Heidelberg University

The filtration performance of fabrics against particles of viral size: a systematic review

Wearing a mask is part of the comprehensive strategy to suppress transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and respiratory tract infections. Despite available COVID-19 vaccines, wearing a mask has remained one of the simplest and most effective ways. There was, however, little data av...

Harnessing biological variability for mechanistic inference: A stochastic framework applied to neural stem cell dynamics

Inter-individual heterogeneity is often treated as noise, yet its temporal evolution can reveal regulatory mechanisms hidden from mean-field behavior. We present a stochastic framework that exploits variability for mechanistic inference in cell population dynamics. Using adult ne...

The clinical and molecular spectrum of AGO2-associated Lessel-Kreienkamp neurodevelopmental syndrome

Abstract Background Pathogenic variants in AGO2 ,encoding a central component of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), cause the neurodevelopmental disorder Lessel-Kreienkamp syndrome (LESKRES). The variant spectrum and associated molecular mechanisms underlying phenotypic va...

Lessons from the field: usability (engineering) in regulated healthcare

Abstract Regulated healthcare settings continue to face gaps between established HCI methodology, user-centered design principles, and everyday clinical practice. Although standards and regulatory frameworks mandate usability engineering, their integration into regulated clinical...

Fast-Forward: Automatic Assignment and Assessment of Bonded Parameters for the Martini Force Field

Abstract Coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations of bio- and macromolecular systems offer a method of accessing otherwise unobtainable time and length scales, compared to atomistic simulation techniques. However, a limiting step is often the generation and validation of the...

Modulation of neuronal excitability and plasticity by BHLHE41 conveys lithium non-responsiveness

Abstract Many bipolar disorder (BD) patients are non-responsive to lithium. The mechanisms underlying lithium (non-)responsiveness are largely unknown. By using gene-set enrichment analysis methods, we found that core clock gene-sets are significantly associated with lithium resp...

MCL‐1 inhibition triggers a largely reversible cardiac stress signature in a humanised mouse model

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Myeloid cell leukaemia-1 (MCL-1) is an essential anti-apoptotic protein and a promising therapeutic target in oncology. Early clinical studies of MCL-1 inhibitors reported unexpected elevations in cardiac troponin, raising concerns about potential cardioto...

The Radical Chemistry of 2,3‐Diguanidinopyridines: Coordination and Visible‐Light Photochemistry

Guanidino-functionalized aromatics (GFAs) comprise an important class of redox-active organic molecules and ligands with a variety of applications. In this work, we report the synthesis and chemistry of novel GFAs with a pyridine core functionalized in 2 and 3 positions with two...

Development and internal validation of the Low Cardiac Index Score: a simplified bedside tool for continuous intraoperative screening

<title>Abstract</title> Purpose Advanced haemodynamic monitoring of cardiac index is restricted to selected high-risk cases, leaving most patients undergoing major surgery without real-time assessment. We aimed to develop and internally validate a simplified bedside score for con...

Longitudinal Tumor, Vascular, and Immune Cell Response in Two Rat Prostate Carcinomas After Isoeffective Photon, Proton, and Carbon Ion Irradiation: Impact of Linear Energy Transfer, Dose Level, and Hypoxia

Background/Objectives: High linear energy transfer (LET) carbon ions achieved more effective and biologically robust tumor control than photons in preclinical prostate cancer models; however, the longitudinal development of histopathological parameters remains insufficiently char...

National Implementation of a Tuberculosis Sample Referral Network to Expand Access to Molecular Diagnosis in the Republic of Congo: Pilot Evaluation and Programmatic Analysis (2023–2025)

Background: Limited access to rapid molecular diagnostics remains a major barrier to timely tuberculosis (TB) detection and drug-resistance surveillance in resource-constrained settings. In the Republic of Congo, GeneXpert MTB/RIF platforms remain concentrated in a few laboratori...

On Global Weak Solutions for the Magnetic Two-Component Hunter–Saxton System

Abstract We study the magnetic two-component Hunter–Saxton system (M2HS), which was recently derived in [19] as a magnetic geodesic equation on an infinite-dimensional configuration space. While the geometric framework and the global weak flow were outlined there, the present pap...

Integrated metabolomics data analysis to generate mechanistic hypotheses with MetaProViz

ABSTRACT With the growing number of metabolomics and lipidomics studies, robust strategies for bioinformatic analyses are increasingly important. However, the absence of standardized and reproducible workflows, coupled with ambiguous metabolite annotations, hampers effective anal...

Molecular characterization of mismatch repair deficient tumors in young Jordanian patients

<title>Abstract</title> In Jordan, approximately 19% of colorectal carcinomas (CRCs) in patients younger than 45 years show mismatch repair deficiency (MMRD) by immunohistochemistry (IHC). MMRD in pediatric high-grade gliomas (HGG) and CRC in Jordan appears substantially more fre...

Assessing climate change-related health hazards: An interactive tool for regional risk analysis in Germany

An interactive online health risk assessment has been created to visualize the health risks associated with climate change at the district level (NUTS3) across Germany. The tool provides a comprehensive assessment by depicting both the current risk patterns and projected conditio...

Can parent–child interactions help reduce socioeconomic differences in language development? Results of a German birth cohort study

Abstract Aim Children from socioeconomically disadvantaged families often have lower developmental outcomes than their socioeconomically more advantaged peers. In early childhood, language development (LD) in particular is a key competence for further socialization. There is a ne...

The zlog value: a decade of standardizing laboratory results

Abstract Background The zlog transformation was developed in 2016 as a method-independent and unit-independent standardization of laboratory results for the German Electronic Health Record (ePA). Based on the assumption of a log-normal distribution and the known lower and upper r...

Homicide at home: setting the agenda for an international collaboration to improve support for children bereaved due to family violence

Background: Bereavement due to fatal family violence (e.g. intimate partner homicide, filicide, parricide, siblicide) is a profoundly disruptive experience for children, with lifelong psychosocial consequences. Although the need for fatal family violence prevention is increasingl...

Iron-induced demethoxylation of lignin as an important source for methanol and its oxidation products in the environment

Abstract Lignin, the largest reservoir of aromatic carbon in plants and soils, undergoes well-characterized biological demethylation by fungi and bacteria, and is industrially processed under harsh conditions to generate bio-based aromatics. However, the abiotic fate of lignin-de...

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis on 30-Day Readmission Rates After Endovascular Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm Repair and Open Repair

AIM: Endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) and open aneurysm repair (OAR) are established treatments for abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). This meta-analysis evaluated 30-day readmission, patient characteristics, postoperative complications, and length of stay after EVAR and OAR, an...