Memorial University of Newfoundland

Balancing data quality and participant burden: a comparative analysis of abbreviated vs extended symptom diaries in the CanTreatCOVID trial

Abstract Background Symptom diaries are widely used in acute respiratory infection trials to capture patient-reported symptom severity and recovery. Longer questionnaires may provide a more complete clinical picture but can increase participant burden and reduce adherence. Eviden...

Sex & Gender Science: integrating the social with the biological

Abstract For decades, researchers have largely studied aspects of sex and gender separately; the former as a basic science and the latter as a social construct with real world consequences, including health inequities. In recent years, as our collective understanding of how the b...

Inference for a Shared Random-Scale Frailty Birnbaum–Saunders Model Under Progressive Type-II Censoring

This paper introduces a shared gamma frailty Birnbaum–Saunders model for clustered lifetime data under progressive Type-II censoring. The frailty term acts on the scale parameter and accounts for unobserved variation among clusters. Likelihood-based and Bayesian formulations are...

Propagation Dynamics for a Stage-Structured Population Model in a Shifting Environment

Abstract. In this paper, we study an integro-difference system in an unbounded domain for a population with a stage structure consisting of juveniles and adults. The environment shifts between a favorable habitat and an unfavorable habitat at two ends of the domain, which makes t...

Platform-Independent Suspect Screening Analysis of Pesticides and Transformation Products in Honey Bees across Multiple High-Resolution Mass Spectrometers

Abstract When investigating honey bee suspected poisoning events, traditional targeted methods may overlook relevant compounds. Thus, a suspect screening workflow combining two complementary and platform-independent strategies in parallel, an exact mass screening tool and a combi...

Research on the ecology of the carnivorous sponge-associated iridovirus (CaSpA-IV) reveals its presence in the Cnidaria

Carnivorous sponge–associated iridovirus (CaSpA-IV) is a recently described virus identified in two deep-sea cladorhizid sponge species from the Gulf of Maine and Baffin Bay. To assess its ecological distribution and potential transmission pathways, we molecularly screened for Ca...

Elements on the move: How ungulate migration expands Alpine biogeochemical footprints

Through depositing waste products, animals influence the spatial distribution of elements across landscapes. Yet the relationship between animal movement and element distribution remains poorly characterized. We developed a spatially explicit agent-based model to test how migrato...

Two-Stage Maximum Power Point Tracking Photovoltaic Converter for IoT Sensor Nodes with Hardware Validation

Continuous operation is increasingly expected of Internet of Things (IoT) and wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes, yet practical solar front ends must account for source variability, intermediate storage, conversion losses, sensing overhead, and battery-management constraints. Th...

Antifouling and fouling-release coatings with polysaccharides: a nature-based solution to a marine challenge

Marine biofouling presents unique challenges in various industrial applications. This has historically been addressed using antifouling or fouling-release coatings. However, issues with the leaching of active or non-active components with non-target toxicity have resulted in incr...

Testing for functional adaptation in a genital bone: baculum size, shape, and microstructure show little plastic response to mating across five rodent species

Abstract Plasticity—the ability of a genotype to produce different phenotypes in response to environmental input—can provide insight into the mechanical forces experienced by biological structures. Bones are particularly plastic, remodeling in response to sustained and repetitive...

A Stochastic Model for Fog Forecasting

Abstract Despite significant advancements in parameterizations of boundary layer processes, forecasting, and nowcasting low‐level clouds using numerical models remain challenging. The purpose of this study is to test a prototype of a high‐resolution stochastic‐deterministic model...

Cognitive Behavior vs Bright Light Therapy for Insomnia in Women Undergoing Chemotherapy for Breast Cancer

Importance Women receiving chemotherapy for breast cancer experience insomnia and fatigue, which impair quality of life. To date, no randomized clinical trial (RCT) has evaluated the use of cognitive behavior therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) and bright light therapy (BLT) both alone...

A framework for integrating natural and sexual selection within- and across-generations of eukaryotic biphasic life cycles

Abstract An alternation between diploid and haploid phases is universal among sexual eukaryotes, with three kinds of biphasic life cycle distinguished by the presence or absence of mitosis in each phase. Across these biphasic cycles, ‘narrow sense’ natural selection and sexual se...

Artificial intelligence-Enabled Lightweight Flood Segmentation Model with Polarization Fusion and Attention

Rapid and reliable flood maps are essential for emergency response and disaster management. However, many deep learning models for flood segmentation are computationally demanding, limiting real-time use and deployment on modest hardware. This paper presents PFALNet, a reduced-pa...

Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle on half spaces and orthants: best constants, optimizers and stability

Abstract Though the sharp Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle has been extensively studied in the entire Euclidean spaces, the counterpart on the half spaces or more general orthants has been missing in the literature. We investigate the sharp Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle on ort...

Joint economic and epidemiological modelling of alternative pandemic response strategies

Abstract In an emerging pandemic, policymakers need to make decisions with limited information and require trade-offs between the health impact of the pandemic and the economic costs of the response. Most mathematical models have focused on direct health impacts, neglecting the e...

Development and analysis of a mixed colloid standard with trace elements using AF4-ICP-MS

Environmental context Colloids are small, unstable particles that play important environmental roles in the transport of trace elements and can be analysed using asymmetrical flow field-flow fractionation (AF4) coupled to inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). A m...

EMMPRIN-mediated metabolism of monocytes promotes disease progression in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis

Monocytes and monocyte-derived macrophages are increasingly recognized as key contributors to the initiation and progression of inflammatory conditions, in part through metabolic reprogramming that drives pathogenic inflammatory phenotypes. However, the upstream mechanisms that c...

The hidden cost of illness: exploring the relationship between seasonal respiratory illness, self-efficacy, and academic achievement of undergraduate science students

<title>Abstract</title> <bold>Background</bold> Seasonal respiratory illnesses (SRIs), including COVID-19, have significantly disrupted university students' academic experiences. This study examines the impact of SRIs on key academic factors such as attendance, self-efficacy, and...

Development and validation of an amyloid PET dementia of the Alzheimer's type (DAT) score

Background Alzheimer's disease (AD) can be debilitating if left untreated, but its progression may be altered through early detection. Objective To develop and evaluate a convolutional neural network (CNN) for detecting AD from amyloid PET brain images and to investigate the regi...