Heart failure (HF) affects over 64 million people worldwide causally linked to fibrotic scarring. None of the available cardiac drugs target fibrosis directly, underlining unmet clinical need for novel therapies. This study aimed to explore the therapeutic potential of the cysteine protease inhibitor aloxistatin as a repurposed drug candidate to combat fibrotic progression in predictive HF models. Aloxistatin reduced migratory...

Zusammenfassung Die Studie untersucht die Entwicklung der Grundwasserstände in Deutschland anhand von 5844 Messstellen sowie deren Reaktionsdynamik gegenüber klimatologischen Antrieben im Referenzzeitraum 1991–2020. Zusätzlich wird die Entwicklung seit 2018 im Kontext der außergewöhnlichen Dürreperiode betrachtet, um die Reaktionsfähigkeit und Vulnerabilität der Grundwassersysteme gegenüber extremen klimatischen Bedingungen zu...

Background Biomedical Large Language Models (LLMs) combined with prompt engineering offer domain-specific reasoning, yet their application to individual-level causality assessment remains unexplored. This study evaluated five combinations of biomedical LLMs, prompting strategies, and causality algorithms by comparing their agreement with two human expert evaluators. Research Design and Methods. A total of 150 Individual Case S...

Organic amendments, such as compost, are widely used to improve soil organic matter content, nutrient retention, and microbial activity; however, their effectiveness depends on multiple factors, including compost type, application rate, soil and crop characteristics, and mode of application. The spatial placement of compost can profoundly influence soil nutrient dynamics and the assembly of plant-beneficial microbial communiti...

Defensive coloration such as bright colors used to advertise secondary defenses (i.e., aposematic coloration) is very common but also shows high intraspecific variation. Similarly, consistent among-individual differences in behavior (i.e., animal personality) are pervasive in the animal kingdom. Therefore, aposematism and personality could be linked to produce an optimal defensive phenotype, however, this has not formally been...

To advance understanding of meiofauna, key components of marine benthic ecosystems, an international team conducted a morphology-based taxonomic survey and workshop around São Miguel, the largest Azorean island, in 2019. The survey yielded critical baseline data on meiofaunal diversity and, despite taxonomic challenges that limited identification of certain taxa, laid a solid foundation for further research. To expand these fi...

Marine mass mortality events (MMEs) are a growing source of concern globally. Affecting diverse marine ecosystems, they frequently cause significant ecological disruptions, often leading to large‐scale ecological shifts. However, in contrast to terrestrial MMEs, most marine mortalities likely occur undetected, particularly in cryptic and infaunal taxa. Here, we present the first documented reports of irregular echinoid mass mo...

Myeloid cells, such as monocytes, are central in the immune response to infections. However, limited knowledge exists regarding the inflammatory response to Gram-positive anaerobic cocci (GPAC). To explore the ability of GPACs to induce monocyte activation, we compared two GPAC species, Parvimonas micra and Peptoniphilus harei , with E. coli, a major cause of bloodstream infections. We stimulated whole blood with heat-killed b...

In the context of global change, marine organisms are subjected not only to gradual changes in abiotic parameters, but also to an increasing number of extreme events, such as heatwaves. However, we still know little about the influence of heatwaves on the structure of marine communities, and experimental studies are needed to test the impact of heatwaves alone and in combination with other environmental drivers. Here, we condu...