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Summary Background Idiopathic granulomatous mastitis (IGM) is a rare, benign and chronic inflammatory condition of the breast. Clinically, it can mimic inflammatory breast cancer and is difficult to distinguish from tuberculous mastitis and sarcoidosis. Diagnosis of IGM is usually by exclusion and confirmed by histopathological examination. The mainstays of treatment described in current literature are antibiotics, systemic steroids and immunosuppressants. Case report We present a case of IMG treated with topical steroids only, with no side effects or relapse. Results and Conclusions Till now, there are no specific guidelines for the management of idiopathic granulomatous mastitis. It varies from expectant management, steroid treatment till surgical intervention. Topical steroids were used as alternative to systemic preparations with the potential benefit of avoiding the side effects of long-term systemic steroid therapy.

Summary Background In 1972, Arrigoni termed hamartoma of the breast as all swellings that are grossly circumscribed, encapsulated masses, composed of mammary ducts and prominent lobules admixed with varying amounts of fibrous and adipose tissue often misdiagnosed as fibroadenomas or mammary dysplasias, a protocol needs to be established with regard to the mammographic and pathological details that confirm the existence of these lesions as a distinct entity. Pathognomonic radiological findings help identify these lesions, confirmed later on tissue diagnosis. Methods Hamartomas form a rare and distinct group of benign breast lesions which are characterized by distinctive mammographic and pathological features, added to a high degree of clinical suspicion. They do not possess specific diagnostic histological features. The role of fine needle aspiration cytology and needle core biopsy in making the diagnosis is limited, and requires clinical and radiological correlation to avoid under diagnosis. The presence of fibrous tissue within the lobules, or fibrous tissue and fat in the stroma, with or without pseudoangiomatous changes, should alert the pathologist to the possibility of a hamartoma. Although hamartomas are benign, coincidental malignancy can occur, and the issue of potential recurrence has not been resolved. Results We presented a case of mammary hamartoma in an 82-year-old female which was picked up on a chest CT scan, diagnosis was confirmed by mammogram, breast ultra sound scan as well as core biopsy. Conclusions Breast hamartoma is a rare entity, but whenever unfamiliar presentation of benign breast lesion is encountered with microcalcifications, this entity should be considered and coexistent malignancy should be ruled out.

Intussusception in adults is a rare condition, in contrast to paediatric intussusception where the majority of cases are idiopathic, ∼90% of adult cases have identifiable aetiology. The clinical presentation is often non-specific abdominal pain. We report the case of a 49-year-old gentleman who presented to our emergency department with a 10-day history of colicky abdominal pain. Computed tomography imaging revealed a lipomatous mass lesion in the transverse colon leading to intussusception. An extended right hemicolectomy was performed with a good result. Histology confirmed that the leading point of the intussusception was a large submucosal lipoma. Gastrointestinal lipomas are rare and largely asymptomatic. However, they may cause abdominal pain, bleeding per rectum, obstruction or intussusception. Since adult colonic intussusception is frequently associated with malignant organic lesions, the differential diagnosis is important, and timely surgical intervention paramount.

Cystic echinococcosis caused by the cestode Echinococcus granulosus remains a serious helminthic zoonosis affecting humans and animals in many endemic developing countries. Surgical intervention is the best management choice, although it is associated with high recurrence rates and serious complications. Also, the commonly used chemotherapeutics exhibited serious side effects. This study aimed to evaluate the protoscolicidal effects of eugenol (Eug) essential oil and its nanoemulsion (Eug-NE) against protoscoleces (PCs) of hydatid cysts in vitro. Eug-NE was prepared and characterized. Their cytotoxicity on macrophages was assessed by the 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide assay. E. granulosus PCs were treated with various concentrations of Eug and Eug-NE at different exposure times. The viability of protoscoleces was evaluated by the eosin exclusion test, and the changes in the morphology of protoscoleces were assessed. Albendazole (ABZ) was used as a positive control. The cellular cytotoxicity of Eug and Eug-NE on macrophage cells, in minimum and maximum concentrations (0.2 and 1 μl/mL), were nearly negligible ranging from 4.7% to 8.3% and 3.7% to 7.2%, respectively. The results showed highly significant activity of Eug-NE and Eug against hydatid PCs compared to ABZ (P < 0.05). Eug and Eug-NE have similar protoscolicidal effects at all used concentrations. Their highest scolicidal activity (100% mortality rate) was recorded at 1 μl/ml after 30 min incubation (LC50 = 0.298-LC90 = 0.521 and LC50 = 0.309-LC90 = 0.646, respectively). Both formulations showed time- and dose-dependent effects. This study suggested the potent scolicidal activities of Eug and Eug-NE as promising alternative scolicidal agents. Future studies are recommended to explore the mechanism of action and treatment response in vivo and clinical settings.

This study aims to conduct sentiment analysis and SWOT analysis of DeepSeek. The dataset consisted of four data sources: news articles, DeepSeek self-perception, users’ perceptions, and a comprehensive literature review. Sentiment analysis examined news articles from diverse Chinese and Western outlets, while SWOT analysis evaluated DeepSeek strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats based on DeepSeek self and users’ perceptions and literature. ATLAS.ti and SPSS were used for analysis. Chi-square analysis results revealed significant differences between Chinese and Western media portrayals. Chinese media expressed more positive and fewer negative sentiments, whereas Western media expressed more negative and fewer positive sentiments, with both primarily neutral. Chinese media positive sentiment emphasized innovation, self-reliance, and global AI leadership, while negative sentiment sharply focused on technical and ethical challenges. Western media positive sentiment highlighted efficiency and technological advancement, while negative sentiment emphasized market disruption, geopolitical tensions, and security concerns. The SWOT analysis of DeepSeek self-perception indicated deliberate management of identity and accountability, with user-centered prompts eliciting detailed responses than tool-focused prompts. Users’ perceptions highlighted DeepSeek strengths in efficiency and accessibility, while noting weaknesses in accuracy and ecosystem maturity. Opportunities were identified in education, equity, and interdisciplinary applications, alongside threats related to misinformation, automation risks, and the potential for ethical misuse. The literature corroborated these findings, highlightingstrengths include performance, efficiency, reasoning capabilities, low cost, and open-source deployment;limitations involve data quality, bias, and privacy concerns; opportunities exist in education, industry, and task-specific applications; and threats include reliability and over-reliance. Plain Language Summary Understanding DeepSeek: Insights from Media Coverage, DeepSeek Self-Perception, and Literature This study examines DeepSeek using sentiment and SWOT analyses across four sources: news articles, the AI tool self-perception, users’ feedback, and the academic literature. Sentiment analysis of Chinese and Western media showed significant differences. Chinese media expressed more positive sentiment, emphasizing innovation, self-reliance, and global leadership, while negative sentiment focused on technical and ethical challenges. Western media highlighted efficiency and technological advancement as positive, with negative sentiment focusing on market disruption, geopolitical tensions, and security risks. The SWOT analysis revealed that DeepSeek manages its identity and accountability carefully, with user-centered prompts generating more detailed responses. Users noted strengths in efficiency and accessibility but highlighted weaknesses in accuracy and ecosystem maturity. Opportunities were identified in education, equity, and interdisciplinary use, while threats included misinformation, automation risks, and ethical misuse. Literature supported these findings, recognizing reasoning capabilities, low cost, and open-source deployment as strengths, with data quality, bias, and privacy as limitations. Overall, the study highlights media portrayal, DeepSeek self-perception, users’ perceptions, and literature review, offering insights for responsible development, deployment, and governance of DeepSeek.

Improving seed germination indices is one of the factors for achieving high yields in agriculture, which is affected by environmental stresses, especially salinity. Seed priming is one of the methods for improving seed germination parameters to cope with salinity stress. Seaweeds can maintain plant growth under stressful conditions due to their bioactive compounds, including hormones, vitamins, nutrients, and secondary metabolites. The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of seed pretreatment with seaweed extract (0, 10, 20, and 30 g L − 1 ) on germination, growth, and biochemical indices of Grammosciadium platycarpum seedlings under salinity stress (0, 2, and 4 dS m − 1 ). The results showed that seaweed extract priming enhanced key germination traits, under non-salinity conditions. For seedling growth traits, although conditions were better in the absence of salt stress, seed pretreatment significantly reduced the effects of salt stress compared to the control condition. The highest levels of chlorophyll a and b were observed at 30 g L − 1 in seeds treated with seaweed extract. The highest levels of MDA and antioxidant enzymes occurred under 4 dS m − 1 salinity. Overall, seaweed extract, with its bioactive compounds as an organic, cheap, and accessible input, appears to be an effective strategy to mitigate plant in low-fertility and saline lands.

Semantic segmentation, which refers to pixel-wise classification of an image, is a fundamental topic in computer vision owing to its growing importance in the robot vision and autonomous driving sectors. It provides rich information about objects in the scene such as object boundary, category, and location. Recent methods for semantic segmentation often employ an encoder-decoder structure using deep convolutional neural networks. The encoder part extracts features of the image using several filters and pooling operations, whereas the decoder part gradually recovers the low-resolution feature maps of the encoder into a full input resolution feature map for pixel-wise prediction. However, the encoder-decoder variants for semantic segmentation suffer from severe spatial information loss, caused by pooling operations or stepwise convolutions, and does not consider the context in the scene. In this paper, we propose a novel dense upsampling convolution method based on a guided filter to effectively preserve the spatial information of the image in the network. We further propose a novel local context convolution method that not only covers larger-scale objects in the scene but covers them densely for precise object boundary delineation. Theoretical analyses and experimental results on several benchmark datasets verify the effectiveness of our method. Qualitatively, our approach delineates object boundaries at a level of accuracy that is beyond the current excellent methods. Quantitatively, we report a new record of 82.86% and 81.62% of pixel accuracy on ADE20K and Pascal-Context benchmark datasets, respectively. In comparison with the state-of-the-art methods, the proposed method offers promising improvements.

ChatGPT has emerged as a transformative technology with its remarkable ability to generate human-like responses, propelling its widespread adoption. While prior research has investigated the general landscape of AI-driven tools such as ChatGPT, the current study focuses specifically on exploring learners’ experiences and perceptions regarding the utilization of ChatGPT as a learning assistant tool.  Data was collected through professional social media platforms from learners and analyzed inductively using ATLAS.ti to identify recurring themes. The findings revealed several crucial themes including personalized interactive learning, language support, writing and research assistance, task and concept clarification. Additionally,  learners found it to be time-efficient and easy to access information. Concerns were raised regarding its limitations and risks such as the hindrance to critical thinking and independent research skills, difficulties in engaging with longer texts for deeper comprehension, and the possibility of writing style homogenization and loss of uniqueness among others. The results highlighted several essential strategies adopted by learners to optimize ChatGPT usage as a learning tool. In addition, most users demonstrated a preference for spending much time using ChatGPT compared to other digital information tools, signalling a paradigm shift toward increased utilization of generative AI in learning. The study underscores the significance of adopting a balanced approach, and advocates for further research on the impact of AI-driven tools like ChatGPT. The findings have important implications for learners, educators, and policymakers regarding the use of ChatGPT in education .

Background The dual technique using blue dye in combination with a radioisotope is considered the gold standard for identifying sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) in patients with breast cancer. Unfortunately, not all cancer centres have access to radioactive material, which jeopardizes the SLN identification rate and patient safety. Aim We aimed to assess the safety and efficacy of mitoxantrone hydrochloride injection (MHI) for identifying axillary SLNs in patients with primary breast cancer. Patients and methods We have conducted a prospective non-randomized analysis of patients diagnosed with invasive breast cancer who agreed to participate in the study between December 2019 and December 2022. We have used the patient's medical records to collect the data. We have used the SLN intraoperative identification rate as a marker for the efficacy of the technique and both the immediate and delayed complication rates and routine blood tests as markers for the safety of the technique. Results Out of the 296 patients, 289 (97.6%) had their SLNs identified using MHI, while seven patients (2.3%) had four-node sampling carried out because the SLNs were not identified. Liver functions were not significantly affected by MHI, and there was no technique-related readmission or reported morbidity or mortality. Conclusion We have found that the MHI technique is still inferior to the combined radioactive directed technique and patent blue V dye in SLN identification. Yet, it may serve as a safe and reliable alternative in cases where the radioactive technique is unavailable.

Conventional scolicidal agents are still unsatisfactory in combating hydatid disease due to their low efficacy and increased drug side effects. Therefore, novel scolicides are required. This study aimed to evaluate the antihydatic and immunomodulatory effects of eugenol essential oil (Eug) and its nanoemulsion (Eug-NE) in cystic echinococcosis (CE). Eug and Eug-NE were administered orally to CE-infected rats and compared to albendazole (ABZ). Hydatid cyst development was assessed based on organ weight and hypertrophy indicators of the infected organs, along with a histopathological and histochemical evaluation of collagen content. The immunomodulatory effects of treatment on CE were evaluated by serum cytokine levels measurement of interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) and interleukin (IL)-4 and immunohistochemical (IHC) analysis of signal transducer and activator of transcription 4 (STAT4) and GATA-binding protein 3 (GATA3) markers. Eug-NE was the most effective in reducing the cyst weights, organ weights, and hypertrophy indicators and improving histopathological lesions with reduced collagen content. Eug and Eug-NE significantly increased the IFN-gamma levels and decreased the IL-4 levels, while IHC analysis demonstrated a significant reduction in STAT4 and GATA3 expression in all treated groups. Eug and Eug-NE demonstrated antihydatic and preventative effects, with a substantial decrease in liver fibrosis compared to that of ABZ. Besides their promising immunomodulatory effects, their good treatment response suggests their use as alternatives or complementary scolicidal agents in hydatid cyst treatment.