Simple Summary The aim of the study was to determine the morphological and morphometrical features of the auditory ossicles in the red fox. Moreover, for the first time, shape analysis was performed on all the middle ear bones by geometric morphometry. The auditory ossicles play a vital role in transmitting sound waves through the middle ear. The malleus was considered to be the largest bone, with three distinctive processes. The overall shape of the incus was found to be similar to that in other mammals. The presence of a prominent muscular process was noted on the head of the stapes and the convex base which closes the window of the inner ear. Abstract The use of carnivores as experimental models in auditory biology has led to a significant improvement regarding our understanding of the structure and function of the ear. Considering that data regarding the anatomy of the middle ear in the red fox are rare, this study aimed to describe the morphological and morphometrical features of the auditory ossicles in the red fox, as well as to provide their shape characteristics by geometric analysis. Nine adult red foxes were used in the study. The malleus, incus and stapes were extracted from the middle ear, prepared, photographed and measured using the software. For the geometric analysis, 19 landmarks were used. Following Principal Component Analysis (PCA), PC1 was found to explain approximately half of all variance (incus: 49.97%; malleus: 49.93%; stapes: 58.49%). The study demonstrated the similar anatomical organization of the auditory ossicles in line with important morphometric and basic geometric data, which can contribute to this field and add a useful perspective to the literature.

Introduction Hypoglycaemia is a harmful potential complication in people with type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and can be exacerbated in patients receiving treatment, such as insulin therapies, by the very interventions aiming to achieve optimal blood glucose levels. Symptoms can vary greatly, including, but not limited to, trembling, palpitations, sweating, dry mouth, confusion, seizures, coma, brain damage or even death if untreated. A pilot study with healthy (euglycaemic) participants previously demonstrated that hypoglycaemia can be detected non-invasively with artificial intelligence (AI) using physiological signals obtained from wearable sensors. This protocol provides a methodological description of an observational study for obtaining physiological data from people with T1DM. The aim of this work is to further improve the previously developed AI model and validate its performance for glycaemic event detection in people with T1DM. Such a model could be suitable for integrating into a continuous, non-invasive, glucose monitoring system, contributing towards improving surveillance and management of blood glucose for people with diabetes. Methods and analysis This observational study aims to recruit 30 patients with T1DM from a diabetes outpatient clinic at the University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire for a two-phase study. The first phase involves attending an inpatient protocol for up to 36 hours in a calorimetry room under controlled conditions, followed by a phase of free-living, for up to 3 days, in which participants will go about their normal daily activities unrestricted. Throughout the study, the participants will wear wearable sensors to measure and record physiological signals (eg, ECG and continuous glucose monitor). Data collected will be used to develop and validate an AI model using state-of-the-art deep learning methods. Ethics and dissemination This study has received ethical approval from National Research Ethics Service (ref: 17/NW/0277). The findings will be disseminated via peer-reviewed journals and presented at scientific conferences. Trial registration number NCT05461144.

Sleep disorders can impact daily life, affecting physical, emotional, and cognitive well-being. Due to the time-consuming, highly obtrusive, and expensive nature of using the standard approaches such as polysomnography, it is of great interest to develop a noninvasive and unobtrusive in-home sleep monitoring system that can reliably and accurately measure cardiorespiratory parameters while causing minimal discomfort to the user’s sleep. We developed a low-cost Out of Center Sleep Testing (OCST) system with low complexity to measure cardiorespiratory parameters. We tested and validated two force-sensitive resistor strip sensors under the bed mattress covering the thoracic and abdominal regions. Twenty subjects were recruited, including 12 males and 8 females. The ballistocardiogram signal was processed using the 4th smooth level of the discrete wavelet transform and the 2nd order of the Butterworth bandpass filter to measure the heart rate and respiration rate, respectively. We reached a total error (concerning the reference sensors) of 3.24 beats per minute and 2.32 rates for heart rate and respiration rate, respectively. For males and females, heart rate errors were 3.47 and 2.68, and respiration rate errors were 2.32 and 2.33, respectively. We developed and verified the reliability and applicability of the system. It showed a minor dependency on sleeping positions, one of the major cumbersome sleep measurements. We identified the sensor under the thoracic region as the optimal configuration for cardiorespiratory measurement. Although testing the system with healthy subjects and regular patterns of cardiorespiratory parameters showed promising results, further investigation is required with the bandwidth frequency and validation of the system with larger groups of subjects, including patients.

Encouraged by increasing public and scientific attention, research has made great strides in recent years to improve our understanding of sexting. However, despite these advances, scientifically based and evaluated prevention strategies are not available and are still in development. There is a need to design sexting prevention strategies in order to implement and evaluate them. For this reason, we have developed a comprehensive sexting prevention program, the background, structure, content, and future evaluation of which are presented in this paper. We have proposed a program that needs to be evaluated to train psychologists, parents, and students in order to prevent the negative consequences of sexting and to develop resources for dealing with it.

We present a singular perturbation theory applicable to systems with hybrid boundary layer systems and hybrid reduced systems {with} jumps from the boundary layer manifold. First, we prove practical attractivity of an adequate attractor set for small enough tuning parameters and sufficiently long time between almost all jumps. Second, under mild conditions on the jump mapping, we prove semi-global practical asymptotic stability of a restricted attractor set. Finally, for certain classes of dynamics, we prove semi-global practical asymptotic stability of the restricted attractor set for small enough tuning parameters and sufficiently long period between almost all jumps of the slow states only.

Introduction. Despite the fact that error correction has significant and long-term effects on facilitating language learning and development, there has not been any research that investigates its influence on learners' motivation within the classroom context of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Purpose. This research aims to examine the impact of written and oral corrective feedback on students' motivation and achievement within this EFL context. Method. For this quantitative study, the questionnaire has been used to collect the data from 160 middle and high school students in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Results. The findings indicated that the respondents generally like to be corrected and they are moderately to highly motivated to speak and write in English as a foreign language. Furthermore, learners with positive attitudes towards the received feedback feel significantly more motivated to keep learning than those with negative attitudes. Conclusion. The study is expected to provide teachers with suggestions on how to transform their classrooms into an environment conducive to the development of higher levels of writing and speaking motivation and how to provide corrective feedback that will positively influence students' EFL achievement.

the milk of control and α-linolenic (1.90%) of milk experimental group of sheep were the most prevalent in the winter. The lowest ratio of omega-6/omega-3 fatty acids in sheep's milk was achieved in the period of feeding sheep with old grass (July), 1.46% in the milk of the experimental group of sheep that were fed with concentrates in which omega-3 preparations were added.