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Introduction High-quality evidence is crucial for guiding effective humanitarian responses, yet conducting rigorous research, particularly randomised controlled trials, in humanitarian crises remains challenging. The TISA (“traitement intégré de la sous-nutrition aiguë”) trial aimed to evaluate the impact of a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) intervention on the standard national treatment of uncomplicated Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) in children aged 6–59 months. Implemented in two northern Senegalese regions from December 22, 2021, to February 20, 2023, the trial faced numerous challenges, which this paper explores along with the lessons learned. Methods The study utilised trial documentation, including field reports, meeting minutes, training plans, operational monitoring data and funding proposals, to retrace the trial timeline, identify challenges and outline implemented solutions. Contributions from all TISA key staff—current and former, field-based and headquarters—were essential for collecting and interpreting information. Challenges were categorised as internal (within the TISA consortium) or external (broader contextual issues). Results The TISA trial, executed by a consortium of academic, operational, and community stakeholders, enrolled over 2000 children with uncomplicated SAM across 86 treatment posts in a 28,000 km 2 area. The control group received standard outpatient SAM care, while the intervention group also received a WASH kit and hygiene promotion. Initially planned to start in April 2019 for 12 months, the trial faced a 30-month delay and was extended to 27 months due to challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic, national strikes, health system integration issues and weather-related disruptions. Internal challenges included logistics, staffing, data management, funding and aligning diverse stakeholder priorities. Discussion and conclusion Despite these obstacles, the trial concluded successfully, underscoring the importance of tailored monitoring, open communication, transparency and community involvement. Producing high-quality evidence in humanitarian contexts demands extensive preparation and strong coordination among local and international researchers, practitioners, communities, decision-makers and funders from the study’s inception. Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov NCT04667767 .

Objective: To qualitatively examine the perceptions of young fathers toward issues related to early childbearing. Methods: Focus groups were held with male partners of adolescent females who had become pregnant while participating in an HIV-prevention trial. Results: Primary domains that emerged included young male's desire for pregnancy, their attitudes toward father/child involvement, and their perceived social support as young fathers. Conclusions: Findings may help in developing gender-appropriate interventions to delay early childbearing and prevent HIV/STD transmission.

We report an HLA haplotype with a deletion at the HLA-A locus in a 7 year old patient of Caucasian origin affected by Late Onset Globoid Cell Leukodystrophy, a rare autosomic recessive disease due to mutations in the galactosylceramidase gene localized on chromosome 14. Allogeneic bone marrow transplantation (BMT) in selected cases has proved successful. Materials and methods: HLA typing was performed with lymphocytotoxicity, low and high resolution PCR-SSP and SBT. Microsatellites close to the HLA-A locus (D6S2700, D6S2705, D6S265, D6S510, RF, D6S276) and the HFE gene were determined in order to assess the extent of deletion. Results: the patient (HLA-A1) inherited HLA-A1 from her father (HLA-A1, 24) and apparently no HLA-A specificity from her mother (HLA-A30). High resolution typing could not demonstrate any known HLA-A null allele. SBT for the patient only identified HLA-A*010101. The most probable hypothesis seemed a deletion at the HLA-A locus. All microsatellites analysed showed no deletion suggesting that the genomic DNA loss was closer to the HLA-A locus, between the D6S510 and the RF microsatellites. BMT was carried out with a donor bearing a single DQB1*mismatch; although engraftment was successful and no GvHD evidenced, disease progression could not be halted. Conclusion: an inherited haplotype carrying a small deletion at the HLA-A locus was described. Further investigation will include a karyotype analysis.

KIRs (Killer Cell Immunoglobulin like receptors) are exposed on NK cells. Aim of the study was to define the genotypic and haplotypic structure of KIRs in the italian Caucasian population. The typing has been performed by a new PCR-SSP kit (Dynal Biotech, Pel-Freez) in a panel of 217 healthy unrelated volunteers in a multicentric evaluation of 22 laboratories. The individual gene content varied from 7 to 15 without the pseudogene evaluation and from 7 to 17 including pseudoegenes. The frame work genes 2DL4, 3DL2, 3DL3 and the pseudogene 3DP1 are found in all individuals as already described in others studies. The gene 2DS4*003 was present in 89% of the population and 2DS4*001/*002 only in 33%. The transcribed allele 2DL5A*001 was recognized in 33% while the variant not transcribed *002-*004 in 28% of the population. Sixty-five genotypes were identified in the population; the most frequent are shown in the table in according to Witt and Uhrberg models: Only 4 (1.8%) genotypes with the profile 2DL1-,2DL3-,2DL2+ were observed in the population. The remaining 22.5% genotypes are present only one or twice The frequencies of KIR genes detected in our study are comparable to other Caucasian populations, while some differences with non-caucasian population are observed.

The effects of adult and continuing education (ACE) on the mental health and well-being of adults who engage in continuing education programmes have been the focus of studies and research for some years now, and the benefits of such involvement have been investigated with reference above all to the socio-economic dimension. On the other hand, attention to well-being in the educational and training professions, including ACE professionals, is still starting and is extremely recent. Starting from document analysis and the exploration of a recent literature, the contribution intends to offer a reflection on challenges and potential avenues for research on the well-being of ACE professionals.   Well-being dei professionisti dell’adult continuing education: riflessioni e piste di ricerca. Le ricadute dell’adult and continuing education (ACE) sulla salute mentale e sul benessere di adulti che si impegnano in programmi di continuing education sono al centro di studi e ricerche già da alcuni anni e i benefici di tale coinvolgimento sono stati più volte indagati e resi evidenti con riferimento soprattutto alla dimensione socio-economica. D’altra parte, l’attenzione al benessere nelle professioni educative e formative, compresi i professionisti ACE, è ancora agli inizi ed è estremamente recente. A partire da un’analisi documentale e dall’esplorazione di una letteratura recente, il contributo intende offrire una riflessione in termini di sfide e potenziali piste di ricerca sul tema del well-being dei professionisti dell’ACE.

Recognition of the need for evidence-based interventions to help to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian responses has been increasing. However, little is known about the breadth and quality of evidence on health interventions in humanitarian crises. We describe the findings of a systematic review with the aim of examining the quantity and quality of evidence on public health interventions in humanitarian crises to identify key research gaps. We identified 345 studies published between 1980 and 2014 that met our inclusion criteria. The quantity of evidence varied substantially by health topic, from communicable diseases (n=131), nutrition (n=77), to non-communicable diseases (n=8), and water, sanitation, and hygiene (n=6). We observed common study design and weaknesses in the methods, which substantially reduced the ability to determine causation and attribution of the interventions. Considering the major increase in health-related humanitarian activities in the past three decades and calls for a stronger evidence base, this paper highlights the limited quantity and quality of health intervention research in humanitarian contexts and supports calls to scale up this research.

Agricultural biodiversity has hitherto been valued almost exclusively as a source of traits that can be used in scientific breeding programs to improve the productivity of crop varieties and livestock breeds. We argue that it can make a far greater contribution to increased productivity. In particular, a wider deployment of agricultural biodiversity is an essential component in the sustainable delivery of a more secure food supply. Diversity of kingdoms, species and genepools can increase the productivity of farming systems in a range of growing conditions, and more diverse farming systems are also generally more resilient in the face of perturbations, thus enhancing food security. Diversity can maintain and increase soil fertility and mitigate the impact of pests and diseases. Diversity of diet, founded on diverse farming systems, delivers better nutrition and greater health, with additional benefits for human productivity and livelihoods. Agricultural biodiversity will also be absolutely essential to cope with the predicted impacts of climate change, not simply as a source of traits but as the underpinnings of more resilient farm ecosystems. Many of the benefits of agricultural biodiversity are manifested at different ecological and human scales, and cut across political divisions, requiring a cross-sectoral approach to reassess the role of agricultural biodiversity in sustainable and secure food production.

More than 99% of the mass of the visible universe is made up of protons and neutrons. Both particles are much heavier than their quark and gluon constituents, and the Standard Model of particle physics should explain this difference. We present a full ab initio calculation of the masses of protons, neutrons, and other light hadrons, using lattice quantum chromodynamics. Pion masses down to 190 mega-electron volts are used to extrapolate to the physical point, with lattice sizes of approximately four times the inverse pion mass. Three lattice spacings are used for a continuum extrapolation. Our results completely agree with experimental observations and represent a quantitative confirmation of this aspect of the Standard Model with fully controlled uncertainties.

Having accurate information available about future thermal building behavior can help to make good decisions in various heating control tasks. However, creating precise mathematical models for many different buildings is a complex and time-consuming task, owing to the heterogeneity of the building stock and the behavior of its occupants. In this paper, we propose a DNN-based system identification approach for predicting the room temperature inside a building based on past information and future weather forecasts. We evaluate various state-of-the-art and custom-built DNN architectures for TSF. Besides prediction performance, storage space and inference speed as measures for the respective model’s complexity are also taken into account. Our main contribution is demonstrating the effectiveness of these models in predicting the room temperature for differently parameterized simulated buildings. By using several distinct buildings for training, validation and testing, we additionally show that these models are capable to generalize in a way such that the room temperature for different buildings can be predicted by a single model, without any changes or adaptions.