that the mutated miR-3260 nucleotide sequences. Then, we predicted the binding partners of wild-type miR-3260 using the RNA hybrid tool and found two juvenile hormone (JH)-related genes as targets of wild-type miR-3260. Next, we assessed the relationships between miR-3260 and JH and found that miR-3260 was highly expressed in the Corpora allata and its expression responded to JH treatment. Meanwhile, miR-3260 mimic and inhibitor did not induce the typical phenotypes associated with JH in B. mori. Then, we compared the dicing products from wild-type and mutant miR-3260 precursors and observed that neither form underwent Dicer-mediated cleavage when the loop structure was altered. These results suggest that loop mutations in the miR-3260 precursor may not influence dicing activity, consistent with the lack of observable phenotypic effects.