Preprints.org

Background: Oral frailty is a multidimensional condition associated with physical frailty, malnutrition, and adverse health outcomes in older adults. Although the Oral Frailty 5-item checklist (OF-5) is useful for screening, its binary classification may not capture the heterogeneous patterns of oral functional decline. The Oral Frailty 20-item Checklist (OF-20) was designed to provide a more det…

The Marshall complex—defined here as the integrated structure comprising the vein of Marshall (VOM), the vestigial fold, and their associated myocardial bundles and autonomic innervation—has re-emerged as a clinically relevant substrate for atrial fibrillation (AF). Historically described as a fibrous remnant, accumulating anatomical and electrophysiological evidence indicates that the neuromuscu…

Do ethics enable or hinder mission success and the strategic objectives an organisation aims to achieve? Ethics assurance answers this question by creating the grounds for justified evidence-based confidence that identified and mitigated moral risks enable mission success. We study this question in the context of swarm engineering with a use case where an unmanned aircraft traffic management (UTM…

This paper presents the collection and potential applications of an open dataset acquired during the partial solar eclipse of 12 August 2026 from Lorry-lès-Metz, France. Observations were performed using a Vespera telescope and a Hestia telescope coupled with an iPhone 16 Pro Max smartphone. Publicly released on Zenodo, the dataset provides a resource for computer vision, machine learning, image …

Background: Chronic coronary artery disease (CAD) with triple-vessel involvement and diabetes mellitus is a high-risk condition that often leads to a recommendation for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). This report presents the course of a 67-year-old man with chronic CAD, old myocardial infarction, and controlled diabetes mellitus who declined CABG and underwent conservative management and…

The range of local sequence–structure correlation is known for coarse-grained descriptors — secondary structure and side-chain burial — but not for the backbone dihedrals themselves. I measure the information local sequence carries about φ and ψ at 10° resolution against how far a translation-equivariant convolutional model may look. Both peak at a window radius of 8 residues — φ recovering 0.330…

For 10 months, our team tested the communication and cooperation skills, as well as theory of mind, of three adult male western lowland gorillas at the Opole Zoo in Poland. The cognitive tasks presented to the gorillas enriched their daily routine and interactions with their keepers. The aim of this article is to analyze whether the cognitive tasks presented to the gorillas correlated with behavi…

Background: Urinary tract infections (UTI) are a major driver of laboratory testing and antimicrobial prescribing, yet inappropriate urine collection, specimen handling, due to limited patient and nursing engagement can compromise diagnostic accuracy and contribute to unnecessary or inappropriate antibiotic use. This study evaluated knowledge, attitudes, and practices (KAP) related to pre-analyti…

We present a critical, pedagogically-grounded synthesis of a cluster of results that, taken together, sketch a non-perturbative and arithmetic reformulation of string theory's foundational claims. Beginning from the worldsheet definition of the string — the Polyakov action, its conformal symmetry, and the BRST cohomology that removes negative-norm ghost states — we trace the logical path by which…

Ghana has sustained constitutional democratic governance since 1992; however, concerns persist regarding executive dominance, weak institutional independence, and uneven economic performance. Drawing on institutional theory, this study examines whether constitutional separation of powers influences economic development beyond conventional macroeconomic factors. Using annual data from 1996 to 2023…

Modern homecare research increasingly relies on multimodal sensing technologies in smart homes to monitor daily routines, sleep, environmental conditions, and physiological activities over long periods. However, publicly available datasets often lack real-world longitudinal tracking, multimodal integra-tion, and detailed environmental and wearable sensor data collected in real home environments. …

Three-flavor oscillation theory describes neutrino propagation but takes the PMNS orientation and mass spectrum as empirical inputs. This paper asks whether both can be reconstructed from one neutral-parent carrier architecture. A central feature is cross-sector inheritance: the charged-root ratios and neutral closure seam used here were fixed in a previously published charged-lepton calculation …

This study investigates the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in consumers’ food-related decision-making and its relationship with established social-media-mediated practices in e-commerce. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Algeria in 2025 and generated 223 valid responses. 39.5% of respondents reported using AI, with ChatGPT making up 87.5% of applications reported by AI users. AI use…

Background/Objectives: Person-centered plans are a cornerstone of Medicaid Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS); however, PCP practices and documentation formats vary across states and service systems. Translating PCP principles into documents that individuals with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities can readily access, understand, use, and share in everyday life remains challengin…

Glypican-2 (GPC2) is a heparan sulfate proteoglycan that plays essential roles in enhancing receptor signaling by recruiting heparan sulfate-binding ligands. Overexpression of GPC2 is observed in pediatric cancers, including neuroblastoma and medulloblastoma, where it supports oncogenic signaling and tumor progression. High-affinity GPC2 binders have been developed as effective immunotherapies ta…

Left ventricular pressure overload (LVPO) is a common hemodynamic stressor in pediatric cardiovascular diseases, yet how progressive—rather than fixed—overload reshapes the neonatal left ventricular (LV) developmental program remains largely unexplored. In this study, we established a neonatal rat model of progressive LVPO via abdominal aortic banding surgery (ABS) on postnatal day 1(P1), achievi…

A new class of pretrained time-series forecasting models — Chronos, TimesFM, Moirai, TimeGPT, Lag-Llama, and Tiny Time Mixers (TTM) among them — now offers zero-shot and few-shot forecasting capability without per-dataset training, a genuinely new operating mode for energy forecasting that existing BQEB benchmark infrastructure was not built to evaluate; strong supervised architectures such as Pa…

This work tests a concrete and falsifiable hypothesis: whether an anomaly-consistent preon model with confining gauge group $\mathrm{SU}(15)_p$ an account for a simple pattern in the spectrum of the nine charged fermions. For each charged sector \(s\in\{\ell,d,u\}\)—charged leptons, down-type quarks, and up-type quarks—we introduce the dimensionless logarithmic curvature $A_s=\frac14\bigl(\ln y_{…

Acute gastrointestinal bleeding is a serious emergency condition which without prompt and accurate diagnosis can lead to severe hemorrhagic shock and death. The initial diagnosis relies on a clinical assessment of the bleeding site. If symptoms such as hematemesis and melena are present, an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (EGD) is typically the first diagnostic procedure. In cases of massive rectal bl…

This study investigates the motivations underlying corporate social responsibility (CSR) engagement among micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in South Africa and Ghana, with particular attention to community-oriented CSR. Using a deductive research approach, a cross-sectional survey design and cluster sampling, data were collected from 390 MSMEs comprising 220 firms in Bloemfontein and Ki…