Saarland University

Outcomes of therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty and deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty in acanthamoeba keratitis: A systematic review and meta‐analysis

While acanthamoeba keratitis (AK) is a sight-threatening corneal infection, a thorough comparison of the outcomes of therapeutic penetrating keratoplasty (PK) and therapeutic deep anterior lamellar keratoplasty (DALK) is lacking. We aimed to compare clinical outcomes of PK and DA...

Subpocket-Aware Fragment-Based Docking Pipeline for Kinase Ligand Design: Methodology and a PKA Case Study

Abstract Protein kinases regulate signal transduction through phosphorylation, and their dysregulation drives diseases like cancer, autoimmune disorders, and Alzheimer’s, making them key drug targets. Fragment-based drug design offers a powerful route to kinase inhibitors but oft...

Selective Electrochemical Lithium-Ion Extraction from Low-Grade Lithium Sources with Optimized Pulsed Operation

Abstract Lithium recovery from brines, particularly low-grade resources, remains a major challenge. Here, we develop an electrochemical lithium-ion extraction system based on carbon-coated LiFePO4 as the working electrode and systematically elucidate how the carbon coating govern...

Design, Synthesis, and Preliminary Investigation on the Mode of Action for a Series of Novel Antimicrobial Peptidomimetics

Abstract Over the years, many antibiotics have been developed, but most have become less effective due to antimicrobial resistance, especially those targeting enzymatic pathways. This growing resistance poses a serious global health threat. It is now recognized that physically di...

The Effects of Physical and Mind–Body Exercise on Anxiety Among Patients with Breast Cancer: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Controlled Trials

Background and Objectives: Anxiety is highly prevalent among breast cancer patients and significantly impairs quality of life. Although both conventional physical exercise (PE) and mind–body interventions (MBE) are used in supportive care, their relative efficacy remains unclear....

Prognosis of acute symptomatic seizures and impact of prolonged treatment with anti‐seizure medication

Abstract Objectives Acute symptomatic epileptic seizures (ASySs) occur in temporal proximity to acute brain insults. Given their low risk of subsequent unprovoked seizures, current guidelines recommend either no treatment with anti‐seizure medication (ASM) or early discontinuatio...

Digital solutions for tackling mental health in cancer patients and their families: The ALTHEA project

Despite advances in cancer treatment, the growing global cancer burden underscores the need for comprehensive and supportive care to address the needs of patients and their families. However, access to psycho-oncological support remains often limited across healthcare systems. Th...

Nutrition and health status in the follow-up of the risks and benefits of a vegan diet (RBVD) study

Abstract To examine health risks and benefits of a vegan diet, the RBVD study was conducted in 2017 and followed up in 2021. The present paper evaluated dietary nutrient intake and status together with systemic cardiometabolic health-related biomarkers and examinations among vega...

Safety and pharmacokinetics of inhaled aloxistatin: A first‐in‐human phase 1 dose escalation trial

Aims Aloxistatin (E64d) is a membrane‐permeable cysteine protease inhibitor prodrug that is converted by esterases to the active metabolite E64c (loxistatin). This first‐in‐human study evaluated the safety, tolerability and pharmacokinetics of single ascending doses of inhaled E6...

Respiratory Syncytial Virus Vaccination Strongly Induces RSVpreF-specific IgG and Neutralizing Activity in Immunocompromised Individuals.

Background: Protein-based respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) prefusion F (RSVpreF) vaccines show promising immunogenicity in immunocompromised individuals. We have recently shown that RSV-specific CD4 T-cell responses and IgG antibodies were significantly induced, but data on func...

LLM-driven design of physics-constrained constitutive models: Two agents are better than one

Abstract Developing constitutive models that capture how materials deform under load traditionally requires years of specialized expertise in continuum mechanics, machine learning, and scientific programming. Large language models (LLMs) have recently been shown to lower this bar...

Active Shielding of Glass Capillaries for the Compensation of Parasitic Effects in Transepithelial Electrical Resistance Measurements of Organoids

Abstract Capillary-based TEER measurements are affected by parasitic capacitances that distort the impedance spectrum and compromise reliable determination of barrier resistance of 3D cell structures, e.g. organoids. In this study, an actively shielded glass capillary concept is...

Neuropsychobiological transdiagnostic risk mechanisms for aggression in mental disorders across the life span

Abstract Background Aggression in mental disorders (AMD) is a prevalent symptom, poses difficulties to the clinical setting and has far-reaching societal implications. The biological basis of different manifestations, developmental courses, and disease-specific mechanisms remains...

Robust fully discrete error bounds for the Kuznetsov equation in the inviscid limit

Abstract The Kuznetsov equation is a classical wave model of nonlinear acoustics that incorporates quadratic gradient nonlinearities. When its strong damping vanishes, it undergoes a singular behavior change, switching from a parabolic-like to a hyperbolic quasilinear evolution....

MAGIC: A Dataset Capturing Mid-Air Gesture Performance for Interaction and Feature Analysis

Mid-air gestures are increasingly used as a natural modality in interactive systems, ranging from smart home controls and automotive interfaces to augmented reality and public displays. Despite their growing adoption across diverse domains, we still lack a comprehensive understan...

Working memory and vocabulary knowledge sustain activation of the literal meaning of metaphors during sentence comprehension

Abstract Metaphors convey meanings beyond their literal interpretation, requiring individuals to rely on linguistic and cognitive resources beyond those used for literal language. Models of metaphor comprehension propose different routes to deriving metaphorical content. The indi...

Physics-Informed Neural Network with Adaptive Loss Weighting for Parameterized Surface Potential Prediction on Polymeric Dielectric Interfaces

Abstract Surface charge accumulation on polymeric dielectrics is widely encountered in electronic packaging, triboelectric energy harvesting, and aerospace insulation, with direct consequences for device performance and insulation reliability. Surface potential provides an access...

Aerosol deposition of titanium dioxide on polymeric substrates – influence of substrate properties and processing parameters on the early stages of film growth

Aerosol deposition (AD) enables room-temperature fabrication of polymer ceramic composites, yet the deposition mechanism of ceramic particles onto polymers is not fully understood. In this study, we investigate the growth of TiO2 films deposited by AD on polycarbonate (PC), polya...

A systematically designed open-access dataset for cross-microscope machine learning benchmarking in complex steel microstructure classification

Abstract The establishment of robust machine learning workflows for microstructure analysis requires datasets that systematically capture the variance introduced by the imaging pipeline. While existing studies in this field predominantly rely on well-curated, homogeneous datasets...

Mind the Trust Gap: Identifying (Mis)alignments in Teacher-Student Views Toward Control and Agency in K-12 Classroom AI

As Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based technologies have been integrated into school classrooms where multiple stakeholders (with different roles) interact with each other, it is critical to deeply understand stakeholder views in the classroom. In particular, prior work has not fu...