Background: Degenerative Cervical Myelopathy (DCM) is a progressive condition causing cervical spinal cord injury. Disease severity is commonly assessed using the modified Japanese Orthopedic Association (mJOA) score, yet clinical guidelines do not integrate pain—a key symptom—in evaluations. This meta-analysis examines the relationship between pain scores and quality of life outcomes (QOL) in surgical DCM patients. Methods: A comprehensive literature search using MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Embase identified 73 studies. Data regarding pain scores (VAS/NRS) and QOL outcomes (SF-12, SF-36) were extracted by 2 independent reviewers and all conflicts were resolved by the senior author. The number of patients analyzed in the studies included was 929. Results: Meta-regression identified no significant relationship between pain and SF-36 preoperatively but found a significant negative correlation at 3 months (r = -0.67, p<0.05), 6 months (r = -0.65, p<0.05), 1 year (-0.63, p<0.05), and 2 years (r = -0.62, p<0.05). Conclusions: Our results indicate a strong relationship between postoperative pain and QOL among patients with DCM. Surgeons and care teams should prioritize optimal pain management postoperatively for patients with DCM.

Background: Aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage (aSAH) is a devastating disease process that represents a significant health shock for thousands of patients each year. Return to work outcomes and associated factors require evaluation to counsel patients and identify domains on which to focus clinical efforts. Methods: A systematic review of the literature following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses 2020 guidelines was performed using MEDLINE, EMBASE and Cochrane databases from inception to February 2024. Proportion of patients returning to work was collected from included studies. Odds ratios were pooled from studies evaluating the association between pre-rupture demographic variables, post-rupture clinical variables and return to work following aSAH. Results: Literature search yielded 3861 studies, of which 40 studies were included in the final analysis for a total of 6888 patients. On average, 55% (SD 17%) of all patients returned to work after an aSAH. Female sex (male sex OR 1.75), high grade aSAH on presentation (OR 0.30), and need for permanent CSF diversion (OR 0.50) are significantly associated with unemployment after aSAH. Conclusions: Female sex, high grade presentation, and permanent CSF diversion are associated with unemployment after aSAH. About half of all patients that experience aSAH return to work.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) offers powerful new capabilities for studying the polarised and magnetised Universe at radio wavelengths. In this paper, we introduce the Polarisation Sky Survey of the Universe’s Magnetism (POSSUM), a groundbreaking survey with three primary objectives: (1) to create a comprehensive Faraday rotation measure (RM) grid of up to one million compact extragalactic sources across the southern $\sim50$% of the sky (20,630 deg$^2$); (2) to map the intrinsic polarisation and RM properties of a wide range of discrete extragalactic and Galactic objects over the same area; and (3) to contribute interferometric data with excellent surface brightness sensitivity, which can be combined with single-dish data to study the diffuse Galactic interstellar medium. Observations for the full POSSUM survey commenced in May 2023 and are expected to conclude by mid-2028. POSSUM will achieve an RM grid density of around 30–50 RMs per square degree with a median measurement uncertainty of $\sim$1 rad m$^{-2}$. The survey operates primarily over a frequency range of 800–1088 MHz, with an angular resolution of 20” and a typical RMS sensitivity in Stokes Q or U of 18 $\mu$Jy beam$^{-1}$. Additionally, the survey will be supplemented by similar observations covering 1296–1440 MHz over 38% of the sky. POSSUM will enable the discovery and detailed investigation of magnetised phenomena in a wide range of cosmic environments, including the intergalactic medium and cosmic web, galaxy clusters and groups, active galactic nuclei and radio galaxies, the Magellanic System and other nearby galaxies, galaxy halos and the circumgalactic medium, and the magnetic structure of the Milky Way across a very wide range of scales, as well as the interplay between these components. This paper reviews the current science case developed by the POSSUM Collaboration and provides an overview of POSSUM’s observations, data processing, outputs, and its complementarity with other radio and multi-wavelength surveys, including future work with the SKA.

Non-technical summary. New approaches to ensure the resilience of urban water supply are urgently needed. This requires moving beyond managing water scarcity through infrastructural measures to understanding resilience as an outcome of complex interactions between people, water resources, and technological infrastructure. We conducted expert interviews and a household survey in a water scarcity ‘hotspot’ and found that water experts emphasize water system deficits and inefficiencies, while citizens complement public water service deficits through (unaccounted-for) coping mechanisms. This leads to uncertainties regarding the outcomes of management interventions. We suggest that integrating different stakeholder perspectives into water management strategies could enhance urban water resilience.

Technical summary. There is limited understanding of how to address the complex dynamics shaping the resilience of increasingly water-scarce cities, globally. By conceptualizing urban water systems as social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) and analysing their interactions from different stakeholder perspectives, we create a pluralistic, yet systematic, understanding of SETS interactions. We conducted expert interviews (N = 19) and a household survey (N = 300) in Amman, one of the world’s water scarcity hotspots, and analysed the data in three steps: (1) We analysed the SETS through the lens of its different actor groups, and, inspired by frame analysis, interpreted each group's system perspective – local experts focus on deficits of SETS elements and aim to increase available resources, while international experts emphasize the efficiency of SETS interactions. Households cope with deficient water supplies by mobilizing adaptive strategies. (2) Combining these three perspectives, we derived uncertainties resulting from different (and unrecognized) stakeholder views, missing knowledge, and unpredictable system dynamics. (3) We identified and characterized new SETS interactions for an urban, resource-constrained environment, which contributes to a typology aiming for better comparability across SETS. Our results have implications for resilience-oriented urban water management and governance in terms of what to manage (fast/slow variables, connectivity), how (learning/experimenting), and by whom (broad participation).

Social media summary. Addressing uncertainty by reframing resilience-oriented urban water management with complementary system perceptions.

Turbulent flow widely exists in the aerospace field, and it is still challenging to realise the accurate prediction in the numerical simulation. To realise the high-fidelity numerical simulation of compressible turbulent flow, a high-order accurate self-adaptive turbulence eddy simulation (SATES) method is developed on the PHengLEI-HyOrder open-source solver, combining with the high-order accurate weighted compact nonlinear schemes (WCNS). The compressible flow in the subsonic and transonic is numerically simulated, including some typical cases, such as subsonic flow past a circular cylinder and flow past a square cylinder, high-lift configuration DLR-F11, transonic flow around a circular cylinder. The results predicted by the current high-order accurate SATES are in good agreement with the available experimental and numerical data. The present numerical method can also accurately capture the interactions between shock waves and turbulence while accurately simulating flow separation, shear layer instability and large-scale vortex shedding. The results obtained show that the current high-order accurate SATES simulations based on PHengLEI-HyOrder solver can accurately simulate complex turbulent flows with high reliability.

Partial remission after major depressive disorder (MDD) is common and a robust predictor of relapse. However, it remains unclear to which extent preventive psychological interventions reduce depressive symptomatology and relapse risk after partial remission. We aimed to identify variables predicting relapse and to determine whether, and for whom, psychological interventions are effective in preventing relapse, reducing (residual) depressive symptoms, and increasing quality of life among individuals in partial remission. This preregistered (CRD42023463468) systematic review and individual participant data meta-analysis (IPD-MA) pooled data from 16 randomized controlled trials (n = 705 partial remitters) comparing psychological interventions to control conditions, using 1- and 2-stage IPD-MA. Among partial remitters, baseline clinician-rated depressive symptoms (p = .005) and prior episodes (p = .012) predicted relapse. Psychological interventions were associated with reduced relapse risk over 12 months (hazard ratio [HR] = 0.60, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.43–0.84), and significantly lowered posttreatment depressive symptoms (Hedges’ g = 0.29, 95% CI 0.04–0.54), with sustained effects at 60 weeks (Hedges’ g = 0.33, 95% CI 0.06–0.59), compared to nonpsychological interventions. However, interventions did not significantly improve quality of life at 60 weeks (Hedges’ g = 0.26, 95% CI -0.06 to 0.58). No moderators of relapse prevention efficacy were found. Men, older individuals, and those with higher baseline symptom severity experienced greater reductions in symptomatology at 60 weeks. Psychological interventions for individuals with partially remitted depression reduce relapse risk and residual symptomatology, with efficacy generalizing across patient characteristics and treatment types. This suggests that psychological interventions are a recommended treatment option for this patient population.

Interactions with bentonite are important in the chemical speciation and fate of heavy metals in soils and other ecosystems. The interactions of Zn with bentonite were studied using X-ray diffraction (XRD), dehydration, kinetic and sequential extraction procedures. The species and activity of Zn retained by bentonite were affected markedly by pH. The Zn(OH)+ was retained by bentonite prepared at pH ≥ 6.9. The extent of dehydration of Zn(OH)+-bentonite was higher than that for Zn-bentonite. At a relative humidity of 55.5%, the basal spacing of the Zn(OH)+-bentonite was from 1.21 to 1.26 nm with 1 water sheet and that of the Zn-bentonite was 1.51 nm with 2 water sheets. The greater affinity of Zn(OH)+ for bentonite than Zn was associated with a lower degree of hydration. When an aqueous suspension of Ca-bentonite was incubated with soluble Zn, the concentration of Zn retained by the Ca-bentonite was linearly related to the square root of time. The rate of the interaction was controlled probably by the interlayer diffusion and subsequently by the diffusion into the ditrigonal cavities in bentonite. The Zn retained by bentonite was dehydrated in situ so as to increase the bonding of Zn with surfaces of bentonite. With hydrothermal treatment the retained Zn could diffuse easily into the cavities and transform increasingly to the residual forms that are associated with the entrapped form.

The Australian SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP) radio telescope has carried out a survey of the entire Southern Sky at 887.5 MHz. The wide area, high angular resolution, and broad bandwidth provided by the low-band Rapid ASKAP Continuum Survey (RACS-low) allow the production of a next-generation rotation measure (RM) grid across the entire Southern Sky. Here we introduce this project as Spectral and Polarisation in Cutouts of Extragalactic sources from RACS (SPICE-RACS). In our first data release, we image 30 RACS-low fields in Stokes I, Q, U at 25$^{\prime\prime}$ angular resolution, across 744–1032 MHz with 1 MHz spectral resolution. Using a bespoke, highly parallelised, software pipeline we are able to rapidly process wide-area spectro-polarimetric ASKAP observations. Notably, we use ‘postage stamp’ cutouts to assess the polarisation properties of 105912 radio components detected in total intensity. We find that our Stokes Q and U images have an rms noise of $\sim$80 $\unicode{x03BC}$Jy PSF$^{-1}$, and our correction for instrumental polarisation leakage allows us to characterise components with $\gtrsim$1% polarisation fraction over most of the field of view. We produce a broadband polarised radio component catalogue that contains 5818 RM measurements over an area of $\sim$1300 deg$^{2}$ with an average error in RM of $1.6^{+1.1}_{-1.0}$ rad m$^{-2}$, and an average linear polarisation fraction $3.4^{+3.0}_{-1.6}$ %. We determine this subset of components using the conditions that the polarised signal-to-noise ratio is $>$8, the polarisation fraction is above our estimated polarised leakage, and the Stokes I spectrum has a reliable model. Our catalogue provides an areal density of $4\pm2$ RMs deg$^{-2}$; an increase of $\sim$4 times over the previous state-of-the-art (Taylor, Stil, Sunstrum 2009, ApJ, 702, 1230). Meaning that, having used just 3% of the RACS-low sky area, we have produced the 3rd largest RM catalogue to date. This catalogue has broad applications for studying astrophysical magnetic fields; notably revealing remarkable structure in the Galactic RM sky. We will explore this Galactic structure in a follow-up paper. We will also apply the techniques described here to produce an all-Southern-sky RM catalogue from RACS observations. Finally, we make our catalogue, spectra, images, and processing pipeline publicly available.

Machine vision has been extensively researched in the field of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) recently. However, the ability of Sense and Avoid (SAA) largely limited by environmental visibility, which brings hazards to flight safety in low illumination or nighttime conditions. In order to solve this critical problem, an approach of image enhancement is proposed in this paper to improve image qualities in low illumination conditions. Considering the complementarity of visible and infrared images, a visible and infrared image fusion method based on convolutional sparse representation (CSR) is a promising solution to improve the SAA ability of UAVs. Firstly, the source image is decomposed into a texture layer and structure layer since infrared images are good at characterising structural information, and visible images have richer texture information. Both the structure and the texture layers are transformed into the sparse convolutional domain through the CSR mechanism, and then CSR coefficient mapping are fused via activity level assessment. Finally, the image is synthesised through the reconstruction results of the fusion texture and structure layers. In the experimental simulation section, a series of visible and infrared registered images including aerial targets are adopted to evaluate the proposed algorithm. Experimental results demonstrates that the proposed method increases image qualities in low illumination conditions effectively and can enhance the object details, which has better performance than traditional methods.

Background: Frailty is increasingly recognized for an association with adverse events, mortality, and hospital discharge disposition among surgical patients. The purpose of this study was to describe how spinal surgeons conceptualize, define, and assess frailty in the context of spinal metastatic disease (SMD). Methods: We conducted an international, cross-sectional, 33-question survey of the AO Spine community. The survey was developed using a modified Delphi technique and was designed to elucidate preoperative surrogate markers of frailty in the context of SMD. Responses were ranked using weighted averages. Consensus was defined as ≥ 70% agreement among respondents. Results: Results were analyzed for 312 respondents (86% completion rate). Study participants represented 71 countries. Most respondents informally assess frailty in patients with SMD by forming a general perception based on clinical condition and patient history. Consensus was attained regarding the association between 14 clinical variables and frailty. Severe comorbidities, systemic disease burden, and poor performance status were most associated with frailty; severe comorbidities included high-risk cardio-pulmonary disease, renal failure, liver failure, and malnutrition. Conclusions: Surgeons recognized frailty is important but commonly evaluate it based on general clinical impression rather than using existing frailty tools. We identified preoperative surrogate markers of frailty perceived as most relevant in this population.

The objective of this study was to explore the effects of tail docking and tail biting on pig welfare through an assessment of physiology and behaviour. In experiment 1, piglets were either tail docked using hot cautery iron (CAUT), blunt trauma cutters (BT), or their tails were left intact (CON). Blood samples were taken from pigs at 3 and 7 weeks of age to measure C-reactive protein (CRP). Tail-biting lesions were scored at 3, 5, and 7 weeks of age. Behaviour was recorded for 72 h when tail biting was observed in 7-week old pigs. Tail-biting lesion scores were similar among treatments at 3 and 5 weeks of age, however at 7 weeks lesion scores were greater among CON compared with CAUT and BT pigs. Bodyweights were lower among CON compared with CAUT or BT pigs and CRP was elevated among CON compared with CAUT and BT pigs at 7 weeks of age. In experiment 2, piglets were tail docked at a length of 2 cm (Short) or 5 cm (Long). Tail-biting lesions were scored every 2 weeks until the end of finishing. Tail-biting lesion scores were greater among Long compared with Short pigs. Compromised welfare of tail-bitten pigs was indicated by severity of lesion, level of CRP, and reduced pig bodyweights. More research is needed into understanding the causative factors behind tail biting in pigs, so that preventative measures can be adopted on farms to prevent this behaviour.

Background: Extracranial traumatic vertebral artery injury (eTVAI) is common following non-penetrating head and neck trauma. Most cases are initially asymptomatic with an increased risk for stroke. Consensus is lacking regarding screening, treatment, and follow-up of asymptomatic patients with eTVAI. Our objective was to investigate national practice patterns reflecting these domains. Methods: An electronic survey was distributed via the Canadian Neurological Sciences Federation and Canadian Spine Society. Two case-based scenarios featured asymptomatic patients with eTVAI. Case 1: non-displaced cervical lateral mass fracture; angiography stratified by luminal diameter reduction. Case 2: complex C2 fracture; angiography featuring pseudoaneurysm dissection. Analysis: descriptive statistics. Results: Response Rate: 108 of 182 participants (59%), representing 20 academic institutions.

Case 1: 78% of respondents would screen using CTA (97%), immediately (88%). Most respondents (97%) would initiate treatment, using aspirin (89%) for 3-6 months (46%).

Case 2: 73% of respondents would screen using CTA (96%), immediately (88%). The majority of respondents (94%) would initiate treatment, using aspirin (50%) for 3-6 months (35%). Thirty-six percent of respondents would utilize endovascular therapy.

In both cases, the majority of respondents would follow-up clinically or radiographically every 1-3 months, respectively. Conclusions: This study highlights consensus in Canadian practice patterns for the workup and management of asymptomatic eTVAI.